***(from the chronicles written in 1990) The following series, "Foothills of Childhood" is not really a creative writing, not a true embellishing flourish of words. It is merely a journalistic approach of times past which I basically 'compiled' in 1990 to entertain my boyfriend while he passed 5 plus months in jail. well, they can't prove he committed ALL those murders...kidding...he was in for a DUI...one of several. So take your relaxed time, and don't expect a Pulitzer Prize winner here. Okay?
Part 2
While living at Reno, Pennsylvania, in the new little house, life became even more Tom Sawyerish. My big brother Charles was 13 years older than myself. He had completed time in Korea during the conflict, and he had converted to the Mormon faith. Charles was now a very nice person, pretty mellow, gentle, able to appreciate everything there was. He never lacked for a smile or a laugh, and became my Mother's darling, due to his constant doting manner.
Charles lifted weights constantly, something he had picked up from Dad. He dressed like a real nonconformist, a true Bohemian, probably due more to the absence of money and good taste than to the attempt to be different. He never tried to be different, it surely just came naturally to him.
He wore an Army green suit jacket, probably army issue dress, with a pair of ordinary dress pants, no jeans, no socks, an old pair of Cordovans, no shirt under the dress jacket...just tan on a hirsute chest. He rode an old bicycle and sometimes he rode it with me, riding handle bars, or I rode mine alongside Charles. We traveled through the woods on old roads made just for woods people, like the ones that live in Appalachia, or for travel by jeeps that needed to check the many oil lines in the hills.
It was hot when we went, but there was plenty of mud and quicksand in the hills. Sometimes we would travel for hours and suddenly I would call to his attention the fact that we were passing a poster on a tree which I had already read some time ago.....
We found an overhanging boulder sheltering a cave overlooking the Allegheny high up on a ridge. Dead-center was an ancient rock carved into the shape of a solid chair. It had been a ceremonial seat for the Indians and Mound Builders. It was wonderful. The view went from hill to hill and from one city to the other.
Strangely enough, from the ceremonial seat, one could look across to the opposite hill to an area known as Rich Hill and see one of our family's old homesteads. It was a very large prestigious looking hacienda-styled home built by a rich uncle whose name was John Rich. The roof was red tile, there was a square area used for gala events to set off hot air balloons around the turn of the century. that is...the 19th to the 20th.
Uncle John went on to be the subject of many interesting tales within the family circle. He made the paper many times, as did his wife, my Aunt Lena, even the New York Times, but we are talking about 1916. Especially when he was indicted on a charge for some kind of stamp collecting embezzlement, and now we are talking about 1930. Hers was more interesting, if not criminal. We will speak of that later!
Anyway, Charles taught me to never go into the woods without a great deal of rope, just in case you do fall into the quick, or fall into one of the old wells, many of which were just boarded over from a hundred-fifty years ago and more. We found a small settlement of woods-folk one day; The kind that lived on both sides of a small dirt path in about four little wood shacks. They all had old hickory-twig chairs and maybe a porch swing out front.
The women all looked like the men, only they wore dresses of flour sack material, and smoked the same corn cob pipes as the men. The men wore old tattered felt hats and straw hats and overalls and looked like they were very inbred, which they were. Everybody had the same name before they were married, oh, maybe they were not married, but they were certainly all related.
And they had dogs and cats sitting on the porch with them, chickens pecking around, and I don't believe any of them could play a banjo to save their souls.
Years later, I would work with the Head Start program, when Lyndon Johnson first initiated the War on Poverty. I would meet some of these same types again searching through the woods for kids who were not registered with the state. There were children eight years old who had never seen a pencil, never seen an orange, a crayon, a pair of glasses. It was not culture shock to me, however. I did feel privileged, even though my own shack was bleak at times as a younger child. Nothing was as dark as these spots.
In the new house, my next door neighbor, Linda, the girl one year older than myself, had become my new best pal. We dedicated a great deal of time to our resolve that we could grow up one day without sprouting breasts. "Imagine, the humiliation of walking around with those things poking out at everyone, you can't pretend they aren't there! Everyone sees them!"
We were adamant, and for a longer time, Linda lucked out. She held out until she was about 18 before her breasts decided they could no longer grow concave. She also resisted full blown puberty until she was at least 16, an achievement most worthy and highly unusual.
I failed the test by the time I was 12. It was my ruin. They were not big, but I knew they were there, and so did Billy Bean and Denny Weeter. I used to get dressed for bed at night on the floor behind my bed because I just knew the local pervert boys were outside somewhere trying to peer in at me and every girl I knew.
They probably were, because just that same time, I had invented a handful of periscopes out of cereal boxes and pocket mirrors, for myself and my little girlfriends so we could 'spy' on these guys in THEIR houses! (However, we restricted our views to the living room, kitchens and dark root cellars.)
These periscopes enabled us in the "Detective Spy Club" to see up over window sills, and down into cellar window wells. We were smarter than the guys. and we were better at being Huckleberry Finns than they ever could be. Boys were really stupid back there. That didn't make them special. Boys were really stupid everywhere. (Denny grew up to be Dr. Dennis, a nuclear physicist and taught the same at Penn State. How silly.)
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