By Fred Owens
Trump leaves me exhausted. I have tried manfully to grapple with the impeachment process, but I am fairly fatigued and bushwacked. I need a break. I need a day at the beach. All I can say is that I give my strongest energy to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She has to deal with this man. She has to confront him. She is not enjoying the process because this is a grim task, but the man needs to be deposed.
The Fire Next Time.
James Baldwin wrote this novel in 1963, The Fire Next Time. I read most of his novels back then, I should re-visit them. I only mention it today because of the fires in California. There were two small fires that got a lot of attention, one threatened the Getty Museum and the other came very near to the Reagan Library. With such prominent locations, these fires got a large amount of media attention. That's just the way things work. The Maria Fire in Ventura County burned 9,000 acres, damaging avocado and lemon orchards. Several homes were lost -- not a big deal -- unless it was your home that burned.
The Kincaid Fire in northern California burned 75,000 acres and damaged vineyards and many homes as well. How do you say "less bad" than the fires last year? Like, it could have been worse. But please, if you don't live in California, don't send us any valuable tips on how to deal with all this.
Don't remind us that if you shut off the electric power to quiet that source of fire, then the cell towers go blank and cell phone service is not available to residents fleeing the blaze. If the gas station has no power, they can't pump the gas to fill the tanks of the fleeing residents. If the traffic lights go dark then people bang into each other. We need to re-think all this and come up with a better plan.
And homeless people are abundant, of course. You can thank us for hosting your discarded people. Homeless people come to Santa Barbara from other states because the weather is good and the people are friendly. That's just the kind of people we are -- we welcome immigrants too.
I moved to California nine years ago and it's the best thing I've ever done. It's like I wake up on another sunny day in Santa Barbara and I thank God I'm not being so stupid anymore. I get to live here. Local Californians welcomed me and now I am one of them.
Family Business. I've been making lots of phone calls to relatives -- my two children, my brother, my two sisters, various nieces and there is lots of news, most of it good but some of it not good. The clearest good news is from my niece Laura Maeve who lives in Monaco in France. Her baby is due in a few weeks and this is a great joy.
But rather than give you the current family news, I will post this long, very long, story about life with the Owens Family in 1956. So, if you're not too busy, get in your comfortable chair and let us return to days of old, in the Midwest, in the leafy suburbs of Chicago.
I write about when I was a kid, part two....This story is kind of long for an email, but if you have the time you might like it
There was only ritual and
seasonal time and children growing and big old trees that never changed. There
were no events. Everything was always the same, except some of the neighbors
moved in or moved out. Almost every article of furniture was still there in
1996 when Mom died and we sold the house. The old green couch and the upright
piano had been in the basement for thirty years – same with the old kitchen
table, the toboggan, the ping pong table, a lot of the ice skates, all in the
basement, not forever, but always there.
The first time I remember
anything in my life was out on the driveway in front of the house. I was riding
a tricycle. Mom and Dad drove up and got out of the car. Mom was holding Katy
in a bundle. She had just been born. I was four years old. It was 1950.
We were seven in our family,
and it stayed that way a long time. The children were Mary, Tommy, Carolyn,
Freddy, and Katy. This was our house. Nothing could be more elemental. When
Katy came home from the hospital it was complete and set for all time as far as
I knew. We were us, the Owens family.
The house was big, white,
square and stucco. The shutters were dark-green wood. Shutters didn’t actually
do anything, they were just there.
The front stairs were wood and
painted grey, broad for sitting and more than six feet in width – five or six
steps with a cast iron railing on each side. Plain cast iron painted black and
sturdy, not with a fancy pattern, but just a little curve at the end.
The outside porch light was a
marvel of wrought iron hung on a chain. It balanced the street light directly
in front, being six-sided as well, with the same mottled glass panes, but
shaped like a globe, and with a spike that pointed downward from the bottom. It
was very strong.
The front door was heavy and plain
and very solid. It swung smoothly open and shut. They never locked the front door, but
sometimes I played with the lock because it was polished brass and clicked into
place.
The living room had a
wall-to-wall wool carpet of deep maroon, just slightly scratchy, just a little
dusty, but you could roll around on it all the time, or lay on your stomach and
elbows to read or play games. The radio and record player was at one end in a substantial
cabinet and the TV was at the other end. We got the TV when I was about five or
six. I remember going over to the Giambolvos house to watch it before that. I
remember hearing Fibber McGee and Molly on the radio too, but the TV took over
pretty quickly.
The living room was not too
formal, but it was the living room with the good furniture and the couch. Dad
had his chair, which was really big and dark red. He sat there, in a clean
white shirt and dress pants and read the newspaper for hours. He had this
peculiar way of folding the paper into fourths and holding it with one hand. He
was quiet. He used to make this fritzing every once in a while when he moved
his partial denture. He didn’t talk much, and when he did speak it was very
slow. I used to be jumping up and down waiting for him to finish a sentence.
His voice was deep and strong while he chose his words – usually about things
that didn’t interest me or about ways that I was supposed to behave. That was
discipline – he would bore us to death. But I liked having him around.
Dad moved slowly too, not being
physically active. He had a big head and deep jowel on top of a slight frame. His
torso was light above and with a paunch underneath. His hands were graceful and
smooth. The back of his hands had black hairs, coarse and sparse and
beautifully clean fingernails. This was where he did his work – with paper, at
a desk. In the evening, when I saw him, he had a can of beer or a cup of coffee
by the chair.
He was solid in his habit,
having his own business a few blocks from the house where he published a
fishing magazine. He came home when work was done, not by the clock, although
it was always late afternoon.
The great thing about Dad in
his living room chair was that he was never perturbed by the ruckus of children
– he just kept on reading his newspaper and ignoring us in the nicest way. You
might here an outburst once a month, “Damn it” or even “Damn it to hell” – which
didn’t scare us.
We got the Chicago
Tribune in the morning and the Chicago
Daily News in the afternoon. The Chicago Tribune called itself the “World’s
Greatest Newspaper.” I was a bit skeptical about that. It had an editorial
cartoon everyday on the front page – something about a guy whose head was a
globe, I never understood it. The Daily
News had much better comics. We got all the magazines too – Life, Post, the New Yorker and several
others. Life and the Post had good pictures and short stories. The New Yorker had cartoons although some of
them weren’t funny.
There was a nice fireplace with
brass andirons and a screen in front. We had fires sometimes in the winter.
They would let me use the tools to poke the blaze, and they would have me clean
it up the next day, by sweeping the ashes into square tunnel in the brick
floor.
The upright piano was in the
other end of the living room, next to the radio. Later we got a spinet, and put
the old upright in the basement.
My sisters all took piano
lessons, especially Mary, the oldest. She rehearsed for weeks when she played
Malaguena for her recital in high school. Tom played the trumpet. I took two
years of piano lessons in fifth and sixth grade. I liked playing the piano and
I practiced, but then I got bored and stopped. Mom didn’t pressure me.
The dining room led off the
living room. We had a beautiful crystal chandelier. The dining table had eight
chairs and there was a matching buffet – a sideboard. They were a set, made of dark
burnished cherry, with intricate carvings on the front, and finely tapered
fluted legs. It was just the right size and proportions the way the dining
table, chairs and buffet filled the room. During the week Mom kept a fitted pad
on the top of the dining table and over that a regular table cloth
Mom kept her best china in the
buffet. We had Sunday dinner in the dining room with the good china on a white
linen table cloth. Dad sat at one end, in the chair that had the arms on it.
Mom sat at the other end near the door to the kitchen. We used to have a roast
beef, or big steak or something special like that.
We didn’t dress, we had already
dressed that morning for Sunday Mass. It wasn’t too formal or fussy, but our
manners had to be a little bit better. There was coaching on table manners
during dinner, but nothing severe. There was a never a child sent to his room
or anything like that. Nothing like an angry exchange, but a pointed reminder
from Mom, and indication that she was watching at all times, and you might get
away with something, but she did notice. Mom talked a lot about good posture
and not slouching. Dad didn’t say much.
We folded our hands and said
grace in unison, “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to
receive from thy bounty, through Christ, our Lord, Amen,” and then we made the
sign of the cross, “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,
Amen.” Bless us, O Lord was a good prayer – it made sense to me and it didn’t
take too long. It was the same prayer every night, so it always went smoothly.
We passed the food around and
ate and talked. I loved the food. Roast beef – Dad had a beautiful carving set
with two long knives and a sharpener kept in a trim wooden holder. He had a
fine carving touch. It was modestly ceremonial. He sliced it thin and made a
very good platter. Mom made wonderful gravy and mashed potatoes. Then there
would be a vegetable – peas, green beans, corn, or carrots. The good thing
about Sunday dinner is that Mom would only serve those dishes that everybody
liked. No spinach – she didn’t want the
hassle. No making a child finish his plate.
Dad had good table manners and
the style of a gentleman, but he ate with extra gusto. He just enjoyed it too
much. He tucked his napkin into his collar like a bib and dug in. Sometimes the
juice would dribble down his chin, and Mom would say “Father!”
“What’s for dessert, Mom?” I
always wanted to know. She would tell me and then give me a look like it’s
really not polite to ask that question. I was highly motivated about dessert.
Of course I wanted to know what it was, and I wanted to make sure we would get
it – not every day, because I never thought about tomorrow, but today, tonight.
For Sunday dinner it might be pie or ice cream -- apple pie and cherry pie,
most often, sometimes lemon meringue. She made a grape pie that was kind of
interesting. And blueberry pie which was wonderful, but only in season.
After we finished eating
dessert, we said grace after meals. This I thought was a bit unnecessary and
the kids were losing focus and getting antsy, “We give Thee thanks, O almighty
God…”
Being excused from the table
was a firm rule. “May I be excused?” You had to say it, and you had to say it
while you were still in your chair, but then you could dash.
Mom and my three sisters –
whether they had a rotation or system I didn’t know – they cleared the table
and washed the dishes. Dad gave a hand in the kitchen from time to time. I
never heard anyone say that girls had to wash dishes and boys didn’t, it was
just that way.
There was a swinging door
between the dining room and the kitchen. First there was a pantry, with canned
goods on the higher shelves, and tools in drawers underneath. Mom used to have
me open cans on the wall-mounted can opener in the pantry. The tool drawer had
a hammer and drill and screwdrivers. The other drawers held tablecloths and
stuff like that which I didn’t care about.
Off the pantry was the
downstairs bathroom. On the other side of the pantry was the door to the
basement, and next to the door was the doorbell chimes. They were cool – two
long brass pipes, one a bit longer than the other, hung from a slim framework.
They gave a very solid, melodious ding-dong. The sound was so clear and
present, yet so un-irritating. It was a marvel of technology to me that you
could press the button outside the front door and get this nice sound
announcing visitors. We didn’t have a lot of visitors, and relatives didn’t
ring the doorbell when they came over, they just opened the door, kind of peeked
their heads in, and then entered.
The kitchen was small and
crowded. The cabinets were white enamel. We ate at the kitchen table. It was
grey formica and chrome. Mom was in there a lot. She was pretty and she had dark brown hair
and good figure. I didn’t think about that because she was my Mom. I just knew
she wasn’t fat or funny looking. I liked her. One time I got mad and told her I
wanted Mrs. Giambalvo to be my Mom, because it was easier over there. I got a
stern response, “Oh, really…” It was a passing thought anyway.
The Wolff’s house was messier
with toys and comic books – more casual. Some other houses were stiff and
formal – too clean. Ours was just right. I had chores – take out the garbage,
not every day, but whenever she told me to do it. If I got to light a fire to
burn the trash out in the alley, that was cool. But daily, it was set the table
for dinner. That’s how I knew the number seven like it was the soul of my
existence – seven plates, seven forks, seven spoons and seven knives, five
glasses for the kids, two cups and saucers for Mom and Dad. Sometimes Dad was
traveling on business, so there would be six. I checked on the count every
night. Six was almost as much work as seven, so it didn’t matter, but sometimes
one of the older kids was gone too, and it was five. Setting the table for five
was easier and dinner time was less crowded. I had mixed feelings about this. I
liked the crowd of seven, but five at dinner was a bit more spacious and
relaxed.
There was more work and more
rules than other parts of the house and there could be open conflict and
scoldings in the kitchen. Mom got an electric can opener when I was twelve. I
asked her why we needed such a gadget when the one on the pantry wall worked
just fine. She said, “If you knew how many cans I’ve opened over the years, you
wouldn’t be asking me.” She was very clear about boundaries like this. She
loved me with a mother’s heart, but I was not welcome to discuss with her anything
about her role. I was not her confidant. My job was to be a good kid, and a
little gratitude was fine too. I didn’t ask too many questions.
I never heard her complain, or
lament, or wish for things. If she had moods I didn’t notice. Angry – sometimes
when I was small I would get a slap. This was not quite terrifying but it was
bad. Her face contorted, she bit her tongue – it’s her face I remember more
than the sting of the slap. She didn’t hug me or pet me either. There was a
warm embrace of food always to eat and the kind I liked, clothes that showed up
in my dresser drawer, all folded and clean. I knew she did the laundry, I was
not to feel guilty about that. I was to feel that I was a good child and
deserved these things. I deserved pie and dessert. The affection she showed me
was never withdrawn, and never contingent, it was always there. It was not
close, but it was constant. She never held the other kids up to me as an
example. I never heard her make a comparison. So I never thought whether she
loved Tom or Mary or Carolyn or Katy. I never thought whether she treated them
good or bad. It never occurred to me. It only mattered how she treated me, and
it was pretty good.
In the morning I had cereal for
breakfast – Wheaties, cornflakes,
sometimes cream of wheat, but she had too cook it, and I didn’t like it that
much. Pretty soon I settled into Cheerios with milk and sugar. For years I ate
the same thing, but she always asked, “What would you like?” Breakfast was
personal, for me. I didn’t know what the other kids ate. We didn’t play in the
morning anyway, just getting off to school, so I hardly noticed them.
Dinner was the whole family.
Being home in time for dinner was pretty important for the older kids. Dad
loved to eat. He was poor when he was a child, so he told us, not with too much
of the martyr, but he had a really wholesome gratitude for his full plate, and
the self-satisfaction of knowing he could feed us all in pretty good style. Mom
used to say something about “starving Armenians” but that was if we were
gobbling and eating too fast. I had no idea who these people were.
Meat loaf, fried chicken, pork
chops – everybody liked those dishes. Potatoes – mashed, baked, or boiled.
Noodles with butter. Vegetables – peas, green beans, corn or carrots – still
all clear. Then Friday was no meat. We had fried white fish, salmon croquets –
I loved salmon croquets -- halibut, which was kind of dry and tasteless,
shrimp, and sometimes lobster tail. You felt good about lobster tail dipped in
melted butter. My Dad was not crass, like saying, “I worked hard to make the
money to buy that expensive food.” He was not righteous or over-bearing, but we
knew that he worked and that he was entitled. He could have said things like
that. I’m glad he didn’t. I felt a little pride that we could have lobster
tails once in a while. Fish sticks with tartar sauce – everybody liked those.
Mom didn’t apologize, but she felt that fish sticks was not exactly cooking.
There were problem foods,
vegetables we had too eat, number one being spinach. We were going to eat
spinach when she served it. We were not going to leave the table or be excused
until that small dab of spinach was eaten. Furthermore there was going to be a
next time, in another week or two, when we were going to eat spinach again. She
was unyielding, there was no mercy. You want to have a tantrum? You want to be
stubborn? You think you can win? Dad backed her up. He had a pretty good
presence, although he was a quiet man. I never, in my whole childhood, saw any
wiggle room between those two. To play one parent off against another, this was
something I did not even imagine.
So we ate the spinach. Broccoli
and cauliflower smelled funny, but they were not too important. Mom kind of
hoped that we could broaden our palates a bit, but we didn’t have to eat them.
Liver was the same as spinach. It was good for us, and it would keep coming in
the regular rotation, but here there was an important difference. I liked
liver. Tommy and Katy hated it. They suffered. I smiled. I don’t think I
gloated. I was even sympathetic in a superior kind of way.
Lentil soup was all right
because Mom sliced up hot dogs and cooked them in the soup. I thought that was
pretty smart of her. I fished the hot dogs slices and ate them first, but then
I ate the soup, why not? Good for Mom.
Vegetable soup was a treat for
Dad. Dad traveled on business. When he came home Mom fixed vegetable soup – you
could see the pleasure on his face because it tasted so good to him and because
with that meal Mom loved him the most. I understood that and I had no argument.
Vegetable soup wasn’t awful like spinach, but it had parsley which was bitter,
and funny looking pieces of meat. We ate it, but we sure didn’t look forward to
it, and you could smell it ahead of time. We had corn on the cob in the summer
and then Mom made bacon lettuce and tomato sandwiches which were really good.
Dad was back up in the kitchen.
He made meat and spaghetti, which was ground beef fried with onions and bits of
bacon in tomato sauce served over spaghetti. I loved it. Several times a year
he made crepes, only we called them egg pancakes. That was for lunch on the
weekend, and a bit ceremonial, pouring the batter in the frying pan, stacking
the light little crepes, rolling them up with grape jelly inside, and then
sprinkling them with powdered sugar to make a platter. They were great.
Mom and Dad liked to go out, to
downtown Chicago for dinner and dancing or to a show – Dad in a suit and tie
and Mom smelling good and coming in to the kitchen to tell us they were off.
She had already made us creamed eggs on toast – a simple meal for just the
kids. They were happy and we got them out of the house. We must have behaved
fairly well when they were gone, I guess Mary and Tom were sort of in charge. I
was asleep before they got home.
I was aware of a family system
that was in place when I came along, being the fourth child. It was not too
tight and not too loose. There was no time except for seasons. Dinner time,
come to think of it, was always about six
p.m., but it was like Dad’s work schedule – never by the clock. It
was always “Be home on time for dinner.” The clock only mattered for things
away from home like school and going to Mass, and then it did matter. Dad could
not stand anybody being late for Mass.
Impatience was rare for him, but here you saw him dressed and ready to go by
the front door fidgeting, and you didn’t want him to be that way. It was half
fear and half why put the old man out?
The hell room was in back of
the kitchen. It was an experiment to put the TV in there and Mom left it a mess
with kids and toys all over the place. Mom and Dad got a little more quiet
living room time, and we could fairly bust loose in the hell room – once
someone broke a hole in the wall – but it didn’t really work. We were a little
too wild, and they didn’t get to watch TV. They moved the TV to the back porch
and that’s where it stayed.
The back porch was off the
dining room, and that’s where we spent the evening, watching TV. Older kids did
homework on the dining room table or upstairs or made their phone calls. We
might listen to records in the living room or play a board game or something.
In the summer, of course, we were out, but most of the year we were in the back
porch. The pack porch was heated and insulated. It had fourteen windows on
three sides. I know it had fourteen windows, because I had the job when I was
older of taking down fourteen storm windows in the spring and putting up
fourteen screens, climbing up and down the ladder. But first taking them out of
the woodshed in the basement, stacking them by the garage, scrubbing them one
at a time with hot soapy water, and then rinsing them with a hose. This took
all morning and then some, on a Saturday.
In the fall I had to do it all
again – take down the screens and put up the storm windows and the storm
windows were big and heavy, and I never broke one. I never felt fair or unfair
about my chores. I just did them. I don’t recall what my brother did. I knew my
sisters helped in the kitchen. Raking leaves was cool. Mowing the lawn was cool
especially when we got the power mower. And shoveling snow – that would make me
feel good because, if it was a light snow, it was easy. But if it was a heavy
snow then I could be proud of all the work I did. We had a long driveway all
the way to the garage in back, but they never put the car in there, so I only
had to shovel the front half.
A few times every year, we had
Saturday chores for everybody. Often this was raking the leaves and it was fun,
or when I was doing the storm windows and other kids were washing windows or
something. Then Dad made potato soup for lunch, which was very simple –
potatoes peeled and boiled, then cranked through a strainer, adding a little
butter and salt and pepper. I liked it.
I loved watching television. We
had a rattan couch and some informal upholstered chairs on the porch. The
rattan couch had a square on one arm where you could put a drink, although no
one ever used it. The other arm had an opening for newspapers and magazines.
There was a small effort to
keep us sitting properly, but usually we sprawled. We could watch cartoons and
kids’ shows in the afternoon after school, and more cartoons on Saturday
mornings. Our favorite shows were “Our Miss Brooks” with Eve Arden, “I Love
Lucy,” Sid Caesar and “Your Show of Shows,” Jackie Gleason. He was pretty
stylish with the June Taylor dancers and “a little traveling music…and away we
go.”
Mom loved the Loretta Young
Show. Mom thought Loretta Young was the epitome of glamour and always wanted to
see what she wore when she made her entrance. Then Mom would comment to the
children about how much of lady she was in the way she moved and spoke. Dad
liked Lawrence Welk – it was hokey, but it was only once a week. “Dragnet” was
really cool. Sargeant Friday was tough and fair and on our side.
Sunday night at seven we
watched Ed Sullivan. It was a bit formal and Ed Sullivan was a stiff, but it
had just the right tone to please all of us – comedy and juggling acts for the
kids, and the singing for Mom and Dad. Ed Sullivan introduced stars from the
audience. That show was an anchor, it had a ritual structure.
But there were huge fights over
the other shows. I remember some real screaming and hot tempers over what show
to watch, and Dad getting irritated, even shouting at us to pipe down. Mainly
we could watch as much as we wanted. Nobody had homework in grade school, and
there were always friends coming and going and things to do outside. Nobody got
depressively attached to the boob tube. Mom didn’t watch the soaps. I do
remember “Queen for a Day” though, where some tearful, pathetic housewife got a
new washer and dryer and a bouquet of roses. Mom’s life was much better than
that.
Dad never sat on the couch, but
on a chair next to it. It wasn’t his chair, like in the living room, but that’s
where he sat. He drank Budweiser from a can, and if I asked him, he would give
me a sip. I always liked the bitter, cold taste. I liked to hear Dad go “Ah”
after a good guzzle. He farted out loud too, big loud ones. It’s a good thing
they weren’t smelly. One time Dad tried to watch TV in his undershirt, but Mom
wouldn’t let him. So there were standards, he could fart all he wanted, but
that was it. Neither of them smoked.
We watched sports on TV,
especially the World Series, and the Bowl games on New Year’s Day. I like the
Gillette song, “You look sharp, dah-dah-DAH-dah-dah. You feel sharp…” That was
a rousing tune. Mom could get animated and shout “Go” in a close game. Dad
never moved. He liked to watch, but he didn’t care about sports, except
fishing. He never tossed the ball around with us or taught us anything, or
encouraged us. We could just play and have our fun.
A lot of shows were just like
our house. “Father Knows Best” and “Ozzie and Harriet” – they lived in houses
just like ours, same furniture, same Mom in the kitchen, same Dad in a white
shirt going to the office, same kids. I was the irrepressible Ricky Nelson in
“Ozzie and Harriet” because he was the younger brother. It all made sense.
Jackie Gleason and the Honeymooners lived in that working class apartment.
Jackie Gleason was a bus driver, and Norton upstairs was a plumber. We knew of
people like that but not closely – people who lived in apartments or worked.
That’s the way it seemed to me – they worked. The Dads on our block didn’t
work, they went to offices and sat down at desks and that wasn’t work. It was
important what they did, because they got a lot of respect. This puzzled me –
because they didn’t actually work. The mailman worked. He carried the bag from
door-to-door. The milkman drove his truck, and carried milk to the back door
twice a week. That was job I understood. Well, it was no concern of mine.
Mostly what grownups did was boring, although they were nice people.
