The Keeper Of The Crypt

I'm sure my mother thought the possum was dead when she buried it. It was lying in the driveway pretty much where she'd last seen it when she left the house, so she grabbed a shovel, dug a hole in the garden, and buried it. It wasn't until later that she began to wonder if it had moved from the time she had first seen it, to the time she had buried it. And then there was the whole "playing possum" factor that she hadn't initially considered. By then it was too late of course.



There is a place in the back garden at my parents house which might someday be a wonder to archeologists. It's full of bones from dead animals. Rabbits. Dogs. Cats. Birds. Gerbils. Hamsters. A few dozen goldfish. And at least one possum.

Most of these animals had met their demise through more or less natural means. Old age. Lack of feeding. A shovel over the head. This is where animals came to die in our little part of the world.

There is one story in particular that my mother is especially troubled by. Sorry Mom, it's too good of a story and you never tell it at parties or church picnics.

My sister Stacy was dating a boy at the time named Tom. I never thought that much about Tom when he was around. He was kind of quiet. Not particularly remarkable. At least not to a 13 year old. He was simply my sister's boyfriend. Live and let live. That is until he crossed the line and made his way onto my adolescent radar.

We were sitting in the living room, watching TV and I said something about the program I was watching. Come to think of it, I don't even think he was sitting. I had been watching my program and he'd wandered in. That's when he shushed me. I was stunned. Here was this guy, watching my TV, and telling me to be quiet. I never cared much for Tom after that and it wasn't long before she broke up with him and started seeing someone else. I'm pretty sure my rejection of him had nothing to do with it but you never know.

So around the time Stacy was in her last throes with Tom, we had this cat. I don't remember how we came upon it, but I'm pretty sure it was a stray that we had started feeding. We were never really a cat family. We were dog people. Well, the time came where we no longer wanted the cat. I think it was peeing everywhere. My mother must have mentioned that she wanted to get rid of it and Tom offered to do the honors. At the time, I don't know what my mother thought he was going to do. Maybe take it to a shelter. Offer it to a needy family. The reality ended up involving a potato sack and a shovel.

I wasn't there of course, and it took us years to get any details about it at all from my mother. We'd ask what happened to the cat and she would just get this funny look about her and clam up. Apparently it wasn't pretty. When we were older and we learned the loosening effect of wine on the tongue, it would seem that Tom didn't have particularly good aim with the shovel and that the cat had no intention of going quietly. But Tom was persistent and eventually the cat joined the rest of the dead in the backyard garden.

There were a lot of things I learned growing up in that house, but maybe one of the more important lessons (if you were an animal anyway) was to watch where you slept. You just never know who might be watching.

A Paine In The House. A Genius In The Closet

When I was in grade school, we had a genius who lived in my closet and smelled of garlic. He lived on the third floor of our house, slept at odd hours of the day, and kept his mail in our cereal cabinet. It's a credit to my absolute belief in the normalcy of my family, that I didn't find this strange in the least.



The genius and I shared the third floor, which was basically a converted attic. His bed was near a large walk-in closet and that is where he kept most of his processions including his TV. Most nights, while I was trying to fall asleep, he would be watching TV. The light would emanate from inside the closet like some weird Close Encounters moment, backlighting his inert body. The sound would be just loud enough to be distracting, but not loud enough to be entertaining.

How he came to live with us escapes me now, but what I do know is that my father had known him for years, and the genius, being without a place to live at the time, had been invited to come live with us. His name was Tom Paine.

Tom was an honest-to-god, off the charts brainiac. He was a charter member of MENSA and in fact was close personal friends with the founder. Tom's IQ was off the charts, be he suffered from serious food allergies, various medical problems and emotional issues. Because of his many issues, Tom was on permanent disability. As a way to try and combat his illnesses, Tom was very into holistic medicine and ate raw garlic as a way to cleanse his body. It's safe to say that Tom wasn't sneaking up on a lot of people. When he was in the room, you knew it.

In the years that he lived with us, and even years later when he would get his mail from us, he would walk in unannounced, with this hair doing a pretty good impersonation of Albert Einstein, wave, open the cabinet over the stove where we kept the cereal and retrieve his mail. Despite his troubles, he always seemed happy, always had a nice word to say and though weird, was a gentleman. He had become such a fixture over the years, that we barely noticed him. I could be sitting in the kitchen with a friend and Tom would come in, say hello, get his mail and leave. My friend would just look at me.

"What," I'd say.
"Who the hell was that?"
"Oh, that's just Tom," I'd say.

Then we would go back to watching cartoons. Almost nothing fazes kids. And I never really felt the need to explain Tom. He was a friend of my father's. He lived in my room. He smelled powerfully of garlic.

What else was there to tell?

Driving God's Tractor

It's funny to think that I have to beg, threaten and plead to get my soon-to-be-fourteen-year-old stepson to mow the lawn. When I was ten, I mowed the lawn where my father worked, for free—several acres at least—and considered it a favor that they let me do it.



Carl was a seminary student, and also the groundskeeper for a time, at Biblical Theological Seminary. And for a short time, my boss. Biblical was exactly one block away from our house, and it was not only the reason we lived in the house we did, but why we lived in Pennsylvania in the first place. We moved from Oklahoma so my father could take a job as the Director of Development, basically a one-man ad agency/public relations firm/fundraising/recruting office and mail house. His duties encompassed any and all correspondence with the outside world from marketing the seminary to prospective studnets, to mailing out fundraising newsletters. He designed, wrote, photographed, layed out and printed everything from business cards to invitations, annual reports and ads. His domain was a little side building about fifty feet away from the main building and he walked to work each day, even in the rain.

Direcly behind his office was the groundskeeper's shed. Carl's office, if you will. As I said, Carl was a student there, and in return for some sort of break on tuition, he was the head groundskeeper. I assume that he was in charge of other operational duties in addition to the landscaping, but for a few short summers, I was his assistant. The seminary owned a John Deere riding mower and since this was the closest thing to driving a car I could find, I jumped at the chance to mow the lawn. I can't even imagine the liability issues you'd have today if you wanted to let a ten-year-old mow several acres of your lawn, I don't care if you are a non-profit.

This was before Sony introduced the walkman and forever changed lawnmowing as we know it, so for the several hours that it took to mow the lawn, I amused myself by singing popular songs I knew from the radio, as well as songs I made up as I rode along. I daydreamed and I watched the ground pass beneath me.



Carl was an interesting guy. Eventually, he moved off campus to a small cottage a few doors up from the seminary, and I used to stop by and see him. He made his own birch beer—some of which would occasionally blow up—shot rabbits with a bow and arrow in his back yard, and always had time to talk to me. Years later, he was living with an Amish family in Lancaster, and they allowed a bicycle touring group I was with to stay on the farm for the night. They fed us homemade ice cream and, of course, homemade birch beer. I don't know how they made it, but I swear I got drunk of that birch beer.

I have no idea of Carl's current whereabouts, but when I think back to that time, I'm amazed by his patience with me. I've often wondered if he married and had kids of his own. I'm sure he would have made a good father. I can't in my wildest dreams imagine entrusting a tractor to a ten-year-old boy for the day. I have a hard time watching my stepson mow the lawn. And it's nearly impossible to do so without a few comments and corrections. Carl had a big beard at the time, and had a mellow way about him that I found soothing. He never seemed to get worked up about anything, even when I would run over tree roots and ding the mower blade. I don't ever remember anything from him but gratitude that I had worked hard.

There are a few people in my life that have served as reminders for how easy it is to take things slower, especially when dealing with children. To listen more than talk. To allow more than you think you should. To leave room for mistakes, as opposed to stepping in at the first sign of trouble. Carl was different than I am most of the time. He was more interested in letting me help, than in having a well mown lawn.

I'll have to remember to think of Carl the next time one of my kids is helping out. What would he have done?

Drugs, Guns & Porn

A Summer Job
When I was fourteen, I got my first job working at the Hatfield Pharmacy, a block from my house. This was before companies like Eckardt, CVS and Rite Aid bought out all the mom and pops. The Hatfield Pharmacy was still a family business back then and the owner was your typical entrepeneur. He was into a little of everything. His father had, I believe, owned quite a bit of real estate, and he had inherited not only the building that the Pharmacy was in, but several of the buildings to which it was attached. Directly next door, and in fact attached by a back hallway, was the area's first video store. This was long before Blockbuster and the whole concept of video rental was new. The video industry had not yet discovered the idea of "sell-through" and so the cost of movies on video was close to $100 a piece. No thought of buying videos. You rented them.



But first you had to make sure you had the right kind of technology. VHS was not yet the dominant format, and Beta was still a presence. Beta was the higher quality, but more people were buying VHS format players. Laserdiscs were supposedly even greater quality but almost no one had those.

Hatfield Video actually began as an arcade. Again, this was at the start of the video game revolution and things like Atari, Nintendo, and Intellivision was just coming on the market. The highest quality games were still only available at arcades, and they demanded a constant diet of quarters.

I can't remember how exactly I got the job, but it probably entailed walking in and asking. I might have even tried to get a job next door at The Trolley Stop, a place where I eventually also worked and which the Pharmacists owned a piece of. They may have sent me to Charles.

Charles was the son of a pharmacist. He had followed in the family business and had taken over the pharmacy some years before. So what does a 14-year-old do in a pharmacy? Mainly I dusted the bottles of overstock drugs. Often in the upstairs storeroom of the pharmacy. Looking back, I have to wonder what the shelf-life of some of these drugs actually were, and whether or not I was a mercy hiring. I remember finding bottles so old, I was half expecting to find the words "miracle tonic" on them.

Because pharmacies stock dangerous and addictive prescription drugs, they can be targets for drug addicts and criminals. Anything from people with fake precriptions, to outright armed robbery, the pharmacist had to be ready. Or so I was told as to the reason for the number of loaded handguns lying on back counters. Charles, who looked like a pharmacist, as opposed to a member of the NRA, did not carrry a handgun so much as keep a little heat handy at all times. Being fourteen, I didn't think twice about it and went about my business in the precense of serious fire power.

I don't remember how long, or how often, I worked in the Pharmacy, but it seems it wasn't long before I moved to the video store/arcade, which was connected to the pharmacy by a back hallway.

The video store/arcade, commonly known as Hatfield Video, was half video store and half arcade. The front half, or two thirds to be more exact, was an arcade of 25¢ video machines like DigDug, PacMan, Star Wars, Centipede, Galaxian, Frogger, Defender, Donkey Kong, Asteroids, Space Invaders, and Missle Command. They even had several "machines" set up to play the latest Atari, or Intellivision game.

The back section was reserved for video rental featuring VHS, Beta and even a small selection of laserdics. We had classics, and new releases, but the selection was fairly limited as not that many titles had been release on video. Back then, a video had to be out of the theaters for several years, not several months, before it was released on video. But in addition to the selection of new releases like Airplane, 9 to 5, Friday the 13th, The Shining, and Xanadu, we had Hatfield's first collection of porn.



The adult titles were in a case on the back wall and were in plain view of the general public, but were not in their original boxes. Each tape was in a generic case with the title written on the spine. Oddly enough, the porn industry likes to spoof popular movie titles, so at first glance they appeared to be mainstream movies. In fact, one day my mother was in the store and began looking at the titles until I informed her that she would probably not be interested in those titles. Now that I think of it, it's amazing that she continued to let me work there.

But that wasn't the only porn available in the place. In the bathroom, located in the back hallway that connected the video store to the pharmacy, was a casual assortment of magazines for your viewing pleasure. They weren't in plain view, but they were never hard to find. After Charles' nephew and I got caught watching "Debbie Does Dallas" one night while we were minding the store, the magazines dissappeared.

Not long after, I changed jobs when I moved over to The Trolley Stop, a combination deli, hoagie shop, and convenience store that Charles was also part owner of. I made a lot more money, got more hours, and was busier, but it never quite lived up to that first job.

Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo

The first time I remember being aware of my mother teaching ballet was out of our home in Nashville, TN. I know this doesn't sound right, but I believe the classes were held in a refinished garage. In fact, I think I remember my parents putting in a linoleum floor; the kind with the 12x12 tiles. Only this was back before the self-stick kind. These were the kind you had to spread glue, or something like it, then place the tile down. It's possible it wasn't the garage, but only a spare room, I was only in nursery school, so it's a little fuzzy.



Back then, my mother used a little record player, the kind that folds up into a box and has a speaker attached. She would put on old 45s and the kids would dance around the room. I'm sure it was more complicated than that, but that's how I remember it.

Later, after we moved to Oklahoma, she opened a big school in Edmond. This was the largest operation she ever undertook in her 30-odd years of teaching ballet and gymnastics. Her speciality had always been teaching young girls ages 3-7, but in this school, she had hired other instructors and the school had classes for every age and level of accomplishment. There was the requisite ballet and gymnastics for the young girls, which my mother continued to teach. But there was also, more intensive ballet classes, as well as a full gym, complete with uneven bars, a balance beam, and a vaulting horse, for the gymnasts. There were even classes developed for college cheerleaders.

For a short time, I even took lessons there. The problem was, the class was a mixture of classical ballet and gymnastics. I was the only boy and while I really liked the gymnastics, I hated the ballet part. I just didn't truck with the girly nature of ballet, with it's pink shoes and tutus. I don't even think I lasted the entire class before I bailed.

But that didn't keep me from coming to the school with my mother. But instead of taking ballet classes, I hung out next door at Toddy's Crafts. Toddy was a Native American Indian from the Hopi tribe. I remember this because it registered pretty big with me at the time. I was a little blond boy with a dutchboy haircut, and she was a long, black-haired Indian woman with a craftstore full of turqoise, hemp and beads. This was the early seventies and I have often thought she was probably the closest thing to a hippie that I ever knew.

Next door was a auto supply store that had a coke machine that still sold ice cold, 10oz cokes in glass bottles, for a quarter. Toddy would send me over with fifty cents and I would put the money in, open the narrow glass door and pull the bottle out. I spent many an afternoon with Toddy.

In 1976, my father decided to take a job with Biblical Seminary in Hatfield, Pa. For awhile, my mother maintained ownership of the school, with another woman running it. In those first years, I remember coming back to Oklahoma in the summer and attending recitals on a stage at the local park. A few years later, my parents sold the ballet school, it turns out she never really liked managing in the first place, and managing a school from 1500 miles away was not something my mother was cut out for.

I don't remember the name of the woman who bought the school, but I remember she wore a lot of makeup and always looked a little overdone and fake. I also remember she was the one who asked our housekeeper, Bachtu, a vietnamese woman, "Now what's your name dear, I always forget. Is it back-to or come-from?"

After we moved to Hatfield, my mother started a new school, this time in our home again. For close to thirty years, my parent's house at 13 East Broad Street in Hatfield was home to the Creative Ballet & Gymnastics School, taught by Miz Jan. Literally generations of mothers and daughters took ballet classes from my mother over that time, and thousands of girls came to know my mother as Miz Jan. She is forever etched in their minds as a powerful part of their childhood.

For the entire time I lived in that house, from the third grade till I graduated high school, a room we called the "sun room" and an adjoining room which we referred to as the "dining room" were dedicated to the ballet school. These were rooms in which no other furniture was kept, but on days when classes were held, the entire first floor, with the exception of the kitchen, was the domain of girls ages 3-7 and their mothers.

The driveway was also off limits for the most part, as it filled up with parents picking up, or dropping off, their kids.

But for all the disruption, my mother was rarely away from home. She had one of those rare jobs where she actually worked from home and made a decent living. There were years, I know, when she was clearing more than my father, who was working for the seminary. She also managed to put three of her six kids through college on what she made working Saturdays. But she did it from home. As a general rule, we did not disturb her while she was teaching, but if we really needed something, or we wanted to go somewhere, all we had to do was open the door leading from the kitchen to living room, walk in, wait for her to notice us, then quickly ask our question or make our request. She never scolded us for this, but rather often introduced us to her class.

If you were in the house during classes, you were treated with a steady littany of music, mostly classical ballet numbers and Disney tunes. Since classes repeated not only throughout the day, but also the week, you came to know the week's class pretty imtimately. And since many classes were repeated year after year, we children could probably recite with near accuracy, the words to most of the songs my mother used over the years.

Misplaced ballet shoes and small musical instruments filled a basket in the corner of the dining room, a practice balance beam (one that laid directly on the floor and that had been covered with carpet to soften it up) rested against one wall. In the sun room, against the outer wall, which was lined with windows surrounded by dark wood trim, there was attached ballet bars. My father had taken old bicycle tires and cut pieces to guard against anyone hurting themselves on the brackets that held the bars in place. Also in the sun room were the gymnastics mats. Folding mats used for tumbling. These had many uses beyond the ballet school. For years we made alternative use of them as forts, wrestling mats, and even cushioning for the back of the station wagon on the long trips back to Oklahoma.

In the winter of 2003, my mother made the decision to hang up her ballet shoes and black wrap skirts. She would be Miz Jan no more. Forever after, she would be know only as Mimi. After a brief moment of doubt, my mother has never looked back. She really did love those girls, but everyday wakes up and she giggles with the knowledge that no little girls will be knocking on her door. She had had enough. Not only had she raised six kids of her own, but she helped to raise, if only for an hour and a half at a time, thousands of girls. One part of her life was over, but a new one had just begun.

We're still not sure where she'll end up, but she still calls me and says just a little guilty, "I'm having so much fun, I can't hardly stand it. I just don't think I've ever been this happy in my whole life."

But because she is my mother, and there is still a part of her that remains, she has to add, "Of course, I loved my time with you all, too."

"It's okay, mom," I tell her. "You're allowed to be happy."

"I am," she'll concede. "It's almost not right how happy I am."

No one deserves it more than her.

The Great Earphone Experiment

There we are, three of us, sitting in front of the TV enjoying our show, with not a sound coming from the TV speaker. I picture my father sitting proudly behind us, admiring his work and basking in the sound of silence.



It was one of my father's great experiments. We wanted to watch cartoons, and he didn't want to have to hear it. Solution: earphones. Lots of them.

After a trip to Radio Shack for supplies, my father set to work, stripping wires, joining cables, attaching plugs. When he was done, he presented it to us with pride. It looked like an octopus.

What he had done was buy four sets of earphones, the old kind you stuck in your ear, the kind that came with a little transistor radio, there being no such thing as today's modern headphones, and attach them all to one single plug that could be inserted into the front of the TV. This meant there were eight individual earphones, all connected to one plug. And because he didn't want us to sit too close to the TV, he had extended each wire by eight feet. When put in place, we could all sit comfortably eight feet away from the TV, and listen in stereo, each of us in our own little world.

If you wanted to watch TV, by yourself, you chose two of the earplugs (you might end up with two left channels), and you watched by yourself. Over time, of course, the long wires became entagled, and try as we might, there assembled a rats nest of sorts near the base of the contraption. We began to sit closer and closer to the TV, until finally, two us would be huddled together several feet from the TV, with our heads nearly touching as we fiddled with the wires to combat the constant shorting of the various connections.

Finally, one by one, each of the earphones died, until the whole contraption ended up in the middle drawer, the one above the drawer full of pictures, and under the one full of gloves and hats. I assume my mother just threw it out finally. But you never know, it could be in a box in the attic somewhere, waiting to be untangled.