The Adventures of a Latchkey Kid

by Robert Hodum

  Few plows did runs after Saturday morning, so I felt like Davy Crocket trudging over the snowbound Appalachian Mountains as I pulled my sled that would carry our tree home. Huddled in the tightest single-line formation we could muster, we headed east on Pulaski Road under a full moon. The snow glinted, hanging heavy in the oak and maple trees along the route. Looking at our neighbor’s old farmhouse, over their porch and into the draped front window, we could see the glow and flickering of a fire in their living room and the colored lights of their Christmas tree.

  We passed their property line and followed the path along the shoulder of the road. The stars were strikingly bright that night as we headed to the faint flicker of Christmas lights that outlined the roof of the red barn. The occasional car with snow chains on its tires would jangle past us in slow motion, challenged by icy roads. Somehow we seemed to keep pace with the vehicles that inched their way past us. Some waved their approval of our Christmas walk. Others warded us off the road’s shoulder and onto the snow banks with a polite but firm honk.

  My mom spoke of Christmas angels that traveled with us that night. Dad’s cigar smoke trailed out of the corner of his mouth, as he pulled the sled that had grown too heavy for me to pull. He told me to climb on. His smoke formed blue fragrant clouds in the freezing night’s air. My sister had our dog, Tex, on a leash that insisted on pulling her away from the path. Tex must have smelled the animals in the old barn, as he got closer, his short legs pushed harder through the snow. Aunt Mae hummed her favorite carol as I sat on my sled and looked up at the stars, feeling the evening snowflakes brush my eyelashes.

  “It’s going to snow heavy tonight,” I whispered as we crossed the snow-covered street and entered the dirt entrance of Ketchem’s barn.

  Fir and pine trees are the most aromatic on winter evenings, when your nostrils have become acutely sensitive to aromas in the crisp winds. Mr. Ketcham, one of the several farmers in our area who owned great fields of potatoes, hadn’t sold out his property to the speculators yet. He sold Christmas trees and wreathes from his barn. The barn’s lofts were filled with hay left over from autumn, the stalls that once housed cows and horses were storage for tools and small machinery that he and his sons used in the spring and summer. A steel drum outside the entrance had a fire blazing in it, warming the Ketcham boys as they waited for us to pick out our tree.

  I don’t remember who chose that year’s tree. I know we always consulted Aunt Mae who would come down from Hartford, Connecticut for the holidays. Her mild and gentle manner prevented her from making a definitive choice, and she deferred to her younger brother, Dad, who looked at Mom, who turned to Fran, who was trying to keep Tex, the mutt, from rooting in the stale hay at the barn’s entrance. I’m sure that I gave an opinion. Finally the choice was made, and we loaded and tied the tree to my sled.

  As we moved away from the barn, heading west down Pulaski Road, flakes began to accumulate on the branches of our wonderful Christmas tree. Snow started to fall heavier and the wind whipped up. Our return home was punctuated with promises of hot chocolate and the occasional admonishment to those who complained about the cold, that happiness doesn’t come without a cost. I was cold, kept my mouth shut, and struggled through the snow.

  All I saw were the backs of my parents, Dad pulling the sled with the tree and my sister pushing her boots through the accumulating inches of snow. Aunt Mae slogged forward, humming her carols, and the growing snowdrifts swamped Tex, handled by Mom. We trudged along the side of the road nearest the Smith homestead, and I used its lights as a mental place marker. When we got to Grandma Smith’s property, I knew that relief was around the next corner.

  We passed that house and turned down our street. My chunky thighs, covered in my husky-sized pants, were stinging from the wet and cold. But we had our Christmas tree!

  I felt so close to my family, walking through that snowstorm. My folks were right about insisting that we walk to get the tree. I learned that everything had a cost and that you valued things when you had to work for them. Enjoyment sometimes was preceded by discomfort and sacrifice, made easier by sharing that struggle with others. You had to pay to play. And tonight’s payment would be exacted in cold feet and frostbitten fingers. I admired my parents for understanding that and helping me learn this lesson.

  After the hot chocolate had been finished, my thighs less red from the cold, I was tucked into bed and told to give in to sleep. But, I stayed awake, reliving that night’s walk with my family. That was my most cherished Christmas moment.

  A Different Kind of Christmas

  I remember one Christmas that felt unlike the others. Dad and I decorated the two pine trees at the entrance to our house with the large colorful bulbs kept in the crawlspace closet in the basement. Behind that magical closet’s gray door all of the Christmas decorations patiently waited until the day after Thanksgiving. It was truly the inner sanctum of all that was Christmas, and its opening signaled the beginning of the season.

  The lighting of each length of Christmas lights painted the basement kaleidoscopic. We’d stretch the strands of outdoor lights across the basement floor, testing each set and replacing the bulbs that had broken filaments. Replacement bulbs of vintage colors, shifted in a worn Macy’s box, each clattering for its turn on the Christmas stage. Standing on my toy chest, I could see boxes of ornaments tucked into the far corner of the elevated, crawlspace closet. Its darkness blessed by the smell of dried orange rinds and over-seasoned candy canes that sifted out from one of the boxes that held our Christmas stockings. I never ate them, but found it fascinating simply because they seemed to be Santa’s chosen fruit. Oranges plumped out the bottoms of our stockings, foundations for balsa wood planes, kidney red bouncy balls, and plastic paratroopers with colorful shoots. They’d wind up in the kitchen fruit bowl by Christmas afternoon. Most candy canes rarely made it past Christmas morning, but their sweet aroma unmasked the few broken survivors that lurked at the bottom of a random box or stocking.

  Several days before that Christmas Eve, Mom and I stopped at Gitzsa’s year-round farm stand, its four walls decorated for the season. It was painted green with plastic sheathing covering the windows and fruit bays, which sucked in and out with the evening wind. Christmas trees, wreaths, and produce lined the walls and bins. In one of the corners, removed from the cash register was a selection of toys boxed in their original see-through plastic covers, stacked neatly on dusty produce shelves. They seemed so out of place in a farm stand. This certainly wasn’t Charles and Sons’ Five and Dime downtown in Hewitt Square, and certainly not Macy’s or A&S where all highly sought after toys were sold.

  My mom seemed to halfheartedly examine the fruit while watching me stare at the toys. I showed a particular interest in a Hasbro Nike missile launcher. She noticed the discounted hand-written price on the box.

  Suddenly, she was standing alongside me and in a low voice whispered, “You know, Bobby, this year’s been rough on Santa, and he won’t be bringing many toys.”

  This seemed to have been weighing on her since we got in the car and drove to this farm stand that we had rarely been to before. She didn’t speak, her silence filled by the seasonal music on the radio during our drive. Mom loved the holidays, and always wanted to give us kids and relatives “a good Christmas” as she’d often say. Whatever family crap happened during the year, and there was always something, all of it could be erased, and a clean slate started with this gift that she worked hard to give us all.

  It was something I believed too. All the trouble I caused or got sucked into, the fights and arguments, the teachers’ phone calls home and the scolding and well-deserved whacking. And all the misbehavior my folks never knew about, but that I carried within me, would be wiped clean by the promise of a good Christmas that I hoped would be kept.

  I remember saying, “It’s O.K., Mom. Whatever Santa brings, will be great.”

  Her response, �
�Oh, Bobby, that’s wonderful!” seemed out of place.

  “Well, why don’t I help Santa by buying this? You don’t mind, right?” she asked lifting the box from its shelf.

  I followed her to the register.

  “No Mom, its fine.”

  After all, Santa was always watching and knew whether I had or hadn’t been wonderful through the year. He certainly had seen how much I liked this battery operated ICBM launch pad. I never wondered whether he’d find it curious that this season dedicated to the King of Peace was sometimes celebrated with toy replicas of weapons of war.

  I remembered how that October we feared that my brother Harry’s destroyer would be called up to blockade and intercept Russian ships. In school we prepared for nuclear war through the fall and into the winter, not that we understood what any of that would really mean. But we did see the anxiety and uncertainty in the eyes of our teachers as we knelt, heads to the wall in the school’s hallways. Maybe the true gift of a good Christmas was being able to forget all that, and not even think about how lucky we were that none of that had happened.

  Taking out imaginary Russian Migs with rubber-tipped missiles occupied much of that Christmas morning. After lunch we watched Babes In Toyland with Laurel and Hardy. Later that evening, I got lost in the glow of the colored bulbs and their reflection on the strands of tinsel that chromed our tree. I’d squeeze under and stare at the insides of that lighted tree, wondering what it would be like to live up in those branches. When I thought no one was looking, I’d sneak some tinsel, stretch them over my forehead, and pull them back and forth like a tug of war rope-pull during the spring Field Day at school. The faster I’d pull the ends, the darker the smudge line I’d have midway between eyebrows and hairline. I’d swagger around displaying my forehead trying to avoid Mom who’d laugh, lick her thumb, and rub the smudge away. She looked happy, sitting on the arm of Dad’s easy chair, hugging him.

  This was a good Christmas. Thanks for this gift, Mom.

  Watching Wrestling with Grandma

  Grandma Cross was a big woman, weighing in at over two hundred pounds. She had large, work-tough hands and a voice like a traffic cop. She always smelled of cooking lard and bleach. I’d disappear into the folds of her bear hug as she’d say, “How ya doin’ kid?” I can’t recall her ever saying my name on the Sundays she came for dinner. Grandma plopped herself at the kitchen table and led the discussions as the women of the family prepared early dinner.

  Grandpa would light up and walk the backyard. Sometimes if there was a game on, he’d find Dad’s easy chair and settle in for a conversation-free, cigar-heavy afternoon. Dad, after the pleasantries were given, would find a comfortable spot on the couch and read the paper. Sometimes I’d see him at his desk upstairs doing pages of pencil-written calculations for Monday morning meetings.

  Grandma and I didn’t exchange many words those Sundays. She’d be largely silent during dinner. I’d be seated next to her and endure the occasional elbow nudge, admonishing me to sit up and eat “like a human being.” After, she’d sit back and watch imperiously as Dad did the dishes and I dried. I’d get a wink from her as I finished my kitchen chores. Her silence and mask-like countenance puzzled me because I knew the other side of Grandma that most of them didn’t.

  On our Saturday morning visits to my grandparents, I’d hear her yelling at the playroom TV as it blared out the introductions of the day’s wrestling matches. Yes, my stoic Sunday Grandma Cross was a Saturday wrestling fanatic.

  When she heard us come in she’d call, “Bobby, you come down here now. We’re watching wrestling!” On Saturdays, “the kid” had a name.

  I’d find her seated on her favorite wicker chair with an embroidered cushion, in her morning dress, only a few feet from the TV screen. She’d grab me and sit me on her lap and, with her hairy-lip kiss, we’d start our visit, screaming at the antics of the wrestlers whose bios she knew by heart, booing that day’s villains and rooting for her favorites. That was when Grandma Cross was her most animated and conversant, at least with me.

  The whole family knew her as the tough Scotch German, daughter of a Brooklyn dairy farmer. She was as big and as strong as her brothers who worked the family farm. No one in the family messed with her. Even cousin Dennis knew that she was the force in the Cross household and had always been. Grandpa might have had the gun, but she had the iron will. But, I just loved these sessions and snuggled right up to her and followed her lead. I really had no idea who the hell these guys in tights and short shorts were. Didn’t matter, I got to scream at the black and white images with her.

  One thing you didn’t do during these matches was root for the opposition. And she made really clear who that was or wasn’t. So, I quickly learned that Haystacks Calhoun, the burly, bearded bear of a man, always shirtless and barefoot and dressed in farmer’s jeans, was her favorite. This three hundred and fifty-pounder would bash his opponents with his belly or absorb the opposition’s blows with his barrel chest. His signature move was to throw them down on the canvass and sit on them. He usually won. Pretty Boy George, a handsome blonde with a weightlifter’s physique was his nemesis. The women loved him in his skimpy wrestling trunks. He’d blow kisses to them, as he’d sneak some kind of sandpaper out of his shorts and rub it in the eyes of his opponent. He’d win a lot but never against Haystack. The Chief, an American Indian who dressed in full-Indian attire, headdress and all, would tomahawk the necks of the opposition. My personal favorite was The Jamaican Kid, a black dwarf whose head-butt known as the “Coco Butt” sent even the full-size wrestlers reeling. Sometimes he’d be literally thrown out of the ring into the stands, but he’d always bounce up, jump back into the ring, and bite his opponent on the leg.

  When the matches finished, Grandma would smile, playfully slap my thigh, and slide me to the floor. Up the stairs she’d go to see her daughter and have some tea. I was on my own to watch the women’s’ roller derby with forearms smashed into throats, solid belly punches and handfuls of hair-pulls that rivaled the wrestling action that Grandma and I loved. Skaters would be launched off the wood track into the stands and you could count on at least one solid fistfight.

  Only minutes into the carnage, she’d yell down to me.

  “Bobby! Bobby, come up here, stop looking at those cheeky legs, and come and get some cookies.”

  Grandma wouldn’t let me watch too much of that show, those ladies’ outfits were too “floosy” she’d say.

  If I didn’t respond, guess I was looking at those short shorts and cheeky legs, her next response would come from the other side of Grandma’s smile.

  “Shut that off and get up here now!”

  There was no third request. Grandma’s hands-on disciplinary policy waited for me if I delayed. Besides, I could never turn down those oatmeal raisin, saucer-sized gems served from the warming pan she’d pull out of the oven. It was clear that when we left her playroom, Grandma became the other one, the enforcer. Only her winks on Sunday spoke to what we had shared the day before.

  Learning to Fight

  The first time that I got beaten up and ran home crying was a Saturday. Dean, who delighted in wrestling us to the ground and punching us, targeted me that day. He outweighed us all by at least ten pounds and knew how to use his fists. He’d taunt us before closing in for the kill.

  Both my parents were home and I expected instant retribution against the older kid up the street. I burst through the door, dramatically increasing the volume of my screams. I hoped Mom would bolt out the door, apron flying in the wind, grab that bully, and shake him good. That was a major miscalculation on my part.

  Mom, who had grown up with thirteen other siblings during the Depression in an Irish neighborhood in Brooklyn, had another way of looking at this. First, use your words, then your fists. Don’t look for a fight, but don’t run from one either. Get your shots in before your opponent clubs you. She made it cle
ar that your mouth would definitely get you into trouble, but might also get you out of it. But if your words failed, never walk away when struck. Fight back. After all that’s what she did as a kid. Cowardice was unacceptable, but worse was taking a beating and crying about it later.

  Mom called my dad over to begin my self-defense lessons. I learned to make a tight fist and knuckle punch that afternoon. Dad took me out back, knelt down and grabbed my shoulders. And so I learned how to make a proper fist, thumbs tucked out not under your fingers, how to stand, jab, block and weave. I never thought that he knew any of this. He was quiet, a proper office manager, well-dressed with a tie and leather briefcase, had two weeks vacation a year, and spent one week painting our house and the other taking us on car trips to Washington, D.C., the Blue Ridge Mountains or the Luray Caverns. He was the patient man with a cigar in hand that floated in an inner tube in our pool, that poured our cement patio with my Uncle Warren. He couldn’t know much about fighting, but he did.

  I was anxious to try out my newly acquired skills and vowed next time to stand my ground and not cry. My street was the main theatre of operation. We kids played on that asphalt, raced our bikes and ate there, learned about the birds and the bees and shared ice cream there, shot fireworks off from its curbs, and, yes, fought on that street.

  My first encounter wasn’t successful, but it was memorable. The Big Shit Kid as we called this older predator still prevailed, but when I gave him a wallop in the face, his surprise melted into more anger. Shortly thereafter I picked myself up off the ground and wiped the blood from my mouth. I noticed that he was bleeding too. I went home, no tears, hair messed up and shirt ripped, with dried blood on my mouth.

  Well, it didn’t take long for the word to get around that I fought back. That didn’t mean I got any more respect from the local hood. But I hoped that maybe next time he’d reconsider his choice of victim. It must have irked him that his younger brother, Gary, and I became good friends, that fall, particularly after President Kennedy was shot. It turned out that Gary and I sat next to one another in Mr. Roth’s fifth grade class the day that Paul Davis, our principal, walked into the room to announce the assassination of President Kennedy. I snapped my pencil in half and threw it at the blackboard; he put his head down on his desk. After a few minutes of silence on our part, we looked at each other and vowed to hunt down the murderer and take his life. Two days prior Mr. Roth had hung up the autographed picture of JFK that my sister had been given for running the East Northport JFK Headquarters during the 1960 presidential campaign. I worked there a couple of Saturdays too, handing out pamphlets and buttons on the sidewalk in front of the campaign office. I felt proud to have the signed photograph hanging on loan behind my teacher’s desk.