Back Home
Again ( Part 12)
5598 Vine
continues
Talking about my Mom and Dad
July 6th
1997
I’m thinking of Inky our dog. We still have
her. Inky was fun. And one of the things I used to do to her to tease her all
the time, I would put a pillow over my head. Don’t ask me why but it drove Inky
insane and she use to get....she would start showing her teeth and growling at
me. It was like she was ready to rip my head off. And then I would take the
pillow off and then she would be all happy and her tail would be wagging and
everything. But the minute I’d put the pillow over my head, she’d get real mad.
My Mom said, “Boy, One of these days she’s going to bite you.” I said, “No,
Inky’s a good dog.” She never did.
I
sure miss Inky
One of the other things we did with Inky
is, one of us would....It would be a lot of fun. One of us would run around the
yard and the other would have Inky on a chain and we’d get her to run after the
person. Like if I were holding Inky and Jeanne was in front of me, she’d start
to run. And Inky would start running after Jeanne. And inky was so strong.
She’d pulled you lick-idy-split around the yard. That was a lot of fun. Inky
was a neat dog. But one time we went on vacation and we’re going to Florida. I
didn’t think about it until the day we left. I said,” What are we going to do
with Inky?” Mom said, “We have somebody that is going to take care of Inky.” So
we dropped Inky off at this person’s house and said a few words to the people.
I still remember the people standing out in the yard there and Inky’s out
there. And we get back in the car and she wants to get back in the car with us
but she can’t. I remember looking back and seeing Inky standing by the people
and that was the last time I ever saw Inky. She was getting so old by this
time. I didn’t think she was that old, I thought she was great. I found out
later, my parents had those people....were going to put her to sleep. That was
the whole purpose of bringing her over there, to put her to sleep. And if I had
known that, there was no way that Inky would have been put to sleep. I still
hate people today that put their dogs to sleep. If you raise the dog gone
thing, you keep it and take care of it. That’s what people do now with people.
They get to old but they can’t put them to sleep but they throw them in a
nursing home to get rid of them. It’s the same thing. I hate that. See, this is
where I get some of my things from. Things that happened in the past carry off
when you get older.
Oh, I remember one time I was going through my
mother’s drawers, my Dad’s drawers. You know how you just look around and I
came across my Mom’s.... I opened the drawer and there’s this rubber girdle
there. I looked at it, “oh man.” I took it out and I put it on. And I thought,
“Does this feel good.” I got to go back....and this goes back to when I was on
Devon Ave and my Mom when I was two years old. She took away my rubber pants
and diapers. Because at two years old, Jeanne was coming along and she didn’t
want both of us to be in diapers and rubber pants. So she took me out of the
rubber pants and hid the rubber pants. Remember I told you at the beginning
when I was talking about Devon Ave, I went down in the basement and found my
rubber pants and I put them on and Mom came down and she says, “What have you
got on?” And she saw that I had the rubber pants on and she says, “Big boys
don’t wear rubber pants.” So she took them away from me and I really put up a
fight. I wanted my rubber pants back. I
remember crying. Around that same time, my mom and dad were getting ready to go
out for the evening. I walked 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.
So anyway getting back to Vine Street, when I saw this rubber girdle in there,
I guess all that came back to me. So I took it out and I tried it on a couple
of times. Every once in a while I would go into her room when she was gone or
something and I’d sneak in there and I’d put them on.
One day I was in my parent’s bedroom
watching TV with them. Mom and Dad asked me if I wanted to sign up for
football. I don’t remember really getting to excited about the idea but I said, "OK." Mom had a list of things I had to have to be on the team. Mom said, “Oh, it
says here that I have to buy you a girdle. Mom smiled at me and said, “I have a
girdle, you can wear mine.” I looked at Mom and I wanted to say, “OK, let me
try it on.” But I ended up saying “I don’t want to wear your girdle.” I really
did want to wear Mom’s girdle. That would have been the perfect opportunity to
get to wear her rubber girdle whenever I wanted too but Dad was standing right
there in the bedroom with Mom and I and
he started laughing at me. So I said, “No.” If my Dad hadn’t been in the room,
I would have said yes to Mom. I would have signed up for football just so I could
wear mom’s girdle. After that, I told my Mom and Dad that I didn’t want to play
football.
I
remember the holidays here around Christmas. Those were always fun times for me
with the presents and everything. That was really fun. We’d go over to my grandparents,
the Morelands. And we’d have the present opening on Christmas Eve. I remember
one Christmas I asked for a radio, a short wave radio. I had a feeling my
mother bought one for me and she hid it the house right before Christmas. So
every time she was out of the house, I’d start looking for this radio. Well, I
finally found it in her closet. And I said, “YES, YES, I got a radio! That was
fun. I played with it so much that, by the time Christmas came around, I wasn’t
surprised at all. But that was a neat radio. That was neat.
Oh, and my uncle Bill, he would always have
the greatest presents for all the kids, great big boxes all wrapped in the same
wrapping paper. You could always tell which gifts were his underneath the tree.
One Christmas, I got an airplane, with the engine on it and my cousin got one,
Jimmy. We both got one. And I got this really fancy airplane and Jimmy’s wasn’t
that cool. And he was really jealous. In fact he even mentioned it a couple of
years ago. He was still mad about that. I got a better plane then him. The only
thing is that I didn’t start it for a long time. During the summer, I asked Mom
if she’d help me start it. So we started it in the garage. We got the thing
going and it just started right up but neither one of us knew how to stop the
thing and it was making so much racket in the garage. It just kept on going and
going. My Mom didn’t know what to do. She’s holding the plane, so she takes it
and puts the propeller right down on the cement and the propeller goes flying in
a million different directions and the engine stops. That’s the only way we
knew how to stop the plane.
Then the Morelands would give us a hundred
dollars every Christmas. Of course we never got to see it. My parents spent it.
So, you know, on clothes and stuff like that and whatever else we needed. But
we never personally saw it. Oh, on the way back one Christmas, it was real
windy and we’re getting out of the car after coming back from the Morelands
from Christmas. Mom’s got the hundred dollar bills and WOSH off they go. The
wind caught them and they took off. Never found them. Someone must have found
them. I’d sure like to find them.
Just about every Christmas I could think
of, we’d always wonder what to buy Mom for Christmas. And she always wore this
Channel #5 perfume. So that’s what Jeanne and I got her for Christmas usually.
You know, one of those small bottles. Back then they weren’t that expensive. I
thing they were five dollars. Try and buy Channel for five dollars these days
that is impossible. And that’s how my Mom smelled, with the Channel #5. Now I
got a bottle in my bathroom, in the cabinet there. Every once in a while when I
start thinking about Mom, I’ll spray the Channel #5. It’s not really Channel
#5, it’s one of those fake Channel #5 but it smells the same thing. And I’ll
spray it, WOW! I mean the memories come back. It’s like my Mom’s sitting right
there! So if you ever come over and see perfume sitting in my cabinet, you’ll
know why it’s in there. There’s a reason. I want it there. Sometimes I want to
think about my Mom. I want to smell what she smelt like back then. Maybe
sometimes I want to cry. But it’s there for a reason.
There’s only one time I heard my Mom swear.
She never swore except this one time. She was down stairs in the rec room. She
was sewing something or fiddling with something trying to get it to work. I
think it was sewing. She was sitting on the couch doing it and I’m coming down
from upstairs and I’m just about to turn the corner to go downstairs and just
as I’m turning the corner, she said, “Shit” to herself. But out loud just
enough were I could hear it. And I was just taken aback so much because she
never swore except that one time. She looked up and saw me and says, “Oh, I’m
sorry Bill. She really felt bad that she had sworn. I wish all people were like
that. I don’t like swearing. I know I did a lot of it but I try not to do it
anymore.
My Mom
and Dad were selling real estate. The model homes were right in back of our
house so it was just a short walk over there. They would sit on the open house
on the weekends and sell real estate. I remember a couple of times when Mom
came back and she had sold some houses. It was so neat to see her so happy that
she sold a house. And everybody else was happy for her and Jeanne and I would
say, “Alright Ma!” You know, we just loved it when she was happy like that. My
Mom and Dad took the brokers test. They had to study for the brokers test. You
don’t have to have a broker’s license to sell new real estate but they wanted
one anyway so they studied and got there broker’s license. I have my real
estate license but not my brokers yet. I remember my Dad saying, “Don’t ever
give up your real estate license, Bill. You may use it someday.” He had given
his up. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. And to make it look better, The
Morelands give their old Cadillac to my Mom. It was a “55" Cadillac. Of
course my grandparent always had the new Cadillac. Every two years they would
buy a Cadillac and they would give their old one either to my Mom or my aunt or
somebody would get the old car. They were company cars.
In
the meantime, my Dad was still one of the foremen on the job. The other one was
my uncle Al, Marie’s Husband. My uncle Al and my Dad did not get along together
at all. My Dad was always bitching about Al Pisors being a foreman. I remember
my dad would go out... get dressed every morning and he always wore a brand new
starched shirt. He always dressed really great. He always smelled the same. He
wore Mennen after-shave lotion. And I use it once in a while. And when I use it, of course all the images
and everything else of Dad comes back when you smell it. Smells are so strong
and they bring out all the memories and the pictures. Smells are really strong.
When we moved into this house, my Dad wanted
to put an in ground pool in the back yard. Now here are some of his faults. He
says he’s going to something but he doesn’t do it. We never did get our pool. I
don’t know why. Maybe it was the money. Maybe he was just dreaming but he
shouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it. Then I remember one time, when
everybody else had the go carts, he said he was going to build me a racer made
out of wood and that would have been fine with me. It would be him and I
working on it and he got me all excited about it. He would tell me what it
would look like and he would get the carpenters to help. I was really looking
forward to that and he didn’t do it. He didn’t keep his promise. And you know
the train set I got here in the living room right now? I promised Shawn when he
was five years old....Whenever we used to take him to the train station and
Shawn loved trains so much. I promised I would build him a train set and I kept
my promise because I thought of this racing car my Dad had promised me and he
never did. So that’s why I kept my promise to Shawn and built him the train
set. Even though it’s sitting here, it’s his anytime he wants. He can pick it
up. Besides it was a lot of fun putting it together and Shawn and I had
something to talk about. But anyway that’s why I kept my promise and my Dad
didn’t, some of his faults.
Some of the nice things he did for use
though was he would take us to Riverview. Oh, that was the coolest park in the
whole world. And Mom and Dad and Jean and I would go. Man, was that ever a nice
place. I got lost there one time and I really got scared. All of a sudden
everybody disappeared and I didn’t know what to do. I’m in this big crowd. I
thought I would never see my parents again. But I finally found them…. with the
rollers coasters, the classic roller coasters.
Soldier Field back when they had stock car races in the infield. That
was exciting to watch
And Dad used to take us to stock car races
down at Soldier Field downtown. Oh, that was fun. You could smell the rubber
burning and all the dust and everything getting in your eyes and the roaring.
That was cool. Then on the way back.... Jeanne was with me too. Then on the way
back as we’re going down Lake Shore drive, there used to be sign.....We’re
heading south on Lake Shore Drive from Soldier Field and on the left hand side,
there used to be a great big “Dad’s Old Fashion Root Beer” sign. And every time
we would go by it, we said, “Daddy, Daddy come on were gonna stop for some
Dad’s Old Fashion Root Beer and we’ll get some ice cream and we’ll make a root
beer float when we get home.” And so that’s what we would do after the stock
car racers. Oh, the memories! That’s why I like stock car racing today. See,
everything goes back to when you were young. Geez.
My Mom and Dad used to take us to a place
called Russell’s Bar-B-Que. OH, that was the greatest bar-b-que in the whole
world and it still is. It’s still there after all these years. It’s on Thatcher Ave in Elmwood Park. Oh,
they had the best bar-b-que sauce. I remember we would get in the car and go.
We just couldn’t wait until we got into the bar-b-que. And they had the old
fashion booths made out of wood. And then the little jukebox selector would be
in each booth so you could play songs. I always used to play the same song all
the time. It reminds me of Russell’s Ba-B-Que and my Mom and Dad, it was “It’s
All in The Game” by Tommy Edwards. And I would play that. That was neat.
(On my tape, you hear a coin dropping into the
juke box and then, you hear Tommy Edwards singing, “It’s All in The Game”)
And I’d have one bar-b-que dinner and then an
extra sandwich .I’d have two sandwiches. Oh, I’d be so stuffed. Those were some
of the Great Memories!
One time when Mom was sick, Dad took us to
Russell’s Bar-B-Que before we went downtown to the hospital where Mom was
staying in. We stopped in and had a Russell’s bar-b-que. Then went downtown and
went up to the room. I guess we snuck up to the room. She asked us, “Did you
guys eat?” and we all said, “Yeah, we stopped at Russell’s-B-Que, Mom. We were
all excited and she just started crying.... because she wanted to be with us
and have a Russell’s-b-que. I won’t forget that.
I’m going to talk about vacation. Mom and Dad
would take us to Florida. Oh, that was so much fun except for the Inky part
which I didn’t know about, thank goodness when I was on vacation. Well we went
down there and.....That’s when my Mom and Dad and I and Jeanne would get on the
all-day fishing boat and go deep sea fishing. Oh Man, was that ever fun. I
still love it to this day because of that. And like I said, when Mom would get
a big fish, we all would get so excited for her and everybody would be so
happy. And Daddy would get a fish and everybody would be happy for daddy.
“Daddy, what does it look like? How big is it?” And he’d get it towards the
surface. “We can see it. WOW, is it a big one.” I still love deep sea fishing
today. When my Dad moved out to California later on in his life, he would still
go out deep-sea fishing. He always told me, he always said, “Every time I go
out, I think of your Mom and Jeanne and you when we used to go fishing in
Florida.
My Dad was always on call because we lived in
the neighborhood and he was the foreman. And if anything went wrong with
anybody’s house, the first person they would call would be my Dad. He got a
call one evening from a guy. My furnace is out I don’t know what’s wrong with
my furnace. Can you come over? So my Dad went over to light the ...to get the
furnace going. And he lit the thing and the thing exploded in his face. He was
in the crawl space and it sent him flying across the crawl space. He came back
and he was all singed all over and burned on his face. Wow, I remember that.
Now that Inky’s dead, Mom buys a.... she gets
a poodle, a white poodle. I can’t remember the name of the poodle. I guess it
didn’t impress me very much. Then we got a little black poodle too along with
it. We had two poodles. And I remember one day. Mom had just come in from
grocery shopping. She parked the car in the garage and gets all the groceries
in the house. And the dogs are running in and out. Mom goes to close the garage
door and right at the very last instant, the little black poodle decides to
scoot underneath to go outside. Well the dog didn’t make it and that garage
door came slamming right down on that poodle’s head and that was the end of
that poodle. Mom cried about that. She felt so bad. We still had the white
poodle.
Every year,
my friend, my sister and I would build a fort in a prairie near our house. We
used wood that we found from the homes they were building in the area. We had
built three of them while we lived here. They always seemed to get wrecked at
the end of the year. So when school got out for the summer we would build
another one. The first two were double decker forts. We started taking off our
clothes after we built the first fort. It was one of those harmless things like
“I’ll show you mind if you’ll show me yours.” kind of thing and we eventually
all ended up naked in the fort. We didn’t know about sex yet. There were two
other girls on the next block that wanted to come into our fort and we all got
naked with them too. Nothing else happened. Well, they must have gone home and
told their parents what happened because the next thing I knew, my mom gets
this phone call from the father of these girls. I get the drift of the conversation
and he’s coming over to talk to my mom. Well, I’m out of there and on my bike
as fast as I can. I know I’m in big trouble. I went over to another of my
friend’s house and told him, “I’m never going back home again.” He laughed and
said, “Where’re you going to go? You have to go back some time.” I knew he was
right but I wasn’t going back until it got dark outside. When I got home, I
could see the look on my mom’s face. She started asking me questions. She was really mad at me. Mom ended up
grounding me to the house for the rest of the summer. Summer vacation had just
started and she makes me stay inside for the rest of the summer. I could
usually talk her out of things but I couldn’t do it this time. I don’t think
she would have gotten so mad and gave me such a harsh punishment if it were her
that caught us. It was because my parents were the salespeople that sold these
homes and my dad was also the foreman of this subdivision. So my mom had to
make it look like she gave me a stiff punishment. And mom sure did a good job
of it. The funny thing was I never heard a word from my father about it.
My sister, Bob and I hanging around outside during the summer of 1957
I remember
one time, there was Bob, myself, who else? There was somebody else with us.
There were some abandon stores that were next to the Wiliby Mansion. So we were
roaming around the store to see what we could find. There was just garbage in
there. But anyway we’re in there hanging out, looking around. We sat down and
started talking about sex. I don’t know who brought it up. Anyway, somebody
started saying, “You know your mom and dad do it. And they describe how it goes
on; you know, put the penis in the vagina and so on? I said, “MY PARENT DON”T DO THAT, are you
crazy. They would never do that!” And they said, “Well how in the hell do you
think you were born?” And I won’t believe them. This how naive I was. I didn’t
know about that stuff. I knew about looking at girls in the fort but I didn’t
know what to do. Then I felt like fool. I started thinking about it and I
didn’t want to believe it.
The school I went to was further away now that
we moved. I had to walk about a mile to get home. One day I was on my way home
from school and I had to pee so bad. I put my hands in my pocket and started
rubbing my penis. I didn’t think I was going to make it home on time. I kept
rubbing and rubbing myself trying to hold it back. All of a sudden I could feel
myself wetting my pants. I gave in thinking I had no choice so I stood in the
middle of the street and let it come out. But it felt different this time and I
could tell nothing else was coming out and my bladder was still full. I didn’t
know what happened. When I got home, I looked in my underpants and felt some
wet sticky stuff inside of them. I didn’t tell my mom about it. I didn’t know
it then but I found out later that, that was my very first orgasm. So later on the guys... one of my other
friends I remember was the first one who brought it up. He said, “Do you know
what happened? I was in the bathtub and I started rubbing my penis with a bar
of soap and all this white stuff came out. I didn’t know what it was but it
really felt good.” Everybody started laughing
at him because nobody had done it yet. Nobody knew what he was talking about.
He said, “Go home and try it.” As soon as I got home I tried it. This felt
great. I guess everybody went home and tried it too. That’s how I learned about
sex, on the street, talking with the guys about it.
It was summer and warm out. I was inside and
suddenly I felt like getting naked but I was afraid I would get caught and I
didn’t want to get into any trouble. Mom was in the kitchen, so I took a chance
and I went up to her and asked her, “Can I go in your room and take all my
clothes off and watch TV?” I thought she would probably get mad at me for
asking her such a thing but she said, “OK.” that’s all she said. It wasn’t a
big deal with her. I was so surprised and happy that she didn’t care if I got
naked. I told mom. “If my sister comes home don’t let her come in your
bedroom.” The TV set was always kept in my parent’s room. That’s just the way
it was in our family. So if you wanted to watch it you had to go in my mom and
dad’s room. This was the first time I ever did this at home. It was so exciting.
I went into mom’s room and turned on the TV and took all my clothes off. I laid
on top of my mom’s bed in the nude and watched TV.
Later that
summer, I went up to Mom again and said, “I’m going up to your room and take my
clothes off. This time I didn’t ask her, this time I told her. “OK,” Mom
replied. She didn’t mind at all. It was fine with her and off I went into her
bedroom and turned on the TV.
There’s this
other friend I had that I haven’t brought up yet. We always use to call him Chip.
He was another crazy guy. He would do anything. He lived on Summerdale. Ring a Bell?
He use to
have sex with.....He had a girlfriend. We always use to go over to his house
and sometimes he won’t answer the door and we knew he was home. So we looked in
his basement window and we’d see him in the basement and here he is with his
girlfriend and his parents are still upstairs. There he is on the couch having
sex with his girlfriend.
He talked me
into going over to this guy’s house. I had seen the guy around but I didn’t
know him. He wanted me to go in and slug him for absolutely no reason at all.
He says, “We’ll go in and knock on the door and get him in the garage and then
you really pound him one. I don’t know how he talked me into it because I
didn’t want to do it. I guess I thought they would think I was chicken if I
didn’t do it. It was really stupid thinking. Anyway, they talked me into it and
they got the guy in the garage. I waited for him just to turn around. Just as
he was turning around, I hauled off and slugged him right in the jaw. I have to
say, that was one of the other most stupid things I ever did. He may never even
remember but “I Apologize.” That was stupid. That still bothers me when I think
about how someone can talk you into doing something you don’t want to do.
“Remember me mentioning Summerdale? Ever hear
of John Wayne Gacy? He’s
right down the street!” I’ll be taking about him but I’ll have to skip
ahead in time for a moment and then we’ll get back on track.
You can see what I mean when I said John Wane Gacy's was right down the
street from Chip's house
He's Right Down the Street!
By Bill
Kaufman on Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 1:37am
Chip Johnson
was a friend of mine way back in 1954 when I first met him in second grade at
St Eugene’s grammar school. He lived on Summerdale. When I turned 18, he was
supposed to join the navy with me but he chickened out. I went ahead in the
Navy and he married a girl that lived down the block from him on Summerdale.
I remember
this one time after I had gotten out of the Navy. I went over to visit with
him. It was a nice sunny summer day and he went in the house and grabbed two
beers. He handed me one and we went for a walk down the street sipping on the
beer as we went.
As we were
heading west on Summerdale, Chip started talking about this guy that lives down
the street. Chip said, “Guys go in his house and they never come out again.” I
said, “Yeah, right.” I didn’t believe him. I thought he was just bullshitting
me. But he told me “If his car comes down the street and stops to talk to us, I
want you to run in the opposite direction.”
Now Chip was
never afraid of anything in his whole life. He was crazy and he would do
anything. But Chip was afraid of this guy.
When we got
to the intersection he pointed to Gracy’s house and said, “That’s where he
lives.” I wanted to walk past his house to see what it looked like but Chip
wouldn’t go any further down the street. So he turned around and we headed back
down Summerdale towards Chip’s house.
Sometime
later when I was at home, I saw the news about Gacy. I almost freaked out. I
turned to my wife and told her this story about the time Chip warned me about
Gacy.
I’m glad we
never saw Gacy that day. I sure wouldn’t want to be one of his victims.
After all
the news about Gacy, I wanted to go talk to Chip about it but he was gone. I
guess he had left his wife and little boy back on Summerdale and moved away
somewhere.
Now I'll go back in time and get back on track on Vine Street... Continuing next Saturday in Part 13
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