Fall of ‘53

The fall of ‘53 was grim.

The colors changed but were lost on a child with red-green color blindness. The slate gray sky reflected trifling rays toward vacant trees, the remaining leaves falling like tears, softly, upon the damp ground.

The first half of the fourth grade in Baltimore felt hazy and dim. There was a boy named Isadore, a girl named Sally. Sex was beginning to be discussed and he got the impression intercourse was enacted somehow through the rear end, a thought that persisted for some years. His father introduced him to spitballs, which lead to a meeting with the principle.

Visits to an old house miles away in a rural community were sprinkles throughout the fall months. Inside, an ancient deep sink was littered with cigarette butts and stains. A tall Holly tree, supposedly the highest in the region, was a prominent feature. For years after the move dodging barefoot the sharp needles on the leaves became a summer habit. It was a shabby white three story dwelling with clogged toilets and well water which often ran dry. The realtor was a fat man named Pumphrey, who had a mean dog named Spunky. There was a sand circular driveway, a large wagon wheel sitting astride the huge oak in the middle. The thought of living there conjured dread.

The move came in mid winter. An abundance of snow ravished the area. It covered the dirt road that rounded the circle they lived on, a white sprawl that stretched all the way to Benfield road a 1/4 mile away. Milhausen’s bar, a tavern he would know well many years to come, was on the corner of Benfield and the dirt road. Red licorice sold there for a penny a stick.

Every weekday his parents went out early morning and came back in the evening. They never told him where they went and he never asked. So many days went by like that that the boy throught maybe they’d never send him back to school. He sat in fear, forlorn, too scared to be sullen, by the living room window looking at the swirling snow obscuring the road. One day they might not come back he thought over and over.