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Santee Circa 1938 from Memory
By Ron McKinney © 2008 All Rights Reserved.
I am lying on a braided rag rug in a drafty farm house somewhere north east of San Diego where the fields are protected from the winds by tall eucalyptus trees. The wind carries the low tide scent of Mission Bay and the cough drop odor of the trees.
The old farmer sits in his easy chair wearing bib overalls. Blue veins above his stocking feet bulge. He is looking at the large Hamilton pocket watch that the Santa Fe gave him years ago when he retired. Now he slips the watch, back into the bib pocket. In one easy movement he extends his left arm and lifts a tobacco pouch and pipe from the their place on the corner of the mantle. He flips back the flap of the pouch and scoops the bowl of his pipe into it. With a large, calloused finger he tamps the tobacco. Then he closes the flap, replaces the pouch upon the mantle and brings the pipe stem to his mouth. He leans back and slightly to his left to draw a blue tip match from his right hand pocket. Before striking the match with his thumb nail, he quietly tells my big sister: “Laura, it’s time for that radio show you like to listen to. “
Sis, who has been lying beside me on the rug watching, stands up, moves two steps forward and turns the dial on the cathedral shaped radio sitting on the center of the mantle. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, almost dancing, as she waits for the tubes in the radio to glow. For a fraction of a second we hear Kate Smith’s ear piercing voice before Sis turns the dial. The announcer in a really creepy voice is saying: “Who knows what dark secrets . . .screech, squawk . . .The Shadow knows. “
Rolling over onto my back, and staring at the high ceiling, I feel a knot in the braided rug rub against a sore spot on the back of my head where I bumped it on a limb earlier, while climbing in the gigantic fig tree behind the house. The fig tree is the source of much pleasure. I love to eat the sweet seedy purple figs. Sometimes a wasp will get on it first and sting me in a jealous rage. The tree is also my nemesis when the wind blows hard and lightning flashes and thunder cracks. Then the finger tips at the ends of long gray limbs claw at my window pane in the attic bedroom where I sleep. Knowing that it really is the tree limbs scratching, screeching against my window, doesn’t make their shadows fleeting across my bedroom wall less terrifying. I shiver, lying on the rug, staring at the narrow boards of the living room ceiling. I have my fingers stuffed into my ears so I won’t hear The Shadow anymore. I wish it was Hop Harrigan instead.
Now, lying on my side, I look at the farmer’ s wife. She wears fuzzy blue slippers, her legs are wrapped with flesh colored bandages up above the hem of her house dress. The light from the floor lamp behind her chair shines on her busy hands as she crochets the white thread into a network of six sided figures. Her chins almost touch her chest. Her rocker squeaks when she rocks back, it clicks as she rocks forward. Her rocking seems to be in tune with the hurried dialogue of the radio actors and sound effects. Now and then the woman cuts a squeaky fart; her husband wrinkles his nose and then grins at her through his haze of blue smoke.
If I had a grandpa and grandma, I imagine they would look like this old farmer and his wife. A weary, devoted couple, sitting on opposite sides of a room with two young children lying on their braided rag rug listening to a radio show. Although I like them both very much, I know that they are not related to me. My mother pays them for our room and board so she can work at Harry Gordon’ s Locker Club in San Diego while our daddy is on a ship in China.
I liked it better when mother worked at the Nan King restaurant. Then she wore beautiful
silk Chinese gowns, and deep red lipstick and made up her eyes and brows with black pencils. The gowns had collars that stood up, and the sides were slit so that her silk stockings showed. She was more beautiful than the movie stars. The sailors, just back from patrol duty in China would watch her every movement and wink at her or whisper to each other. But then, daddy Upton was home on shore leave and he scared the young sailors with just a mean look. He scared me too, so I was not unhappy when he went back to sea, back to that gunboat that swam up the rivers of China. He left me funny pennies with square holes in their centers for souvenirs. We saw newsreels at the movies. The Japanese and Chinese were at war.
A lot of funny thoughts flit through my mind, lying on that braided rag rug trying not to hear the spooky radio show.
I wondered why our father, the man mother called “Mack“ had gone away. I suppose he didn’t like us. Maybe we did something very bad which made him mad. I don’t think about him much; I can’t even remember what he looked like. Mother has some pictures of him that she keeps in a scrap book. I saw them a long time ago. I remember that he had an army uniform with tall leather boots and riding breeches. But I can’t remember what his face looks like except that his nose is broken and crooked. I can picture the mule he was holding by its halter; the mule was tall and gray and looked much like a horse. I can draw a good picture of the mule, but not of my father‘s face. I like to draw pictures when it is raining outside, but never when it is sunny. On sunny days I like to kick at the wind rows of butter bean plants drying, waiting for the thresher to come along. I like to climb in the fig tree. I love to eat the guavas from the trees closest to the drive way, and to spread guava jelly on my peanut butter sandwiches. I do not like to fight with chickens to get their eggs out from under them; chickens are not friendly animals, they are mean. I like to ride on the farmer’s lap when he drives the tractor pulling the cultivator through his guava orchard to kill the weeds. But there’s something sinister about those trees with their trunks painted white, all lined up like ghosts of soldiers, that gives me goose pimples.
I was not unhappy when the old farmer got sick and his wife asked our mother to come and get us. Riding in the rumble seat of Harry Gordon’s roadster is fun. Mother’s a very good driver. I like the way the dust flies up behind the car in a tan cloud shaped like that big, mean rooster’s tail. I like seeing that old, two story farm house get smaller and smaller and the guava soldiers vanish in the dust.
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The Channel Swimmer
Mission Bay, circa 1943
There was this sand spit, see. Then there was a channel and beyond it an island where big kids went to make out. I wasn’t interested in watching older kids make out; I wanted to prove to myself that I had as much guts as those big kids. What I had to do was swim across that channel. All I knew about swimming was from watching Johnny Weissmuller swim in those Tarzan movies. I stayed in the Tower Theater all one Saturday, watching the same movie three times. I paid close attention to Tarzan when he swam, going like a bat out of hell to rescue Boy or Jane.
When it came time to try swimming across that channel, I backed away from the water, maybe a hundred yards on that sand spit, which was hard and flat as a street, not sandy like the beach; my feet hardly left any prints on it. And then I ran full blast towards the water. I must have been going sixty when I got to the water’s edge and flung myself forward, arms outstretched my skinny body flat as a board. I hit the water belly first with a smacking sound and shot forward like a speeding bullet. I didn’t even slow down a bit. My arms were churning, just like Tarzans and my feet were kicking like mad. I was going too fast to worry about how deep that channel was, or what might have been down there in it; I was still churning my arms when my hands dug into the sand on the island. I popped out onto the dry sand.
I was so happy I just ran all around that island. Big kids, who were making out in the sand dunes, naked as plucked chickens, got mad and cussed me out. I didn’t care. I just ran like the wind as I came back to the edge of the channel. I didn’t even have to think for a second about it. I just dove in and swam back to that sand spit. God! It felt fantastic. I felt bigger than Tarzan and twice as strong.
Monday, when I went back to school, nobody messed with me. They could see that I’d changed. I wasn’t the new kid who was younger and smaller. I was a force to be reckoned with. The same guys who had tormented me for weeks now wanted to be my best friend.
I told my new friend Roy about the island and that channel. I even offered to teach Roy how to swim, but his mom wouldn’t let him swim in the bay. So we talked our moms into getting us memberships at the YMCA, where I taught him to swim in the tank. Roy and I swam every day after school, and when we were good enough we both signed up for the Red Cross life saving course. Right after Christmas I had to move again, so I never got to see Roy swim across that channel, but I’ll bet he did.
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