Month: May 2023

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An Accident

When I was five years old, I fell out of a moving car speeding down the road one summer afternoon. I still have a scar in my right eyebrow and on my elbow. This is what I remember. I might have some of the details wrong. I never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon. My mother and her friend, Jo Scanlon, decided to take my brother and I for a picnic at Tanners Lake, in nearby Oakdale Township. Bobby was three years old and would turn four in November. My mother was probably pregnant with my sister, but we didn’t know that at the time. No one used the “p” word back then. And there were no prohibitions against cigarettes or alcohol when someone was “expecting.”

Jo Scanlon and my mother were good friends from high school. That summer they were both twenty-six years old. Jo, an unmarried secretary working at 3-M, was short and trim. Her hair was reddish-brown and her face was covered with freckles. Jo and my mother gave each other “perms,” so their hair would be fashionably curly. 

My mother packed a picnic lunch, including plenty of beer, and Jo picked us up in her car. Tanners Lake was on private property and we paid a fee to go to the beach. The day started off badly when crows noticed that my mother had painted Bobby’s toenails a bright red. He screamed as the crows pecked at his feet.

“Here, cover your feet with sand and they will leave you alone,” my mother said. She and Jo went back to sitting on the picnic blanket, smoking and drinking as they sunned themselves at the water’s edge.

Bobby and I played in the water all afternoon until suddenly my mother announced, “Quick. We need to go home. Your father is getting off work soon. We need to get home before he does.”

As my mother hurried to pack up our picnic lunch, Jo went to a nearby stand to buy us a bag of popcorn to share on the way home. We piled into the back seat and Jo took off. The adults were laughing as Jo turned a corner at a high rate of speed. I bumped against the door handle, which wasn’t locked, and fell out on the ground. Popcorn scattered all over the back seat.

“Stop the car!” my mother yelled. “Lynda fell out.”

A woman, who lived nearby, saw what happened and ran toward us with a towel in her hand. My forehead was bleeding badly.

“Here take this towel. You need to take your little girl to St. John’s Hospital. Go right away.”

My mother held me on her lap as Jo raced to the hospital. Meanwhile, my mother was yelling at Bobby. She accused him of pushing me against the door, but that’s not what happened. The door was not locked and I fell out. It was as simple as that. Both Bobby and I were crying, not knowing what was going to happen next.

As we passed Seventh Avenue, Jo saw my father’s car leaving the drug store where he worked. She frantically honked on the horn, but my father never saw us as we sped past him, on our way to the hospital.  

My mother used a pay phone to call my grandparents, who lived upstairs from us. She told Grandma to watch for Dad and tell him to come right down to the hospital. The gash in my eyebrow needed stitching. My elbow was bleeding, but not broken.

 

Dad arrived about thirty minutes later. He told my mother and Jo to take Bobby home. “I’ll stay with Lynda and call you later.”

I was in the hospital for a couple of days. Dad visited me every day. He brought me comic books and candy bars from the drug store. My best friend, Betty Lennon, heard about the accident and her family sent me a telegram. Meanwhile, Bobby was grounded and not allowed to play with his friends until I came home.

My brother later told me, “It was one of the worst days of my life. I spent two days just walking around the dirt in our backyard. I didn’t know if you were ok. I wanted to be in an accident, too. I wanted someone to send me a telegram.”

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Silver Lake Store

I grew up in a small town in Minnesota during the 1940’s and 50’s. Children of that era were raised in a parental style that is best described as “benign neglect.” 

My family lived in the lower half of a duplex. My grandparents, my mother’s parents, lived upstairs. We didn’t have a car or a television. We had indoor plumbing but no bathtub. We took our baths in a big wash tub, filled with hot water from a tea kettle heated on a wood stove. My mother and grandmother washed clothes in that same washtub and hung them on a clothesline in our backyard. We had a telephone, with multiple families sharing the same line. My mother listened to news on the radio all day long. I remember it as a time of great joy and tremendous freedom. 

Looking back on it, no wonder mothers didn’t have time to entertain their children. No wonder we were told, “You kids go outside to play. I’ll call outside for you when it’s time to come home.”

There were not many girls in my neighborhood, so I mostly hung out with my brother and his friends ~ Leo Fortier, Davey Cournoyer, and Carl Olson. At least once a day my mother sent me to the Silver Lake Store, about a block away, with a note and some money to buy whatever she needed ~ a can of coffee, a package of Kool-Aid, maybe milk or a box of Jello. A pack of cigarettes was also often on the list. Occasionally, Mom would let me spend a penny or two on penny candy.

My favorite candies were root beer barrels. At two for a penny, they were a bargain. My brother and I were always hunting for pennies dropped in the dirt or behind couch cushions, so we could buy candy that cost more than one penny ~ wax lips for me and baseball cards for him.

One day, Bob, Davey Cournoyer, Leo Fortier and I were especially bored and looking for something to do. One of us suggested forming a club. We wanted to call it the Be Bad Club. We were tired of being good and we wanted to see how it felt to do something bad. I was about seven years old and the boys were all six. As the oldest, I should have known better but it sounded like fun.

We hatched a plan to walk into Silver Lake Store and throw all the bread on the floor. When the owner saw what we were doing, he yelled at us and we ran out the door. We raced down the alley to Leo’s backyard, laughing all the way.

Later, we couldn’t think of any other bad things to do so we formed the Be Good Club. The Korean War had just started. We considered ourselves practically angelic as we knocked on people’s doors and asked them if they wanted us to tell them about the war. Most people just shook their heads and said, “No! Go find something else to do.”

When I was eight years old, we moved to a new home, about two blocks away from my grandparents. Our new home had a bathroom with a bathtub. My mother had a wringer washing machine in the basement. She spent all day Mondays washing clothes and hanging them on the clothesline by the side of our house. On Tuesdays, she ironed. It’s what most mothers did. When I was nine years old my father bought a car and later we got a television.

During the summer, my brother and I continued to roam the neighborhood, often the two blocks between our new house and my grandmother’s house, where we used to live. My brother rounded up his friends to play baseball in the open field next door. I helped my mother do the laundry and I learned to iron. My mother sent me on errands to Silver Lake Store at least once a day. I loved it.

One day Dad came home from work with a canister and asked me to take it to the store. The canister was meant for people to donate money to help people with cerebral palsy. I needed to ask the owner if it was ok to put the canister next to the cash register in his store. I was horrified. I was so painfully shy, I was later diagnosed as an “elective mute.” I could talk to people my age, but never to an adult.

I was terrified at the thought of actually having to speak to the owner. I had been coming to the store daily for years, but for all those years I just handed the owner my list and he filled my order. The day I took the canister to the store, I wanted to talk but I couldn’t find the words to say out loud. I came home with the empty canister and told my Dad that the owner said “No.” I felt terrible. I went to confession and told the priest that I lied to my father. 

A couple of weeks later, we were out for a drive when we saw a young man struggling to cross the street. He was on crutches and he shuffled his way across the street. 

“What’s the matter with that guy?” my brother asked.

“He has cerebral palsy,” Dad answered. 

To this day, I wish I had been able to talk to the owner of the Silver Lake Store. I wish I could have done something to help the man on crutches, trying to cross the road in front of our car.

Silver Lake Store was never the same for me again.

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Lobo

The years I spent in Mazatlan, running a home for snowbirds, are some of my fondest memories. The people I met were fun and funny,  thoughtful and kind. Some of them became my friends for life. With one exception. Because I can’t use his real name, I’ll call him Lobo.

The last summer I lived in Mazatlan, I was ready to sell my place and return to the U.S. I needed someone to house-sit while I was away. Someone who would sweep the courtyard every day and make sure the kitchen was clean. Two of my guests recommended Lobo. They met him at church and were impressed by his demeanor and intelligence. According to them, Lobo was an attorney with two daughters living in the U.S. He was a tennis player and a Spanish-speaker. He was about my same age. I thought Lobo was the person I was looking for.

I met with Lobo and explained his responsibilities. I had him sign a rental agreement that stated that he could use the guest quarters, but that the owner’s side of the home would be locked. I would not charge him rent as long as he lived up to our agreement.

Lobo had free rein in the kitchen, but my telephone was off-limits. Lobo pushed me to let him use my office but I held firm. I told him that a friend would be checking my home on a regular basis, to see if everything was ok.

I was back in Colorado for only a few weeks when i started receiving emails. Everything was not ok! Lobo was not sweeping the courtyard, which was now full of mango leaves. Lobo was seen urinating on the front door when he came home drunk at night. The neighbor complained that Lobo often walked around the courtyard totally naked, in full view of the neighbor’s young grandchildren. Lobo needed to go.

I called Neto and asked him to meet me at the airport to help me evict Lobo. When we arrived , Lobo was not yet home. We found a set of lock picks on the kitchen counter. The door to my office was wide open. We swept the courtyard, which was ankle deep in dead mango leaves, and cleaned the kitchen while we waited for Lobo to come home. He was surprised and not happy to see us.

When I told Lobo we were there to evict him, he went crazy. He bellowed like a bull. He pounded his fist on the kitchen counter and started spewing lawyer talk. He said he wasn’t leaving and we couldn’t make him. He grabbed the telephone off my desk and started running down the courtyard toward his room. Neto ran right behind him. When I told Lobo to stop, he threw the telephone at me, hitting my upper arm with full force.

Neto was a super-hero. He’s the most athletic man I know. His nickname is “Chanfles” because of the powerful left kick that was his trademark when he played soccer as a kid. Neto’s famous left kick landed square on Lobo’s testicles. Lobo fell to his knees and whimpered like a baby. We told Lobo to start packing. We were going to find a lawyer.

We returned with a lawyer and Lobo was still screaming. He hadn’t packed anything. We called the police, who arrived and said we needed to go before a judge. The police put Lobo in their car. Neto and I went in the lawyer’s car and we were off to see the judge.

Lobo sat quietly in the corner of the courtroom. The judge immediately pointed at Neto and said, “What has this guy done?” The lawyer said nothing. Neto explained that he was not the criminal. He was the owner. The criminal was the old man sitting quietly in the corner. We needed the judge to sign an order to evict him. Lobo responded that Neto had kicked him in the balls and he wanted to press charges. He offered to show his bruised balls to the judge, who declined to take a look.

The judge ruled in our favor and everybody trooped back to our house: Me and Neto, the lawyer, the policemen and Lobo. The police told Lobo to start packing. For forty-five minutes nothing happened.. The lawyer said he couldn’t do anything. Finally one of the younger policemen told Lobo he had five more minutes to get in the car. They would drop him off at a hotel up the street.

The young policeman then turned to us and asked if the room was now available to rent. He would like to live there. He would love to be our house-sitter. 

Lobo climbed into the back of the police car, looked at me and said, “Nos vemos.” (See you later.)

I replied, “Vete al Diablo.” (Go to Hell)

The lawyer approached us and said we owed him $1000.00. U.S.

I replied, “Besame el culo.” (Kiss my ass.) I was barely a Spanish-speaker but it’s always a good idea to learn the bad words first.

I still google Lobo’s name from time to time. He’s now living in a fancy retirement community in Florida, where he regularly terrorizes the residents with his obnoxious behavior. He recently spent six weeks in jail for impersonating a lawyer. I was lucky to get rid of him with only a bruise on my arm.