1in10

the old house where i grew up stood smack dab in the middle of a very long, very big city block in the old northend, the second largest polish catholic enclave outside the mother country. i lived in that old house from the day i came home from the hospital until my wedding day, the youngest of five brothers and five sisters. i was the one in ten blessed to be born on a sunday, the last sunday in winter.

in the front yard of the old house at 110 west central avenue, stood a real buckeye tree, not to be confused with a horse chestnut tree. they are not the same. we had the only one on our block.. our neighbors had maples, diseased elms, and one cigar tree that shed its bark like flaky pie crust. my mom taught me how to predict when it was going to rain. 'watch the neighbor's silver maple tree,' she told me. 'when the leaves turn over, upside down, it will rain within 48 hours.' it's true. try it.

two cherry trees stood like sentries in our backyard. they were taller than the old house and i would go out on the airing deck off my parents' bedroom and climb into the top branches and get the sweetest fruit. the pachuckis, who lived next door on the right, had a peach tree; the barkers, two green apple trees; the shavinskis, one brown pear; and arlene and albert (i never knew their last name. anyway, everyone was 'neighbor-this' or 'neighbor-that,' so it didn't really matter much about last names...) had an apricot tree. what a wonderful neighborhood filled with smells of freshly baked pies all summer and fall. desserts were passed from family to family - everyone shared their baked goods. my mom baked the best, of course.

everybody's mother is the best cook in the world, but my mom really is the 'bestest.' after every family supper in the old house, i would tell her, 'thanks, mom. good dinner. you're the best cooker in the world.'

that's sort of the way my dad met my mom. she was a fresh young gal straight off the farm and new in town. everyday after school, daddy would go and ring the doorbell where she worked. mom would come to the door, hands on her hips and a twinkle in her eye, and tell daddy, 'now, richard francis, you know very well that james allan is not home.' and it's true. dad did know very well that james allan was not home. he didn't go there to see james allan after all. . .

daddy told me one time that mom was the prettiest girl he ever laid eyes on and he fell in love with her the first time he saw her. she's still the prettiest woman in the world. the first time my dad kissed my mom they were standing in the summer kitchen of that very large mansion where she worked as a cook and maid for james allan's father, the president of the glass company in the big city.

my mom told me one time how she always knew she would one day marry a fellow named 'richard.' she was so sure about it that one year for her 4-h project she raised a state fair prize-winning pig she had named 'dickie.' she gave him a bath everyday. he was pink and very fat and she hated to sell him when it came time. oh well. . .

my mom told me she hated every minute on the southern farm where she grew up. she vowed never to return there once she left home, but she did. one night her father called her in the big city where she lived and told her how terribly sick her mother was and would she please come home and see what she could do? . . . so my mom returned to the farm... her mother said, 'everything's going to be all right now. laurie's home.'

mom took care of her mother 'round the clock for weeks giving her medicine the country doctor prescribed but did little to ease her pain and suffering. mom set an alarm clock to ring every four hours so she wouldn't miss a dose. my mom never got over the death of her mother. mom blamed herself for not making her all better. mom never found out what had taken her mother at such a young age. she was only 56 when she died, i think. maybe it was the hard farm life. . . i wish i had met my grandmother graham, a tiny quietly proud native american woman with long black hair.

i think i inherited migraine from my grandmother graham. mom told me about how her mother would sometimes tie a rag around her head and twist it tight with a twig to relieve the pain. no aspirin then, you know. not that it would have done much good against that kind of headache.

mom was one of six children, the first girl baby. her daddy was so proud of his first born girl, he carried her around on a pillow and showed her off to everyone in the county. when she was old enough, about five i think, mom had to work in the tobacco fields right along side her four older brothers. the work was endless and back breaking. the tobacco worms were the worst part of it, she told me.

i would have nightmares about those slimy tobacco worms mom told me about until one day i saw the tomato worms which came to devour my mom's tomatoes - then i had nightmares about the tomato worms under my bed which hid there waiting to devour me if i put my feet on the floor in the middle of the pitch black night.

she grew the tomatoe plants in the back backyard behind the hedges that hid the alley from view from the kitchen window of the old house. the shinnyman drove his horse drawn wagon down that alley once a week collecting junk. the junk man vacationed each winter in florida, so i was told. at one time, sporty our followed-me-home-one-day dog, lived in a dog house my dad built behind those hedges, too.

mom's tomato plants grew almost as tall as the old house and produced the reddest sweetest juiciest tomatoes large and small i ever ate in my whole life. summer dinners were the best - corn on the cob, green beans only my mom could fix, potato salad, and tomatoes. yep, she sure was the best cooker. . .

if i stand real still and listen real hard, i can hear the clippity clop of horse's hooves as the milk wagon comes down the street. the milkman always left four glass bottles of milk with cream on top in a wooden cooler by the back door everyday, then clippity clop away down the street. in later years, the bakery truck would drive up and the bakerman would do coin tricks for the kids while mom selected packages of sweets for the lot of us and because i was the baby of the family, i always got to pick first!

my earliest recollection of how the old house looked is of a grey shingled two-story with a red brick foundation and a slate grey roof. everyday when i came home from school, i knew where to find my mom. she would be in the basement ironing. cookies and milk waited on the table for me to grab and carry to the basement steps where i'd sit and tell her all about my day, the tests i took, the papers i wrote, the books i read. she listened to it all. i can still smell the freshly ironed sun-dried blouses if i stand real still and inhale real deep.

you might think the old house, which was built about 110 years ago before there were indoor plumbing and electricity, was crowded but it wasn't. many of my brothers and sisters had left home to go to colleges and universities scattered across the country, or to get married and start families of their own. it's hard to believe that ten or more people used one bathroom, a converted closet, with a real flushing toilet and a claw-footed iron tub.

the old house had only one other closet and it was in my bedroom. but i didn't have any clothes in it. it was mom and dad's closet and no one was allowed to go in there. one time, i sneaked in anyhow and, oh my, the treasures i found - an old mandolin with broken strings and inlaid with mother of pearl, an elegant necklace made of a thousand strands of tiny black beads and must have cost a million dollars, and an old silk dress much too small for anyone i knew.

i was curious about the beautiful silk garment, so i gave myself away and asked mom who had worn it. she took it into her knurled hands and held it to her face, then she told me it was hers. it was her wedding dress. a trickle of happy-sad tears spilled down her cheek as she remembered the day she wore the dress and married the handsomest man in the world. daddy pinned gardenias on her silk dress with nervous fingers and away they drove in his black '32 ford convertible (with a rumble seat!!!) to a small methodist church with only my grandma kimble to stand up with them at the alter where their 65 years together began.

they returned to the old house that night. no money for a proper honeymoon. they lived in the old house for thirty-five years and raised the ten of us ornery children there. our neighborhood was full of little kids. well, there was the bunch of us and the barkers had six! but on the other side of the old house lived mary ellen, an only child. she wore a uniform to school everyday and came home to do housework until it was time to fix dinner. both of her parents worked which was unusual for the times. neighbor stanley was a window washer and washed the windows of the very tall glass company building downtown. and neighbor angie worked at the sparkplug factory.

mary ellen was four years older than me. i would stand between the houses and call to her, 'mar-ee-el-len, can you come out to play with me?' sometimes she could but most times she called back, 'not now, marty. i have to fix dinner and then do my homework.' but in the summertime, she had no homework and a little more time and we would play house on her front porch. she was always the mother and i, the father. sometimes, i was a neighbor she invited over for morning coffee. it didn't matter much to me what we play-acted. i was happy to be playing with mary ellen.

it was a lifetime later that i learned what 'one in ten' meant and i am happy. . . as far as i know, the old house now painted shades of green is still standing smack dab in the middle of a big city block, the buckeye tree long since chopped down so the big city could widen the street that passed in front of my childhood home where i learned what loving means.