My recollection of the drive between Texas and Arizona is filed away in my memory files under the tab BORING. One moment I am in Lubbock crying about dolls that come alive at night specifically to bite little girls and the next moment I am in Florence Arizona. Florence is a small small town in the Sonoran desert. Although the population of humans living in Florence in the early 60s was sparse, some of those humans were family and I learned that even in Florence the word family did not mean much at times.This new episode in life dropped me in front of an adobe structure that I was told would be my home. A different look to the old standard cockroach motel. My senses gobbled up the appearance and smells of this new island in life named, The Brown Apartments. The Brown Apartments were literally brown and I could taste and smell the brown dust and sand embracing the front door delivering a new flavor of welcome home. Within the door's frame was a rickety screen slammer that would soon wham and bounce a thousand times as I ran into and out of the adobe shell. The screen on our door was stretched out from too many faces leaning into the partition trying to get a look left and right without opening the door. In addition to the screen being misshapen and lax, several holes in the wire mesh formed gnarly sharp finger traps for curious kids like myself. The dysfunctional screen matched our family's decor perfectly.
(The Brown Apartments image courtesy Google Maps.)
The Brown Apartment's outer and inner framework in the 60's was neglected and looked nothing like the picture above showing how those same apartments look today. The stiff mud shack was boringly uninviting with its flat roof and several doors offering different holes called homes. Each weather beaten portal opened to a living space revealing differing levels of poverty. The apartment offered a kitchen, a living room, a bathroom and two bedrooms. Two bedrooms for five children and two adults was not uncommon for the era nor for the economic standing called flat broke. I did not care about sleeping with other kids. As long as there was a spot for my body to curl into a ball,I could sleep between pushes and kicks from restless feet and bad breath was escaped by burying one's face into the crook of an elbow. I can still feel the texture of the bed's mattress with its blue stripes, white metal buttons, and lump producing springs. Many nights were spent, trying to pop off buttons that my nose or cheek would find because the bedsheets no longer covered the mattress due to the churning of fidgety, sleeping bodies.
(google image no credit given)
The kitchen had its place in the back of the apartment showing off empty shelves and cockroach nests. Along the rear wall was a door like an escape hatch that exited into a large fenced yard. Wonderful sandy silken dirt dusted the entire backyard which showcased a communal wringer washer with a saggy clothes line companion. That wringer washer and I had several painful encounters! More than once did I dare and tempt fate by teasingly putting my finger tips into the rolling wringer. Once the rolling cylinders gripped my fingers I belted out screams of agony under the force and pull of the wringer as those turning savages squished the heck and blood out of my hands! Fortunate for my fingers and palms, I was rescued before my skin was ripped form my dainty little hand bones. I eventually lost my fascination for the washer's wringer mechanism and went on to challenge life elsewhere.
The Brown Apartments gifted me with another very flavorful memory of a bathroom. My first bathroom recall was a humiliating experience with clothing that I would rather live through twice over than what unraveled in The Brown Apartment's so called shower.
(Janet Leigh, shower scene from the movie, Psycho, 1960)
The first day at our residence I was told to "go clean up" which meant getting wet in a shower and actually using a bar of Lifebuoy soap. I go into the bathroom, strip off my clothing and kick it aside like shed skin. I step into the pitted and chipped cement shower stall and twist the crusty water knobs in unison to the on position and - nothing. The pipes burp and groan a bit and I begin twisting the knobs left and right, repeat, left and right, expecting water to flow and still - nothing. No water. Now the pipe like protuberance has my full attention as my upward gaze is intently riveted on the water spout which is void of a shower head. My curiosity was laced with an expanding imagination and anticipation as I rapidly created a variety of stories about burping, strange, arid water pipes. I stood with my face directly beneath the spout, my eyes wide with expectancy, and mouth gapped open when suddenly a huge cockroach jumps out of the pipe onto my face!!! My screams failed to reach any hero's ears! There was no rescuing me from the monster cockroach that I know with certainty had huge fangs and piercing claws and most likely wanted to take me home to feed her kids! That hard shelled nasty creature inspired me to dance atop hot coals of being creeped out as I slapped my body violently in unison with the shaking of my hair wildly! As I beat that carnivourous bug off my naked body I transported my tiny carcass out of the shower stall landing onto my shed skin of inside out clothing! The heebie-jeebies continued crawling on my skin as I wet my face and hair in the sink so could leave the bug hole with the look of being wet. I did not venture back into that room until the rest of the family cleared the water pipes of all the cockroaches. I still shudder when thinking of this experience!
Time was always irrelevant to me. My clock had four settings, day and night and hot and cold. Today was today. Tomorrow was a fantasy. Yesterday was filed away and entered into my mental log. One day I am living with a house full of people and the next day three of those people are gone. I can't say when my father's Lubbock Texas wife and her children fled Arizona, but they did so life snapped back to being just four Hughes' again. We were Bill Hughes, Billy Hughes, Moe Hughes, and Mary Hughes. I learned I was a Hughes in Lubbock in a very impressive way, so now in Florence I got a kick out of calling myself a Hughes and spelling it for people. The elder Hughes worked for the Arizona Department of Corrections also referred to as the state prison. The elder Hughes, my dad, continued to drink away his paychecks; some things in life never change. In Florence my dad spent a lot of his semi conscious time in the local bars and taverns or at another drunk's house. By the grace of the graces my dad seemed to manage getting himself to work, but found it to be a challenge to come home. As in the other episodes of my life while living with my father, the three of us kids were very creative and resourceful in caring for ourselves. We had to be overly creative for our lives were void of any parenting. In looking back I can't say what was more traumatizing: living with my parent's constant bickering and arguing and plate throwing and baseball bat threats and screams and angry tears, or, living a life void of parental nurturing and demonstrated love. My non attentive father made sure Florence was another class room and he was a grand teacher. But I diverge! So, my oldest brother spent most his time with his high school friends and with some of our cousins. My next to oldest brother spent his time hanging with his friends too and seemed to always be in trouble. I spent my time either alone with my imagination or with one friend, Vangie.
I absolutely worshiped and looked up too Vangie for she was truly my first ever friend. I thought Vangie was super lucky because her parents owned a restaurant on Main Street in Florence, AZ. Once in a while Ms Vangie would invite me into the delicious smelling café that her mother used to delight the senses of hungry townspeople and town visitors.
Mrs. Marisacal, Vangie's mom, fixed authentic Sonoran Desert Mexican foods, and I was ever so appreciative for soft juicy tacos. I would pick up the rolled, soft corn tortilla dripping meaty juices and in one bite, stuff the entire taco into my watering mouth. I must have looked like a hairless, overgrown chipmunk!
My best friend Vangie and I loved playing with Mother Nature's fixins'. We dug up doodlebugs with our bare hands, collecting the bugs in any vessel provided by the desert landscape. We could entertain ourselves in the light of the Sonoran Desert sun for hours conducting Doodlebug races. Doodlebugs are Antlions and are super ugly, harmless, larva. With our bugs in hand, we would smooth over the silken sands then on the count of 3 release our racers to do what they do best - creating new pits to capture ants for their meals! The winner was in possession of the bugs that made new pits first instead of doodling away their time going in circles! Fun indeed! Along with capturing and racing our doodlebugs Vangie and I would explore the under layer of the desert that never disappointed our imaginations. Vangi and I would on occasion wander over to the Florence graveyard and scare ourselves, and we would cool our bodies beneath pepper trees, and chew mesquite seed pods, and gladden make believe worlds populated with beautiful flying creatures. Vangie told me that one day she would be a nurse, and I told tell her one day I was going to be a horse! I mean if you are going to become something other than a child you might as well make that something spectacular! When in AZ I had no clue as to what being grown-up meant, much less what I would do as an adult. My focus was on play, and surviving until the next day not on thinking about an uncertain future.
When night crept across the landscape, taking away the light of day, my imagination ran wild toward the scary side of darkness. I did not like dolls anymore and so I did not have any fake human to comfort me anywhere in the apartment or in bed. On one of my adventures with Vangie she told me about the monster demon that hid in the velvet black of night and its favorite place to find its victims was at the Court House, on the lawns. She explained how that demon laid in wait for unsuspecting souls accidentally trespassing into the demon's realm and that demon would gobble them up! The court house demon had gnashing teeth that dripped sticky soul catching drool and that demon howled a howl that could paralyze one's body. That Court House, where the demon hunted, was conveniently across the street from my home. I recall one evening sitting in the living room staring out the barely screened door and I was convinced I was seeing a hideous creature peering back at me through the gnarly sharp holes in the screen. I froze. I did not move, not even a twitch. I knew in my gut if I so much as took a breath, the demon monster cloaked in the dark of night would suck my body through those little holes in the screen and steal my soul! Obviously I was successful in avoiding that soul sucking goblin of the imagination - I think? Aside from the fear of ghostly apparitions I began to miss my mother fearing I would never see her again. Both those fearful emotions fed off one another, missing my mother and fearing a monster required rescue. I recall crying myself to sleep as I would talk to the angels asking the angelic keepers of prayer to deliver me to my mom. I wanted to feel her hugs and kisses, even though her abandonment of me hurt, I still loved her and still needed her. One day I asked my dad why mommy was not with us, why did she not come back to us like she did in Texas? My loving, caring father, told me my mom had died. My mom dead? That sealed the deal on my already waning ability to share emotions in a healthy manor; I withdrew into a shell that took me half a lifetime to crack.
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)
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)
