Of Gods who would be men
May. 22nd, 2021 07:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joegodaIt was the summer of 1968 when Father explained that the family was moving. It was a quiet announcement, on par with what they were having for dinner or that Mother was going into the hospital for a while. While it was true that Mother had been in the hospital a couple of times, it was only true now that they were moving.
The word moving means so many things. One the one hand, it might mean that they were growing, evolving, turning from what they were to something else that was a step upward in their emotional and spiritual journey. This was not likely.
On another hand, it might mean that they were physically moving, as the earth rotates, and revolves around the sun and if one truly knew the speed and angular momentum of that movement, it would lead to an astounded gasp. Or perhaps not. Google is an amazing thing, is it not? Or is Google a *they*? Does Google identify as a gender, since, in the Us of A, it is recognized as a person? Gender Neutral then. Maybe? Regardless, it is not likely that this was the sort of movement that Father meant, although he might, given his predilection for literalness.
On a third hand, if you were so disposed, moving could easily be a simple movement, and as Father had looked increasingly upset in the last few weeks and Mother was looking increasingly blurry-eyed drunk in the last few years, moving meant that they would be moving out of town. As Father explained it, they would be moving to a place called Oklahoma, which was somewhere in the middle of the country, about 12 hours away by automobile following a mythical road known as route 66.
Glenn pulled down an encyclopedia from the shelves in his father's office and looked up the land of Oklahoma and specifically the village of Broken Arrow.
Glenn was used to small towns. He lived in one all of his 11 years. He knew the ins and the outs of his small town. All the best places to hide from bullies and the best place to steal candy when nobody was looking and the best place to go splashing in the summer. His mother used to talk about jumping from the top of the Four Arch into the creek below.
The Four Arch was called the Four Arch because the top of this structure was an arched road where freight trains ran from here to there and from there back to here and then far away to another there. These were the very same freight trains, or one of which, that his older brother Gary hopped on to have his adventure. Quite often, the freight trains would make deliveries and pickups at the RRDonnelly paper company, which was just down the road from where Glenn's little house stood. It was the house that his father had gotten from Grandmother Dorothy, the Paternal Grandmother, a rather stern looking woman whom, it was rumored, could type 200 words a minute. She was a professional secretary of some sort.
To Glenn, this was just a bunch of words. The most important thing about Grandmother Dorothy is that she made cookies of the most incredible smell, had toys that he and his brothers were not allowed to touch be cause they were 'too old to be played with' and a crank telephone that hung on the wall. The cookies were sublime and he had never had another like them in all of his long life, although he did come close when he found a thing called a 'Ranger Cookie' that was sold in a grocery store named Skaggs Albertsons.
The other, sort of important things about Grandmother Dorothy is that, at the time his father was born, she was married to a man who was also named Glenn. This was where Glenn the younger had gained his first, and quite possibly, his last name. Grandfather Glenn was not alive when younger Glenn was born. Grandfather Glenn had been killed in an automotive / train collision, decades in the past. It was this same collision that gave his Uncle James his pronounced limp and the eternal sense of guilt as James was the driver of the Model T that stalled on the tracks. Before he passed away, Grandfather Glenn was a postman during the week, and on Sundays, he would deliver traveling tent ministries. Regardless, he was a man who delivered news, good or other wise, ha ha.
Glenn's house, the one from Grandmother Dorothy, was a white house with a grey front porch that Father was very proud of, having rebuilt is and painted it using an industrial paint that was used, he said, in the painting of battleships. Who knows? It might very well have been true. It was located in the poor part of town, three blocks down from an all men's Liberal Arts college, one of the last in the nation.
Imagine, if you would, that three blocks in one direction was one of the remaining bastions of all male higher learning, and was the very same college that had given Glenn's father had his three degrees, an institution whose motto remains 'Scientiae et Virtuti', and interestingly enough, it was here, in 1956, that Father had met Mother in the kitchen of the Student Union where they served a delightful drink call a 'Suicide Spritz' made from every sort of flavored syrup on hand and a dash of seltzer water, and, as these things tend to do, produced a baby Glenn in 1957. Because his father was the type of man that his father was, Father married Mother two months before the birth. It is unknown if any discussion of, er, alternative methods of, um, delivery occurred.
Mother's family was 35 miles away, and in 1956, that was quite far. Father's family was very staunch religious folk, and lived much closer. One might think that discussions of some nature happened in heated tones and with tears and with guilt. One might be right. Tape recorders were very expensive in 1956 and there are no written records of what transpired, and Dick Van Dyke was no longer available to point a finger at. So, regardless, a Baby Glenn was going to be born, and it was the decent thing that a decent young man could do, during this time of human evolution.
Technically, Glenn was a bastard, having been conceived out of wedlock. This idea that he was responsible for his father making the choice to marry a woman he did not love would, for many years, give him some considerable guilty thoughts. One day however, he came to the conclusion that the Universe does not play with dice, and even if it did, the dice were loaded. It was going to be, one way or another. This Universe needed this Glenn.
If you walked three blocks in the opposite direction from the all male Liberal Arts college, you would find the RRDonnelly company, which due to the types of chemicals used in the process of making paper and the types of governmental restrictions imposed on such facilities at that particular point in time, created such a stink that, even today, decades and decades past, Glenn would recognize a paper mill blindfolded and with no ears, using only his olfactory sense.
The RRDonnelly company also had a hill. Such a hill that, came wintertime and snowcovered time and childhood time, made for excellent and incredible sledding. Fond memories of whooshing down a steep decline at breakneck speed, feet splayed out in front to steer the low slung bladed beast, mittened hands that held the reigns of a sleek missile which full bat out of helled flew on waxed blades down a hill that might have been the Matterhorn in his young mind, with his young voice whooping and hollering and the guards at the RRDonnelly poison your water paper mill just chuckled in amusement and may have, for all we know, wished that they were young again.
Oddly, there was a row of trees at the bottom of the hill. It was this row of trees that the brothers, Glenn, Samuel and Jamie, used to stop their descent before they ended up in a ravine at the bottom of the hill. By stop, it is meant that they purposely crashed head long into them, laughing and brushing snow away and getting up and racing to the top of the hill to cheat death again, and again, and again. Such were the young back then. Such may be the young of today. Young Gods, all of them, hard to kill and harder to tame. It is no wonder that their mother would, on occasion, lock the door behind them as they went out.
This was the place that they were moving from and this place, this Broken Arrow, Oklahoma was the place they were moving to. A house, three blocks in the middle of Higher Learning and Paper production. A house, where fairies and little folk lived in the Honeysuckle and trees gave out spring elixir of life and the oak tree in the back didn't speak to the Maple tree in the front because of a hundred year long feud that only Glenn knew about and the monsters stayed in the corner behind the clothes rack where they should stay and the sound of trains in the night would forever remind Glenn of his hometown and bring comfort on those nights when being an adult was the hardest thing to get through and the heaviest burden to carry.
Time passed far to fast, as time tends to do because it cares not who you are or what your troubles may be. Summer came and went, school started up, the fabulous 6th grade for Glenn. It was the last year before Junior High School, because Junior High Schools were still a thing. He was saddened because he knew he would not be joining his friends at this new adventure. However, he was excited that he would be finding new friends, as his parents had promised. They had promised this. He would find new friends and his old friends, David and Gorden and George and Brad would all still be there when he came back to visit.
And all that would be excellent and it would be fine and a grand time, if it had only been true.
In matter of fact, it was not, or at least, not immediately. It would be three years before young Glenn developed a friendship in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, population eleven thousand.
Four days after a presentless Christmas, which was presentless because moving is an expensive thing, children. We know it's hard on you, and it's hard on us as well, but next year, next year will be different, will be better. We promise. Four days after Christmas, with U-haul in tow behind a 1968 mercury station, the family waved good bye to the house that had seen years of growth, years of laughter, years of pain, years and years of family and headed west to their new home. They waved good bye to the house that would, in the next ten years, become the western half of a double tennis court for one of the last of the all male Fine Arts Colleges in the nation. They waved goodbye to the Four Arch where Mother allegedly could jumped thirty feet down to a 5 inch stream and suffered no injuries. Goodbye to the park where Samuel, hanging from the bottom of a bridge that was over a rain swollen creek cried for help and when that help was offered and given, stood up, brushed himself off and said, "I didn't need you anyway."
For good and ill, the family waved goodbye to that part of their lives, and like a million gazillion other people on their small planet, they moved forward to the next part of their lives, even if they didn't know it.
Trip was not terribly eventful. Driving from Crawfordsville and through Terre Haute, the family merged onto highway 70 and into Illinois, driving through boring farmland after boring farmland, which is all that there is in Illinois unless you travel north to Chicago where things can get interesting for good or ill. The family drove on and on, eventually stopping at the Powhatan Restaurant in Pocahontas, to have a lunch. Snacks had been baloney sandwiches and Kool-aid from a picnic basket Mother had prepared, so stopping somewhere different to get out of the car and 'stretch their legs' as Father called it was a treat indeed.
Glenn was entranced. It was somewhere different. He had never been here before that he could remember. The feeling of the place was exciting and unaccustomed. He loved traveling, even if it gave him a bit of car sickness if he ate the wrong grape flavored hard candies. Mother had come prepared for that, too. She had packed a bottle of flat Seven-up, just in case.
Dinner was eaten, back on the road they went, said road passing under them in a wiz. It was winter so they were all bundled up in their coats, trying to be as comfortable as they could be, playing license plate bingo and how many colors and how long can you be quiet games until all the games were used up and quick as you knew it, a big place called St. Louis was just across the river.
Not just any river, mind you, but the Mississippi river. Old Man river. Grandfather of Rivers. Really, nobody cared. They were tired of the road.
On they family of six drove. On and on. Outside of St. Louis, in tiny town called Sullivan, they stopped for their last meal of the day. Call it supper or dinner, it's all regional and doesn't matter anyway. It was the last meal of the day. They ate at a marvelous place called 'Howard Johnson' and Glenn had spaghetti, because he loved spaghetti. He and his brothers and his parents sat by a big plate glass window with the moon shining in and Glenn watch people swimming in a hotel swimming pool and felt all was right with the world for a moment. A brief, shining moment at the Howard Johnson and the moon and spaghetti.
It was just a few miles away, once last meal had been eaten and the station wagon refueled and back on the roaded that Glenn's car sickness arose and, although he loved spaghetti, that evening, spaghetti did not love him and the rest of the trip was made most uncomfortable. It was indeed fortunate that Samuel was completely covered by a quilt when the explosion occurred.
There was only four hours to go before the destination. On the Bright Side, they got to watch part of 'Yellow Submarine' at the Sullivan Drive Inn Theater while Father hosed out the car. And it was winter, remember. Car Heaters, cranked as high as they could go, can only do so much. Glenn was not the popular kid on the road that night, let me tell you.
It was night traveling that Glenn loved the most. All the lights in the distance, all the life and living that happened at night amazed him. The stars in the sky, the stars on the ground that had quite obviously fallen from the sky, regardless of the other part of his brain telling him that they were the lights of houses, entranced the boy. For the rest of his very long life, even if he was in an aircraft, night travel was the favorite travel. Once, while flying over the ocean, he caught the glimpse of a Cruise ship, all alight. It was heaven, after a fashion.
Travel, travel, small town, mountains, mountains... after car sickness everything else pales and the destination becomes the goal. Four hours and a bit of retching later, Father called out, saying, "We're here, boys. Broken Arrow, Oklahoma!"
Rubbing sleep sand out of their eyes, the boys looked around. There were no Teepees. There were no campfires. No war parties. It was nothing like on Death Valley Days. Grandfather Joe had been wrong. Maybe he had just been kidding when he said, "Watch out for them injuns! Don't let them scalp you! Ha ha ha"
On the last day of 1968, the temperature in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma was two degrees above zero. There was eight inches of snow on the ground.
The Mercury Station wagon pulled into the parking lot of a shabby hotel looking apartment building. Glenn had never seen an apartment building before. He had never been in an apartment. It was an adventure, for sure. At 11:30 pm, New Years Eve 1968, the family opened the door to a one bedroom apartment that was loaned to them from Father's new place of work, and piled in as best they could, tired and road weary. They had arrived. That was the good news.
Mother had started to drink.
That is the story of from there to here, dear reader. And this is just the beginning, really.
The word moving means so many things. One the one hand, it might mean that they were growing, evolving, turning from what they were to something else that was a step upward in their emotional and spiritual journey. This was not likely.
On another hand, it might mean that they were physically moving, as the earth rotates, and revolves around the sun and if one truly knew the speed and angular momentum of that movement, it would lead to an astounded gasp. Or perhaps not. Google is an amazing thing, is it not? Or is Google a *they*? Does Google identify as a gender, since, in the Us of A, it is recognized as a person? Gender Neutral then. Maybe? Regardless, it is not likely that this was the sort of movement that Father meant, although he might, given his predilection for literalness.
On a third hand, if you were so disposed, moving could easily be a simple movement, and as Father had looked increasingly upset in the last few weeks and Mother was looking increasingly blurry-eyed drunk in the last few years, moving meant that they would be moving out of town. As Father explained it, they would be moving to a place called Oklahoma, which was somewhere in the middle of the country, about 12 hours away by automobile following a mythical road known as route 66.
Glenn pulled down an encyclopedia from the shelves in his father's office and looked up the land of Oklahoma and specifically the village of Broken Arrow.
Glenn was used to small towns. He lived in one all of his 11 years. He knew the ins and the outs of his small town. All the best places to hide from bullies and the best place to steal candy when nobody was looking and the best place to go splashing in the summer. His mother used to talk about jumping from the top of the Four Arch into the creek below.
The Four Arch was called the Four Arch because the top of this structure was an arched road where freight trains ran from here to there and from there back to here and then far away to another there. These were the very same freight trains, or one of which, that his older brother Gary hopped on to have his adventure. Quite often, the freight trains would make deliveries and pickups at the RRDonnelly paper company, which was just down the road from where Glenn's little house stood. It was the house that his father had gotten from Grandmother Dorothy, the Paternal Grandmother, a rather stern looking woman whom, it was rumored, could type 200 words a minute. She was a professional secretary of some sort.
To Glenn, this was just a bunch of words. The most important thing about Grandmother Dorothy is that she made cookies of the most incredible smell, had toys that he and his brothers were not allowed to touch be cause they were 'too old to be played with' and a crank telephone that hung on the wall. The cookies were sublime and he had never had another like them in all of his long life, although he did come close when he found a thing called a 'Ranger Cookie' that was sold in a grocery store named Skaggs Albertsons.
The other, sort of important things about Grandmother Dorothy is that, at the time his father was born, she was married to a man who was also named Glenn. This was where Glenn the younger had gained his first, and quite possibly, his last name. Grandfather Glenn was not alive when younger Glenn was born. Grandfather Glenn had been killed in an automotive / train collision, decades in the past. It was this same collision that gave his Uncle James his pronounced limp and the eternal sense of guilt as James was the driver of the Model T that stalled on the tracks. Before he passed away, Grandfather Glenn was a postman during the week, and on Sundays, he would deliver traveling tent ministries. Regardless, he was a man who delivered news, good or other wise, ha ha.
Glenn's house, the one from Grandmother Dorothy, was a white house with a grey front porch that Father was very proud of, having rebuilt is and painted it using an industrial paint that was used, he said, in the painting of battleships. Who knows? It might very well have been true. It was located in the poor part of town, three blocks down from an all men's Liberal Arts college, one of the last in the nation.
Imagine, if you would, that three blocks in one direction was one of the remaining bastions of all male higher learning, and was the very same college that had given Glenn's father had his three degrees, an institution whose motto remains 'Scientiae et Virtuti', and interestingly enough, it was here, in 1956, that Father had met Mother in the kitchen of the Student Union where they served a delightful drink call a 'Suicide Spritz' made from every sort of flavored syrup on hand and a dash of seltzer water, and, as these things tend to do, produced a baby Glenn in 1957. Because his father was the type of man that his father was, Father married Mother two months before the birth. It is unknown if any discussion of, er, alternative methods of, um, delivery occurred.
Mother's family was 35 miles away, and in 1956, that was quite far. Father's family was very staunch religious folk, and lived much closer. One might think that discussions of some nature happened in heated tones and with tears and with guilt. One might be right. Tape recorders were very expensive in 1956 and there are no written records of what transpired, and Dick Van Dyke was no longer available to point a finger at. So, regardless, a Baby Glenn was going to be born, and it was the decent thing that a decent young man could do, during this time of human evolution.
Technically, Glenn was a bastard, having been conceived out of wedlock. This idea that he was responsible for his father making the choice to marry a woman he did not love would, for many years, give him some considerable guilty thoughts. One day however, he came to the conclusion that the Universe does not play with dice, and even if it did, the dice were loaded. It was going to be, one way or another. This Universe needed this Glenn.
If you walked three blocks in the opposite direction from the all male Liberal Arts college, you would find the RRDonnelly company, which due to the types of chemicals used in the process of making paper and the types of governmental restrictions imposed on such facilities at that particular point in time, created such a stink that, even today, decades and decades past, Glenn would recognize a paper mill blindfolded and with no ears, using only his olfactory sense.
The RRDonnelly company also had a hill. Such a hill that, came wintertime and snowcovered time and childhood time, made for excellent and incredible sledding. Fond memories of whooshing down a steep decline at breakneck speed, feet splayed out in front to steer the low slung bladed beast, mittened hands that held the reigns of a sleek missile which full bat out of helled flew on waxed blades down a hill that might have been the Matterhorn in his young mind, with his young voice whooping and hollering and the guards at the RRDonnelly poison your water paper mill just chuckled in amusement and may have, for all we know, wished that they were young again.
Oddly, there was a row of trees at the bottom of the hill. It was this row of trees that the brothers, Glenn, Samuel and Jamie, used to stop their descent before they ended up in a ravine at the bottom of the hill. By stop, it is meant that they purposely crashed head long into them, laughing and brushing snow away and getting up and racing to the top of the hill to cheat death again, and again, and again. Such were the young back then. Such may be the young of today. Young Gods, all of them, hard to kill and harder to tame. It is no wonder that their mother would, on occasion, lock the door behind them as they went out.
This was the place that they were moving from and this place, this Broken Arrow, Oklahoma was the place they were moving to. A house, three blocks in the middle of Higher Learning and Paper production. A house, where fairies and little folk lived in the Honeysuckle and trees gave out spring elixir of life and the oak tree in the back didn't speak to the Maple tree in the front because of a hundred year long feud that only Glenn knew about and the monsters stayed in the corner behind the clothes rack where they should stay and the sound of trains in the night would forever remind Glenn of his hometown and bring comfort on those nights when being an adult was the hardest thing to get through and the heaviest burden to carry.
Time passed far to fast, as time tends to do because it cares not who you are or what your troubles may be. Summer came and went, school started up, the fabulous 6th grade for Glenn. It was the last year before Junior High School, because Junior High Schools were still a thing. He was saddened because he knew he would not be joining his friends at this new adventure. However, he was excited that he would be finding new friends, as his parents had promised. They had promised this. He would find new friends and his old friends, David and Gorden and George and Brad would all still be there when he came back to visit.
And all that would be excellent and it would be fine and a grand time, if it had only been true.
In matter of fact, it was not, or at least, not immediately. It would be three years before young Glenn developed a friendship in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, population eleven thousand.
Four days after a presentless Christmas, which was presentless because moving is an expensive thing, children. We know it's hard on you, and it's hard on us as well, but next year, next year will be different, will be better. We promise. Four days after Christmas, with U-haul in tow behind a 1968 mercury station, the family waved good bye to the house that had seen years of growth, years of laughter, years of pain, years and years of family and headed west to their new home. They waved good bye to the house that would, in the next ten years, become the western half of a double tennis court for one of the last of the all male Fine Arts Colleges in the nation. They waved goodbye to the Four Arch where Mother allegedly could jumped thirty feet down to a 5 inch stream and suffered no injuries. Goodbye to the park where Samuel, hanging from the bottom of a bridge that was over a rain swollen creek cried for help and when that help was offered and given, stood up, brushed himself off and said, "I didn't need you anyway."
For good and ill, the family waved goodbye to that part of their lives, and like a million gazillion other people on their small planet, they moved forward to the next part of their lives, even if they didn't know it.
Trip was not terribly eventful. Driving from Crawfordsville and through Terre Haute, the family merged onto highway 70 and into Illinois, driving through boring farmland after boring farmland, which is all that there is in Illinois unless you travel north to Chicago where things can get interesting for good or ill. The family drove on and on, eventually stopping at the Powhatan Restaurant in Pocahontas, to have a lunch. Snacks had been baloney sandwiches and Kool-aid from a picnic basket Mother had prepared, so stopping somewhere different to get out of the car and 'stretch their legs' as Father called it was a treat indeed.
Glenn was entranced. It was somewhere different. He had never been here before that he could remember. The feeling of the place was exciting and unaccustomed. He loved traveling, even if it gave him a bit of car sickness if he ate the wrong grape flavored hard candies. Mother had come prepared for that, too. She had packed a bottle of flat Seven-up, just in case.
Dinner was eaten, back on the road they went, said road passing under them in a wiz. It was winter so they were all bundled up in their coats, trying to be as comfortable as they could be, playing license plate bingo and how many colors and how long can you be quiet games until all the games were used up and quick as you knew it, a big place called St. Louis was just across the river.
Not just any river, mind you, but the Mississippi river. Old Man river. Grandfather of Rivers. Really, nobody cared. They were tired of the road.
On they family of six drove. On and on. Outside of St. Louis, in tiny town called Sullivan, they stopped for their last meal of the day. Call it supper or dinner, it's all regional and doesn't matter anyway. It was the last meal of the day. They ate at a marvelous place called 'Howard Johnson' and Glenn had spaghetti, because he loved spaghetti. He and his brothers and his parents sat by a big plate glass window with the moon shining in and Glenn watch people swimming in a hotel swimming pool and felt all was right with the world for a moment. A brief, shining moment at the Howard Johnson and the moon and spaghetti.
It was just a few miles away, once last meal had been eaten and the station wagon refueled and back on the roaded that Glenn's car sickness arose and, although he loved spaghetti, that evening, spaghetti did not love him and the rest of the trip was made most uncomfortable. It was indeed fortunate that Samuel was completely covered by a quilt when the explosion occurred.
There was only four hours to go before the destination. On the Bright Side, they got to watch part of 'Yellow Submarine' at the Sullivan Drive Inn Theater while Father hosed out the car. And it was winter, remember. Car Heaters, cranked as high as they could go, can only do so much. Glenn was not the popular kid on the road that night, let me tell you.
It was night traveling that Glenn loved the most. All the lights in the distance, all the life and living that happened at night amazed him. The stars in the sky, the stars on the ground that had quite obviously fallen from the sky, regardless of the other part of his brain telling him that they were the lights of houses, entranced the boy. For the rest of his very long life, even if he was in an aircraft, night travel was the favorite travel. Once, while flying over the ocean, he caught the glimpse of a Cruise ship, all alight. It was heaven, after a fashion.
Travel, travel, small town, mountains, mountains... after car sickness everything else pales and the destination becomes the goal. Four hours and a bit of retching later, Father called out, saying, "We're here, boys. Broken Arrow, Oklahoma!"
Rubbing sleep sand out of their eyes, the boys looked around. There were no Teepees. There were no campfires. No war parties. It was nothing like on Death Valley Days. Grandfather Joe had been wrong. Maybe he had just been kidding when he said, "Watch out for them injuns! Don't let them scalp you! Ha ha ha"
On the last day of 1968, the temperature in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma was two degrees above zero. There was eight inches of snow on the ground.
The Mercury Station wagon pulled into the parking lot of a shabby hotel looking apartment building. Glenn had never seen an apartment building before. He had never been in an apartment. It was an adventure, for sure. At 11:30 pm, New Years Eve 1968, the family opened the door to a one bedroom apartment that was loaned to them from Father's new place of work, and piled in as best they could, tired and road weary. They had arrived. That was the good news.
Mother had started to drink.
That is the story of from there to here, dear reader. And this is just the beginning, really.
