Blessed by the Puppeteers

Long before you reach Mineral Wells, you see the Baker Hotel far away, like a brick citadel, standing in the sun … then after passing Welcome Mountain, you come to the hotel and see the swimming pool and blue fountain and women in bathing caps … and farther down the street, the pool hall where the men in overalls sit on the bench and the sign reads “Do Not Spit On The Sidewalk” … and turning down Oak Avenue going north, you pass Poston’s Department Store and the five-and-dime and the drugstore with the soda fountain and then the Crazy Hotel ... why was it called that, I wondered, and imagined crazy goings-on on the upper floors, a pop-eyed bellboy on laughing gas, the Little Rascals tumbling out of a wall bed, and everyone chased by a lion … black-and-white dreams … but when I finally went inside one day, curious, I found it quiet … on the ground floor as you walked in was a barber shop and shoeshine stand … one barber sat reading the funnies … the lobby was huge, empty, and dark, but in the middle a sofa and chairs were lit by a skylight … it was dusty in there and smelled of cigars …

Continuing down the street, you come to the Oak Avenue Newsstand … inside, the smell of fresh magazines … squeaking racks packed with funny books and paperbacks, longhorns on the wall behind the counter, and the portrait of Will Rogers … outside on the sidewalk, the legless man on the little wheeled cart sold pencils … Grandma Walker always bought one … farther down the street, the Grande Theatre, where in a dim early memory my father carries me crying into the lobby … purple swirling pattern on the carpet … Rin Tin Tin on the screen … one street over from Oak Avenue, the Nazareth Hospital where I was born … in the back was a garden with a statue of Jesus that was lit up at night, ghostly white, glowing in Gethsemene glooms, His hands stretched out to the moon … when I was older and could walk around by myself after dark, I would hurry past it … would also hurry past certain old houses …

All the houses were old in that part of town … old houses, old people … Grandma White lived there, on Northwest 7th Avenue … around the corner from her was a neighborhood grocery store … when I was little, I would walk there with her … the floors were dark wood and there were ceiling fans, and shelves of cans, and Animal Crackers … the man at the meat counter would entertain me by sticking a cigarette up his nose and pulling it out his ear … Grandma was proud to show me off … she wore her bonnet when we walked to the store, or to town, and wore it when she worked in her yard … she used an old push mower … one time while she was mowing, I was playing on the porch when I turned and saw a horned toad sitting beside me … I cried out in fright ... “it’s just an old horny toad, he won’t bite” … her house was gray and rickety … there was an unused room where the floor slanted … in the living room Grandma would spread a quilt out on the floor and I would play there under the evaporative cooler … the wallpaper was stained … the stains looked like clouds … and like clouds, made fanciful shapes … the terrier and the laughing king … there was no television in the house … television was sinful, Grandma said … no television, but old framed photos everywhere … on her dresser, a tinted photo of her and Grandpa White, taken in the 20s … she had short dark hair and was dressed like a flapper … in the hallway was a photo of her when she was even younger, standing with one of her sisters in front of a horse-and-buggy … at the end of the hall was the kitchen where in the afternoon the sunlight made spots on the wall … and in the backyard was the clothesline, billowing sheets, and above the trees a towering old house with an attic window … a place of mystery … and in the back yard next door was a weed-grown garden and cracked statuary … one day, a woman even older than Grandma was back there watering her plants and when she saw me watching she said hello and asked how old I was … I told her, then she asked if I could guess when she was born … I couldn’t … “1876,” she said …

The other grandmother, Grandma Walker, lived a few streets away, next to the box factory where she worked … she had a television with a small, round screen … I first saw the Mickey Mouse Club on that television … in one of the rooms of her house, Grandpa Walker had died in 1943 … cancer, 38 years old … behind her house was a garage apartment … one day, Roy wound up a toy car and it went round and round on the leafy street … but Grandma Walker didn’t live there long … she married Roy and moved to his farm on the south side of town … you could see the Baker Hotel and the mountains from there, small and distant … the house was big and had a wrap-around porch and a sleeping porch, and there was a big garden and a windmill and a barn, and cows in the pasture … Roy milked the cows in the morning and Grandma churned butter … “country butter” she sold at Piggly Wiggly’s … there was no bathroom … instead you went to the Johnny House ... a two-seater with a sack of lime and a scoop … when you finished you poured the lime down the hole … next to the windmill was a vine-grown bath house where you could take a shower … the frogs danced around you and croaked while you showered, and you laughed and Grandma laughed too … but most baths were in the big metal tub on the sleeping porch … the bars of soap were big and coarse and smelled strange and sometimes stung your pee-pee … next to the sleeping porch was a small room where there were three very tall stacks of Life magazines, the old ones with the black-and-white covers … Roy kept his chewing tobacco on a special shelf in the kitchen … the tobacco looked like candy bars and smelled good, but I was warned I would get sick if I ever ate one … in the summertime, all the windows were open and fans droned in every room … on the front porch was a porch swing … there was a long dirt driveway … Grandma had an old Studebaker … Roy drove an old pickup, never faster than 30 miles an hour, even on a busy highway … he stuttered and was always spitting tobacco … he played the fiddle and Grandma the piano … Old Rugged Cross … Amazing Grace …

Between Mineral Wells and Weatherford, the highway was entirely paved with brick … red brick, miles and miles of it, every brick having been lain in the 30s by two black men … not until the 70s would the bricks finally be covered by the less-picturesque asphalt … but at the time I recall, the mid-50s, the brick road was only 20 years old … it stretched east and west, straight, like a vein of blood through the green country … in Weatherford, the road stopped being brick and you went around the courthouse square … the courthouse was tall and white, with a clock on all four sides … it dated from the 19th century and was surrounded by equally old buildings … on the façade of one of the buildings was the statue of a knight, shiny and silver … reminded me of the Tin Man … you drove on … after a while, you came to Fort Worth …

Fort Worth in the 50s … the Will Rogers Coliseum where the Shrine Circus was held … smell of popcorn and manure, roar of lions, men in fez caps selling programs and souvenirs, excitement … a baby clown wandering through the audience carrying a potty and giant milk bottle … as he got closer to me I started crying … he came right up to me and placed the potty under my seat … Forest Park Zoo was nearby … same rich fragrance of manure, popcorn … the monkey house, elephants, giraffe necks stretching high into the trees … there was a mini-train in Forest Park … I remember the train’s debut … people shoving each other and shouting as they fought for seats … my parents stopped dead in their tracks when they saw the chaos, then we walked away … West Freeway took you downtown … you passed the building that housed KFJZ Radio and Channel 11 … I thought the Three Stooges and Little Rascals actually lived there … always wanted to go inside and see what it was like … magical place … Mrs. Baird’s Bakery also magical, because of the bread smell that filled the air … downtown … Texas & Pacific Depot, the post office with the row of stone-carved lion faces looking down … the Continental National Bank under construction, orange girders like Tinker Toys shining in the sun … the Greyhound station was downtown … waiting there for Grandma White to arrive … I stood on my seat and peered over the partition into the area where the black people sat under a blue neon sign that read COLORED … not far from the Greyhound station was the Hotel Texas, where later in the 60s President Kennedy would spend his last night on Earth … downtown Fort Worth … at some point you left the West Freeway and went down Lancaster, then Rosedale, where you came to Newark Avenue and home …

It was a short street, Newark … the north end of the street ended at the train tracks … when a train passed, the diesel horn would shake the earth and I would watch transfixed from the back yard till the caboose passed … the south end of the street met Rosedale, and directly across Rosedale was the church … stained glass windows told Sunday School stories … running with the other kids on the side of the church beside the water tower … the preacher stomping and shouting, face red as a beet … “Mommy, why is that man mad?” … our house was a tiny box with a flat roof, like all the other houses on the street … for a while, there was a rock pile beside our house … standing on it wearing a straw hat … I watched Daddy make a driveway with the rocks … Howdy Doody Time, Hostess Snowballs … we had a dog named Peggy … Grandma Walker gave her to us … they told me there were puppies inside Peggy’s tummy, so I tried to open her mouth to see them, and she bit me … dark morning when the puppies were born … Daddy borrowed a dog house from the man next door … Manor Bread truck … and the milk man … rooftop TV antenna against the morning sky, smell of concrete porch … Captain Kangaroo … one day, my parents left me alone for a short time to go somewhere with some friends … I was only three … right away, I ran inside and got the box of matches … came back out to the driveway and built a tiny enclosure with the driveway rocks … struck the match on my shoe sole the way I’d seen my father do and threw it flaming into the rock enclosure … it went out … took the matches back inside just before my parents returned … behind the house was the alley … I was in the alley one day when my mother called me to come to her … it occurred to me for the first time that I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to … I took off running … she chased me … the boy hanging onto the cyclone fence watched … wild joy, then I turned and saw her mad face and was paralyzed with fear … she grabbed me and I got a spanking … my mother belonged to a women’s club that met once a week at a school … while the mothers were meeting, the kids would go to a nursery school in the gymnasium … lunch on the bleachers, afterwards they would pull out the big toy box … always wanted to play with the shiny green knight, but the bigger boys got it first … the club held a Christmas program one time … woman onstage in Santa Claus costume, red toenail showing through split in black rubber boot, I knew she wasn't real … she handed out toys … the yellow boat they wouldn't let me keep … never understood why … mother took a nap in the afternoon … I was supposed to take a nap too, but never could sleep … I’d lie in my bed staring up at the yellow curtains with the monkeys and balloons and giraffes … couldn't wait to go outside and play … Scott the older retarded boy would terrorize me … one day he stole my tricycle … I told Daddy when he got home from work and he didn’t hesitate a moment, he went down the street and brought it back in the late afternoon light … truly, he knew no fear … Superman comic on the floorboard of an old car … the boy tried to leave his glasses in the car, but his mother fussed at him so he grabbed them and hurried into school … the rust on the bathroom scales made a picture that engrossed me when I sat on the toilet … one day, a man from the dog pound took Peggy away, I don’t know why … she screamed and strained at the end of the rope, fought him all the way to the truck … Mommy cried all day … finger paints, a fire engine … Glenn with the soda caps stuck to his legs … Uncle Remus book at night sale I wanted … cut my toe in a swimming pool … in the afternoon, the older kids would walk home from school … lying in the backseat of the car, I saw God in the sky, with dark beard like Jesus … told my parents but they paid no attention … in the doctor's office, touching the seat the man had just vacated, still warm … “that man doo-doo'd” … Mommy frowned and hushed me … riding stick horses across the street with Terry to her house while our mothers watched … in her sandbox Terry made mud pies and I tasted one … jumping off the see-saw … “my bottom! my bottom!” … later in the bathroom, Terry’s mother put starch on it … Terry and I pretending to be monkeys … she said “let’s eat our babies” … we poured pretend ketchup on her dolls and pretended to eat them … on rainy days, we made picture shows … smell of paste and newsprint … hung the picture shows on the wall and sat there watching them like movies … Arthur Godfrey Show in the morning … magazine ad, cartoon tomato face … birthday party in Vicki’s backyard, the Goodyear blimp flew over … TV Guide picture of Pinky Lee … in my room, the table full of little men, my plastic soldiers and cowboys and Indians … Jiminy Cricket opened the book and magically there was a wagon train … wearing a fringe leather jacket, I stood on a woodpile in the backyard one frosty morning singing “Davy Crockett” … Lake Worth … I drew a big circle in the white sand with a stick while Daddy fished … Brownwood … Aunt Jody's front porch … the lot across the street and two-wheeled machines I called “rolly coasters” … running through her house one time, I burst into the room where Uncle Vinus lay dying … his face was gray and his mouth open, gasping for air … I screamed … the grownups came running … Uncle Vinus laughed, “that boy screamed like a wild Injun” … Galveston … we stayed in a motel … I had never been in a motel before and was excited, jumping around the room while my parents laughed … later on the beach, playing with my shovel and pail, I looked up at the boy in fringe leather pants walking on the seawall with his mother … I wanted pants like that … then Daddy carried me into the raging waves and I got salt water up my nose and cried, and he carried me back to shore … “I'm bored,” said Mommy … I thought she meant board … seafood restaurant on the pier, I reached out the window and touched a passing seagull … later, playing with my little red boat on the window sill, it dropped to the sand below … Mommy went down to get it, waving up and smiling … and the San Jacinto Monument, elevator door opening onto a roomful of historical dioramas, glass cases with little men, plastic figures with rifles … then the observation deck, where far below I saw our white-topped blue Ford the size of a toy and shiny in the coastal sun … and Corpus Christi, standing in the front yard of a house, I looked across a field and caught the glimpse of a woman in a blue bathing cap far away jumping off a diving board and disappearing into an unseen swimming pool … was she real? … sometimes I wasn’t sure what was my imagination … and in the breezeway, the older boy and girl put me on a bicycle, but I didn’t know how to ride and the bicycle fell over, sending me straight into the concrete … I screamed and all the grownups came running out of the house … then there was a visit to someone else’s house in Corpus Christi, and after that a visit to the cemetery where my father’s baby sister was buried, and then, on the way home, we stopped in San Antonio where my father carried me through the doors of the Alamo, wearing my coonskin cap … old stone walls, antique guns under glass … Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier …

I didn’t know it at the time, but something momentous happened on that trip … one of the persons we visited in Corpus Christi was an aunt of my father’s … he had never met her … for that matter, he had never met his father … his father had deserted the family shortly after he was born, right at the start of the Depression, leaving Grandma White with two boys to raise by herself … and now, 26 years later, my father curious about the father he had never known, visited this aunt and asked her about him … he was living in Mexia, she said … would he like to meet him … he said yes, and she said she would contact him … thus, Grandpa White entered our lives …

He visited us a few months later … he was a tall man, with a full mop of gray hair that sat on top of his big head and he had a broad smile … he gave me a string of lollipops … after dinner, Grandpa White pulled out a bottle of Old Crow and he and my father drank and talked … my mother went to bed earlier than usual … when it was time for me to go to bed, the two of them carried me, laughing and stumbling and talking funny … hard to believe, but there was a time when my father was unaccustomed to hard liquor … beer was all he drank, and not very much, in those days … so, after consuming the Old Crow, he got sick … Grandpa White helped him to the bathroom … old devil …

He visited us again … I remember he smoked cigars with disposable plastic holders … they were orange and fascinated me … the backyard would be littered with them after he left and I would pick them up, much to my mother’s displeasure … “put those down, they’re nasty” …

On his fourth visit, he came while my father was at work and sat on the couch talking to my mother … I played on the floor in front of him … his big head was framed by the picture window … he looked down at me, smiling that broad smile of his … he wanted to surprise my father by visiting him on his lunch break, so my mother told him where my father worked in Arlington and he left … he and my father had lunch in his car, and at some point in the conversation he said he wanted to see Grandma White, the woman he had left so many years before … my father didn’t think it was such a good idea, and told him so … he didn’t take it well … he was very hurt, my father told me years later …

They said goodbye … Grandpa White drove back to Mexia … somewhere along the way, he opened a bottle of Old Crow and started working on it … a few miles north of Mexia, he got behind a slow pickup … he passed the pickup and slammed head-on into an oncoming car, killing two salesmen and mortally injuring himself … his common-law wife called my father that night … he drove to the hospital in Mexia … Grandpa White had long since lost consciousness … my father sat beside him, holding his wrist to feel his fading pulse … when there was no longer a pulse, my father stood up, walked out into the hall, and fainted … and came to later, with nurses hovering over him …

I remember the funeral … it was a rainy day, stormy, so dark it seemed like night as we entered the funeral home … inside it was bright and full of people … my father held me up so I could see Grandpa in the casket … he was wearing his wire-rim glasses and a gray suit with a purple tie … I was fascinated to see a dead man and wanted to see him again … I kept asking my father to lift me up again for another look … I expected he would become irritated with me, but he never did … over and over, he lifted me up so I could see Grandpa White ...

My grandmother was there … she and my parents sat in the front row during the funeral … my grandmother’s sister Aunt Alma took charge of me and we sat in the back where I fidgeted and squirmed, wondering when I would get another look at Grandpa White … throughout the service, it thundered outside and rain and hail hit the windows … years later, I would still dream about being at a funeral while it stormed outside, but not anymore …

When the funeral was over, the storm ended and the rest of the day was gray and drippy … we went to a house full of people … a sad teenage girl in a white fringe leather jacket walked around sniffling and dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief … I watched her, curious, and years later learned she was Grandpa White’s daughter by his common-law wife … haven’t seen her since …

Later we went to the trailer house where the girl and common-law wife lived … the grownups sat around talking … Grandma White, usually so cheerful, was more serious than I had ever seen her … and usually she lavished me with attention, but this time she didn’t look at me when I showed her a red ball I had found …

Back in Fort Worth, winter came … ice cycles hung from the awning … they looked like Santa Claus beards from where I lay on the couch, sick with the flu … Terry came to visit … we drew pictures … I told her I was going to be a cartoonist some day … I was always drawing … my father would bring me paper from his job, and ballpoint pens … Grandma White went to the hospital … I didn't see her for a long time … I heard my parents talking … something about Grandma having a “nervous breakdown” … I didn’t know what it was, but it sounded terrible … Aunt Alma gave me a picture of Jesus, young Jesus without a beard, just the long hair, holding a lamb … it hung on my wall and for some reason scared me … one night there were ghosts in my ceiling … cartoon ghosts banging their mugs together, drinking and laughing … or was it a dream … later I dreamed I was walking down a street and came to a place called the Nightmare House … inside I could hear the same ghosts drinking and laughing … in another dream, I saw my father dead … he had no hair and was lying inside a glass cylinder … 50 years later, when he was old and had no hair, he showed me a brochure with a picture of the glass cylinder he had to lie in for his treatments … and when I saw it, I remembered the dream and knew that he would die soon …

They gave Grandma shock treatments, and she was better, but not as cheerful as before … Wizard of Oz came on television … flying monkeys … “don't dream about bugs” … Alfred Hitchcock's shadow … GE Theatre with host Ronald Reagan … Sputnik … Eisenhower … Edward R. Murrow … Milton Berle … Ed Sullivan … Elvis … I heard Mommy and Daddy yelling at each other and walked into the living room just as Daddy hit Mommy … I cried and Daddy looked at me and left … Mommy went to her bed and cried and I crawled in beside her and said I would beat up mean old Daddy if he did it again, and she laughed, then cried even harder … but he didn’t do it again … Ray's face smeared with enchiladas … Christmas tree strung with red and green popcorn, blinking lights, electric train … Aunt Alma lived near Lancaster Street … you could see the clock on top of the Continental National Bank from her driveway … walking with her grandkids Ricky and Candy Kay to the Safeway for M&Ms … the Pike Drive-In, neon cowboys on the screen tower … animated lasso, skillet, and campfire … the playground … “he pinched me” … Woody Woodpecker's echoing laugh … Technicolor dreams … blood on the cowboy's yellow shirt, the herd of cattle … and the baby in Mommy's tummy … I didn’t want to eat my dinner … finally, Daddy said if I’d eat one more bite, just one, he would take me down the street to see the cement mixer … so I ate one more bite, and only one … and he took me to see the cement mixer … I was standing on the rock path behind Grandma Walker’s house when she came outside and told me I had a baby sister … we drove to Fort Worth in her Studebaker … the living room was crowded … my baby sister was red-faced and screaming … Terry wanted to hold her, but they wouldn't let her … the baby grew older and could sit up … one day Superman came on television and it was a story about a clown … Daddy came home and asked if I wanted to go to the circus … he knew the answer already, of course … at the circus Daddy bought a souvenir fez cap and later put it on the baby … sometimes Daddy and I went to Buddies supermarket … black people shopped there with white people … unusual … at the Channel 11 studio, I attended a broadcast of the Mickey and Amanda Show … color cut-outs of cartoon characters on the reception room wall, Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Popeye, Little Lulu… we sat on metal folding chairs … in an adjoining room I recognized props from other shows … Cap’n Swabee’s steering wheel, Cap’n Swabee who hosted the Popeye cartoons … I looked for Icky Twerp and the Three Stooges, and the Little Rascals, but didn’t see them … Mickey and Amanda’s tree house was actually a small stage beneath which sat a man and woman who worked the sock puppets … and the tree house door didn’t open by itself the way you thought it did, but opened when a man out of camera range pulled a string … and the door wasn’t even attached to the tree house, but stood on a separate platform directly in front of the camera and was several times smaller than the tree house … and the cartoons played on a black-and-white monitor … these details fascinated me … when the show was over, the puppeteers came out into the audience of boys and girls … Mickey Mudturtle bit the boys’ noses and Amanda Possum kissed the girls … we were blessed by the puppeteers … and back on Newark Avenue, families were moving away … we were outgrowing the little houses, and more and more the local stores were becoming like Buddies … Terry and her family moved to Hurst … we moved to Arlington and I turned five …