Reluctant Little Soldier
My earliest memory is of being born. A flash of blinding light, the first instant of life. Blurry silhouettes moved under my eyelids. Is it true? No matter, it is to me.
Then I’m two or three years old, standing in my crib bawling. Wanting desperately for someone for someone to come, I can see the front door in the living room. No one is there. No one came. I cried so hard.
We went to the zoo when I was about four years old. I remember very little about the wildlife we encountered, but I recall clearly a sadly chipped and weathered statue of a lion. Coldness surrounded me. It felt very lonely, perhaps because this visit happened in the fall and I’ve always been sensitive to the changing of seasons. I remember holding on to my father’s hand. My father was a difficult man, as I held onto him I felt no comfort or security. There’s an old photo of this bleak day. I was wearing a flannel outfit that looked like pajamas. My father wore wool and a fedora. His back is turned in the image, pulling me along in his wake.
I remember at around five years old or so walking with my father to meet the streetcar. We rode downtown to a moldy, cigar littered law office, a place I didn’t fully comprehend at that time. I met Judge Cullen, who had yellow teeth and foul breath. All his working life, my father wanted to be a judge like Judge Cullen. He briefly made it at the end of his career. He would gruffly put away scared adolescents – telling them to cut their hair – and handed out fines. He wasn’t that way in the streetcar that day. I had no memory of his being mean yet, although my mother told me he spanked and slapped me a lot. Late in life he told me that he’d been hard on me after he came back from the war. He treated me as a little solider, cuffing me around when I didn’t obey or wasn’t quick enough to act. I was 18 months old when he returned.
I once asked him for a football rulebook, thinking it would also have pictures. “You don’t want that,” he said, “it’s just a bunch of rules written down.” I bugged him. It was just a bunch of rules written down.
The smell of corned beef wafted about in a deli he took me to. I didn’t like the taste yet and said so. “You don’t know what’s good,” he said. This was a favorite phrase of his, and he said it a lot. I felt shamed for not liking the things he liked.
The aroma of neighbors burning leaves in the dusk of ’50 brings back different memories. When I smell a similar aroma now, it brings back a peaceful and pleasant nostalgia. I’m not accustomed to pleasant recollections from my childhood, and I welcome this one. I see my old street at dusk: I was standing on the porch and gazing across to the other side’s fall activity. No one saw me watching the leaves slowly curl and burn. I was delighted by the smoke and the smell and the flames.
There was a plot of land down at the end of the block called the triangle. I’d go down there to play ball, or whatever sport was in season. I learned a special thing there. I could zig and zag quickly around the older boys for a touchdown and could hit a baseball from one end to another. I began to get chosen quickly for pickup games. One day I threw a hook shot a long way to a basket in an alley, a beautiful arc that I appreciated just as I was slipping down to meet the concrete.
Things were dark at home. I hated liver and was made to eat it. If I didn’t, I was slapped in the face and sent to bed. I played cowboy with Billy Hutton when I didn’t feel like going to the triangle. Billy was effeminate and lived up the street. My father was profoundly homophobic. He came home early one day to find Billy and me playing happily. That was the last day Billy was welcome in our home. I never saw him again.
Dad had the gloves on me at six years old. He would invite the boys my age from the neighborhood to come over and box with me. I didn’t like getting hit. One Saturday morning I just quit boxing. Hands by my side, I just let my opponent punch me softly with those big gloves around the basement till Dad stopped us. “You’re a sissy,” he said.
I did fight down at the triangle though. A lot of the older boys had younger brothers and it was amusing for them to see their little brothers fight me. I hit back then, mostly cause I hated getting hit and I feared ridicule if I didn’t.
There were three tough brothers who lived on one side of my house on Milford Avenue. One was my age, seven at this time, and the others were slightly older. I got into a fight with the middle brother on my playmate Dickie Sharper’s porch. I can see myself swinging my fists around and getting hit. We finally stopped from exhaustion. He’d gotten the best of me. I felt ok, though, as Dickie walked me across the street to my house. We walked in, my parents sitting across the room on the couch. “He did ok,” Dickie said, as they surveyed my swollen face. I’d held it in, but now burst into tears from the pain and the shame of feeling beaten. “He was just too big for me,” I said. Dad stared at me, looking down with disappointment pain on his face. “I’m going to take you back there and have you fight him again,” he said. He didn’t, but he did with this kid named Ernie Pie. Ernie beat me one day in the alley behind his house and my father marched me straight back to that alley and had me fight him again. I won.
Around the time I turned eight years old, I started getting really good at baseball. My father started to take pride in my abilities. He respected my physical exertion, as long as we won or I performed better than the other boys. Eventually, he became the coach of my little league team, the Severna Park Green Hornets. It was a group of 9 to 12 year olds, and I was nine by then. I was the only regular pitcher despite my junior age. One special game I threw a four hitter against Universal Motors. Dad was so proud. I still have the baseball from pitching that day, a reminder of my success. It was a good day.