Listen to thisIn our study (the one conducted by the youth workers who present their stories in this column), we often explore moments from our own youth to determine how our experiences bias and enrich our understanding of youth work. Recently, I was exploring a moment from my own youth. It reminded me of how boredom and waiting play major roles.
Milwaukee’s Northwest Side, between Burleigh and Auer on 45th street, 1954.
(1954) I kick the ball above the garage roof. On the way down, it hits the edge of the rain gutter, falls to the ground and hisses, punctured on a rusty piece of metal. I go inside. We live downstairs. No one is home.
I won the ball at Summer Fun Club for most pushups, 28. It’s about the size of a basketball, only the rubber is thinner and the seams go out, like my ribs. I put tape on the puncture and pump it up. It still leaks. The gas station is at the end of the block. I walk down the alley, dodging horse apples from the garbage wagons. Despite the shit, I prefer this way. It’s shorter.
I close my eyes and count my steps, trying to make it to the end of the alley without looking. I almost do. Tires are stacked in back of the station. Sometimes when we play kick the can I hide here. I walk through the overhead doors. Red, the owner is working under a Plymouth. He sees my shoes, slides out. His face is covered with grease.
“What can I do for you Matt?” he asks.
I show him the ball.
“Flat, uh.”
“Yup.”
“Easy enough to fix.”
“I thought so.”
The bell rings. Red goes out to pump gas. I sit in the old shoeshine chair in the office and look out the window. Emil Horn's Drug Store is across the street, just beyond that is Freedman's grocery store where we have a tab.
“This will just take a second,” Red says after he puts the money in the cash register. With the little silver valve in his mouth like a toothpick, he scrapes the spot around the leak with a file, spreads the glue evenly, puts a patch on top, and smoothes out the edges. Then he pumps it up. “There, that ought to do it,” he pats the ball and tosses it me.
“Thanks Red. How much?”
“No charge.”
“I owe you,” I say, like my dad says sometimes.
“Sure.”
Wally’s restaurant is on the other side of the alley, just past the barbershop. I sit at the lunch counter.
Pumpkin seeds,” I put three cents on the counter.
“You sure like your salt.” Wally scoops up the penny’s and gives me the seeds. “How’s you mother?”
“Fine.”
“You be good to her.”
“I will.”
“Here.” He gives me a penny red licorice for free.
“Thanks.” I eat it right away.
On the way home I chew pumpkin seed shells around the edges while I bounce the ball with the other hand. They last longer that way. It’s getting late in the afternoon. The house is still empty. I gulp down a glass of water, and comb my duck’s tail. Then I stretch out on my bed and try to be perfectly still.
The cracks in the ceiling are the Amazon River. My cat Rocky jumps up. I pet him. He purrs, rolls on his back so I can scratch his stomach. It’s dead silent, like nothing. The front door opens. Rocky jumps off the bed, meows. My mother feeds him regularly. I do it when I feel like it.
“Hi Matt.” She’s exhausted. In two weeks school starts again. She’s the principal’s secretary. They’re getting ready. I like the way she looks. She’s wearing a skirt and short-sleeved blouse.
“What’s for dinner?” I ask.
“I thought I’d make sweetbreads, boiled potatoes, and beans.”
“Can we have fried potatoes?”
“Yes, I guess so,” she sighs. “Why don’t you go and wait for your father.”
She wants me out of her hair. I ride my bike to the bus stop, three blocks away on Sherman Boulevard. My father rides the bus from the life insurance company downtown. A bus stops. The door opens with a hiss like the hiss from the punctured ball. He’s not on this one. Another passes without stopping. Last week, I waited until it was dark “one hiss after another with no sign of him.
I can see him on the next one before it stops. He’s standing, ready to get off, newspaper tucked under his arm. He looks cool with his dark hair is slicked back and his dark blue suit, white shirt and dark blue white poke-dot tie.
“Hi son,” he says, his voice drown out by the motor.
I walk by his side with my bike.
“How was your day?” he asks.
I tell him about the ball.
“That Red is something else, isn’t he?”
“Yes, how was your day?”
“Oh, let’s just say uneventful.”
Our house is fourth from this end of the alley, the end opposite the gas station.
“Hi Bill,” my mothers says, turning from the stove.
“Hi Marie.” He takes off his coat and sits in his chair in the living room with the newspaper. My brother comes home from football practice. He’s in high school; I start junior high this fall.
“Let’s eat,” my brother says.
“In a few minutes,” my mother says.
My brother washes up. “So, what are we having,” my father walks in the kitchen.
“Sweetbreads.”
“Harry called today, he’s coming in for the
convention,” my father says about my uncle who lives in New York. He
used to work at the home office with my father before he got a branch
office in the Big Apple. He wears wild ties and Lady Godiva suspenders
and tells corny jokes. While my mother tells about her day at the
school, I go into the attic and swing on the gymnastic rings my brother
and I made and hung from the rafters, back and forth over old clothes
and phonograph records.
At dinner, my brother tells about his job cutting grass and practicing
football. I don’t say much. I never do unless I want to get a reaction
like the time I told my mother I was glad when my grandmother died.
“I’m going up to see Ralph,” my father says after dinner and goes upstairs where the Barry’s live. Mr. Barry wears a suit too. He travels, for another company. Mrs. Barry works in an office like my mom for the government, but not a school, highways, I think. They don’t have kids.
I put on my khaki pants with the big side pockets and powder blue jersey and walk down the alley to the park, which is only a couple blocks away, and field balls during batting practice before the softball game. They let us do it. All the kids in the neighborhood participate. We chase down the balls they hit. The one who gets the most points for the summer wins “5 points for a fly ball with no glove, 3 with a glove, 2 for a once bouncer (glove or no glove) and 1 for a grounder. There’s no prize or anything, just winning, whatever that’s worth.
I get seven balls, 19 points “total for the season, 742. Arbiture, who lives on the other side of the block, has 800 something. Russo, my main friend, shows up. We walk around looking for girls. He has a brush haircut. Maybe I“ll get one. Kathy and Mary, who we see almost every time we come, approach. Last week, Russo got bare tit from Mary, in the bushes, behind the pavilion. He’s ahead of me on that. When Mary and Russo go off, to the bushes, again, I’m left with Kathy.
“See you, I’ve got to go home” I say, and leave.
It’s dark, Wally’s is closed, but Red's is still open. Kent is working. He has a tattoo from the navy and wants to go to Michigan State to study forestry on the G.I. Bill. I wave; he waves back as I enter the alley. It’s private here at night, away from traffic, and people. I walk slowly trying not to get shit on my shoes.
I swing on the gate; it creaks. My mom’s watching T.V. I hate it when she knows I’m coming. My dad and Mr. Barry are upstairs, drinking cocktails and reciting from the Jabberwoke.
“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe”.”
Mr Barry says and my father goes:
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The fruminous Bandersnatch!”
I throw my clothes down the shoot and go to bed. The moon is out. My fort, a refrigerator box with a rug on the floor is under the window. It’s not real fort like the one I make when we go up north in summer. Sometimes it rains.
I can’t see the Amazon River. I can see the ball though. It’s on the window ledge, seams sticking out like my ribs. Wonder if Russo got bare tit? I“ll get some pretty soon. Maybe Kathy will give it to me, even though I don’t like her. School starts in a few days. The moon dips behind the garage. It’s pitch dark. I stay perfectly still. There’s nothing.
