Texas Ain't For Sissies

 Texas Ain't for Sissies

(Google Image Yellow House)

I don't remember the drive from the airport to my new yellow home. My new home was located in a small housing development for military families. My new home was just West of Lubbock Texas and just East of Reese Air Force Base. Reese Air Force Base sat just West of War Blvd and the Blvd was the main road between the base and the military housing. It was while living in this housing I was to learn a lot about the harsh temperament and mean disposition of some humans. My memory of the time between the plane landing and arriving at my new home is missing. I do remember the little plane that carried me away from Alabama landed abruptly, again. We were up in the air one minute and then, bump bump bump, we were down! The airplane's little doorway opened and my memory shuffles up time and stands me in front of a pale, yellow house, on a corner, in a strange land called Texas. 

My sister, who was on the plane with me along with her husband and my drunk father and a drunk pilot, ran inside the yellow house filled with her own brand of excitement  leaving the drunk men to unpack the few suitcases and belongings that flew with us from Alabama. Everyone went indoors. I remained outside the yellow house for a small while recording my surroundings. I noticed there were many houses lined up along the street that looked exactly like the yellow house I stood in front of. I breathed in stale and dusty Texas air that felt so oddly thin and dry in my nose and lungs. Texas air was way different from the moist blanket called air in Alabama. I noticed the lack of trees, and the hard concrete of a sidewalk and I could hear dogs barking and kids playing and people were making noise everywhere. I was numb. Soon, my father came outside and scooping me up in one arm, carried me into the yellow house while tickling me and telling me I was home. The house was cold, very cold. The house did not have furniture in the living room. There was only one table with 3 chairs in the kitchen, and two beds with two dressers in two of the three bedrooms. The house lacked furniture as well as furnishings of the heart. My sister was soon to change the warmth level of the yellow military box. I recall thinking of Mabel as I stood in what was to be my room. It had only been a few days since I was in her care.  At Mabel's I existed by barely breathing with my eyes shut tight and my heart sealed with stone so I would not contaminate my spirit with her evil. I considered the place she called her house nothing more then a monster's cave. Now I was with family in a house I could call a home, a word that lost meaning for me when my parents divorced. 

Funny how our memory can hoard selective moments and keep those moments in a top drawer for easy access while other moments in time are relegated to a bottom drawer and abandoned like yesterday's newsprint.  In those bottom drawers you have to slice through thick webs of bent up and twisted time and piles of other worldly dust, and imagery that may be distorted with emotions. In those bottom drawers of memory I sift through detail after detail in search for the something I know I know but can't find the words for! My memories of the houses in Texas (yes, there were two), and the adventures during this time are mostly kept in a bottom drawer so I have to clear away and dust off my movie clips and cross reference to ensure the memories I touch are indeed Texas memories. I also have a few Texas memories that I keep in a top drawer where there is no doubt about my experience. 

(McCalls Maternity Skirt 1950s/60s)

I know the memory of my sister in Texas is selective in that her image and words occupy only a small portion of my recall. I've not gone digging for anything other than what I can touch easily about Kathleen during her time in Texas for I want to leave those memories filled with happiness. I am guessing it was not news to anyone but me that my sister, who was 16, was expecting her first child. In Texas I learned what being pregnant looked like. From the minute Kathleen saw the yellow house she started to nest which included sewing as she began to make a home for her baby that would be born sometime in the summer.  I remember my sister making remarks about men and boys just not knowing how to keep a house clean and would often look down at me and scoff about how I just was of no help either. I recall my sister making curtains for the bedrooms, and constantly sweeping the floors. Everyday in Texas seemed to be churned with a tornado or sandblasted via a dust storm or saturated in torrential rains or seared in scathingly hot heat or frozen with ice storms and soft snows.  Texas dust and Texas mud occupied my sister's time. When the dirt is "dust bowl dry" and the wind is blowing sideways it is no surprise that dust invades every space available to it. Texas was just dusty, even after a rain; the earth would dry quickly and then crumble into dust.

(dust storm Texas Google images)

I was given a bed, a place to put my clothes and someone enrolled me in the local school. I was in 2nd grade. In my mind, to get to school my brothers and I and the other kids in the housing development, would walk down a road, cross a huge street, and there was the school. My oldest brother tells me, we would walk down a road, wait on the corner, and a bus would pick us up taking us to a school that was just outside of Lubbock proper. We went to school in some small township between Reese A.F.B. and Lubbock and neither my brother nor I can remember the name of the school nor the township. It was one of those great old schools where everyone from age 5 to 18 gathered for classes and there was no such thing as going to three different schools like elementary or middle or high school. We all went to school in one school building.

Lubbock, or rather, Reese, or rather "that part of the world" is where I discovered that kids could be really really mean. I suppose we all go through common lessons in life as children. Lessons about how size does matter when being shoved. Lessons about how appearance does matter when you are singled out because your clothes are unkempt with holes and your socks don't match. Lessons about how, back in the early '60s, as a kid you had to defend yourself or stay at the bottom of the heap. I stayed at the bottom of the heap. I was not big enough to shove back and claim my space or territory or self-esteem. I did not have nice clothes. I did not know how to scratch and claw my way out from the bottom. I remember one day I was coveting another kid's roller skates. I was watching my military housing peers skate around the block over and over. The girls laughed loudly as their hair flew behind them like flags! Their arms moving wildly side-to-side pumping their body forward on the skates, was an image of untamed childhood passion! I sat on a lawn wishing I had skates. I sat there watching the fun whoosh by me and I wanted so badly to join in. The three girls stopped close to where I was dreaming and they snorted with giggles mixed with words, while pointing in my direction. Whisper. Laugh, and spew spit all over the sidewalk and point at me over and over again. I kept daydreaming about owning my own skates and imagining my body flying through the air and my hair waving like a brownish reddish tinged flag as I flew along the sidewalk. I was daydreaming big because I did not know how to skate. I had never seen skates but I just knew I could skate because my body told me I could skate. While I was in my skating dream I was trying to ignore their loud snorts. Then, unexpectedly, one of the girls approached me with her skates dangling from her fingertips and she offered the skates to me. The girl told me I could use her skates!  Now, my memory is in that top drawer section in my mind, and I can see myself looking up at the skates and I can see her smile and I can feel my body tingle with excitement! I jump up from the grass like a grasshopper and with my brown eyes opened wide, I thank her and take the skates from her fingertips! I flop back to the lawn and using the key, I open the skates up and then tighten them around my laced up brown shoes! I successfully get the skates on, with her help.

(vintage key roller skates Google Images)

It only took me 4 or 5 pushes to get the skates to meld with my body and I was off! With my arms pumping side to side, and my feet pushing off from and then reconnecting with the sidewalk, I was moving forward and I was moving fast! I can still feel the wind rush through my open mouth taking my saliva with it and hurling that saliva sideways across my cheeks and my eyes burned and watered from the dry air moving across my face ! I went faster and faster! I circled the block once, passing the three girls as they were clapping and waving me on for another lap and I could hear their laughter and I felt pure joy! I was in heaven! I came around the block for a second time and I yelled out with excitement, "how do I stop?” the answer I got was painful. One of the girls put her leg out and tripped me! My skating motion was disrupted! My body became airborne fueled by skate energy, and I was propelled forward like a rock! I flew through the air along with the laughter of those girls and when I landed on the sidewalk face first my joy filled experience came to a stop. With blood seeping from my forehead and eyebrow and cheekbone and nose and lips and chin, my new friends removed the skates from my feet in yank and jerky impatient motions while scolding me for possibly denting the skates. For over a month, I sported a cut and bruised face that attested to my position at the bottom of the heap where I belonged, beneath the egos of my military brat peers. 

Fortunately skin heals, bruises go away and children, like puppies, trust again. It is the nature of life; it is the nature of survival. To survive is to have faith, to trust, to give life another chance, and to become wise along the way. In Texas, I took the laughter toward me within my big heart and laughed at myself too. Silly me, thinking that I could just borrow someone's skates and not pay a price! Laugh! The more I belittled myself, the more the kids accepted me into the group - again - and soon I was like a fly circling the outskirts of friendship awaiting a place to land. I followed all the kids as they played tag or played house, or war, or go to another's home to watch a T.V. show on a Color T.V. which was new technology and only a few households had one. 

Sometimes I would be invited to play along, but mostly not. Sometimes I would be invited in to watch a show, but mostly not. It did not matter; at least I was allowed to follow! My home life was not that thrilling, so like most kids, I opted to stay outside as long as possible. If I did go in the house my nesting sister would make me do chores and that was not what I wanted to do. I wanted to belong to the group of kids outside, even if that meant being laughed at because I was on the outskirts of acceptance. 

(Bullying at school (Source: Maine.gov))

On one occasion as I was following up the rear of a bunch of kids playing hide and seek one of the kids who was one of the skating girls, asked if I wanted to join in. Of course I did! Another chance at being one of them! I was told I was "it" for the game of Hide and Seek and I had to count to 100 while standing in a storage space that all the carports had. I can still smell the wood and the pealing green paint as I  stepped into the storage place and placed my face into the crook of my arm and began counting. "One, two, three .. " by the time I counted up to 20 the door to the storage space slammed shut and those girls locked me in! I stopped counting, and then continued counting to 100 because I did not want to appear to be scared. I did not want to believe I was being picked on again. I did not want to believe I was locked in. When I got to 100 I tried to open the door. The door would not open. I could see the little stick that was held in place by a nail that allowed it to spin was snuggly in place behind what ever it is it is placed behind that locks the door. Looking between the boards of the storage space, I could see and hear the girls as they laughed harder when they knew I was aware I was locked in. Some of the girls were slapping their knees and calling me names and some of the girls were taunting me to slip between the cracks. I was a bit thin. They, those girls, the ones I wanted to be friends with, left me alone and locked inside a storage space. To this day, I can close my eyes and feel the uneven texture of the boards barely covered with peeling green paint. I can still smell musty old stuff in decaying boxes, and I can still taste my dusty tears on my dirty cheeks. Memory in the top drawers can be strong. I did not cry long. Once my tears dried and the girls disappeared I sat down accepting my fate. In the calmness of the space I was in and the quietness of my young mind, I figured out how to help myself. I began looking for a stick or anything to slide between the wooden slates and raise the twirling piece of wood that kept me prisoner. I don't recall what it was I used but eventually I was able to release my spirit from captivity and make my way home to lie about my day and pretend I had friends. 

As time blew past and the dust settled I did make a few friends that did not torture me all the time. I loved walking to the air base with my occasional friends to swim in the clubhouse pool. We walked everywhere back then and on the way to the pool I was fascinated with how my foot could make imprints into the hot tar of the road. Texas days in the summer are hot and I became very skilled at hopping from one foot to the other while walking on the roadways and running to the painted white lines for relief. I did not run to the side of the roads because then I would be challenged with all sorts of stickers and burs and fire ants! Swimming, I loved swimming and still do. I know I am half mermaid and one day I will discover my gills. On the way to the swimming pool my friends and I would climb on an airplane that graced the airbase's grounds. I imagine the war plane was a monument to all the pilots who had been trained at Reese Air Force Base and no one ever stopped us from playing on and in the plane. We pretended we were fighter pilots shooting down enemy planes and then parachute out to run away and jump into the swimming pool! The plane and swimming were wonderful, good memories ~ Top-drawer memories as were some foods in my life like cookies.

(Google Image)

In Texas I discovered there were other cookies besides Vanilla Wafers by Nabisco. One of my friends introduced me to Hydrox Cookies! I remember my very first chocolate sandwich cookie. I held the cookie like I had been handed a piece of gold. I devoured that cookie slowly because I did not want the experience to end! As my friend showed me, I unscrewed the cookie revealing the fluffy creamy frosting inside. I nibbled at that fluffy goodness for a long time stealing tiny little pieces and then making myself lick it so it would last even longer. I ate the chocolate cookie top and then the chocolate cookie bottom one tiny little bite at a time. To this day I prefer Hydrox cookies to Oreos. Toward the end of our time living in Texas, food was fast becoming an issue for my brothers and I so free Hydrox cookies and meals at friend's houses fast became something I looked forward to.

Once, a neighbor invited me over to their home for dinner. I felt like I was getting out from under that underdog heap and I was thrilled to go! While there, me and my skinny little body needed to use the rest room. I went into the bathroom and my shorts fell off my legs and feet and onto the floor. I finished my business and when trying to get my shorts on I somehow managed to put both my legs through one leg hole and then got stuck! I had to walk out of the bathroom, in tears, with my legs all smooched together in one leg hole and ask for help. The Mrs. of the house helped me out of my predicament then took me home and of course I had another experience of being at the bottom of the heap as the neighborhood buzzed about my bathroom pant leg trauma. It was tough being a skinny kid in Texas. Really. Tough. I was learning that to survive you had to become hard, and stiff because otherwise I would cave in and no one was available to assist me. 

My days in Texas piled up like rocks. The sun was mean. The wind was vicious. The dirt was dry and tasted awful. Snow was wicked and cold. I learned to desire snow boots and I learned a snowdrift meant that the snow was deep. One day, my sister left Reese and the yellow house taking with her a new son and her husband. That is when I became more acquainted with my alcoholic father and my brothers. Before my sister's leaving, I don't remember dealing with my father or brothers.  When life became just my father, two brothers and I, my memories shift and life becomes void of the word home as my father disappeared even more into his bottles of booze often forgetting where he lived, and my brothers disappeared into life somewhere trying to survive. Although life was unpleasant for my brothers and I it seemed life was becoming more and more of one big party for our father.

(image from tcm.com)

It was in Texas that I learned about sex, sort of. I was with an older girl who said she was my friend and invited me over to her house for some sandwiches and to watch T.V.. What she really wanted was to play Dr. Kildare and to molest me. I was a bit in shock and ill inside by what she did to me and as I was roaming the neighborhood thinking about Dr. Kildare and if that is what he really did, I saw a woman standing on the front step of my house. That woman was my mother! I was so happy! So excited! My mom had come to get me!!! I loved seeing my mom and being held and hugged for I had not been touched with love in so long! My mom hugged me and kissed me and bathed me and fed me. I was in heaven. The house was clean, my brothers were smiling, and my father was acting sassy and even staying home for a change. I was not dreaming. My mom had come for me! My mom explained to me she did not plan to live in Texas. She told me she had a place in Alabama and was taking me home. Home. There was that word again, home. On the day my mom was leaving to go back home, she bathed me up and dressed me up all clean and nice and packed me a bag. I was going home, to a new home with my mom.  Mom and I stood on the sidewalk waiting for a bus that would take us home. Then, my father walks up with a little swagger to his stagger and takes my bag in one hand and my hand in his other hand and tells me I am not going anywhere! He pulls me away from my mom, and she just looks at me with tears in her eyes and she gets onto the bus, to go home without me. The bus does not hesitate. The bus doors close. I am crying as my father sucks the life out of his cigarette and flips the butt across the road and drags me back "home". Home. Home where I live with two boys that are 5 years and 7 years older than I. Home where my father has more dates with a bottle than he has with his children. Home. Home where once again, I am on my own and where I learn more about how odd people are. Humans are odd because they all have different meanings for the word love and for home. Yes, I really did think like that when I was a child. I had decided I did not like humans and wondered why God made me human.

(Google image)

One day, after riding the long ride to school that was somewhere else other than Reese, I was sitting in my classroom daydreaming. I was staring out the tall-levered windows, wishing I would be picked one day to be that special kid who would use the long pole with a hook and open the windows up. I daydreamed about being that special kid who would be picked to use that long pole with a hook to close the windows at the end of the day. I daydreamed about being that special kid who would be chosen to clean the erasers on the sidewalk and suddenly -  BOOM!!! Right on my desk a loud BOOM! I snapped out of my pretend life of being special and was back in my real life of being just me and noticed my teacher's hand opened wide on top my desk! I followed the hand up to her arm, followed her arm up to her face and she was not happy! My teacher's face was puffy and red and her eyes were bulging like hard-boiled eggs ready to crack open! She spewed words onto me that sounded like, "now that I have your attention Ms Mary quite contrary" and she spun on her heels and stormed her way to the front of the classroom. In her iron fist she squeezed the color out of a sizable piece of chalk  - I sat with my eyes opened wider than my mouth as she began to yell the word "HUGHES! Hughes!"she snarled, "Hughes!", "Your last name is H-U-G-H-E-S" and she made the chalk scream my last name as she cut it into  the chalkboard! I had no idea what she was talking about! Hughes? What is a Hughes? Well, by the time my teacher finished with her public display and ranting rage toward me I discovered that my name was not Mary, nor Maryanne, but my name was Mary Ann H U G H E S!!! I had no idea there was a thing called a last name! I was always Mary, or Marianna, or Changa, or Chatty, or Brat. No one called me Mary Hughes! Once again, I found my place at the bottom of the heap and decided to just stay there. I did cry when I got home. I did ask my brothers if they had a last name too and if so, was it the same as mine? My brothers laughed at me just like all the other kids. My father was not around for me to ask. In Texas I learned I had a last name. In Texas I leaned about fear and that the world was populated with evil people who killed other people. 

(Google Image)

Sirens! Lots of Sirens blasting blaring and the sirens were not the ones we heard during airbase drills! The sirens were real, and the sirens were blaring because President Kennedy was shot. The president was dead! Sirens! Alert! Everyone had to go home and stay home! No unauthorized persons were to be on the base or out of their homes in our neighborhood. I did not see my father for days. I did not go to school for days. No kids were playing out in the streets for days. I was alone for days. I was not under the heap of my peers but I was under the heap of worldly fear. It was a scary black void where everyone was crying. All the adults were scared. I was scared. We had no food in the house. Life in Texas changed that day in a big way. Everyone was different. Our neighborhood changed. School changed. The air changed. It was not long after the assassination of President Kennedy that my father retired and we were scheduled to move. I was glad to learn we would be moving. I wanted to live again, to run and play and explore the outdoors. I wanted food all the time, and I wanted to be hugged. I even dared think my father would take us to a place where I could have friends. We loaded up our car and drove away toward a new life.

My father always was a womanizer. That was the biggest problem between him and my mom. Add booze and women to a marriage and things just don't work out. When it came time to leave Texas my father drove us to Lubbock Texas  for a small pit stop he said. In Lubbock he took us to a stranger's house and announced we would be staying at that stranger's house for a small while. We would be staying with his lady friend Amy and her kids. What? Her name, the lady's name, was Amy and she was my father's friend? What did that mean? Amy had two kids a boy and a girl. Amy's son's name was Junior. I don't remember Amy's daughter's name but what I do remember about Amy's daughter is she told me dolls came to life at night and they would bite you! I was glad I did not have any dolls of my own anymore, but I was scared because I had to sleep in that girl's room and she had dolls! We did not stay long in Amy's house because my father decided it was time for all of us to move to Florence Arizona. He also announced that Amy and her children would be coming with us. My father also informed us that he had married Amy and she was our new mom and her kids were our new brother and sister. Numb. I was numb. 

Nebulous memory cells can save us sometimes from bad moments, not horrible moments, but moments that are not worth the memory space. I don't remember the drive from Lubbock Texas to Florence Arizona and it is just as well. I shudder to think my memory cells would be filled with moments of being in a car with Amy and her kids. The journey from Lubbock to Florence must have been a real bore. Once we arrived in Florence Arizona life was twisted once again, into a reality that was even more surreal. 

The image above is from Google Maps. This is what is left of the military neighborhood I lived in while my father taught Anatomy and Physiology and Jungle and Desert Survival at Reese Air Force Base. My father was also part of the crash rescue team. This is the street corner the yellow house sat upon and this was the street that was so hot. The remains of the sidewalk where I left my skin from my face on is barely present and like many of the souls, the trees are all dead. Time has not been nice to this place. Maybe there were too many hurtful memories for too many people and time did what it must and scraped away the entire neighborhood of so called homes in an attempt to erase as much as possible.

to be continued ...


(All stories blogged by me are my property and protected under copyright laws. No part may be used or reproduced in anyway without my permission ~ Maryanne Mesplé)