Snow days: Matt’s perspective

Snow did not stop our mother from sending us outside with orders to return only for meals, but we didn’t complain.

At least I don’t remember complaining.

We dressed in our limited snow gear, which included socks for mittens, an occasional pair of snow pants and a less-than-occasional pair of boots and made the best of it.

In truth, we had a blast.  

With bottoms and bellies affixed to red, plastic discs, we would sled down a long hill at our grandfather’s house that was perfect for sledding in length and slope but less than ideal because it came to an ended in the street. This required us to break before reaching the bottom (which was difficult), abandon the sled at the last second (which was painful) or shoot across the street, hoping that a car wasn’t coming (which was daring and fun).

My siblings were more than happy to simply sled up and down the hill, but dissatisfied unless we were competing (and I was winning), I would create games in which two or more of us would sled down the hill side by side (and sometimes on a single sled), battling to dislodge each other from our sleds before we reached the street.

No one enjoyed these games, but being the eldest, I forced them to play anyway.

There was one particular winter day when the sheen of ice atop the snow was so thick that we could walk on it without ever breaking through. Though it made walking back up the hill incredibly difficult. the sledding that day was the best that I’ve ever experienced. The speeds that we achieved were astounding. 

The sled battles that day were equally fantastic. The combination of the high speeds and the rock hard surface raised the stakes of the contest considerably.

I spent many winter days slinging to a sled.

We also built some excellent snow caves from the piles of snow on the edge of our driveway, and our snowball fights were long, violent and merciless. Rocks were not permitted, but ice balls were required if you hoped to survive.

When we were cold, we would retreat to the barn, which wasn’t any warmer than the outside air but protected us from the worst of the wind. We would huddle in the hayloft and warm up before leaping from the roof into piles of snow below.

I was seven years old during the Blizzard of ‘78, when our area of Massachusetts received more than 40 inches of snow. We were trapped in our home for days, and when we were finally able to leave the house, it was only through a series of trenches that had been dug through the snow to the car. The walls of the trenches were twice my height. I remember an awful sense of claustrophobia walking through those trenches, only able to see the solid white of the walls and the icy blue sky overhead.

The Yellow House on Federal Street: Kelli’s perspective

Sometimes when I can't sleep at night and I turn the TV off, I lay there and mentally walk through my childhood home remembering every detail. Usually I don't get past the bathroom before I fall asleep so I am going to try to get through the whole house now.

When first entering the house, you walked into the kitchen. The kitchen with the ugliest floor tile even made. The floors were white and each tile had a different picture on it. Some were old fashioned cars, symbols resembling the Atari symbol, and women dressed in old fashioned clothes. Possibly from the circa Little House on the Prairie.

We had a wrap-around counter that you could stand behind. We always kept a cutting board on the end because my mother burned it. She forgot to put water in the pressure cooker before making potatoes. There was an opening for the washer and dryer. There was ledge above them where Matt used to hide my favorite crayon, bittersweet. (This is the highlight of an earlier post.) Above the washer dryer were cabinets. They were covered with wallpaper meant to make them look oak. It didn't do a very good job. In one of those cupboards was the ugly green, plastic cookie jar with the gold flower on it. It was there that we kept the generic Oreos which we were seldom allowed to eat.

There was a white shelf on the wall where we kept an electric kettle which was probably the first model ever made and the metal toaster that I would use as a mirror before school.

There was a tiny step and then you were in the dining room. When we were younger, there was a black wood burning stove but that was removed when we were older. Part of the counter wrapped into the dining room. On the bottom of the counter were sliding door cabinets and then a big black heater. We kept hats and mittens in those cabinets, and we hung our wet hats and mittens on that heater. The cabinets were covered again with the ugliest wallpaper ever. It was light blue with pictures on it. I can't seem to recall what the pictures were, however, I do remember it was awful.

We had a tin picture of The Last Supper on the wall. There was also a wall with a wall hutch on it. My mother had four copper balls on it along with a sign that said “Think.” I never really understood the purpose of the sign but I never questioned it. The floor tile was meant to resemble brown bricks. Not as bad as the kitchen floor, but not great either. Past the kitchen table was a closet. We kept cereal, instant oatmeal and Pop Tarts in the closet.

The bathroom was next. I don't remember the original bathroom because my parents had it redone when I was young. The new bathroom had a shower with sliding glass shower doors. There was a large medicine cabinet with three mirrors that all opened. We had three ball lights above the medicine cabinet. The sink was big and brand new.

The next room was the den. The den changed several times. Unfortunately the wallpaper did not. It was patchwork with different colors and designs. We always had a couch in there. There was one point where we had several pieces of furniture in there. Sometimes, when all the kids watched TV together, we played “switch.” You would change seats with the person on your left every time a commercial came on.

We had a bureau in there with five drawers. Each kid got one drawer to keep their things. Matt was on the top and it went in order of age. We had a wooden gray table in there which we called “the gray table.” There was a bookshelf in there with grown up books on it and a small bookshelf on top which held our “Early I Can Read” books. Stone Soup was my favorite. One day Meghan decided to use permanent marker on the three shelves and wrote “Matt, Jeremy, and Kelli” on the three shelves. Matt, Jeremy, and I were accused until Neil went in each kids bureau drawer to find papers to match the handwriting. We were exonerated.

There was one closet in the den where my mother kept the vacuum and all of our board games.

My parent's room was off the den. It was a typical bedroom: bureaus, night stand, a TV, and my parent's waterbed. (I inherited that when I got my first apartment)

There was a second door in my parents room. When you opened it the stairs were right there to go up to our bedrooms then you walked into the living room.

When we were younger, we had a big fake fire place that really worked. It was a fake flame but it was warm. It was a typical living room. Couch and recliner. There were bookshelves behind the recliner. These were the books that we tore the blank pages out of the beginning and end for writing and drawing. We had a big picture window in the living room. During the days of the “sniper,” we were told not to stand in front of the window. This is when someone was shooting in the windows of random houses. My mother had a coo-coo clock on the wall but as the years went on, it stopped coo-cooing. Also hanging on the wall was another wall hutch with my mother's cherished Hummels.

The stairs leading up to our bedroom were covered with an ugly, yellow, plastic cover. It covered the brand new carpets that were installed when the upstairs was renovated. When coming down the stairs at the bottom was a ledge. We would run down the stairs and grab the ledge, let our legs fly up in the air and jump. At the top of the stairs was a hallway. When we got older and got our own phone number, we put the phone in the hallway on a parson's table. The bathroom was in between the two bedrooms. It was a half bath and never was renovated. It was an ugly mint green and usually a mess.

Matt, Jeremy, and Ian's room was on the left. They had the bigger room. Brown paneling and blue carpeting. The only TV with cable was in their room because it was bigger. For years, they all had Star Wars bedspreads. In both of the bedrooms were eves. Not sure if that it what they are really called though. You could take the door off and store things in them. I'm not sure what was in the eves in the boy's room but I know mine held the Halloween costumes. They had a small closet and a wooden, homemade toy box painted blue.

In my room there was white paneling and red carpets. I had a huge walk in closet and my bureau was built into the wall. When I was young I had a regular single bed. When Meghan slept over we took her roll-a-way bed out of the closet. When my parent's got their waterbed, we inherited their double bed and Meghan and I shared that. When I was older, they bought me a daybed with a trundle bed underneath for Meghan. That was my bed until I got my mother's waterbed. I had a cheesy black and white TV with no cable on it and a little white desk.

Last but not least is the basement. The basement, like other rooms in the house, changed over the years. When we were young, it was a playroom for us. We had my parent's old stereo with the eight track player. We had their old eight tracks and knew all of the words to Mrs. Robinson. When Matt got older, it became his room. He was lucky. He could get out of the bulkhead whenever he wanted without anyone knowing. After he moved out I used his trick and slept down there on nights I knew I wanted to sneak out. The other side of the basement was the boilers and sewer. I used to roller skate down there.

I finally made it through the whole mental walk through and I am still awake.

Family Pets: Kelli and Matt’s Perspective

Unlike previous posts, I have decided to add my own thoughts about our pets to Kelli’s post. It seemed easier than reviewing each pet on my own.

In a subsequent post I will add in pets that she has forgotten.

My comments are indented throughout the post.

______________________________________

There is not one time in my childhood that I can remember when we did not have a pet.

The first pet I remember was a newt. I don't remember the name of it or even what it was. I just remember saying “I have a newt.”

I think it was a fish or a lizard. I'm not quite sure. Maybe I should Google it.

Our newt’s name was Newt. A newt is a type of salamander that is occasionally kept as a pet, so my parents were not completely insane in giving us one.

I had completely forgotten about Newt until Kelli mentioned him. Or it. I have no recollection about what happened to Newt, but apparently these little creatures can live for up to 60 years.

I doubt Newt is still alive (though theoretically he could be). We probably killed him by accident.

We had several hamsters. All of them were named Chubby Whiskers. Each of them died some a brutal death. It is a bad name. I have bought my daughters hamsters and I never named one Chubby Whiskers. It is a bad name that can never lead to anything good.

Everything that Kelli said here is true.

The first dog I remember having was Bruin. I don't remember what he looked like or what kind of dog he was, I just remember his name because it matched the Bruins ashtray we kept on the coffee table in the living room. After those two pets, my memory is much better.

Bruin was a small, black and brown dog who was perpetually happy until the day he was killed in the road by a car. My parents sucked when it came to caring for pets. Dog after dog after dog was killed in the road, and yet no effort was made to keep them safe.

I also oddly remember that Bruin’s astray well.

Holly was our main dog. She was a mutt. She had white curly fur and had a couple litters of puppies. One of them we kept, but I'll get to him later. Holly had a tendency to cross the street to our neighbors house who had a Pomeranian. She also had her own fun with the male dogs that lived in our house. She was my mother's favorite.

I don’t remember my mother every crying as much as the day Holly died. Even with her frequent trips across the street to have sex with the Pomeranian, she managed to avoid dying in the road. She was one of the few dogs to die of natural causes.

Measelman was a dog we had for years. He was a mutt also. He was a big dog who was black, brown, and white. There was no leash law back then so we let the dogs out on their own. He was hit by a car by my friend, Chris Stone, who unfortunately has since passed away.

Measelman was named after a family doctor. On the morning that he died, Chris knocked on our door. It was a Saturday. I answered.

“I think I just hit your dog,” he said.

I looked, saw Poco in the house, and told him that it wasn’t our dog. I don’t know what I was thinking.

He came back ten minutes later and said that he was sure it was our dog.

It was. Measelman was still alive when I reached him. I was devastated. It is not an exaggeration to say I remain devastated to this day. I know it wasn’t Chris Stone’s fault for hitting our dog, but I have always hated him since that day.

I had no idea that he passed away.

Molly was a dog we had but not for too long. She looked like Holly but she was black, hence the name. She had long curls though and wasn't the cutest dog out there.

I have no recollection of what happened to Molly.

I also don’t remember her being as ugly as Kelli seems to imply.

Copper, aka Copper Sox was a cute dog. He was an Irish Springer and he was adorable. I'm pretty sure Copper Sox was hit by a car. If memory serves me right, he was hit by my father who I had not seen or heard from in years.

It’s true that Copper was killed by our father, who we had not seen in at least five years. We didn’t see him on the day that Copper died either. We learned about the his participation in Copper’s death from our mother later on.

Rags was not a good dog or a cute one. His name totally described him. He was a sheepdog. His long white and gray hair covered his eyes and he did not like being walked. For some reason, we didn't have a leash so we used a white rope to walk him. He had about 30 pounds on me so when I tried to take him for a nice leisurely walk, I came home with rope burn. As with a few of our dogs, I can't remember what happened to Rags.

We already owned five dogs when my stepfather brought Rags home, which put us over the town limit. Our grandfather (my father’s father), who lived next door and was not a fan of Neil and probably not a fan of the way my parents allowed our dogs to roam free, reported us to the town, and Rags was eventually given away.

I remember the white rope well. We would tie Rags up to a tree stump in the backyard by that rope. Why we didn’t have a leash I’ll never know.

Pirate was a cute dog. He was small and tan and loveable. I was outside with my brothers waiting to go to Sunday school when Pirate came outside and was hit by a car in front of us. As awful as that was, the worse part was that we were forced to go to Sunday school ten minutes after we saw our beloved pet die.

I am responsible for Pirate’s death. He ran across the street and I instinctively called him back into the path of an oncoming car. I have never forgiven myself for that. It breaks my heart again and again every time I think about that morning.

And yeah, I parents sent us to Sunday school anyway.

Pac-Man was a long time pet. He lasted with us for years. He, like many of our dogs, was a mutt. He was a big black dog with tan eyebrows. He also had a tendency to hump me. Being so young, I thought he was trying to give me a hug. I know better now. Pac-Man, like many of our pets, was hit by a car.

Pac-Man’s longevity was a miracle, as he could be found all over Blackstone at any given time. I would see him at the park, miles from our home, while I was playing basketball.

He was named after my mother’s favorite game on our Atari 5200.

Our Uncle Paul and Aunt Nancy hit and killed one of our dogs with their car, and Pac-Man might have been the one.

Dee-Dee was not the best dog. She was actually scary. She was a pure bred Doberman Pincher with cancer. She was very mean. One day I was watching TV and she started growling at me for no reason. I was frozen in fear in the chair until my parents came home. She was put down shortly after that. To this day, I would love to know why my parents agreed to take this dog in.

I had forgotten about Dee Dee. I don’t know how. She was mean as hell.

Poco was the favorite dog, loved by all. My brother's and I watched Poco being born near the couch in our den. He was the son of Holly, my mother's favorite.

Poco was our family dog for 13 years. When my mother and I moved to an apartment in Woonsocket after Neil left and we lost the house, Poco got out and ran away. My friend Bethany and I walked around for hours looking for him. We even went down and walked the train tracks searching. When we finally gave up, my mother came outside. She called his name once and he came running home.

When he was 12, he had a seizure which left him with a limp and a tilted head. When my mother would walk him, children at the bus stop would make fun of them. She asked my boyfriend and me to walk him one morning and put a scare into the kids. They never made fun of him after that day.

When he was 13 he had to be put down. I watched him come into this world and I held him when he left it. It was one of the saddest days of my life. I left the vet’s office with a lock of his fur and his collar and tags.

I remember Poco well. The sweetest dog I have ever known.

We had a few litters of puppies from Holly that we got attached to while they were with us. Lady and Duke were from Poco's litter, and we loved them. Sandra and Meatloaf were from her second litter. My mother named Sandra and was devastated when we let her go. Meatloaf looked like a little Pac-Man. He was named Meatloaf because his breath always smelled like meatloaf.

I remember watching Holly give birth to her babies, but I have no memory of the specifics of each puppy except they were so much fun to play with.

It wasn't just dogs we had. My parents came home one day with guinea pigs. We named them Q-Tip and Squeaky. Q-Tip was an albino Guinea pig. He was all white with red eyes. Squeaky was brown tan and white. We used to take them out on the couch in the den.

One night, someone forgot to put them back and chewed the fingers off of my beloved doll, Baby Feels So Real. Her name was Jodie. She was filled with a gel so it made her feel squishy and heavy. The gel was leaking out and her fingers had to be burned closed to prevent further leaking. A hard day for me.

I remember that the guinea pigs would keep my parents awake at night with their incessant squeaking. Eventually we gave them away for this reason.

I never liked them very much. Too much like rats.

I was walking home from school off the late bus one day and a kitten followed me home. My mother, the self proclaimed cat hater, saw him and insisted I bring him back where I found him. I did and he followed me again with a second cat. She told me not to go back in fear of another following me. She had me keep them in the cellar. I named them Ham and Cheese. A few months later, Ham ran away. Cheese stayed for over a year.

One day he was hit by a car. My mom, the cat hater, was the only one who cried. She was sobbing saying “Cheesy” over and over again.

I'm guessing she wasn't as much of a cat hater as she said.

I had completely forgotten about Ham and Cheese, and though I have a vague recollection of them, I cannot even formulate an image of them in my mind.

Perhaps I was older and spending more time out of the house by then? Though I slept in an unheated basement bedroom, so you’d think I would know about two cats living down there with me.

Maybe they joined the family after I moved out completely?

So many pets, so many deaths. Almost always by a car. You would think my parents would have learned to tie the dogs up.

Ian and Meghan: Matt’s perspective

I could probably write a book about Ian and Meghan, the stepsiblings who I grew up with from the age of six until eighteen and then lost when I was twenty.

I probably will someday.

Losing a brother and sister who you spent the majority of your childhood with is one of the greatest tragedies of my life.

Like Kelli, I remember meeting Ian and Meghan on Halloween, and I remember being somewhat confused as to why they were in our home. My mother and father were still married and together, but it was clear to me, even at my young age, that something strange was going on. 

Just a few weeks later, we stepped off the bus and found Ian and Meghan’s father, Neil, in our living room with our mom. Mom told us that she and Dad were getting a divorce. Neil presented himself as a social worker who was there to help us through our parents’ separation.

I knew better. I had seen him around the house too often to believe it.

A few weeks later he was living with us, and Ian and Meghan began staying with us every weekend. 

The integration of Neil into our home as a fulltime stepfather was not easy. In many ways, I never accepted him as my stepfather, which probably explained why I spent more and more time away from the home as I got older. By the time I was sixteen, I was managing a McDonald’s restaurant 45 minutes from our home and working 40-50 hours a week. I moved to an unheated basement bedroom in order to further extract myself from the family and began using the hatchway as my primary entrance and exit from the home. I avoided my parents as much as possible as I got older, because of my distaste for Neil and my understanding of how their relationship came to be.

But the integration of Ian and Meghan into my life was instantaneous and perfect. Almost overnight, they became my brother and sister. I became hard to imagine a time in our lives when they weren’t a part of the family. Ian was a tougher kid than Jeremy and challenged me more often, but it was good for me. Being the eldest, I was always in charge. Ian still deferred to my age most of the time, but if there was a voice of dissent, it came from Ian.

Meghan was the sweetest of the bunch. The most innocent. Kelli was tiny for her age but was tough as nails. If bitten by a dog, Kelli was the kind of kid who would bite back. She relied on her big brother’s protection from time to time, but most often, she took care of herself.

Meghan was four years younger than me, and I suddenly found myself with a tiny little sister in need to watching and protecting. I liked this. She was like the baby sister I never quite had because of the closeness in age between Kelli and me. I would take her on amusement rides for the first time, teach her to ride her bike and keep a wary eye on her when we hiked through the back forests.

Of course, being brothers and sisters, there was the occasional spat. One of the toughest things for me to deal with was the clear favoritism that Neil demonstrated for his children, and especially Ian. When given the choice between doing something with Ian or with me, Ian was always the chosen one.

In 1983 my Little League baseball team reached the championship game. On an adjacent field, Ian was playing a regular season game.  Despite the fact that my team was playing for a championship that we would ultimately win and I would be named an all star for the league, Neil remained on the adjacent field watching Ian play.

It was a moment that I never forgot.

Kelli’s description of the disillusion of our Mom and Neil’s marriage was sanitized to say the least. Perhaps she doesn’t know all the details.

I moved out of the house after graduation, moving in with friends and continuing to manage McDonald’s restaurants. The word “college” was never spoken to me throughout my entire childhood. Not by parents nor teachers, While my friends were spending their Saturdays taking SATs, I wasn’t even sure what an SAT was. 

Instead, I was given bath towels, a microwave oven, and a set of pots and pans for the birthdays and Christmases leading up to graduation. I was sent a clear message, through these gifts and the complete absence of talk about my future, that my time in the family home was coming to an end. I graduated in the top ten percent of my high school class, yet no one spoke about college to me, and I became to afraid and embarrassed to ask. In my mind, college had become something for people not like me.

A year after I left the home, Neil lost his job. I have been told that he lost his job for actions that were unethical and possibly illegal, but I have never been able to confirm these stories. He would eventually convince my disabled mother to accept a lump sum disability payment from the state in order to invest in a multi-level marketing company. Needless to say, the money would be gone a year later, along with Neil and our childhood home. He stopped paying the mortgage and didn’t tell my mother until foreclosure proceedings were eminent. Then he left for a canoe trip to Maine, leaving a note on the kitchen counter that informed my mother that he was leaving her and that the house would be gone in two months.

My mother showed me the note. It was despicable.

Just like that, Ian and Megan were ripped from my life.

With opposing parents, it became impossible to remain together.

My mom would descend into poverty with my sister, and I was suffer from a lifetime of guilt as I found myself equally impoverished and eventually homeless and unable to help her. Eventually I discovered that Neil was living in the same apartment complex as a friend, about two miles from my home. I made it a routine to drive over to his apartment about once a month or so and bash in his windshield with a baseball bat.

I have seen little of Ian and Meghan since our parents’ divorce. I attended Meghan’s wedding years ago and saw many of her family members who I once called Uncle and Aunt, but I avoided Neil entirely. The family had apparently heard that I planned on writing a memoir about my experiences as a child. A couple of the uncles seemed less than enamored about the idea, but one uncles offered to sit down and “dish me all the dirt” when I was ready.

I recently reconnected with Ian through Facebook. He’s married with children now. He only lives a couple hours away from me. Meghan is even closer.

It’s so strange. The boy who was my brother is not a father with children of his own. The girl who was my sister is a mother with children of her own.

All of their accomplishments and joys over the past twenty years, lost to me because of our parents’ divorce. I often wonder what it would have been like to have Ian and Meghan in my life for all these lost years. I try to imagine them at my own wedding, meeting my own children, sharing Christmas Eves and birthdays like we once did as children.  

Losing the brother and sister who I spent the majority of my childhood with remains one of the greatest tragedies of my life.

Ian and Meghan: Kelli’s Perspective

Being the youngest child in a family for the first five years of my life, I have a very good memory of the early days with my younger stepbrother, who was four when we first met, and my younger stepsister, who was three.

It was Halloween night when Matt, Jeremy, and I first met them. We had just come home from trick-or-treating and were in the playroom (later called the “den”) going through our candy. This was the late seventies when it was safe for children to eat candy before their parents checked it. Ian came in first and saw my pile of candy. The first thing he did was come over and stomped on it. Meghan stood in the doorway watching. Matt and Jeremy liked to tease me and aggravate me, however, they did not tolerate it when someone else was doing it. They pushed Ian off my candy and told him to stop. After that, introductions were made, candy was eaten, and Ian and Meghan left with their father.

Over the next few weeks we started seeing them on weekend afternoons. It was always at our house. We would play outside or in our rooms while our parents spent time together.

One night, our mother had to work so Neil (Ian and Meghan's father) picked us up and took us to Woonsocket. He said we were going to Ian and Meghan's house. It was a nice house on a dead end. The thing I remember most about this house was that I could reach the sinks and the counters with ease. I was only five years old and very small for my age, but I didn't need a stool to reach anything. Neil informed us that the house was originally built for “midgets.”

Today “little people” is the PC term.

We went and checked out Ian and Meghan's toys for a while until Neil said we had to leave because Ian and Meghan's mother was on her way home.

Over the next few weeks Ian and Meghan began spending the night at our house. Our parents put a bed in Matt and Jeremy's room for Ian. For Meghan, they got a roll-a-way bed for Meghan which was folded up and put in my closet every Sunday when she left. Soon they spent every weekend at our house. For me, the transition seemed very normal. They became our brother and sister.

Over the years they spent weekends during the school year with us and all summer. We were raised for thirteen years as one big family: two parents and five siblings.

Right before I turned 18 our parents had trouble and decided to divorce. We stopped seeing our step family and even stopped speaking to them. Ian and Meghan never met or even knew about their step niece, who was born seven months after Neil moved out. It is hard to believe that we were such a close blended family for so many years because in a blink of an eye they were all out of our lives for good.

Here Comes the Lunch Truck: Mat’s perspective

The thing I remember most about our days at Cold Spring Park was the diversity of kids on the playground. We grew up in Blackstone, Massachusetts. Throughout my entire educational career, I think there was one black student in our school, and only for a brief period of time.

At least half the kids at the park were minority, giving us our first real experience with kids from other racial backgrounds. I think this was important for us. I don’t think I would’ve grown up with prejudice in my heart regardless of my childhood experiences, but the time we spent with black and Hispanic kids at the park proved invaluable in terms of my acceptance and understanding of them as kids just like me.

That said, my brothers and sisters and I rarely strayed from one another. We were like aliens visiting another world. We knew no one. We didn’t understand the rules of this foreign land. We stuck together and played together for the most part. The idea that our parents would simply drop us off at a park in another town without supervision for the day in order to avoid purchasing us lunch was crazy.

I will also disagree with Kelli on the economic state of our family. In her post, Kelli says that “We were far from underprivileged. We were far from poor.”

I think we were closer to the poverty line than Kelli realizes.

We were free breakfast and lunch kids for our entire lives. As a teacher, I know that this alone indicates a serious level of economic struggle.

Many of the clothes that we owned were hand-me-downs, and most did not fit properly.

We didn’t have much by way of toys, sports equipment and such. I was the worst prepared Boy Scout in our troop, rarely equipped properly for the outdoor conditions. There was a weekend in February when my Scoutmaster had to pile the clothing of other Scouts on top of me to keep me warm overnight because my sleeping back and winter clothing were not suitable for the cold, winter nights.

Band trips, Boy Scout trips and any other event that required money was almost always paid for through some scholarship program funded by other parents. When I spent time in New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island with friends and their families on vacation, I was never sent with a single dollar.

I can count the number of times we ate in a restaurant as children on one hand.

We were recipients of enormous blocks of cheese from the WIC program. Government cheese. The sign of poverty if I ever saw it.

Inexplicably, my parents seemed to have enough money to travel to the Caribbean and the Poconos. They had enough money to go out on Friday and Saturday, leaving their nine year old son in charge of four younger brothers and sisters until 2:00 in the morning.

My parents might not have been poor, but the kids were.

Not destitute, mind you. Not impoverished. But poor.

It should also be noted that we thankfully did not spend every summer at Cold Spring Park. It might’ve been just one. Two at the most.

Kelli was also right about our home. It was an adventureland for kids. In addition to the fields surrounding our home and the pool and the barn, there were huge swaths of forest behind out home that we explored regularly. There were crumbling basements from ancient, burned out homes, cow ponds, swamps, a cave and endless fields of tall grass. We could ride our bikes almost anywhere in town and beyond by the time we were ten-years-old. Our generation might’ve been the last to be sent outdoors at the crack of dawn with the expectation that you would only return for lunch and dinner. The freedom that we enjoyed as children would be unheard of today. I tell my students about the lack of parental supervision and organized play that I enjoyed as a child and they cannot believe it.

Cold Spring Park put a damper on that freedom for a time, but thankfully not for long.

Oh, and the lunches were terrible. Free, yes. But you get what you pay for.

Here Comes the Lunch Truck: Kelli’s perspective

Growing up at our house in Blackstone during summer vacation was great. We didn't have any friends who lived close by, but we had better. There were five siblings in the house. Lots of opportunity for fun.

We had a huge yard and a pool.

We had a barn in the back yard. In the main room of the barn was a couch. We could hang out there, play house (for me and my stepsister) and jump off the roof. Riding bikes off the roof was fun for my brother, but not for me.

If we got bored with that, we could go inside and play Atari or watch television.

If that bored us and we were hungry we could go in our own back yard and pick blackberries or go to my grandfather’s house next door and pick apples, pears, or grapes. We even had rhubarb.

With all those activities at home, my parents thought it would be a good idea to send my siblings and me to Cold Spring Park in Woonsocket, RI for the day. This was odd for a few reasons.

First, we had a lot to do at home.

Second, we did not live in Woonsocket, nor did we live in Rhode Island.

Mom would drop us all off in the morning and leave us there all day. There was an arts and crafts station where we would make necklaces and paint rocks.

There was no swimming, which we could have done at home, and fruit picking was also not an option. People pay to go fruit picking and we could have done it at home for free.

Instead we spent our summer at Cold Spring Park.

We were bored. Very bored. We waited for the lunch truck to come because we knew when we saw it, two good things would happen.

First, we could eat. For free.

Second, we were half way through the day before we could go home.

We watched for the truck. When we saw it we all yelled, “Here comes the lunch truck!” We got a menial lunch: bologna sandwich, an apple and a carton of white milk.

Once they left we just watched for our parents to come and finally get us.

Looking back now, as an adult, I know that the park lunch program was for under privileged families.

We were far from underprivileged. We were far from poor. I can't help but wonder: Why were we there?

PS: I entered the Little Miss Cold Spring Park pageant and was the first runner up. I didn't make the paper like the winner did, but I was still the coolest girl on the planet, so I thought.

Elementary School Teachers: Matt’s perspective

As I expected, I remember considerably less about my elementary school teachers than Kelli, but I seem to remember more details about the ones I do remember.

Oddly enough, I remember kindergarten better than the following two years combined. My teacher was Mrs. Dubois. I loved her. I remember her being kind, patient, and in my tiny mind, a freakin’ genius.

I can still remember specific lessons that she taught us to this day. I can still picture specific pages of our math workbook. I remember learning about sets and basic addition and subtraction. Every time I learned something new, I assigned her all the credit.

There are many reasons I became a teacher, but I suspect it began in kindergarten with Mrs. Dubois.

Mrs. Dubois taught us the alphabet using letter people: large, inflatable characters that represented each letter. I loved those letter people, and Mrs. Dubois must have known it, because when she replaced a leaky Mr. R with a new one, she gave the old Mr. R to me to take home and keep. Mr. R had rubber bands for hair. I thought that was just about the cleverest idea in the world.

Apparently the letter people were associated with an educational television program at the time, complete with video and song. I recall the songs a little, but I don’t think we ever watched any videos about them.

Mrs. Dubois was the first teacher to discipline me. I can remember being send to the corner for the first time. I stood beneath the American flag and stared at the pencil sharpener, wondering if she would ever let me out. I swore that I would never do another wrong thing again while I was standing in that corner, and as far as I can recall, I was never sent to the corner again in kindergarten. 

Our classroom was filled with blocks and puzzles and pretend kitchens and the like, and I remember adoring the time we had to play. Kindergarten was always sunny in my memory. I never rained as long as I was with Mrs. Dubois.

Mrs. Carroll was the equivalent of the kindergarten paraprofessional, and she would take each one of us out of the classroom and into the hallway to test us. We would sit at a round table between the two classrooms and demonstrate our knowledge of our birthday, our address, our ability to spell our names and count to 100, and similar information.

I just did some poking around online and discovered that Mrs. Dubois retired in 2006. Her first name is Cora. I wonder if I can find her and thank her for all that she did for me. Kindergarten was only a half day for me back then, but those few hours of schooling each day were precious to me.

I have almost no recollection of my first or second grade teachers. In fact, I can’t even recall their names, though Kelli’s mention of Mrs. McGann makes me think that she was probably my second grade teacher, too.

Since I grew up in the age of tracking, where children are grouped according to ability, I may be able to recover the names and memories of these teachers. The kids who were in first grade with me remained with me for the most part throughout elementary and much of middle school. We were Group 1. The smartest kids. Just imagine grouping students solely by perceived academic ability and then informing them of the pecking order by assigning a number.

I still can’t believe it happened.

As such, any friends that I have from that time had the same teachers as me and might remember.  

My third grade teacher was Mrs. Laverne, though I suspect that I am spelling it wrong. I find no mention of her online.

I remember Mrs. Laverne’s class because that was the year when I realized that my family was not doing well economically. I was in a class filled with the best and brightest from our town, and as you might expect, many of those kids came from homes that were at least middle class and often above.

My family was not.

Third grade was the year when I realized what it meant to raise my hand every morning during the teacher’s lunch count when she asked who was “getting free hot lunch.”

I still can’t believe they had us do that.

My fourth grade year was a disjoined time that deserves a post of its own. Probably a chapter in a memoir someday. As the top group in our class, we were sent to middle school a year early, but when the second middle school in town was condemned, administrators sent those students to my middle school and sent us back to elementary school for the remainder of the year.

As you can imagine, we were an unruly bunch. We went through at least two substitute teachers for those final months and most assuredly learned nothing. I’ve had conversations on Facebook with childhood friends about that year, and they might be able to offer those details again to me. I recall a lot of Blondie dance routines from the ladies and a lot of fooling around in the back of the classroom by the boys. I know that for a short period of time, my friend’s mother, Mrs. Lavalee, served as our teacher. She was a German with a thick accent who had no control over us whatsoever. 

Lastly, our principal was Mr. Hartnett, for whom the new middle school in town is now named. He was a kind but firm man who I had to visit on more than one occasion for minor indiscretions. What I recall most about Mr. Hartnett was that when I was sent to his office, he would call me into his office even if he was meeting with other adults at that moment and let me have it right in front of them.

Public shame is a powerful tool. Mr. Hartnett understood this well.

Elementary School Teachers: Kelli’s perspective

Going to school in Blackstone, as probably with every other school in the world, there were teachers that every kid wanted and teachers that every kid dreaded. Having two older brothers, I always had the inside scoop on which teachers were “nice” and which ones were “mean” and it started as early as kindergarten.

There were only two teachers for kindergarten at John F. Kennedy Elementary School in the 1970s.

Mrs. Dubois was the nice one, the one every kid wanted.

Unfortunately I got Mrs. Roberge. Mrs. Roberge a short, angry woman. She wasn't nurturing like a kindergarten teacher should be. Halfway through the day, selected kids would put their things in a shoe box and go to the other class to be taught by that teacher for a while.

I wasn't one of those children either. I spent the whole school year in Mrs. Roberge's class.

On graduation day, during the family party after the ceremony, I spilled my milk. Mrs. Roberge yelled at me. I was very happy to leave the class that day.

Another teacher that none of the children wanted was Mrs. McGann. She taught second grade. She yelled a lot and gave way too much homework. There was a rumor about a fourth grade teacher named Miss Chaukins. Kids said she scratched a student one day for forgetting his homework and made him bleed. No one could ever say who the kid was or how long ago it happened, but it was a rumor that spread through my entire career at JFK.

Mrs. Callahan had a reputation of being a nice teacher. I was lucky enough to have her. She didn't yell too often and made learning fun.

Mrs. Daignault was a fourth grade teacher who every kid wanted. In the middle of my fourth grade year, she went on maternity leave and left us with Miss McMichael for the remainder of the year. She was nice but she was no Mrs Daignault.

In elementary school there were two gym teachers. Mrs Bergeron was the teacher everyone wanted. She was easy on the kids and didn't yell very often. Mr. Bourgery wasn't as nice and definitely made gym class a lot less fun.

After elementary was done, my brothers gave the good and bad list for middle school and then elementary school. For me, being the youngest, it was nice starting a new grade knowing what I was getting into. There were some upsides to being the youngest.

The Bus Stop: Matt’s perspective

I loved the bus stop. I miss those days when my siblings and I stood beneath that enormous oak tree, waiting for the bus.

The bus stop was the place where Kelli, Jeremy and I gathered everyday. Regardless of what was filling our lives at the moment, we always came together at the bottom of the driveway for a few minutes each day before going forth and taking on the world.

Yes, it’s true. I would tell Kelli and Jeremy that if you placed your ear on the street, you could hear the vibrations of the bus from far away. There may have been a time when I actually believed this, but eventually it became a way of getting Jeremy to lie down in the street so I could inwardly laugh at him. 

And yes, it’s true that we collected “Cocoa Puffs,” which were actually tiny, multicolored insect egg sacks that would fall from the tree and land on the ground. And yes, referring to multicolored spheres as Cocoa Puffs seems a little ludicrous today.

There was also the day when Kelli, still in first grade, had to pee while waiting for the bus. Being latch key children in every sense of the word, our parents had already left for work long before we ventured down to the bus stop. I had a key tied around my neck on a length of string, but knowing that the bus would arrive any minute, I told Kelli to hold it.

She started crying, begging, pleading to pee. After a moment, I handed her the key and told her to hurry up. She ran up the driveway and into the house.

We waited. And waited. She did not return. I grew impatient and worried. I became annoyed and frustrated.

Finally I told Jeremy to hold the bus if it arrived, and I ran back into the house to find out what had happened.

In her haste to pee quickly, Kelli had launched herself onto the toilet and fallen straight through, When I peeked my nose into the bathroom, the only thing I could see were her head and her feet. The rest of her was jammed in the toilet bowl.

She was crying.

I managed to extract her from the toilet, and she cleaned herself off, but in the meantime, the bus had come and gone. Jeremy had been too shy to tell the bus driver to wait for us.

I called my mother at work to tell her that we had missed the bus, and she told us to stay home for the day. A third grader and a first grader were instructed to stay home alone and “make sandwiches for lunch.”

A different time or questionable parenting? I’m not sure, but I recall it being a great day for the two of us.

The Bus Stop: Kelli’s perspective

Living in Blackstone we had the benefit of getting a bus everyday to school. Because we didn't have any other kids our age in the neighborhood we got picked up right at the bottom of the driveway. Even though we were only at the bus stop for a short time, as a kid it felt like forever. We did a few things to pass the time while we waited.

We stood under a tree at the bus stop. In the spring, small round colorful balls fell from the tree. I’m not too sure what they were but we made a game out of it. I called them Cocoa Puffs. Looking back now I think Trix would have been a better name for them since they were different colors. It's pretty surprising that none of us realized it. The Cocoa Puffs would  fall from the tree and we would pick them up on the side of the road and put them in our school bags. After school we brought them up to the house and put them with all the other ones we collected in The Cocoa Puff Kingdom.

Looking back at it, we were strange children.

Matt had a theory. He said if you lie down on the street and put your ear on the road, you could hear the vibration of the bus and you could tell how far away the bus was. I was the only one too scared to do it, which is ironic because I am the one who 25 years later was hit by a car attempting to cross the highway.

It wasn't always fun and games at the bus stop. We did have fights  sometimes. Some being physical.

Matt and Jeremy were getting annoyed with me one day. I'm not quite sure what I was doing to annoy them but being their little sister, I'm sure I didn't have to try too hard. Matt, finally sick of me, grabbed my Disco Daisy Duck school bag and swung me around by it until I fell. I stayed down on the ground and cried. This didn't make my brothers feel bad. It made them more angry. The bus was in sight and they didn't want me crying when it came. Matt grabbed me by my hair (which unfortunately for me was a bowl cut throughout my entire childhood) and pulled me up.

After school that day, my mother told me to change my clothes because I had worn a dress with tights that day. When I tried to take off my tights they were stuck in the cut that I got that morning and it had scabbed over. My mother kept dabbing it with water and pulling it out little by little. I was angry because Matt had not got in any trouble for what he did.

After Matt got his license he started driving and it was just Jeremy and me at the bus stop. Then Jeremy graduated and I was alone. It just wasn't as fun anymore after my brothers left.

Food Nazis: Matt’s perspective

I’m so glad that my sister remembers the trials and tribulations surrounding food like I do. It’s true. Eating was something that was only tolerated in our home.

One of the saving graces for me was my lactose intolerance as a child. Though I quickly outgrew the problem, I did not tell my parents because it allowed me to drink fruit juice at dinner in lieu of milk.

The only three liquids we were ever allowed to ingest as children were water, milk and a bastardized version of Kool-Aid.

A cup of apple juice was like a treasure.

It was also odd how some of our parents’ decisions seemed to have a nutritional underpinning while others did not.

Yes, you can have a Pop Tart once a week, but unfrosted only. No unnecessary sugar for you. And only healthy cereals like Wheaties and Corn Flakes. Nothing with an animal or a leprechaun on the box.

But here, have a slice of bologna on white bread with catsup for every single lunch of the entire summer.

And potato chips to go along with these sandwich monstrosities?

Never. I don’t think I ever ate a potato chip unless I was visiting a friend or relative. 

I almost never saw a slice of cheese as a child, other than the blocks of cheese that we would receive sometimes from WIC. I still think of American cheese as a priceless commodity. When I see it in my refrigerator today, I can’t help but want to horde it.

Snacks in the summer were often picked off my grandfather’s fruit trees. He lived next door and grew apples, pears and peaches in abundance. We were forced to eat the fruit right off the tree regardless of how ripe it might be.

I like to say that as a child, I never went hungry but was always hungry.

We were active, growing children who played outside everyday regardless of weather or temperature, but we were probably living on a diet of about 2,500 calories.

Kelli was correct about dinner, too. Grub was exceptionally common.

“It consisted of scrambled hamburger and baked beans. The state should have removed us from the home for that one.”

Yes, indeed.

There was also a lot of spaghetti, almost never with any meat in the sauce, and many times without sauce. My mother eventually bought a pressure cooker, and for a time, everything was cooked in there. An endless parade of meatless stews and unidentifiable soups. One day she placed the heated pressure cooker on the counter and burned a hole in the shape of the pressure cooker about one centimeter deep. The repair of the counter consisted of placing a cutting board over the hole and calling it a day.

Our parents also dropped us off at Colt Spring Park in Woonsocket, Rhode Island every day in the summer because a free lunch wagon would come through the park and feed any child who was playing there.

Mind you, my parents didn’t stay with us. They dropped us off in a strange park in another state and left us for a few hours so we could get a boxed lunch from the Woonsocket social services department.

I’ll have to ask Kelli to write about those days in the park. I recall them being surreal and scary.