Mr. GQ Man

Other than occasional and unintentional moments of popularity, I was generally a wallflower at school - an introvert and afraid of everything (why, I wonder). One of those moments to "shine" was when I wore a new shirt and shoes to school. The shirt was grayscale and had a lizard/snake/alligator skin pattern. The shoes were black with squared-off toes, and black pants. It wasn't often my parents chose the right clothes for me. This time they hit the ball out of the park because I was a well-dressed man in my 2nd grade class and quite admired for a day.

Bitten Tongue

I came close to biting my tongue off one day. I remember it quite vividly. The family was at Seneca Park (on Seneca Lake) one fine day, and us kids (Rita, Dennis, & me, as I recall) were at a small playground in the park. Rita - who was 6 years older than I (and still is) and significantly heavier - and I got on the see saw (or “teeter totter” as we called it) and teetered and tottered on it for awhile until I decided to get off, which I did without informing Rita of my intentions. I, of course, got off when it was tottered in my direction and I was close to the ground, however the weight of Rita on the other side caused the wooden seat to rise up at a great speed and smack me under the chin, causing me to bite my tongue with great force. It hurt, naturally, and I put my hands up to my mouth and made some sort of muffled exclamation. I them looked at my hands to see if there was blood, and lo and behold there was lots of it, which caused me to scream and panic and run as fast as I could to my parents. They assessed the situation, stuffed a towel in my mouth and whisked me off to the hospital emergency room. Turns out there was nothing the doctors could do for my badly bitten tongue. Perhaps nowadays they could. There is still somewhat of a scar on my tongue after all these years.

Off the Pier

We had little to no money growing up, though I recall a relatively happy childhood. One of the things we did for inexpensive recreation is visit one of the nearby finger lakes – Seneca or Canandaigua. I remember us fishing off a pier on a nice summer day and seeing crowds of people on the beach behind us having a grand ‘ol time. I very much wanted to join them (fishing was dull business, to me; still is). So, I whined and complained like a little shit for some time until Dad says to Mom “Let’s put him in his bathing suit and throw him off the pier.” At the time I could not swim and was deathly afraid of deep water, so I clammed up. I guess I was afraid they would actually toss me off the pier. Strange what goes through a kid’s mind.

My Story

Mom watched a soap opera on TV each weekday afternoon, sometimes 2, probably as a coping mechanism for having 7 kids. "Don't bother me it's time for My Story" is what she said to announce to anyone within earshot that she was unavailable for the next hour or 2. I remember watching them with her after morning kindergarten (back in those days it was a half day). I was pretty much clueless about the plot, but there were certain characters that I found interesting most of them for reasons I have long since forgotten. However, I always enjoyed seeing Dr. Hardy on General Hospital – he was such an approachable and kind character and was seemingly content and even-keeled all the time. I was, of course, blissfully unaware of the drama surrounding his character which I just now read about in Wikipedia. Back then I assumed the character you saw on TV was a real person and not a character being played by an actor. Sort of how I assumed that teachers only existed in school.

Easy Bake Oven

Cindy & Terri were twin girls in the neighborhood that I played with occasionally, being that they were only slightly younger than I. One day they showed me their new Easy Bake Oven (toy oven introduced by Kenner in 1963; heat was provided by a 100 watt incandescent light bulb). We 3 decided to bake a pie in it. And not just any pie, but a peanut butter & jelly pie. And we did. And it was gross.

Jersey

We spent a week in New Jersey visiting cousins of some sort. I asked my father recently about it and he told me they were from his side of the family. The house was out in the country. There was a train tracks in the back of the property - we would stand and watch the trains go by, which was a novelty for us. There were also barn owls and bats that invaded the night, also items of interest for us village-dwellers. We went to a public pool of sorts one day. I was relegated to the kiddy pool while everybody else had fun in the adjoining "adult" pool. The water over there, as I observed, was a wonderful color blue. It spilled over into the kiddy pool and I imagined the blue tint making the kiddy pool water blue-er. A kid's imagination.

The most meaningful memory I had of that trip was an evening when the older kids played records and danced in the enclosed patio. At one point someone played a slow song and everybody slow-danced except me because, as a little kid, I was way too short. I was sad until my brother Roger picked me up and slow-danced with me. I recall the kindness and affection to this day. I talked about this incident at his funeral.

Letters from Jean

My sister Jean had moved out on her own by the time I was 3 or 4, so I only recall her not being at home except to visit. She had an apartment in Rochester which, to a kid, was a big city very far away, though it was really only an hour away at most. I did not get to see Jean on a regular basis and missed her, so I wrote her letters and had Mom mail them for me. I would also take a piece of plain white paper, place it over a portion of the dining room tablecloth (which had a textured pattern), rub the long edge of a crayon over the paper, and the pattern would transfer to the paper in the color of the crayon. I did this, and other artsy things, and send them to her along with some narrative. I would, of course, sign the letter "J.B." since that's what everyone in the family called me. Jean replied occasionally with a letter addressed to "Master Jon Perez" which made me feel grown up. She also raved about the art work I had sent her. I had the opportunity to visit her once and, sure enough, my drawings were put up on her fridge. Even though I'm sure she was only being nice to her baby brother, it meant alot to me that she took the time to write back and praise my artistic efforts. You never know what your words/actions mean to a kid.

Big M

The only grocery store in the village was Big M (till eventually another store opened up on the other end of town). I found out decades later the “M” stands for Midstate – a grocery company. It was a tiny store, compared to the multi-acre stores around today.

Grocery shopping for the family was done once a week on Saturday morning. I remember there was a nest of sorts built into a space in the wall above the dairy section with either an owl or chicken (fake, of course); I don’t recall which it was. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced it was an owl. Once and for a time there was this life-size clown that inflated & deflated continuously. It must have been there to advertise something. I was deathly afraid of that thing. It must have been the noise of it or something, because I was not afraid of clowns in general, but boy-o-boy that thing gave me the frights.

What I enjoyed most about Saturday morning grocery shopping was this special loaf of bread my parents would buy as a post-shopping treat. It was relatively small, as bread loaves go, but it was so soft and sweet and delicious, and we would go apey with anticipation of arriving home, slicing it up, and wolfing it down! I have never found anything like it, since.

Broken Nose

Back when I was around 4 years old my nose got broken. My dad coached a baseball team for the American Legion which my brother Mike played on. I often went along to the games, mainly to run around and play with other kids. At one particular game somewhere out in the boonies of Wayne County, I was playing chase with another kid on a playground slide. I remember being at the top of the slide and waking up at the bottom on the ground, face up. Apparently, I had taken a tumble down the slide and plowed face-first into the gravely dirt. I was carried – stretcher-like – and loaded into the back of a van (Mr. Hunt’s green cargo van) and taken to the closest hospital. At the hospital I was checked out and taken for X-Rays. It was at that point that I began to panic because I was being taken somewhere without my parents. Before that I remember being calm, cool, and collected, and just sort of “went along for the ride”.

I spent the next few days in the hospital, recovering from a broken nose and (apparently) serious concussion, because I recall not feeling well at all for a couple days. Didn’t want much to do with anything or anybody. Some young guy with a broken leg would wheel in and say hi to me occasionally, but I was not interested in the least until I started feeling better, then I socialized a little bit. I have no idea who he was or why he took an interest in me. Perhaps I shared the room with him, I dunno. Also, someone from my family – father, mother, big sister – was always with me, 24x7.

I remember that on the day before I checked out, the doctor very carefully took little stones out that had been buried into the end of my nose like I had been hit with shotgun shot. The obvious result of hitting the gravel with my face at the bottom of the slide. Here’s a picture of me in my hospital bed. What doesn’t show up well are the bruises on my face, like I had just lost an ultimate fighting match or something.

Roger's Money

I liked hanging around my older siblings, specifically Jean, Roger, or Mike ("Mickey" as he was called until he went off to college; then he was known as "Mike" though I am not certain of the timing or reason for the transition). Anyways, one never knew what adventures might crop up whilst hanging around one of them, or possibly a treat of candy or something. I was following Roger around the house one day like a puppy dog. He, for some reason, remarked that he didn't have any money. Perhaps I asked him for something, I don't recall. Knowing that he was gainfully employed back then, I inquired as to what he did with the money he made. He said he threw it away. Not comprehending the euphemism, I fished through all the wastebaskets in house looking for some financial windfall courtesy of Roger.

Pet Sounds

Brownie (the dog) was dead & buried at the previous house and somebody decided we needed a new dog, so dad went off to the dog pound to find one suitable for us ("dog pound" is what we called it back then; nowadays an "animal shelter" or similar). He did find one - a smallish hound dog of questionable heritage which bounced up and down on all fours as if to say "pick me! pick me!" Dad said that any dog that could do that deserved to be taken home. His name ended up "Magoo". He was enjoyable to have around until one day John and I found him behind the house lying down, his eyes open and teeth bared and as still as stone. We puzzled over him for some time trying to figure out if he was frozen and could be thawed out, as it was late in the year. Eventually we decided that telling a grownup was the best strategy, so I went and told Mom. She subsequently informed me he was dead, and I was very sad. I believe that was the first time I experienced the death of something/someone important to me.

We had a cat that had died before then - named Supercalifragialisticexpialadocious (title of a song from Mary Poppins). We called it Expial, for short. Anyways, I had not seen the cat around for some time and inquired as to its whereabouts. It was told to me that it was run over by a car. Neither the nature of its demise nor the fact that it was dead had any measurable effect on me, emotional or otherwise. I was a bit older when Magoo met his Maker, so the impact was much more profound.

Post Magoo, Arnold (I think it was Arnold) brought a cute little fuzzy puppy home from somewheres. It must have been on a Friday, because I spent the entire weekend cuddling it. It was scared of everybody except me. By Monday morning we could tell it was sick, the poor little guy, so Arnold took it back and I never saw it again. Eventually we obtained another dog - a cute roly-poly fuzzball we named Major.

We had another cat around that time named Mr. Muffs. He was a good cat, as cats go, mostly white with some occasional gray. He had a large gray marking on his side that was the nearly the precise shape of Mickey Mouse's head. Dad worked in graphic arts / advertising and one of his accounts produced household humidifiers. These humidifiers were supposed to be unusually quiet, so Dad produced a cardboard cutout of Mr. Muffs sleeping on one which was replicated, distributed, and perched on every store display model of said humidifier in the country. Some years ago I found out that Dad had drugged the cat to get the picture because it had no interest in promoting humidifiers or sleeping on one, quiet or otherwise.

Cereal

It was customary for us kids to have a bowl of cereal w/ milk before bed. Not sure how that habit came about, for it was the standard breakfast fare as well. Cereals such as Super Sugar Crisp, Honeycomb, Trix, Kix, Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, Quisp, Quake, Captain Crunch, Wheaties, Puffed Rice and Puffed Wheat (which we referred to as Puffa-Puffa Rice and Puffa-Puffa Wheat), and a host of others I would only recall if I Googled "breakfast cereals of the mid 1960s". Most of the same cereals are in stores today and, undoubtedly, have the same amount of sugar in them, though back then they didn't hide it behind marketing words and slogans. We ate Grape Nuts occasionally, not so much for the flavor but for the loud noise when you chewed it. Someone recently referred to it as "Box-O-Gravel". Sometimes I would have my bedtime bowl of cereal with John next door, sometimes he with us at my house. The Wilsons also ate both dinner and supper, the former in late afternoon and the latter later. We thought that was weird - we had one evening meal and called it both dinner and supper. I guess there's a difference between dining and supping, after all.

John

Also attending school across the street was the next-door kid, John Wilson, who was in the same grade and turned out to be a good friend for many years - up until high school when our paths of life diverged. He shows up in my story regularly, as he was a major player in my growing-up years. I never told him how much it meant to have him as a friend. Maybe it was just understood between us. The last time I saw him or his sisters was at his mom's funeral decades ago.

School Days

I started kindergarten while living at that house. The elementary school was (and still is) directly across the street. I wasn't allowed to take the shortest route there unless Mom walked me across. Otherwise I traipsed up to the corner where Mrs. Mahoney the crossing lady was in charge and would guide me safely across the street. For some reason I really liked her - she was welcoming and friendly. Anyhoo, my kindergarten teacher was Mrs. Pretty, and she commanded a class of around 30 kids - all by herself. Perhaps kids were better behaved back then, I dunno. One kid - I believe his name was Stanley - was forever getting up out of his chair and wandering around. Mrs. Pretty was forever telling him to sit down and threatening to find some rope and tie him to his chair. Some of those kids I ended up graduating high school with, though I don't recall ever seeing Stanley again after kindergarten.

My 1st grade teacher was Mrs. Nearing who, in my estimation, was elderly at the time, at least compared to other teachers. Imagine my surprise some years ago to see her obituary in the paper. She must have been 180 years old when she died.

2nd grade was Miss George (I think; could have been Mrs). What I recall most vividly about her was the time she came in to work sick. While she was waiting for the substitute teacher to arrive, she had to puke and ran for the bathroom. I had never seen a teacher run. I didn't know teachers could run. A kid named Tommy laughed out loud at the sight. He was verbally chastised by a number of self-righteous hypocritical classmates. I say hypocritical because I'm sure we all thought it was funny to see Miss George dashing out of the classroom and down the hall. Also in 2nd grade we did a short play. I don't remember what it was all about, but I played some sort of military commander. I was quite good, as I recall. My first foray into stage drama.

Naked Time

Two friends came over one day - Jackie and some other girl. Maybe it was Cathy. Anyways, Jackie was (and most likely still is) my age. We did dances for each other in our underwear in the garage, alternating between the girls, then me, for several iterations. My underwear was a bit small for me and boys' underwear having the trap door in the front - suffice it to say that the girls found out that day what boys carry around in their underwear.

Along that vein, my parents would occasionally set a kiddy pool out in the backyard for me and I would splash around in it butt naked, though I do not recall anyone else joining me.

Comedy Time

Dennis (my brother) and Keith (Cathy's brother) were up to something. They invited us to sit at the edge of the lawn facing the garage. They, for maybe a half hour, did a comedy show for us they had made up (how long did they plan this? I still wonder). It was a laugh riot from start to finish. There were a bunch of empty cans and stuff in the garage and Dennis would pretend to trip and fall in the dark back there. What we in the "audience" heard was Dennis yelling and things crashing. This was repeated at various times in the show. Cathy and I laughed and giggled our butts off. I asked Dennis about this recently and he had no recollection of it.

Cathy

I had a friend who lived next door - Cathy Eastman - who was a couple years younger than I. Despite our difference in age, I got along with her quite well and apparently she adored me - a fact I was oblivious to. The rest of her family were very friendly and welcoming. Her brother Keith showed me cherry bombs stashed in his dad's desk drawer. One time I was outside with Cathy in their yard with her mom nearby on a lawn chair. Cathy and I were searching for 4-leaf clovers which were as rare as gold to a kid. Her mom looked down from her chair for 2 seconds and said "Here's one", plucked it, and showed us. I was astounded at her luck, as well as her nonchalance at finding such a treasure.

Here's an old photo of me and Cathy. Appears I'm explaining something to her.

UPDATE: I was able to locate Cathy on Facebook through her sister. I sent her a message along with the above photo, and she responded! It was very nice to hear from her, after all these years.

Loud

I was terribly frightened of loud noises as a kid. We went to an airshow somewhere in Wayne County, which was wonderfully interesting until the military jets did some fly-by's. The high formation wasn't the issue, it was the rogue jet that would buzz the crowd at low level and high speed after the others had passed. There were several cycles of this. The rest of my family ooo'd and ahhh'd while I cowered in the back seat of the car, my ears as plugged as I could get them. Thunderstorms would also send me hiding. I remember my parents enjoying a lightning/thunder show with the front door open and me having kaniptions thinking the world was ending. To this day I don't care for fireworks - the pretty colors are OK, but the ones that sound like mortar rounds really bother me. Interesting, my granddaughter (age 10 at the time of this writing) has always disliked loud noises.

Come Blow Your Horn

Roger had a car. A convertible, I believe it was, and some pattern of red and white. He was working on it in the yard and asked me if I could help him for a few which consisted of turning the key on and off very quickly (has something to do with the engine cylinder timing) whenever he asked me to. I did that several times until eventually there was a lull in the action. Roger had his head buried somewhere in the engine compartment and I was sitting there, bored, so I hit the horn. The results were surprising. If there was a ceiling over us he would have hit it. After Roger collected himself, he leaned on the car door next to me and in a quiet monotone voice said "Why did you do that?". I shrugged (I honestly didn't know). He said "Don't ever do that again". I said "OK". He went back to work on his car.

Tonsils

One of the older boys - Arnold, I think it was - had their tonsils out and were sitting in the TV room in some form of misery. The cure for said misery, as I observed, was generous amounts of ice cream. I actually wondered when I could have my tonsils out (whatever tonsils were, I had no idea) and consume big bowls of ice cream.

DISCLAIMER

These stories, by the way, aren't in any particular chronological order. Time has a way of re-arranging the order of one's memories.

Fire

I was playing with fire in the kitchen, specifically candles. Mom was upstairs cleaning, or something. I started the corner of a piece of paper on fire and it quickly was becoming engulfed in flames. I dropped it, screamed for mom who came dashing down the stairs and stomped it out. She yelled at me good for that, and I did not play with fire again...until I was a teenager and would make little rivers of gasoline down the driveway and set them on fire. But that's a different story.

Other Parts of the House

Concerning the hallway: we have a game, and it's name I cannot remember. Something ghosty, I think. It was spooky game, glowed in the dark and had strange pieces and exotic parts. I wasn't allowed to see it in the light - Dennis set it up, turned off the lights, then I could come in and play. The whole thing was scary to me but intriguing nevertheless. I keep forgetting to ask Dennis what that game was all about whenever I see him. UPDATE: I asked Dennis and he did a bit of research (Google) and found it. Turns out it was the Green Ghost Game, and one can buy it on eBay if one is feeling nostalgic enough.

The kitchen was my favorite room of the house - the hub of activity for the household. You could get into the kitchen via the TV room, the dining room, the upstairs, the basement, and there was even a door to the outside, so it was a central location. The older boys (Arnold, Roger, and Mike) had their room upstairs above the kitchen. They had a record player and strung speaker wire down to the kitchen where they hung a speaker or 2. We heard the latest Beatle's music through those speakers, as well as the Rolling Stones, and others. My parents enjoyed a wide variety of music, including whatever was popular at the time. I was told by Mom that I knew all the Beatles' songs before I knew any nursery rhymes. Dennis, for his birthday, received a huge box of red string licorice which was kept on top of the fridge. Huge for a kid, anyway. I got the same for my birthday that year.

I don't remember the basement, mainly because basements scared me when I was a kid. However, on a shelf near the top of the stairs was a marble sculpture my dad had either done or was working on - it was a dolphin, and I was always fascinated with it. I remember the smoothness of the marble. I wonder whatever happened to that thing.

We had a long driveway which led to a big garage/barn. We also had a red metal wagon that I would sit in and Mike would push me up and down the driveway very fast until he was worn out. In retrospect my older brothers Mike and Roger took a significant amount of interest in me (I assume they spent time with Dennis, too, but you'd have to ask him). I enjoyed having them as my older brothers. I am sad they are gone.