Rats and Guns

Hunting was big in Wisconsin. My uncles and some of my brothers were hunters. All the burly farm-bred boys in my neighborhood were hunters. During deer hunting season, we regularly saw dead dear strapped to the roof of cars. Hunting season also produced the predictable news of the tragic deaths of improperly clad hunters and children mistaken for deer.

We had guns in our house. When the boys were young, their first one was a bb gun. Later they got pellet guns, and finally 22 caliber rifles- larger if they stuck with it and showed commitment to the sport.

After the barn burned down and winter set in, all the rodents who’d resided in the barn came to the house in search of warmth and food. I was terrified of rats and had the misfortune of seeing one climb the stairs to our bedrooms one afternoon. I laid in bed many nights petrified, soothing myself by imagining that rats and mice were unable to climb bedposts.

One night Go-Go Mom was having a little solo party, drinking and talking on the telephone. I don’t remember what woke me up, or if it was gun shots. When I got downstairs I saw her, perched on a stool, the furnace grate in the floor removed, a beer and cigarette resting on the telephone table, and a shot gun aimed at the heating duct. She had decided to take on the rat population by leaving food in the heating duct and, once the rats scurried into her sight, shooting them. I asked her what she was doing and she ignored me. Finally during a break in her telephone conversation she told me she was taking care of our little problem and to go to sleep. I went back to bed with more than just rats to fear.

Malted Milk Balls

Go-Go Mom came home from her weekend with her BF with a carton of malted milk balls. My brother Russell grabbed a bunch out of the carton and one rolled out of his hand, across the kitchen floor, and into the tiny space between the stove and the refrigerator. Candy was not something we had in our house so losing one of those precious malted milk balls was unthinkable. Desperate, Russell crammed his body into the narrow space to retrieve the lost candy. On top of the stove was a metal coffee peculator with its cord plugged behind the refrigerator. When Russell dragged that cord with his shoulder he pulled down the pot. Hot brewed coffee onto his flesh. The scorching metal pot fused with his skin. When Russell finally managed to wiggle out of the spot he ran screaming through the house with the coffee pot stuck to his back.

My Dad jumped up and carried Russell into their bedroom and began phoning a doctor. Apparently, my parents were trying to determine if there was any way to dislodge the coffee pot from his flesh. The doctor instructed them to leave the pot attached and take him to the emergency room.

I'm not sure if Russell's hospitalization kept Go-Go home any more than usual. I like to imagine it did. I know I was jealous because when he finally came home from the hospital he had more cool toys than I had ever seen.

Russell spent more than five weeks in the hospital, having multiple surgeries involving skin graft after skin graft. When he returned home his back looked like a pile of stiff earth worms. I rubbed burn cream on his back nightly. In the summer heat, sun screen and doubled tee shirts were still not enough to keep him out of pain.

One Red Ked

In the summer of 1966 Keds came out with a stylish new girls sneaker. I begged my parents for a pair for months or years, it seemed. They had slightly pointed toes and an elastic band over the top and a cute little white rubber sole. Finally for my sixth birthday my parents gave me those coveted red Keds.

A few days after my birthday, my older sister Judy and her friend Kitty Carpenter were going to ride their bikes to the toy store in town. I desperately wanted to join them because I was wearing my new red keds and a pair of peddle pushers with ties up the sides. I had to be seen in town. My brother Scott had taken my bike so my begging them meant that I would ride on the back of my sister's bicycle.

The toy store was in the center of the town of Kimberly and it was one of those old-fashioned mom and pop shops. What I remember about it was row after row of toys stacked from floor to ceiling, and the sour smell of plastic, rubber, and promise.

We stayed a good long while in the store and when we went to leave I saw my brother pull up on my bike. I demanded to ride my own bike home. “How is Scott supposed to get home?” Judy argued. I didn’t care, after all, I protested, he had taken my bike and now I wanted it back. I threw a tantrum, and continued to whine bitterly even as I climbed onto the back of Judy’s bike.

I was sitting on the fender with my heels resting on the rear axle bolts when I felt the most searing pain imaginable. I started to scream. Judy thought I was ramping up my tantrum. My heel had slipped and was being sawed off by the spokes of her bicycle wheel. She continued to peddle, and peddle until finally Kitty Carpenter saw what was happening and shouted "Judy, stop, there's blood everywhere." We were in front of a bar and a man who heard the screaming came out, grabbed me off the back of the bike, and shouted back into the bar for someone to call an ambulance.

Later, after the ambulance ride and the bright lights of the hospital, and after my heel was returned to my foot with Frankenstein-like stitches and wrapped in a big bandage, I obsessed over my little red Ked. I had only worn them that day, and now one was missing and I wondered where it was. Was it on the street at the scene of the accident, torn and covered with blood, laying in the gutter? Or had it been left in the ambulance or removed at the hospital, and discarded in some sanitary waste basket?

While my foot was in bandages, it worked to only have one shoe. Even after my stitches were removed and my foot was healed I continued to wrap my foot in bandages just so I could wear my one red Ked. Asking my parents for another pair was out of the question-I felt I had somehow lost my shoe by my own recklessness and did not dare ask for another pair. Eventually I must have gotten bored with walking around in one shoe, but I never forgot my red Keds.

24 Tons of Hay

One cold October evening, my siblings and I were sitting around watching television when my brother Russell walked from the living room to the kitchen where he passed the windows looking out toward our barns. In a level voice he declared, “the barn is on fire.” We all jumped up and gathered around the windows and watched the flames fly. My parents were not home so I suppose one of the older kids dialed the operator to report our fire.

By the time the fire trucks arrived there wasn’t much they could do to save our barn but they aimed their big hoses at the fire and worked into the night. Their first priority was to keep the flames from jumping onto our house which they did by covering our house with water which instantly turned icy in the frigid fall air.

Earl and Joyce Jansen and their seven kids lived in the next farm house and we were evacuated there. I remember talking to my mom who called from where ever she was with her boy friend to see if we were all safe. Apparently she watched her barn burning on the ten o’clock news.

My eleven year old brother Scott, was uncharacteristically at his friend’s house and later we would understand why. The story I remember is that Scott and his two buddies were playing in the barn and decided to light a bale of hay to keep themselves warm. There were twenty four tons of hay in that barn. I wonder how long before the fire was so big they were fleeing for their lives.

"Spring Cleaning"

Until I was eight we lived in a big farm house in the outskirts of Kimberly, Wisconsin. The farm was owned by Mr. Vanhandle who tended dairy cows and harvested the fields. There were eight of us children living in that old house, and six were boys. My Dad held three jobs, bartending after his the day as the high school guidance counselor and drivers ed instructor. My parents fought violently. Every weekend Mom was off with her boyfriend in Madison. We kids played games, raced barefoot, destroyed things and tortured each another (literally). Our house was a nightmare of jumbled chaos, debris, and filth.

One summer morning I woke to the sound of the house filled with commotion. When I went downstairs I saw my parents, our neighbors, and my Aunt, all cleaning and packing. This was very confusing because in my short life I had never seen anyone clean like this. There were even people cleaning the scary basement, a place no one ever dared enter.

I recall that my sister was crying and my brothers were seriously moping about. When the eighteen wheeled moving van heaved it’s way up our long driveway I asked my Mom why the big truck was at our house. She told me we were going on an adventure-we were moving to Madison where my brother Tom lived. “It will be great,” she said, “we’ll get to live in the City and see the Capital.” With all my siblings crying and pouting, her story didn't add up, but I chose to believe her. A big truck full of our belongings, a move to the big city and into a new apartment, it was thrilling. Around midnight we all piled into my mom's Pontiac LeMans. When I saw my parents kiss goodbye I realized my dad was not coming with us. My heart sunk. I knew then my parents were divorcing.

The Chicken Coop

She had a habit of waking me up in the middle of the night, well, after two in the morning, which is when the bars closed in Wisconsin. She woke everyone up. She called people, drove to the home's of her adult children, knocked on neighbors doors; there were no limits to what she would do to find someone to stay up with her after a night of drinking. There was also no predicting her mood. As I grew into a teenager and started to develop sexually she became obsessed with me, and not in a good way. When she woke me up in the early hours of the morning, she was cruel, persistent, repetitive, violent, and intolerable. One summer night at the age of fourteen I waited until she passed out, packed a knapsack, and sneaked myself and my bike out of the house. I rode the couple of miles to the next small town where "friend's" lived. They were guys who had an apartment where I would hang out and buy and smoke pot after school.

When I arrived with my knapsack at four in the morning, they were still awake but not happy to see me. "What the hell are you doing here?" one asked. After all I was an under age high school kid who may have been entertaining but my arrival at this hour certainly was not a good sign. "I ran away from home". My pronouncement was met with an unequivocal, "you can not stay here." I told them I couldn't go home, my mom was abusive and I was going to try to become an emanicapted minor.

They must have seen my resolve so they helped me devise a plan, knowing their place was too hot. DeForest was a very small town and they had been visited by the cops more than once. Even Go-Go had been by to drag me out of their apartment.

I was hid in a small apartment of one of the local stoners. It was a top secret operation, sneaking me through the little town of DeForest into the apartment of a man who felt he could be arrested for being seen with me. He was not happy, but must have felt sorry for me. He allowed me to sleep on the floor of his small apartment, and in the morning my sister picked me up.

She and her musician husband lived in a converted chicken coop in Morrisonville Wisconsin. As tiny as you might imagine, it had three small rooms and an add-on bathroom. I slept on a cot in the living room and when school started the following fall, I rode my bike through the country roads from Morrisonville to DeForest and back home at the end of the day. I continued to waitress in my step dad's truck stop restaurant to help with rent and food.

Living in the chicken coop allowed me to thrive. I did well in school, joined the swim team and broke school records for the 100 meter crawl and IM (individual medley). I felt free and adventurous. I excelled in school, took drafting, shop, and small engines (the first girl to have ever branched into the boys territory).
The only rules were that I could do anything I wanted as long as I went to school and did my homework. One of my fondest memories is spending Saturday mornings smoking dope, cleaning the house, and listening to Joni Mitchell, over and over. When my Dad came to visit, he would pick up my brothers from home, and then come to the chicken coop to get me. Life was good in my sophomore year of high school.

Occasionally Go-Go still made her way out to torture us with her drunken diatribes. But now I felt protected in a way I never had living with her, with them. Pete, my brother-in-law, always managed to get her out of the house, even if he used me as an excuse, after all, I needed sleep for school. I didn't care, really. I felt free and safe and was certain I would never have to live with with her and be that vulnerable to her again.

Lucky Strikes or Part Two

I did not intend for these stories to connect to one another or create a thread of any kind. But as I was thinking about the poker story I remembered the cigarettes.

One of the poker players left a full pack of filterless cigarettes on the kitchen table. I came home from school that afternoon to the full ashtrays, and half empty beer cans and I saw the pack of cigarettes. I pocketed them, and hid them for the remainder of the week until Saturday when my friend Jackie Consiglio and I set off to the woods to smoke. Neither of us had ever smoked before, I was only ten years old.

Jackie and I hiked down to Lake Monona, crossed the swampy creek to the path that winds around the lake to our spot (probably the spot of every kid in the complex), and started smoking. We smoked the entire pack, one after the other after the other. I wonder now, did we think that was how cigarettes were smoked or were we just children from large families who were in the habit of gobbling everything up until there was nothing left? Jackie's father was a chain smoker, so maybe that's where we got the idea that cigarettes were supposed to be devoured.

We must have poisoned ourselves because I recall the walk home; Jackie was white as a sheet, and my own little body was wracked with nausea. What was wrong with me that I wasn't able to handle smoking a few cigarettes, I wondered? Cool kids smoked. I was determined to overcome the sickness, and by the time I was eleven I had a preferred brand: Kool.

Poker For Breakfast

When I was ten years old I woke up on a school day to the smell of stale cigarette smoke and the familiar sound of slurred and muffled voices coming from the kitchen. I showered, dressed, and tiptoed down the stairs to have my breakfast and see who spent the night drinking with my mom. Go-Go was in the habit of picking up guys to play cards with her after the bars closed. At our kitchen table, the place I would normally eat my breakfast, was my mom and three of her pals, playing cards, drinking cans of Schlitz, and smoking cigarettes. They were by then grossly drunk.

Go-Go Mom was not normally free with compliments but when she was drunk she would introduce me by pouring it on. She would gush about what an amazing child I was and how lucky she was to have me. “Guys, meet my daughter Diane, isn’t she beautiful, look at her legs, aren’t they gorgeous?”

My Mom's syrupy behavior was intolerable. I took my cereal into the family room, my urge to escape as strong as my wish to eavesdrop. I was as repulsed by her as I was fascinated by the people she brought home for her late night parties. Often, they were people she excluded from her usual circle of friends, like the African American neighbor. Even at the age of ten this struck me as hypocritical.

I left for the school bus early that day, without packing my lunch. She was so gross and flirty when she drank. I didn’t talk to anyone about her or the parties. I had intense loyalty to the family.

The Number Seven

Go-Go Mom liked to remind me that I was the seventh child of the seventh child. She would have a few beers and start talking, “you know, Diane, you’re the seventh child of the seventh child.” I knew things were important to her if she talked about them when she was drinking. Like her dead brother Bobby whom I rarely heard about unless she'd had a few drinks.

My mom's middle name is her mother's first name and my middle name is my mother's first name. This bit of name sharing was woven into her fascination with the seventh child of the seventh child story. If she had been consciously trying to form my young mind, she might have told me "you are powerful, you can do anything at all, seven is a magical number." Instead she showed me that lying, drinking, drugging, cheating, neglecting your responsibilities (i.e. your children), were acceptable rules for life.

I'm pretty sure this was an absurdly unsafe environment to grow up in, but it does make for good stories. Now that my mother is dead, I am feeling surprisingly motivated, and liberated, to tell some of those stories.

Since her death, I have been flooded with horrendous memories of growing up with her. I tried to get a therapist who accepts my health insurance but haven't been able to find someone qualified. I did see a nice older lady who when I tried to explain I had three parents, she said "what, that is so confusing, what?" I also saw a man who complained about the economy and how poorly his practice was doing and could I pay him more than my allotted co-payment?

Rather than continue down the therapy path I've decided to work out my grief by telling stories. Stay tuned and as my pal Judy says, for one whole year I'm not responsible for my behavior, because after all, my mom just died.