Back East, Part I

I spent some time in Wisconsin and Illinois last week, and I have some thoughts on that trip. But today is Father’s Day, so this first part is going to involve tattling on my dad.

My dad was born in Wisconsin but his parents moved to Illinois when he was a wee lad, and my dad grew up in the area of Highwood and Highland Park (roughly 25 miles west of Chicago). At one point, they—and by “they,” I mean Grandma and Grandpa Murphy plus their seven children—lived in this house:

I know this because my sweet cousin Donny scooped us up the morning after we arrived in Illinois and drove us on a tour of Highland Park, Highwood and Fort Sheridan—where my dad would have gone when he enlisted in the army. (Yeah, it was a goose-bumpy moment, to realize we were traversing the same ground he would have covered as a gung-ho twenty-two-year-old who was eager to get overseas and serve his beloved country in WWII.)

Donny showed us the house, and we had a conversation about what it must’ve been like for nine people to be living there—with the only bathroom being an outhouse in the back yard. (Side note here: How on earth did mamas potty train babies when they had to run them across the yard to get them pants-down-and-seated in time?)

But what really made me happy was when Donny drove us to this hill:

I had to get out and take a photo, and I hope you can see from the photo how steep the hill is. Now close your eyes and imagine two things: 1. The hill is covered in snow. 2. There is no rock barrier between the bottom of the hill and the lake (aka, "the big lake," Lake Michigan). Hold that thought.

When I was fifty-ish, it occurred to me that, since my father had died when I was only eight years old, and for other reasons which are just sad and don’t bear repeating here, most of my impressions of him had come from my mother, who, as it turns out, wasn’t the most reliable narrator of my dad’s life story. When I had that revelation, I wrote to my dad’s sister, my very sweet Aunt Betty, and I asked her to tell me about what my dad was like before he married my mom. I’m going to skip over the back story of everything that happened to that letter after it arrived in Illinois and was passed from aunt to uncle to cousin and back again, and just say this: Some months later, a CD arrived for me in the mail. On it were the voices of my Aunt Betty and my cousin Mick, the latter interviewing the former about my dad. Since then, I’ve wept my way through that CD numerous times—all the more so because Aunt Betty has now passed. But my favorite story involved that steep hill… and my dad… and a sled… and my Aunt Betty. Here is the story in Betty’s own words:

“There were nine of us stuffed in that little brick house--Mom, Dad and seven kids. One winter Saturday morning Mom had things to do so she told my older brother, 'Pete, you can’t go any place until Betty is dressed. You take her with you today.' Little did she know what a treat I was going to have!

I was four or five at the time and Pete was three years older. He grumbled but he got me dressed and set off with me and a sled. ‘This is going to be the most exciting day of your life,’ my big brother promised me. ‘What are we going to do?’ I asked. All he’d say was, ‘You’ll see when we get down to the lake.’

It wasn’t that far a walk. Soon we came to the bluff overlooking the lake. There was a path that Highwood people used to get down to the lake. Pete stopped there and told me, ‘Listen to every word I say. I’m going to lay down on the sled. You lay on my back and hold on for dear life because it’s going to be a rough ride.’ I grabbed on with two hands. Once he made sure I had a good grip, off we went bumpity bumping down that cliff and out onto the lake. We flew through little whiffs of snow. The cold air was blowing on my face so hard I had to put it down on Pete’s back, but I kept lifting my face up because I wanted to see everything. We went far out onto the lake. ‘How far can we go?’ I asked my brother. ‘Until the ice cracks,’ he said. I wasn’t scared. I just thought, ‘Okay, he knows what he’s doing. He’s my big brother.’ Just as I thought that, the ice cracked. Peter quickly turned the sled sideways. We flew that way for a while because we were going so fast. It was a long walk back, and I was tired by the time we got to the shore.

When we got home, my mother said, ‘Look at your rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes!’ Pete hadn’t told me not to tell, and I didn’t notice his frantic signals. I said, ‘Oh, Mom, I had the best time!’ As I told of our adventures, my mother’s smiling face changed like a witch woman’s! Peter had to go to his room. I felt terrible that he got punished.”

This story is all the more endearing to me because every time I hear it, I think of all the times my big brother—three years older—placed my life and limb in jeopardy by pulling similarly dangerous stunts. Just as Aunt Betty trusted my dad, I trusted my big brother to always keep me safe, and he did. For the most part….

How fun it was, though, after hearing that story for so many years, to stand at the top of that hill, look down to the lake, and imagine the wild ride down and the slide across. At least my brother had the sense to always warn me: “Don’t tell Mom!”