05.|. Dallas

Dallas Texas in 1967 was a world away from NYC.  Still broken from Kennedy’s assassination, and repairing from years of Civil Rights protests and change, all in process, but not there yet.

My family decided to move us there in late 1966 when my father made a job change from Chrysler to working for an auto auction in Dallas.  He was a finance man with a background in the automotive industry, so in the 1960s when everything was car based, it probably seemed to be a good idea.  Of course there was always the other story that led to the move….  The story I heard in whispers many years later, that moving there was a way to insure that my father’s transgressions with a certain woman would definitely end by leaving New York altogether.

Whatever the reason,  I was taken out of 1st grade not long after the holidays, a move that I did not appreciate as it meant giving up my role as the Dormouse in Alice in Wonderland.  However, leave we did, which I was vehemently opposed to.  [I was a strange little thing - I remember one day as I was walking through the school halls repeating the word “Kitchen” over and over and realizing that if you say something enough times it becomes a meaningless group of random sounds.  Something every 6 year old spends hours considering.]

I remember on arrival that we did not move into the house that my parents had found for us, but into what was then called Garden Apartments as our home was not ready yet for it’s new tenants.  It was a group of dark brown two story buildings, all surrounding a central pool which was a huge source of fun in this new warmer climate.  I seem to remember we lived in the lower unit, with neighbors living above us who were from England.  They had two sons who were the same age as my brother and myself.  We would explore the wooded area behind our homes, gated off but with enough holes in the fencing for our tiny bodies to crawl through and discover a cowboy graveyard hidden amongst the trees and brambles.  Each of the grave said something different about who was buried there, and even though I can’t remember what was said, it all read like a story just waited to be enacted by us. 

We would all walk together to school every day, through a dry patch behind the houses and over a road where the boys were given strict orders to hold my hand on crossing.  This must have been a horrifying proposal.  One day on the way to school we found a scorpion, and in usual childlike fashion, all stooped down to look at it, with no fear of the possible and impending death that crawled beneath our feet.

School was hard.  It was Spring of 1967, and our little housing units were in a school district that was all black.  I was the only white girl in the entire school.  There was one little girl who wore the cutest pigtails with perfect bows at the end of each one, and always wore a perfectly immaculate outfit.  She was very popular and sat in the front row as she always had the answers to any question the teacher asked.  I wanted terribly to be friends with her.   

On my first day I joined all the other kids at recess, and said hello to the cute pigtail girl.  She turned her heel on me and went off to her friends.  I tried again the next day.  And the next.  After that I knew there was no use to it, and spent every day at recess standing in the corner of the school yard watching everybody else play. The teacher would sometimes ask me why I didn’t play with the other children, and even at that young age I thought she was shockingly naive.

When we moved back to New York a year and 1/2 later, my first friend in 3rd grade was the only African American girl in the class.  In looking back, it makes perfect sense.  But that is another story…

By the time 1st grade had ended, we moved into our new home at 4341 Livingston Ave.  It was in a nice neighborhood, and a block from my new school, Bradfield.  Almost every house on the block was filled with kids… all our age, and fascinated by their new metropolitan neighbors.  Our home was a beautiful Tudor looking home with an extra room connected to the garage which was once the home of a maid, as all the houses on our block once housed one.  It was unused for years and dilapidated, once more off limits to us kids, and once again, a source of amazing stories yet to be invented.

My father had put together a tower for us, a large metal structure that had lots of bars for swinging from and a central pole for sliding down.  My brother and I created a club called the F45 Soda Pop Club [unsure of what the actual numeral was] which every kid in the neighborhood joined, and we spent our summer in blissful play mode.  Behind each house was an alley way once used by garbage trucks, but now abandoned but used by us as a way to travel between friends houses, unseen by the eyes of the adults.  Each kid had something different to offer - one friend was terribly spoiled and had a playroom connected to her bedroom that was filled with every game and toy you could imagine. Another friend’s parents had built a home that looked like a miniature white columned mansion, and had a pool in the backyard that seemed to be open to our use whenever visiting.  I remember seeing his father in the family room next to the pool drinking copious amounts of brown drinks from the wet bar.  Innocence truly is bliss.

2nd grade was a dream.  All the girls wore white gogo boots with white fishnet stockings, emulating the Dallas Cowgirl cheerleaders. My brother joined the junior Dallas Cowboys, a pee wee football club for the 4th graders.  Even though I was forbidden from wearing the boots, I loved seeing my friend Sherilyn sporting them, as just standing next to her made me cool.  I flourished during my time there, until one day my mother went to the hospital and came home with a little sister for me.  She moved into my room which was fine with me, as it was on the corner back of the house and had 8 windows and my own doorway to the backyard.  Just outside was a garden alongside the house that I planted with wild strawberries.  I was happy to share them, though this new little bundle was no where ready to enjoy the fruit of my labors.

My mother hired a nurse for her and each day I would accompany the nurse as she took out my sister for a walk in the huge English carriage my mother had purchased for that purpose.  She was a gentle girl, who seemed happy to Bring me along for the walks.  We would stop in the little village nearby and I would get a cherry slurpee at the 7/11, and sometimes we would stop in the supermarket to pick up a few items for my mother.  There was a little movie theater there, and next door there was a ballet studio.  I begged to take ballet lessons.  Not once, or twice, but what must have been an annoying number of times, as my mother grew very weary of the constant request.  But on each walk as we passed the dance studio, I was reminded to ask once again when we returned home.  It was to no avail, or at least at that time.

There was however a certain solace in the cherry slushee from the 7/11 on the corner that was the only thing that would delay the endless queries.

The nurse would take lunch every day with her boyfriend who would park on the street out in front of the house with sandwiches for them. I would watch them sometimes from the living room window, talking and laughing and sometimes stealing a kiss.  I never saw her laugh during our walks, and wondered why they never had lunch in our generously sized kitchen, or the dining room next to it.  Another lesson in race relations.  I asked my mother one day and she told me it was her choice.

It was not long afterwards that it was announced to us that we would be returning to New York.  The story we were told was that my mother was tired of being called a Yankee.  The other story, was that my father was having an affair with someone else, and I suppose if this was going to be his behavior moving forward, my mother decided to be home near friends and family..  In a way, both stories were correct.  Only one was told.  

04.|. FARM

When I was little, most summers my parents would pack up the car for the long drive to Uncle George’s farm. Hours would pass counting out of town license plates and making up stories from the view out the back window of our station wagon until finally arriving at Brier Hill; somewhere between Montreal and Toronto on the USA side of the border. Population 6, Uncle George, Auntie Gay, Aunt Frieda, the postman and a couple of the many farmhands. 

Once settled in, my parents would leave, abandoning myself and sometimes my older brother to fend for ourselves.  Our handler was Aunt Frieda whose handy pancake turner readied in her right hand for the inevitable trouble we might get into. Being typically an overly curious me, it was in continual use. 

The big house was a source of excellent play material as it had been built centuries earlier and therefore had small windows meant to hold in the winter heat and keep out any significant amount of light.  It was therefore most definitely haunted and full of divine family secrets worth investigating. Especially the attic which we were warned was completely off limits and bolted shut. Excellent fodder for assumptions of every kind. 

Late night sneaking around the house was out of the question as the floorboards would creak out warnings to Aunt Frieda that trouble was afoot. 

But most days began with the dawn warmth of Aunt Frieda up early to make homemade donuts and a feast of breakfast delights for 8am when the dairy farmhands would come in after the milking of the cows. Huge men.  8 or 10, sitting around the long table making short conversation about the days work between grumbled voices of pleasure and the nodding of heads in approval. Aunt Frieda could cook. But remained a spinster as her only marriage proposal was because of her culinary ability.  Or so the story goes.  

I frankly questioned that particular family fable, as she seemed to me to be a most frighteningly large women with a fierce sense of propriety who scared me to death.  But each day after that miraculous breakfast, I was sent off to the chicken coop to collect the eggs for the daily baking.  I would amble off inspecting the various activities around the farm as the lows of the the cows and the burring sound of tractors heading out to the fields seemed much more interesting than a visit to see a bunch of somewhat evil hens who were not at all willing to get off their nests to allow me the microsecond of time necessary to grab their precious progeny.  Sometimes I would stand there staring at them for a long, long time, hoping that with my mere presence I could move them away, and avoid the pecking of those sharpened beaks.  Sometimes I would talk to them, usually with a somewhat raised voice to convince them that I was larger and therefore a threat to their very livelihood.  Usually in the end, it would take way too long to collect up the eggs, and the classic question of “what took you so long!” was expected.

[shot from a crop duster, photographer unknown]

Another time I wandered off after my egg collecting adventure to see what was happening in the dairy barn, and noticed that the silo was empty.  The layer of hay of the base was exactly the same level of the barn floor, so I assumed I could walk across it to the other side of the cow stalls so I could talk to them and pet their noses.  Instead, as I stepped onto the seemingly solid floor of hay, my foot continued downward until I was standing knee-deep in water.  My red sneakers and socks, soaking wet, but even worse, I was now in a position to interrupt the baking in the kitchen. I already know that Aunt Frieda was going to pull out that pancake turner and I did not venture into the silo again.  Though I do remember wondering exactly what was so terrible about my mistake before considering that my handler had no children, and thus no barometer to know exactly when the pancake turner was to get used.  All infractions were possible bait.

Our farm life stories continued for several years, and eventually we started visiting Uncle Vincent and Aunt Scharlie’s farm so as not to leave them out of the summer visits. That was a much smaller farm as Vincent was getting on in years.  He has a dairy barn, one farm hand and a field of corn which I can remember running through over, and over again, searching for nothing in particular.  

I was 13 at the time and Uncle Vincent’s farm hand was not much older than me… 17 at most.  But with nobody else to speak to all summer long, he became my friend.  We would spend hours with me perched up on his tractor listening to Alice Cooper on his 8 track plugged into the battery, and naturally, I asked him to teach me how to drive.  And even though he never let me drive it alone or near my Aunt and Uncle who would have been most disappointed in him, it was a new freedom unimaginable.

The day my parents arrived to drive me back downstate was a sad day for me.  I had a feeling that my visits to the farm were at an end, and it turned out that I was right.

Sometime in the early 70s the big house burned to the ground. Somewhere in the ashes were the remains of the forbidden secrets held in that locked attic. It was the family’s uniforms from the civil war, the revolutionary war, the original paperwork of arrival to America of the Schermerhorns. My Dutch ancestry up in smoke. But in my mind, I still see the ghosts we imagined lived there, and realize we were right all along. 

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