A Story That Triggered Life Changes by the Rooster.
Circa 1983 while a student at New Hampshire College.
(Present day Southern New Hampshire University)

Homeless

I have lived in a 50/50 relationship with my wife for fifty-nine years, there is little we don’t share. When reading over this assignment, my wife was the one who provided the electricity for the lightbulb. “Remember when you came back from Connecticut one year and your family had moved and no one told you?” Wow, did she clear out some cobwebs and get the memory going.

I was sixteen years old, it was 1959, and I had just spent my yearly summer in Connecticut with my father and his family. Since age ten I would be put on a bus or train during long holidays from school. I would spend Christmas Day in New Jersey and be gone the next morning and not return until school started again. This would happen during the spring and Easter vacations as well.

I would spend the summer of 1959 working in Shade Tobacco fields. Tobacco Valley in New England ran adjacent to the Connecticut River from Portland, CT up to Brattleboro, VT. Many kids over the age of fourteen earned money for school clothes then by working the Tobacco fields. That was one long hot summer that I can still vividly remember.

The school year before that summer, we had spent living with my maternal grandmother. We had returned to the old hometown from a short stint in Wildwood, NJ. My mother and grandmother were not two people who should have tried living together. My stepfather and two half-sisters also resided there. It was chaos the entire year, I was ten years older than the half-sisters. I was relegated to living in an unheated attic which I didn’t like and did not have a great relationship with my stepfather.

Apparently, there was some kind of Brew Ha-Ha amongst Granny, her daughter, and the stepfather during that summer. I would never learn the particulars of what went on and only knew that it was not pretty. Some time mid-summer my mother and family bought a home thirty miles away. I was not told of this, and when summer ended, and school was about to start I returned from Connecticut to my grandmother’s house. My mother and her mother would remain estranged for many years. I thought I would quickly be welcomed back by my grandmother. She played a significant part in my life growing up to that point.

On that day I returned, I would knock on the door and be greeted with hostility by my grandmother. I was not invited in, I was told the (others) had moved, and she had no idea where, and much less, did not care. Go stay with your Aunt and Uncle I was told. Dragging my suitcase, I walked the half mile to my favorite aunt’s. This aunt was my father’s sister-in-law, and I was welcomed with open arms. I was told my Uncle would find out where my mother moved to the next day.

My Uncle and my stepfather’s father were members of the Masonic Lodge together. Through that relationship, my Uncle contacted him and got the address of their new residence. Two days later my Uncle would take me to their home. There was no warm and fuzzy reunification. Something on the order of “Oh, you’re back” was my greeting. During my last three years of school, I never felt like part of the whole family from that point on. My mother always had night jobs, usually three to eleven. I avoided the stepfather whenever I could.

I would work at several jobs, never not employed, attend high school, play football, run track, and return to CT for those holidays and summers just as before. I had gained my independence, I had a new vision, a new outlook, and I could only wonder where it would take me. I just wanted out. My idea was the United States Marine Corps, and it would take me to Parris Island, SC during the summer of sixty-two, just two weeks after high school graduation. Now I can only look with anticipation at where this class will take for me sixty-six years later.

I should have mentioned the Sand Fleas of Parris Island. I will save them for future writing. One Sand Flea could generate an entire story, should that creature be swatted by a recruit at Parris Island.

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