Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Double Trouble


I had a brother that was two years younger than me. It seemed like we were in trouble more often than not. And it started early on.

I was five years old and he was three. We decided that we wanted to walk all the way from our house in town to my grandparents' farm. After all we knew the way.

We went to Mom and asked permission.She denied us the pleasure. Daddy was at work so appealing to him was not an option.

Instead of walking to the farm we asked if we could go play on the church steps. It was a block away and we played there often. The railing was fun to turn over and try to do tricks. Permission granted.

We walked up to the church. Then we stealthily made a left turn and began to walk to Grandma and Grandpa's. After all we knew the way.

When we did not return home Mom sent another brother to tell us it was time. He returned to tell her there was no sign of us. She frantically called Daddy at work and told him we were missing. He worked in a neighboring town so it took him a while to get home even though he drove as fast as he could.

Now Mom and Daddy were not stupid people. They figured that we probably tried to go to the farm. Daddy set off looking for us while Mom stayed home with the other two kids just in case. He found us walking along beside the highway.

We had not even made it completely out of the city limits in all that time. I remember Daddy sweeping us into the car and spanking us in the same motion. It was one of the very few times he hit us.

We were living on a farm when our dog Trixie had puppies. I know there were quite a few of them. We named one of them Ugly for obvious reasons. They all had names but I do not remember any of the rest.

We had no indoor bathroom. There was just one of the outhouses that I detest so.

One day I walked into the kitchen with my brother. I put the most innocent look on my face that you could ever imagine. Then I announced, "Mommy I don't know how it happened but all the puppies are down the toilet hole." I tried to sound innocent and surprised.

Mom went into the living room and told my father that we had thrown the puppies in the toilet (we did) and she needed him to at least help her get them out. Daddy started to laugh until he could not breathe. Still he kept laughing.

Mom was worried about what would happened to those poor puppies so she went out to fish them out of there. She then had to take them all to the water pump and clean them off. After all the place they had been was not terribly sanitary. When she was finished she went back in to sarcastically thank Daddy for all the help. He was on the floor laughing and trying to breathe.

My two brothers and I were playing cowboys and Indians. I assume the brother one year younger than me was the Indian because my other brother and I were on the other side. We played outside for a long time. Finally the brother two years younger and I went into the house to watch TV.

Mom thought we were being awfully quiet. She wondered where the other brother was and asked us. We looked as innocent as possible and shrugged an "I don't know" kind of answer.

Mom rushed to the back yard to find my brother hanging by his neck from the apple tree. We had hung him and could not figure out how to get him down. He was turning purple. Mom got him down. After that all three of us always had to be on the same side in any kind of war after that.

One time we were in the car that Daddy was driving through town. It was a fairly big town in the part of the country where we lived. Daddy stopped at a red light.

My brother jumped out of the car and did a Japanese fire drill. That was what we called it when the car was stopped at a light and people jumped out and ran around the car, then jumped back in before the light changed to green. I did not partake in the exercise. Only my brother could get away with something like that. However I sat in the car and laughed uproariously.

My brother was killed in Viet Nam in 1970. He would have been 21 on his next birthday. It was the only time I saw my father cry. He is another of many that I miss every day. But I have such good memories.

17 comments:

  1. Hold on to the good memories of you brother. He lives on through you!

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    1. Both those brothers are gone now. I hold my many memories of them dear in my heart.

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    2. Oh, Emma, I am so sorry to hear this. Although my sister is younger, shes' a lifelong smoker, so I think she'll probably die ahead of me. Oh, gosh, I'm really sad about your loss. If only there were words that might actually help a person when loved ones die, but all I can say is that I do care, and I know that that's something.

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    3. It is unnatural to have younger siblings die first. The younger of the two died in Viet Nam as I said before. The older died only a couple of months before my ex-husband. Now the older of my two little sisters is in a nursing home because she had a stroke a couple of years ago and cannot care for herself. Her husband has done everything he could but it is not quite enough. Sometimes life is unfair. But that is why smiles and laughter are so important. They keep us from losing our minds. Thank you for your thoughts.

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  2. memories exist to make us remember good things, and laugh about them, but also to haunt our days.
    Beautiful text!

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    1. That was a poetic statement. Beautiful. And so very true.

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  3. Good memories keep us going. Glad yours are.

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    1. I choose to remember the good things. There are bad memories too but if I can find a positive I will. (I know I am disgusting that way.) The good memories will keep me young.

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  4. Oh man, you kids were really a handful! Sounds like you had a fun childhood. Remember what makes you happy. There is already more than enough sadness in this old world.

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    1. My mother was a saint. She made raising us seem like no work at all. The sadness is why I choose to be happy. Who needs to be sad?

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  5. Your father laughed at the thought of puppies drowning in sewage, and wouldn’t even help your mother get them out?! I, too, sometimes report troubling events without commentary, so for you to report this as you did makes me wonder if you know how cruel it makes your father appear, to not only be indifferent to the suffering and to not discipline his children, but to find the image of puppies drowning in sewage so funny that he couldn’t stop laughing. Maybe he wanted the puppies to drown so he wouldn’t have to find homes for them, but that wouldn’t explain his laughter.

    I envy you your siblings. I had a half brother and sister but never lived with them, and my younger sister was five and a half years younger, so we didn’t play together.

    I started life in an unpainted shack with no lights and no internal plumbing. My father enlarged that shack and added utilities as he found the time to do the work, but I couldn’t tell you just when the various changes came about. I do remember that the lights would go out almost everytime it rained, so we would retrieve the kerosene lamps off the mantle. Our church had lights but no plumbing, but I don’t remember hating such deprivations.

    I think we’ve spoken a bit about Vietnam previously. I did everything I could to avoid going, and I’m very glad I succeeded. I’m also very sad that so many went because they got drafted despite their best efforts, or because they thought it was their duty, or because they trusted their government when their government said it was an important war and that we would succeed in winning it. I’m especially sad for the ones who didn’t make it home and for their families. It was a very sad war in so many ways—for instance, the fact that returning soldiers received little welcome and in fact were sometimes cursed and spat upon. Even with our current wars, I want to support our troops, but since I don’t support what they’re doing, my main emotion is pity rather than respect. I get stuck on wondering why they would go when they didn’t have to, there being no draft. But you had a brother who was killed, and I can but wonder how this must make you feel regarding those who make the ultimate sacrifice but wars that, when it comes right down it, the American people either oppose or are indifferent to. I don’t even know which is harder on the troops, anger or apathy.

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    1. You make my father sound like some sort of beast. If he had been able to breathe he would have helped get the puppies. And he was laughing at the absurdity of the situation not the plight of the puppies.
      I admire the military people who are trying to do what they believe is right to preserve our way of life. I have empathy for the families who have to deal with the loss of a loved one. It hurts so much. I hate the idea of war. At the same time we need to protect ourselves. Turning the other cheek does not always work.

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    2. "If he had been able to breathe he would have helped get the puppies."

      Did I misunderstand that your mother criticized him for not helping her save the puppies?

      "You make my father sound like some sort of beast."

      I wrote of my cruelty toward animals that started when I was but eight, and suggested that my behavior was directly attributable to my father's own cruelty. I think the same might have been true for you because dropping puppies into an outhouse isn't normal behavior for children, but comes from either mental illness or, at the very least, a delayed ability to feel compassion and empathy due to the influence of the important adults in one's life. Whether your father engaged in prolonged laughter because he thought the plight of the puppies was funny or because he thought the behavior of his children was endearing makes no difference because either point to the fact that he had a serious problem. There is simply no way to minimize the dysfunction that underlay this event.

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    3. You have misunderstood the whole situation. I understand that your view is colored by your own experiences. Not every incident is evil. Some are simply an event that happened. I will not allow you to criticize my father who was a loving man to his children and his pets.

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    4. "I will not allow you to criticize my father who was a loving man to his children and his pets."

      My opinion is what it is, but I'll certainly let the subject drop because it would be cruel and pointless to continue. I was thinking about the situation last night, fully realizing that you were upset to the point that you might want me to go away from your blog altogether. I had the thought that we could agree for one or both of us to ask a friend whose impartiality we could trust to to read your post, and offer an opinion about whether the incident was as bad as I interpreted it be, or rather it was, as I think you saw it, an innocent childhood memory involving loving parents and naughty, but not cruel, children in which no real harm was done. Of course, we could simply, as I think you are insisting upon doing, drop the subject. I hope you will believe that I meant you no harm because I indeed did not. I value you as someone who appreciates a dialogue that goes beyond the usual superficial blog comments, and that was where I was coming from. I like you, and I certainly had no ill intent.

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    5. I too think we should drop the subject. Before I do so I want you to know my father was not being cruel or unfeeling. He was a wonderful person. My mother was not angry because she felt he was cruel. She was upset that she had to handle the puppies by herself rather than having him to help as he normally would have. My brother and I were not cruel. We were not much more than babies who were playing and not aware of consequences for our actions until we could not get the puppies out ourselves. I will now consider the subject closed.

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    6. Given the strength of your feelings about this, I'm grateful that you find enough good in me that you still want me around.

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