Seeking a Life (eBook)

Chapter 2:
Leaving for Parma

By this time, Mom had been in the Dixmont State Hospital for two years. Every Saturday morning, at about 9 or 10 a.m., Dad drove his four kids to Mom’s mother’s apartment in Rochester while he visited Mom. We called her Nana Celia. She insisted we use that name, Nana, which I seldom heard used by other families until later in life. The long stairwell leading to her doorway, at the back side of a three-story building, I’ll never forget. Always awaiting our attention as we entered her place was a candy dish filled with various treats, all of which we’d eat during our stay while Dad drove toward Pittsburgh to the asylum to see Mom.

A few times within those couple of years, Dad would take us along with him. At the rear of a six or seven-floor building, we parked and were told to look up at one of the upper-floor windows to see if we could catch sight of Mom. I don’t remember seeing her. Maybe one of the others did.

Normally, the agenda for the day was to give each of us less than a dollar for entrance into either the Oriental or Family Theaters on Hines Street to watch a movie. I have many memories of both theaters.

Fifteen cents got us into the building, with a dime left for two candy bars or popcorn. Those were the days of scary movies like The Tingler, The Wolfman, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Dracula, The Fly, The Mummy, The Blob, Frankenstein, and Strait Jacket, featuring actors like Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, and Joan Crawford, as well as John Wayne westerns, Zorro, Lone Ranger, and The Graduate. So fearful Strait Jacket made Denny after viewing about ten minutes of Joan Crawford’s film, he ran out the door, down Hines Street, then up the Virginia Avenue hill, back to Nana Celia’s apartment, before the end of the film.

When not at the movies, we were given enough money to bowl at Beaver Valley Bowl in Rochester, located at the bottom of Virginia Avenue next to the Ohio River and across a wide yard of railroad tracks. Eventually, we became impressive young bowlers, always with the need to find a properly fitting ball, which was the key to a good release. We never owned our own balls and always rented shoes.

One day, as best as I recall, in the winter months, Dad brought home with him a short, reasonably attractive woman from the poor, redneck, alcohol-laden town in Southeastern Missouri called Parma. Her name was Lula Mae Eiceman. Everyone called her Lou. Almost immediately, it was easy to see that alcohol would pose profound problems in our lives. When drinking, the two of them would always argue.

This afternoon, Denny and I were outside playing baseball at the Nixon field, unaware of what was taking place at home. The game was in the last of the ninth inning. We were winning and hungry, so we quit to get a bite to eat. Little did I know our lives were again about to change dramatically.

By the time Mom had been interred for two years, Dad had grown tired of not having a woman in his life, and tired of hopping from bed to bed. This newest woman he introduced us to had now moved into the basement with us. The two of them drank a lot and argued incessantly. After the game, upon entering the basement, I turned to Denny and asked, “Where is everybody? Shouldn’t Lou, Diana, and Doug be home?” There was no sign of them in the cellar.

Earlier, as we were walking out the door with gloves in hand, ready for a ball game with the usual boys from Sylvan Crest, I’d heard the Hi-Q music theme, the prelude to the clay-animated children’s television series Davey and Goliath. It was the favorite show of my six-year-old brother, Doug, who had been sitting on the floor with his eyes glued to the set. My fourteen-year-old sister, Diana, I had noticed a second earlier excitedly examining a new makeup kit her girlfriend, whose parents, strict conservatives and anti-fad, would not permit her to keep. Lou was out of sight.

Not until Dad arrived home a couple of hours later with a drinking buddy of his named Pete was Lou’s note found scribbled on a telephone pad, informing Dad that she was taking both his children with her. If he wanted them returned, he’d have to come to get them.

Dad then erupted, “That’s got to be one of the stupidest women on earth. Why would she take them? If she wanted to see her father, she could have gone alone. What purpose does it serve to take my kids?” It was one of the few times in my life I heard him speak with some semblance of parental care.

We would later learn that Lou had convinced Diana and Doug to grab some clothes and get into her car. She and Dad had agreed to this trip the night before, she’d told them. The destination was a small, one-traffic-light, countrified cotton town in Southeast Missouri called Parma, her childhood home.

As I view it today, Dad should have immediately called the police and had her charged with kidnapping. But he didn’t. All through my life, I have remained astounded by Dad’s decision not to have Lou arrested. It would have saved us so much torment and grief. Did she have something on him, something she threatened to go to the police with if he didn’t follow her lead? What kept Dad clinging to this woman?

This was at that moment that Dad gave up his dream of completing our home. To him, it was time to let it go. He was eleven thousand dollars in debt and was holding on to a burden he hated. So, he handed the basement keys to his brother, Buzzy, to sell the house, and after ordering us to pack no more than a few sets of clothes, he told Denny and me, “Get into the car. Now!” So we did, and one of Dad’s workmates, Pete, went with us.

All of the furniture, kitchenware, bunk beds, carpets, and anything else that made a home we left behind.

“Where are we headed now?” I asked Dad, so fed up with extreme behaviors. “What’s this all about?” I didn’t want to leave Sylvan Crest and was upset. I had plenty of friends there. It was home to me.

“We’re on our way to get your brother and sister,” he said as he backed out the car, still attired in his work clothes and unshowered.

Neither my brother nor I understood the full meaning of this. It was the tone of Dad’s voice, together with his words, “we’re on our way,” that intimated we were in for another unbearable ordeal. This was the beginning of what we were about to witness for years to come, the combining of two whackos with the explosive natures of a brawling alcoholic and a potentially protective yet terribly misdirected, anxiety-filled father.

I’ve known more men who refused to contend with life’s challenges without a female partner than I have men who endured hardships purely on their own. The son of a close friend in Pennsylvania hung himself after his wife declared their marriage finished. Men will search the online want-ads, go to bars, and attend churches in their hunt for a woman, not knowing anything about them, yet willing to blindly give all that they’ve earned just to get a compliant nod, even while they’re ignorant of the full picture.

Dad’s search for a homemaker, cook, and bed partner was habitual, void of vetting, and caused emotional harm to those around him. Barely middle-aged, his behavior resembled that of a man wrestling with a middle-aged crisis. He had to have Lou in his life even if she was sent by the devil himself. What was his attraction? Her cooking? For she was, without a doubt, a phenomenally gifted cook. On good days, she made dishes I never knew existed, so appetizingly good they tasted. Sauerkraut, pork, and potato dumplings with lemon meringue pie for dessert. Her breakfasts were top-of-the-line and included eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, and grits, with strong percolated coffee. Leftover greasy ingredients were poured into Crisco cans that sat on the stovetop, which she used in most dishes. She liked to fry.

On a routine basis, almost every afternoon and evening, Dad would find her mind entirely altered as she sat for hours at a bar shaping her personality into an uncontrollable wickedness.

Did Dad not realize he was placing his family in harm’s way merely to satisfy his misguided need for food and whatever form of companionship that pretended to welcome him and his family? To Dad, Lou represented misplaced emotion. He should have been discerning. He should have thought of us first, but he didn’t. No matter the personality of that woman, Dad refused to see things as they truly were. Lou’s true nature was being fully exposed as a drunken kidnapper of weak and defenseless children.

In sheer disbelief, I sat in the rear seat of the station wagon still headed south, with Pete chaperoning with a cigarette between his fingers and singing “There Goes My Everything.” Where, in God’s name, were we headed? What is Parma? I thought Dad was about to involve himself in an aggressive criminal act. Would there be gunplay? Is that why Pete was with us?

“What are you going to do, Dad?” I insisted upon knowing. My mind was filled with many possibilities. At the same time, Denny and I had a few important baseball games lined up on Sylvan Crest, or The Hill. There were three neighborhood teams. None of us wore anything fancy, no uniforms, just our everyday clothes, for we were poor and entirely unsponsored. Three games were lined up for which we would be no-shows. I was desperate to get back to Monaca, Pennsylvania. In all the years we’d played baseball, we’d never missed a competition, never forfeited due to not showing. This was a first, and it bothered me. I badly wanted to win. I knew we could...