Chapter 3
The Bomb(shell) and Beyond
As if learning the correct anatomical names for certain body parts in the presence of both parents, wasn’t embarrassing enough, the next topic would be completely unexpected. It turns out that my dad, who acted like a normal dad, was not my real father. I had a different biological father, and my dad had legally adopted me when I was three years old, long before the memories started kicking in. My normal surname was not my birth name. Wow, did this all seem really weird! It was too much to take in at first, and it took a while to actually sink in. One thing it didn’t change – the fact that my dad still loved me and related with me the same way now, as in the past.
The funny thing was that I was not curious about my biological father. He left the scene from the get-go, and someone else stepped in at the right time to fill that father-figure gap. So, it felt to me like there was no gap. It felt natural. Dad was my father, and that was all that was necessary. Cool – now let’s get on with life.
Some of the greatest times in my childhood happened at my grandparent’s cabin in the woods, in central Pennsylvania. It was originally a tiny house, with a tiny kitchen, but with no inside bathroom. I remember going to the outhouse in cold weather, which was not fun at all. It had two doors, one for the guys, and one for the “gulls”. They had a small TV, which only picked up two channels from the antenna, on a good day. They had a dart board, with a baseball diamond on the reverse. I would spend countless hours “playing” a complete baseball game as I threw the darts, like a big-league pitcher. My great-grandmother knew all kinds of card games, and she taught me how to play Shanghai rummy. I never did learn how to play pinnocle, though. I thought it odd that a deck of cards did not have any numbered cards lower than 9s. Whenever we got together there with many relatives, Pap would make home-made ice cream. It was the creamiest ice cream I have ever tasted, and it was even better with peanuts.
The camp had a nice wood stove, which took forever to heat up the open room in chillier weather. My grandparents eventually installed a few heater fans within several walls. They also expanded the cabin by about eight feet to the south, in order to create a bathroom, and to expand the kitchen. What a change! No more walking to the outhouse. My grandfather also had a round corn crib at the cabin, which the deer loved. Once in a while, the black bears would come for the corn. One year, my grandfather started gathering day-old donuts from a Dunkin’ Donuts shop about 30 miles away in the nearest town. He would dump them into a long wooden trough on the ground, which drew many animals for a snack, especially black bears; this, of course, was the goal.
That cabin became a great place of enjoyment through my teen years, and even into my young adult years. Roxanne (my future wife) and I would occasionally take friends and relatives for a weekend in the autumn. It was a frightening thing, in every year of life, to get to the cabin after dark, because one had to unlock the door with the possibility of a bear walking around the corner while one was turning the key. Those days ended when my grandparents could no longer take care of the building, and there was no one in the family who lived in Pennsylvania, in order to accept an inheritance on state land. One could not live outside the state and own a house on state land. Those were some of my favorite memories.
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When I was approximately 12, my parents let me walk to the town park, which was about ½ mile from our house. In the summer, I would join friends at the town pool for hours of swimming. That was well before the days of paranoia – the days before the diving board was removed. On one of these treks to the park, my middle brother accompanied me. (I had no idea where the youngest brother was. Maybe we left him at home by himself.) On our walk back home, we were about three blocks from the park. All of a sudden someone called to us. We were on the sidewalk, and the person calling was by his car, an older white car that I was not familiar with. I just knew that it was old and ugly. This guy had not shaved in some time, and he had horn-rimmed glasses. He said, “Hey boys! Don’t you remember me? I’m your uncle Cecil.” Talk about the alarm bells going off. We immediately turned around and high-tailed it out of there, hoping that he and his friends were not following us. I had never been so frightened in all my life.
In ’76 on Halloween night, I was out walking the neighborhood as usual. It was unusually cold for that time of year. As I was heading back home from down the street, I figured that I would do a little scaring before I turned in for the night. I decided to withdraw my arms from my zipped-up coat and flail around as if I were some silly ghost. To do so, I had to have high ground so that people could see me. So I started up the old neighbor’s stairs to get to his embankment. Instead, I tripped over the drain pipe in front of the stairs and fell nose-first into the concrete steps. (I bet your stomach is turning right now.) Somehow I managed to get up, screaming like a banchee, running across the street to my house, where my parents took over the first aid, and the real-life, scary, bloody scene of Halloween. Needless to say, my nose was broken. I had to wear protective headgear to school for a couple of weeks. It had a protrusion that ran down over the nose. It made me look like a freak. I was so embarrassed.
By this time, my family had quit going to Francis Raspberry’s church, and had intermittently attended a different Methodist church. There were a couple of kids my age, whom I knew from school, who went there as well. In the latter part of that school year, I was forced to go to the church’s catechism class to learn of its official doctrine. (It should have been termed “cataclysm” class.) Three other kids were in this class, which was necessary to complete in order to become a member of the church. I remember nothing from the class, as it made no impression upon me. (I was probably so bored, that it was wonderful not to remember.) I did come out of that trial as a bona fide member of the Methodist Church, with my own offering envelopes – as if a pre-teen has any money to give anyone, much less to a boring church organization. The worst thing about it all, was that I was made an acolyte. That, however, did not last long. God was granting me mercy for dealing with those catacomb classes.
I got involved in Boy Scouts around age 12. I am not sure how, because I never participated in Cub Scouts, or Webelos, or even 4-H. But it turned out to be mostly enjoyable. There were weekly scout meetings with older boys, who thought they were hot-shots, trying to make you into a quasi-military squad. I found the saluting, standing, resting, and posturing a waste of time. I just wanted to get on with earning my ranks and merit badges (and of course gaining knowledge about the same). Oh, and there were camp-outs – some in rustic tents, and some at Scout camp in cabins.
The summer camp at the Scout camp was the best. The property had a large beautiful lake, where all the water-related merit badges were earned. This was where I was afraid to swamp a canoe, until I found out that it wouldn’t sink, even full of water. There was a pavilion for the crafts merit badges. There were open fields and plenty of woods for outdoor-related merit badges. No one stayed in the cabins at summer camp. They were reserved for the counselors. One would sleep in tents on a wooden platform at various locations on the grounds. All the campsites were in the woods and had individual names like Boondocks, Duck Hollow, Bear Trace, and Totem Hill. If one’s scout troop got the draw of staying at a campsite far from the parade field, one wore that hardship like a badge of honor.
Of course, one of the best things about camp was meal time. Each troop stood in a single-file line at the front of the mess hall. A few camp counselors (older scouts) would tell jokes, or stories, and would make us sing silly songs. The loudest, straightest troop would be the first to go into the mess hall and claim its table.
One summer, I remember a particular event that happened in the mess hall. After each table got served its food, whichever table finished all its food first could request seconds, of which there were enough for maybe four tables out of twenty. The requirement for requesting seconds was that the food trays at the table had to be empty. So, someone in my troop decided to get creative. When the food trays arrived, we immediately dumped all the food onto several plates, then held up our empty food trays and requested seconds, way before any other table had the chance to dole out their food from the trays. It actually worked. Although, to this day, I am not sure, whether that was slightly underhanded, or just a bold move to stake one’s claim.
And then there was the year at camp, when I forgot to pack extra underwear. Imagine living all week in the same pair of underwear. How stupid can one be! At least I got out of them when I got to swim.
Every year at summer camp, on Friday night, parents were allowed to come for the nighttime skits and singing in the natural amphitheater, where there were bleachers for sitting. Then the troops would walk to the far end of the lake and stand single-file, facing the lake, for the ceremony of the inductions into the secret society of the Order of the Arrowhead. The “Indian chief” would stand in the middle of the lineup, next to his assistant and a roaring fire. His “runners” would get their whispered instructions from the chief, then run back and forth in either direction, seeking the inductees, pulling them from their ranks, and bringing them to the chief. The runners knew who to pick, because the troop leaders would stand behind the inductees and hold up a white handkerchief over their head as the runner would pass by. The runner sometimes needed two or three passes before knowing which boy to grab. After all inductees were brought, they were led away to a secret meeting, where further instructions were given, related to the new membership in this secret society. The first time I experienced this, it was eerie. It got to be familiar over the years, even being quite tedious.
On one of my earlier camp-outs, the leaders did not do a good job of supervising the boys. We ended up at the mouth of a cave, where several of the boys in my troop pulled out a bong and started to smoke what they said was marijuana. They passed it around to me, but I flatly refused. I thought these boys were stupid for doing this. At the very least, they were not in keeping with the Boy Scout laws, which exulted in being morally clean. At the very worst, they were doing something illegal. It was the same boys who always told the dirty jokes at night, when we would stay in the cabin at Scout camp. By the time I was 14, I had earned my own way to Life Scout, just one rank below that of Eagle Scout.
Well, back to the birds and the bees. They were flying thru my neighborhood, because there was a pretty girl, slightly younger than me, who lived a few houses away. As I approached my 14th birthday, I started taking notice of her. Then I started to spend more time with her. Then I went off to scout camp that summer, and she visited me on Friday night. That was the same year that I forgot my underwear. Well, that flame died out, and someone else swooped in behind me to court her. That someone turned out to be the same person who had gotten me interested in pop music in 7th grade. Although now, he wasn’t happy that I had been vying for his girl. Since that time, we became enemies. No big loss, because it turned out that he was just a bully, and arrogant, to boot.
The days of childhood were over, and it was time for adolescence. But something happened that autumn that would change things forever.