Back Home Again ( Part 13)

                               Back Home Again ( Part 13)

                                   5598 Vine continues

                                                                                                                                                            
                       Things Are Starting to Happen at Home

July 6th 1997

We are still on Vine street - continued

 Well I’m in eight grade now and we all think we’re hot stuff. I didn’t think grammar school would ever end. Well, we have our first and only formal dance. So everybody’s excited and we all get dressed up. And the night of the dance, I walk in and everybody’s there. And I see Sandra, “Hi Sandra.” and I go over and hold her and as the music starts to play. Her skirt with all the petty coats underneath brush up against the front of me and I start to get an erection. The music plays and we dance.

(On my tape, I have Paul Anka singing, “Put Your Head on My Shoulder”)

   Well, I graduated from St Eugene’s grammar school. I was in the class of 1960. And it says here, what your ambitions are, your hobbies, your pet peeve, your high school. Here’s what it says. William (Bill) Kaufman. Eight years at St Eugene’s, I’m going to go to Notre Dame high school, my ambition is to be a doctor, my hobby is water skiing, my pet peeve is talking too much. My “Last Will” is my English book. I guess I don’t like people who talk a lot. Of course, look at me I’m talking on this tape recorder.

                                                                                                             

                                                                                                                                           I’m not very happy in this picture

Well the Morelands, my grandparents, have a graduation party for me over at their house. And I’m looking at a picture that was taken. I’m sitting on the couch next to my Mom and my Dad and I look discussed. The reason I look discussed is because my Mom is bombed out of her mind sitting next to me and my Dad’s mad because my Mom’s bombed and my Dad doesn’t want to be there in the first place. So if you ever see that picture, you’ll know why. But I got the graduation presents I asked for. My uncle gave me a portable television set. That was really cool because now I got a TV in my room. I wanted to go on a Boeing 707 to fly to Florida. And that’s exactly what I got. And I got to go down to Florida to see my grandmother. That was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that. I stayed there a couple of weeks but when I got back. I can’t remember who picked me up. I think it was my uncle, my uncle Al. And the reason he picked me up is because my Mom was bombed again. I come back and get into the house and the house is a mess and how depressing that is. I come back to a house that’s all screwed up after being with my grandparents who are great and then getting back into that situation again. I got up to my bedroom and I just cried the whole day. I think the rest of the summer I got my first job and that was sweeping basements in the subdivision. You know, sweeping junk out of the new homes in the basements that the workmen left for fifty cents an hour. Boy, was that the pits. All that dust getting in my lungs, geez I hated that, so that didn’t last that long.

 And now that Sandra and I are not going to be going to the same school. I’m going to Notre Dame and she’s going to Ridgewood high school. We’re just are not going to be seeing too much of each other. So she had one party and I went over there and she broke up with me. I couldn’t figure out why, at that time anyway. But it really hurt me. I acted like it didn’t hurt me but it really did.

(On my tape, I have Paul Anka singing “Summer’s Gone”)

 So I go off to Notre Dame high school. That’s a different experience for me I want to tell you. I didn’t like it. Now I got to take a bus. I had to walk to the bus stop, which was a couple of blocks. In the winter it was terrible. Most of the school is during the cold weather, you know. I remember we were by a church where a Notre Dame bus picked us up. Ohhh the cold days, it was just unbearable. We used to hide behind this evergreen bush, between the church and the evergreen bush just to keep warm. Everything started going wrong at home I guess. I just didn’t get along in school at all. I started doing bad. I didn’t do very good there. Things are starting to happen at home. My parents are drinking at home, so are my friends and myself. We started drinking too. We usually had somebody go out and......We had this one guy, he looked old enough I guess. And he use to go out and get quarts....We’d order quarts of beer. I don’t know what they do today but back then, the big thing was a quart of beer. A quart of beer back then would get me totally wiped out.

    I remember one time John and I were at the Big Hill and it was in the evening during the summer time. We had two or three quarts out there. Because I know I had a quart and a little bit more of the next one. I got a little wiped out.

 I remember one time I found some wine that my Mom had. Mogen David wine, Ohhh was that icky. It was a whole half-gallon. So I brought it over to John’s house and we went down into our sewer pipe were we smoked. It was an excellent hiding place. We started to drink it. Oh man, was I getting high. I got so drunk and I couldn’t go home because I was so drunk. Somehow I said, “I can’t go home.” So I went to the drag strip. I guess I thought I could wear it off there. They were putting in these great big pipes. So I laid in this great big pipe and I must have passed out for a while. Finally one of my friends....My friends left me there and came back later and got me I guess and I went home. Boy, was I sick and bombed. I threw up there a couple of times on that terrible wine. Somehow I slipped past my parents and I went to bed, wow, icky.

   I’m going to talk about Jeanne a little bit. I haven’t mentioned her too much. She taught me to dance. I didn’t know how to dance. Jeanne and I used to be pretty good dance partners. That was a lot of fun because she knew all the girls. Jeanne is two years younger than I am, so she knows all the girls and she taught me to dance. She would even get me fixed up with the girls. You know Sandy, having her come over to my house and stuff.

    I remember one time she had a....I think Mom was in the hospital at the time. She had to fix dinner. So my Dad came home. My sister had fixed a candle light dinner. I think there were hot dogs and beans under candlelight. She had a girlfriend also besides Vail. She had a girl friend named Mary Marnald and her side of the family built the Whitwicke homes, which are the homes next to the Moreland homes that we built. So they were good friends. And all this time....I didn’t know it at the time but Mary Marnald had a crush on me. She told me that not too long ago, a few years ago. I said, “Why didn’t you tell me back then? I didn’t know that.” She was kind of sharp when she was in the high school years.

  This is when my Mom tells me about the gold buried on Mason Ave, remember that’s my first house. Remember I mentioned that my grandparents had sold a house and the guy gave them all gold coins for the house and my grandparents brought home the gold coins and my grandfather hid it and he forgot what happened to it and they never did find it. And this is the time when my Mom tells me about this story. The gold’s still sitting there I guess, I don’t know.

 I remember one time my Mom was going out to a party with my Dad. And she’s opening a can of something. I can’t remember what she was opening. You know one of those old fashion can openers. She’s going around the edges and it slips right into her hand. It rips her hand open something terrible. So she wraps it all up and everything. She still goes to the party. And she met a doctor there, talking to a doctor. He gets concerned about it and he looks and says, “We’re going to my office right now.” The doctor said, “It’s a good thing I caught you at the party because you would have been in big trouble.” I guess it was really bad. So the doctor sewed her up there at the office. I hate those can openers. I don’t think they have them anymore.

Oh, I get my first “22" rifle. But the only way I can get my “22"....Oh my Mom doesn’t really want me to have a “22". But the only way I’m going to get it, now that I’m in high school, I got to take a.....Notre Dame has a gun course so I have to take the whole course or I don’t get the “22". I take the course and they teach you how to shoot it and handle it and all that. I got my “22". Then Bob and I can go out hunting with my “22" and he has his “22" or shotgun. I remember one time Bob and I were out in the field and we were after Pheasant. I killed a couple of pheasant. I always killed the hens, I don’t know why. They fly up so fast in front of you. You just shoot at anything that flies up, you know? Anyway, I remember this one pheasant few up and I had my “22" and he takes off like gangbusters and I shoot my “22" and I hit the bird right in the wing. Now, that’s one hell of a shot but a lucky shot just like that arrow was, that I split down the center. I couldn’t do that in a million years again. That was a cool shot. Bob was so impressed that I got him with one shot and he had a shotgun.

 Oh, they were putting in the expressway, I remember. The road graders would go along and then they’d dig real big....they were digging real deep so they could build bridges over the expressway, you know. Then when it rained, the low spots would just fill up and it would just be like a lake down there. I remember one time we went down there and it was during the summer. We decide to go skinny-dipping. Me and a couple of other guys, swimming around in that dirty water. Oh, that was fun. We were kids, man. We were kids having fun. Skinny-dipping is neat. Everybody’s got to do it once in a while.

 Well, my parents were selling houses you know and on Sunday it was over to the Morelands for brunch. That was the rule. You go to church and then over to the Morelands to have brunch. Boy, my Dad hated that. I don’t think he went to many times. And my Mom didn’t like it after a while either. Of course she started with the drinking too. But before the drinking started, My Mom got real sick one time. All I can remember is, one time my Dad took us down to Lake Michigan and we went swimming. I thought it was the water that got her sick. Anyway she ended up at Columbus hospital downtown on the lake. She stayed down there for a long time. I can’t remember what the matter with her was. I think she had to have a Hysterectomy. All I remember, my dad would drive us all the way downtown. We didn’t even get to see Mom when we got down there because kids weren’t allowed to be up in the room. But my Dad didn’t know what to do with us. So we had to come along. I remember we had to park really far away from the hospital because every parking space was filled up and then walk all these blocks back to the hospital. We used to do that every night. My Mom found out she was allergic to penicillin because they gave her some penicillin and it gave her a heart attack. Wow. She thought she was going to die. Mom was in and out of the hospital a couple of times. One time was for her stomach. Back then when you had an ulcer, they took out part of your stomach instead of giving you a shot today where they can cure it with just a shot of medicine. Back then they had to take out part of your stomach and she was afraid of that operation. But while she was in the hospital so much, she really got to like it according to my Dad because everybody was taking care of her. She got to meet other girls in there that she talked to. Dad said she really started to like being in the hospital. 

     I remember one time Nana and Papa came in while Mom was in the hospital and Dad stayed out all night. Nana and Papa didn’t like that too much. My dad was out drinking and probably found somebody, I don’t know.

 I remember Mom when she did get home, Dad would stay out drinking after he got off work. He’d go to the bars and drink. I remember Mom was always looking for him. He wouldn’t be home for dinner and Mom would be on the phone trying to find him at different bars and couldn’t find him. Once in a while she found him. And I don’t know if this is where Mom really starts drinking a lot. I’m pretty sure it is. And she really gets bad were she’s pasted out. She got to the point where my Dad and the Morelands committed her to a place called “Dunning” We use to pass it all the time on Irving Park rd. in Chicago. It was a nut house for the insane and on the outside they’d have a big long fence all away around this place. When we were young, we could always see the nuts walking around in the yard out there. And my Mom and Dad would always point them out. Well anyway, they committed my Mom to Dunning for a month, to sober up I guess. And when she got out, Boy was she mad! It was really a horrible place I guess from what she said. She never forgave my Dad for doing that to her. And that really never stopped her drinking either. She kept on drinking and Dad would stay out.

 This one time my Dad came into my room to watch TV. I guess the big TV in his bedroom wasn’t working. So he came into watch TV with me. And I was watching one program and he had been watching another program in the other room when the TV went out. So right away he goes and turns it to his program and I just turned it right back to my program. He got mad and he turned it back to his program. I turned it once more back to my program and he hauled off and slugged me in the side of my head. WoW, all I saw was black and a whole bunch of stars. That’s the only time my dad ever hit me but he really walloped me one there.

   I remember one time my Dad came home and he took my BB gun and my Mom was in the living room, they were both in the living room. And my Dad took my BB gun and started shooting my Mom with my BB gun. I got hysterical and I ran after my Dad and I said, “Give me that BB gun.” I was crying. Things weren’t good at all.

All the really bad drinking I think happened after my graduation from eighth grade. It got to a point where my Dad just said, “That’s it.” and he walked out of the house. He flew down to Florida where Nana and Papa were, where his parents were and he stayed down there. My Mom and Dad decide to get a divorce. I remember the day he walked out. It was at night. My Mom was in her room. She was half bombed and he had just come back home from the local bar. He walked in and saw that she was drunk again. He got mad and they started fighting. Anyway, that’s when he walked out. Now that Dad’s gone, it’s just my sister, Mom and me. And Mom’s still bombed. Some days were OK but she still got bombed. She’s still kind of depressed, well naturally. The booze didn’t help any either. I didn’t do well at school at all. I went to Notre Dame and I eventually flunked out of there.  I suppose it was from the divorce, I don’t know, more than likely. Now I could get away with stuff now that my Dad is gone. Mom knows I smoke, so she says, “I’d rather have you smoke in front of me, as long as you’re smoking.” So she lets me smoke in the house in front of her. I’m fifteen and I’m smoking full time now. I stay out later and I started doing things around the house that I wouldn’t ordinarily do now that my father isn’t there any longer.

Well we talk about moving now. We mention to Mom, why don’t we move? We thought it would be fun to move away.  And sure enough after I flunk out of Notre Dame, Mom buys a two flat. It had two apartments and a sub apartment down below so three apartments all together. We bought the building. We lived in the first floor. So that’s where we’ll be heading next. And things are going to get even worse. So Talk to you later.