A Beginning
The boy was born late one snowy early February night not long after the end of hostilities in Europe, but it would be many many years before the man was whelped. 9 pounds, 8 ounces. His mother told everyone who would listen that first he robbed her teeth of most of their calcium, then he almost killed her trying to draw that first breath, almost ripped her freckled, 110 pound, red-headed body apart over many, many hours. (This belied the boy's birth certificate that indicated a normal, 3 hour labor.) She had an unhealthy, obsessive love for him and she hated him, too. She felt much the same about the boy's father.
The father was a product of the early 20th century working class, one of 4 born to a tall, stringy man and a short dumpy woman. His mother had married 'beneath her station' and her family had cut contact as soon as they found out. His father, a master carpenter who worked on bridges and big buildings, houses, and stores, built the house where he was born on the east side of Arlington, just half a block south of 11th street in the Heights, the oldest neighborhood of a young city. He was abusive to his boys who were, in turn, wild and rebellious and desperate to gain his approval. He was protective of his two daughters who were always perfect in every way. He ignored his wife. She died, with a long sigh of relief in a diabetic coma during an August hurricane. The two girls finished raising the boys. The old man walked away from the two story he had built, the family he had made, rented a small back room in a boarding house several blocks away. He continued to work enough to buy the weekly fifth of Old Crow and he played dominoes with his buddies at the corner ice house. He never remarried, became thin, crusty, spare, living close but at a great distance from his kids. The grandfather haunted the boy all his life, cast a showdow even on a cloudy day.
The boy's mother and father had traveled during the war years. His asthma and a busted ear drum effectively kept him out of any of the military services. He tried to get in the Marine Corps but lasted only a couple of weeks. The Navy agreed to give him a try and tried to make a medical corpsman out of him. But blood brought on a serious lightheadedness and he knew at least 3 ways to convert medical supplies into a drinkable alcohol product which made him popular with his bunkmates, but got him classified to 4f and shown the door. He had marketable skills, was a journeyman plumber, a liscensed welder. There was no shortage of demand for his abilities during the war years. They went to Cor D'alene, Idaho where he worked on a secret submarine training base high in the mountains in a clear, pristine lake. There was another job in Seattle, something in Neuevo Lorado where they lived in Mexico and the border people followed her around wanting to touch her red hair. They traveled with friends of his and it was a loose, free time they both loved. But after the war when she found herself pregnant the traveling days, the honky tonks, the new horizons and places that she had grown up reading about had to come to an end. They went back to Houston to settle. They rented an apartment, two rooms in an old victorian back in his old neighborhood. And, as the time for delivery approached, she announced she was going back to her home in Arkansas for the event, needed to be with her mother, needed to be with the doctor that had cared for her when she had diptheria as a girl. He drove her back to that little town in the Arkansas River valley not far from the western border and left her there saying he had to work, they needed money, he would be back.
It was ok.
Her father had built a house for her and her mother in 1939 just a mile west of town, a sturdy rock story and a half, upstirs with one room finished for the girl, the other open attic where, later the boy would sleep and his imagination would be nurtured by dark shadows and boxes of memories. The house hugged a little creek about halfway between the highway and the abrupt rise of Short Mountain. The mountain was an unlikely geologic event bursting up out of the alluvial river valley, a capstone top, flat, forrested in pine, oak, cedar, hickory, wild cherry, elm. Once a monestary, a community of Benedictines had considered locating there. It was close to the little town of Athens, but the narrow dirt road giving access to the top acted as an effective barrier to the material world. But water on top of the outcrop was problematic. There was a spring that locals said never quit running even if at times it was no more that a cold trickle. There was a hand dug well at an old farmhouse but it woudl go dry in August and September. The monks decided on a more hospitable site east of the town with much better water. The mountain filled the view from the house and her father developed an almost physical attachment to the land. He was disabled from the first world war and when he worked it was clerking in a local grocers for someone he had known all his life who would overlook his physical shortcomings and tolerate his eccentricities. But he would keep a cow or two and had a horse. He had loved to ride as a younger man, back when men rode horses and there were no cars. The redheaded woman never liked the house that she had moved to when she was a senior. She had deeply resented the move to Athens from the little town twenty miles away where she grew up, the separation from her friends, the stability she had known. It was a threat to her and although she was devoted to her father she never quite forgave him for it either. She was not a forgiving woman.
It was just before Christman in 1945 when she went home. The truce between her and her mother was still shaky, frosty. She helped with the holidays, took long walks with her father, visited with friends. And then, on that February afternoon, just as her father was coming back from the barn with the pail of fresh milk, her water broke. It was cold and raining as they loaded up and drove to town, to the hospital on the hill just north of the square, up under the watertower. A few hours later as the rain changed over to snow, Anson first yelled out at the world.
The father was a product of the early 20th century working class, one of 4 born to a tall, stringy man and a short dumpy woman. His mother had married 'beneath her station' and her family had cut contact as soon as they found out. His father, a master carpenter who worked on bridges and big buildings, houses, and stores, built the house where he was born on the east side of Arlington, just half a block south of 11th street in the Heights, the oldest neighborhood of a young city. He was abusive to his boys who were, in turn, wild and rebellious and desperate to gain his approval. He was protective of his two daughters who were always perfect in every way. He ignored his wife. She died, with a long sigh of relief in a diabetic coma during an August hurricane. The two girls finished raising the boys. The old man walked away from the two story he had built, the family he had made, rented a small back room in a boarding house several blocks away. He continued to work enough to buy the weekly fifth of Old Crow and he played dominoes with his buddies at the corner ice house. He never remarried, became thin, crusty, spare, living close but at a great distance from his kids. The grandfather haunted the boy all his life, cast a showdow even on a cloudy day.
The boy's mother and father had traveled during the war years. His asthma and a busted ear drum effectively kept him out of any of the military services. He tried to get in the Marine Corps but lasted only a couple of weeks. The Navy agreed to give him a try and tried to make a medical corpsman out of him. But blood brought on a serious lightheadedness and he knew at least 3 ways to convert medical supplies into a drinkable alcohol product which made him popular with his bunkmates, but got him classified to 4f and shown the door. He had marketable skills, was a journeyman plumber, a liscensed welder. There was no shortage of demand for his abilities during the war years. They went to Cor D'alene, Idaho where he worked on a secret submarine training base high in the mountains in a clear, pristine lake. There was another job in Seattle, something in Neuevo Lorado where they lived in Mexico and the border people followed her around wanting to touch her red hair. They traveled with friends of his and it was a loose, free time they both loved. But after the war when she found herself pregnant the traveling days, the honky tonks, the new horizons and places that she had grown up reading about had to come to an end. They went back to Houston to settle. They rented an apartment, two rooms in an old victorian back in his old neighborhood. And, as the time for delivery approached, she announced she was going back to her home in Arkansas for the event, needed to be with her mother, needed to be with the doctor that had cared for her when she had diptheria as a girl. He drove her back to that little town in the Arkansas River valley not far from the western border and left her there saying he had to work, they needed money, he would be back.
It was ok.
Her father had built a house for her and her mother in 1939 just a mile west of town, a sturdy rock story and a half, upstirs with one room finished for the girl, the other open attic where, later the boy would sleep and his imagination would be nurtured by dark shadows and boxes of memories. The house hugged a little creek about halfway between the highway and the abrupt rise of Short Mountain. The mountain was an unlikely geologic event bursting up out of the alluvial river valley, a capstone top, flat, forrested in pine, oak, cedar, hickory, wild cherry, elm. Once a monestary, a community of Benedictines had considered locating there. It was close to the little town of Athens, but the narrow dirt road giving access to the top acted as an effective barrier to the material world. But water on top of the outcrop was problematic. There was a spring that locals said never quit running even if at times it was no more that a cold trickle. There was a hand dug well at an old farmhouse but it woudl go dry in August and September. The monks decided on a more hospitable site east of the town with much better water. The mountain filled the view from the house and her father developed an almost physical attachment to the land. He was disabled from the first world war and when he worked it was clerking in a local grocers for someone he had known all his life who would overlook his physical shortcomings and tolerate his eccentricities. But he would keep a cow or two and had a horse. He had loved to ride as a younger man, back when men rode horses and there were no cars. The redheaded woman never liked the house that she had moved to when she was a senior. She had deeply resented the move to Athens from the little town twenty miles away where she grew up, the separation from her friends, the stability she had known. It was a threat to her and although she was devoted to her father she never quite forgave him for it either. She was not a forgiving woman.
It was just before Christman in 1945 when she went home. The truce between her and her mother was still shaky, frosty. She helped with the holidays, took long walks with her father, visited with friends. And then, on that February afternoon, just as her father was coming back from the barn with the pail of fresh milk, her water broke. It was cold and raining as they loaded up and drove to town, to the hospital on the hill just north of the square, up under the watertower. A few hours later as the rain changed over to snow, Anson first yelled out at the world.
posted by Robert McGehee at 8:08 AM
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