More Bits from the Side Yard

The DesJardins and the Gang

The house that was right next door to us on the West side and next to the side yard belonged to the DesJardin’s when I was quite small. They were a family with several children, all older than me and some quite a bit older than I was. They had children who were my brother’s age and the youngest one was Beverly’s age. The girls that I remember were beautiful and somewhat tom boyish, which I admired. The DesJardin kids ran with a pack of other kids in the neighborhood. When My brothers were in grade and high school, they seemed to be the center of the action in the neighborhood. If there was a baseball game, it was in our front yard, if there was trouble to get into, the Kavanaugh boys were right there and if not instigating it, at least participating, though I doubt much went on that they didn’t instigate. By the time the boys had grown up, Beverly and Kathy DesJardin were good friends and kind of ran at the back of the pack trying to keep up with the boys and watching and learning all they could about how the big kids did things. When brother and Larry was 16 years old, Bobby was 13 and Beverly was six the gang was going strong and Beverly, the precocious thing she was, learned fast. At this time I was only three and so I was still under Mother’s strict control. It would take several years before I was able to scuttle about and learn from the big kids, but by that time the boys were well into high school and wanted little to do with some little one following them around. On the other hand Beverly didn’t want me hanging around with her and Kathy either, since I was just the annoying little sister. However, every once in awhile I would be allowed to tag along and learn all sorts of big kid stuff.

The Gang of Kids From the Block

The Little girl in front is a DesJardin

The DesJardins had a woodshed like we did only Daddy turned our tool shed into a workshop by the time I was old enough to really remember very clearly so the woodshed next door was quite intriguing to me. It was a small shed that was filled with wood and the floor was covered with wood chips. It was warm in the cold wet winter and it smelled wonderful with all those woody scents filling the air. The one time I remember being allowed to tag along with Beverly and Kathy and their gang of kids, we went to the DesJardin’s woodshed. They were going to have a “meeting” (whatever that meant, I’d never heard of a meeting before). So everyone gathered together in this tight woody space and someone had a cup as a gavel and started the event saying in hushed voices, “Order in the court, Judge Roy Bean, Wife’s in the bathtub shooting submarines.” The room burst into giggles and I stood there completely be befuddled. I didn’t know what was going on but I guessed that it was something naughty, but I had no clue as to what any of it meant and I probably just wanted to go home. I sure wasn’t going to tell Momma about any of this stuff…it must be really bad. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to grow up any more, if I didn’t understand what the big kids were talking about, I’d just stay home where it was safe and I was pretty sure I understood most of the stuff that was said.

Karry & Her Kitty 1953 Side Yard View

Conservative Christianity Comes to the Neighborhood

The next family to move in stayed for several years. Their last name was Heimbach and they became close friends of my parents. They had two children, a boy and a girl and were generally nice people. I was particularly interested in the kids because this was the first child I’d ever met who had the same first name as me and this Kari was a BOY! It seemed strange that I had never met another Karry nor had I ever met another Kavanaugh (much later in life I would learn that Kavanaugh is a very popular name in Ireland). I really believed that I was unique from the whole rest of the world. I knew other Beverlys and I knew other Bobs and Larrys but no one else had my moniker. To me the new family was perfectly fine, and my folks seemed to like them a lot. I guess I originally thought that this might be a potential baby sitting opportunity for me and that I might earn extra bucks by finding another family that I could wrangle out of a few dollars in exchange for occasional child care. This, of course, never amounted to anything and I soon learned it was because preachers from this church didn’t earn a hill of beans. They were the truly poor, perhaps not in spirit but certainly in currency, but they were lucky because they lived next door to Pete Kavanaugh who was forever hiring people to drive school bus for him. Before every long, Daddy had Mr. Heimbach driving bus for him on a regular basis.
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.

Beverly & Karry in Side Yard