Childhood Fears and Misconceptions

BY BILLY SNEAD

I was an only child for the first five years of my life. Had I known that there was such a thing as a privileged class, certainly I would have been among its members.

My parents took me everywhere, bought me any toy I saw in the store, and read to me at bedtime and nap time every day.

My aunts and uncles doted on me, each trying to out do the other with gifts and trips. But then my mother went away for a few days and came back with a baby girl. Meanwhile my aunts and uncles had children of their own, and five years after my sister arrived, my mother went away again, only this time, she brought home a baby girl and boy.

All dotage were redirected and I was no longer in a privileged class, even in my own house.

When I was three, we moved to a big barn-like house at the south end of Belmont Avenue.

The Belmont streetcar line ended at that corner and when the car came rumbling and clanging to a stop, my mother would take me over to see it.

The conductor would invite me in and I would help him flip the seat backs so that the riders who got on would be facing in the direction they were going.

What a marvelous machine it was. It was driven by either end and never had to turn around.

To the right of the house was a road, which lead to a city dump.

Trash trucks were constantly going and coming and so were the hobos. Daddy said they lived in a hobo jungle. I knew about jungles from my folks when they read to me, but then they were filled with lions and tigers. Those hobos must have been tough guys.

Sometimes, when I was playing in my backyard with my dog, Spanky, a hobo would stop by the fence and ask me to see if my mom would give him a potato. I would run inside and she would give me two and I would hand them through the fence. He would thank me and head for the jungle. Daddy put a stop to this. "They’ll just keep coming back." Well, sure they would; we had potatoes, I thought.

I loved going to the Swan Lake to feed the ducks, as I called them. Mommy would hand me a bag of breadcrumbs and I would ride in the car standing up in the middle of the front seat taking in everything going on in the streets. One day, she said that we were going to the lake but not to feed the ducks.

"Why?"

They are having a fair; you’ll see when we get there. When we arrived at the park, there were more cars and people than I had ever before seen, and lots of kids. Mommy took me by the hand and led me to the grass. She sat me down facing a tall box structure and told me that I was going to see a show. There were lots of children sitting around me all looking just as ignorant as I was as to what was about to happen. Music started playing from inside the box and everyone got quiet.

Curtains were pulled back and a creature appeared who seemed to have just dropped into sight. What in the world was it? I was glued. It was about my height, but its arms and legs were as skinny as sticks and they were flailing around with each movement of its head. Its face was exaggerated with big red lips, large round eyes and a long pointed nose. It talked. It did!

And then another creature appeared from nowhere, only this one was a girl. Several more creatures came and went; some of them were fighting and arguing. The other kids around me would all laugh at times, but I saw no humor in this thing at all.

I sat rigid and I was frightened that they might jump out of the box and fight me. At last the curtains closed. Everyone clapped, except me. I was still sitting when Momma came to get me.

"Did you like it? It’s called, ‘Punch and Judy.’"

I said nothing as we walked through the crowd back to the car. The traffic was slow as it took us some time to get through the streets. We moved slowly around the lake until we were back to the spot where I was sitting. The crowd had dispersed when I saw an astonishing thing. A man was walking to the curb and he had the first creature that appeared in the box, draped over his arm.

As I stared in amazement, he opened the trunk of his car, flopped the creature in, and slammed the trunk closed. I felt a little sorry that anything would be treated so badly, but I was also glad to know that it was in a place where it could do no one any harm, especially me, cause I didn’t like him.

I felt relieved riding home standing in the front seat, but the images were etched in my mind as if inflicted by a branding iron.

There were lots of books in my bedroom and among my favorites Uncle Wiggily books. Sitting in my mother’s lap as she read to me, I would put my fingers on each page drinking in the pictures. She would not turn the page until I moved my hand, which was her signal that I had seen all there was to see.

There was one picture, which still is vivid to me. A huge bird with a gross beak had swooped out of the sky and picked Uncle Wiggly up by his collar and was carrying him away. It both frightened and worried me at the same time – that this was possible.

In a child’s mind all things are possible. I had one friend to play with – Gene Wills, who lived at the opposite corner of my block. Next to my house was my Daddy’s vegetable garden and the rest of the block was wooded all the way to Gene’s house.

One day I wanted to go to Gene’s house to play. As usual Momma would call Mrs. Wills for the okay, and she would come out on the sidewalk at her house and watch me on my way.

I started out walking and just past the garden; a brown bird waddled out of the woods and onto the dirt sidewalk. I froze. Then two more came out, and another two and another three, until there were more than my arithmetic abilities could count.

They were not making a sound, just waddling around in circles pecking at the ground. I thought of the gross beak bird in my Piggily Wiggily book, and although these guys were small with little beaks, I was convinced that there were enough of them to carry me off to I knew not where.

Up the street I saw Mrs. Wills come out to her sidewalk and she waved, but I was still frozen in my tracks, not returning the gesture.

Some time went by and now she started to wave me on but I did not move a muscle. She obviously did not see the peril that faced me.

The birds were getting closer and closer to my feet as I saw Mrs. Wills turn and go back to her house. An eternity passed and when I was sure of my doom, I heard Momma call me from our porch.

"What’s wrong? Mrs. Wills is waiting for you."

But I did not turn around or answer. She yelled my name several more times before I heard her coming down the wooden steps. My only thoughts were, would the birds take her too?

Just as she got to me, an amazing thing occurred, the birds all took off at once appearing to me as one giant bird and with a loud whistling sound from their wings.

"Were you afraid of them? They’re just quails. They can’t hurt you… They are more afraid of you than you are of them."

Momma didn’t remember about Uncle Wiggily, I thought.

Walking back to our house with a tight grip on her hand, I knew that we were both just out of extreme danger, but I decided not to tell her about it.

Momma gave me a gold ring for my fourth birthday. It was a simple band of gold, but I loved it. I spent hours just twirling that ring around my finger using my thumb. I guess I spent that time pondering life as I knew it.

Dr. Hulcher, our family physician, came to see my sick grandmother. Momma said as he was leaving, “Show him your ring.” We were standing at the top of the steps and as Dr. Hulcher was descending he called me, “sissy britches.”

“Boys don’t wear rings, he said.

It incensed me, probably because I wasn’t sure he wasn’t right. I ripped my golden ring off my finger and threw it down the steps at the doctor. He only laughed as he left.

I never wore the ring again and I have always regretted it.

The time had come for me to go to school and we moved to 216 South Addison Street, three houses from where we had lived once before. It was close to John B. Cary School on Idlewood. Now I had many friends both boys and girls. We played hard everyday and just before being called to dinner, we would all gather on the curbing and discuss the day, tomorrow and our life in general. Harken, to me parents and future parents: things discussed at curbside are not for your ears. If you see your children talking at the curb, do not hesitate, interrupt them and disburse them and take them immediately to one of those clinics where they debrainwash people.

There was a red-headed kid, a teenager, who lived around the corner on Parkwood. He was normal looking down to his waist, but his legs were very short and he walked on crutches. He always wore suspenders and was never seen without his mother. They walked by one day on the other side of the street, as we, sitting on the curb, watched in silence.

“What happened to him,” one said.

“He disobeyed God,” another said who was in the second grate and spoke with authority.

Silence followed leaving each of us with our own thoughts.

What? I thought. You mean God had spoken to this boy. Well, he had not spoken to me yet. Maybe you have to be in school. I had been going to Sunday School for as many years as I could remember, but none of my teachers had given me this warning. Well, I made up my mind right then that if God ever spoke to me, I would obey his every wish, no matter what it was. The last thing I needed was short legs.

It was time for my first haircut. Daddy took me to Truslow’s over on Idlewood Avenue where he had taken me before when he got his hair cut. The shop was about a half block from Byrd Park. I learned later that block was the remnants of an amusement park, which ran all over Byrd Park, but long before my time.

I have a vivid memory of my life all the way to my early childhood and I don’t know why, I just do.

Truslow had a three-chair shop with him working out of number one, his brother second, and third, the dreaded Dominick. He was a bitter man, who rarely took part in Barber Shop banter, which was a big part of the Saturday morning ritual.

He had lost his left leg up to mid-thigh in a Wolrd War I explosion and he had it replaced with a wooden replica, which bent at the knee and ankle. Of course, no one ever saw it because of his pants, but one could imagine its sight. I was fascinated by his every movement as he circled his chair plying his trade. He was the butt of everyone’s jokes to which he retorted with a snort. Even though I listened intently to the banter, I understood very little of it.

Each new customer to the shop had to listen to the regulars’ favorite Dominick story.

As the “story” goes, it happened on a fairly slow Saturday. Dominick was sitting in his chair reading the paper when all of a sudden, he leapt to his “foot” on the shop floor dancing, screaming and swatting at this crotch.

The onlookers thought at first, that he had finally cracked from his WWI days, but then they too noticed a large bulging movement in the crotch area.

Dominick was swatting the thing down his wooden leg, but it wanted to go down his right and finally won. With his wooden leg somehow locked stiff, he swung his real leg straight out and kicked hard until a huge rat came hurtling out looking just as baffled as everyone else.

From then on, he wore bicycle clips around his ankles every working day.

Daddy, like me, was also very observant of his surroundings and I was watching the goings on around me, he was watching me.

Walking to the Barber Shop the morning of my first cut, he asked me what I thought of Dominick. I looked up at him in awe. How did he know what I had been thinking about all morning?

“He will probably cut your hair this morning and he will try to scare you. Don’t let him. Be braver than he is. He looks mean, but he is harmless and besides, I’ll be watching.”

This was very comforting as I had seen Daddy in “action” before. Sure enough, no sooner had we sat down, Dominick motioned me to his chair. My legs were a little wobbly but there was no turning back.

As I neared the chair, he reached behind it and pulled out a board, which was wrapped in black oil cloth, placing it across the porcelain arms of the chair.

He gently reached down and swooped me up onto the wooden board, wrapped a cloth around me, sealed my neck with a tissue, reached into his drawer, pulled out his comb and scissors and went to work.

Just before he started, he turned his chair so that my head blocked his from the front. He very intimidatingly whispered in my ear, “If you move at all, I will cut your ears off.”

At which time he started snapping his scissors in a menacing manner. It worked. I never told a soul and Momma loved my haircut.

Most of our worst fears are never realized. I think someone more famous than I said that first, but it’s true, no matter the origin.

Some childhood misconceptions are not resolved until their true meaning is resolved by the child’s own eye. In other words, their mystery is so large as to not beg any question or answers from parents or peers lest you look stupid and therefore, you simply wait out the inevitable revelation.

One of my several revelations, involved the delivery of new cars. On our Sunday car rides, I had seen many large, brightly colored trucks pulling long trailers that looked like big sections of bridges. The top and bottom of each section carries three brand new cars all chained to the sides of the trailer. They were being delivered to their new owners, but how. How did they get them down to the ground without serious damage? Can you see my wonder?

Well, I was about to have this mystery revealed as one night at dinner, Daddy told Momma that he had bought that new car they were looking at and he was getting it the next day after work. I could hardly hold my excitement and began to make my plans.

As I said earlier, this was a lack of conception about to be revealed. That afternoon, I gathered a group of my same age kids and explained what was about to happen around 4:30 that afternoon.

“Meet me at the curb in front of my house for this mystery to be revealed.”

They did not seem that enthralled so this must not have been one of their childhood wonders, but they both showed up. We were staring up and down Addison Street for some time after 4:30, but still no sign of the big truck. Then standing at the street edge, Daddy came up driving in his new ’39 light grey Chrysler, parked and got out.

“Ain’t she a beaut,” he said, and she truly was.

Me and my buddies walked all around and crawled through it.

“You don’t like it,” he said.

“Yes sir, I do, but how did you get it down off the truck?”

He stopped and stared at me and he knew my wonder.

“I got the car from the dealership. They took it down from the truck, washed it. I stopped by after work and paid for it, and drove it home. We will ride around this weekend and find one unloading for you to see. The boys can come too if they want to.”

And thus, the mystery would have to wait another day to be revealed to me, and it was.

Little has been discussed in this childful narrative about a most important subject – the existence or not of a supreme being. Awed, revered and feared, but rarely if ever debated at this age group level.

I fell silent during these rare debates ceding to the older boys’ knowledge and experience. But one caveat, an add on to the true belief, recurred in every discussion and that was always something like this, “Oh, I believe in God, but not in bringing the dead back to life or parting the Red Sea, etc.

Even I recognized the absurdity of these comments. Why, I thought, belief meant that ALL things were possible and none of his life occurrences are subject to debate.

However, there was a person to us who commanded an almost as great, if not greater importance, and that was none other than Santa Claus. You see, we were asked to see and believe in God in blind faith – easy to accept for a child, but also to take for granted on a day-to-day basis – nothing to really remind or make you aware of his importance.

Santa Claus, although around for about one month a year, left clear and tangible evidence of his existence. He was widely discussed, debated and welcomed among millions of believing kids and at almost any time of the year.

Notice that I said, “believing kids” because with age became wisdom and with wisdom there became questions and the questions brought answers that most kids did not want to hear – I being one.

I had begun having some personal doubts on my own as of late, but had managed to suppress them with some success. It was about three days before Christmas and several of the older and younger boys had gathered on a front porch around the corner discussing the subject of existence.

The older boys talked over the heads of the young as if they were not there, but all knew to whose ears the convincing arguments were aimed.

We were silenced and had no real cogent comebacks or counter points for their onslaught of reason.

My long one block walk home in the evening dusk was as sad and reluctant as I had taken in my short life. I felt grown up and didn’t like it. I was now burdened with this awesome secret that must be shielded from my bothers and sisters as well as all other young believers.

Whether it’s the curbside or front porches, parents question your childrens’ conversations and, at least, give them some counter thoughts to weigh into what they have heard in the wild.