Today I was reminded of some of the oddities of my past, I mean my really distant past, way, way back to the dawning of memory. I think of early childhood as being unconscious and then, slowly coming to, bit by bit until there is a continuity of memory. I recall once spending an hour or two as a four year-old sitting on abstractly flowered brownish linoleum in an empty room and noticing how the rectangle of sunlight coming through the window slid across the floor. I was pondering the nature of day, wondering exactly what one was. I don't think I ever figured it out but I know there was a children's story about tomorrow that went something like:
"Is it tomorrow?"
"No, it's today. Today we are going to the beach. Tomorrow we are going to the zoo."
The next morning at the breakfast table, "Is it tomorrow?"
"No, it's today. Today we are going to the zoo. Tomorrow we are going to visit grandma."
And so on. Yesterday must have figured into that story somehow because yesterday, today and tomorrow was what I was contemplating.
My parents divorced when I was eighteen months old. I don't remember that. My grandfather owned an apartment building in which we were staying. Apparently, when my dad bunked off, grandpa suggested he could stand in case my mother ever got horny. At least that was the gist of it. I didn't learn about this until I was nineteen sitting with my grandfather on the side of an alp near the Matterhorn. It creeped me out. It creeped my mother out too and she up and moved out. The problem was, there was no place to move to. After the war there was something of a housing shortage in Berkeley and landlords were unwilling to take children. The solution was to find someone who boarded children of parents stuck in exactly that situation. So I was shunted off to Walnut Creek to live on a ranch with the Bordens. Every few weeks, my mother would turn up to take me for the weekend. I would be in heaven until Sunday afternoon when it was time to go back. I can recall clinging to newel posts and door jambs, sobbing, in the hope of preventing my return to the ranch. I didn't really hate it there, it's just that I wasn't with my mother.
There were four or five other kids there, maybe more, I don't really recall except that there were both boys and girls. I remember sleeping in a room that had two bunk beds and my crib. I never ever went into the girls' room. I really looked up to the first-graders, they were so mature. The went off to school every day, how important! I lived there for two and a half years. In the winters, we would all assemble in the kitchen for breakfast. That was where the wood range was. All of the cooking was done on that wood range. There was no other cooking stove. That range warmed up the kitchen beautifully. As I recall, there was a narrow door on the left that opened to the fire box where the wood was placed. above it were burner plates with a little square hole on one side. There was a handle with a coiled wire grip to keep it cool that could be poked into the hole so the plate could be lifted. I remember bacon being cooked in a cast iron skillet directly over the flame with the burner lid removed but the most vivid memory is of Mrs. Borden lifting the lid away to drop more wood into the fire. Tongues of flame would flicker up out of the hole. I liked to watch from my high chair when she did that. I remember eating bacon with my fingers. It wasn't cooked all crisp and crumbly as is the current fashion. I remember the bacon being all ripply with translucent fat curling along one side. I liked the feel of that between my fingers and I liked the taste of it. I can picture it as I sit here. The high chair was painted a sky blue and, pressed to the tray top, the bacon fat would take on a hint of blue. I sometimes cook bacon that way to this day as a reminder of that kitchen.
On her own, my mother moved around a fair bit during those two and a half years. I remember staying weekends with her in a variety of places where she had a variety of roommates, young women trying to find better living conditions in the post war economy. One of the places she lived had an honest to goodness ice box. It was all mellow orange wood, varnished and shiny with bright chrome handles. The top compartment held big blocks of ice over a tray to catch the dripping water. I believe that tray had a hole in one corner that allowed the water to drip into a pitcher so there was always cold water to drink. Ice water. My mother kept a water pitcher in the fridge all the time I was growing up. Ice water. Once or twice, when I was staying with her there, the ice man came with a big block of ice in tongs balanced on a pad over his shoulder. He'd open the top compartment, take out the remains of the previous block and chuck it into the sink then he'd put the new block in and shut the door. I guess he had to come on Saturdays because all the girls who lived there worked during the week. The ice man impressed me, he seemed important, maybe I'd grow up to be an ice man. By the time I was ten or so, all the ice men, or most of them had moved on to become something else, perhaps milk men for a while. Another job that hasn't lasted.
I bring all this up because today's NYT Crossword stirred these memories. I don't know many or even any folks who remember wood ranges being cooked on or ice men coming to fill ice boxes. When my mother finally found an apartment that would accept her with me, she came and got me. I remember her showing off the tiny fridge in that apartment that had once been an ice box that was built into the wall. And I remember here showing off the gas range which she lit with a kitchen match. I remember wondering what the big deal was.
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