Although I did not have any neighborhood playmates in those early childhood years, I was blessed with a large extended family. Although I never knew my paternal grandfather, my father's widowed mother, my Grandma, lived in an apartment at the end of South Whitehall Road, just a short walk away. My maternal grandparents, Nana and Pop-Pop, also lived in Jeffersonville. All of my grandparents were like characters out of a storybook. My Nana was known for her cooking and baking, so lots of family dinners were held out her house. She was also famous for her prowess at the skill games of local fairs and carnivals. She would ask us what particular prize we wanted, take aim, and then win it for us! Nana and Pop-Pop were one of the first families to buy a television set, making them even more popular among the grandchildren. I remember so well sitting on the sofa with Nana and Pop-Pop, watching the Friday night fights. It is from them that I inherited my love of baseball. We would sit and watch games on their state of the art black and white TV. In those days, a TV was more a piece of furniture than an electronic device. A tiny screen peeked out from a massive wooden cabinet. The actual baseball players themselves appeared as not much more than stick figures. There were minimal graphics which basically told the teams that were playing and the score. One could never really see what was happening with the baseball. For that we depended on those golden-toned announcers whose words brought those games to life for us. There was no strike zone box, no "super slow-mo", no instant replay, nor exit velocity calculations for home runs. But I would gladly trade all today's technology in my wide-screen high definition TV set to sit with my Nana and Pop-Pop once again and watch a baseball game.
My Grandma was very different. She had a much better education than most women of her era, having attended what is now known as the Perkiomen School. (It was more akin to a junior college than high school.) She was also an accomplished pianist who became well-known in the area as a private music teacher. Both her education and her artistic sensibilities set her apart from her contemporaries as did her Mennonite faith. A woman of cultural refinement, she was, at the same time, one of the Plain People.
My grandfather, a jeweler, had left her fairly well off, but she lived and dressed very simply her whole life. She made her own clothes, including her underwear, for most of her life. My Grandma had no TV, although she did buy a radio when she was well into her eighties and could no longer see to read. She did not play cards or other games. (Certainly she did not win any prizes for us at the carnivals!) However, she was not at all judgmental toward those of us who did enjoy such pleasures.
As a child, I thought my Grandma was quite peculiar. However, the longer I had her, the more I came to love and respect her. She lived to be one hundred years old, with all her mental faculties still intact as well as most of her physical ones, only dying from complications following emergency surgery for appendicitis. I remember hearing how the hospital staff struggled to remove her false teeth until they were told that those teeth would not come out because she still had all of her own! My Grandma was one of most encouraging and supportive figures in my life. Even though I had her until I was well into my thirties, I felt her loss very deeply. I still do.
It is a mystery to me how my father and mother ever got together. Certainly I know the facts of how they met and I've seen the photos of their early years together. They were married for over forty years and had two children together. Yet I do not remember seeing any visible displays of affection between the two of them. Part of that is due to the times in which they lived and part of that was due to their cultural heritage. All visible displays of feelings, whether good or bad, were discouraged.
It also seemed to me that they had very little in common. Yes, they were both public school teachers, but that was not enough to make a marriage. At the time they met, most young men were off fighting in World War II. My father was physically ineligible for military service and was an only child from a home of some means. My mother was one of six children from a family of very modest means. She frequently told me how much of a struggle it was for her to go to college. Her parents saw no use for it, especially for young women. (Perhaps this is some explanation for her insatiable quest for money and prestige which only seemed to worsen as she got older.)
They didn't even have many of the same interests. My father was lost in his own private universe of marching band music. My mother had played the cornet in her high school band, but that had been a very small part of her life. Unlike my father's, her high school years were pretty normal for the times. She went to dances and fairs with her friends and even went with them to Ocean City, New Jersey to spend a few days together during the summer. My father never mentioned his high school friends, if indeed he had any. When my parents married, they were both college graduates and Protestants. Apparently, that was considered enough to form a lifelong relationship.
Much the same kind of reasoning applied to having children. Unless there was some kind of problem, it was simply what was done after a couple married. My parents never conveyed the idea that children were a blessing from God and were to be loved and cherished. I don't think they even saw it that way. Their first child, a son, was born four years before I came along. He was the one to carry on the family name. Whether it happened by nature or by nurture, my brother grew up to be much like my father. Had he aspired to be a baseball player or a mechanic, I simply don't know what would have happened. He was never exposed to the normal boyhood world of those days, so there was no way to find out what other interests he might have developed on his own. He never got to play Little League baseball or go hiking or fishing with his dad. We simply weren't "those kind of people".
Activities were even more limited for me. When their second child turned out to be a girl, my parents had fulfilled the minimum requirements for the "ideal" suburban family of the fifties. They had two children, one of each gender, and that was plenty. Children were a lot of work and cost too much money. And as my mother often said to me, they should have quit while they were ahead. (Translation: Their son fulfilled all their needs. It was a mistake to have a second child.) Certainly being a parent is not easy and I am sure there were many times that I misbehaved. But even when I wasn't being punished for some misdeed, my father and mother always seem to have a vague air of disappointment with me. Nothing I did was ever quite right. Things were about to get worse—much worse.
A LITTLE ADULT
THE LIE: "You will never be anything without a degree from a prestigious college."
THE TRUTH: "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world
rather than on Christ." Colossians 2: 8
When my brother was in the early elementary grades, my parents decided that the family needed more income. My mother wanted to go back to teaching, but I was still not old enough to go to school. Daycare did not yet exist because most suburban mothers did not work outside the home. The county providing testing so that those children who were academically ready could enter first grade a full year earlier than their birthdate would allow. I was signed up for the testing because, as they told me, I was showing signs of boredom at home. (They were right about the boredom, but it was probably due more to a lack of playmates than anything else.)
I remember taking the test in a library. The first part consisted of putting wooden puzzles together, something that I loved to do. The second part was a series of questions given orally because not everyone at that time had gone to kindergarten and reading was not taught until the first grade. I can remember only one question from the oral exam, but that one was probably an indication that the test was culturally slanted toward people like us. The woman giving the test asked, "Who was Faust?"
The fact that this was even a question on a test for preschoolers should have been a clue that something was not right. My response to that question should have been a dead giveaway that I did not come from an average home:
"Do you mean the character from literature or one of the operas?"
The test proctor did not indicate that this was not a normal answer from a five year old. She merely replied, "Whichever one you want."
"Well, there was an opera