Back in those days hospitals did not have separate maternity wards and mothers were in the hospitals multiple days. My mother was in the hospital to deliver my new sister Kathie. Jeanne and I were in the bathtub taking a shower/bath while my dad was in the living room with the people with whom we were staying. I was never permitted to interrupt my father under any circumstances. This caused a problem. Jeanne and I turned on the hot water and could not turn it off. It was scalding hot. I was big enough to climb out of the bath. Jeanne was not and I could not get her out. I tried. I went into the living room and tried to interrupt my dad. Not a chance. Finally, the other people understood that there was a problem and hurried into the shower. Jeanne ended up in the hospital room next to my mother. We kept it a secret from my mother until Kathie was born. The first thing I do in any house is to turn down the water heater thermostat: my kids will never get scalded from faucet water.
At some time we were in a hotel room in Buffalo for a while. Jeanne and I played in the elevator. Elevators had operators in those days. My mother thought we had disappeared.
Lots of things in Buffalo. The grade school was down the block and around the corner. Next to the swamp/dump. We had a little, concrete, brick house with a garage next to it. Not attached. My mother always worried when we fell or a dish dropped: things broke -- concrete floors are hard. 2 bedrooms upstairs. Our bedroom was on the left as you went up. Parents’ bedroom on the right. I do not remember the bathroom but I am sure it was upstairs. It was a tiny house but when you are 5 how do you know?
I kept getting hurt. The neighbor girl's German shepherd bit me in the back -- off to the doctor. I cut off the end of my right thumb with the lawn mower -- off to the doctor. On a dare, I walked in the swamp barefoot and cut my feet on the glass. Blood everywhere -- off to the doctor. My mother and the hospital/doctor got used to sewing me up. I split the flesh on my right hand so often I still have scars there. Once I took a razor blade and cut the lines of my right hand and up my fingers. I still have messed up fingerprints on my right hand. I showed my mother. "Look mommy -- hand is ok". Spread fingers "Look mom -- it bleeds all over". Wipe off. Repeat. Off to the hospital again. I became left handed somewhere along the way.
My mother learned what it was to be mother of a young boy. My father worked someplace where there were fighter planes. Cornell was in the name. I remember while he was talking, I climbed into an F-80 and pushed buttons. It made loud noises. There was excitement. It happened only once. I had puzzles of the F-80 and the F-86 but did not see any again up close.
There was a gas station outside our back door and down the block. In those days there were not fences everywhere. My mother would take us on the bus downtown to go shopping. We got on the bus at the gas station. I remember the statue of the bison downtown. These were major expeditions. When I went back in 1979, I went right to our corner. Everything was still there except the swamp. The gas station was there but abandoned.
On Saturdays we went up to the waterfall park for a picnic. We got tired of the waterfall. It took a long time before I found out that many people had never seen Niagara Falls. When we went back to Michigan, it was a long time before I saw them again.
Kindergarten was an all day thing. I was dyslexic: I always reversed the letters in my name. This was held against me. In those days, left-handed, dyslexic, hyperactive, attention-deficiency-disorders were nothing more than adjectives for which the teacher could mark you down and your parents expected to understand and correct. Sometimes I think it was better that way than the way it is now. But I wish that someone understood the problem rather than just thinking me stupid.
I had a nice sled that my uncle Bill gave me. He was my mother's youngest brother. I think it came from Bill. It could have come from her brother, Ernie. It was painted red. We were playing in the front yard. There was another sled but everybody got to use mine. Nothing was ever really mine. Things that were mine were frequently shared. I got angry and pushed Kathie off of the back and got paddled that night. I missed the point of "possession". If something were mine, it was only mine until my sisters wanted it and it became shared. The idea is that something that is mine should require my permission to be given away. Shared was a concept that had no reality until I became an adult. They thought I was selfish. I thought their concepts were perverted even if I did not know what they should have been. Communication often fails when its primary form comes from the palm of a hand.
The people across the street were really nice. They made me a nice bookcase that got painted blue and yellow enamel. They had a baby. The baby took its toy shovel and whopped me on the head. It knocked me out. When I got up and took the shovel away and tried to hit him back (just a little), his mother took me home and my father whopped me again. I should have known better than to hit somebody back. That became a life lesson: defending myself against anyone from neighbors, sisters, schoolmates, or anyone was a capital offense: I would get whopped no matter the circumstances -- just because it happened. If my father heard about it, I got whopped. Why not? After all I was the class dummy and that was the only way to teach a dummy. Did he really think I was a dummy? I shall never know. The one sentence I shall hear for the rest of my life is: "You are not stupid. You are smart. How come you always act so stupid?" It was repeated with some regularity.