My Dad

The first Christmas after the divorce my Dad gave me a pair of ice skates that were much two big. He promised to return them for the right size and bring the skates the following week. I couldn’t risk it. I hid in the closet clutching my skates and refused to come out until he promised not to take them away. I was sure the store would not have the same pair with the powder blue checks and furry strip on top of the boot. I couldn’t bear to lose any more of him.

Go-Go married her BF, Roger, in 1969. They went away one weekend and returned with a diamond on her finger. She was radiant. I was crushed. I vowed to hate Roger for as long as I lived. Living in our apartment in Madison with Go-Go and Roger, I ached for my Dad.

Dad visited us in Madison every Sunday and took us up north to Phillips to visit his Mom every holiday. His dedication to us made me so happy, and so sad. I would imagine him being alone and make myself sick with sadness. I would think about him eating alone, shopping alone, watching television alone and living alone, all things he so recently did with us. I used to get sad before he visited because I would anticipate his leaving at the end of the day. Sundays were always sad days. I loved him desperately and at the end of the visit, he dropped us off and left.

In the beginning there were car loads of kids going off on adventures with him-my siblings, our friends, he never said no - but by the time I was in high school it was frequently just my little brother and I. Those trips were some of the most precious to me because I would have him mostly to myself. We would talk about everything-politics, the educational system, his family, how cars operate, and my favorite, what happened to him in World War II when his plane was shot down over Normandy.

He told me I was smart and I should use my brains. Encouraged me by calling me college material. Go-Go taught me to clean and cook so I could get and keep a man, but my Dad insisted that I get a career, and then worry about marriage and all that. He helped me get my first apartment at sixteen, sent me money when I went to college, and most importantly, wrote me a letter every week, without fail. His letters were never scolding, despite how often I was failing at the things I set out to do. He died when I was twenty six, at a time in my life when I was too screwed up to properly say goodbye.

He'd been dead twelve years when I learned he wasn't actually my Dad. I was visiting Go-Go that summer and she woke me up at three in the morning, inebriated. “Diane, we have to talk.” I was now sober enough and old enough to realize this was likely the thing she had been trying to tell me my whole life. But why now? I was thirty five years old and suddenly I felt so trapped in this hideous childhood dynamic. She went on, “Now I know for sure, I mean, I’ve always known, but I didn’t know absolutely.” “Oh Diane, when I saw you walk off that plane it was so obvious". “You know honey, Roger is your father.”

Her words exploded in my heart, or maybe my stomach, because I jumped out of bed and puked.

Milk and Money

When Go-Go first met Roger in the 50's he was a milk man. He owned his route and was responsible for his truck and cooling systems, ordering and delivering his product, billing and collecting payments from his customers, and giving a percentage to Bowman's Dairy, the owner of the product. He was a veteran of the Korean War, a hard worker and a good money saver.

One day after delivering a families milk, Roger ran over and killed a two year old child. It was a tragic accident but the pain of it made Roger want to get out of the milk delivery business. Later that year he was approached by his friend Mike Gintilly about buying a truck stop outside of Madison. Wracked with guilt about the dead child, Roger decided to take the risk, despite knowing nothing about running a huge operation like a truck stop. Mike later changed his mind and Roger was left to run the operation by himself.

The Madison Truck Plaza was a fueling station, hotel, restaurant, store, and a big rig repair shop. Roger worked day and night trying to stay on top of all the work that needed to be done to own and operate a truck plaza. He came home for dinner, slept, and returned to work around ten or eleven and worked through the night. His business was a success and Go-Go reaped the rewards.

The first evidence of their new prosperity was a vacation for Go-Go and Roger to Las Vegas. Go-Go had never been on a vacation or on an airplane and there was a lot of build up and drama leading up to that trip. They played cards with friends, went to horse races and bet on horses, but Go-Go had never seen anything like Las Vegas. She was a small town girl who had never been out of the state unitl she met Roger.

They stayed in Vegas extra days and when they finally returned home Go-Go had an extra suitcase filled with fringed leather vests for all of the kids and some for our friends (it was the late sixties). She came home with her eyes wide with excitement and stories of what a wonderful place Las Vegas was. She also returned with a gambling compulsion that would eventually ruin them.

Go-Go went to casinos every chance she got. When I was sixteen she took my brother and I to the Bahamas because there were casinos there. I spent nights waiting for her to be done playing black jack, days trapped in hotels, and weeks worrying about the money she had lost. Go-Go continued to gamble long after she could afford to. When she was too sick to gamble she died.

My Friend Jackie

When Russell brought Jackie to dinner at our house, Go-Go was surprised she was a girl. She liked to tell the story of how surprised she was because she just assumed “Jackie” was a little boy.

Jackie was no ordinary girl. She was a tomboy. She played basketball, had a very cool banana seat bike, and wore pants two or three sizes too large. I had never met someone like Jackie, who was fiercely independent, smart, funny, athletic, and a girl. I am certain she is responsible for what has turned out to be a life long attraction to boyish girls.

Jackie was closer to my age than Russell's and I wanted her to be my friend. I didn’t understand her attraction to Russell but mostly, I was unbearably jealous. We were new to the neighborhood and I had no experience making new friends. I began by stealing her bike, well, asking her if I could ride it around the basketball court and then taking off down the street and out of site. I upset her mercilessly. I don’t know why this act of bullying resulted in her befriending me, though I suspect I was relentless.

Jackie had short red hair and freckles and after we became friends, strangers frequently mistook us for sisters. Mom had fun with us. She really liked Jackie and I think she felt sorry for her because Jackie's Mom bought her clothes too large so “she could grow into them”. Go-Go took us shopping and bought identical outfits for us to wear. The first time we dressed alike, I knew Jackie was mine for keeps.

Jackie’s mom was strict. One afternoon I answered the telephone at their house by saying “hello.” Jackie’s mom, Mrs. Consiglio scolded me and then taught me the proper way to greet a caller: “hi, you’ve reached the Consiglio residence, how may I help you?” followed by “one moment please, I’ll call her.” I had never heard anyone talk like that. It was kind of cool. I answered the phone every chance I got so I could practice speaking this strange new language. When I ate dinner at their house I was coached to place my feet squarely on the floor and keep my elbows off the table. Manners were completely foreign to me. I found them strange and alluring. I probably enjoyed the structure but was nervous because I frequently had to be reminded.

Our parents became friends. They had a lot in common, like horse racing and bar hopping between Madison and Chicago where Mr. Consiglio worked. When we were eleven years old Jackie's parents moved to a suburb of Chicago. Luckily, it was close to the race track so my parents visited frequently. Jackie and I spent summers together alternating between her house and mine. We were together when we bought our first bras, smoked our first cigarettes, learned to shop lift (and got caught). We grew up together and I adored her. I think loving her and being loved by her was very important for me.
Here we are as teenagers, many years into our friendship. Go-Go is on the left and we are with Roger.

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.