Photo source: Richard Ratay

My Real Memoir

My Early Brushes with Mortality. I’d spent just four months in my new home. Still, everything had changed. I’d gained two new best friends and emerged from my shy-shell. “Emerged?” Heck, I was dancing on it! The world seemed to be flooded with light. And yet it was also the darkest winter I’d ever experienced.

For the first time, Christmas felt like it looked in the movies: I helped Dad pick out the tallest tree in the lot (our new home had vaulted ceilings). I sipped Ovaltine while Mom disentangled the clumps of tinsel I’d hurled at the tree. And then I hung my stocking on a real fireplace mantel (actually one of Mom’s nylons, because it held more goodies). On the radio, “Jingle Bell Rock” replaced “Jail House Rock.” Little Suzie and Peggy Sue made room for “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.” And Harry Belafonte, who I loved almost as much as I did Sam Cooke, sang about “a world aglow” in “Mary’s Boy Child.”

But I would soon see darkness and suffering too.

Mom and her sister Tavia were close, so we visited often. The way to their house was through Dairy Valley, home to 118 farm families and 80,000 cows. The source of milk for millions, it was picturesque during the day. But we always drove through it at night. So total darkness is what I remember (along with the smell of 80,000 piles of manure).

There were no lights. Anywhere. And there was fog. Everywhere. Always. Plus it was crisscrossed with milk-train tracks, which would eventually trigger my burgeoning train phobia. However, it was the way to the Prices, and to the nearest movie theater, so it was a necessary evil.

For the first time, I began sleeping over. That was when I discovered that the Price home was a scary place at night as well. Aunt Tavia was nice. And her husband, Uncle Larry, was convivial around Mommandad, although he was a bit of a braggart. But his dark side emerged when my parents left. My cousins and I–Lonnie (the mature one), Frankie (“Pranky,” the uncontrollable one), and “Guy-Guy” (the baby-talker)–were nothing alike. Still, we managed to play together. Then bedtime came.

Kids goof-off at bedtime, it’s a universal rule. At the Prices I learned not to, and yet for some reason my cousins hadn’t. “Don’t make me come in there,” Uncle Larry would warn. Nevertheless, they’d soon be yelling and jumping on their beds. Then Uncle Larry would charge in, belt in hand. And I’d watch in horror from the farthest corner of the room, as he beat each of them over and over again, until they were covered in huge red welts.

Why did it have to be this way? I wondered. Was it Uncle Larry’s drinking? Or his war experience? Did his father beat him the same way? “The sins of the fathers…” I’ll never know for sure. But all three of my cousins’ lives eventually took tragic turns.

On our next trip to the Prices, Dairy Valley added its own tragedy to my memory. I spotted the blinking lights of two airplanes headed toward each other, and pointed them out. Dad assured me that they only appeared to be close.

And then they crashed. For once, Dairy Valley was lit up at night. Flames fireballed out from what we learned the next day was one of the worst aviation disasters of the decade. On February 2, 1957, at around 7 pm, two military planes had struck head-on, killing all forty-seven on board, and crushing a young woman on the ground below.

My childhood may sometimes sound idyllic. But it wasn’t always. We all have to pass through the darkness, it seems…

On our way to the light.