Back Home Again ( Part 3 and Part 4 )

                                           Back Home Again (part 3)
                                                    5546 McVickers

A Visit to my other Grandmother’s House

 

This is my favorite picture of my Mom holding me up. It was taken in 1945. Oh, to be able to start over again.

This is the same view taken 48 years later.

June 10th 1994

I stopped off at 5546 N, McVickers, Nana and Papa’s house. That’s my grandparents. They were living here when I was first born on Mason so I thought I would stop by. This is where that picture was taken with my Mom when I was…she was holding me up. So I thought I would stop by and take a look at it.

                                                                              

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Back Home Again ( Part 4 )

7516 W. Devon

Big Boys Don’t Wear Rubber Pants

June 10th 1994

   I’m at 7516 W. Devon. This is the second place I lived. And I was thirteen months and I lived here until I was 4 years old. I remember a lot more here. I think this is the happiest place I lived, with all the love and caring my mom gave to me. I had some good memories here.

 

I can still picture my Mom’s face looking down at me while she changed my diaper. Mom was always smiling and laughing at me. What a great memory I have of her back then. I can picture her taking off my rubber baby pants and unpinning my wet diaper. She would get a new one and take my two little feet and lift me up, sliding it underneath me. She’d clean me off and sprinkle Johnson’s Baby Powder all over my little penis and my bottom. Even today, the smell of baby powder sends me back in time to those wonderful days. Then mom would pull my diaper up between my legs and pin each side. She would get a pair of clean rubber baby pants and put my two feet in the openings and slide those soft smooth rubber baby pants down my legs. Mom would have to stand me up and finish pulling them up around my waist until they fit snug against my diaper. Then she would give me a love pat on the bottom of my rubber baby pants and say, “There, you’re all done.” 

    One day my aunt came over. My mom was pregnant again and my aunt said that she should take me out of diapers. “You don’t want to have two babies in diapers?” Mom thought I wasn’t ready yet. I had just turned two years old. But my aunt had convinced her. The next thing I remember I was standing out on the front steps wearing these brown corduroy pants. All of a sudden I could feel something running down my legs. I had wet my pants. I started crying and mom came and got me. She told my aunt that maybe I took him out of diapers to soon. My aunt said, “No you didn’t,” anyway I never did get my diapers back.

 I was playing and mom had left the basement door open. She was doing the laundry and I went down to explore. At the bottom of the stairs, I came across a box full of my baby clothes. I started looking through them and suddenly I found my rubber baby pants. I took them out of the box and took my pants off. I wanted my rubber baby pants back again. So I put them on the best I could. I didn’t have any diapers but I wouldn’t know how put them on even if I had them. Mom came down the stairs looking for me. She found me standing there in my top and rubber pants. She said, “What have you got on?” She looked at me and said, “Big boys don’t wear rubber pants,” and took them off of me. I started crying that I wanted them. I guess I put up a pretty big fuss about them because my dad reminded me of that incident later on in my life when I was married. I tried to look through that same box again but mom must have thrown them away. I couldn’t find them. And that was the end of my rubber pants.

         

  Around that same time, my mom and dad were getting ready to go out for the evening. I wandered into their bedroom to see what was going on. My mom was standing there doing something and I walked up to her and put my little 2-year-old arm around her. My arm only reached around her bottom. I felt her and said, “Mommy your wearing rubber pants. I want to wear rubber pants too.” She said, “That’s my girdle,” and took me out of her room and closed the door.       

 I remember she used to take me for a walk in the stroller to go down the street and around the corner and in the back there was a lot of prairie back here. A lot of woods and trees and it was nice, I liked that, I remember that. I remember the trees and how peaceful it was back here.

  I remember I’d wake up in the morning and wait for Mom to come in my room and I’d stand up in my crib and just wait for her to come in and she’d come in and I used to be so happy to see her. I used to jump up and down I remember that. And she’d smile and I’d smile. That was great. After she changed me, I always knew what was next. Mom brought me down into the kitchen and put me into the high chair. I had the regular kind of baby cereal but it was the fruit that came out of the jars that I remember the best. My favorite was fruit desert with tapioca. I even bought a couple of jars while I was doing this part of my memoir just to see if it tasted the same. It was just as good as I remembered. 

  One time she was tacking down carpeting in the bedroom upstairs. And I came in and I saw this little bolt and picked it up and put it in my mouth and swallowed it and my Mom thought that I swallowed one of the tacks. So she rushed me to the hospital and they took x-rays and they find out it’s just a little bolt. And I finally pooped it out a couple of days later. Everything was ok. My Mom was really upset. They thought I would have to have an operation and everything.  I still have that little bolt that my mother saved in my baby book.

  I’m looking at the steps now, outside. I remember one night, Mom and Dad and me just sat on the steps and looked up at the stars and there wasn’t all this traffic all the time. And across the street there were no houses. It was just a great big long field, a great big prairie.

  Is this ever cool, I took the car and I went the way I thought my Mom used to push me in the carriage to the train station. The train station is way in the back. And I take the streets and all of a sudden I remember EVERYTHING. There’s a park here and I look in the back and I recognize the street and then I turn the corner around by the park here and THERE’S THE TRAIN. But in those days, they had the great big coal trains and they’d bellow out this great big black smoke and just go CHA-CHUM, CHA-CHUM and you could hear it. Now they got the crummy diesels. And you could smell the smoke from the trains, I remember that. Oh, this is neat!

I remember my Mom pushing me in the stroller down this side walk past the park. After you make a right turn at the corner, you can see the train tracks. That was so cool to see the big old trains going by belching out big black clouds of smoke.

 I didn’t see too much of my Dad in this house. In fact the first house he was in the service. He was over in the Pacific in the Philippines during World War II. So on Mason ave, I never saw my Dad until I guess I was a year old. And when he came home, that’s when we moved over here to Devon ave. Even on Devon ave, I really didn’t see him that much. I just remember every once in a while I’d see him. He was always gone, working I guess or whatever. So I guess that’s why I’m close to my Mom cause I was around her all the time. During this time, Jeanne was born, that’s my sister and I don’t remember too much about her either, except I remember saying, “When is she going to grow up so I can play with her.” So I guess my Mom was....when she was born my Mom started taking care of her.

 This house was interesting. After I took a look at the house and followed the way that my Mom would push me past the park and to see the train and just all the memories of love and everything. If I had a choice of staying any were in time, I’d want to stay in this time, at this place, it was the happiest for me. I’m recording this on June 10th 1994, I’m 48 years old now. I’ve only come to the second house and I don’t know if I want to go any further then this because as I get older, the memories get worse. Well, around 11 or 12 they get worse. So, my next house is OK but I really like this one the best.

 (On my recording, I have Olivia Newton John singing out my memories of this house with the song, “When you Wish Upon a Star”)