For years I was afraid in the place of my childhood, and even after I moved out to go to college, I would get a creepy feeling whenever back alone in that house. It was nothing that couldn't be explained. The expansion of the ducts as the furnace came on caused creaking. Cleaning out the crawls revealed no supernatural habitation. No witches. But I was terrified to be alone. Up until middle school I would ask my dad to walk me upstairs to bed.
Our house was one of two dozen split level ranches in a cul-de-sac twenty miles north of Chicago. The dirt roads leading out of the city had been paved into highways, and the collection of farms in the middle of oak tree savannah turned into villages where dads with briefcases could commute to the crowded city. My grandfather, my mom's dad, a comptroller from Pittsburgh, bought one of the two models available in 1954, planted by the developers who were busy sewing seeds for schools, banks, and churches.
It was a cozy house with three bedrooms, six stairs up the landing that separated upstairs from downstairs. My uncles shared the room facing south with a view of several mighty oaks and a creek that ran through fields of clover and brambles of wild berries. My mom, the middle child and high school teeny-bopper, slept in the middle bedroom while her parents Carl and Alice occupied the room that looked out over the rest of Marcee Lane. The rec room down the stairs off the kitchen was where the new black and white t.v. sat in the cool below-ground space. Two windows at ground level allowed light into the room with its brown/beige checkerboard tiled floor.
They called my grandfather Finny, a nickname given the tall Swede, lumping him in with all the other Scandinavians who found their way to the Midwest. He worked in the city, but enjoyed his new home where pheasant hunting on the weekends with his sons was just outside his door. He would stop at the old Cypress Inn after work, situated on the way home from the train station. Sometimes my uncles got to hang out with him there--David was approaching 6'4" and could arm wrestle his way to a free beer. He was putting himself through John Marshall Law School at night and working days. His younger brother Jay, who was barely out of elementary school, got to play skittle bowling while the men drank.
Our house was one of two dozen split level ranches in a cul-de-sac twenty miles north of Chicago. The dirt roads leading out of the city had been paved into highways, and the collection of farms in the middle of oak tree savannah turned into villages where dads with briefcases could commute to the crowded city. My grandfather, my mom's dad, a comptroller from Pittsburgh, bought one of the two models available in 1954, planted by the developers who were busy sewing seeds for schools, banks, and churches.
It was a cozy house with three bedrooms, six stairs up the landing that separated upstairs from downstairs. My uncles shared the room facing south with a view of several mighty oaks and a creek that ran through fields of clover and brambles of wild berries. My mom, the middle child and high school teeny-bopper, slept in the middle bedroom while her parents Carl and Alice occupied the room that looked out over the rest of Marcee Lane. The rec room down the stairs off the kitchen was where the new black and white t.v. sat in the cool below-ground space. Two windows at ground level allowed light into the room with its brown/beige checkerboard tiled floor.
They called my grandfather Finny, a nickname given the tall Swede, lumping him in with all the other Scandinavians who found their way to the Midwest. He worked in the city, but enjoyed his new home where pheasant hunting on the weekends with his sons was just outside his door. He would stop at the old Cypress Inn after work, situated on the way home from the train station. Sometimes my uncles got to hang out with him there--David was approaching 6'4" and could arm wrestle his way to a free beer. He was putting himself through John Marshall Law School at night and working days. His younger brother Jay, who was barely out of elementary school, got to play skittle bowling while the men drank.
On a quiet March morning in 1958, Jay was away. He had been sent to live with cousins, a nurturing crew of fun-loving boisterous Swedish/German Pittsburghers in a place where Jay was born and where he could go to school and concentrate, and get away from the gloomy residue of his mother's death from cancer the previous fall. Finny hadn't been able to adjust. After caring for his wife, and on leave from his job, Finny drank himself into a false sense of comfort, and slipped into a depression, exacerbated by losing his job.
There was another reason for Jay to go to kin. The house on Marcee Lane was getting crowded. My mom had married my dad, and I was a new addition to the family.
My dad was a street smart city kid with a winning personality and Frank Sinatra style. After a short stint in the army between wars, he was making good money as a milkman for Bowman Dairy, a route that would bring him out to the suburbs. He had plans on becoming a lawyer, and had taken a semester at DePaul, but with rumblings out of Korea and an offer to get service out of the way that could get him out before deployment, my dad left college and did his stint. When he returned, however, he couldn't pass up the urging of a friend to join up at the dairy which was paying a decent salary.
The route brought him out to Northbrook, where he often chatted with Alice and charmed her so much that she readily gave him permission to take her daughter Judy out on a date. Judy, a senior in high school, soon to graduate, was attracted to my dad and his charm, his red convertible and gifts of black lilies (an idea lifted from the Brenda Starr comic strip).
Next came baby (me), and moving in with the in-laws, and Alice gone to cancer, David swamped with the service, then school and work, and Jay in sixth grade, and off to Pittsburgh, Finny regularly into his cups. The Cocker Spaniel, Tokie, didn't like a baby taking her a notch down on the cute charts, and after a long Chicago winter it was difficult to imagine that it would roll over into spring. The Soviets were nuking it up and celebrating Sputnik. Ginsburg howled. Miles blew.
On a quiet March morning, just before sunrise, while everyone slept, my grandfather was at the end of a long and lonely night. Another day would not be possible. He took his gun out. Where was it? In a bedroom drawer? A handgun or his hunting rifle? He went to the middle bedroom. Where was I? That was the room where my crib was kept. I was not yet one year old. One shot fired. My mother awoke and screamed. That's what my dad said.
I didn't find out about my grandfather's suicide until I was in my forties. My mother was dying of cancer after a long, hard life of living with multiple sclerosis. My dad wanted me to know the secret. He wanted me to finally know that her pain was much deeper than physical malady. She had lived a life of joy and laughter, and had never said a word about her parents, although I knew she loved them because she always smiled fondly at the old home movies of her childhood. But, I had rarely heard their names spoken, or stories of their past She had raised me and my sister with the focus on us only. I don't know how that was possible.
My father remembers little of that morning. In fact he remembers nothing. Ambulances. Police. Funeral. He doesn't recall. He said he concentrated on taking care of my mom. With his dad's help, he bought the house.
I tried to look up the public records, but they have been destroyed. I thought to find the police chief from that year who was quoted in the small Chicago Tribune story reporting the death. He passed away years ago.
So I'm left with cobwebs, and in the still of the night, I listen for voices. For the witches who surely lived in my basement.
On a quiet March morning, just before sunrise, while everyone slept, my grandfather was at the end of a long and lonely night. Another day would not be possible. He took his gun out. Where was it? In a bedroom drawer? A handgun or his hunting rifle? He went to the middle bedroom. Where was I? That was the room where my crib was kept. I was not yet one year old. One shot fired. My mother awoke and screamed. That's what my dad said.
I didn't find out about my grandfather's suicide until I was in my forties. My mother was dying of cancer after a long, hard life of living with multiple sclerosis. My dad wanted me to know the secret. He wanted me to finally know that her pain was much deeper than physical malady. She had lived a life of joy and laughter, and had never said a word about her parents, although I knew she loved them because she always smiled fondly at the old home movies of her childhood. But, I had rarely heard their names spoken, or stories of their past She had raised me and my sister with the focus on us only. I don't know how that was possible.
My father remembers little of that morning. In fact he remembers nothing. Ambulances. Police. Funeral. He doesn't recall. He said he concentrated on taking care of my mom. With his dad's help, he bought the house.
I tried to look up the public records, but they have been destroyed. I thought to find the police chief from that year who was quoted in the small Chicago Tribune story reporting the death. He passed away years ago.
So I'm left with cobwebs, and in the still of the night, I listen for voices. For the witches who surely lived in my basement.
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