The Couch

Much of our family time was spent in the living room. We got a television when I was around three years old. My dad was always someone who wanted to have the newest “gadgets” that were available and although we were not a wealthy family, I suspect we fell right in the middle of the bell shaped curve for SES, we were usually the first family on our block who had the newest piece of technology. Television was a big thing for that era. I can remember neighbors gathering on our front porch to watch it through the living room window. I was so young that I don’t remember the experience but remember feeling that this whole thing was weird. The first television we had was really awful. It had a tiny little kind of oval screen, black and white picture, and a lot of snowy interference. Television shows were not predictable and there were usually lots of time slots in the middle of the day when nothing was being broadcast. The television had tubes that were forever blowing out and so Daddy had to constantly fiddle with them, trying to get the set to work properly. I can remember going to the store with him while he tested the tubes to see which ones were working and which ones weren’t. The vast majority of the first few years we had the television set it was usually turned so the back of the set faced the middle of the room and daddy was usually on his knees trying to get the tubes in or out depending on where he was in the process of trying to fix the darned thing. Gradually Portland got more than one station and we were able to watch shows regularly throughout the day and evening. By the time I was in high school there was some kind of programming until about two in the morning when the stations would have terrible programming and really horrible B movies. I watched a lot of these when I was babysitting into the wee hours.

Beverly & Karry

Television 1957

(Updated from our first TV)

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

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.

Grandma & Grandpa's House in Medford

My mother’s sister, Auntie Jo and her husband Uncle Jack also lived in Medford. Uncle Jack had started a construction company and they had a passel of kids, seven in all, two girls, Mary Jo and Laura (both older than I) and five boys (John, Jim, Bill, Andy and Russ). It seemed to me that when I was growing up Auntie Jo was perpetually pregnant or had a tiny baby. I thought the whole experience of growing up in a big family and continually having new babies around was quite romantic and just the most perfect way of having a family.

The Batzer Clan

I loved to take our many trips to Medford and spend as much time as possible with the Batzer clan. I fell, age-wise right between John and Jim so I always had a friend to play with and when they boys got to the age where they didn’t want to play with their boring little cousin, I got to stay with Auntie Jo and play with the new baby. Mother’s brother, Uncle Jerry and his wife and family also lived in Medford although we spent much less time with their family (I think it was because Jerry’s kids were quite a bit younger than we were and Mom and Jerry never really got along). The fact that Medford was a good half a day’s drive from Longview may have been an advantage for everyone involved since we were far away from Mother’s family so that we didn’t get used to each other and close enough that we could visit them, or they could visit us every once in awhile. This made both groups have the excitement of the occasional out-of-town visitor come and the joy of seeing them leave once they’d gotten tired of having them around.
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).

Mary Jo & Laura

Visit Longview

By the time that Bill came for his visit I was in eighth or ninth grade and he was probably in fourth or fifth. Bill Batzer was always onfe of my dad’s favorites. I think Daddy always rooted for the under-dog and Bill always seemed to be the one who stood out in the crowd simply because he seemed a little out of stepped with the rest of them. Bill was born bigger than life and laughed harder, joked more and seemed to be more of the bull in the china closet than most of the other kids. Dad thought he was a hoot. Bill always made him smile. Bill seemed to fit right into the family and Daddy was having a great time during his visit, mostly because he was glad to have another “guy” around rather than his overly female household (all of my brothers had grown

Bill Batzer

About the age when he came to visit

up and moved away from home by this time). Daddy’s usual evening schedule brought him home by 5:30pm. He would walk in the front door, sit down with the paper and rest for a few minutes until supper was ready. Our job was to make darned sure that dinner was on the table by the time he’d finished his daily read of the Longview Daily News. After dinner Dad would get up from the table and head into the living room for a rest on the couch. He would flip the television on turn the sound down a bit and ramble over to get a little nap while the women folk cleaned up the dishes from dinner. Bill caught on to this ritual very quickly and, since he wasn’t really part of the family, he was not instilled with the respect (and almost fear) of my father. As the days went by Bill got the idea that the nap on the couch could be made into a competition between him and Daddy, and that if Bill could get to the couch fast enough then Dad would have to sit in his rocking chair and Bill would get to stretch out on the couch. Daddy caught on to this ritual as soon as it started, and the compitition was on. Each day Dad would find a way to distract for Bill by asking him to take out the garbage or do one little thing for him. Bill always fell for it so Daddy never lost his resting spot. However, on one of the last days that Bill was visiting, Dad hesitated and a bit and Bill took a flying dash across the living room floor, landing fully spread out in Daddy’s nap space. Oh dear, all of us thought, what’s going to happen now? Will there be a battle of the wills or will dad just dump him off and recapture his territory. We all stood behind the kitchen door holding our collective breaths as Dad sauntered into the living room. Bill rolled over feigning sleep, and Dad without a pause Daddy said, "Bill, did you hear that the Barnum and Bailey Circus is in town today?" Bill groggily replied that he hadn’t heard that. Then Dad went out the front door and said that he could see the elephants coming down the street. Well, that did it for Bill he was up and running down the front steps as fast as he could to see those elephants, while Dad quietly slipped back onto his couch for his regular nap after dinner.