growing up

Small towns, Big City

Standard

‘Where I’m from is a lot like where I am’

Ah, hiking in the Catskills. A great way to get away from the City over Columbus Day Weekend. Also a great way to set the mind to wandering (along with the feet) and think about random stuff like why people like me and my friend Phyllis (both from teensy towns) tend to feel well, at home, here in Big Ole New York. If you feel one of my theories coming on, you would be right.

Get ready for my ‘New York is Really a Bunch of Small Towns Smooshed Together’ theory.

First, a bit about my home town. Which is Carlyle, Illinois. That is a recent (you can tell by the cars, if nothing else) picture of it at the top of this post. Carlyle is smack dab in the middle of Southern Illinois — nope, not anywhere near Chicago. ‘Our’ Big City (where you’d go for baseball games, the zoo, or to buy your wedding dress) was St. Louis. Which was about 50 miles due west of us.

Quick note: if you ask someone from Chicago where they are from, they will say ‘Chicago’; if you ask me the same question and I say ‘Illinois’, it means I am not from Chicago. Otherwise, trust me, I would say so.

Okay. Back to Carlyle. If you’d like to delve into the town and its demographics (including, interestingly enough, the number of sex offenders who live there), Continue reading

My Mom, the ‘Party Girl’

Standard

‘Special Happy Birthday Edition’

Karl Malden — and his nose — will just have to wait. I was all ready to hit the ‘publish’ button when I realized that today is Mom’s birthday. So I’m putting Karl’s story into the blog equivalent of Tupperware, and writing a post about Mom instead.

Now I realize that you readers have perfectly good moms of your own. You might very well be asking ‘why the heck would I want to read about Lutheranliar’s mother?’

Well, she’s hilarious, for one thing. Once, while driving us all somewhere, she told my fidgety brother Roger to ‘get in the back seat if you want to wiggle your behind.’ Another time, she and Dad had to go out of town unexpectedly and she had to leave us on our own for a couple of days. (There were five of us; I was the oldest. Big surprise.) She puts a few bucks on the kitchen counter and says ‘Here’s some money. In case you run out of bread.’ My brothers hooted and called her a ‘beatnik’ (which was kind of like a ‘hipster’, in case you’re wondering).

Also, hilarious things would happen to her. When we lived in Memphis (see ‘That’s my Bob’ for colorful family detail), she kept getting weird phone calls. Guys asking her Continue reading

That’s my Bob

Standard

‘Your family is who you think your family is’

My Middle Younger Brother Roger is many things: filmmaker, banjo player, wind miller, and maker of the best chili on the planet. Who knew he was also a trailblazer? Yes, Roger was a member of a ‘blended family’ way before ‘blended’ was a term stuck on the front of ‘family’.

That’s Middle Younger Brother Roger standing behind the couch and behind Mom

See, back when Roger was just a tyke, my dad was transferred to Memphis for his job and our young family landed (somehow, I’m not sure how or why, I was only seven at the time) in a very large house near a university. To help pay the rent, my parents took in boarders — a couple of college guys, one named Bill Something-or-Other and another named Bob Sipowich. They lived upstairs, kept to themselves. Everything worked out fine. Except for the time we kids (there were three of us at this point) all came down with the measles over Christmas at my Gramma Peterson’s so we had to stay there till we got well and the boarders didn’t feed or water our parakeet Petey while we were away and he (gasp) died.

Anyway. That was traumatic. Just had to get it out.

That’s Roger, practicing Dad’s “Whoa-Back” move, at about the age of this story

Back to the story. Continue reading

L’shanah Tovah, Rocky. Wherever you are

Standard

‘Okay, so I got that phrase from a Macy’s ad’

Just because I didn’t grow up wishing my friends and family a Happy Rosh Hashannah doesn’t mean I don’t sincerely wish it today. I do! I especially wish it to the person who introduced me to feasting, fasting, and the dreidel song, my freshman roommate at the University of Missouri, Roxanne.

Now, you have to remember that my U of Mo stint took place back in the days when people didn’t mix much while growing up. There was exactly one person in my hometown who would have known, personally I mean, what the heck a Hanukkah Bush was. And he married a local girl, so I’m betting he put up a Christmas Tree like the rest of us, bless his closeted little heart.

So, anyway. Back to Roxanne. She was this Continue reading