Tag Archives: father

The Day The Earth Stood Still Or So I Thought

2 Replies

I shoveled in my oatmeal as quickly as possible without choking. I was watching my mother’s parakeet Prettyboy eat his morning treat of lettuce. Afterward, he hopped out of his cage through the open door and flew onto the kitchen table. He walks across the table, knocking the forks and the knives onto the floor.

My mother pretends she’s mad. “Prettyboy stop that. Get back into your cage.”

I think she secretly enjoys his mealtime antics. 

“Susie and Karen, please eat your oatmeal.”

The oatmeal feels like a ton of bricks in my stomach. My mother believes that every child should start the day with something warm in their stomach that sticks to their ribs.

Still, it’s a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning, my favorite day of the week. I can get up as late as I want. Well not really, if I wasn’t up by nine AM, my mother would come into my bedroom to see if I was still breathing. It’s late spring, which means I only have about eight more weeks of school. Then summer will arrive. I hate school more then I hate vegetables, and that was considerable.

As soon as I finish my last spoonful, I jump up so violently from my chair that it falls over. My father starts yelling,” Susan, you are being a pain in the ass.”

“Susan, please remember your manners and asked to be excused.” My mother chimes in.

I start explaining to my father. Sorry, sorry it was an accident.” He keeps going on about how I did the same thing every day and never seemed to learn. I was pigheaded and stubborn that I would argue with the pope. “Sorry, Dad, I won’ do it again.”

I run out the kitchen door, slamming the screen door behind me. I can hear my father yelling after me, “I’ve told you a thousand times, don’t slam the door.”

I was free now, free to go where I please and do what I want. I chose to wander over to Mrs. Collins’ yard and visit my friends who live in her cellar. But they’re allowed within the confines of the outside kennel to enjoy the good life out in their backyard.

There are about twenty to thirty cats, give or take a few. I know all their names and stop to pet them and exchange a few words with each one. They come rushing over to greet me. Each beautiful in their way. Some were black and white, some calico. Some had long tails that sway. Some had no tails at all. They’re my friends.

My best friend’s name is Strottles. He doesn’t live in the Collins’ cellar. He’s a wild cat. He had belonged to one of our neighbors, the Lombardi family, but he scratched up all their furniture and sprayed on the doors. So, they put him out of their house.

He survives on his wits and on food that people in the neighborhood put out for him. It wasn’t unheard of for him to kill and eat the occasional bird or mouse. Strottles is the biggest cat I have ever seen. His fur is orange, and mangy looking. He has scars and part of one ear missing. But to me, he was the most charming and handsome of them all. I love him.

As I crouch down in the grass petting the cats through the chicken wire, I see Strottles cruising through Mrs. Lombardi’s yard and heading in my direction. I call out to him, “Strottles, hi Strottles. How are you?”

He comes over to me slowly and bumps his head on my shoulder. I can hear and feel him purring. I start telling Strottles about my morning and how my father told me I was pigheaded. I told him how I was yelled at for knocking over my chair. He gazes at me with his enormous golden eyes and somehow conveys to me with his look that everything will be ok.

Strottles and I spend the morning investigating and saying hello to all the neighbors’ pets. Strottles is very tolerant of dogs and female cats, but he can’t abide other male cats.

In my room early in the morning, I have often been awakened by the sound of cats waling and screaming. When I look out my bedroom window, I see a whirling dervish as Strottles fights any male cat that dares to interlope in his territory. As far as I know, he remains the victor in all his battles. He wears his many scars and healing wounds as any great warrior would. I hear my mother calling me to come in for lunch from the kitchen door.

“Susie time for lunch, come home Susie, lunch time.”

“Strottles, I’ll see you later.”

He stares at me intently with his great orange eyes, and I stroke him from the top of his head to the end of his straggly, broken tail. As I run towards the side of my house, I take a last look at Strottles as he strolls away in the other direction. He seems in no great hurry to reach whatever his next destination might be.

As I open the kitchen door, I smell chicken noodle soup that’s steaming in a pot on the stove. My mother stands there in her housedress, covered by her everyday apron. She has a long line of safety pins hanging down the front of it. She claims that you never knew when you might need a safety pin, to pin up an errant hem, or replace a lost button.

“Hi, Susie.” She says with her beautiful smile. I’m making grilled cheese sandwiches, please go and wash your hands before you sit down.”

As I run into the bathroom, I hear my sister Karen, coming in through the front door.

“Hi, Mom, what’s for lunch?”

Then I close the bathroom door. As I finish my business in the bathroom, I hear a great commotion coming from the kitchen. My father is yelling, and my mother ‘s crying. I run into the kitchen to see what’s going on. I see my father at the kitchen door with a broom. He’s chasing what looks like the tail end of an orange cat. I have never seen my mother cry before. I feel my lower lip start trembling, and tears sprang to my eyes. My mother gives me a look that I had never seen in her eyes before. I know that something terrible has happened and somehow I‘m to blame.

My father comes back into the house, and his face carries an angry expression. I know that I was about to be on the receiving end of something terrible. “You and that stupid cat,” he spits at me, “look what you have done.” My sister looks at me, her mouth in a circle. Then everyone stares sadly up at Prettyboy’s now empty cage.

“Where is Prettyboy?” I beg as tears roll down my cheeks.

“That dammed cat of yours, he ran into the kitchen while your mother took out the garbage. He jumped up onto the kitchen table and he killed your mother’s bird.”

“Oh no, I sobbed, oh no, Strottles wouldn’t do that.” But I know in my heart he would. He’s always hungry and on the lookout for food.

My mother looks away from me. My father roughly grabs me by the arm and smacks me on my behind.

“Go down the cellar and stay down there and think about what you have done.” He pushes me through the door and closes it behind me. It seems I was down there a very long time. I cry and cry until my eyes are swollen shut. I hear my mother’s soft voice and feel her arms around me.

Daddy Liked To Clean House

3 Replies

I rooted through my drawer, moving things aside, throwing stuff on the floor. It was no use it just wasn’t there. I kept hoping it was in there, but it just wasn’t. I searched the entire house after my parents went out for their weekly food shopping.

I went so far as to look in my fathers’ cabinets in the basement. He had strictly forbidden snooping. I had to be cautious when I looked in these drawers because he was very careful where he put things away. He remembered exactly how he left them and could tell if anyone had been in there.

Photo by Hugh Carberry 1958

Susan Carberry First Communion-

I was equally as careful. I memorized how each object was placed and in what order. I had years of experience, so I was very good at it. So far, my intrusion into his inner sanctum had never been detected. In desperation, I looked in his secret stash in his desk drawer under his Playboy magazines. It was nowhere. It was gone.

I would have to innocently question my mother to see if she knew the whereabouts of my most precious collection. It had taken me years to amass. And now, now it was gone. I prayed it hadn’t gone the way of all my other beloved treasures, removed, and never to be seen again.

It all began innocently enough. One year in the early Spring I decided to plant some Zinnia seeds in the front yard. In front of the white, wooden fence my father had built years ago. Well, he never finished it. He had completed the front section that faced Fellowship Road, it had no sides.

Kids in the neighborhood often made obnoxious remarks about how come you only got half a fence, your father is too lazy to finish it, or too poor to buy more wood. Maybe all or part of that was true, but it didn’t have anything to do with me.

Anyway, I digress. I bought the seeds at the Ben Franklin 5 & 10 Store down the pike on Main Street in Maple Shade where I live. It was marked down to five cents. I used my own money. I rarely had any money so I was careful about what I invested it in. I usually spent any money I acquired on candy.

The illustration on the packet was beautiful, colorful Zinnias of red, yellow, and orange. I loved the flowers. We only had two plants in our front yard, one was a bush we called the Communion Bush, but now I know it’s called a Spirea. When someone in the family made their First Holy Communion, which was a big deal in an Irish Catholic family, we had our picture taken in front of this white-flowering bush.

The only other bush was my mother’s lilac bush that grew next to the front sidewalk.  It was my mother’s pride and joy. It was wonderfully aromatic. The harbinger of Spring in our house was the lilac blooming in early May. She would cut branches from it and put them in her crystal vase in the center of the kitchen table.

When my older brother, Harry came over on Sunday morning to visit my mother, he would cut a bunch. He would give it to his wife, Maryann for her Sunday dinner table.

Every day when I came home from school, I checked on my zinnias to see how much they had grown if they looked thirsty. I would drag out the hose and give them a drink. Oh, and how they grew tall, reaching almost to the sky, wonderfully bright and cheerful. I was so proud that I had created this wonderful oasis of color in our otherwise boring yard of dandelions, and buttercups, and the occasional clump of grass.

As the summer was in full bloom, so were my zinnias. I smiled every time I spied them from the kitchen window. Then one day I came home from playing with the kids in the neighborhood. And as I rode my bike towards my house, I noticed something looked different. Then it hit me. My lovely zinnias were no longer there. And in their place was a long strip of dirt, decorated by small pieces of mowed down flower petals and leaves. I stared in utter disbelief.

I ran into the house and howled at my mother, “where, are my flowers mom? My zinnias are all gone.

She looked up at me and said, “I’m sorry Susan. Your father cut them down when he cut the grass today.” There was no point in confronting my dad about things like this. He never offered any explanation. He might simply answer, it’s my yard to do as I wish, or girls shouldn’t be doing work in the yard. That’s a man’s job.

I stopped playing with my dolls when I was about twelve years old. My mother put them away for safekeeping in her room, in the storage space above her clothes closet. I had two dolls. One was a collector’s edition of Shirley Temple. She was dressed in an authentic Scottish kilt, and military-style jacket and tan beret with a red feather. She wore woolen knee-high socks and patent leather shoes. Her hair was dark blond and had perfect ringlets. I had her for many years, but she was in perfect condition. I kept her and her clothes in a miniature white trunk. That had a special space for her on one side, and on the other side was a place to hang her change of clothes.

My other doll was older, she was a baby doll called Betsy Wetsy. You fed her with a little bottle that you could fill with tap water. And then she would pee in her baby doll diaper, just like a real baby, except she did it as you were feeding her.

My mother kept these dolls for me for a long time in her closet. Perhaps hoping that someday I would have my own little girls who would like to see, and play with their mom’s childhood dolls.

One day when I was sitting on my mother’s bed, she was looking in her storage area for her hat, which she kept in a hatbox. I noticed that my doll trunk and Betsy Westsy were no longer there. ‘Mom where are my dolls?” I felt a sense of dread.

“I don’t know Susie.” She answered. But she wouldn’t look at me, she had her head down. But I knew, I knew my father had taken them away.

After that, I tried not to let myself get too attached to things.  But then I discovered my special collection of autographs of TV actors, was gone as well. I had kept them hidden under my twin bed. This really made a great big empty spot in my heart.

My best friend, Joanie, and I had shared this hobby for most of our childhood years. We spent many a summer’s afternoons sitting in her screened-in back porch. We wrote long letters of our undying love for the stars of our favorite TV shows, requesting autographed pictures.

Our favorites were Western’s like Gunsmoke. I was secretly in love with James Arness.  And then there was Wagon Train, and Have Gun Will Travel, and of course Bonanza. My favorite show of all time was Dobie Gillis, who I thought was the coolest. Because he was a beatnik that frequented coffee houses, and listen to obscure poetry, and snapped his fingers instead of clapping.

Even now sixty-plus years later it’s hard to fathom what motivated my father to abscond with not just my childhood playthings, but my memories as well.

LESSON LEARNED

5 Replies

It was 1969, my senior year in high school. I was seventeen but would turn eighteen in May. Everyone else was doing it, had been doing it since they were sixteen. But not me, the other girls in my class told me I was a baby, asked me what I was waiting for?  What was I waiting for?

As my birthday drew closer, I made the decision I would do it. I would learn how to drive. But

Father’s old car

who would teach me, who? Well, the most likely candidate was my father, since he was the only member of my family who owned a car. My mother never learned how to drive. In fact, she seldom went in the car, except to the doctors, or the food store, and she didn’t go often.

My father was not an easy person to talk to. He was prickly like a porcupine, and you never knew what would set him off. He was in one word a grouch! In fact, his nickname in our family was” The Old Bear.”

So, the Sunday morning before my eighteenth birthday, I decided it would be D-day. The day I would ask my father to teach me to drive.

My father made his feelings about women driving no secret. He didn’t think that they should drive, could drive, or needed to drive. Up until now my transportation included my feet, my bike, and the bus, in that order.

So, as I sat down at the breakfast table after Mass, I cleared my throat and took a deep breath. My father was engrossed in reading the Sunday paper. He did not encourage talking at meals.

Nor did he encourage conversation, or other points of view. I had asked my mother’s opinion about talking to my father about driving. She said, “well I don’t know Susie you know how your father feels about girls driving. But I guess it can’t hurt to ask.

So, I did. “Dad, would you teach me to drive? You know I’ll be graduating from high school this year, and I’ll need to drive back and forth to whatever job I get.”

“Susan, you don’t have a car, so why would you need to learn how to drive?”

“Well, I countered, I can go on the bus back and forth to work, until I save enough money to buy a car. Then I would need to learn how to drive and get my drivers’ license. And then I wouldn’t have to take the bus anymore. I hate taking the bus. “ I said this all in one breath.

This wasn’t the best argument because my father worked for PTC. That was the Philadelphia Transportation Company; in other words, the Philadelphia bus company. He had been a trolley driver first, and then he was the head dispatcher for over thirty years. In other words, his life was all about the bus.

“You know Susie, if you are able to save enough money to buy a car, then you have to get insurance, in case you get in a car accident, did you know that?”

I had a very vague idea about that, from talking to some of my friends at school. “Dad I will get a job now, and start saving so by the time I graduate, I will have enough money to buy a car.” I had no idea if this was possible, or even where to buy a car, or how much it would cost. Up until now, the biggest purchase I had made was a movie ticket.

Just then my mother said,” Harry teach her to drive; she’ll need to learn at some point, why not now, before she graduates?”

I stared at my mother.I couldn’t believe she spoke up to my father. It was really unheard of. He rarely asked or wanted her opinion or anyone else’s. My father looks from my mother to me, and then with a loud sigh, he said, “OK, OK next Saturday, we’ll give it a try.”

Saturday arrived, and I was filled with excitement and trepidation. As I was finishing breakfast my father said, “all right, Susan get in the car, we’re going over to the Sears parking lot at the Moorestown Mall, and you will practice.”

As we pulled into the parking lot, my father said,” whatever I tell you to do, do it, nothing else.” We switched places in the front seat. My father explained how to sit properly in the seat, how to check the position of the mirrors, the signals, the gas pedal, and, most importantly, the brake.

“Susan, we’re just going to go from point A to B. Then, you will depress the brake, when I tell you, show me which is the gas pedal, which is the brake.” I was nervous and started biting my nails.

Off we went back and forth, back and forth, for about fifteen minutes. “OK Susan, now I want you to start turning the wheel, you’re going to drive in a circle.” I started to do that, although I didn’t make a perfect circle.

My father started yelling, louder and louder, “slow down, slow down, you’re going too fast. The louder he yelled the more nervous I got. I forgot which pedal was which. He told me to stop and,  I hit the gas pedal hard by mistake. We started heading toward a little building, Sear’s Auto Parts.

My father’s yelling got me so flustered I smashed right into a pile of car tires next to the side entrance of the building. Which was lucky for us, because otherwise I would have hit the building itself.

I let go of the wheel, and the gas pedal, and that is when we stopped, and my father reached over and hit me on my arm as hard as he could. That was the end of the driving lessons.  Without looking directly at me, my father said, “Get out of the car Susan.”

I got out, I was pretty shaken up, between the yelling, crashing into the tires, and then getting smacked. I could only remember my father hitting one other time, so I knew he was really, really mad.

I thought he was just going to drive away and leave me, but he said, Get in the back!”

After that, I asked my sister Betty to teach me to drive. She said she would. Even though she was married and had four kids. She found the time to teach me and take me to get my driver’s license test. The day I passed the test, I told my dad. And he just shook his head and said, “just what the world needs another woman behind the wheel.”