This is the Western Metal Supply Building which was incorporated into Petco Park, the home of the San Diego Padre baseball team. Rather than tearing down the 95-year-old building, the designers of the ball park converted it into various uses for the park. I took this picture out our hotel window on Labor Day.
When I was nine, we lived in apartment 8, at 21 Lawson Road, a street on the side of a hill, just south of Omaha, Nebraska.
Our apartment was a two story, with three bedrooms and a bath on the upper floor. The bedroom I shared with my brothers, ages 7 and 3, had a window that faced the street.
When it was hot and terribly humid and sleep was difficult, I would sit in the open window, hoping to catch a breeze in the still night. There are plenty of sounds on a hot summer night, if you listen. Crickets, mosquitoes, frogs all singing their summer songs. Sounds through the open windows of the apartments around us, people out on a summer night.
Sometimes the DDT truck would go by gushing clouds of fog behind it, killing the mosquitoes, but also the fireflies and birds, as we would find out much later. Many times older boys would chase after the truck, engulfing themselves in the clouds of DDT. In the fifties we didn't know any better.
Other times, awaken by the voices of my parents fighting, I would sit in the window hoping their screaming would stop and thinking of a different, a happier life. My dad was a mean drunk and crashes and screaming late into the night were common occurrences.
Often, my father would trudge out to his car after one of his outbursts and sleep it off. In the winter, I would see my mother pounding at his window and yelling at him to come in before he froze to death. He would make a big deal about not caring if he did die, but he always came in when he got too cold.
In the winter I would sit in my window, one side of my body cool from the coldness of the window, the other side warmed by the radiator just beneath me. I often waited for the snow plow to go up and then down our street. It would bury the cars of the owners foolish enough to leave them at the curb. Once covered by the plow, some cars would sit beneath a snowy pile until a thaw, their owners unable to free them. I would think of the man driving the plow, what a lonely job he had, plowing the empty streets at midnight.
There are no sounds in the snow, late at night; everybody and everything takes shelter from cold. But, if I was completely still, I could hear a faint tick-tick-tick, of snow flakes tapping at the window pane.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky
Sep 18, 2008
My Window
"Corporations have been enthroned .... An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people... until wealth is aggregated in a few hands ... and the Republic is destroyed."---A. Lincoln
As timely today as it was 150 years ago.
This is the Western Metal Supply Building which was incorporated into Petco Park, the home of the San Diego Padre baseball team. Rather than tearing down the 95-year-old building, the designers of the ball park converted it into various uses for the park. I took this picture out our hotel window on Labor Day.
When I was nine, we lived in apartment 8, at 21 Lawson Road, a street on the side of a hill, just south of Omaha, Nebraska.
Our apartment was a two story, with three bedrooms and a bath on the upper floor. The bedroom I shared with my brothers, ages 7 and 3, had a window that faced the street.
When it was hot and terribly humid and sleep was difficult, I would sit in the open window, hoping to catch a breeze in the still night. There are plenty of sounds on a hot summer night, if you listen. Crickets, mosquitoes, frogs all singing their summer songs. Sounds through the open windows of the apartments around us, people out on a summer night.
Sometimes the DDT truck would go by gushing clouds of fog behind it, killing the mosquitoes, but also the fireflies and birds, as we would find out much later. Many times older boys would chase after the truck, engulfing themselves in the clouds of DDT. In the fifties we didn't know any better.
Other times, awaken by the voices of my parents fighting, I would sit in the window hoping their screaming would stop and thinking of a different, a happier life. My dad was a mean drunk and crashes and screaming late into the night were common occurrences.
Often, my father would trudge out to his car after one of his outbursts and sleep it off. In the winter, I would see my mother pounding at his window and yelling at him to come in before he froze to death. He would make a big deal about not caring if he did die, but he always came in when he got too cold.
In the winter I would sit in my window, one side of my body cool from the coldness of the window, the other side warmed by the radiator just beneath me. I often waited for the snow plow to go up and then down our street. It would bury the cars of the owners foolish enough to leave them at the curb. Once covered by the plow, some cars would sit beneath a snowy pile until a thaw, their owners unable to free them. I would think of the man driving the plow, what a lonely job he had, plowing the empty streets at midnight.
There are no sounds in the snow, late at night; everybody and everything takes shelter from cold. But, if I was completely still, I could hear a faint tick-tick-tick, of snow flakes tapping at the window pane.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky
This is the Western Metal Supply Building which was incorporated into Petco Park, the home of the San Diego Padre baseball team. Rather than tearing down the 95-year-old building, the designers of the ball park converted it into various uses for the park. I took this picture out our hotel window on Labor Day.
When I was nine, we lived in apartment 8, at 21 Lawson Road, a street on the side of a hill, just south of Omaha, Nebraska.
Our apartment was a two story, with three bedrooms and a bath on the upper floor. The bedroom I shared with my brothers, ages 7 and 3, had a window that faced the street.
When it was hot and terribly humid and sleep was difficult, I would sit in the open window, hoping to catch a breeze in the still night. There are plenty of sounds on a hot summer night, if you listen. Crickets, mosquitoes, frogs all singing their summer songs. Sounds through the open windows of the apartments around us, people out on a summer night.
Sometimes the DDT truck would go by gushing clouds of fog behind it, killing the mosquitoes, but also the fireflies and birds, as we would find out much later. Many times older boys would chase after the truck, engulfing themselves in the clouds of DDT. In the fifties we didn't know any better.
Other times, awaken by the voices of my parents fighting, I would sit in the window hoping their screaming would stop and thinking of a different, a happier life. My dad was a mean drunk and crashes and screaming late into the night were common occurrences.
Often, my father would trudge out to his car after one of his outbursts and sleep it off. In the winter, I would see my mother pounding at his window and yelling at him to come in before he froze to death. He would make a big deal about not caring if he did die, but he always came in when he got too cold.
In the winter I would sit in my window, one side of my body cool from the coldness of the window, the other side warmed by the radiator just beneath me. I often waited for the snow plow to go up and then down our street. It would bury the cars of the owners foolish enough to leave them at the curb. Once covered by the plow, some cars would sit beneath a snowy pile until a thaw, their owners unable to free them. I would think of the man driving the plow, what a lonely job he had, plowing the empty streets at midnight.
There are no sounds in the snow, late at night; everybody and everything takes shelter from cold. But, if I was completely still, I could hear a faint tick-tick-tick, of snow flakes tapping at the window pane.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky
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16 comments:
Lovely.
It sounds like a dream.
It's nice you could stop and listen to good sounds when you had crazy things happening. it does sound like a very good short story is in here.
What a beautiful post! Thank you for this, oh window sitter.
I find it fascinating that so many of us who grew up in less than perfect families turned out to be so interesting, and well, so nice!
As for the DDT trucks, I remember them, too. Science is so optimistic, never really thinking about the downsides of the newest techniques.
Merle, that was terrific. I got a real image of you at your window, making a peaceful space for yourself while all that mayhem was going on around you.
We had mosquito trucks in Florida when I was a kid. By that time they'd stopped spraying DDT but I'm sure they moved on to something else equally awful. We knew not to play in it, though.
We also had trucks that would come around and spray waste oil onto the dirt road in front of our house to keep the dust down. THAT must have done wonders for the environment.
Merle, thank you for sharing a glimpse of your nine-year-old life -- this was a very wonderful and tender post.
My Dad tells stories about running through DDT clouds in Florida. Maybe that explains why my brother and I are so weird.
Ah, dads. Mine had a drink at Christmas only, and the rest of the year he lay in bed.
Nice imagery.
Interesting mix of imagery and feeling, Merle. More please!
I wasn't a boy, but I remember running after the ddt trucks when I was around 9 in the early 60s....
tough memories regarding you pa...despite what I've heard it's baloney that we pick our parents...
A window on the past and a window for all seasons.
Ms Soup
Hey! What happened to the ranty rant?? Was just about to comment ...
hmmmmmm.....
The only explanation I've come up with to explain why I "chose" my parents (mother=insane, father=even more insane) is that before birth, I had some kind of spiritual dyslexia. I meant to go to the nice, stable, responsible parents, but pointed left instead of right (or whatever) and instead ended up with the crazy parents.
I've never heard the saying that we choose our parents. Sounds made up.
I can't understand why no one asks themselves should I be a parent? They just ask if they want to be a parent.
those snowflakes sound real fine.
What a very poetical remembrance. And very strong images, from an usual angle. Thanks for posting this.
I like thinking about the cold snowy air and the hot radiator air, and the lonely man who plows the street late at night. poetic.
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