There were lots of times however, when we would sit in the living room and not watch television, but read, or play the piano, or just talk (I know that this is unheard of today, but honestly we TALKED to each other). Daddy usually had the newspaper or a magazine in front of him and I was an avid bibliophile with my mug in a book most of the time. I read frequently but not particularly widely, although I think I read well beyond my years. For example by grade five I was reading things like The Silver Challis, Jane Eyre, and The Robe. Obviously I spent a lot of time in the library at St. Rose School! So when I started ninth grade at Mark Morris, I was exposed to new and interesting reading material. I had spent a lot of time at the city library as a child but it was always in the children’s room in the basement, and the collection there was very curtailed for the little one’s safety. However, Mark Morris was a public junior high school and there was no telling what those heathens might have on their shelves! Naturally, I had no idea of what I might find and so just started picking up whatever was within my reach. One Saturday afternoon Daddy and I were alone at home. He was in his rocker and I was on the couch reading my library book. I must have been really into the story about the young man during Revolutionary times when our forefathers were forming our nation, because I had no idea that I was reacting to what was on the written page. I must have made quite a few shocked inhales of breath because Daddy finally turned to me and said, “What are you reading?” I responded by innocently showing him the cover of the book, but he was having none of that. He told me to turn it over and let him take a look at it because something was certainly shocking me. I can clearly remember that I sure didn’t want him to see that I was reading my first few lines of what I considered to be real smut! Here were the briefest of descriptions of a young man feeling up a girl, tweaking her nipples. I’d never seen the word “nipple” written in a book before, so I was really shocked! However, there was no going back, Daddy was not backing down and I was going to show him that book. So I finally handed it over. I’m sure that he had great difficulty not bursting into laughter, but he controlled himself and asked me what I thought of what I was reading. I exclaimed that I was shocked and dismayed by the fact that this kind of garbage could be present in a school library. He asked what I was going to do about it and I proclaimed that I thought they shouldn’t have that kind of book in a library where children could be exposed to it. I thought it was obscene and that we should get the book thrown out of the library. This was my Dad’s first inkling that I would one day become an activist of some kind and if he had known it, I’m sure he would have stopped me in my tracks, but I was off to see what I could do. Naturally, I didn’t get far because, thank goodness, there were saner and more mature heads around to stop my rabble rousing. In retrospect I really appreciated the fact that Daddy didn’t laugh me out of the house, but made me think through what actions I should take if I thought something was wrong.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
The Couch
There were lots of times however, when we would sit in the living room and not watch television, but read, or play the piano, or just talk (I know that this is unheard of today, but honestly we TALKED to each other). Daddy usually had the newspaper or a magazine in front of him and I was an avid bibliophile with my mug in a book most of the time. I read frequently but not particularly widely, although I think I read well beyond my years. For example by grade five I was reading things like The Silver Challis, Jane Eyre, and The Robe. Obviously I spent a lot of time in the library at St. Rose School! So when I started ninth grade at Mark Morris, I was exposed to new and interesting reading material. I had spent a lot of time at the city library as a child but it was always in the children’s room in the basement, and the collection there was very curtailed for the little one’s safety. However, Mark Morris was a public junior high school and there was no telling what those heathens might have on their shelves! Naturally, I had no idea of what I might find and so just started picking up whatever was within my reach. One Saturday afternoon Daddy and I were alone at home. He was in his rocker and I was on the couch reading my library book. I must have been really into the story about the young man during Revolutionary times when our forefathers were forming our nation, because I had no idea that I was reacting to what was on the written page. I must have made quite a few shocked inhales of breath because Daddy finally turned to me and said, “What are you reading?” I responded by innocently showing him the cover of the book, but he was having none of that. He told me to turn it over and let him take a look at it because something was certainly shocking me. I can clearly remember that I sure didn’t want him to see that I was reading my first few lines of what I considered to be real smut! Here were the briefest of descriptions of a young man feeling up a girl, tweaking her nipples. I’d never seen the word “nipple” written in a book before, so I was really shocked! However, there was no going back, Daddy was not backing down and I was going to show him that book. So I finally handed it over. I’m sure that he had great difficulty not bursting into laughter, but he controlled himself and asked me what I thought of what I was reading. I exclaimed that I was shocked and dismayed by the fact that this kind of garbage could be present in a school library. He asked what I was going to do about it and I proclaimed that I thought they shouldn’t have that kind of book in a library where children could be exposed to it. I thought it was obscene and that we should get the book thrown out of the library. This was my Dad’s first inkling that I would one day become an activist of some kind and if he had known it, I’m sure he would have stopped me in my tracks, but I was off to see what I could do. Naturally, I didn’t get far because, thank goodness, there were saner and more mature heads around to stop my rabble rousing. In retrospect I really appreciated the fact that Daddy didn’t laugh me out of the house, but made me think through what actions I should take if I thought something was wrong.
Family comes to visit
The vast majority of my Mother’s extended family lived in Medford, Oregon while I was growing up. My maternal grandparents had settled there by the time my Mother was a young girl. Grandpa was a pharmacist and owned Hunter’s For Drugs but by the time I can remember much, he was retired and they had a lovely home not far from Medford High School.
Occasionally Grandma and Grandpa would come up our way for a visit and eventually every Medford cousin got a chance to have an individual visit up north (I didn’t realize that the Kavanaugh kids never got individual visits to Medford until I was writing this story!) When Laura and Mary Jo came to visit, the oft’ told story goes that, all four girls came down with the chicken pox all at the same time and Mother nearly tore her hair out trying to get them all taken care of and healthy again so that they could go back to her sister none the worse for the wear. I think that the reason the Batzer kids got to come to visit us in Longview was because Mother and Auntie Jo thought that each kid needed a special time away from the incredibly rambunctious tribe of children; an individual time where each one was focused on and life was kind of quite (I’m sure they thought it was at least boring).
Monday, April 27, 2009
Living Room: Cleaning and Mom
One of the things that I liked best about it was that my favorite cat, a long haired black beauty named Sam loved to have his tummy vacuumed. Whenever he would hear me pull out the appliance, he’d come running into the living room and throw himself on the floor so that I could give him a good vacuuming. I always thought it was strange that he didn’t mind the noise and he loved the results. He always looked beautifully groomed and that’s not easy for a long-haired feline. I never saw this with any other cat until our old boy Bandit lost his hearing when he was around 17 years old and then he didn’t run and hide from the vacuum any more, he’s let me give him a good old suctioning. That, of course, was because he couldn’t hear a blessed thing and so the noise didn’t scare him.
The windows in this room were Mom's nemesis. The house did not have a foundation and Longview WAS in Washington State, not exactly the driest climate in the nation. These windows had small panes and were wooden framed, so they sweat a lot. All of us hated cleaning the windows, the bottom pane was large and not so difficult to clean but the top of the window was separated into six small panes and the work was always painstaking and monotonous. There was a constant mildew problem in the house and Mother fought it with a vengeance. But, these windows were a constant reminder that she was defeated.
Bev, Mom & Me
1948
The One thing that you could depend on when I was growing up is that when we were expecting company Mother would spend at least two days tearing the house apart making sure that every tiny place in the house was spotless. This tendency grew exponentially worse after the boys left home and joined the service. First they were off to boot camp for what seemed like forever and then they would start coming home on leave. As soon as they that they would be coming home for a visit Mom started to go nuts preparing their special foods, cleaning house and making sure that everything was absolutely shipshape (or at least shipshape for Arlen since he was in the Navy, it was probably spit and polished for Larry and Bob who were in the Marines!) If, per chance, they were sent overseas then the cleaning frenzy got worse because they were gone for a longer time and the expectations for their home coming was enlarged. As the cliche' goes, it's always darkest before the dawn, and this was certainly the truth when in came to the cleaning frenzies; the house always looked much worse mid-cleaning than it did at any other time pre OR post cleaning. The vacuum temporarily took up permanent location in the middle of the living room, cleaning rags laid helter-skelter throughout the house, the sink was constantly full of hot soapy water. Mother would race from room to room in a nasty old house dress with a bandana around her head fussing and shouting orders to whoever might be within hearing distance (probaly including anyone within 100 feet of the property line).
When Bobby left home permanently he joined the Marines and one of his longest times away from Longview was when he was stationed in Hawaii. We all thought it sounded really romantic to be in the Islands and we were sure he was having an incredible time. There was great concern when he was hurt (I think it was a broken clavicle) while playing football for the Marines. He was not one to write home frequently like Arlen or Larry. I think Arlen wrote every week and Larry though less often, at regular intervals, but Bobby would never pick up a pen if he could avoid it. I can remember that Mother would get exasperated with him and then contact his commanding officer and then it would hit the fan! Bobby would be beyond angry with her, but it was the perfect plan because she would start getting letters fast and furious. The first time he came home from Hawaii (I must have been about 11 or 12 years old) he wrote and said that he thought he’d be home sometime around a particular date, I have no memory of what the date might have been but I do know that it was during the late Spring or early Summer. Mother took this to mean that it was exactly that date and so a day or so beforehand she started her race for the cure, cleaning and moping and waxing and fussing. Everyone of us was pulled into duty, we rubbed and scrubbed and made every place shine like the top of the Chrysler Building. I remember thinking to myself that she didn’t seem to like him too much when he was home, why all the fuss now that he’s gone? So the last day prior to his arrival I heard Mom and Dad talking about not really knowing which day he was arriving, and it gave me an idea. Now was the time when I could fix Mom for good. So as she was mopping the kitchen floor for the third time I stood up, looked out the opened front door and yelled in a delighted voice, “Bobby! Bobby! We’ve been waiting for you!!” At this point Mother let out a terrific cry of despair. She knew that she and the house were a disaster area and that she couldn’t do a thing about it. Of course Bobby was nowhere in sight, I was just pulling her leg. But, when I rolled on the floor in laughing fits, she didn’t think it was anywhere near as funny as I did. To say the least, she was none too happy with me. I’m not sure that we ever had the same sense of humor, but I still look back at it with a twinkle in my eye, because I got her good that time.
Bobby 1966
Thursday, April 23, 2009
The Living Room
Beverly & I in the living -room
Beverly & I 1955ish
The front door opened from the porch into the living room. It was the one door in the whole house that was built from some kind of solid, heavy wood. It was dark and had a large metal handle that was extremely difficult to open for the youngest one in the household (that would be me). When I finally grew old enough to have a key of my own I seldom, if ever, used the one to the front door; I much preferred going to the back door, even if the way was dark and scary. On dates, however, I could always have the young man leave me at the front door since Mom invariably left it unlocked. The ritual for returning home when I was out after hours as a teen was that I would enter the house (alone through the back door, on a date through the front door), turn off the light on the stove in the kitchen and head for bed. Usually I would stop in the folks bedroom for a brief play-by-play of the evening’s activities. Mother told me much later in life that Daddy thought this ritual was hysterical since there was never any question of what I’d been up to, I always spilled the beans, unlike any of the other kids in our family, my life was an open book. I was always more than willing to tell all…mostly because there wasn’t that much to tell. This ritual was not one that Mom and Dad had concocted, but one that I had devised. Why, because there wasn’t anything to hide…I was a pretty straight shooter, with little to keep secreted away from my parents (no wonder my sister and her friends thought I was a little goody two- shoes!)
Karry, Dad, Mother, Larry & Bev
in front of "the door" 1959
Sunday, April 19, 2009
The Front Porch
One of my favorite pictures of the five kids
Christmas Petticoats
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
The Front Yard
Karry 1955ish
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
More Bits from the Side Yard
Karry & Her Kitty 1953 Side Yard View
Conservative Christianity Comes to the Neighborhood
The next thing I learned about this family came from Mrs. Martin the Catholic lady who lived across the alley from us. One day she came over to our house and said that a friend of hers lived right next to the church where Rev. Heimbach preached and that every Saturday morning he would come to the church, open the windows and then begin practicing his Sunday morning sermon. These sermons it seemed were continually becoming more anti-Catholic every week. If this was not the truth, then something very strange was going on. Why would someone who purported to be a friend of the family and who was able to feed his kids better and raise their standard of living because of my Dad, preach bad things about the church that our family attended? But when we looked into it further the truth was that was exactly what he was doing. He would say horrible things about Catholics and then treat my Dad like his best friends. It didn’t take long for the friendship to cool off on the home front, but Daddy continued to keep Heimbach on the job and never said a thing to him about what we had discovered. Daddy didn’t seem to care if the other guy was a two-faced jerk, the preacher needed Dad's help and he kept his job.
Monday, April 13, 2009
The Side Yard
The little sidewalk that ran from the back yard to the front yard on the right side of the house separated another garden from the side lawn area. This garden held beautiful orange poppies that had black centers and as they died back towards the end of summer left large peculiar looking seedpods. After these pods dried each year we shook out the seed into the garden beds hoping that we were insuring another year of these lovely plants.
The Mouse Gift
Left to right: Bobby Larry with Karry on his shoulders, Arlen withBeverly in front
Circa: 1950
Daddy was never a defender of cats and sometimes not even close to being friendly with any cats that happened to be around him. To him cats were supposed to be working animals, they had one purpose in life, not as pets but as pest control. He had been raised on a farm and when he was on his family’s farm cats were supposed to keep the farm free of vermin. Cats weren’t supposed to be fed; they were supposed to find their own food, preferably any spare mice that happened on their path. Any of this nonsense of spending hard-earned money on pet food was just a ridiculous waste of funds.
L to R: Arlen, Bob, Beverly in wagon, and Larry
Circa 1947
Friday, April 10, 2009
Back Yard: Sleeping Outside & the Lath House
Once in a long while Mom would let us have a slumber party where there were a bunch of girls and we could all sleep in the backyard. Often we would hang several white sheets on the clothesline and get one of Daddy’s shop lights (a big reflector with a light bulb in the middle) and set it up on the other side of the sidewalk. In this way one group of kids could put on a shadow play for the other group of kids who were sitting on their sleeping bags and watching the “show”. It was always great fun and we often made it into a guessing game making one group guess what the other group was trying to portray. It usually ended with a pile of girls giggling hysterically until Mom and Daddy were forced to growl at us about making too much noise.
After I grew up and became a mother, it became a habit for Jim and the kids to get me a beautiful big fuchsia for Mother’s Day. For years I smiled and hung the lovely plant in a tree or on the end of the carport never saying anything negative but secretly hating the watering ritual that was necessary to keep the darned things alive. Almost every summer I would eventually let the pot die from lack of water, simply because I hated that daily ritual held over from my childhood. Eventually, I told Jim that I didn’t want him to waste another penny on trying to please me with the Mother’s Day gift that I didn’t really appreciate.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
The Back Steps
Beverly & Karry circa 1952
Sunday, April 5, 2009
The Summer Party
Nevertheless, when asked Mom agreed with the plan and we set about deciding what we’d serve and who we’d invite. The gang of kids that I ran around with were pretty eclectic, to say the least. Most of them were from the neighborhood, but some were from the other high school (RA Long) and some were friends I knew from Castle Rock and Kelso. This was not going to be a big party, probably no more than a dozen people all together and it was just going to be an excuse to get together before the new school year began. Mom said that we could play records and dance and have refreshments. So we moved the ping-pong table to the carport so that we could dance on the patio and have food and drinks under the carport. I don’t remember what the food consisted of, but I do remember that Mom thought it would be cheaper to have punch instead of soft drinks, so she got the big punch bowl out and filled it with some sickeningly sweet concoction that she thought the kids would like (which really meant that she would like since no one in their right minds would drink the sweet stuff that she enjoyed). The party started in the late afternoon and as the day wore away and evening set in some guys, as guys are wont to do, showed up who were not invited. It wasn’t that we didn’t know them, we did, but we had not invited them and they, as you might expect happened to bring a little hootch along for the ride. As Mom scurried in and out of the house making sure that the food was kept replenished and that everything was in order, I noticed that surreptitious sips were being taken from the bottle of firewater. But as Mom made another dash for the door one of the guys sidled up to the punch bowl lifted his shirt unscrewed the lid from the bottle and tipped the whole thing into the pot. Now, we were in for it. There was no going back; this was going to be a party! I’m sure that my already pale complexion blanched a couple of degrees as I envisioned the coming disaster; plastered kids lying in heaps all over the backyard, raucous shenanigans being carried out in all kinds of dark, dank places, and God forbid, Daddy coming home and the ensuing fiasco. However, this was not to be. Mom came to the rescue as she blithely bounced out the back door and announced for all to hear, “Well, now I think it’s about time I had a taste of that punch.” The crowd jerked to attention, someone scored the paper cups and quickly announced that we were out of cups and that she’d have to go get some more. Oh good, she could be helpful and still have a chance to taste the sticky brew, so she headed back in the house to procure some more cups while the guys swept the punch bowl up promptly dumping the contents in the nearest garden bed. By the time Mom returned to the party, the punch was gone; everyone was sad to say that they had drained the punch but that it had been delicious. In the days following the party I carefully watched the garden and particularly the white trumpet lily that took the brunt of the liquor-laden potion from the party. I was happy to report that the garden survived none-the-worse for the wear, and thanks to my quick moving and quicker still thinking friends I too survived what may well have been my parent’s murderous rage at their moonshine sharing daughter.
Beverly's First Communion circa 1952
Arlen, Bobby, Beverly (front left) Larry holding Karry
circa 1950
Friday, April 3, 2009
Scratch the Car
Thursday, April 2, 2009
The Back Yard
The Patio
In the Sixties Dad decided that we needed a patio in the back yard, so he worked his tail off planning, pouring cement, and building the cover for it. The patio was attached to the garage and was constantly used. It turned out to be a very nice addition enabling us to spend more time out doors even when it was raining buckets, which it usually was. One year Dad decided that he would build a ping pong table for Beverly and me. I think the idea was that it would be something that would keep us occupied and give us something healthy to do at home, rather than sit around and watch television which he wanted to control. He worked for weeks on the project. We were told that when Dad was in the work shed we were not to look outside or wander into the area. It didn’t take Beverly but a few days to find out what the hell he was doing, but I made her promise not to tell me so that I could be surprised. I think the table was much more time consuming and difficult than he anticipated. It was a really wonderful table that even folded up and had rollers so that it could be put out of the way if it ever became necessary. However we used it for just about every occasion that we could think of. It was a ping-pong table, a dinner table, a craft table and any number of other uses. Dad used to brag that it had over a hundred pieces and I must admit it was a real beauty and lasted for many years giving the whole family much pleasure.
The Carport
The carport was another building project that Daddy took on in the Sixties. This became an important addition by the time that Beverly and I were able (also I had to be willing) to drive.
By the time that we were in high school Mother had decided that she wanted to go to work and got a job at Montgomery Wards first in the warehouse and then in sales. This meant that she had to get her driver’s license and that meant that Daddy was out looking for a second car. Apparently Daddy knew that Mother had driven when she was a young woman, but didn’t know why she quit driving, and her lips were sealed and nothing would get her to open-up and tell the story of how she either lost her license or decided that driving just wasn’t something she wanted to do. It may seem strange in this day and age, but back in the late fifties and early sixties it was not uncommon for a woman to not drive an automobile at all, and so I didn’t think much about it, I just assumed that she never knew how to drive and that she’d never done it before. However, Daddy was certain that he did not want Mother driving his good car and there was no way that either of the girls would ever be allowed to drive it. In the end, and after several attempts Mother did get her license though Daddy was exceedingly concerned about the ability of the people who gave out driver’s licenses. (He KNEW how she drove!) But nonetheless she had the approval of the local licensing bureau and so there wasn’t much anyone could do. Explaining her driving skills might be easier through one of my all-time favorite examples. Throughout my childhood education I found that once in awhile everyone needs a day off from the grind of school. Sometime one needs just a simple mental health day and other times it was case dependent, for example when a test was scheduled that you just weren’t quite ready for. In none of these events did it mean you got to really sleep in, in every case you had to get up, feign a head, tummy or other anatomical parts that were aching, feverish or just plugged up and beg to stay home from school. Most of the time this didn’t work but every once in awhile you were either a good enough actor or Mother just gave you a break and you were allowed to stay home. Shortly after Mom got her license she relented and let me stay home from high school. I popped back into bed for a couple more zzzs and then headed down stairs, blanket in hand, for a date with the couch and a stint of TV watching. Later that morning Mom said that she was going to go shopping downtown and that I was to stay down and get better. I hadn’t expected this spate of good luck, I not only was home with no school but I was also alone and could expect to be so for a
Saturday, March 28, 2009
The House
The Yellow Paint Job
The summer after I moved out of home to Portland Mom decided that she wanted to have the house painted. Her idea was that we would change the house from charcoal gray to yellow with white trim, and that I could come home from Portland and help Dad with the job. Dad thought that was almost as good as his idea, which was that I would do all the painting. I had a few concerns about this project, but not as many as I was to eventually have. The first weekend I had off I took the Greyhound from Portland to Longview and arrived home with expectations that I would have the job at least half done by Sunday evening and I get free food and lodging. The food and lodging were certainly mine to have but the "free" part was not exactly accurate (it seems as though we always pay in one way or another). I came home nonetheless and Mother had a gallon of yellow paint waiting for me. Her thought was that she might not have exactly the color that she wanted, so maybe I should just paint the back part of the house and we could let it dry to see if the color was perfect the next day. Saturday morning was spent with the first can of paint and another trip to the paint store for a lighter color of yellow. Saturday evening was spent painting another large section of the back of the house, and Sunday was spent repainting the first section a lighter yellow yet.
The next weekend I was back in Longview again and the days went by similarly with the exception that my week-long vacation holiday was arriving soon with no expectation that Mother was even near getting the color had in mind for the house. After two "lost" weekends, I think she was clearly getting the idea that if she wasn't careful she would loose the only free labor she had and by the third weekend she found the perfect yellow color for her project. Dad and I spent the next week working on the job up but not before I was at my wit’s end and the house wasn’t nearly completed. To Dad’s chagrin he was stuck with finishing thepaint job, and I was extremely happy to go back to my mundane job at the public library in Portland.
Side yard
Friday, March 27, 2009
Move to Longview
Pete and Betty Kavanaugh Wedding
May 17, 1942
One day they decided to drive to Cathlamet, Washington to visit with friends (I suspect any excuse to get out of the cramped living quarters was welcome). The three boys rode in the back seat and the adults were in the front. Clearly even the short drives for enjoyment were catastrophically cramped. During the trip Mom and Dad were discussing their living situation when Mother said, “You could get a job in any one of these little towns. You have experience and you’re good at what you do. See, there’s a car dealership. You might be able to get a job there,” (they happen to be driving through Longview at the time). So Daddy thought he’d call her bluff and pulled the car over, got out and went in and asked for a job. When he came back out to the car he said, “OK, so I got a job, now what are we going to do about getting a house?” This was during World War II and the housing situation was difficult everywhere in the U.S. But, as luck would have it, they happened to meet someone who knew someone and they were able to find a house that needed a family on the very same day that Daddy found a job. It seemed like it was meant to be a job and a house and a nice enough little town.
They did end up visiting the relatives in Cathlamet with the news that they would soon be closer neighbors. This was the start of a continued migration from North Dakota to Longview and other Pacific Northwest sites. By the time I was growing up it was not unusual for someone from North Dakota to be knocking on our door wanting to talk to Dad about old times on the farm, and where all of the Diaspora from the old sod were now located.