Normally in this space, I remind you that tomorrow I have another Self Help Radio show, on from 7 to 9am, on 88.1 fm in Lexington & online at
wrfl dot fm. I might also mention why I'm doing a particular theme, if I know. I do know! This is my birthday week, & way back when I started Self Help Radio, I explored my favorite music from 1968 on my birthday, & it became an annual thing. I am up to 1979.
But I've been reminiscing about 1979 on this blog, & I want to tell the story of my adventure in 1979, when I was eleven years old, as I spent the longest I would spend away from home until I left for college: a summer passed in Albany, Georgia.
I mentioned previously that I didn't remember my mother telling me & my little brother that we'd be going, but that doesn't mean she didn't. She must have. What I do remember is being completely unaware that we'd be away from home for virtually the entire summer.
I talked to both of my sisters yesterday about this. They cleared up a number of things I didn't know & perhaps had guessed at. My younger sister, Karin, didn't quite run away from home. She was miserable in high school & told our mother she wanted to get away, & our mother agreed on the condition that Karin attend school in Georgia. She didn't - she would return with us when my mother came to pick us up at the end of the summer, & never go back to school - but that was sort of the plan.
As I discovered when I moved from growing, vibrant Austin, Texas, to shrinking, moribund Huntington, West Virginia, a few years ago, there's a tremendous shock to the system when one place is so very much unlike the other. Garland, Texas, may have been - & may continue to be - the armpit of the Metroplex, but it
is next to Dallas, which is a bona fide city; Albany, Georgia, sits lonesome in central south Georgia, two hours away from Tallahassee, Columbus, Macon - not cities in the same class as Dallas.
So my sister wasn't really going to find anything in Georgia but a temporary respite from her teenage misery. I still applaud her for doing it, & of course I am glad our big sister was there for her.
(In 1980, according to the census, Garland had 139,000 people; Albany had 74,000. So it wasn't quite as weird as going from Austin to Huntington, but still quite a shock I'd say.)
Now, I might not have thought I'd be spending the summer in Georgia, but it turns out I wasn't alone: my sister & brother-in-law, living on a very modest military salary, didn't think we'd be there all summer, either. It was probably a bit of a strain for Karin to show up; imagine how tight the budget became when my little brother & I showed up!
Why did my mother not tell my older sister how long she'd be in Germany? I don't want to be too unkind, but it's weird to look back into my childhood to observe how many things my mother did that were just outright selfish. I don't have a whole lot of evidence to say she was like that her entire life - but I do have enough to
suggest that. She stayed in Germany for as long as she could because she knew there'd be no repercussions for doing that. She knew her daughter wouldn't send us away or mistreat us or do anything awful to us. As she's gotten older, as she's relied upon her daughters more & more, my mother treats them in much the same way. She asks for virtually nothing from her sons. But her daughters, it appears, have always been required to do what she says & take care of what she needs.
I was awakened painfully early (school was out!) on an early summer morning (there's a picture of me somewhere in my tee shirt & underwear, sitting on the edge of my bed, looking as though I'd been tortured & sleep-deprived for weeks) & put into a car. My brother-in-law, the Marine, had probably driven from Georgia the day before. My little brother, me, my sister, her husband, & their dog Sam went straight back onto the road. I can't say I wasn't a little excited once I woke up - it would be the longest I'd been in a car in my life. We drove on small highways - I'm guessing we were on I-20 for a while, but it might not have been as developed as it is now. My memories are of small road. & I have two memories of the trip:
1) Stopping at a Stuckey's. We had a burger there. It was my first truckstop. It seemed to me a magical place, full of things unavailable in department stores, but with the feel of a weird overstuffed convenience store with a diner in it. I remember us eating outside, because Sam was with us, & it was probably too hot to leave him in a car.
2) Driving through the Alabama woods as the day was ending. I had never seen so many trees, so densely packed. I felt like I watched whole worlds go by.
My sister & brother-in-law lived in military housing, a small place with a carport, immaculately kept by my sister. I think my little brother & I were given the extra room, & my sister Karin exiled to the living room. It was probably a good idea - keeping two spazzy kids in a room you could lock was a good idea.
Now, when I talked to my sister yesterday - my older sister, Pat, who has read my previous entries - I told her I didn't want to say anything mean about her or her husband. But the realization came pretty quickly to me & my little brother that we were having our summer stolen from us. The first night after we arrived, we were made to go to bed at 9pm. 9pm!
It was still light out at 9pm. This was the summer! I'd be up to all hours watching old movies & Mary Hartmann & whatever else I could find on the television. What the hell was going on?
I'm sure that my older sister & her husband watched the way my little brother & I were raised - or not raised, as the case may be - & told themselves, "We can do better." They made us wake at a certain time in the morning, we ate at specific times, we had snacks at specific times. There were times when we were shown the door & told "go play."
Imagine my shock! As a willful child, certainly one who wasn't above crying & pitching a fit to get what I wanted, I doubtless tried that. But my brother-in-law was a Marine. My sister had already lived through three other kids. I wasn't going to win.
It didn't help that Albany was basically a swamp. It rained every day, usually around three in the afternoon, not for a long time, but long enough, which meant it was hot, muggy, & humid all the time. I have memories of just standing under that carport waiting for the rain to stop. A summer just standing there. Wondering what I had done to deserve this.
& there weren't a lot of children in the area, either. We might have met & played with a couple, but it was mainly my little brother & me, trying to find ways to pass the time. & me wishing the entire time I was back home.
Oh, to have been more self-aware then! I'd love to have eavesdropped on telephone calls my sister had with my mother, asking when she'd be coming to get us, perhaps asking for a little money (which my mother didn't have & wouldn't be able to get to her anyway) to help out. Or the discussions Pat & Dan had about their limited resources. Both of them are good people, but in retrospect it seems a disrespectful thing was done to them, a thing they've probably never been recompensed for, or even apologized to for.
Look, I know I wasn't tortured or in any way mistreated, spending the summer there, but I did resent it a great deal & for a good period of time afterward. I think my brother-in-law came to really dislike me at that time, & that dislike was not eased by my teenage years, after he & Pat moved back to Texas. It took years for him to be agreeable to me - more than fifteen years, I'd reckon.
I felt like I was in Albany for three months, all summer long. My sister Karin says we were there for two months.
My mother finally showed up, on a Trailways bus, in the middle of August. She had landed in Dallas, hopped on a bus, & came to get us. My sister Karin opted to come back with us to Garland, so, after a night's sleep, we four took a Trailways bus back to Texas. Trailways still exists out there, but in the 1970s, it was the cheaper alternative to Greyhound, & by cheaper, I meant cheapest. We switched buses a lot on the trip back, & I remember at least one bus had no air conditioning, just open windows. In the heat of the summer of the Southern United States. We returned to Garland smelling the opposite of roses.
& our apartment was a mess. I told my sister last night that it smelled like a Cheech & Chong film. My brother had not kept it up, & what's worse, he had barely taken care of our rabbit. She was very thin, & something had happened to one of her eyes - a green film covered it. We never took her to the vet, & to my complete shame, I was repulsed by her, & didn't spend a lot of time with her after that. She became this lonesome creature that lived in our little patio that my mother, I suppose, remembered to feed & water, & she actually lived a couple more years. As someone who now has seven animals that I live for, it angers & saddens me that my self of thirty-five years ago was such a piece of shit to the poor bunny. It makes sense that as a child I couldn't be trusted with a dog.
& selfish me, I was desperate to reclaim as much summer as I could. It was two weeks until school started. I wanted to go swimming in our apartment complex's pool! The bad news was, as I've mentioned before, the place was a shithole, & it was apparently between effective management, so the pool hadn't been cleaned all summer long. In fact, it was a deep green color due to algae growth. Honestly, I would've swam in it anyway. My mother, alas, would not let me.
& that's how I lost the summer of 1979. I would make up for it by being a complete sloth the next summer - but there would be a heat wave! I'll talk about that, I suppose, next year. I'll try not to kill too many brain cells between now & then.
