Incomplete memoir (Part 9)

Posted 28 February, 2011 in Memoir

About five years ago I started writing a memoir. I kept at it for a little while, writing about 1,000 words a day for a few weeks. I hadn’t yet been to therapy and there were many things I didn’t really understand about my life, but I still find the unfinished memoir to be a fascinating look into my own past. I’ve decided to post it in installments here, with only a few redactions. You can find the other sections by clicking the Memoir category.

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On one trip to Lenox, I went to the Hagyard Building with a mission. My cousin Denise (whom I refer to as my Aunt Denise) told me that the front door of the Hagyard Building still bore the doorbell nameplates of Bernard Flanders and John Coughlin, my grandfather and great-uncle, respectively. She asked whether I would try to get them off the building, and of course I agreed.

There was a problem, though. My grandparents were forced to leave the Hagyard Building by the landlord, Eddie Darrin, who’d taken over Mole & Mole Real Estate after marrying the boss’s daughter. Darrin was a money-hungry real estate agent who raised my grandparents’ rent an enormous amount and told them to take it or leave it. So they left it with great regret, and moved to Plymouth, Massachussetts to be nearer to my Aunt Linda.

The Mole & Mole offices now occupy the ground floor of the Hagyard Building, and my path to the nameplates must certainly involve a favor from Eddie Darrin, unless I was prepared to return to the building late at night with a crowbar and a ski mask. That kind of thing would probably be noticed on Main Street in Lenox.

So I walked into Mole & Mole, strode up to Eddie Darrin, told him who I was, and asked for the nameplates. He got a hammer from his desk drawer – an interesting thing to have in your desk drawer, come to think of it – and outside we went. On the way, Eddie related to me that my grandparents had whined when their rent was raised, and that they complained about everything. I smiled and kept silent as I watched him pry the nameplates off the doorjamb. With my loot safely in hand, I thanked him and walked away.

Incomplete memoir (Part 8)

Posted 27 February, 2011 in Memoir

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My grandparents lived in an apartment building on the corner of Main Street and Housatonic Street in Lenox. The building was known as the Hagyard Building, because Hagyard’s Pharmacy was on the first floor. My grandparents had the second floor of the building, and my great-uncle Jack and his second wife lived on the third floor. (As did a solitary elderly woman who lived in the back room of the third floor until they discovered her dead one day.)

If my life has a Mecca, the Hagyard Building is it. This yellow-brick monument to our family’s past was the central point of gatherings, celebrations, dinners, and stories. My cousin-hero Todd and I ran through its rooms playing Incredible Hulk. I’d put my Dallas Cowboys pajama top (Todd’s favorite team) over my shoulders, and the transformation into the Hulk consisted of me yanking the pajama top off my shoulders and throwing it to the floor like Lou Ferrigno.

One day I was standing in my granparents’ bedroom. My grandmother was in there, wearing a purple silk nightgown with white polka dots. I loved to rub the material between my fingers. She eventually gave it to me, and my “silky” was born. That nightgown stayed with me until my fingers transformed it into a frayed fragment measuring two square inches.

Down the corridor from the bedroom was the den, back in the day when people still had dens. The den was the room with the couch you could relax on, and the TV set. One night, my great-uncle’s apartment upstairs flooded. My grandfather climbed onto a chair and removed one of the panels in the drop ceiling to investigate the pipes above, and a gush of water drenched him. In my memory, he’s wearing tan pajamas.

The focal point of the house was the kitchen. White with yellow highlights. A long rectangular table took up most of the kitchen, and the counter, sink and stove ran along one of the long walls. On the opposite wall were cabinets, and in these cabinets there was a cheese slicer. The slicer consisted of a small cutting board with a hinged wire blade on one end. You placed the cheese on the board, lifted the cutter, and voila! – Velveeta slices at your fingertips. And it was Velveeta, believe me. The cheese of the future. In fact, the two foods I remember most from my grandparents’ apartment are Velveeta and Ring Dings. Not at the exact same time, but certainly in the same day. And it was somewhere around this time that I developed my lifelong passion for Freihoffer’s Chocolate Chip Cookies. (Original Recipe, thank you very much.)

I go back to Lenox and look at the Hagyard Buiding every chance I get. The pharmacy is long gone, that space occupied now by a real estate office to sell the outrageously priced homes that are now the norm in Lenox. I no longer know anyone who lives in the building. I’d met the trio of elderly women who moved into my grandparents’ apartment in the 80’s, but they’re long gone – maybe from life itself. In spite of all that, though, just being in the presence of the building gives me a sense of calm, coupled with a painful yet pleasurable longing for a time gone by, for a childhood not to be regained, for roots in a town.

POEM: you don’t say

Posted 26 February, 2011 in My poems, Poetry

you don’t say

I’m coming over and when I get there
I want you to kiss me
she didn’t say

let’s get in the car and drive west
until we run out of gas
he didn’t tell her

the thing is, I don’t really
love you anymore
she should have admitted

I’ve found the love of my life
and it isn’t you
he should have confessed

we had some good years
some fun times
she could have remembered

I didn’t realize this is what they meant
by the word “passion”
he could have realized

will you come with me right now
and never look back?
she didn’t ask

I’ll never leave your side
as long as we live
he didn’t answer

Incomplete memoir (Part 7)

Posted 26 February, 2011 in Memoir

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One memory I have is of a small round Dairy Queen with those frosted block windows around the bottom half. I can see my mom and I walking to this Dairy Queen, although we don’t go inside. In my hazy recollection, there’s a window on the side of the stand, and it’s propped open. I can just make out someone through the window as we get closer. The memory stops before we order anything. I have no idea where we are, although somewhere in Berkshire County would make sense, given my age at the time. To be honest, I’m not even sure it’s my mother that I’m walking with.

I also remember a small child – I’m not sure if it’s a boy or a girl. This child has tightly woven curls, and is riding a Big Wheel. The child may be African-American.

And then there’s the old couple who lived across the street from us on … some street. The old man is missing part of his index finger, and he uses the stump to point out a daddy-long-legs spider on the wall of his cream-colored house. His curly-haired wife stands nearby wearing an apron and eyeglasses. Their house is at the top of a steep hill, as is ours, of course. I can also remember people sledding in winter down this steep hill. Or at least down some steep hill in a residential neighborhood. And I can remember walking down the hill because we couldn’t get our car all the way up.

One of the many houses my mom and I lived in flooded, and the firemen came to pump it out. I wore a fireman’s helmet – either borrowed or plastic, I can’t remember which – and rode my Big Wheel around the flooded cellar as the men worked. The cellar is lit by exposed bulbs in the ceiling, and the walls are made of cinder blocks. My mom has told me and others this story so many times that I’m not sure if I remember it or if I’m recreating it from her memories.

My biological grandmother, Evelyn Borders, is standing in a kitchen, holding me in her arms as the sun streams in. In one version, we’re standing in front of a horizontal rectangular window that fills much of the wall. In front of the window is a restaurant-style booth, although I’m sure this is someone’s home. The walls have brown paneling, and my grandmother is rocking slowly back and forth. In another version, she’s standing in front of a closed door, in the top of which is a window divided into nine small panes. Again, the sun fills the room.

I used to have a recurring nightmare that was set in the last house my mother and Art lived in together. My bedroom was down a narrow hall from the living room, and my bed was in the far left corner as you walk into the room. I’m three years old, lying in bed wearing footie pajamas with some sort of cartoon pictures on them. I hear heavy footsteps come down the hall, and a head like Frankenstein’s monster peers around the corner of the open door. In fact, there is no door, just a doorway. The monster has glowing yellow eyes. He makes no sound. That’s where I would always wake up.

In another dream, my cousins Tammy and Todd and I are in the basement of an old castle. You can see into the castle – and see us – because the walls are cut away as if the castle were a model. We climb up the dusty stairs, climbing and climbing until we reach a high parapet. Tammy falls over the side. Maybe Todd does, too. And then I go over, hurtling toward to ground, awakening just before impact.

And then there’s the first tactile dream I can remember. I’m lying in bed in one of the bedrooms in my grandparents’ apartment in Lenox. The bed is pushed up against the wall, and I’m on my side facing the wall. Although sometimes I’m on my back. I can’t recall much of the dream, except that it involves pinching a very small hard round object, like a pebble, between the thumb and index finger of one hand. The pebble shrinks, and this is terrifying.