Day 13: Daddy’s last day with us…

We finally had to leave 1101 Colonial Ave and moved into a tiny house on Memorial Dr almost directly across from the Bowling Alley in town. When I say tiny, I mean it. I’ve seen apartments bigger than that house. We had one bathroom, 3 tiny bedrooms, a very small kitchen, and a living room/dining room combo room. I’m sure it was all Mama could afford because Daddy wasn’t working and had not been working for several years.

At one point while we lived on Colonial Ave, Daddy decided he would go back to college and get his master’s degree in Geography. Then as he almost finished that, he decided it should be a master’s degree in History, so he switched. At some point, and I don’t really know why, I was too young to ask, he just quit everything and didn’t work anymore. He would stay up drinking until the TV stations went off the air…yes, they did that in those days around midnight or 1 AM. Then he would sleep in until almost noon. I have no idea what he did during the day, I just wanted to be out of the house and away from him.

I joined Boy Scouts, choir, the swim team, and anything else I could just to be able to leave the house. The only thing good about that house on Memorial Dr. was that I could now ride my bike to my long-time friend Jim Winslow’s house on Hooker Road. I’ll tell you about Jim and his family later, we had some great times together.

A few days ago, I said that the police came to that house several times because some of the neighbors thought the fighting was so violent, they should do something. But even the police had to respect Mama when she said she was alright, probably because she feared Daddy.

I was almost 16 by now and as big as Daddy was but I didn’t think of it that way…your Daddy always seems bigger when you are a kid. One day he challenged me to arm wrestling at the dining room table. I agreed and after a few minutes, I actually beat him. I was elated! I don’t remember his reaction, but as I looked at Mama she was paralyzed with FEAR. I didn’t understand at the time, but she was probably afraid Daddy would retaliate. Instead, I think it scared him.

This was in the mid-60s, and the Beatles were all the rage. All the boys wanted to have hair like the Beatles…long and hanging down in the front. Daddy had always combed his hair back like “all respectable men” of those days maybe like Elvis, so this irritated the hell out of him. He would say that men don’t have “bangs”, as he called them. So, he made me comb my hair back or at least to the side so it was out of my face. Which I did until I left the house and then I would pull it down across my forehead.

That summer, he told me once again to get the hair out of my face, which meant to push it back to the side. But that didn’t please him, so he told me to go into the bathroom and “trim my bangs”. I was still pretty dominated by him, so I went into the bathroom and trimmed my hair in the front. I came out at least twice and he sent me back in because it wasn’t good enough. Finally, I took the scissors and cut off everything in the front down to the scalp and then looked in the mirror and said, “Are you happy now Daddy! You will never get to me again…this is it, you son-of-a-bitch!” I walked out of the bathroom and defiantly looked at him and he just laughed and didn’t say a word.

Daddy never hit me, but he did get rough with Debby, and he certainly didn’t mind hitting Mama. But his specialty was criticism. He was extremely cruel verbally. He could make you feel like the most worthless person in the world, and he seemed to have fun doing it. My poor sister got the brunt of it, maybe because she was a woman, but he constantly was critical of her physically.

One night, there was an especially bad fight. Debby and I never had a peaceful night’s sleep because this was a regular thing. Anyway, at one point Mama cried out my name and I jumped out of bed and met Daddy in the hallway. He must have been intimated because he just looked at me and said, “It’s alright, just go back to bed”. I’m not sure what I would have done, but I was there, and I wasn’t backing down.

They stopped fighting that night and it was at least quiet. Back in the day, you only had one phone in the house, and it was attached to the wall or on a desk. Ours was on the wall just outside my bedroom so I could hear everything. I heard Daddy talking to Grandmama, crying as he did when he wanted to get his way and asking if he could “come home”. By this time, the man was in his late 30’s and he wanted to “come home???” All I could think was, “Leave you, bastard, no one wants you here!”

Soon after that, Debby and I were called to the Office at the High School one afternoon and Mama was there. She told us that the Sheriff had gone to our home and made Daddy pack and leave. I was going to spend the night in Little Washington, as we called it, with my Uncle Duncan, Mama’s brother. Debby and Mama were staying with a friend in town.

As I rode with my uncle to his home, I told him the greatest thing I feared was that when it was time for me to be a Daddy, I wouldn’t know how. That’s a pretty sad commentary for a 16-year-old to come up with.

A day or so later we went back to the house on Memorial Dr, it was the first time I could remember the house being quiet at night…no fighting. Soon after that, we moved to Meade Street about two blocks from the college and life started over for us.