[This is a rewrite of the second half of part 1 of my original backpacking thru Europe memoir]

It was late afternoon Monday September 17 when her mom drove Angie and me and our big full backpacks the thirty some miles to Metropolitan Airport outside Detroit. I felt an unnatural calm, akin to the reverse stage fright I would get before going out on stage in a theatrical performance. I was once again throwing myself in the deep end of the metaphorical pool of life experience. Like when I had first decided three years earlier to perform on stage, particularly my first big lead part singing and dancing in the musical Oklahoma. It was how shy, reticent me conducted my development, resisting and procrastinating until the fear of being a total chickenshit overwhelmed the fear of the leap into the abyss.

If Angie was having any second thoughts about our trip at this point, I did not notice. I was so deep within myself. She was quiet as well, sitting next to me in the backseat, probably going through her own version of something like a pre stage performance routine. Her mom seemed uncomfortable with our silence and kept trying to make conversation. All she got was short answers from both of us.

(more…)

Me as “Peabody” in The Flahooley Incident

It was Monday September 2nd 1973. Labor Day actually, though if I still had my “house boy” job at the Briarwood Hilton, I probably would have worked that day to get the time-and-a-half holiday pay. I was walking down the sidewalk on the north side of Wells across from Burns Park returning home from Angie’s house. Now turned September, it had still been a summery Ann Arbor day, but now a breeze had come up out of the north with that first real fall chill in it.

“Impending doom” is probably too strong a phrase, but a sense of some dread engulfed me. For the past twelve straight years that first chill had meant that I would shortly, always grudgingly, be reporting back to school. That institution my parents and other adults of their cohort imagined would allow me and mine to learn the skills to eventually take our place as successors to the civilization they were now responsible for. A civilization, from my point of view, whose history was a litany of wars, genocides, slavery, colonization, racial oppression and the subjugation of women.

(more…)

The thing in the basement that you could watch things on, my mom called a “television”, and what she watched were “programs”. Her favorite programs were “soap operas”. I tried watching them with her a couple times but nothing happened except grownup women and men talking and mostly being sad or mad. She also watched the “news” which I liked sometimes, like that time when we watched a rocket take off.

Dad also called it a “television” but he called the things you watched “shows”. His favorite shows were “westerns” where grownup men with guns and cowboy hats were shooting bad guys who usually tried to shoot them first.

Molly called it a “TV” and watched “shows”. Her favorite was “Sky King” of course, which she liked to watch with her dad. It was like a western because they wore cowboy hats and where they were didn’t have any trees, but the good guys flew airplanes instead of shooting guns.

Molly’s mom called it “television”, but she did not like it so she also called it the “boob tube”. She thought watching it a lot “rotted your brain” and made you dumb. She did watch the news, but I don’t think she liked that either.

I called it “television” sometimes, but mostly “TV” because that was what Molly called it. I also called them “shows” like Molly and my dad, and my favorites were “cartoons”, which Molly watched too sometimes.

The show I liked the best was called “Captain Kangaroo”. He was a grownup with white hair on the top part and the bottom part of his head, but he talked more like a kid. He was always trying to figure things out and he would talk to other grownups but also puppets and a big clock with eyes. And best of all he would talk about a cartoon and then you would see it.

(more…)

Molly was excited when she came over to get me. I was going with her and her mom and dad to the Dexter Cider Mill. It was a cold, cloudy, windy day, and I almost forgot to bring my jacket, but my mom reminded me. Molly and I walked across the street together, looking both ways like our parents had told us.

Molly’s mom and dad were coming out of their front door and Molly’s mom called out to her, “Molly, you and Coop can sit in the way back if you want!”

Their car was called a “station wagon”, because it had more seats than a regular car. A regular car had a front and back seats. But a station wagon had another seat behind the back seat. Molly called it the “way back”, because her parents had told her it was the seat “way in the back” of the car. Molly and I both liked the way back seat because it was far away from the adults in the front seat. Also because it was different, when you sat in it you were looking out the back window of the car. You could not see the adults driving, so it was easier to pretend you were driving, even though the car was going behind you not in front of you.

(more…)

Dad read books and sang songs to me when it was bedtime. He told me it was the favorite part of his day, to sit in the wood rocking chair across from my bed and together get “lost in a good story”, and then “raise our voices in song”.

We finally finished reading the Tom Sawyer book. I was sad when it was done, because I liked hearing about all the things that Tom did. I did my best to keep pretending I was Tom sometimes down in the basement or out in the backyard. I knew that Tom was special because his life was an adventure that was in a book.

“So Coop”, dad asked as he sat in the rocking chair, “What should we read tonight?”

(more…)

My mom had shown me that you could “divide” things into four “quarters” by drawing an “imaginary” line across the middle and another one up and down the middle. Where those two lines crossed was the “center”. She said it worked for things that were square or round. She liked doing things like that, thinking with lines and numbers, and writing them on a piece of paper.

So it worked for square things like the basement. When you walked down the stairs to the bottom and turned left, that was my quarter. It was perfect for me because I was left handed and liked to go that way anyway. It had my toys and the shelves my mom and dad made out of bricks and boards to put the toys when I wasn’t playing with them. They never did anything in that part of the basement. I could always play there whenever I wanted to. They called it “Cloob’s area”, though now they were calling it “Coop’s area” because of my new nickname.

(more…)

It was a cold, gray, windy Monday on the planet Ann Arbor. Monday February 11th 1974 to be exact. Though now that I was no longer soldiering through Europe with my pack on my back, I wasn’t keeping a journal and writing down the dates. Overnight, the blowing snow had covered the outside of my one small basement window, the one I could see from my mattress on the floor. I had been out earlier in the cold wind shoveling the snow away from the window, and the rest of the driveway, per the list of chores my mom had left me, that I was determined not to get behind on and risk getting a negative comment from her.

(more…)

I heard the doorbell ring out in the living room. My mom was in my bedroom with me helping me button up the special shirt she had bought for me for dressing up. She said it was a “Campbell tartan” because “Campbell” was my “middle name”.

“Jonathan Campbell Zale”, she said. “That’s a name you can run for President with some day!” Her eyes twinkled when she said it. I knew that was something very special for boys to do when they grew up. We were dressing in special clothes to go to a party across the street at Molly’s house. My mom was wearing a bright white shirt under a blue “dress”. That was one of those things that only women wore that was open at the bottom instead of pants or shorts, which was what she wore the rest of the time. She had on the black shoes, “heels” she called them, that made her very tall but also walk kind of funny. Her lips were very red and shiny.

(more…)

This morning my dad told me that my mom was finally coming home from the hospital with my brother that had been inside her. He took me over to Molly’s and then he drove off in the car. I still did not know what was really going on, so it worried me. I had seen a baby before but it just cried a lot. Why did we need to have one of those at our house?

Molly and I had been playing up in her attic bedroom when my dad and Molly’s mom appeared to tell Molly and me that the baby inside my mom had come out and was now my brother. My dad had asked me if I wanted to go and see my new brother at the hospital, but I didn’t say yes or anything else, so I stayed at Molly’s house.

(more…)

It was Sunday December 23 and dad, David and I sat in a booth at dad’s local favorite Xenia coffee shop that served breakfast fast food style. Instead of having someone wait on your table, you bought your food at the counter like you would at McDonalds and took it back to your table. That way no need to tip, which dad always tried to avoid. That morning’s conversation was mostly about football, including Miami of Ohio’s upset victory over Florida in the Tangerine bowl Friday night, plus yesterday’s pro football playoff games. We distracted and medicated ourselves with vicarious game highlights, instead of acknowledging the sadness that our long weekend together was ending, and we had the long four-hour drive back to Ann Arbor ahead. Dad’s drive that day would actually be eight hours, since he had to turn around and drive the four hours back down to Xenia alone. At least he would have the playoff game between the Dolphins and his local favorite Cincinnati Bengals to listen to on the radio.

(more…)