CHAPTER 64
The narratives from this point will jump around probably even more than the Downingtown tales did. It will be somewhat chronological, but not totally. My stories of my high school years will follow themes in my life and that of my acquaintances more than a strict timeline. Please keep that in mind and hopefully I don’t confuse anyone too much in the pages ahead. For instance this chapter begins and speaks to events in spring and summer of 1956 for the most part. The photo of me on the left, though, is the official tenth grade school portrait, so was taken a bit later than the events we will cover in this chapter. I doubt I changed that much in those few months. Note what I complained about since getting glasses, the two-third profile shot. At least I looked less woe begotten than the last school pictures at Downingtown Junior High.
Maybe I felt better because I dated briefly after moving to
Bucktown. My first were with Helen Siebold (right), the daughter of the man who sold my mom and dad the house. This was a matter of convenience, it had been her family home and there she was. Our dating period was not long-lived and consisted mainly of movies in Pottstown. Mom would take us in, drop us off and pick us up later. I think she might have went to school in Pottstown proper, but she dropped out of my life pretty quickly.
Next I had some dates with Anna Shantz from. My Sunday school class. )She is pictured left.) There was never any magic between us, however, and after taking her to a few events we just drifted apart. I recall her as being quite cute and nice, but little else. I don’t know exactly what kind of dates we had, probably events at the church. She was definitely more religious than I. This little attempt at romance soon faded as well and then I didn’t date anyone for a time, although I did ho to some parties nd dance with Joan Boder.
Rich Wilson played the tough guy on the outside, quite different from me, but inside we shared a commonality. Just a couple kids looking for approval. Possibly because Rich was the offspring of a past husband to Betty he wasn’t getting the love Elmer’s two children received. And as I stated, the Fates are fickle woman and Richard got approval from where I wanted to get it, from my dad.
Rich possessed interests that I did not. His demeanor was what my father viewed as manly however. My dad took an immediate liking to Rich quickly showing a friendliness toward him that he never demonstrated to any of my Downingtown friends. If Ronald or Stuart visited when dad was home, he was civil to a degree, but not overly welcoming. He spent more time grunting and ignoring them than talking, although he was never quite as off-putting as Mr. Tipton. It was different with Rich. He treated Rich almost as if he was the son and I was the visitor.
Did it bother me? Yes, it did. I didn’t resent Richard because of it, but it certainly didn’t bring me closer to my dad. I was angry with him.
My father’s attention to him may have been therapeutic for Rich. His relationship with his dad was as strained as mine. The fates did not arrange a similar flip-flop for me. Richard’s dad or mom never treated me as any more than a visitor to their home. Truth be told, I didn’t much care for his parents at all. They were dour and always complaining.
Richard’s father was a truck driver as was mine, but he drove a dump truck for a local gravel quarry. Therefore, Richard had his dad home nightly, but Elmer Wilson was not exactly buddy-buddy with the eldest son. There may have been a cruel reason why.
Betty Wilson had been married and divorced from a former mayor of Pottstown and Richard was that man’s offspring. Tommy and Suzy were the result of the union between Elmer and Betty. His dad and mom constantly put Richard down. Nothing he did was up to their standards. Where he did shine and show talent, they ridiculed as childish foolishness much as my dad ridiculed my art and my writing
My great grandparents Meredith had taken their anger at their own son and daughter-in-law out on my father. They felt my grandmother had seduced their son and gotten pregnant to force a marriage. My father was the result of that pregnancy and although he was an innocent baby, his grandparents acted as if he was somehow at fault. Betty acted as if Richard was the fault for her own failures. Betty Wilson had been married previously to a Mayor of Pottstown and had a bitter divorce. She was a load, large caustic woman. Richard was the son of that union, not of the one with Elmer. Tommy and Sue were Elmer’s offspring. It appeared to me that Betty took out her resentment at her ex-spouse on their child while Elmer resented him for being another man’s son. (Betty Wilson is the woman with her pinky finger to her eye in the photo on the left.)
My father on the other hand doted on Richard. For instance, dad
sometimes took Richard fishing without even asking me along. I can’t say I totally blame him. Dad had tried interesting me in fishing when I was younger. I found the activity incredibly boring, but I tried to look enthusiastic. Fishing was my dad’s only activity outside of work. He took me on a trip with my uncle and cousin, Big Francy and Little Francy. It didn’t end well. We drove into the country and walked up an old railroad bed to get to the fishing spot. We had to cross a train bridge over a gorge. The bridge was open beneath the tracks. You stepped on the ties over these foot-wide spaces to go to the other side where the fishing hole was located. My acrophobia kicked in and I couldn’t go across. Dad was pretty angry. He didn’t take me fishing after that, at least, not field and stream type fishing.
Now Rich and I did occasionally go fishing together in a stream on the other side of Pughtown about two miles down Route 100 from Bucktown.. We’d hide our bikes under the bridge and wade out in the water wearing hip boots, but I never got to where I liked the fishing. I did enjoy the splashing through the rapidly flowing stream and being out in the country. I found the fishing part dull.
As country boys we owned weapons. You would have been hard pressed to find farm boys in that county that weren’t armed. My dad had several rifles in a case between bedrooms. He gave me a 16-shot, bolt action .22. Richard had a .22, but his was a single shot. Every time he fired it he had to hand feed another bullet into a slot.
Dad also owned an old twelve-gauge side-by-side double barrel
shotgun. It was a smooth bore with hammers back of each barrel that you cocked with your thumbs before firing. We use to do a lot of target shooting in that big back yard with all our shootin’ irons. We’d set old cans far down in the field stacked on wooden boxes. Sometimes someone would toss the cans in the air and we’d blast them out of the sky. I was a very good shot. I liked shooting targets and would practice with my rifle on my own when I could afford shells.
I didn’t care much for the shotgun. It was scattershot, not precise like my rifle. It had a bad kick, but I could handle it. Dad had us out back one weekend firing it. Rich had never shot one before and didn’t expect the kick. He fired off one barrel and the recoil banged off the side of his face and into his shoulder so hard he went over on his rear end. Yeah, it was hard not to laugh. Actually, I did laugh. He learned after that to fit the butt snug and tight into his shoulder and rest his cheek on the stock for aiming.
I went small game hunting once. I didn’t want to, but dad insisted. There were a group of men and their sons who came to our field. It was early morning and chilly when we set out. My feet got numb in no time. I purposely dragged behind the others and kept hoping I wouldn’t see any game. I didn’t want to shoot anything. Nonetheless, I had a stupid rabbit pop out of the grass and freeze directly ahead of me. I froze too and rabbit and I both stared at each other. I finally did exactly what I knew not to do. I jerked the trigger rather than squeezed. My shot went high and wide and the rabbit escaped. I was glad. It was a long day and I don’t remember anyone getting much.
That result didn’t make me unhappy. It did inspire a later stories called “The American Sportsman” and , included in aa antiwar book I penned entitled Something Like A War. (2002).
We met him on the trips we made every now and then. He was sitting on a warped green bench beside a roadside stand eating a hot dog and a coke. He was like a bear. Hairy lumpy arms stuck out of his tan shirt. His hair was clipped close to the head and he had a bald spot. He began talking to us the moment we sat down at the table. We were the only other lunchers.
“My boy,” he said and for no reason pounded his fist upon the old table, rocking it and threatening to split the wood. “My boy have you ever fished the lakes and streams of these mountain valleys? If you haven’t then here and now I tell you that you’ve missed the finest moments a man can know. To stand in cold and swift running water with white foam gurgling at your knees and your hair tangling in the breeze is as close to Heaven a living man can come.’
Excerpt from “An American Sportsman” (1966)
From my Collection, Something Like a War.
(The cover of this book is of a bombed out building in Iraq where my daughter, Noelle, was bivouacked during her deployment there in 2003-04. She is on this cover, the girl sitting in the Numvee.)
Here is an excerpt from the story,“A Mighty Hunter Will I Be” (1968) in the same collection.
“’Bout light enough,” said a voice.
Men stirred from the midst of cars and campers and set loose the dogs. The dogs leaped about yelping, circling uncertainly, sniffing, settled on a direction and became a running, baying pack.
Huffing along behind the hounds, the hunting party entered tall grass. It was dryly brown, though wet with morning dew that stained the lower trouser legs. But these were men. They ignored discomfort. It was like the old days again, when they served in the war together, the big war, the old war, fighting slowly toward Germany in the bastard snows of Bastogne. This was the annual hunt that celebrated that they had lived through that together and had not died together.
Now they were civilians scattered to different parts with wives and families. Some brought sons to the reunion. This was Timmy’s first time. He was determined to do well.
The men had talked of the war around the late night fire, clicking tin coffee cups and beer cans together in memory of fallen comrades. They laughed at tricks they had pulled on each other and about the French girls they had kissed as they liberated this or that village. They joked about the early frost and compared the discomfort of the night to the discomforts of the snows of Bastogne. They clicked their cups and cans together and told funny stories about past hunts. As the fire dimmed they told tales of fallen comrades and grew silent.
Timmy had huddled against his father’s side for warmth and listened and though how much fun it all was.
It was strange, his father never talked about the war at home.
A thicket of course briar blocked their way, but didn’t stop them. Timmy’s dad hoisted him onto his broad shoulders. Other men who had young boys did much the same, and they crushed the brambles underfoot and entered the wood.
Some trees at the edge held No Hunting signs, but the farmer who posted the land was a member of the party. He nailed up the signs for others. He preserved the game for this group, for this time to die. It was their private killing stock and usually the harvest was plentiful. But this year the game was scarce. The only carcass taken the first day had been a bony rabbit, dead by one shot fired by the farmer’s son, a boy one year younger then Timmy, but already a veteran of two former hunts.
At a fence line that broke the woods in half, his dad swung him back to earth, then handed him the twelve-gauge, broken open with the two gold shell caps exposed. They glinted occasionally in the strengthening sunlight.
“Here,” said his dad, the words somewhat blurred because he held his pipe clenched between his teeth. “And lis’n good now, boy. Don’t you point at nobody, even broke like that. It’s loaded.”
He could see that. He took it gingerly, found it heavy. He looked expectantly at his dad’s broad face, partially hidden behind the pipe bowl and a cloud of smoke.
“Shut it,” said his dad.
However, before you think I was too soft toward the little
creatures of our woods, let me tell you about Rich and my fur trapping enterprise. There were muskrat living in the marshy strip between our backfield and the woods. Rich came up with an idea based upon that fact. (I wonder why I never was the one coming up with these brainstorms? First it was always Stuart; now it was Richard.) He showed up with some traps and we went into the muskrat fur business. We were going to catch a slew of these smelly rodents and get wealthy peddling their pelts. The muskrat has a brown fur, which is short and thick. It is also warm. The Canadian Mounted Police’s winter hats were made of muskrat skins. The fur was routinely died and sold in the States as Hudson Seal. Fur. We were just going to sell some local pelts.
We didn’t make any money. We caught one muskrat and neither of us had the stomach for the cruel business of trapping after killing the poor beast. We pulled up those traps and forgot that idea.
Rich and I picked up where Ron and I had left off. We rode our bikes out and about the roadways in our area. Beside our swim trips to Kirkwood we would pedal down Route 23 to places named Warwick and the Village of St. Peters (left). St. Peter’s is a small tourist place a;pmh Sy. Peter’s road. It is lined with small shops and a couple reastaurents. The difference was Ronald and I went exploring. Rich went because there were some girls he wanted to impress who lived in these places.
Because of my dad’s affinity for Rich, he was invited along on
various trips with my family, especially to the auto races. Yeah, watching speeding cars on dirt tracks always turning left was a Meredith tradition. It wasn’t only stocks any more. We were going to a variety of tracks. Rich was right there with Dot Bernard and Elmer Lentz going to the Midget Racers in Lancaster on June 23 and came along to the stock cars with the Seibolds on July 7.
Elmer Lentz was a long time truck driving friend of my dad. Elmer had a girlfriend named Dot Bernard. They visited us a lot and both were very nice. They went together about 15 years and finally married in June 1968. The last I ever saw of them was on Christmas Day 1972. I am not certain what happened to them after that. I seem to recall that Elmer Lentz was killed in a truck accident.
Richard and I played a lot of catch over that first summer, but often Rich would want to take a bike ride just to escape his brother and
sister. His sister (pictured left) especially wanted to tag along wherever Rich and I went. She was only in grade school and could be a pain. She was a definite tomboy and tried to out-do us in any dumb teenager stunt. On July 11 she was injured falling off her bike while riding with us. I think she was riding hands free or trying some stunt and hit debris in the road. She banged herself up pretty good. She bounced right back a week later, Band-Aids here and there, to accompany, my mom and grandmother, her brother Tommy and me on a trip to the Downingtown Farmers Market.
Rich and I took her out in the field one day while we shot targets or should I say she trailed along like a yipping puppy. She nagged and nagged to shoot the rifles. Rich refused to let her. His brother Tommy was along and he and Rich took turns with their .22. It was Tommy’s turn, but instead of taking a shot he handed her the loaded rifle. She asked how to hold it, how to aim it and how to shoot while the whole time swinging about in a semi-circle pointing it at us. If she had accidentally pulled the trigger on that single shot rifle she would have only got one of us, preferably Tommy. If I had given her my 16-shot repeater she could have wiped us all out and maybe some cars on the highway as well.
Kids shouldn’t play with guns.
There were a couple of pistols of dad’s he kept hidden in the
bedroom. When no one was home, which was a lot, I used to fish them out from beneath his sox. One was a six-cylinder revolver; the other a .45 automatic you loaded with a
clip into the handle. Dad hid them in his sock drawer thinking no one knew they were there, but I knew they were there and sometimes took them out just to handle. I had shot the revolver a few times, but that was always when he was home.
On June 24, only a couple of weeks after I had moved to the new
home, we found Topper dead in her box. We believe she accidentally strangled herself trying to escape from her pen. It was a shame. She was a loving gentle dog. She was only around 8 years old.
There was an enclosed shed off the kitchen and the clothes washer and dryer were there. We always used the shed door to enter and exit the house, never the front door. The front door was to the living room,
I saw it there while getting something from the cabinet for mom. I got nosy and the next time I was home alone went digging in his duffel. I went searching through that bag during times I was home alone, like I said, I was alone a lot and always looking for things to do. His old sailor uniforms were in it. I found this little booklet, “Gray’s Guide to War Ships” or some such title. It was interesting. It showed you how to identify all the different vessels on the seas during World War II.
What really drew my attention though was a folder holding some
ten-by-eight sheets of paper. They were pinup pictures, drawings of women in various predicaments that half pulled their clothing off. One girl with a picnic basket had her skirt caught atop a barbwire fence, which lifted it above her bottom. In the distance stood a bull and on the ground halfway between was a spilled picnic basket. Another showed a woman blown by a strong wind that turned an umbrella inside out while blowing her skirt above her waist. I found them immediately arousing, but as I said it didn’t take much when I was 15. I put everything back, but I made several visits to his bag over the coming weeks. Now, I still didn’t really understand this effect the pictures had on me, why looking at them caused a reaction in certain parts of my body or why that reaction felt so good. The cause was not important to me; the feeling good was. I was beginning to crave that feeling more and more.
I always liked taking baths as a kid. My mom never had any difficulty getting me to bathe; she had trouble getting me out of the tub. In grade school I would play with boats or other toys. I had a little submarine you filled with baking soda or some such household ingredient and it would float and dive in reaction to the water. When I reached my young teens I gave up the toys for books. I stayed in the water for an hour or more reading. I would wash myself, then slide down against the back of the tub with my book. I had turned 15 and not long after my birthday I was bathing in my usual manner. I ran a soapy washcloth down my chest to my groin area. When I reached my privates my penis got hard. This didn’t startle me because that happening had become a very common occurrence. It seemed like almost anything would cause this reaction anymore, to the point it was sometimes a nuisance. Anytime we went some place in the car the motion would bring it on. I was constantly trying to guard against being embarrassed when I stood up at school. I still didn’t quite understand why this happened, although I knew by
now I was far from the only boy with the problem. Anyway, it felt really good as I ran that warm washcloth over my privates. It felt
more intense than I had previously experienced and I couldn’t stop washing with the warm water and soap and suddenly…I had discovered masturbation.
As Labor Day approached I got nervous about starting school. Richard being my age I thought I had someone to ride the bus with and show me the ropes. This wasn’t the case. Richard had been held back twice in his schooling and was two grades below me. We didn’t even go to the same school. He went to Warwick Junior High School. I was going in the opposite direction to North Coventry High, better known as Norco.
Norco was actually just inside the Pottstown City limits about five
miles from my home. I had to take a school bus, which I hadn’t done since third grade. The bus stop was right at the top of our driveway next to our mailbox. I walked out to the stop the first day and Dave Bishop (pictured right) came across the street to wait as well. We said hello and chatted a bit. I assumed we’d sit together on the bus, but he entered first and immediately sat down next to someone he knew. There was an empty seat right behind him next to a skinny kid with a ducktail haircut and leather jacket. When I reached that seat this guy moved over toward the aisle and wouldn’t let me sit down. The two guys behind him giggled. Here we go again, I thought. I was the last stop going in and I
figured that was probably the last seat. I kept moving back the aisle as the bus pulled away and a guy near the back motioned to an empty seat across from him. His name was Matthew John (left) and he carried a Bible with his books. He and I became friends, even though he was quite religious; in fact, he planned to become a minister, which he did. Unfortunately Matthew died young, first of our class to do so. He had a heart problem and perished by his thirties.
Pottstown had its own high school where the Townies went.
North Coventry, known as Norco, was a county school for farm kids and country bumpkins like me. It only served tenth through twelfth grades. They were currently building a new school out near where I lived that would consolidate all the scattered district schools under one roof. Meanwhile the old decentralized system was it. The county had built Norco in
1912. It was a brick, squat cube building with dark corridors lined with brown lockers. The classrooms were dingy and dirty. We had old-fashioned desks, bolted to the floor with seats that folded down from the front.
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