Sputterpub's Blog

     When I was almost 8, Dad brought the Austin Healey home.

Of course he purchased it, but it was as if he acquired a pet for the family, introducing us to it and giving it time to acclimate (he called that breaking in the engine).

I assume the Buick (waiting in the garage like an old mare who would steady the young colt) was new when acquired, but it was a 1953 model and I was a 1950 model, so I wasn’t stocking many articulate memories from then. The Healey is the first and most exciting new car I can recall.

It was a two-tone roadster, red and black. It had snap-on plastic windows and a removable metal bar to support its “tonneau” cover. It came with a soft top but that was no fun: too claustrophobic. Topless it was a dream. There was plenty of room in the front for you to extend your legs, and you rode so low that you experienced every nuance of the road.

It didn’t have synchromesh; Dad showed me how to double-clutch to downshift. He also demonstrated controlled skids at low speeds on the icy streets of the development behind ours. The best lesson he gave me was how to shift gears without the clutch. It’s pretty easy to go from gear to neutral, but to proceed from there takes a careful hand and ear. Windows open. Radio off.

Dad had other cars, a few before and many since. I don’t remember much about the old Austin except the sun roof hole. I do remember the Rover sedan, the rotary-engine Mazda, the seasons of Saabs. But the Austin Healey was the best and stayed the longest. It moved with us from New York to California in 1958 and then from Chula Vista to Larkspur in 1965 (Dad and the boys drove north in it, while Mom and I took the white 1961 Corvair Monza). It got a paint job and became all red, but I can’t remember if that was before or after it was stolen and recovered.

We had a lot of fun in the Healey. We always waved at other roadsters. Dad’s lessons helped make me and Steve car snobs. We disdained American models: Fords with their round tail-lights and then-ahead Chevys. We boycotted German-made vehicles, so we didn’t buy Volkswagens, carefully pronounced Porsche and mocked Carmen (Karmann) Ghias for the Bugs they really were. Steve longed for a Jaguar XKE but we never would have called it that. No: he wanted an “E type.”

     When I was not yet 4 years old, my parents bought their first house and we came from Levittown, NY to Glen Cove. We moved into a brand-new, single level, three-bedroom two-bath home, near the bent end of a cul-de-sac called Leuce Place. Our house was on the right side of the street as you approached the dead end. Beyond the bulb and also behind our side of the street, there was still farm land. It was soon subdivided and developed; the new homes would contain not only several of my schoolmates but also the half-staircases that defined the new and silly split level design.

The town’s old movie theater was called The Glen. It had closed or would by the time I was old enough to sit through a film. By then the new Cove had opened its doors.

If you went out the open end of our street and proceeded kind of straight, you came to what we called the Bohacks hill. It was a steep drop to a main drag on which you’d then turn your car left and left again, into the parking area for the big Bohacks supermarket. That mini-mall also had a liquor/sundry store and I remember a cigar-box ballot container near its cash register, in which one could vote for Miss Rheingold. Rheingold was then the beer that was “extra dry.” Their ads used The Bridge on the River Kwai – Colonel Bogey March (Rheingold, the beer that’s ex-tra dry) the same way Malt-O-Meal (Winners… warm up with Malt-O-Meal) used it a few years later.

If you weren’t in a car, you didn’t have to go all the way to the main drag to make the left. You could cut through the patch of berries, a vacant lot between the road downhill and the mini-mall. The blackberries were tasty in the summer; the brambles were obnoxious the rest of the year. Or you could turn left even before the berries. Parker Doctor (Dr. Parker) had his converted-house office just off the downhill street and about halfway there; you could cut through his parking lot and plow downhill to the liquor store end of the shopping area.

At least one winter, I remember sledding down the Bohacks hill with Dad and Steve. Triple decker. That may have been the same season it was so icy we could skate on the sidewalks (but they were slow, cracked, uneven). And it was probably that winter when a neighbor’s car, warming up in his driveway, escaped its parking brake and rammed our 1953 dark green Buick. We called our car Betsy. Not only was Betsy repaired, she moved with us to California in 1958.

     When I was 7½, I had my best family vacation. There were later good and memorable trips, like to Lake Arrowhead where I remember rising early with Steve and fishing with American cheese for bait, or the time we hauled a fold-out trailer behind our white Corvair, struggling up Tioga Pass to Tuolomne Meadows, coping with the nose bleed Andy suffered as soon as we reached ten thousand feet. There were annual trips, usually somewhat rustic, but the one to New Hampshire in 1957 impressed me the most.

We were part of a new demographic group – Jewish campers. Our family was headed by a Jewish mechanical engineer (almost an oxymoron), and my parents (the children of immigrants who made homes in Manhattan and Brooklyn) were settlers in the suburbs who would soon move to the west coast.

It was an eight hour drive from our house in Glen Cove to the cabin we rented on the shore of the New Hampshire lake. We vacationed with the Weisbins: Roz and Jack and their son Jimmy who was my age and their daughter Randy who was Steve’s. The thing I didn’t notice then and am very struck with now? Our parents, who were happy and silly but very in charge, were then in their early 30s.

Dad and Jack drank beer together: Pabst Blue Ribbon. They and the mothers had cocktails in the evening. They had private jokes and we were included even if we didn’t understand. Most were inspired by billboards we read on the long drive up (Hungry, Brother? Eat!).

Each family had a little painted wooden cabin. All cabins had boardwalks to the dock over the lake water.

Lake Winnepesaukee is not huge, but I remember being told that it’s the largest lake contained within one state in the US. It had a boulder floor. No matter how many swimmers or boats it hosted, its mud stayed on the bottom and its water stayed clear.

What I remember best about that vacation was the exquisite sense of freedom I enjoyed, for I was able to swim underwater, eyes open and astounded by the view, just about whenever I wished.

I also got my first burn there. Not from sun: from a hot potato. My mother applied butter to the injury, which we now know is not the right response (ice ice ice). My finger was potato-coated and then buttered, like it was edible.

All four parents agreed that we’d return the next year, but then both families had babies and changed plans.

   When I was around 7, my mother attempted to wash my mouth out with soap.

It was wintertime, and we lived then in New York. Later that day I knew we were due to see the doctor for (yuck) vaccines of some sort, but we had the morning to play.

Mom warned us not to eat snow.

She must have been having a problem about it, because she was specific in her threat: she’d wash my mouth out with soap if she caught me eating any snow.

Well, what could I do? The snow was fresh and shining white with flecks of reflected sun. Telling a kid not to eat snow is like telling her not to pee in the pool.

Mom caught me. She decided to make an example of me, or show me she really meant the threat; she hauled me inside and into the bathroom where next thing I knew she was not only yanking me around but shoving the white bar of soap at my face and ordering me to take a bite. I didn’t know how biting fit into the washing idea but I could tell she was on the edge, so I bit, and I removed a chunk of the soap with my teeth. It felt like it was half the size of a regular marshmallow. Mom was right there so I couldn’t spit it out, and I sure wasn’t going to chew it; I put my energy into the swallow.

It felt like the chunk got caught halfway down. Maybe it did, or maybe it just scraped my throat so it felt like it was stuck. The aftereffect was quite unpleasant.

Then Mom took me and Steve to Parker Doctor. Of course he was Dr. Parker, but we reversed his name between us like some kind of private joke.

I endured a shot in the behind while suffering a lump of soap in my throat.

It was not a good day. And it didn’t cure me of eating snow.

   When I was 1 to 3, we lived in Levittown, NY. That’s the site of my earliest memories.

I didn’t know till I was an adult that the two Levittowns (New York and Pennsylvania) were the first tract home suburban developments in the USA. I didn’t understand till I asked, that my parents rented that house.

I remember the kitchen area with the door to the white-fenced yard. I remember the placement and appearance of the front-loading laundry machines, because they scared me, but my parents have mentioned that terror so often that I may be recalling their words more than the appliances. I can almost summon up the sight of the big television set in the living room. I remember the sidewalk out front, and the doll carriage a neighbor had, that I wanted so badly my parents used it as a bribe to try to get me toilet trained. I can still recall the look of the staircase in that neighbor’s house, which seems to have created my preference for two-story residences.

But the most vivid memory I have from Levittown and from the age of 3 is this:

I had a wooden toy box with a painted scene, I want to say Western, on its lid. My mother stood me on the top of that box, to pull my clothes on, before we got in the car to drive Dad to the train station. Imagine it: the car was a gray sedan with a big bench seat, no seat belts, and an unpadded dashboard.

I stood between my parents as Mom drove and Dad sat on my right. There was a Jolly Roger restaurant at the station. I liked to look at its big colored lights as Dad walked away from us, suited and with case in hand, to board the train for New York City.

Although I don’t get many comments posted in this blog, I do receive some feedback. Here are additional words about two subjects.

Regarding horses and girls (Riding – September 21), my friend Geri avers that, for her, the power of the experience was learning she could control something as formidable as a horse. And I think I felt some of that too, but I was also experimenting with surfing and skateboards, I was bicycling around, I was exploring with friends the caves and cliffs behind the high school. We were sneaking into unused farm buildings in the area and creating our own secret places. There were plenty of lessons in control.

The way I view the riding era, I was 12-ish and my father was withdrawing a bit. Please understand – he continued to be wonderful and instructive, interesting, thoughtful, supportive – but he backed off compared to his earlier presence. I’m sure he thought he was giving me space. I’m sure he was a little intimidated by my incipient womanhood. But the fact is, the horse felt a bit like a dad, standing near but informing me with calm confidence that I didn’t need the training wheels any more.

Regarding The Spaghetti Squash Incident (September 20), both kids commented. Katie posted that she likes every form of winter squash except the abominable spaghetti variety. It’s Danny who boycotts them all. And he reports that the real horror in the episode was me making them eat it anyway! I have NO recollection of that but I totally believe him. As Lisa says, it’s not up to the abuser to define abuse or recite the memory.

Oh but I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.

   When I was nearly 9 we moved into our new Cinderella Home in Chula Vista. I had no idea then or now why that name was chosen, unless it was the slightly gingerbread trim on the ranch houses or the pastel shades of the offered exteriors.

The tract development into which our family moved was in a new part of town, slightly east of the established community. Our streets were named E. Whitney, E. Mankato, and E. Shasta, and I don’t think I knew while we lived there that all were called for mountains. That was an odd choice, for while there are a few slopes and hills in Chula Vista, they weren’t in our neighborhood.

The houses were all similar. I think there were three or four floorplans from which to choose, and our fivesome moved into one of the larger models. The three streets were straight and regular, so much so that when I was a little older I could ride my bike around the block with no hands (the circuit was about half a mile). The sidewalks had big squares. All the parkway plants were pepper trees, and they didn’t get very large in the seven years we lived there. Just about everyone’s back yard ended in a slope to the standard six-foot redwood fence, and the slopes were invariably covered with ice plant. A high school was under construction up the street; I’d attend it after another six grades.

But I’d experience all that after we moved in. First we came to California and tarried in Coronado while the house was completed. Steve and I even started school in Chula Vista before we moved into the new house; Mom had to deliver us there each morning and retrieve us when we were done, and with Steve in kindergarten and me in third grade that meant different end times and a lot of trouble for her. So we were in Chula Vista daily, and we visited the house while it received its finishing touches.

That must have been how I did the damage. One afternoon I got into the almost-completed house with a new friend. It was probably Candy Carson. Her block was done before mine and she already lived in the neighborhood.

The house looked done to me. It was without furniture or carpet or curtains but the walls and fixtures were all there and the utilities were connected. The kitchen was in the front of the house and the living room looked on the back yard. Between them, above the kitchen sink, there was an open pass-through space to the living room. And the kitchen sink had a sprayer for washing pots and stuff. I tried it. That’s how I managed to shoot water through the pass-through and onto the living room floor.

My father had a fit. I’ll never forget how he raged about me ruining the wood. That’s when I first heard the word “warp.”

We got past it of course. And the living room received wall-to-wall carpeting. Knowing my parents as I came to, full carpet was always going to be their choice for living and family rooms. Go figure.

     When I was 8¾, we moved from New York to California. The New York airport was then called Idlewild.

I’d been to California once before, three years earlier. Me, Steve, Mom and Dad flew out to visit Dad’s family. I had loved that trip: the plane, Disneyland, even all the cousins and aunts and uncles.

This flight was not so good. Mom had to make the trek with three kids and no husband. Between loneliness and bladder distress I was not comfortable.

We changed planes in LA and continued to San Diego, toward our new Cinderella Home in Chula Vista. But we couldn’t live there yet. The house wasn’t finished. We stopped in Coronado for a few weeks. We stayed in a residential hotel called the El Cordova.

Across the street was the Del Coronado. It’s the biggest wooden resort on the west coast, then and now, and then it was more exotic because Coronado was almost an island. It was reached by ferry from San Diego or the long Silver Strand between ocean and bay, from Imperial Beach. The bridge wasn’t built until 1969.

So there we were, in a mission-style place, across the main drag from a beautiful monster hotel, a block away from the Pacific Ocean. It was pretty cool for us kids.

We had Halloween there. We ate those Japanese gel candies that are wrapped in edible rice paper. We were charmed.

The El Cordova had a pool too. Steve and I were not allowed in it without permission and supervision. Since Dad was away all day and Mom was busy with a baby and other things, we didn’t think we got enough pool time. We disobeyed and swam on our own. It was the only time Dad ever belted us. He bent me over one hotel room chair and Steve over its mate, removed his belt, and whupped our butts. I’m thinking now that my parents were probably pretty stressed by then. It wasn’t cool for them.