Ansonia
by Alan J.Pedersen
~written for Petie in her last months~
January 31, 2000
Johnny Kruger got shot. It must have been cold outside, snow on the ground, maybe tire chains on the wheels of the black 1938 DeSoto sedan our family drove. It was after the war, but gasoline was still in short supply. When you went to a service station, there would be two or three cars parked in front with there hoods raised so that you could see that when you had your auto worked on HERE, they cleaned the engine as part of the service. Because of the shortages, neighbors helped each other out. Our family lived further up Wakeley Terrace than the Abromytis family and we had a big sedan, so it was often that my mother stopped to pick up their daughter, Caroline, who went to kindergarten in the same school as I did - Peck Elementary. I went to first grade. At my mother's insistence I entered first grade directly having skipped over the big K and thus I was, for most of my academic life, the youngest one in the classroom.
As we approached the doors of the two story brick school house, the school janitor met my father who had driven us this day and ask if he had heard that Johnny Kruger had been shot. Later on, I would learn that he had been playing with a .22 caliber rifle and had shot himself in the hand. This was an older boy, perhaps ten years of age, whose parents lived on the other side of our road up where it was named Great Hill Road because it was in Seymour not Ansonia and because it went up Great Hill. The Krugers were held in a great deal of suspicion around our house, them being German and all, and now to hear that their rather young boy was running around with a gun just added fuel to the fire. For my part I was certain that if a boy had been shot, he was reasonably likely to die and in short order. There was a great deal of murmuring going on among those gathered. The warmth and smells of the school seeped out of the front door and through the cold air while I stood there contemplating the demise of the mystery boy. Everyone seemed to be wearing overcoats and galoshes - not in short supply since we could always make a trip to Naugatuck to the U. S. Rubber plant to buy rubber goods at the ‘seconds’ store. After the war, with a surfeit of galoshes on hand they would, out of a need for new markets, invent Naugahide upholstery about which, as William F. Buckley Jr. would say, more in due course.
Did the hallway of the school seem to close in on me like The Crypt as I made my way to Miss van der Cooke’s classroom? Probably not, because I had little knowledge of crypts and ‘dirt nap’ was not yet a phrase to me, but I did have a feeling of dread - that first inkling that life does not last brought all the more into focus because it involved someone small - someone non-adult. Cookie (as Miss van der Cooke preferred to be called) ushered the last of us in, closed the door and blunted our weltschmertz by saying that we had all heard that a fourth grade boy had been hurt and that he would be just fine. She then drew our attention to the enigma of Dick and Spot and of course the mysterious Jane. Jane was one of THEM. Caroline was one also. I knew her slightly and life long perversions would be triggered by a dream I would soon have about her. I had two other examples at hand - my older sisters Shirley and Elaine. They had hectored me into learning to read early on, saying that next year I was going into the first grade and I had better know how to read or I would be hopelessly lost. They had learned that, unlike them, I would be skipping Kindergarten and they were mightily pissed at the favoritism. I did receive the assistance of the younger and the criticism of the older in deciphering Toonerville Folks and The Katzenjammer Kids while Bringing Up Father remained elusive. Smokey Stover, another favorite, was my introduction to Dadaism. The Little King needed no translation any more than Teletubbies does today. The words did not contain the real meaning which was visual. I was a visual kind of guy. By way of further bullyragging they told tales of the dreaded Mrs. Gaffney who, it was said, would pull out a handkerchief, blow her nose and redeposit it inside her clothing against her ample bosom. Such were the concerns of my two mentors and they appeared to agree on the degree to which it was all very disgusting.
February 2, 2000
Two older sisters - what a guide to the universe such as they knew it. The older of the two is more interested in the cousins than the siblings. Perhaps they represent more degrees of freedom - more stories of how the outside world can be. A more innocent time. We visited from time to time. The cousins would coalesce, merge into a single body of mischief and err in that they would swear me to secrecy regarding their mission - to visit the city dump as gleaners on one occasion. Your gentle narrator suffered from not having seen sufficient films starring Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney. The cousins, you will want to know, had that advantage. I was a RAT and did not fully comprehend my treachery. Aunt Harriet would look up from the ironing board and inquire of her daughter Lois and my cousin Judy and my sister Shirley. Where? They said they were going to the dump. No, I didn’t know about the teenagers who sunk into burning coals while walking through the dump and were severly burned. It was in all the papers!! (I could not read that well and I lived in a different city and the subject did not arise in the Toonerville Folks.) Uncle Eddie seemed indifferent as he looked up from his stamp collection except for some concern for my oldest sister.
Years later, one of the cousins would have me beaten to a pulp while in junior high school in a city far far away (Sacramento) in retribution for this innocent misdeed. She is old now and if I return the favor, bones will surely break. Is it sufficient to know that her life turned to shit, that she produced a deformed son, lived a life of naval wife and eventually divorced and live the double wide trailer existence to which her choices condemned her or should I have her whacked?
Unable to compute. Insufficient data.
Well, OK. Maybe I haven’t been completely honest in this matter. My mother and her sister, Aunt Ruth, shared a residence briefly in the aftermath of my parents divorce. I was still in grade school at the time but a different one than cousin David. One day I pretended to threaten him with a knife (it was, as I recall, a rather dull kitchen knife) and he ran away. I followed him hoping to make it up and let him know that I was just kidding but he was scared. He went all the way to the New Helvetia Cemetary on Alhambra Boulevard (three blocks away) and would not let me come close to him. It precipitated a break in the relationship between my mother and her sister Ruth although in point of fact the close ties had impeded Ruth’s lifestyle. Ruth and Harriet, as my father would later confirm, shared secrets including the names of doctors who would, for a nominal fee, perform abortions. This was a fact recalled from the 30’s which I believe were not quite as roaring as the 20’s but in which sperm was known to flow, nonetheless.
Shirley’s main concern today is with a photograph from long ago showing her and the cousins all lined up on a hillside. She is not one iota interested in the photo shot in winter on our gravel driveway on Christmas day 1946 or 1947 with Shirley and Elaine on new bicycles and me Alan in a push-pedal aeroplane bearing the insignia of the Army Aircorps. What a price that toy would fetch on eBay today. The undercurrent was this: If they had new bikes, could I have their tricycles? How come he gots a fancy aeroplane and all we got were stupid bicycles?
Can you see it in their faces? The younger sister - bright with promise of what good thing might happen next. The older sister dark with the fear of when the next horrible milestone would be reached. There is snow on the ground here in this precious photo. The pond in the nearby pasture is frozen over and can be skated upon. In town there is another larger pond also frozen over except at one end where there is an area surrounded by a chainlink fence - an area where the water exits the lake and falls into a culvert there to travel underground. The light and the dark. Soon there will be a thaw. The rows of buried fish heads and entrails in the garden which our mother has carefully tended these months will begin to writhe slowly as the waste provided by the local fishmonger slower turns into fertile ground from which will spring fat, champion tomatoes. The sheep I have come to know in the back yard as I played in the sand box will disappear. They will not reappear on our table as curried mutton nor as lamb biryani but will end up on shelves in the basement in jars preserved according to some misunderstood recipe in a Danish cookbook. Our father will be angered that no one will be able to get past the smell of the stuff, but that anger will not prevent him from time to time to run quantities of veal and beef and pork and spices through a meat grinder to form the delicious meatballs known as frikerdellas. An event will take place in the sweaty evening of August of the new year, but it cannot be rushed neither can it be avoided. The seasons change but slowly.
February 11, 2000
As the events of the day wind down things begin to settle. Thoughts of the day which are many begin to coalesce, evanesce and bubble up. Supper warms the stomach and drains blood pressure from the extremities. A certain tiring of the limbs lends itself to sitting on a sofa propped up against a pillow or a sister and listening to a story or reading the funnies or hearing music. On some occasions there are news reports. The war was still on during the middle forties. I suspect that we were for the most part sheltered from news of the war. But on at least one occasion we were not.
The news was horrible.
On going to bed, I looked out the window worried about some event coming near. The moon shown full upon the back yard. The sand box in which I commonly supervised large constructions and the movement of earth was illuminated fully. Next to it was a reflection of the moon off of some shiny bit of metal. On the home front you had to be alert for unusual events and report them when they occur. Planes flying over head needed to be identified. Boats beaching on the sands of Montauk point might be something other than mere smugglers.
Fires must be reported. On one occasion, to be helpful and to demonstrated my mastery of things, I set fire to the trash in our overstuffed trash burner which was on the embankment above the brook. Some of the burning cardboard fell to the ground and touched off the dry grass at the base. It was quickly controlled by my father with a garden hose. The box of matches was placed on a higher shelf. Fires in fireplaces seemed to be OK. On another occasion my father was clearing some part of the back yard of weeds which he piled up and burned and it got away from him. I was nearby and he yelled at me to get help from "mommy." My message to her was to call the fire department. I couldn’t remember what he said and that seemed like a reasonable version. After cranking the phone and getting through to central, she went out to help. They got it under control at about the time the engines rolled up Wakeley Terrace from town. Were the matches placed on a still higher shelf? Now there was this small fire in the back yard - the one next to my sand box. It did not seem to flicker but it was so bright.
No one shared my concern. I went to bed knowing that the blaze would continue unabated and that when the were all asleep it might reach the house and consume us all - just like on the radio.
After awhile I became aware of the blackness of the sky inside my room. A horrible rumbling could be heard not at all like the beloved thunder of an autumn evening and color could be seen not like the awesome flash of lightning muted by the clouds or brilliant streaking across the sky and then to earth. This was brilliant yellow, Clayton yellow, bright saffron on blackened rice, black flames flickering up against the backdrop of yellow flames and not in the safety of the hearth but high in the sky in the distance and moving slowly this way. I woke up screaming, unconsolable.
My only comfort came from the small pink blanket to which I held so tightly.
The concerned voices of parents did not make up for their not having heeded my warnings. I slept in their bed that night and in the morning I looked out on the back yard to survey the damage. The fire had gone out. The sandbox remained unscorched. No sign of the offending ember could be seen. The grass remained green. The hillside behind us contained as many trees as before. The leaves were turning color. Soon the leaves would begin to fall and many would end up in the channels of erosion which patterned the lower part of the hill below the tree line and those leaves would be thick and we would be able to slide down them in our own play ground. We would frolic in the bounty of autumn. And the memory of the dream would remain undiminished for a half century. Not a thousand cranes could lift it from my mind.
March 3, 2000
Places to hide. In closets, under beds, behind furniture. The easiest way to hide is to cover your eyes. Then it is dark and no one can see you in the dark.
The noise was shrill and hoarse. The shrill part was my older older sister, Shirley. The hoarse part was our father John Charles (nee Hans Karl, from the Old Country - Denmark.) Why do these things happen? She sounds frightened and yet defiant. He is angry, a state made worse by the defiance. I think I hear hitting but it is drowned out but a shrill scream and then then a hoarse voice warning that if she didn't stop crying, he would "give her something to cry about."
I've reached the safety of the closet. Overhead are overcoats and raincoats and regular coats. On the floor next to me are an odd variety of shoes. I had sat upon one which was particularly rough on the butt. I recognize its texture and can visualize the high buttoned overshoe with the slight narrow heel. There is a rubbery odor from the wealth of overshoes hidden along with me. Not hidden long enough, I fear. The doorknob is turning and the door opens and closes quickly as my younger older sister Elaine enters and crouches down next to me. She is surprised to learn that I have discovered her secret place, that we share a fear of the event which has unfolded.
That event is less loud now, muffled by the closed door and by a reduction of screams to sobs and, that having been accomplished, a reduction in the anger generated from guilt for having administered such abuse. Another voice - angry - difficult to make out - words not understood (If you hit her again, ever, I'll pack up and leave).
Why do these things happen? Did I have anything to do with it? Some accumulation of acrimony? Let's see. There was The Incident of the Clay From the Base of the Waterfall and The Strange Disappearance of the Eagle Quarter and of course The Fire in the Trashcan, previously mentioned. Regarding the trashcan incident, she might have been blamed in that as the older older sister, she should have been watching me. Regarding the clay business, she had dug some moist clay from the base of a waterfall which came down a slate filled hill from Seymour or thereabouts. She had fashioned some sort of toys from it and was letting them dry out on the garage floor when I became intrigued and wanted some. Access denied. Eyes brimmed with moist upset. Blame laid at door of older older sister. Now, about that quarter with silver heft and eagle wing in v-shape. It was in a hiding place. There was next door to our home a two story house with a stairway up the center of the house to the second floor. This stairway played a dramatic role in the life of our neighbors in that it was said that their young boy had tumbled down those stairs and been badly hurt. In those days that was the movies' symbol for death. Today it's a flat line on a heart monitor. I don't recall seeing him after that. In fact the only time I ever saw him that I recall was on the occasion of a picnic in our back yard. There was a wooden table set up and some sort of outdoor stove on which sat a large pot of boiling water containing cobs of corn picked fresh from the garden. Several adults were sitting there munchy-wunching corn cobs slathered with butter and salted when the young lad walks on stage with nary a stitch of clothing. It was August and in Connecticut such an option does seem to be more comfortable. I'm surprised there's not more of it going on.
It was also cooler to be indoors, preferably in a basement where one could hide from the heat. The house next door had such a basement below its two stories. It was cool. It was dark but for the light coming through the open door - enough light to see the furniture stored there. Among the items was an old desk with drawers which pulled out smoothly. There, undisturbed in its hiding place was a quarter of a dollar ($0.25). Now I could invest. But no! Older older sister has been watching and wants her share: all of it!! Tight-fisted I ran out of the basement with her following to see where I went, to wait for an opportunity, to bide her time. Nearby was a hedge in soil that was somewhat moist. I dug some of the soil loose between two shrubs using the coin as a scraper, placed the coin on the bared patch soil, covered it with dirt and tamped the mound smooth again. A perfect hiding place. Satisfied that my trust fund was safe and could be accessed during the next bull market, I went into the house to consider more permanent storage. When I returned, the mound seemed to not be so orderly and digging to retrieve my life savings proved fruitless. I had heard of people suffering reversals during the Crash of '29, so these things must be somewhat cyclical. One further oddity: the dirt between adjacent shrubs was also disturbed and although I had been certain this was the right spot, I now had some doubts and further searching seemed similarly futile. In later years I would reflect upon this event and realize the treachery of older older poopy-pants but at the time I was inconsolable and rather loudly so. (I expect repayment with a reasonable rate of return. I would have bought Microsoft at the bottom.)
March 4, 2000
"DIG" This Laugh Making ACTION Game by Parker Brothers.
Let's see. Some gold painted wood 'bars' - collect three to win the game. Each bar will cost five Shares in DIG GOLD MINE. Shares made of bluish paper bearing the image of a little man in a coat and top hat carrying a pick, a shovel and as an accessory - a cane. We'll be seeing more of him I think. Some PICKS. Kind of cheesy, a small cork with a wood stick glued into it, some kind of sticky goo slathered on the big end of the cork. An awful lot of squares of stiff cardboard 2.54mm on a side and imprinted with one capital letter on each side. Some larger pieces of cardboard 63mm by 79mm, blank on one side and imprinted on the other with a picture of the lad with pick and shovel. In addition there are two suggestive phrases, one in black and one in red: 'a container'/'railroad or steamship line'. That dates us a bit. So the 'dealer' calls out one of these phrases and we all smack the gooey picks onto letters to compose an answer. If someone gets a letter that another wants, there seems to be an unwritten rule that you can knock it off of their pick and take it for your own. My sisters practice this skill at the dinner table when one has carefully carved a pat of butter from the butter dish and the other steals it from her knife and applies quickly to bread or bread crusts thriftily rolled up by our mother and called Pollacks (a dessert item.) Older older sister seems always to be the dealer. I think she hides the one that says 'physical activity for Jane' or 'name of Dick's dog.' I don't win very often.
Here are some examples:
'a mineral or metal'/'something sweet'.
Rock candy might answer for both. Available at Vonetti's, I
believe, or if not then perhaps at Lungrens grocery.
'a girl's name'/'any opening'.
Caroline Abromyetis, an opening to the world of 'girls'.
She is younger than I am and in kindergarten, which is why I
don't see much of her in school, but I think she is a grade
ahead because she knows stuff that I don't like about Tag
and Red Rover, things I would have learned about if I had
gone to kindergarten instead of skipping and going right
into first grade. Caroline appeared to me once in a dream.
It was some sort of sewing area with broad tables for laying
out patterns. There were rolls of yard goods and piles of
lace and she was standing on the table with her arms at her
side and there was red yarn wrapped around her from her
shoulders down to her knees like a big bobbin. She was
asking me to get her out of the yarn. The scene had the
look and feel of the Laurel and Hardy film "Babes in
Toyland" except that it was in color. On one or two
occasions I spent time at her house playing on a swing in
her back yard. Her parents viewed me as the chubby little
kid who lived up the street.
'a three letter word'/'a flower'.
Cow, a three letter word (I might have spelled it
'cou' because a 'w' seemed like two letters bringing the
total to four) and skunk cabbage which grew near the cows
and which I would have had no chance of spelling.
'a wooden article'/'a boat or part'.
Cabin cruiser, that's the item. My mom wanted
one. She thought that was really high class. She showed me
a picture of one such yacht. The prominent feature that I
could distinguish was that the front window was divided
vertically and horizontally by a wooden cross separating the
window into four panes. I wanted to make her one and my
father let me use some materials while he was working in the
cellar. I nailed two sticks together at right angles and
painted them. Not having any plans, that was the best that
I could come up with. Then my dad let me help him chop wood
for the fireplace. Sometimes in the morning, my sisters and
I changed from our pyjamas into school clothes in front of a
roaring fire. It was really cold getting out of my jammies
with the built-in feet. I always kept my pink blanket
nearby for extra comfort. The chopping job continued until
I hit my left thumb with the hatchet - my first scar and
after only one swing of the tool.
'a manufactured product'/'used in dressmaking'.
A Caroline bobbin? I was baffled by these big words but the
question might have triggered the aforementioned dream.
'an amusement'/'a body of water'.
The Big Fun Book. Among the amusements in this
book was a scatalogical series of drawings with overtones of
wave physics. In the series of drawings, a seagull flies
over a body of water. As the seagull is passing, something
breaks the placid surface of the lake. A small ring forms
followed by two and then three rings farther from the
center. The thing is, the pictures are not in sequence.
You have to label them,1,2,3..for all the separate
frames.
'an animal'/'something dangerous'.
Cou again. A nd something dangerous is water
flowing over a dam. Someone had drowned at the end of a big
lake in town. Well, it was bigger than the pond up in the
pasture and in the spring when water flowed out of it, you
could see how much water there was and it moved away
downhill on a gentle slope of the pasture. At the end of
the big lake the water came out from under the ice layer and
dropped off quickly and made a tremendous roar as it
coalesced at the bottom of this hole and disappeared under
ground. Across the road from the pasture was a structure
midway between the two - a reservoir dam wide enough to walk
on and perhaps six feet high. That is three times my height
and when water is flowing slowly over the top, it brings
back the feeling from the previous winter of looking down at
that deep hole through which someone was drowned and swept
underground. I followed my two older sister as they walked
across the dam and I was terrified once I could feel the
water going over my toes - so much so that I have no clear
recollection of how I got off of the damn dam.
'anything black'/'a lake or river'.
Coal and coke delivered through a chute into the
basement. This kept the house warm in the winter but
tending to the furnace at night while we slept would not
have been easy, so the coals were 'banked' to impede the
flow of air and slow up combustion. In the morning, you
spread them out again, shovel on more coal and start over,
provided that you have calculated correctly and the fire has
not gone out. If it has gone out the fallback position is
to start a fire in the fireplace so that we can get dressed.
The river doesn't have a name. We call it the brook, though. It
separates our land from the dairy farm next door and moves
at right angles to form the back end of the property. At
that end there are industrial things - a castoff vehicle
shoved into the water to get it out of the way and under the
shallow water, a radio with several silvery glass tubes.
Good mysteries.
Alan is Petie's younger brother, five years her junior.
Petie is the "younger older sister" in the stories above.
Last updated: December 31, 2001
