Clubius Incarnate Part 26 – Whiffenpoof (October 1959)

Dad got mad today because the Michigan football team lost. He was down in his office part of the basement listening to the man on the radio saying what the teams were doing in the game. I was playing in my part of the basement making Tom Swift’s island where he made things in his “lab” and launched his spaceships, planes and submarines. Dad used TWO swear words, I guess because he was REALLY mad that the football team he liked the best was losing. Mom never got mad like that when the teams she liked lost. She’d say, “We’ll get ‘em next time”.

“Damn it to hell”, dad said with a low but very fierce, even scary voice, and he broke the pencil in half he was holding. He saw me looking at him and started looking worried, and mad even in a different way, at himself. It seemed strange to me that a person could get mad at themselves, but then grownups always did stuff that surprised me. Then I remembered that when I said “damn” to mom about tying my shoes, that later I wished I hadn’t said it.

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Clubius Incarnate Part 25 – Play School (September 1959)

“So I think it’s good that Khrushchev and his wife came to tour the U.S.” mom said, as she drove the car down Main street on a windy Monday morning with those big white puffy clouds like giant islands in the sky, “He seems much different than Stalin.”

“Not THAT different Liz”, dad said, sitting across from her in the front seat of the car, his brown “briefcase” thing on his lap, “I still don’t trust the man. He’s like one of those slick PR guys who says whatever he thinks will achieve his goals in the moment. He’s just another Stalin with a Madison Avenue twist. You yourself said on more than one occasion that you prefer a straightforward adversary to a weaselly friend.”

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Clubius Incarnate Part 24 – Nursery School

I was in the backyard of this house I had never seen before when mom left me here this morning, now sitting at this long table with a bunch of other boys. Some were my age and some were a little younger. The girls were sitting at another long table next to ours, not because they had to, but that’s just where they wanted to sit I guess. The grownup women in charge had given us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cut up pieces of apple, and milk in these small boxes for lunch for lunch. Those grownups said they were “teachers”, whatever those were, but they said things and did things like they were moms.

Mom said it was a “nursery school”, and before we got here this morning, I figured it would be some big building like that giant “school” down at the other end of our street from the park. Or like that “college” place where dad went which he also called a “school”. But instead it was just a regular house with a big sign in the front yard that I think had that “school” word on it.

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Two Inch Heels Part 4 – Solo

Victoria Station, London

[This is a rewrite from August 2021 of the first half of the original “Solo” chapter, now broken into two chapters.]

It was Tuesday September 25th as I walked alone now, my big red backpack on my back, through residential streets of west London to the subway stop that would take me to Victoria Station and my train to the Continent. I felt the locals I passed were looking at me like I was some sort of oddball. If Angie were still with me, they would have seen instead just another couple young “hippie Yank” travellers, a matched set. I was an unmatched set of one.

At several points along the way I almost turned around and went back to Angie in the hotel. This grand adventure with my comrade Angie was now something utterly different, a solo odyssey that was feeling like it was going to be an ordeal. But I could not bear the sense of defeat I knew I would feel if I gave up. The most painful thought of all, was like it or not, for my own still tenuous self respect, I had to continue. I knew at some level I was throwing myself into a hugely developmental “deep end”, that I was pretty sure I wasn’t ready for, but couldn’t NOT do at this point. So somehow I had to traverse this journey so I could return home transformed, the triumphant European traveler.

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Two Inch Heels Part 3 – Angie

[This is part of a rewrite in August of 2021 of my autobiographical novel “Two Inch Heels”. It is the second half of what used to be “Part 1 – Angie”]

The next morning was Friday September 21, and after breakfast with the Clays, we said our goodbyes, repacked our backpacks, and Bill drove us back to the Oxford bus station. We were catching the bus to Salisbury, which had been on our planned itinerary. Angie wanted to see Stonehenge. I had seen it, three years ago, but was happy to go again to a place of great gravity and historical significance. There was also an official youth hostel in Salisbury, and we had called ahead and confirmed it was open and should be able to accommodate us.

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Clubius Incarnate Part 23 – The Swat (August 1959)

I woke up. I heard the sounds of guns shooting and people yelling.

“Get your boots on and grab your rifle”, someone said, “The soldiers have found us, and our only chance is to get across the river!”

I sat up. I’d been lying on the ground using my backpack as a pillow. I pulled a boot over my left foot and watched my fingers move quickly, making the first loop, surrounding it with the other lace, and then pushing the second loop through and pulling it out the other side, and pulling on the first as well, making a tight knot. It was like I didn’t have to even think about it to make my fingers move. Then the other boot, doing the same thing. There was more shooting and a person screaming in pain.

“I’m hit”, he yelled out.

“No time to help him”, someone said, “We run now or we’ll all be dead.”

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Clubius Incarnate Part 22 – Allmendinger Park (July 1959)

It was summer, and we kept the windows open all the time, except when it rained, because mom loved “fresh air”. She said it “kept her going” and she didn’t like “feeling all closed in”. Every morning mom would do chores in the kitchen and the basement. She said there was “twice as much laundry” because of all David’s clothes and especially his dirty diapers. Dad was usually at his desk in the basement typing on the typewriter trying to “finish this damn dissertation”. He would work on it all day, though he would always read to me and David at bedtime and also sing songs.

When mom finished her morning chores, if it wasn’t raining, she would take David and me over to the park. She said it was called “Allmendinger Park” because, “There was a family named ‘Allmendinger’ that was nice enough to give the land to Ann Arbor so it could be a park”. We didn’t just live on Prescott Street, we lived in Ann Arbor too. Ann Arbor had lots of streets, not just Prescott.

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Clubius Incarnate Part 21 – My 4th Birthday (April 1959)

I woke up and I knew it was a special day, my birthday PARTY day! My real birthday was two days ago, but mom said today was a better day to have the party, because it was the “weekend”, and more people could come.

Yesterday, mom and dad had an argument about where to have my party if it rained. Dad said he could “borrow some folding chairs and card tables from the frat house” and have it in the living room, and us kids could play in the basement after we did cake and presents. Mom said she didn’t like that, and it was a “problem until we could afford to buy furniture for the living room”, and that this was the “same argument we had last year”. She would say “I don’t want to argue with you Eric”, but then she would argue anyway.

I didn’t like arguments. Mom would usually feel better when they were done, but dad would feel worse. But if dad felt better after, then MOM felt worse. And the one who felt worse would figure out how to have another argument later.

I was now four years old, the same number as Molly. She was really happy about that, because she didn’t like it when we were a different number. Not that I felt like I had changed because I was that new number, but grownups thought it was important, and older kids too.

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Clubius Incarnate Part 20 – Spring (March 1959)

When I woke up this morning I knew something was different. It FELT different. David was standing in his crib looking out the window across the room from my bed. The sunlight was coming in that window and shined on him. I couldn’t remember the last day when there was sunshine and not just clouds. I looked out the other window, by my bed that looked into the backyard, and the grass where the sun hit it looked extra green, like it was glowing. I heard birds chirping outside.

I got out of my bed and ran out of the room in my pajamas into the living room. The front door was open and just the screen door was still closed. All the windows in the living room were open and I felt a little cool breeze on my skin and the air smelled like flowers. Mom appeared at the doorway to the kitchen.

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Clubius Incarnate Part 19 – Molly’s 4th Birthday

Mom, dad and I crossed the street from our house walking through lots of snow, which mom said was “fresh” and also “beautiful”. David had stayed at home with Margie, who was “the babysitter”, and mom had told her that this was the first time she and dad had gone out together without him since he was born. Margie had stayed at our house a couple times to play with me when mom and dad went out to a party or to “play bridge”, whatever that was. I liked bridges too, because you were up high and going over something below, but I wasn’t sure how grownups would play on them. I also liked Margie because, like Aunt Pat, she was bigger and older than I was, but still I could tell she was a kid and not a grownup.

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