Reckless : My Life As a Pretender (9780385540629)

by Hynde, Chrissie

  The family went where the job took the primary breadwinner and never thought for one moment to question it. A pronouncement like “Cleveland? I’m not moving there—you can go on your own” had not yet found its way into the American consciousness. My generation would see to that. I would practically take it up single-handedly.

  Terry had new friends, and they’d play in the backyards making tree forts, wearing raccoon-tailed Davy Crockett hats. Everybody had lasso designs on their bedspreads and maybe an Indian headdress along with their cowboy hats, six-shooters and holsters. If asked, I said I wanted to be a cowgirl when I grew up.

  One bath time, my mother found a necklace in my pocket which wasn’t mine. When questioned I admitted it was Patty Bordeman’s, who lived behind us. I was made to understand that I had stolen it and would have to return it the next day. I didn’t know what stealing was, but it sounded like I was in trouble.

  The Bordemans’ back door was on the side of their house, so with my mother watching I walked across the backyards, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to see if someone came to the door or not. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to tell Mrs. Bordeman about my “stealing,” so I pretended to knock, waited a few seconds, mimed returning the necklace and walked back.

  That might have been the only time I pulled a fast one on my mother.

  Other than that, life was trauma-free, other than one major bummer that I wasn’t dealing with very well: the furnace in the basement. It had a face and scared me to death. My dad would take me down, stand me in front of it and shout, “OKAY, DEE!” She’d switch the thermostat on and we’d watch the interior ignite. It didn’t matter how many times they talked me through it, I was terrified of the one I called Furnace the Burnace.

  I had my first nightmare about it—of it walking into the room where Terry and Dad and I were watching TV with white-and-pink icing all over its face. After that I would never go down to the TV room on my own. If I wanted to watch Captain Penny when Terry was outside, Dad was at work and Mom upstairs, I’d belt down the stairs, turn it on and scramble back up to the top of the landing and crouch in a sprint position.

  —

  Like everyone else who got earaches and sore throats as a child, I was taken to have my tonsils out. The nurse told my mother that I wouldn’t go to the bathroom, so I waited for her to leave the room, climbed over the bars of the crib and showed my mother the route I took down the hall to “Go toidy.” She snuck in my clothes in a paper bag the next day and smuggled me out before I had to get the operation, which was on hold on account of my getting tonsillitis again. I got a Dumbo the Elephant toy and a little dog for my Ginny doll—gifts for being sick. I never did get my tonsils out.

  I discovered that if I bit hard enough I could break a glass with my teeth. “Bud—come quick. She did it again” was an ongoing commotion for a while. Pencils weren’t safe around me either, when I discovered that if I bent them far enough they would snap.

  I understand that, as children, serial killers torture animals. If Wendy O. Williams and I are anything to go by, rock singers like to break things when they’re young.

  I’d go next door to Timmy Porter’s house, and we’d sneak into his dad’s garage and pee in the gravel in the corner. Our parents seemed to know everything no matter how stealthy we were and we got found out but didn’t get into big trouble, which surprised me. Maybe they thought we didn’t know it was wrong, as we were only three. We knew all right, but we liked peeing there.

  I heard years later that Timmy Porter got killed in Vietnam.

  —

  One thing about the Hynde household: it was never old-fashioned. You wouldn’t find a doily or an Early American motif. No chance. It was wire sculptures, Miró-like motifs, and hold the lace, for Dolores Hynde.

  So our next house, after my dad’s transfer to Cleveland with Ohio Bell, was a bungalow on Sherborn Road in Parma Heights, characteristically new and modern with stained-wood siding, golf-course green lawn, matching shrubs, red geraniums and a black Ford Fairlane convertible with gold lightning bolts down the sides, gleaming with Hollywood glamour, in the driveway.

  It was 1958 and everyone was home. No feature in Life magazine had America coursing through its veins more than the Hynde household: Marine Corps mementos, bowling trophies, Coty lipstick, Steve Allen and Jackie Gleason. This was Ohio. This was the heart of the nation, looking forward with opportunity, possibility and flair.

  My parents had been the archetypal newlyweds, both from generations of Akronites; no higher education, no time or money for that sort of thing, they took their lead from the lifestyles presented in Life, Saturday Evening Post or Look magazines. My dad’s job at the phone company meant that we could have a telephone in the basement and the garage. Nobody else had that.

  The United States led the West, and the citizens of the world all wanted to be like us. We had Frank Sinatra and Elvis. We had Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. Everyone wanted to stand with us as we took our place in the sun. They knew all about us, but we didn’t know about them.

  The day we arrived in Parma Heights, as boxes were unloaded from the Mayflower van, I wandered next door into the garage of Colleen McMonagle—a girl my age who shared my interests, which at that time were pretty basic.

  Drawing horses was our favorite pastime. Sprawled across the floor, we improvised theme songs to accompany the furious coloring-in of stampeding horses…DUN dun, DUN dun, DUN dun, DUN dun, DUN dun, DUN dun, DUUUUUNNNN!

  We drew horses grazing, horses resting—their legs folded under them with muzzles on delicate knees—horses rearing, horses galloping, horses trotting, horses jumping. But mainly horses rearing.

  The best thing next to drawing and making tree forts was playing “lost girls,” a game I devised in which I would convince a friend to join me in wandering as far back to the edge of the housing development and into the woods as we could go until we couldn’t find our way back—followed by a blood-pumping rush of fear and mild panic.

  We lived in a world where fearing for our safety was an unknown, as likely an idea as a flying saucer landing in the front yard. We were safe, fed, warm and provided for. We were the last of a dying breed.

  We played baseball, no rules or catching, not for the girls, anyway, as we whacked the ball and watched it soar over the backyards. The boys had rules and took the game seriously.

  We rode our bikes, accompanied by the constant sputtering of lawnmowers and the humming sound of heat and insects. I stuck baseball cards between the spokes of my bike, which made a loud thwacking sound as I got up to speed. In the ponds, we caught guppies, minnows and frogs.

  The approaching bells of the ice-cream man set our hearts aflutter. The sharpening of popsicle sticks on the sidewalk to make spears was ongoing.

  We wore striped T-shirts and corduroy trousers with elastic waistbands; never dresses or anything girly except to church or school. It was still a few years before the entire nation would start wearing blue jeans. Before the hippies came along they were only for farmers. Even beatniks wore slacks with their turtleneck sweaters, not jeans. Jazz musicians wore chinos. Marilyn Monroe once wore jeans in a film, as did James Dean and Marlon Brando. I would never have been allowed.

  The world was full of promise and choice and no one was trying to hurt us. Feeling safe came as naturally as swatting a mosquito. I pranced between the houses on my colt legs, the ground awash with dew and crabapple blossoms. Life smelled good.

  Every fifth house was the same, all up the block and around the corner. Things were newly built with good intentions. Mom called out across the backyards, “Terry! Christy! Christy! Terry!”

  Then the Ohio Bell transferred my dad again—back to Akron.

  3

  AKRON

  I started Fairlawn Elementary School, aged eight, with my first day as “new kid” ruined by the certainty that I would never be able to spell “people” or “Wednesday.”

  During recess, Lolly Reyant and Sally Bittaker, my fellow horse-lov
ing compatriots, and I would wail! After drawing pictures of our alternative identities in class, we would assume our “horse” personas on the playground, galloping at full pelt, then sailing over hedge and fence. We were “The Herd.”

  Lolly was Tan Topper, a bay stallion with one white front stocking and a blaze from forelock to muzzle; Sally was Don Juan Ed, a dappled gray gelding; and I was Royal Miss, a chestnut mare with two white stockings and a star on my forehead. We trotted, galloped, snorted and pawed, reared and sidestepped, cantered and jumped, cleared bush and wall, never balking or shying; we crossed the length of the playground, carefully avoiding the area where the rest of the girls in our class were watching the boys play kickball.

  —

  One day in the summer, when our parents were out bowling, I saw some of Terry’s friends coming up Stabler Road and thought up a plan to scare him. I liked to scare people.

  I snuck out, intercepted his friends and asked them to surround the house and wait while I went back in, then, when they heard me scream, they were to bang on the screened-in windows as hard as they could for one minute. When I knew his friends were in position, I let rip with an almighty howl, triggering a house-shaking assault, not unlike an episode of The Twilight Zone.

  Another time, I spied Terry sitting against the wall of the garage under the milk chute, reading Mad magazine. I went in, opened the chute and dropped a rock on his head. That time I was bang out of order and he was actually hurt. I was sorry. I’m not a violent person, but I couldn’t resist a perfect setup.

  I held my plastic “Jesus Saves” cross near a lightbulb before going to bed so it would glow in the dark. I didn’t think I was religious and didn’t think about whether I believed or not. Having said that, I could never understand how anyone with a modicum of rebelliousness or sense of fair play couldn’t appreciate He who hung with lowlifes and healed the sick. I especially liked the story about Him driving those merchants out of the temple. Even Jesus could lose it if pressed.

  I spent so much time in the woods that it went without saying that something transcendental was at work. Even a child could see that things didn’t just appear out of nowhere. One afternoon, while staring into the sky intent on grooming, tacking up and jumping the horse I would one day have, an unfamiliar terror jolted me from my imaginings: I was beginning to love horses more than I loved God. I knew, even at the age of eight, to keep it in check.

  —

  Dianne Athey was a grade behind me at school. We met at Faith Lutheran Church and spent many a sermon choking on silent, painful laughter in the choir box. In summer, we swung on the trapeze she had rigged up in her backyard, me playing the supporting role in anything athletic but being a total bully when it came to harmonies and parts for our musical repertoire—on a cappella versions of the Kool-Aid theme song and “Foolish Little Girl.”

  Our bid for show business would have to wait a few years, but started when I got a baritone ukulele and the Mel Bay book of chords for an Easter present. Dianne already had a guitar, and we soon had a little thing going, nothing too exciting—“Four Strong Winds,” and Barnaby’s theme song—a kids show on Channel 3. Stuff like that. Pretty crap really.

  My dad played his chromatic harmonica and had an ocarina, aka a “sweet potato,” which I would sneak down from the shelf and have a go on myself. (When “Wild Thing” stormed the charts years later, I could knock out that closing solo, no problem, me and a couple-of-dozen freckled West Virginians.) I copied Bob Dylan’s harmonica holder out of a coat hanger so I could play my uke at the same time.

  The new discount houses like Clarkins where my parents did their grocery shopping also had a record department. It was there that I first saw “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” I stared in amazement for half an hour. I’d heard it on the radio but the long hair and Pierre Cardin suits threw me. I’d never seen a band that looked like them. In fact, I’d never seen an English band. This was a huge turning point. I abandoned my baritone uke and got a big-necked nylon-stringed acoustic guitar that said Zim Gar on the headstock. I couldn’t play along to records as I wasn’t good enough, but found with three chords I would make up my own tunes and sing along. I put to music a wistful message of love to Paul McCartney and found that singing came naturally when I was strumming my stuff.

  4

  WALK, DON’T RUN

  I met Nita Lee while doing time at Litchfield Junior High School. She was willowy, long of limb, and wore her platinum-blonde hair parted just enough to reveal her sorrowful face and the dark circles under her sad eyes. She was beautiful, delicate and nothing like the rest of the Litchfield Argonauts who stalked the corridors. She spoke other languages that only she understood.

  Neither of us was interested in what the “popular” kids were interested in, like getting good or even passable grades, dating guys or wearing penny loafers, or whatever else they were doing. We didn’t want to be like them. Our music was better than theirs and that was what defined us.

  We weren’t yet aware of what “nonconformity” was, but soon it would be the hallmark of our generation. We were well outside the margin of conformity already. My parents might have thought that Nita came from the wrong side of the tracks. They weren’t snobs, but they had that keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentality that characterized middle America.

  Music was becoming the only important thing in our world. We sewed Empire-waist dresses, paisley-trimmed bell-bottoms and Nehru-collared shirts. Nita had recordings of old Hollywood theme songs and went into raptures at the sound of a violin as I did at the sound of an electric guitar. But what really set us apart, aside from our love of sewing, was that we were walkers. Our favorite pastime was walking to downtown Akron. It took a couple of hours from Litchfield, but we were in our element since there was nothing else to do, having rejected all things academic. We walked, rambling and philosophizing; our journeys up West Market Street were adventures. We studied every house and red-brick road, speculating about their histories while discussing the world and what might be out there beyond Akron—like English bands and girls who looked like Jean Shrimpton. Then, when reaching our destination, the intersection of Market and Main, we would make our way over to Polsky’s or O’Neil’s, the two department stores still presiding over what had once been the heart of a bustling urban community, and perch like two panting sparrows at the luncheon counter in Polsky’s basement, sharing a grilled cheese. It felt like running away from home.

  One day, I got on a bus at the terminal on South Main and rode all the way to the nearby town of Barberton. Taking a bus almost felt like a subversive act, given that most (white) Americans living in the suburbs were required to have at least one car per family. Only “poor people” got buses in the new world. Well, you couldn’t walk to a bus stop out there—it was too far. You’d have to get a lift to catch the bus, so why bother taking the bus if you were driving anyway? Part of the “progress” process was to shun public transport. It was dead or dying.

  I felt like I was on a secret mission, watching people milling around the bus terminal in Barberton. How old world it seemed, a public gathering in a public place. I came back to Akron aglow with the thrill of seeing another town, but I kept it from my parents, like my walks downtown. My secrets were starting to mount up. I was almost fifteen and my private world was gaining ground. I had no future plan, but I already knew I wanted to see everything. I wanted to see the world.

  The downtown and its department stores were on their last legs, but we didn’t know it yet. Akron was our world, downtown our playground. Like Nita was enthralled by those old music-hall songs, I was enthralled by the city. My city. My town. But the city was dying and I was clinging to it. I wanted its glamour, its past, recorded in black and white; I wanted to touch it, to feel it. We hardly noticed that it was largely abandoned already. We were still reveling in childhood memories of getting dressed up to go downtown.

  Shopping malls and discount houses, warehouses stacked with price-slashed goods surrounded by acres of park
ing lots accessible only by expressway had taken over from the city’s heart. But I clung to the downtown like a rubber tire bobbing hopelessly in an oily pond of urban demise.

  One afternoon in Polsky’s basement, an Akron pervert attracted to Nita’s Lolita-like beauty sidled up to her; she was wearing one of her whimsical fairytale creations and girly sandals. He leaned over and whispered, “Mmmmm, what pretty toes. If I pretended to drop something now I could lean over and kiss those toes, and nobody would see.” We weren’t sure what to make of that but it was a big story for us and we referred to it often.

  There was another Akronite we saw wandering the streets around there occasionally, known as Coats because he always wore seven or eight, even in summer. Other than Coats and the pervert, there wasn’t much human interaction downtown by the late sixties.

  A suffocating cloak of isolation was enveloping America. Only the destination places, cultural centers you’d visit or pass through like Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco or Seattle, still functioned, with thriving downtowns, defying the seclusion that was spreading like molten lava. With the interstate highway system, nobody passed through places like Akron anymore—they drove around them.

  Akron was now just one of tens of thousands of cities being subsumed into metroplexes, a sinister alchemy at play. The creed was “every man for himself.” Even verandas, the front porches where people used to gather to commune with their neighbors, were replaced by backyard patios in the new prefab bungalows. You drove your car right into the garage and entered the house without having to see anyone. Everyone wanted to be lord of their own Ponderosa.

  There were still a few nightspots downtown like the Black Cat—jazz clubs that were jumping in the fifties; now those too were dying. North Howard Street had been Jazz Central at one time. All the big names came to play there. Akron had been on the circuit and acts would pulled into town on the train and stay the night in one of the many hotels along Main Street. But not anymore.