The Hermans

     While life in our home was fairly structured, our cousins the Hermans lived in a more free-flowing manner, with looser boundaries.  At a very early age, they were allowed to play with matches in the basement, drink sodas, and eat as much candy as they chose.  Their house was the only residence on  the 16-wheeler Coca-Cola truck delivery route.  The antique cabinet to the left of the main entrance was kept stocked with an impressive variety of candy – all you could eat - that rivaled any candy store.  If you didn’t fill up on sodas and  candy, there were  plenty of chips and “bar shrimp” (cheese doodles).  They lived in a virtual kid Utopia.  While my family consisted of introverts, the Hermans were all extroverts, lead by Aunt Babs who could talk to anyone about anything, and put the most awkward individual at ease.

     Stain  and Little Sinner, carefully monitored by Looper, were  allowed to stay up as late as they wanted and were allowed to watch horror films judged by my parents as having no redeeming value. Additionally, my parents insisted that staying up late made us irritable.   That always struck a nerve with me because it seemed so irrelevant to the experience.  That suggestion also implied that the Hermans did not get grouchy from sleep deprivation.   To the contrary, Looper, Stain, and Little Sinner got just as grouchy as we did; it was just that  Uncle Herman and Aunt Babs were better at ignoring it.  

While my parents did not solicit advice from their children on how they could be better parents, Uncle Herman and Aunt Babs must have, because Looper, Stain, and Little Sinner never hesitated to offer helpful parenting advice, usually conveyed in very loud, colorful language.  While these tips were generally disregarded in their entirety by Aunt Babs and Uncle Herman, there were times when the parents responded with even more colorful language, if that was possible.  

     Another draw of the Herman house was that they had all the great toys including messy ones like the “Creepy Crawler Factory,” the sort of toys that rarely made it to our inventory.  It wasn’t from a lack of interest or trying on our part. It was just that they did not make the final cut by our birthday shoppers. The Hermans  also had the latest fads in pets, whether it be Sea Monkeys, ant farms,  or dyed chicks and bunnies from Woolworth’s at Easter time.  Stain had a pair of “neutered” gerbils that went on to procreate like bunnies.  Somehow they became free-range occupants in the house, and spent a life living large on the lam, moving stealthily between family member’s clothing drawers, feasting on fine woolen sweaters.

     Little Sinner was the toughest little kid any of us knew.  This was in no small part a result of having a short life heavily influenced by Stain practicing his  freestyle wrestling moves on her, moves  he had mastered watching professional wrestling on UHF TV.  

Professional wrestling was the perfect union of two of Stain’s favorite things, wrestling and Halloween.  As a purist, Stain would not allow his enthusiasm for professional wrestling to be diminished by Little Sinner’s reluctance to participate.  

Owing much to Little Sinner, Stain went on to be an accomplished high school and college wrestler.  In one unfortunate high school match, Stain’s opponent’s arm was broken after a not-so-soft landing from an otherwise legal move.  The poor fellow was flailing on the mat as Stain looked on in horror.  

We were all a bit surprised at the unfortunate lad’s lack of fortitude given that Little Sinner had been thrown down steps and out windows, and instead of crying, she harnessed her efforts toward escape and hiding.

     Stain had a lifetime subscription to Mad magazine.  While the basic content has not changed much in 50 years, the Mad issues of the ‘60s, were generally full of crass, irreverent stickers, stickers like “Moby Dick is not a social disease.”  Not wanting to waste his free Mad stickers, Stain plastered them all over the family Chevy wagon, except, of course, the ones he stuck directly on the clothes he wore to school.  The car looked like a Mad magazine on wheels.  The look was completed with side-to-side bumper stickers equally crass.  The car was a legend at our school.  

The interior had its own unique features: seats and upholstery that had been gnawed away by their dog, Bozo. Bozo’s chewing had converted the driver’s side of the front bench seat into a deep bucket seat.  You could  tell when someone had ridden in the wagon because they always had foam upholstery crumbs clinging to their clothes for the remainder of the day.  On the front passenger side there was a hole in the floor about the size of a large hand, making the road visible.  Stain would reach through and skillfully sharpen his pencils against the road on the way to school each day. The local Chevrolet dealer, who was also a family friend, was always trying to lure Uncle Herman  to trade in the wagon and get it off the streets.  It wasn’t until the ‘70s however, when all of the forward gears were shot, and Chevy offered $500 to trade in for any vehicle driven to the lot, that Uncle Herman backed the Chevy half a mile in reverse to the dealership.

     A few times a year, our grandmother would take the family to the formal dining room at the country club.  Children had to dress up, and we were expected to dig deep to showcase our  manners in our grandmother’s presence.  We had been exposed to etiquette from the ballroom dancing classes we were forced to attend.  It didn’t help that my father and his siblings had been required to attend as well. Quite honestly, we would have preferred to stay at home and do homework. The classes consisted of old dowagers teaching us classic dances like the fox trot and  waltz.  We would have to suffer through a receiving line and dance with boys whose wool suits were so prickly they left wool splinters in our hands.  When the boys were dispatched to bring a soda drink back to their assigned partner, they generally chose to cull the ice from the drink and cast it across the dance floor in hopes of causing a macabre dancing accident.  When we complained bitterly to our parents of this entire process, my father explained that it was our “legacy of pain” that we all must suffer through as those before us.  We had  hopes that his ruling, characterized by a lack of sensitivity, might be overturned by our loyal grandmother, Bom Bom; however, we were deflated when she supported the decision, saying that we were gaining character.

     Any discussion of the Herman family would not be complete without a more detailed discussion  of their dog, Bozo.  Born two months before Little Sinner, Bozo was a standard poodle that the Herman’s had been given from Aunt Amory.  He was a friendly dog who fully embraced life. He had an independent spirit and no inhibitions. In his early days, Bozo’s zest for life, chewing, and wandering made him difficult to manage, particularly with two small children and a baby.  The Hermans very reluctantly sent him to a farm nearby, crying the whole way to deliver him to his new home.  After about a week, Aunt Babs called the farm and said that if, for any reason, they did not want to keep Bozo, then they would love to have him back.  As luck would have it,  in just a few short weeks on the farm Bozo had quickly developed a palate for live chicken feet, making harmony on the farm an unlikely outcome.  Aunt Babs got the call informing her of Bozo’s fall from grace and the farmer’s desire for a hastened farewell. Within hours, the family was reunited.  Living in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, Bozo was raised before leash laws, baggies, and procedures (i.e., neutering) sucked the life out of being a pet.   He would leave the house every morning when Looper, Little Sinner, and Stain left for the school.  Bozo was one  busy dog - there is some evidence that most of the mixed breeds in the mid-Atlantic states could be traced back to Bozo’s lineage.

One of his day trips involved hopping on the bus and heading down to the inner city.  The bus drivers knew him well.  One of his shortcomings was not knowing which bus to take home.  

Aunt Babs made many a trip, with reward in hand, to bring Bozo back.  In spite of his failings with the return bus, no one would suggest that Bozo was not a very bright dog.  He was remarkably obedient when he was not distracted by his own agenda.  A mere tapping on the couch would land you a partner for the evening.  That trick, and New Papa’s impatience, led to an unfortunate incident at Bom Bom’s farm.   One evening when he was waiting for Bom Bom to join us in the dining room, New Papa impatiently tapped his fingers on the table.  Bozo welcomed this as an invitation to join the family and leapt onto the fully set table, coming to a sliding halt next to the ham.  New Papa was furious on several levels, and it did not help that Bom Bom was as much amused as she was annoyed.  Of course, all of the grandchildren took great delight in the excitement, and poor Bozo never understood what had gone horribly wrong.  Bozo’s major vice was that he was a world class chewer, and he had been banned for life from most of the local kennels because of his gift for chewing through their fortified cages.    From then on he traveled with the family.

     To the untrained observer, the Herman household might appear chaotic, particularly as it related to Stain and Uncle Herman.  Quite the contrary, everything of import fell neatly into place when order was required.  When Uncle Herman was representing a client in court he got the matching pair of socks. When Bozo had mistakenly eaten a neighbor’s cat, the Hermans replaced it with two identical barn cats that miraculously appeared on the farm. The Herman house was a living microcosm proving Henri Poincare’s  Theory of Chaos and the order that emerges. 

Clean-up Editor - Toni Gardner, Author of "My Fathers" and "Walking Where the Dog Walks"

The Mayflower - The Untold Story

     My family used to be  Mayflower descendants.  The Mayflower Society says  that we are not Mayflower descendants anymore.  This would be  because my grandmother Bom Bom had a falling out with an uninformed telephone representative who chose an ill-fated path by stating that  she was no longer a Mayflower Descendant.  Bom Bom was not one to suffer fools, and with an air of bemused condescension, she advised him that for obvious reasons, he could not strip her of her descendency.   Bom Bom was not about to waive her principles and reward incompetency, so she parted ways with the Mayflower Society that afternoon. 

     The Mayflower descendant we descended from is John Howland.  As a 4th grader with a Mayflower paper assignment,  I gave a lot of thought to John Howland’s duties on board that ship.

He, along with a seven-year-old boy and an eleven-year-old boy, was an indentured servant to John Carver when he boarded the Mayflower. Curiously, he disembarked the Mayflower as a free man.   There is evidence with some historical significance, that, in addition to his assigned tasks, John Howland also assumed the bartending duties on the Mayflower.   He was twenty-one years old at the time of the voyage, with large amounts of idle time during the journey.  It is quite likely that John Carver permitted him to moonlight at the bar.  I have no collaborated evidence  for making this claim, but as a child amateur historian, I had to choose what to research carefully. This was  a moment  when I felt my time could be better spent watching “Leave it to Beaver” reruns, than doing research in the library to confirm the obvious.   Using certain indisputable facts, it was pretty easy to fill in the gaps about Howland.  

     John Howland was a passenger who allegedly cheated death twice on the voyage:  once when he was swept overboard in a storm, and once when he fell into the voyage rum tank nearly drowning.  It has been intimated  that falling into the rum tank was a natural consequence of being over-served.  After weeks at sea, it is quite imaginable that boredom and poor judgment crept into his daily routine, culminating in that unfortunate mishap.  Only two crew members would have had access to the keys to the rum tank, Captain Christopher Jones and the bartender. John Howland was obviously the latter man. Fellow passengers referred to John as a “lusty young man,” and it is well documented, by legitimate historians, that no Mayflower passenger has been credited with creating more descendants. 

It would appear that he also performed his bartending duties quite well, offering a wide variety of drinks and bar food.   Unlike his fellow indentured servants, he earned enough in tips  to buy his freedom upon arrival in Plymouth.    

     Unlike myself, our family had a number of legitimate scholars who availed themselves of mainstream academia and conventional means of research.  Helen, the second oldest grandchild and Toad’s older sister, was one of these scholars.  She  attended  Radcliffe and looked very much like the model Twiggy.  When you played intellectual games of knowledge with Helen, she never responded with a straightforward answer.  Letting everyone else battle it out, shouting their answers, she would reluctantly pick up the pieces from their overly confident but occasionally incorrect answers.  While all of the participants were mesmerized, she would, without conviction, methodically begin thinking out loud. Helen would carefully review the history of the world concluding apologetically, for example,  that “Henry the VII  must be the correct answer, because we all know that Henry the VI’s reign was interrupted by his frequent bouts of insanity.” Correct again.

     Helen was several years older than us, and although she was always kind, she  quite understandably had more intellectual interests than hanging out with her younger cousins, who on frequent occasions had the capacity to be overly competitive, loud, and obnoxious.  Quite honestly, while we would have welcomed her company, we  would have thought less of her if she had wanted to hangout with us.  We didn’t want to hang out with us either, but had little choice. 

Shortly after college, Helen visited the farm with a hippy beau.  We found him to be very polite but painfully quiet and very difficult to read. It never occurred to us that there were people from small families unaccustomed to large, extended families with little cousins who could rapid-fire questions faster than they could be answered. 

     I don’t recall the source, but rumor had it that he was a member of the notorious  “Weathermen”, a radical, leftist underground group.  Being in the late ‘60s, we were in the midst of anti-Vietnam war sentiment. We were liberal but  the Weathermen were much farther left.    Being self-appointed scouts  for national security, we planned our very first mission when Helen and the beau went  swimming.  We snuck into his room  to search his luggage for bombs, weapons, and plans for a revolution.  What we found was quite unexpected - seemingly normal personal effects and a text book on meteorology.  We thought the book might have a secret compartment, but it was full of detailed maps of the U.S. with H’s and L’s all over them. 

Finding no smoking guns, we called off our investigation.  As luck would have it, he turned out to be a really nice guy who volunteered to take us  all crabbing that evening.  This was a wonderful offer, as none of us were old enough to drive, and Uncle Owl had hung a plucked dead chicken on the line in the sun for us to use for bait.  

     Blue crabs have a genuine appreciation for rancid, rotten meat.  We would tie the chicken pieces to  weighted lines and then toss them in the brackish water at the dock in Port William.  Penn and Jack were always the  “net men”.  We would summon them when we had a line with a crab on it.  They would sweep the net underneath the crab and raise it out of the water before he could escape. 

They would then deposit the wet crab into the dry cardboard box on the pier, and we would throw the line over again.  This exercise was repeated until we had a few dozen crabs. If we spent too much time, the soaked bottom of the cardboard crab box would break open when we picked it up to take the crabs home.  Then we would have to scramble around and re-catch the crabs  as they dashed for the river.  

     One might suggest that there was a certain stupidity inherent in our selection of a cardboard box to stow wet crabs. Being well aware of its limitations, we would argue that it was only stupid if we didn’t  realize that it was stupid.  We preferred to think of it as maintaining tradition and being more sporting.

I never gave much thought to what happened to the crabs after we delivered them to the farm kitchen, but the cook, Rie, would take over and steam them with her top secret spices, and we would spend the evening picking crabs.  Helen and the Weatherman joined us that night, and we took great pride in the fact that we had contributed to his character development and youth tolerance skills....that said, we never saw him again.

Clean-up Editor - Toni Gardner, Author of "My Fathers" and "Walking Where the Dog Walks"