Back Home Again ( Part 15)

My Nerves Can’t Take This
 

 Back Home Again ( Part 15)

5929 Merrimac

 

       I recorded this part of my story on tape September 18th 1997

5929 Merrimac

I lived here from 1961 o 1963

My age was 15 to 17

John got his license and he had his Dad’s car. So we were driving around. I forgot where we were going but all of a sudden right around my house, I saw this.....in back of this old house, I saw this “34" Ford 3 window coupe sitting back there. I said, JOHN, LOOK IT, a “34" Ford. I said, “Pull in there, pull in there. Let’s see if they want to sell it.” So we pull in there and the guy was standing out by the garage there. This was just a shell. It had no frame no doors. “Do you want to sell it?” and he said, “Sure.” I said, “How much do you want for it?” He said, “$15" and John and I look at each other and say, “Huh” and I said, Yeah, I’ll buy it, I’ll buy it. I said, “But I got to get a trailer and we’ll be back to pick it up. Is that OK?” He said, “Sure.” So John and I get a U-Haul rent-a-trailer. We bring it over and lift up the shell of the “34" Ford and we put it inside the trailer. We almost split the railings on the trailer because of it.

This is What My 1934 Ford Coup Looked Like

But anyway, we got it over to my garage and I’ve got this Chrysler engine sitting in there. So that would have been perfect having a Chrysler Hemi engine in a “34" Ford 3 window coupe. So that’s what we were going to do. John had an older brother named Dwayne who owned a garage and a transmission shop. John and I went out and found a “41" Ford truck frame over at that farmers place. Over at that farmer where my “50" Ford convertible was.  There was a “41" Ford truck frame, so we took that and brought it over to Dwayne’s garage. And we started taking a torch and the welder to it and cutting it up and we’re going to fit it to the “34"Ford. Well we cut it down. It’s a pretty rusted frame. But we got it together. We got the body on the frame anyway. And we got the Chrysler engine sitting in there and that’s about where it stood for a long time. Then we found out that the engine is..... The bell housing, the back half of the engine is too big for the “34" Ford. So I’ve got to get a later model Chrysler engine that’s a little shorter and it would fit in the car. I sell my Chrysler engine and I made $15 on that one. I sold it to a guy for $50. Now I just have the “34" Ford 3 window coupe in my garage and I work on that and paint it. You know, with the primer. That’s about all I put on it. But it looks pretty good for just being a shell.

 Well after that fight that I had over the girl at the sock hop, now she likes me I guess. And she invites me over to a party at her to house. She’s ok, I think her name was Barb. I’m not quite sure. But she’s all right. She’s not what I expected her to be. Then another time, I was working in my garage on my car and her and another couple came over while I was in the garage. They said, “Do you want to go for a walk?” I said, “Sure.” But I was really dirty from working on the car. So I said, “Ok, I’ll go.” So we took a long walk and just talked. After that day, I never talked to her after that. I never saw her. I guess I just wasn’t that interested in her. I found out later she started going steady with somebody else and she got pregnant by this guy. Boy, that’s the last thing I would need, holy Christmas! Anyway, I heard that they had to get married. Boy, would that be the pits. So that was the end of that girl.

Well Mom was trying her best and she goes out shopping to the grocery store. But she likes this little grocery store on the corner in the neighborhood, the Ma and Pa grocery store. She said they had good meat there besides they deliver. So she uses that quite a few times. Well, I’ll let you listen to my sister and hear what she has to say:

   

   (Jeanne, My sister is talking)___

    “My Mother would go shopping on Friday, this was after he (She is talking about me, her brother) was a teenager about your age. My Mother would go shopping on Friday and she would absolutely fill the cabinets and the refrigerator and the freezer. And he would stay up all night and eat all night. He’d eat up a whole package of Smokey links. That was one of our favorite foods. He’d eat the whole thing and I would be so mad because I liked it too. And when I woke up the next day they’d always be gone.”

(Jeanne, My sister is talking)___

 “Did he ever tell you about the mushrooms in his bedroom over there?

(Me Talking)____

“The radiator leaked.”

(Jeanne, My sister is talking)___

 “THE RADIATOR LEEEAKED along with....you know but that in combination with the fact that his room was so trashed and he’d always had food in there. They just sprouted up around the radiator.”

 (Me Talking)____

 “They grew right out of the rug. I had mushrooms like that.(I was showing the size of the mushrooms.) I’d pick them every once in a while but they grew back. I never ate them, I thought they were too poisonous.”

 (Jeanne, My sister is talking)___

“He had a very fertile rug conducive to growing mushrooms. He had the back bedroom and that’s all he’d do just sit in there and watch TV, cartoons mostly, especially on Saturday. Jimmy would come over and watch cartoons with us. He’d sit on your bed on Saturday morning and watch all the cartoons and eat.”

 (Me Talking)____

“Really, I don’t remember that.”

(Jeanne, My sister is talking)___

“What was really strange about that was when the astronauts landed on the Moon. We watched that in that same room. Didn’t you have the TV in that same back room? We watched that years later after you moved in there and you were married.”

 Well my grandparents decide to buy my Mom a new car. They think she needs a new car. So we go out looking and we went to this Oldsmobile place, I remember. My Mom was going to get a four door. You know, for showing real estate. That’s what she wanted. I said, “Ah come on Mom buy a convertible. They had this beautiful Oldsmobile convertible on the showroom floor. And so, she says, “Yeah, why not, you know. So, I don’t know what happened but she went back and probably talked it over with the Morelands, her parents. Anyway, she didn’t end up getting a new car. She ended up getting my uncle’s old 1959 Lincoln Continental. It was a black one, a two door. And of course, my uncle got the brand new car, a Cadillac. Anyway, I drove the Lincoln one time in the neighborhood. I didn’t have my license. I went around this corner a little too fast and the seats were made of leather and I slide right across the seats.  I almost lost control of the whole car. I almost cracked it up. So I didn’t do that again. I was afraid to drive that thing. It was too big. It was like a tank.

 My Mom is still working at the real estate office. She holds open house every once in a great while. This one time she sold a house and she came back and she was so excited, so happy. Of course that made everybody else feels really great too. One of the few times she seems to be happy, when she can accomplish something, I guess. I think I know how she feels.

 Well, my Mom was just taking a lot of pills and I’m always going to the pharmacy all the time and getting her pills from the doctor. I don’t know what they were. At a later point, I was getting so many pills I even started asking the pharmacy, “What are these pills for?” I still can’t remember what they were for. Anyway, she’s been drinking a little too. The pills and the booze started eating holes in here stomach and caused some bleeding ulcers and in those days they didn’t just give you medicine to fix it like they can do now.  They cut you open and cut half of your stomach out. So she had to go in the hospital and have part of her stomach removed. She was really afraid of that one. While she was in the hospital, I was staying over at my aunt’s house. But I would still go over to my old neighborhood during the daytime and see the guys. This one time, I brought the guys back to the apartment and no one was home. It was just myself and two other guys. And I had this projector that projected images on to the wall. I used it for when I did my science project for the heart. I put this projector over the heart and then it projects it onto the wall. Anyway, we had a playboy magazine. I didn’t keep it in the house. I don’t know where we got it. Well we had this picture of the naked lady and I take this projector and put it over the picture and it projects it life size onto the living room wall. Well, I get a call the next day. “Your Mom’s all upset. The neighbors called and said you had naked girls running around the apartment. And I said, “WHAT?” I said, “There’s no way.” I admitted being in the apartment with the two guys but I said we didn’t have any girls.” So when I visited my Mom that evening, she asked me about it and I explained it to her. “Mom, I didn’t. I didn’t have any naked girls.” I explained we had a picture of a naked girl and I used that projector to project it onto the wall. The woman across the street must have....she always had binoculars looking out the window and she would always spy on everybody. Well evidently when she spied into our living room, she saw this....we had the lights out. So all she saw was this image of this naked girl on the wall. She probably thought it was real. So my Mom just kind of says, “Is that all.” and she kind of laughed and that was the end of that. But that made me mad that, that woman spied on me and then called my Mom downtown at the hospital while she was sick and told her that. That really made me mad

 This one time I was over at my grandmothers and I was up in her attic for some reason, roaming around. And I came across this shotgun that my grandfather had. I didn’t even know about it. I didn’t even think he was into that kind of stuff.   But evidently he had bought a shotgun a long time ago when he was younger. And it was a real expensive one. You could break it apart and it would come in two pieces and it would fit in this case. It was really nice. Well, I got all excited and I asked my grandparents if I could have it and they let me have it. Oh, I was really excited about that. That was nice. So I got to go hunting with Bob my friend. We went on this farm. I don’t know whose farm it was. Anyway, we were out there. We didn’t shoot anything. There was nothing out there except this five-gallon container. We blew a couple of holes in that. That was about it. That was a nice gun. Now I got my “22" and a shotgun at home. That’s neat.

  Oh, this one time I was at the park and all the guys were there. And this one guy was talking about how he got into a fight and he really got beat up bad. He was going to go back and try and beat up the guy again. I knew the guy was going to get creamed again. So I said, “Well if you don’t finish him off, I will.” So that got around. Besides I had the reputation of beating that one guy up so bad before. Oh, John my friend, he’s taking metal shop at high school and he made these pair of brass knuckles. I knew this fight was coming up and I ask John, “Can I borrow your brass knuckles?” So he gives me the brass knuckles and I’m carrying them around in my pocket. One night I was walking back with this girl that lived across the street. She didn’t mean anything to me she was just a friend. And we were walking down the street back toward home and all of a sudden this car pulls up and six guys pile out of the car. Now I know something bad is going to happen. They had heard that I was going to be in a fight with this guy and really cream him. They must have found out I had brass knuckles too for some reason. I don’t know why. But anyway, I had my hands in my pockets and my hand around the brass knuckles. Now if it was just one guy, I would have done it. I would have haul off and whacked him one. But there’s six guys and there’s no way that I’m going to beat up all six guys with a pair of brass knuckles. All they’re going to do is take them away from me and use them on me. So I didn’t take them out of my pocket, I just left them there. He says, “Whatta you have in your pocket?” I said, “Nothing.” He says, “Let me see whatcha got in your pocket.” So I showed him the brass knuckles. He said, “Give them to me.” I said, “Listen, they’re not mine” He said, “Give um to me.” So he takes them away from me. He staring me in the face and he’s up close right in my face. He stares at me and then knees me as hard as he can right in between my legs. Ohhh did that hurt! And I just went down and I stayed down. And they all piled back in their car. If I would have got up, they would have done it again so that’s why I stayed down. So they all piled in their car and drove off. But I was really in pain. Now I want to take revenge because I was mad. But I thought about it and I knew better. If I go back and do something to them, they’re going to come back and do something even worse too me and back and forth and it’s really going to get out of hand. So I just left everything alone. I didn’t show up to the fight, I didn’t take revenge and that was the end of that. But I could have done just the opposite. Everything would have been a mess. So that was the end of that.

 Well I flunked out of Taft high school and now my grandparents, Nanny, Grampa and my uncle Bill get me into Loyola Academy. Uh! When are they ever going to give up on me? I don’t want to go to school. Evidently, my uncle knew somebody at Loyola and that’s how they got me in and I just don’t want to go to school at all. And why I feel like this, I don’t know. I ‘m just a total screw up at this point. I started cutting school. This one time, I missed the bus on purpose. So I go walking home and I said....I was staying at my grandparents for some reason this one time. I told my grandmother, “I missed the bus.” Ohhhh did she get mad. She woke up my uncle. And when my uncle was still living at home, even though he’s in his forties, he still lives at home. Anyway, He gets up and Boy he is mad! And it’s the first time I ever saw my uncle mad at me, ever!  Ohhh was he mad at me. He drove me all the way from the house to Loyola. Boy was he mad. Anyway, I keep skipping school and my Mom is home at this point. I get on the bus this one time. We get to school and I just turn right around and start walking back home and hitching a ride back to my house. I just give up. I just don’t want to go to school anymore. I knew my Mom was going to be mad and upset. So on the way home, I got a job at....It was a place something like Wal Mart. I don’t know the name of it but it was similar to that. I got a job in the garden department. I worked there for a couple of days and then they put me down in basement in inventory in the stock room. So that’s where I worked. Anyway, so I get home and I told Mom that I quit school and I got a job on the way home. Ohhh, she was devastated and she was crying and she was all upset. I love my Mom so much and why I screwed up like this, I just don’t know. I have no idea.

 Mom has trouble with her drinking and the pills. That started before I dropped out of school. One of the things that scares me, is she gets......something happens and she stops breathing and she passes out. And then when she passes out, she starts breathing again. Oh, that really scared the heck out of me. And I even asked the doctor, I said, “What going on?” and he told me, “Bill, don’t worry about it. When she passes out, she’ll just start breathing again.” And I couldn’t take that. I remember a couple of times, one time she stopped breathing and she just passed out. So I give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and she comes back. My nerves can’t take this at all. And then the next time it started, I could see it was starting and she couldn’t breathe and she started passing out and I just ran out of the house. Like that was going to solve anything, you know? I get outside and then I found out I locked myself out and I want to get back inside to help her now. So I had to run around to the back were my bedroom was. I knew my windows were open over there. So I climbed in the windows and got in that way. By the time I got back there, she was just waking up. WOW, I hated that.

  And when she was bombed, a lot of times she would smell like vanilla extract. I don’t know why. I thought I heard someplace where people drink that sometimes. There’s a lot of alcohol in vanilla extract but god, you’d really have to be hard up to drink that stuff. And I got to a point where I searched for the booze in the house and I mean I really searched. And I couldn’t find anything. I went through her closets and everything and I couldn’t find anything. So a lot of it was the pills I would imagine. Either that or she had a pretty good hiding place for the booze.

 This one summer evening I came home and it was dark out. And I’m walking up to the apartment and I can hear the music playing in the living room. And I go inside and it’s dark inside. The record player is going and Mom’s sitting on the couch looking out the window. It’s really pretty out, with the trees that look like a tunnel and then there was a street light there. We have bay windows in the apartment so you could see the whole street. And she’s sitting there staring out the window. She’s not drunk tonight but she’s depressed. I can imagine what was going through her mind. Everything’s going wrong. She was probably thinking about Dad and how she got into this apartment. I imagine a lot of stuff like that went through her mind. And the record she was listening to.....I’ll play it in a minute. I sat down next to her and tried to keep her comforted and talk to her. She says, “Bill, why don’t you play that record over again.” So I put on the record again and we listened to it several times. Here’s the record and I’ll let you listen to it.

 (On my tapes, I have Nat King Cole, singing “But Beautiful”)

  Every time I hear that song, I relive that moment sitting there with my Mom. I wish I could have done something, anything to help her.

  We order a lot of pizza. Mom doesn’t cook that often. I know where she gets some of her beer anyway because when she orders the pizza, she orders like a six pack of beer. But I know where she gets some of it but I don’t know where she’s getting all of it or where it’s stored or anything.

 I remember Jeanne telling me that she took the Lincoln. I don’t even think she had a driver’s license at the time. And she takes it down by her school and it’s a long way from the house. The thing was, the power steering was broken on it. I couldn’t even drive it was so hard. I don’t know how she did it. But she’ll have to tell you that story if she ever gets around to it.

 This one time in the winter of “62" my Mom was coming out of the apartment and there was ice on the sidewalk in front of the apartment and her legs just went zip up in the air and BAM, she came down really hard. And this man was walking by and he says, “Did you fall?” Mom’s telling me this story afterwards. The guy says, “Did you fall?” and Mom says, “Well what the hell do think I’m doing sitting her.” That was one of the funny ones. But she got hurt. She hurt her rear end.

 Mom started asking me about my guns and how do you load them. I said, “What do you want to know that for? She says, “Well, just in case somebody breaks in or something I’ve got some protection. So “DUH,” not even thinking, I started showing her how to load the gun. First I taught her how to load the “22," and she said, “What about the shotgun?” and I said, “Don’t even touch that. It’s to powerful,” I never did tell her how to use it. You have to put it together anyway and it was too complicated for her. Besides, I didn’t even want to have her near that thing. But I told her how to use the “22". She use to call us in the room, she called us in the room once or twice. She said, “In case something happens to me, this is where the bank accounts are and how much are in it. And she was talking about the trust she has with the Morelands, you know with her parents. And we said.... Both Jeanne and I were in there. We said, “Ma, nothing going to happen to you.” You know because she was only like 45, 46. I’m not putting this all together. I’m only 16 or 17 and I’m not putting this all together. Today, everything would click on instantly and I would have known what she was thinking. So one day I come home and there’s ashes all over her bed, there’s a hole in the ceiling and I said, “What is going on?” Everything was all messed up and no one was around. So I go over to my grandmother’s house. I had to walk over there. I found out that my Mom had taken my “22" and put it to her chest and shot herself with the “22". The bullet went through one of her lungs and ricocheted off of her ribs and came out her arm pit and put a hole in the ceiling of her bedroom. I found out that after she shot herself....she was home alone. After she shot herself, she called her parents that were at the real estate office. Now all of a sudden she’s scared that she’s going to die, you know, after she shoots herself. Now she doesn’t want to die. That’s what’s going through her mind, I guess. So they get her to the hospital and my grandparents tell me what happened. Man, I’m really upset. I just can’t take any more of this stress.

   They tell me not to say anything about the gun, the shooting or anything. Just be nice to her. So that’s what I did when I went to see her. I was real nice to her and I wasn’t going to get mad at her or anything. Man! I don’t know what made her shoot herself. I don’t know what was going through her mind. But the police took my “22". That’s the last time I saw that. The shotgun that I had, the neighbor across the street took it for safekeeping, my friend across the street. I forgot his name. He held on to it for a long time, you know, when my Mom got back from the hospital. We didn’t want any guns in the apartment. So he held on to it. After she got home from the hospital, she stayed at my grandparent’s house for a while. They wanted her to stay for a couple of weeks I think and she stayed for about a week. And she’s sober now. She’s total different now but she’s still really depressed. But she looks different, she looks healthier and she’s not all drugged up and drunk and everything and I think she’s really looking good. But the depression has not gone away. I went into the house and she says, “I’m getting out of here. I can’t stand staying here anymore.” She finally got out of there. We went back home to the apartment. I didn’t think it was a good idea. I wanted her to stay a little bit longer. But she didn’t want too.

  I asked my grandparents what all the ashes were doing all over the bed. They told me that was from my uncle Al. He smokes a cigar, so when he came over to rescue my Mom and pick her up, all his cigar ashes went flying all over the bed. So that’s what that was from. Well I’m working at my job. I’m tired of taking the bus so my Dad’s working at Nicky Chevrolet now. He calls me up and says he has this really nice car and why don’t I come over and take a look at it. So I went over there and it’s a 1955 Chevrolet convertible, a black one with that orange and white interior. Oh! Was it ever fantastic. It’s got a white top on it. That’s my car. What classic and I said, “Yes.” I wondered how I could make the payments. He figured out the payments. I bought it for $500. So that’s my car and ever week I have to make a payment. Since I’m working, it works out ok. So I got my “55 Chevy and I got my license. I’m driving around finally. Thank goodness. So that was one of the better things I did. That was fun. Then I got to see all my friends in my old neighborhood, showing off my car. I had my freedom.