Ashes to Ashes

There was a short time in my childhood when our family didn’t live at 4017 Sheridan Avenue in Minneapolis; instead, we lived at 2109 Hawthorne Street in Franklin Park, Illinois. Nearly everything about living in Illinois was different than living in Minneapolis. Living on Sheridan Avenue, we had a big house, big yard, and I had lots of friends in the neighborhood. We had huge Oak trees in our yard, and two lakes within walking distance. Our house on Hawthorne Street was smaller and newer with no fireplace, and there weren’t many trees in the whole neighborhood. Chain link fences divided the houses, and our neighbors were not so much like us, like the neighbors on Sheridan were. In Franklin Park, on one side was Mrs. Romero, a very loud single mom, who yelled at her kids often. On the other side, were Mr. and Mrs. Hartmann, with their son, my rare friend in the neighborhood, George. The Hartmanns were from Germany. I went to first grade in Illinois, we moved there because my dad took a new job.

I remember sleeping one night in a first floor room, near the back of the house, I was alone in a single bed, with boxes all around, still unpacked. I could hear the television in the living room, my mom and dad talking, and it seemed like the only sense of comfort at all in this strange house. It had only been the year before that we’d moved into the house on Sheridan, we’d lived there while I went to kindergarten, at Lake Harriet elementary school, (now torn down, and townhouses fill the space). As I lay in this strange room trying to sleep, I felt something on my leg, something tickly, I pulled back the blankets, and there was a big, black spider on my leg. I screamed loudly, and both my parents came running, “It’s alright, it’s only a spider, just go to sleep now.” Well, I don’t think living on Hawthorne Street was ever really all right for me, and now the spider seemed a foreboding.

Eventually, my mom had both my older sister Kathy and I, and my two younger brothers, Tim and Mike, have our ‘bedroom’ in the whole second story of the house. This was a large room, and the second floor had it’s own bathroom. This was an improvement on the house on Sheridan, which had only one bathroom. Kathy was five years older than me, so she was in 6th grade, and my younger brothers were only 4 and 2 years old. Mike was still in a crib. My rowdy older brothers, 3 of them, were in the bedrooms downstairs, where my parents also had a bedroom.

I don’t remember so much being in the house, as hanging out outside of the house. My older brothers quickly made friends, and it seemed there were always teenage boys around the yard, with their banana seat bikes, and their cigarettes and their greased back hair and blue jeans. My brother Steve became part of a band, and bought a set of drums. Now, our garage became a stage, and these teen age boys formed a band. They’d play, G-L-O-R-I-A, Gloria, and I was so proud that I could spell Gloria. I felt so proud of my cool brother, Steve, the drummer. This was the beginning of me wanting to be a boy, not a girl, anymore. My oldest sister, Rosie, was off to college, back in Minnesota, and my sister Kathy, it seemed got stuck watching us little kids and doing the dishes. My brothers, however, got to have fun.

My brothers Pat and Steve were 6 and 7 years older than me, so that meant that when I was in first grade, they were in junior high. While my brother Steve was more likely to be playing drums, inside the garage, my brother Pat would hang out with his friends behind the garage. There was no alley on this block, just garages in the middle of the block, separated by more chain link fence. It was quiet and private back there, and it felt a little scary to me. I didn’t go back there alone, even though just across the chain link fence was a friend of my sister’s and they had a pool in their yard, sometimes she’d take me with her swimming. But there were dark stories about that family, about how the dad had gone down to the drugstore one night to buy a pack of cigarettes and had never returned. Just like that, never returned. “The mob” my mom would say, and I’d stand there, speechless, wondering what untold horror the ‘mob’ was.

But as long as my big brothers were out there, I’d feel safe and protected and I’d hang out there until they’d tell me to scram, but I liked to be with them, just hanging around. One night, I was hanging out there and then our Dad called us all in for dinner. It was an early, warm spring night, and finally my brothers came in too. While in Illinois, my mom worked nights at the Motorola factory, so it was often just my dad and us kids for dinner, this was weird, too. Until this time, my mom had never worked; I missed her, especially in the evenings. My brother Pat must have finished his cigarette behind the garage. Finally, we could eat. We said grace, as we always, always, did. We were all around the dinner table, just beginning to eat, when one of my brother’s friends came banging through our front door, yelling loudly, “Sorry to barge in like this, but your garage in on fire!” My dad hollered for us to all get outside, while he grabbed the phone and called the fire department. Very soon, I could hear the siren roaring down the block, to our house, to our garage.

My dad joined us all on the front sidewalk, far enough away to be out of harm; where we had a bird’s eye view of our garage in blazes. It burned bright and hot, dark, dark smoke pouring up to the sky. The sooty dark smell filled my nostrils. The firemen were rushing towards the garage with their huge hoses, yelling, pulling on the hoses, spraying out the fire. I don’t remember how long we watched, our dinner cold on the table. Our horror, our surprise, at our garage’s demise. Our new swing set, still in the box, in the garage, our new picnic table, still in the box, in the garage, boxes still unpacked, still in the garage. We’d just been back there, behind the garage, and now, now it was all gone, mostly burned to ashes. Fortunately for my brother, he’d moved his drum set into his bedroom to practice. I don’t know how long it was until we finally, exhausted, went back in to finish our dinner. My mom came home from work, tired and now sad and tired. I could hear my parents up late that night, talking. Things weren’t going so well for our family in Illinois.

The next year, we moved back to Minneapolis, back to house on Sheridan Avenue, which my father had wisely not sold, but had rented out while we were in Illinois. Back to green lawns and lakes nearby and I started a new school in the middle of second grade, St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic grade school, down the hill on Sheridan, and up the hill on Upton Avenue. I’d walk that way, it seemed a hundred times, wearing away the memories of Illinois, and the house on Hawthorne Street.