To the Bakery and Back 

It was not a direct path from my house to the bakery. It was a journey. One with deep colors, ancient music, rich tapestry, intrigue, and exotic ceremony. A social smorgasbord  for a twelve year old girl hungry for entertainment, the freedom to make her own choices and forge her own path. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On the wooden table in the kitchen sat a small manilla envelope with a quarter tucked inside. I put it in my front pocket where it was safe. My mother set it out for me each week knowing I’d be up early, dressed and out of the house on my way to meet my girlfriends at church. She encouraged independence with the understanding that you suffered your own consequences. Leading was more admired than following. It  was also understood that I was to put the envelope in the donation basket as the elders stood in the aisle and passed the long handled basket across the width of each pew.

I let the wooden screen door slam behind me as I ran down the front steps on my way to the Belmar Presbyterian Church. The imposing brick building topped with a sturdy steeple stood on the corner of 9th and E Streets  as a bastion of family values. It was  painted white inside, shutters on the windows, no adornment but a deep crimson curtain hanging behind the small altar with unlit candles on either side of the  brass cross as a subtle reminder to a common belief. The rows of dark wooden pews were filled  with so many devoted parishioners that the community required two services be held each Sunday. A simple service of a few songs led by the choir and a few prayers along with a thought provoking or inspiring sermon by the minister in black robes.

On Sunday mornings I could hear the chatter the minute I opened the back door. It was the sound of twenty preteens and teenagers finding the right size robe, fixing hair, and giggling before we sang at the 9 o’clock service.

Mr O’Day, the sweet eighty-five year old man who played the organ for the choir called over the din, “Let’s settle down girls, now come on, let’s have a quick practice. Open your song books to How Great Thou Art, ” The music began and we sang. 

I was twelve with no sisters, so my friends meant everything to me. Susie, my best friend, was black and her mom was the school librarian; Jeannie was Irish with red hair and freckles, her dad was a lifeguard. We not only went to the same church and sang in the choir together but  we were in the same grade at the public school and the same Girl Scout troop. I belonged here.       

We’d sing in the choir for one service and either attend the next or work in the nursery and take care of the  babies. We would sometimes stay right through the afternoon playing  basketball in the gym.

One day in spring  I left early and ran down the back stairs to meet Cindy at the corner. She lived across the street from me but attended the Catholic school and church. She waited for me to come out and we ran the two blocks to St Rose’s to make the eleven o’clock mass. She didn’t want to be late and get scolded by the nuns. As we slowed down, I checked to make sure the small manilla envelope was still safe in my front pocket. We had a plan.

Cindy hated to go to mass every Sunday but had no choice; both her mother and her religion required it. No one required me to go anywhere, but I chose to go to church every week. I’d often find myself attending two churches in one day. But I was well aware I did not belong in St. Rose’s Roman Catholic Church.

Walking into the ornate stone chapel was like visiting an exotic country.  The heavy incense, the procession, the statues, flickering candles, the ceremony in Latin all satisfied each of my senses. Touching the holy water to my forehead, I’d cross myself and bow, holding my palms together, bowing again before sitting in a pew, just the way Cindy did it. 

Jewel toned stained glass windows surrounded us, cushioned kneeling benches tucked under rows of dark wooden pews. The Nuns in long black habits, keeping an eagle eye on their wards. When it was our turn I’d follow Cindy to the altar to take communion. I’d kneel, clasp my hands together and bow my head like a good little Catholic girl.  The priest would place a wafer in my outstretched hands and offer me a bit of a prayer. I’d place the tasteless wafer on my tongue and let it melt along with any guilt I was supposed to have harbored. 

We made sure to stop and light a candle, saying a short prayer, before we left the rectory and again, I checked for that quarter in my pocket, making sure it was still there. 

I’m not a religious person, I attended the Presbyterian Church for the social outlet and attended the Catholic Church for pure exotic entertainment. 

After Mass we’d walk up to Main Street together to the Jewish Bakery with our quarters in  our pockets. The heavy smell of yeast, powered sugar and vanilla hit you as you walked in. It always seemed to be a loud and busy place. You had to be assertive to get your order heard. Standing at the glass display cabinet we ogled over the onion bagels, the Kaiser rolls, the rye breads, the cakes and all the pastries, but it was Sunday and therefore special.  I chose a chocolate eclair, my favorite treat.  They were bigger than my hand, dipped in good dark chocolate with  the sweet cream filling about to escape. Now, all my senses were satiated. 

Back home the screen door slammed behind me again. I ran into the house to find my mom. She looked up from her  book and asked, “Hi, honey, where’ve you been all day?”

As I plopped down on the couch I said, “Where do I start?” Admitting everything, I described in detail my journey to the bakery and back. 

Glen

Tuesday, July 21, 1970

       On another glorious sunny day during that same summer of 1970 the people were still rioting in the streets over race relations and inequality. Rage overflowing entering our daily lives. My cousin Glen was just twenty at the time and somehow got in the middle of things and ended up dead on the floor of an empty apartment  near Rutgers University during a riot.

Was it a drug overdose?  Was it murder?  We never knew.   The police were too busy to investigate due to the riots.  He was found three days  after he’d died.  The neighbors must have called.  

 

                                                                                             ~~~~~~~~~~~

While growing up we often visited my mom’s sister, Aunt Shirley, and her husband, Uncle  Paul, in their basement apartment of the tenement where they lived; low ceilings, one high window—sidewalk level,  dark and musty, a tenement in Newark. My Uncle managed the building in exchange for rent, holding down two jobs to pay for their four sons and my Aunt Shirl’s prescriptions.  She had lost both legs to gangrene from not taking care of her Diabetes in the past few years and was confined to a wheel chair.  Alcoholics, both of them, the visits were always entertaining, at least.

We’d park at the curb, pile out of the car, my parents and little brother Bart and I, and walk down the narrow alleyway between the buildings covered with asbestos shingle siding to their door that was two steps down on the bottom floor of a five story building. Just inside the door to the right was a chrome dinette covered with beer cans and overflowing ash trays surrounded by three chairs. We were a kitchen table family and that’s where we’d sit, there was no living room. 

They drank beer, lot’s of  beer, laughing and talking in innuendos and whispering over my head.  I knew it often had to do with my older cousin, Glen, but I didn’t understand what they were saying.  I sat on my Dad’s lap with him tickling my back, my rightly  place in the world, minding my own business so they wouldn’t  notice I was still there while they talked. 

My cousin Glen was about sixteen  at the time and seldom at home when we visited. One day he and his friend Carmine spent the afternoon in his room. We could hear them giggling down the dark hall. When we all heard the bedroom door open the kitchen table talking stopped. I’d never seen boys before with makeup on and their hair teased and sprayed, dyed blond. I didn’t understand why but they sashayed their way through the kitchen, the two of them, and swished right out the kitchen door without a word. I just thought that’s how some boys were.  I was about ten years old at the time, I didn’t know.

For the next little while there was a lot of whispering and a bit of hissing from my Uncle Paul, a blue collar worker with tattoos on his forearms.  He and my boxer dad seemed to agree, disgusted, both of them. My mom and Aunt Shirl, rolled their eyes and looked at each other with some sort of understanding between them that was over my head.

Under his breath, I heard my dad call them ‘a couple’a queers’, while curling his lip; my mom glossed over it with a wave of her hand and changed the subject. 

                                                           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was four years later, the day Glen was found. I had been at the beach with some girlfriends, like I was every day, I was fourteen at the time getting ready to enter high school.  We were sitting Indian style on our towels, maybe ten of us all talking, playing cards and looking for boys when my little brother Bart came running down the boardwalk yelling to me, “Hey, Lin!” 

I stood and ran the short distance to the shady sand at the boardwalks edge.  Bart looked down through the chain link fence at me and said, “You have to come home now, Glen’s dead.”  

“What? Hold on, let me get my stuff.”  I ran back to tell my girlfriends that I had to go home with my little brother and grabbed my towel then ran back to get off the scorching sand again.  

Bart was wearing the same long cutoffs with the three inch fringe that he always wore.  No shirt, no shoes. Bart ran wild at eleven though I wasn’t much better since I had no cover up or shoes either, just my bikini and a towel under my arm.  Our parents both worked full time and we were left to take care of ourselves and each other.  This day, Bart, a little kid running down the boardwalk all the way from home looking for his big sister, was sent to bring me the news.  

We walked home together, bewildered.  I don’t remember what we said but I know we wondered aloud to each other  trying to figure out what this all meant.  We walked down the boardwalk past the pavilion and Spring Lake on our way down to 4th Avenue, were we lived. 

There was rioting in our streets, they were burning down the towns around us.  There were murders and suicides and I escaped all this by going to the beach everyday. In essence putting my back to the world and looking to the vast ocean for hope and cleansing of the spirit. 

Bart and I slowly walked up the five stairs and across the wooden porch through the screen door and into the living room where my parents sat, stunned and saddened. Both of them truly moved.  Bart and I new enough to just be, sit, and not be heard, they just wanted us at home, safe.  

We weren’t told how he’d died but we knew everyone was very uncomfortable about it.  Three days later we went to the closed coffin funeral of our cousin Glen.  All the family was there.  It seemed like the only time we got together as a family anymore was at family funerals.  

My cousin Mark, Glens’ younger brother, was the same age as me.  He didn’t seem to want to be inside with everyone else so he went out the front door of the funeral parlor and sat on the front stoop.  I went out too, just to be with him.  There were no words of comfort.  We didn’t know what had happened and we didn’t know what to do or say, so we just sat there on the stoop next to each other.  Sometimes it’s enough to just be.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ten years later, when I was twenty-four years old, I was taking my Grandmother grocery shopping when it seemed she wanted to talk.  We parked but just sat there in the car for a while in the shade of a tree so she could tell me what she thought I needed to know.  

My cousin, Glen, had been a transvestite. 

Habits Flying

September 7, 1969

Hurricane Gerda

I came home from school to an empty house, threw on some jeans and a sweater, and hurried down the two blocks to the beach to see the storm that was barreling its way up the East Coast. I was thirteen. Living on the Jersey shore in the late 1960s gave me the opportunity  to learn about diversity, perseverance, and the dangerous beauty of raw nature.

Time was running out, I had to beat the storm. Hurrying down my front steps I turned left, past the Martignetti’s big discolored boarding house, a couple of empty fraternity houses, closed up for the season, and ‘Jerry Lynches’, the big Irish bar with the long covered front porch.  

The Duffy’s lived in the yellow three story Victorian on the next corner, big enough to house their family of ten kids by using the attic as a bunk room for the older boys.  There were a couple of empty lots on either side of the other Irish bar on our side of the street and I had to step carefully to avoid any glass broken from the night before. Belmar was a party town and I was barefoot.

We were barefoot all summer long and we stretched it out as long as we could.  By walking barefoot you learn it’s wiser to step lightly on the ball of your foot to protect from the painful mistake of stepping on a tiny stone or worse, with your heel.

It was off season, late September, and the tourists were no longer cruising up and down Ocean Avenue.  “The Benny’s” were gone. A nickname, created long before me, used for the New Yorkers who clogged our streets all summer long. We had the town back to ourselves so it was easy to run across the usually busy street and up the three steps to the boardwalk.

The boardwalk at that time was still made of wood, and there’s a certain way to walk on the boards to avoid getting a splinter.  You’ve got to walk against the grain and not with it.  Step softly, and you eventually learn to walk with some confidence. 

My father was the one to go to if you had a splinter. He’d get out the tweezers, a needle and a match.  I’d have to look away as he burned the end of the needle to sterilize it . He’d do a bit of light surgery and then cover it with his black salve to suck out anything left behind. A mere splinter never persuaded me to wear shoes.

I could have walked further down the boardwalk that day to use the ramp down to the sand. It offered a slight bounce with each step, making that familiar springy, squeaky sound of wood against wood. Instead, I planted both hands shoulder width apart on the four-foot high fence that lined the beach-side of the boardwalk, pushed myself up until my arms were straight, threw one leg over to the right and the other leg over to the left and  jumped down about six feet to the soft sand.  

Belmar wasn’t a free beach, you needed a badge during the summer tourist season.  Every year my mother made it clear that we each got one $6 season pass and we were supposed to take care of it. Inevitably, I would lose my badge within the first two weeks. I had to jump that fence and quickly disappear under the boards until I thought the coast was clear from the roaming boardwalk cops, most of whom were our public school teachers in need of a summer job.  

I loved to jump that fence and I loved to walk in that hot sand. It’s not easy really, the strength it takes to walk on the soft sand makes your body wriggle with an unnatural gait, though it’s a great way to tone your legs, and everything else.  

Just before I reached the waters edge I found a soft spot to make myself a seat. I dug my toes deep into the sand, and let it smooth my heels. The sand connected me to the earth, and kept my feet warm. I felt I was in a safe place to watch natures show. 

The oceans’ white foam and churning waves, crashing, created fine soft sand with tiny little shells on our beach.  The clouds overhead made the sky fierce, heavy and menacing.  The skies were that combination of grey and glaring white that makes you squint. Mists of salt water settled on my face and created ringlets in my hair. I sat alone in the wind listening to, and feeling part of, the raw nature around me. I was surrounded by the roaring winds, wrapped in my own arms, my hair whipping about my face.  I love how the beach makes you feel so alive and slightly vulnerable during volatile weather. I had the sense of sitting on the very edge of the earth, feeling it was just a bit dangerous, my heart beating quicker than usual. 

That day I went to the beach to see the power of Mother Nature, but what I found was what I now think of as religion, human nature at its best.  I witnessed an image that reminds me still of a faith I do not have.

Two young nuns struggled to walk across the deep sand in the whipping wind. Arm-in-arm, they leaned into the gusts, walked out to the waters edge slowly and carefully gathering their long black habits trying to keep them from getting wet in the crashing surf. Together they climbed the rocks of the jetty that were piled high to stop the waves from crashing and destroying our shoreline. They kneeled, facing the ever growing fierce waves and prayed to their god.

As I watched them, a profound sense of calmness came over me. The seagulls screaming and diving overhead announcing the approaching storm. The nuns knelt praying to a god who had created this beauty in the guise of such extreme danger. Asking for mercy while facing a vicious storm on its way to our shore the nuns endured. I see their habits flying, hands folded in prayer.  It’s an image that I can conjure up at any moment.  To me these women represent commitment, dedication, and faith, undying and lifelong. 

I don’t share their religion, but that day they shared theirs with me.  

Metuchen

We were driving west on our way home through the small towns of Northern New Jersey. Neighborhoods, main streets, and fog, but no cars that night. Usually no traffic is a good thing, but this time we were looking for any sign of life, we needed help and we needed it now.

We’d  spent the day at my Uncle Ron and Aunt Liz’s house in Metuchen with the family.  We stayed for hours after dinner sitting around the kitchen table talking and finally were on our way home. Carl and I were curled up on the backseat of my Dad’s big white Cadillac asleep.  We each got exactly half of the back seat. No seatbelts at that time so we could stretch out or curl up in my case. My little brother Bart was upfront with my parents, asleep in my Mom’s arms.  He’d gotten sick during the day and had a fever by the time we left. Suddenly his fever spiked and his eyes rolled to the back of his head and that’s when Mom sprung into action. 

Mom told my Dad to find a hospital or a policeman. He started running red lights, blaring his horn and speeding, hoping to get pulled over. Eventually, we saw the lights of a motorcycle cop and he did pull my dad over. As the car came to a stop my mom opened the car door and rushed towards the cop with Bart in her arms. 

Carl and I were now sitting up and concerned. Our baby brother was very sick, my Mother was in high gear and my father was erratic and highly stressed out. Carl and I sat quietly in the back seat.

“Officer, my son is sick.”  My mother said firmly as she rushed towards the policeman. 

I had to stand up from the backseat to see what was happening, Carl sat up straight to see. The policeman wore a helmet and a uniform. He stepped off, took Bart in his arms and laid him on the seat of his bike. As he examined Bart, my mom held on to him and talked for a just a minute. 

I looked for my dad and found him over near the entrance to an office far from the curb. We were on a main street of some little town. But my dad was standing there facing the brick wall leaning his forehead on his arm and leaning against the building, he stood there and shuddered as he sobbed, while my mom took care of business. 

A moment later, back in the car, we followed the policeman to the local hospital. Bart was fine but I was offered an opportunity to learn another facet to  my father.  And my mother for that matter. 

Not able to cope with trauma was a hallmark of my fathers’ makeup. Balanced by a mother who faced challenges, conquered them and moved on. No time to worry about what happened yesterday, there’s more on the way.

Maplewood

It was already dark as I stood at my second story bedroom window looking at my reflection. I could tell my green sweater was too green.  The cowl necked collar folded over, secured by a big plastic green button just below my chin. The sweater was too big for me but my mom said I’d grow into it. I’d never had to wait to grow into clothes before; everything had always been bought to fit me.

It was only a year ago we’d left our home out in the country.  I heard horses hooves on the tar and gravel lane in front of our home. The only diversity we experienced was whether or not you rode.

We had been ‘well-to-do’. We’d bought my clothes in New York City, and owned a big white Cadillac and an Irish Setter called Whinny, named after Winston Churchill.

Then our family went bankrupt.  I didn’t know what it meant ‘to go bankrupt’ at the time but I knew we no longer lived out in the country popping tar bubbles on our lane while eating onion grass.  Suddenly we lived on a busy city street in Maplewood.  

At the new house we now heard busses and trucks rumbling down the busy streets as well as horns blowing instead of horses hooves. We saw red lights and people everywhere. There were houses up and down the street instead of the rows of white fencing along the paddocks. 

I went to school in Maplewood for the latter half of second grade and all of third grade before we moved again. One day I was playing with a girlfriend I’d met at school. In her backyard she had her own playhouse painted pink and green with a picket fence surrounding it. We were playing school when her Mom called for her to come inside. A few minutes later she emerged with a scowl on her face. She said I had to go home because her family was going to the club.

“What’s the club?” I asked her.

“We go there to swim and my dad plays golf” she said.

“Can I go swimming with you?” I asked with hope in my heart. Just last summer I swam in my own pool in my own backyard every afternoon. 

“I asked my mom if you could go with us but she said no. She told me that if your family would join the club we could go together but you have to be Jewish to go to the club,” she told me. 

I walked home feeling dejected. No one to play with and I couldn’t go swimming. 

Eager to talk to my mom I asked, “Mommy, Are we Jewish?”, kneeling at her feet, having no idea what it even meant to be Jewish. 

“No, honey, we’re not Jewish, why are you asking?” My mom said, putting down her book. 

“Can we be Jewish?” I asked again with hope in my heart.

“It’s not that easy, Lin. Why are you asking to be Jewish?”

“Marsha and her family are going swimming at the club and I want to go with them, but her mom says we aren’t Jewish so I can’t go. I want to be Jewish so we can go to the club.” I said with some urgency, still hopeful that I could go swimming soon. “I just want to go to the club.”  I whined.

“Well, honey, we’re not Jewish and we’re not going to the club, Jewish is a religion. Now go play and don’t worry about it. 

‘No sniveling and no complaining’ was her mantra.

~><~

A few months later I fell into a pattern of walking  home from school with a group of girls who lived on the other side of Springfield Avenue, the big street we lived near. The girls crossed at the light near my house.  I was allowed to walk with them but not cross the street.  

When I got home I ran up the 5 steps to the front door and started yelling even before the door slammed behind me.

“Mom, Mom!” I called, finding her in the kitchen. 

“Mom, can I go to my friend’s house? She’s waiting outside.”

“Slow down, tell me,  who is your friend?” 

“She’s my friend who walks home with me, her name is Judy. There’s a group of girls and they all live across the big street. She’s the youngest and has no one to play with so they want me to come and play.” I said with palpable urgency.

“No honey, I’m sorry, you can’t cross Springfield Avenue, it’s just too dangerous.” She said.

“But mommy, those girls cross the street, I can go with them.” I pleaded. 

“It’s just not safe, I don’t ever want you crossing that street without me. Do you understand?” she said with finality.

“Ok,” I said in three syllables. Walking back out the door I’d just slammed a moment ago I’d had hopes of having fun. Now I had to go out and tell the girls I couldn’t go. 

“I’m sorry, Judy. My mom says I can’t go to your house with you because I can’t cross the street. Even if I cross with you she still says no.” I turned away with my head hung low and walked slowly up the five front steps to my house. I went up to my room and closed the door to sit alone on my bed. 

Later, my mom quietly explained  to me that my friends  didn’t live in a nice neighborhood and it wasn’t safe for me to go with them.   I worried that if it was unsafe for me then how about them?  Was it not also unsafe for them?  The answer was still no, I wasn’t allowed to cross the big street nor go to their house. They were colored girls, she explained, and I was a white girl and it was just best if I didn’t play with them. I could walk home with them but not play at their house. 

That night I stood alone at my bedroom window, looking at myself in an oversized sweater, wondering why I couldn’t be colored so I could play with my new friends, and why we couldn’t be Jewish so we could go to the club. I knew no better.

In Oldwick there had been  no place that I was not welcomed or allowed to go. I hadn’t see the privilege that we’d enjoyed, I didn’t know that we were a ‘white’ family.  When we lived in Oldwick everyone was white and we fit in perfectly until we went bankrupt, and then we didn’t fit in there either.  Why was the world not fair?  Why had my life changed so completely and profoundly without explanation or logic?  

These were concepts too complex for a little girl to comprehend, but it didn’t mean that I wasn’t deeply affected by our circumstances.  I know now that even had it been explained to me more clearly and timely I still would not have understood and I would have fought it.  

Prejudice has no place in my heart nor in my life, and I remember the evening I first understood this. I stared at that reflection of a little girl I no longer recognized, wondering how I would fit into the world, my new world.  I knew I was not colored  enough to play in that neighborhood, not Jewish enough to go to the club, not wealthy enough to live in our old house with our own pool and my pretty dresses that no longer fit me. I was not enough.

Living in Maplewood taught me that there was more to life than popping tar bubbles while walking to the General Store and riding bareback. The world was larger than that and I needed to find a way to fit in. Maplewood was a turning point in my life, and I was only eight years old. 

Months later we moved down the shore to a new town and again, I was the new girl in my class with more lessons to learn. 

Kumbaya

Not weapon enough

It had been exactly a month since my bike accident where I knocked out my two front teeth. Most of the scabs on my arms and legs had healed. I still only had temporary caps glued on to cover my own little black pointy teeth the dentist had filed down for me. My father was speaking to me once again and life had gotten back to normal. 

Susie and I met one Friday night on the boardwalk and walked together toward the inlet that separated Belmar from Avon-by-the-Sea, the next beachside town.  We were both members of the Presbyterian Youth Group. In the summer, meetings were held on the Second Avenue beach where the swings were located. This was a safe place for me to hang out with my friends and I needed to feel safe.

Those days my father and I fought over whether I could hang out with Susie or not. She’s black with two older brothers. As far as he was concerned that was enough. I knew that she came from a nicer family than I did so I considered it an education and good exposure. He didn’t agree. Friday nights I didn’t have to fight, I just 'went to church.’

There were about ten kids who’d gathered from twelve to sixteen.  We had an older teenager as our leader named Jeff who had dirty blond hair that fell across his forehead. He wore long denim cutoff jeans with a loose white tee shirt, always crisply ironed.  He brought along his guitar and we held our meetings in the sand, still warm from the afternoon sun.  We sang, we talked, and we prayed, though while the others were praying I imagined Jeff as my boyfriend. “Young Girl” playing over and over in my head. At fourteen girls can be quite romantic.

We sat on the beach singing songs of peace while what I heard in the background were the sirens on the streets behind us. I hoped they weren’t on their way to my house only a few blocks away, wondering  if anyone else had that same thought. 

Eventually, we sang the old favorite, Kumbaya. It was then we noticed smoke rising toward the sky getting darker and drifting toward us from the direction of Asbury Park. We didn’t take much notice at first, caught up in the song. It was when the smoke turned black and we realized looking down the beach in the other direction towards Point Pleasant, that it, too, was on fire, we knew something was very wrong. The rioting we heard about in the news was now in the streets of two towns, Belmar, halfway between. The fury was closing in on us.

We sat on the fluffy white sand with the squawking sea gulls diving into the crashing waves of aqua, competing with the melodies played on Jeffs guitar. The clear blue skies above filled with the smoke of anger forced its way into our daily lives.  Kumbaya is not weapon enough when faced with poverty, discrimination, and rage at the disparities of life.  

My fourteenth year was a confusing time for so many reasons.  I was starting high school in the fall and not only was my body changing daily, but my family life was volatile and the world around me was in turmoil.  We watched the anger on the nightly news noting the body count of those young men killed in Vietnam that day. Now surrounded by smoke rising from the fires set by angry protestors burning down towns brought the war from South East Asia to our own front porch.   

Belmar, the town I lived in, gave me a strong foundation of cultural awareness and gave me a sense of open mindedness, too. Because our town was mixed with Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant, Black, White, Italian, and Irish; I was offered the opportunity to see as a child, past  color and religion and see the beauty that lies in the differences not the commonality of each of us.  Maybe sitting on the sand singing Kumbaya was just what I needed that soft summer night surrounded by strife.

My Two Front Teeth

May 5, 1970 a Wednesday night at 8 pm

The summer of 1970, was a turning point in my life. I was never the same afterwards. I learned much about myself and life that summer, more than I could comprehend at the time.  Seeing more than I should have, learning things I never wanted to know. 

My little brother Bart had gotten a new bike for Christmas that year.  Having his own form of transportation was important to him.  He’d waited all winter to ride his bike as soon as the weather was warm enough. This bike was his pride and joy.  

 That night after dinner, Bart and I were hanging out under the street lamp at our corner one night.  There were about five of us or so, maybe more, now that I think about it; Cindy, Bart, Bobby, Joey, A, and me. 

Bart wanted to use the bathroom and instead of going to our house and maybe getting trapped inside with our parents, he went to Bobby’s house for a quick get away.  He handed me his bike and said, “Lin, hold my bike for me, but don’t ride it.”

“Aw’right.” I said, taking the bike with every intention of riding it the moment Bobby’s front door slammed behind them.  I thought I’d ride to the middle of the block and back before he even knew it.  

I swung my right leg over the seat and grabbed the handle bars with the streamers and I take off up the block.  As I get farther away from the street light  it became darker and I back peddled to slow down but my feet just spin backwards.  Just as my front wheel found the ring around the manhole in the middle of 4th Avenue I found the hand brakes, clenched tight, and stopped the bike on a dime.  Girls bikes didn’t have hand brakes.

All I saw was the blacktop coming up to meet me.  I ended up lying in the middle of the street tangled in my brothers new bike, spitting out what I later realized were my two front teeth; bloody down the front of my face, arms, and legs.  Though I had to think about it for a minute I eventually screamed “Help,” and my friends came running.  

Joey Twohy was my boyfriend at the time which really only meant I wore his watch. Joey came running when he heard me scream for help, picked me up and helped me up the front steps to my house. The top half of the Dutch door was open so Joey called in through the screen door to my mom, “Mrs George”.   

Bart came running up the street to find his bike in the street luckily there was no damage done.  He picked it up and rode off into the dark just as my mom opened the door to let me in. Joey returned to our friends out under the street lamp.

As I stepped in the living room my father looked up from the TV and burst from his black Naugahyde recliner screaming “What the hell happened to you?” And then yelling to my mom, “Dottie, come take care of this. Oh, for Christ sake, I told you not to let her go outside, she’d get hurt!”  He slammed his way through the kitchen, on his way down the basement stairs to hit his boxing bag. Rat a tat tat, Rat a tat tat…we heard the familiar rhythm my father had after being a boxer for years as a young man.

My dad didn’t handle stress well.  I’ve learned that there was a reason for his short temper, his feelings of being out of control, the underlying rage. Life takes its toll.  He wasn’t angry at me, he was frustrated because he felt it was his duty to protect me from harm. He had the passions of a Latin man, which he was. 

My mother helped me up the stairs to the bathroom and called for Carl, my older brother,  to come and help her clean me up. My mom attending to my face, Carl filling the sink with warm water and rummaging through the medicine cabinet to find the bandages and ointments.  

My father was still screaming and slamming things downstairs. My mom reached behind her and kicked the bathroom door closed to keep out the angst.  They cleaned me up and put me to bed. 

The next morning my mom called in sick to work and took me to the dentist office in Asbury Park, an old white man wearing a white coat.  He was not gentle, he was not friendly and I spent the next few hours in his chair getting needles jammed into my gums and the drill sanding down my two front teeth into points.  Having molds made and ‘temporary’s’ fitted.

I had to go back to see him several times over the next several weeks for more work and each time I was miserable.  I hated everything about the experience other than the fact that I had temporary teeth in the front of my mouth for a couple weeks and I could suck them in with my tongue and virtually hide them behind my pointy little blackening front teeth. I did this because it entertained my friends and because I was thirteen and found it funny. 

Because I’d missed so much school at the very end of my eighth grade year I was able to make up tests and catch up my work by sitting in with the special-ed kids, the only place they could find for me to do my work. They were supposed to leave me alone while I used a corner to take my tests so I could graduate with my classmates.  That’s what they were supposed to do. 

I might have been the most mature kid in the room but that didn’t stop me from dazzling them with my two front fangs.  I made the best of it and had fun playing with the other kids.  I wasn’t embarrassed nor ashamed, it was what it was. 

Nine days after the accident I turned fourteen and then a few weeks later I graduated from grammar school. Because I was the shortest girl in the eighth grade I sat in the front row center aisle on the stage in my white robe with my new white shoes.  These were the same white shoes I wore when I’d talked my mother into allowing me to join the Rainbow Girls down at the Masons Temple in town. What was she thinking?  At least I got more wear out of my white shoes. The day of graduation I wore my shoulder length brown hair in a flip and fortunately smiled broadly to show my new teeth off. I  was no longer able to dazzle my friends with my pointy black front teeth. 

My father had not spoken to me for the first three days. If I walked in the room, he’d walk out disgusted.  He wouldn’t look at me.  I stayed in my room and read.  I know now that it was because his stomach churned with the sight of his beloved daughter damaged. He tried to protect me by limiting my activities.  As a little girl I wasn’t allowed to walk on the curb.  “You might get hurt! Here walk with me and hold my hand.”  No riding bikes, no swings, no diving, no sports, nothing that might hurt me.  No wonder I rebelled so badly as a teenager. 

Knocking out my two front teeth taught me a bit more about my parents’ strengths and weaknesses and their ability to handle stress. I was able to find the funny in the situation, made the best of it and smiled.