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.

Back Home Again ( Part 12)

                                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.

                               

                                                                                                                There is the our "55" Cadillac and we also had a "55 Mercury

                                                                                                                              

     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