I’ve been in an out of the hospital this whole month…and 3 times this week alone. Nothing they can find to answer to the symptons, but hell, my arms and hands look like a junkie’s. I have little energy right now…so I’m posting something I wrote last year from “Memoirs of a Rotten Childhood”…
Which actually is pretty funny. I was encouraged to write this “Memoir”, but felt it was pretty pretentious. Aren’t you mostly supposed to be dead before you write a memoir? Well, I feel pretty dead this week, so I’ll post this and maybe a few more chapters from “Rotten” this week.
Bear with me until I get my steam back….
Lady Nyo
from: “Memoirs of a Rotten Childhood”
In order to visualize how any of this happens, you must realize that 1950’s central New Jersey was pasture land and milk cows, and then, gardens, lots of gardens. Strawberry fields, pastures and meadows. It was, after all, the Garden State. What it is now, I don’t know.
Houses were placed rather far from each other, and most had much acreage. Everything was bound by the Millstone River, and only the left side had residences.
People back then were artists, and architects, and airline pilots and musicians. They produced children that were musical and artistic. No dullards were allowed, in fact, the area of River Road and the surroundings was something of a bohemian culture for the adults. I think the dull children were drowned in the Millstone River.
I remember lots of rather ‘beat’ parties at our house, where my mother and father would serve white wines and people would sit on the wide plank pine floors. I remember Halloween masquerades for the adults. My mother in fishnet stockings, stiletto heels, a ballet leotard, and for some reason, cat ears on the top of her head. I must have been pretty young, because my nursery was set up in the future upstairs bathroom. I remember her leaning over me and the smell of Woodhue floating off her into my mouth as she kissed me good night. Must have been some party, because I heard her complain chillingly to my father that he had ‘slipped her a Mickey.’ She apparently had vomited in the one of the four fireplaces downstairs, and blamed my father for her drunkenness. My mother never got drunk, so this memory remains strong of my childhood.
Neighbors were not close in the sense of friendly, for people were competing for the same jobs at Princeton. There was bonhomie amongst neighbors that broke down over the years.
There was little to do in the countryside during the 50’s, and the 60’s. Chase Duncan Campbell’s cows from the summer to the winter pasture, and he had a lot of milk cows, swim in the Raritan river and skate on the canal at winter. Play Northwest Passage in the woods. My brothers would give my dolls Viking funerals on the river, complete with matches.
Children knew each other for miles around just because we all went to the same country schools. The school bus, driven by Mr. and Mrs. Johnson from the time I was in kindergarten through high school, was the same damn bus. I can still smell that metal bar that we were supposed to hold on around corners. There are a lot of corners on Jersey roads. They also gave us kittens on a regular basis, which my mother would make us give back. She hated cats, and I grew to hate my mother just for that.
One day, when I had to be about nine years old, which would be about 3rd grade I believe, I was messing around, turning around in my seat, sitting up on my haunches, and jabbering to the kids in the seat in front of me. In the 50’s little girls wore starched dresses with a petticoat, nothing with lace, all utilitarian cotton, and cotton underpants. At that age, there is no sign of the puberty to come, so there is no decorum, just a silly, bouncy little girl, playing in her seat.
However, behind me was Kevin ____. Blond hair, green eyes, mysterious Kevin. He must have been fourteen or so, maybe fifteen. Something about my wiggling behind caught his attention, and I felt a finger pierce my butt. It was a very smooth action, and I turned and just stared at him. I think he was as shocked as I was, for no words were exchanged between us. I sat, in shock, and he sat back in his seat, probably as confused as to what he had done as I was.
Kevin came from a family that was Norwegian. Almost everyone was either Norwegian or Dutch. We were Hungarian, so we floated. Kevin was the oldest boy, and there were only boys in that family. He lived only two houses away, and I remember him working on his Morgan car, and flying his bi-plane over our fields.
I think I fell in love with Kevin ____ from that day when he dared to stick his finger in my fanny. Or maybe I felt I should love him. Either way, I had a major, irrational crush on him all through high school, even though the scoundrel never stuck his hand up my privates again and ran off with a girl named Bonnie when I was in eighth grade.
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2008
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