Our introduction to formal routine began early. Once a week, we were dressed in our Sunday clothes, with combed hair and shiny shoes. We walked with our mother a few blocks to a large grey limestone church. This church was filled with ornate carvings, a high arched and trussed ceiling with tall stained-glass windows depicting Jesus performing various miracles and praying in various settings. Our dad was usually away on Sunday making a guest appearance as a supply pastor at another church across Ohio or Indiana.
We sat in slippery wooden pews and fought to stay awake during the service. I learned to recite words of dogma with the rest of the congregation.
Words like exalt, repent, diety, beget and redemption were repeated often. I never knew what they meant but I learned to say them. The teachings did not come with an explanation. I had to guess. Do something today for an eventual payoff. I had trouble making sense out of the dynamic at the church. I had trouble relating how any of this could be good. The preaching was about brotherly love, doing good deeds for others, or the miracles that Jesus performed and forgiveness. I wondered; what about now? I was conflicted. I sat in Sunday school with the same kids that picked on my older brother.
After church, we changed out of our Sunday clothes. Then we had a treat. In the living room we would look at the Sunday newspaper funny comics. John learned to read first. I admired his ability to look at each panel and know what the characters were saying. All I could do was to look at each panel, study the cartoon image, make a guttural sound like I understood what was depicted and then go to the next panel. As the result of studying the Sunday Comics, I developed appreciation for cartooning as a form of storytelling.
Years later at church, I was selected to be an acolyte. Acolytes are the small people who assist lighting candles at the beginning of the ritual. Near the end of the service I would climb the secret staircase that went to a landing where a long rope hung. It extended through the floor to the bell tower above. When a bare light bulb came on, that was the signal for me to jump as high as I could and grasp the rope. My body weight pulled on the rope to get the massive bell up in the tower to move. After several attempts of jumping and pulling on the rope, the bell gained enough momentum to start clanging. This was coordinated with the end of the service. Hallelujah
We grew up during an ideal time. The fifties enjoyed the momentum of post war prosperity. Our urban, university campus neighborhood in Ohio provided the ideal environment in which to grow up. The neighborhood was dotted with fraternity and sorority houses, the central chapel, class and administration buildings always had something going on.
College kids were admired and considered “cool” with their Packards, Ramblers and Nash automobiles. Another admirable trait we noticed was cigarettes. Paula and I used to light the hollow stem of a dried lily and pretend we were smoking. The right mix of interesting features to explore on the safety of campus led to resources galore for the active imagination. These observations transformed into constant play.
Our two-story clapboard house was one of a curious accumulation of older wood, brick and stone homes in various architectural styles and arranged in neat rows on Woodlawn Avenue. Street lights and maple trees lined all the streets near Wittenberg University. Our home was made warm by our loving mother and fun by our dad.
Our living room was tidy, furnished with nice pieces of furniture from the old country and paintings by my great grandfather. Over the mantle hung an oil painting of an autumn woods scene with a babbling brook running through. This was painted in the 1920’s. The vista was pleasant to look at, spurned imaginative thoughts and wonder about the magical scene pictured.
A full-size grand piano dominated our living room. There was plenty of room underneath for us to play. In the safety of the piano, colored blocks in various shapes could be arranged and stacked in any way we pleased. Lincoln logs expanded our architectural options. Later, under the piano became the designated spot to set up the electric train. I fondly remember playing under the piano in my youth.
Many of the features in our home promoted fascination for children. A tropical fish tank in the fireplace was the focal point of our living room. The living room was also where the family gathered on Friday night. Dad was home from his travels. After dinner we enjoyed an evening together. The family gathered in front of the black and white TV and we got to know Red Skelton, Jack Benny, and Lawrence Welk while eating popcorn and drinking our allotted one bottle of pop per week.
History was made during that period. We saw astronauts land on the moon, heard the Dr. Martin Luther King speech I have a dream. And we discovered the phenomenon of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. While pondering the Beatles as we sat there, our dad complained about how long their hair was.
Every year we saw the television movie “The Wizard of Oz.” I still shudder to this day when I remember the part when the wicked old witch showed up on the screen. Paula and I would crawl behind the couch to peer around from behind while we continued to watch. When mother noticed, she asked; “would you like me to turn it off?” To which we screamed, “Noooo!” From behind the couch we continued to watch the movie in safety.
Our festivities concluded with a piggy-back ride where dad hopped and galloped each of us around like a horse. The ride trekked outside, around the house, back inside and up the stairs where I was flopped into bed. When the giggling finally subsided, I went to sleep with a big smile on my face.
Each night at bedtime mother would recite a poem after tucking us into bed.
As she descended the stairs, we heard; “good night, good night, far flies the light.”
Then she clicked the hall light off.
“But still God’s love, will shine above, making all bright, good night, good night.”
Dad engineered a project to expand the size of the house. He enlarged the basement, remodeled the kitchen, dining room and added the master bedroom. The huge steam shovel that came to the backyard to dig the massive hole become a source of fascination and wonder for the children in the neighborhood.
Our improved kitchen included a dining area on the main floor. The kitchen cabinets were of a white “pickled” wood finish and the central location of the main sink capitalized on the view through the glass on the back of the dining room area, a feature my parents included in every house from that point on. Fascination with fish seemed to be an obsession. Two guppy tanks sat on the island counter that divided the kitchen and dining room and tanks for breeding guppies also populated the basement.
Our father was a strict idealist, a perfectionist with whatever task he was immersed in and difficult to please. Dad was deeply involved in his work and with projects around the house. His stickler characteristic facilitated admirable results for his efforts, but frustrated us with his observation and remarks about our adolescent attempts. Not noticing emotional needs, our dad’s constant dissatisfaction with our best work developed into a frustrated, bereaved defiance. The feeling of being misunderstood and less than esteemed, combined with the frustration of our older brother’s behavior that promoted distance and an apathetic outlook on life.
My father was relentlessly creative, adventurous and driven, always adding one more task to the moment he was in. His already busy schedule stayed full, establishing an ongoing need for his mantra; “hurry up or we will all be late.” A strict perfectionist is perhaps the best way to describe him and his expectation for me. This characteristic set up a positive quality for his creative output, yet manifested a frustrating inability for me as a child, to ever measure up.
He had started building a large train layout, painstakingly built to scale with brass track to showcased his perfectionistic tendencies. This filled the new enlarged room in the basement. His love for trains had been encouraged by friends from his first church assignment. As I grew, he noticed my genuine interest in playing with trains. Seeing my interest, he realized it was not appropriate for me to play on that beautiful layout. So, his scale layout was dismantled and sold to make room for me. He supplied me with toy track sections I could play with. I filled that big table with my versions of a layout. This was evidence of his big heart.
Following in his footsteps, I became creative, fun loving, and driven to produce. Due to the frustrating dynamic in our family, having a handicapped older brother and the negative attention he received in our neighborhood, I avoided becoming social.
Kindergarten compounded the chaos, especially on the very first day. Being dropped off by my mother at school was pure terror. I saw only a few recognizable faces, the same ones who hated my brother. I settled into a resigned routine of compliance. Immersed into that adolescent humanity increased my tendency to withdraw. Although reluctant socially, I had an inner desire to reach out to others but could not seem to act on it. Something seemed to have my voice.
The inclination to create artistically showed up early and my mother noticed my gift.
One day upon returning home from Kindergarten, my mother asked, “what did you do in school today?”
I flatly stated, “Oh, the teacher made us paint something,” and casually handed her the paper I had been carrying.
She gazed at the watercolor painting and was amazed that it looked like a bowl of fruit. She knew then that I saw more of what was around me than the others.
I became a creative dynamo and was encouraged with sketch books, painting classes, piano lessons and hobbies in the workshop. I also exhibited the perfectionistic tendencies of my dad.
As we learned our ABC’s I discovered the way to spell Hi. I soon adopted the pattern of secretly drawing “Hi” on the chalkboard. This became a habit that I extended to most papers, walls, my school supplies and eventually, in text books. One day the teacher reprimanded me in front of the whole class.
“Knoderer,” she pounded her fist, “If I see another “hi” around here on something, you are going to be in big trouble,” as she pointed at me.
All that did was motivate the rest of the class to begin marking “hi” on everything they could think of.
I decided to not walk with my brother to school and expose myself to the concentration of kids who consistently teased him. The walk to and from elementary school became somewhat of a daily horror.
I recall one morning seeing in the distance ahead, a circle of children taunting my brother John, who spun around extending his clarinet case at arm’s length as a weapon. I later learned that in preparation for the walk to school that day, John closed the lid of his case on a drawing compass with the sharp metal point extending out. If contact had been made with any one of the harassers, an impaling injury would have occurred. There was no justice in childhood. John was all alone, just trying to fit in. He had few friends. I being like the rest, avoided him.
Letterfly Writes 