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.

Who's In Charge?

It certainly wasn't the last time my parents would be summoned to a school of mine, but it might have been the first. I was in the first grade at Clegern Elementary School in Edmond, Oklahoma and my parents had just gotten a call from my teacher. It seems there was a problem with their son, and she wanted to talk about it with them.



It seems my class had just gone through picture day the day before. We had all filed into the gym in an orderly manner and were taking our places on the risers, when the problems started.

"Well, you see, he was telling all the kids where to go and where to stand," the teacher told my parents.

My parents sat and looked at the woman. She was a young teacher, her first year, but she could tell that my parents hadn't understood the seriousness of the event.

"I don't understand the problem," my mother said.

"Well, the problem was," she whined. "They were all listening to him."

Better Put Your Name On It

It all started with my sister, Stacy. Since she was the oldest and had started a family first, she began requesting, or in some cases, commandeering things from my parents house. Nothing huge. The first I remember is that she took all our original Winnie-the-Pooh books.



"What do you mean she took them?" I asked my mother.

"I don't know," she said. She was sitting in the living room floor, working on that week's ballet class. She looked up at me and said, "She asked if she could take them, and since I wasn't doing anything with them, I said yes."

I just looked at her.

"Oh honey," she said, "I didn't know you wanted them. They were just a couple of old books. You can have something else."

The thing was, I didn't really want anything else. I was a bachelor living in an apartment in Philadelphia. I had no wife, let alone kids. I don't even know what I would have done with the books, but it was one of the few artifacts from childhood that might have meant something to me. I would have liked to have them, but I had missed out. Apparentlty, the memories of my youth were already being plundered and if I was going to get in on the action, I was going to have to start thinking ahead.

Looking back, I realize it didn't really start with my sister, really. In college, I got the idea that since my grandmother was getting old, I needed to go visit her and write down some of her stories. I took a week off, and flew to Oklahoma City, OK and spent a week at her house. We looked through old photo albums and she told me stories of great aunts and uncles, great grandparents I never knew, and her days growing up in Kansas. During that time, I showed interest in some of her old books.

"Well," she said. "I'll just have to put your name in them, and when I die, they'll be yours."

This started me thinking, and I asked her about some of her paintings. My grandmother, who we called Nino, was an amatuer landscape painter. Her work was quite good, but they were all copies. To my knowledge, few of her paintings were original compostions. There was one in particular that I especially liked. It had hung in the den in my grandparents old house and I had spent hours as a young boy, lying on the old leather sofa and staring at it. The painting was of an old horse-drawn wagon filled with hay, on a country road. My grandmother said that getting the hay right had been the hardest part and she had struggled to make it not look like a big hairdo. It was by far, my favorite. But again, I was too late. An older cousin who lived in Oklahoma had already claimed it. So I asked about another one. The painting of the old dutch windmill. She put my name on it, and years later, much to my Aunt Carolyn's dismay (it had been one of her favorites, too), I was given the painting.

My wife, Jane, considers my family's discussion of post-death memorabilia to be peculiar at best, and morbid at worst. She calls it my family's preoccupation with death. I simply like to think of it as a practical way to avoid a bitter family argument over who gets what. It's not a perfect system, but then what is?



Surprisingly, we haven't split my parents house completely up, yet. For one thing, they're still young and very much alive. But we have begun dividing and conquering already. My little brother, Brad, and his wife somehow got to the piano first, but not before I'd snagged the piano stool, which had been my Uncle Will's. Somebody got Uncle Will's old chair too, but I don't remember who. Probably Stacy.

Stacy and I have different connections to the things in my parents house than our younger siblings do. Stacy and I, for instance, remember when that stationary rocker sat in my Uncle Will's house in Joplin, MO. To my other brothers and sisters, it's just a chair they've always known. It doesn't hold any more, or less, sentimentality for any of us. It just has its basis in different memories.

The grandfather clock, that I managed to snag, probably has more sentimental value for some of the younger kids, because they probably don't remember living in the house without it. In fact, as far as my youngest brother is concerned, my parents have only ever lived in one house, whereas I think of their house on Broad Street in Hatfield, as just their most recent home. But I think I grabbed the clock when I found out the piano had been taken. It was more of a desperation move.

Some of the items we've claimed, my parents have given up to us immediately, like the piano. But others we will have to wait, either until they die, or until they move into a smaller home that won't accomodate the massive amount of stuff.

As I am the executor of my parent's will, I'm hoping that our continued discussions on who-gets-what will end up in a smooth dispursement of the spoils by the time my parents pass away. In fact, to my knowledge, other than dividing whatever money is left over in the estate, no specific items are mentioned. Rather than my parents deciding what they will leave to whom, we've started calling dibs. As a big family with a lot of kids, you learned early on to call for what you wanted. Whether it was the front seat or the wishbone, we have a long history of claiming things of value.

But, seeing as my parents are only in their early sixties, and in good health, this is all a little premature. They have a good many years to both accumulate memorable artifacts, as well as to lose or give them away. They'll probably move at least once, if not more. And each of us will find new attachments to old things, or old attachments to new things, whatever the case may be.

But when it comes time for my parents to leave us, as sad as it will be, we'll all be ready to yell, "Shotgun."

Asian Fusion.

She had avoided capture by lying facedown in the sea and pretending she was dead until the soldiers left. She had lived in a large beautiful home, had boxes of jewelry and cash and being that her husband was an important man, she lived a life of luxury. She had escaped on a boat with hundreds of other people, with no place to lie down, no place to go to the bathroom, no water, and no food. And now, here she was in America, cleaning our house.



I don't know who was taking care of her kids while she was taking care of us, but I know she had kids around our ages; a little younger, even. I remember meeting them once, but I don't ever remember ever socializing. They never came to play and we never went to their house.

Her name was Bachtu. I don't even know if that's how she spelled it. I don't remember ever having to spell it, even though I know I was reading and writing by then. She was polite, as Vietnamese always are, and kind to us. I think she had genuine affection for us although I don't remember giving her any reason to do so. Her English was sketchy at best and I remember ignoring her demands and running away from her.

My father was working for FIFE, a manufacturing company that made guidance systems for printing presses. My mother had turned her small ballet and gymnastics school into a full-blown school with students that ranged from 3 years old, to college cheerleaders. There was a ballet studio, with mirror covered walls, as well as a large gymnastics arena that included all the basic equipment like tumbling mats, uneven bars, balance beam, rings, etc.

So during the day, when my parents were at work, Bachtu came and took care of us. I'm not sure how long this went on, but I don't think it was long. We only lived in this house for two years and I remember that later she got a job at the high school cafeteria. I also remember that one of her sons lost an eye in an accident with a B-B gun that ricocheted off the sidewalk.

For the most part, Bachtu came to our house, watched over us while she vacuumed and cleaned the house, then left when my mother came home. But on a few occasions, my mother was going to be late, and Bachtu offered to cook dinner as well, so that when my parents got home, everything would be ready.

The first time this happened, she cooked us a traditional Vietnamese meal. There were some stringy noodles that tastes like they were made out of plastic, some sort of eggroll, and a rather large pot of rice.

In the Midwest, where my parents grew up, rice was not a staple on the dining room table. In fact, it was rarely offered, because if you were going to have a starch with your meal it was most certainly going to be potatoes. If you did happen to have rice, it was considered a side and you might get a cup of rice on one corner of your plate that you would soak with butter to make it palatable.

This was enough rice to last us a few weeks. I'd personally never seen so much rice at one time. Of course I was in the first grade, so what did I know, but I don't believe my parents had ever seen a quantity of rice like this either.

"Now that's a lot of rice," my father said.

Bachtu gave my mother a worried look, and my mother quickly added that everything looked wonderful, thanking Bachtu again for making dinner, which made Bachtu smile.

We used to laugh about it. Not in a mean way. We just didn't know any better then. We'd never seen anyone eat a plate of rice. Even potatoes were just a side, with meat, or at least fish, being the main component of the meal. It had never occurred to us that rice might be the main ingredient.

Even before our diets were so influenced by Asian cuisine, my father was eating large bowls of rice. I'd think back to Bachtu and wonder what she'd started.

Later, after we had moved to Pennsylvania and my father was working for the Seminary and we were poor again, I'd think back to the time when we had a maid. It was strange to think that there had been a time when such things happened. And I'd wonder what Bachtu was doing.

Bachtu eventually started some small company along with her husband, and I'm sure they were successful, but like many immigrant families, their main concern was building a better life for their children. I don't know about Bachtu, but her children all went on to very good colleges, and became successful doctors, engineers and lawyers. It's the American way, after all.