1925

1925 was the year that "Dinah" and "Sweet Georgia Brown" were hit songs. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington released their first recordings. Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby and Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. Charles Jenkins produced the first working television set and Nelie Taylor Ross of Wyoming became America's first woman governor. Forty thousand KKKers marched in Washington, D.C., and Earl Wise invented the first potato chip. But history did not record the event that took place in a small house in a small town to a small boy in Ohio. It would change forever the child's history and the subsequent lives of those with whom he would come into contact for the next eighty-one years.

The boy's name was Jim. At six years of age, he was the youngest of five children. There were two older brothers and two older sisters. Jim came along well behind the others and was doted upon by his mother, a large, soft woman whose body felt like a down-stuffed pillow and who wore her thick reddish hair in a braided crown about her head. A.J., or Pop, was also a very large man who sold various goods door-to-door or city-to-city. He was absent from home well before he left for good.

Jim was on crutches that day in 1925. A bone disease had eaten into his right tibia just above the ankle and surgery had repaired the damaged bone. The wound, however, was large and left Jim to fend on crutches for many months. His mother, Celestia, was standing at the ironing board steaming starched shirts for A.J.'s out-of-town trip. The kitchen was hot and sticky in that late Ohio summer. The boy had spent much of the day on the back steps trying to catch any breeze that might stray toward him in pity as it watched the sweat pour down his chubby little face. He had few playmates; his mother was his closest ally.

On the counter in the kitchen, noodles were drying in a chaotic pattern as if they had simply been cut then dropped there in a heap. Dirty pots and pans were piled high in the sink and the odor of yesterday's food tainted the pungent, humid air. Celestia was bent over her task, stopping frequently to pass the back of her hand across her brow to keep sweat from pouring in droplets onto Pop's shirt. It seemed he was always gone, and when he was home he had no interest in her anymore. Her arms were flaccid as was her belly from bearing children and from her hours of sitting and knitting on the porch. A.J. found her to be uninteresting, unattractive and unlovable. His wife did not know what to do about this failing relationship. No use thinking about it all the time. No different from the neighbors. Things just change after a while.

Smelling as though he had bathed in cheap cologne and wearing an undershirt, dark dress pants, black thin nylon socks and shiny black wing-tipped shoes, A.J. strode too quickly into the kitchen demanding a white starched shirt. Celestia moved toward a kitchen chair where she had hung a fresh shirt across the chairback. Grasping it gingerly by the shoulders, she held it up for Pop so that he could easily reach his arms into the sleeves. Brusquely, he threw the shirt closed across his chest, jerking himself free of her as quickly as possible. Without saying a word, A.J. left the kitchen as swiftly as he had entered, carrying with him the other pieces of ironed clothing his wife had meticulously, if not lovingly, made ready for his suitcase.

The back door clanged shut and the tap-tap of Jim's crutches could be heard as he slowly made his way to Celestia's kitchen. "Did Pop come in here?" Jim actually smelled the overpowering sweetness of the men's cologne mixed with the odor of his dad's perspiration. It became the essence of man to Jim - cleaned up, ready for action, going out of town, living the high life, exciting, exotic, grown-up man smell. Jim sometimes slept with Pop's pillow when Pop was out of town just to breathe in the comfort of his fading odor and to lay with his face where his dad's face had been.

Without looking up, Celestia barely spoke. "Yes. Yes, he did."

"He hasn't left, yet, has he? I want to see him," said Jim, rushing toward the front door.

"He hasn't gone, yet. Calm down."

Taking a glass from the cupboard, Jim poured himself some tap water and sat down at the kitchen table waiting until Pop came in to say good-bye. Jim heard the squeak of patent leather and smelled the cloud of cologne again before he actually saw his dad standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He loved looking at Pop all decked out with the hat, suit and tie. Jim confused A.J.'s sense of self-importance with actual eminence and was proud to look at this big man standing there poised before him. He and his mom never got a kiss good-bye, so he was not expecting that. But, there was a look on Pop's face that Jim had never seen before. Pop just kept looking at Mom and him like he had something hard to say. Jim thought he was in trouble, maybe. Beside Pop on the floor were two large suitcases that Celestia kept looking over at. Jim had never seen them before; clearly, neither had his mom. With great deliberation and without changing the determined expression on his face, Pop reached into his pocket, pulled out a dollar bill, laid it on the ironing board in front of Celestia and said: "I'm not coming back." With that, A.J. turned on his heel, picked up his bags, and walked out the door for good.

Jim rose in a daze from the kitchen chair, put his crutches in his little armpits and slowly, slowly, one tap-tap at a time, made his way to the front screen door that had just banged shut his childhood. He stood there looking through the wire screening, watching, as if in slow motion, his Pop load up his car and drive away. Pop never looked back; never saw his youngest son, tears streaming down his pudgy face, slowly lift his little boy hand and wave a tentative good-bye.