CHRISTMAS EVE TALE

I couldn’t read the temperature. The drainpipe leaked and a giant icicle hung from roof to ground hiding the thermometer on the wall. It was cold. The pond was frozen solid behind the house. I was able to walk across the ice. I wondered where the snakes went.

I had a snake last summer that I carried on a stick, but I lost it under the porch. I guess at winter snakes borough far into the earth where it’s hot. Uncle Les said the Devil was once a snake and Hell is underground.

Mom didn’t like snakes. “Don’t you bring that in the house. Get rid of it.”

It fell off the stick and crawled under where I couldn’t get it.

 There were spiders under the deck then and even now. I looked for frozen spider webs in the weeds by the pond. It would be great to own a frozen spider web. But there weren’t any, so I slid for a while on the pond.

There was a frozen lake near my school. Skaters made crisscrossing lines across it. My pond was smooth. I pretended I had skates. I imagined races on my pond and I won every time. There was snow from last night across the ice and my boots left marks, just like the skaters did, except mine were very broad.

I got tired of make-believe racing when I couldn’t think of any more names to give my opponents.

I looked across the yard. Snow covered everything. I saw my footprints from the house to the pond. There was no traffic down on the highway. It was quiet. The sky was all ready dark and suddenly the colored lights Uncle Les tacked around the door came on and the snow was pretty.

My father was a trucker. He was on the road all week and mom couldn’t drive so I hadn’t seen any Christmas displays. Across the field at the forest edge were two houses that put up decorations. One had a light behind the glass in every window, all red. Last weekend before dad left I asked, “Are there more lights like that?”

Daddy was reading the paper.

“Derrick asked you a question, “ said mom.

“What?” Dad lowered the paper.

“Derrick asked a quest…”

“What is it?”

“Are there more lights?” I asked again.

“”Lights? What kind of lights?”

“Red, like that house across the way.”

“Christmas lights,” said mom.

“Yeah,” said dad. “All the towns string lights.”

I wanted to see, but he couldn’t take me. He had to leave for work. He would be back by Christmas Eve. “Why don’t you get Les to take the boy,” he snapped.

“Not now,” mom said, “it’s Christmas.”

“Not yet,” he said as he pulled on his jacket.

After dad left, Uncle Les stopped by the next day to visit. Uncle Les strung the lights around the door while he was there. 

“Did you ever see Santa Claus?” I asked Uncle Les.

“Sure. He’s in the mall.”

“I mean on Christmas Eve, when he comes.”

“No one sees Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. But I heard him once.”

“When?”

“When I was about your age. We’d been shopping, the whole family. It was Christmas Eve and it snowed hard. We got stuck comin’ home. The roads were even worse in those days. We almost got home, got right up to the lane when we got bogged down. Mom, your daddy’s and my mom, your grandmom, had gone up the lane to start the furnace and make some coco. Your dad and I got out of the car and tried to push, but we didn’t get far. We were too little, see, and kept falling down. Finally we just gave up and started walking toward the house. Then I started running and shouting at the top of my lungs. “What is that? What is that?”

Your dad started running after me. “What’s what?”

“Don’t you hear them,” I yelled.

“He didn’t, but I did, jingle bells and a whooshing sound in the sky.”

“I like you, Uncle Les,” I said. I gave him a hug. “Dad never tells me stories ‘bout being a kid.”

“Well, I…”

“Sometimes I wish…” But I stopped.

Uncle Les looked at his watch and got up. “I guess I best be goin’ before the roads get worse.” He kissed mom on the cheek.

“Be careful,” she said as he left.

She stood at the window and watched his car out the lane and down the road.

“You come in now,” shouted mom. She glowed in Uncle Les’ Christmas lights as she stood in the open doorway. “Supper’s ready.”

I went in. It was snowing again. My tracks were disappearing. It fell on the lights, but the light shown through. I ate by the window and watched the storm. The house was cozy. Mom had the radio on and a chorus was singing carols. When supper ended, I got the Christmas cards and played postman. The windows were the houses.

Dad got home late. I was all ready in bed. I heard him come home ‘cause I was awake listening for Santa Claus. I listened because Uncle Les said you could hear him.

“You’re late,” said mom.

“Damn snow got the roads tied up,” he said.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t get here.” She said.

“Why?”

“What would I tell him?”

“Tell him the truth for Christ sake. He’s gotta know the world for what it is sooner or later.”

“He’s only a child.”

“I was too once, you know. So what? The old man died and suddenly I weren’t no kid anymore. He’s too old for all this damn fairy-tale crap.”

I was listening for Santa Claus, but daddy was loud. He was stomping up the stairs.

“Harry, don’t,” said mom. “Not now.”

“Why not? Now’s as good as ever.”

I thought I heard something outside before daddy opened my door, but I don’t know because daddy was talking at the same time and afterward all I heard was mom crying.

Mom turned the colored lights off and the snow outside disappeared in the dark. I shut my eyes and dreamt of snakes. When I woke I decided snakes went south for the winter with the birds.

When I came downstairs Uncle Les and my mom were waiting for me, but dad was gone. Then I thought, it’s Christmas, and I got my wish, so why was I crying.

Written in 1963

"The Incident" and the Shadow of Prison

This is my entire Seventh Grade Class. Can you find Waldo…I mean me? Hint, I am in the photo on the top and this was taken before I wore glasses. I am standing next to my on-again, off-again friend, Gary Kinzey. Iva is in this grouping in the front row, the first girl on the right. Okay, now find the fifth girl from the right in the front row wearing a dress with broad stripes. Go up from her to the thrid row and there I am, my lower face hidden. Gary is next to me toward the left. The boy directly behind me slightly to left left is Doug Way, one of my tormentors from the Charles-Bird-Way Gang.

Ronald Tipton and Stuart Meisel are in the third grouping, as is my one-time heartthrob, Mary Jane Chudleigh.

In Seventh Grade I was either harassed or embarrassed or bored out of my mind.

For instance, in my first week of school I was hustling to go between classes, fearful I would be late. I turned a corner and crashed into a girl. She was older, probably a Ninth Grader. She was carrying several books. I had my head down as usual, looking at my feet not the hall ahead, when I slammed into her. Her books flew every which way and she fell down. She was not happy. I was scrambling about trying to pick up her books when I heard the second bell ring. Sir Gallahad simply dropped her books in her lap and ran for it, hoping I’d never see that girl again.

If life were a Hollywood movie that girl would have become my steady date. The reality is I never did see that girl again, much to my relief.

We had assembly every week. I even had to watch my back there. We had fold up wooden seats. This allowed you to stand up for things like the Pledge of Allegiance or the National Anthem. The assembly always began with something you had to be on your feet for. At the end of these opening exercises everyone would sit on the edge of their seat and it would fold down under the weight, except the guy behind me sat first and stuck his feet up under the space between my seat and the back of the chair. When I sat there was a loud splintering noise and every head turned to stare at me.

I was always the center of attention for the wrong reasons, always the Doofus or clown.

In class I would become bored listening to most of the teachers. I had a young lady teacher named Lila Barnes (pictured right). If I remember correctly, she was fresh out of Teachers’ College. She had red hair and was pretty, but a bit hesitant. She taught History and I can’t remember anything about the class. I can’t tell you if it was World or American History. I use to kill time in class by flipping through the textbook just to look at the pictures.

I even invented a game for this distraction. The pictures in the textbooks had the source written in tiny print beneath the photo. I began marking down the names of these in my notebook, then making a pen stroke after the name when it got a credit. It was a contest to see which photographer got the most recognition.

My desk was against the wall right behind the doorway. I noticed there was a long space between the wall and the jam. I torn a page from my notebook and wrote a little poem.

To the one who finds this

Lodged in this resort,

Look tomorrow and you will find

The secret for winning every sport.

I signed it, “Helpful Edd”, folded the paper several times and stuffed it inside the crack.

The next time I had history, which was probably the next day because I think we had it four times a week, I wrote another poem.

To those who found the paper

Folded in here so neat

Here is the message on how to win.

Just one word…Cheat!

I signed this one, “Crooked Nedd and stuffed it into the crack.

I wonder if they are still in there?

For all my dislike of school, I was absent very few days. I hated being there, but I showed up. I missed a total of twelve days in the three years of Junior High, ten of them in seventh grade. I missed one day in eighth grade and one in ninth.

I missed half of those seventh grade days within the first two marking periods. I know most of those were due to the hiccoughs. When I got the hiccoughs I couldn’t stop. I would have them for hours, sometimes for days. We tried all the famous measures, a bag over the head, drinking water without taking a breath, eating a spoonful of sugar and even standing on my head. Nothing worked; they just had to run their course. Years after I got out of school I discovered eating pretzels would quiet my hiccoughs, but I didn’t know that back them.

The school nurse sent me home from school a few times because my hiccoughs were so persistent that the teachers complained I disturbed the class.

I was not hiccoughing though for three of the five days I missed in the late spring of 1954. I wasn’t sick either. I was playing hooky with my parents’ blessing. My mother decided my father and I should have a chance to bond. Maybe she believed if my dad and I became closer I wouldn’t be so moody all the time. Since starting junior high I was growing more and more meloncholy everyday. She talked my dad into taking me on the road with him. Early in April we set out for Pittsburgh together.

It wasn’t that bad. I don’t think we talked much, but the ride was an adventure to me. I would climb into the sleeper behind the seat and the rocking of the moving truck usually put me to sleep. We stopped in the Howard Johnson’s that were the only eateries along the Pennsylvania Turnpike in those days for all our meals. We sat at the counter. I usually had eggs and bacon for breakfast and hamburgers or those hot dogs in the funny looking buns for every lunch and dinner.

Whenever we stopped my dad would go to the restroom. He always asked me if I had to go. I always shook my head no. I didn’t want to use public restrooms. I think I urinated three times the whole trip and then only when I was absolutely certain I was in the restroom alone. If someone was in there, I left and held it to the next stop where I could hopefully have privacy. Even when I got that privacy, I used a stall, not a urinal. We were two nights and the most of three days on the road. See why I said Teddy and Stuart weren’t going to beat me at the Drinking Game?

I remember going through the Blue Mountain and Kittatinny Mountain Tunnels. I also remember sleeping in a bunkhouse overnight near the mill where dad picked up a load of steel. I believe this was actually located in Butler, Pennsylvania, a town about 35 to 40 miles north of Pittsburgh. He was most likely hauling out of AK Steel.

He told me to hide in the sleeper and not to come out when we reached that mill. They forbade children inside. He had to pull his truck through a part of the plant where they loaded it. I did as he told me. There were large forklifts and bustling men surrounding the truck while I peeked through a part in the curtain. A crane swept overhead and dropped the heavy steel beams on the trailer. What if the crane operator misjudged and dropped one of those on the cab?

That evening we were driving on a mountain road above Pittsburgh. I could see the lights of the city down in a valley and the three rivers converging in the twilight of the distance. The two-lane road was very twisting. Suddenly some fool in a car came around a blind turn passing another truck. My dad swerved over as far as he could and the car tried to squeeze back to the proper lane. The driver didn’t quite make it and sideswiped dad’s trailer. Dad’s truck was fine, but the guy’s car was badly smashed in on one side. We had to wait around for over an hour while dad talked to the police and they examined the scene trying to determine who was at fault.

The trip was not bad. My dad didn’t harp on me about much, except he did start nagging me about not going to the restrooms. We didn’t come home all bonded and at peace with each other for evermore. Things went back to normal. I returned to school and dad returned to telling me to stand up straight or whatever.

The Sunday after the trip was “The Incident”. I honestly don’t know why I did it. It was early in the morning and mom and dad were still asleep. In fact, it looked as if the whole street was still in bed, but I was soon to learn that was not the case.

I got out of bed, but didn’t go into the bathroom as usual. I took off my pajamas and then in just my undershorts, I went downstairs. I pulled off my underpants in the kitchen and went naked out on the porch and down into the back yard. There was no sign of any life. They closed the farm machinery store because it was Sunday. I stood over near their long garage and urinated. Then I went back inside, up to my room and dressed. As far as I knew no one could possibly seen what I did.

Later in the week a teacher called my name and told me to report to the Principal’s Office. I am not sure it was on that very Monday or a couple days later. I went to the office and was ushered into Mr. Evans’ office. He was sitting behind his desk looking grim, but he often looked that way. There was a police officer standing by the desk. I knew the officer because he was a friendly guy who regularly said hello to we kids when he saw us walking back and forth to school. He didn’t look any too friendly at the moment.

I thought it had something to do with the trip I took with my dad. They found out I had played hooky perhaps. Maybe it was a follow-up to the accident. But then the police officer said someone had seen me in my backyard stark naked. They had also witnessed me urinate. Was this true?

I was stunned. I was scared. I was only 12 years old. I nodded my head.

The police officer then explained to me what I did was wrong. It was a very bad thing. He told me I might go to the reform school in Camp Hill as a result. I had heard tell of Camp Hill and what I had heard was not good. It was not a place one wanted to go.

Camp Hill was founded in 1941, the year I was born. It was a State Correctional Institution for young offenders, and at that time was mainly for those below the age of 16. In 1975 it was ruled that Camp Hill was inappropriate for juvenile offenders and in 1977 it changed to an all-adult facility for men.

I was then send back to class, like I could concentrate on any lessons after that. I arrived home that afternoon expecting the worse. My mom would probably be crying, but at least dad would be on the road. Dad would be home again soon enough and I expected he really would whip me with his belt this time.

I got home and there was nothing out of the ordinary. My mom cooked dinner as usual. She was fine. I went to bed, but couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep well for the next month. Dad came home for the weekend and it was the same as any other weekend. Every day I went to school waiting for the cops to arrest me and tote me off to Camp Hill. It didn’t happen. I started to believe that it wouldn’t happen.

I was now nervous about who knew. It felt as if all eyes looked my way whenever I entered a room. What were they thinking? How many people saw me do it? Who told whom about it? How many of the other kids knew I did this disgusting thing? How could I face my friends? Had Iva seen me? Had Patty Robinson seen me? Patty lived on the side that might have allowed the best view.

The cops never came for me and nothing happened. My parents never mentioned having any knowledge of The Incident. No one said a thing about it to me, neither a grownup nor a kid. I found out ten years later a man named Stan Fredericks was the one who reported it to the police. He lived in the other half of our semi-detached house. I learned this fact from Ronald Tipton in a letter dated December 13, 1963, a decade after it happened. He wrote that Mr. Fredericks had told his dad about it and Ron’s dad told Ronald he should stay away from me. I wonder if Mr. Tipton thought I was Gay? How ironic if so.

In the letter where I learned this, Ronald claimed, “Stan Fredericks related to him [His father] he often saw you playing with yourself in the nude in your back yard…” This was not at all true. I did this one time and I was not engaging in “playing with myself”, because at this point in my life I had still not learned about masturbation or sex for that matter.

Mr. Fredericks worked at Guindy’s with Ronald Tipton’s father. Ronald says Fredericks told  his father I came out of my back door naked and crossed the back porch. He said I walked the length of my yard to the back and then to the front again masturbating the whole time. I knew knowing about masturbating at that time. I didn’t know about masturbation, and wouldn’t, until I was 15, which was when I was in Senior High School and not living in Downingtown. I had not walked to the back of the yard, either. I had walked from the back porch steps to the side of the farm equipment building. He couldn’t have seen me walk to the back of the yard where we had a dog run and house for Topper (pictured right), because I never did that.  He obviously saw me cross from the porch to the edge of the farm machinery garage and urinate there since that is what I did and all I did, which is what the police officer said was reported, but nothing more. Not that it matters, since it happened over 60 years ago and I was but a twelve years old (I turned thirteen the next summer.).

After a month or so I kind of put it out of my head. I was grateful then that my parents didn’t punish me and that the authorities didn’t send me to reform school. Looking back at this from the distance of age, knowing what was raging inside me those years and what was ahead, they didn’t do me any favor by totaling ignoring it. I was obviously a troubled boy who needed some help that I wasn’t going to get. Of course being sent to Camp Hill probably wouldn’t have helped me; it most likely would have destroyed me.

This is the view of the back of 417 Washington Avenue. The Fredericks home was on the left with the white walled-in back porch. I had exited the kitchen door, went down the porch steps and turned left going straight across the yard to the side of the farm equipment garage, then returned the same way. Fredericks must have seen me from the upstairs window, the only viewpoint he could have had on the back of his home. Needless to say, I didn’t run out into our backyard naked anymore and I kept my bathroom functions in the bathroom after that.

It wasn’t the end of all things nude, however. It wasn’t the end of uneducated sexual urges leading to criminal acts. It wasn’t the end of the turmoil, low self-image and doubt inside me. It just added to my angst.

Back to Nature in the Woods

Some may ask why hold up such a besmirched picture of myself to the world? For one I promised I would be honest about me. We can go through life putting makeup over our blemishes and scars, of course, and many do. I chose not to do that.

This is also a form of confession. Confession is good for the soul because we must recognize the need for it and then confess our faults and sins to God or we can’t find forgiveness and salvation. (See Psalm 32.) I believe if we truly seek forgiveness and salvation we need to confess to everyone.  

Some things seem so securely secret that no one would ever know, so why tell them? Perhaps my feeling and my thoughts are deep secrets that would remain such if I said nothing, but truth will out because frankly, somebody knows most of what I write. For instance the striping naked when my friends played war. Is that so secret? It isn’t since 2004 when Stuart put it out there in his memoir.

My most embarrassing public act was noted in a December 13, 1963 letter from my best friend, Ronald Tipton. He was passing on information he learned from his father, who learned it from the man who also told the police. Who knows whom else the man or Ronald’s father may have told. It may be mostly forgotten today, but it is hardly secret. Why pretend I was perfect in any way? Why not get it out there? One thing about confession is you no longer have to be concerned someone learning of it will use it against you, because you’ve already held it up to the light of day.

Finally, telling your past, good, bad or indifferent, shows people how you’ve changed. How can people know you’re a new and improved model if they don’t know how badly the old product was flawed? I was 34 years old when I turned to Christ. I was a lost sinner in need of salvation before then, so I must have required saving from something.

I’ll tell you, I thought I was a loser by the time I was 12, but I also thought I was a really good person. Hopefully, this autobiography shows how wrong I was about both.

We return you to our sordid story.

It was nearing the end of summer 1953 before the beginning of Seventh Grade. The weather was very warm. Temperatures had peaked in July at 101 degrees. I wore short sleeves. I hadn’t worn short pants since I was 5 years old. I decided shorts were for little kids and stuborningly refused to wear them. I didn’t begin wearing shorts in hot weather again, except for swimwear, until I was fifty. On the right is my typical boyhood outfit during the summer, short sleeve button-down the front shirt, blue jeans held up by a wide belt, socks and sneakers (Usually Keds). I had switched by the spring of

1954 from my usual baseball cap to a motorcycle hat. The hat was similar to what Marlon Brando wore in “The Wild One”, a movie released in December 1953 that I liked a lot. I identified with Brando’s outsider, just as later I would identify with James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause”. Except for the style of hat, my outfits in the summer of 1953 were basically identical.

(The boy balancing atop the barrel was an acqaintance named Dallot Norris, who weaved in and out of my clique. The photo was taken in Downingtown’s Kerr Park.)

On this particular 1953 summer’s day I went to Stuart Meisel’s and he wasn’t home.

I hiked back into the woods behind his yard. (Picture: Behind Stuart’s) There was a little field of high grass just past the Slave House. A narrow path went through it and into the trees. The path followed the edge of the Millrace. Once you entered the woods you couldn’t see much of anything to the East. You could see the lake on the other side of the millrace and the back of the Bicking Paper Mill beyond it. The path would lead you to Pennsylvania Avenue coming out across from what is now called the Lion’s Trail. Lion’s Trail goes through Kardon Park and joins the Struble Trail.

Lion’s Trail, Kardon Park and Struble Trail didn’t exist in 1953. There wasn’t very much at all along Pennsylvania Avenue in those days. It was fairly private and quiet back in those woods. It is all built up today (left).  This is where Stuart, Teddy Miller, Bill Brookover, other friends and I would sometimes play Cowboys or War using the large indentation we called Devil’s Nest as a bunker or fort. I now began to play one of those games by myself, running down one side of the big hole and up the embankment on the other side.

It was hot and I was doing a lot of running back and forth. There was no one there but me, so I took off my shirt. The breeze felt very nice against my bare skin. It occurred to me since I was completely alone and out of sight of anything within those woods that I could take off everything and no one would know. So I did. I striped naked and ran about the “Devil’s Nest” for a few minutes.

I was nervous someone might come. I didn’t stray too far from my little pile of discarded clothes, but no one came. After several minutes I dressed and went home.

I went back the next day. Stuart wasn’t home again. I went back to “Devil’s Nest” and this time I undressed right away. I pretended I was like Tarzan, some person raised by wild animals instead of people, wolves. I was a Wolf-Boy. This time I stayed longer and went a little further away from my pile of clothes. I felt free. I felt cool, especially out of those heavy jeans. I also felt the strange tingle inside I was beginning to experience around girls. I though it was just nervousness, but at the same time a fear in the back of my head said I could be caught.

Having anyone see me doing this was not something I wanted. It was not that I felt what I was doing was wrong in anyway. It was I didn’t want anyone looking at my bony body and once in junior high I would dislike removing my shirt in Gym or taking group showers for the same reason. Sure, I didn’t want anybody to see me nude in these woods, yet at the same time the breeze felt so cooling and the strange tingling sensation was pleasant.

After a while, I thought I heard something and hurriedly dressed. There was no one. It might have been a squirrel or a bird I heard or just a nut falling from a tree. It didn’t matter what I heard, I got out of there.

Yet I kept coming back to that place. I went there without stopping at Stuart’s to see if he was home. I found it exhilerating. I was doing something in secret that no one knew about, something daring. I got the tingle each time and I got ever more daring. Before I would remain hidden down in that hole, because I knew if someone came down the path they wouldn’t be able to see me below the embankments. If I would hear anyone coming I’d have time to dress. Now I was venturing out of the hole into the woods above it. This seemed to increase the tingling.

There was still no way I wanted anyone to see me.

After two or three weeks I was taking more risks. I left the hole and walked down the path a ways in either direction. Ever fearful of being caught I would imagine the sound of footsteps and run for my clothes. One time as I fled back to my clothes a brush struck me across the face. I got dressed and as I walked from the woods my eye hurt every time I blinked.

I thought I had something in it, but it really hurt if I tried rubbing. At home my mother noticed I was in pain and that my face was red from where I kept touching it when I blinked. She made me sit down and let her look at my eye.

“There’s something in your eye,” she said. She took me to see Dr. Neff.

Doctor Neff examined me and told my mother that I had a splinter of wood in my eyeball.

Splinter? To me it felt more like the proverbial beam. Every time I blinked it seemed to slash the inside of my eyelid. He said he would take it out with a needle.

I was calm, which was extraordinary. When I had a splinter in my hand or foot and mom talked of using a needle I would sometimes run and hide, trying to work or suck the object out on my own. Now the doctor was going to stick a needle in my eye, which he preceded to do.

I didn’t feel a thing.

I took this as a punishment for what I had been doing. I stopped going to the woods after that. Besides school was starting.

I’ve never told anybody about these things.