Pudgy Me 20: Falling

Fuck!

Fuckfuckfuck!  I can’t believe this!  Fuck.  Fuck.  Fuck!  Oh, Fuuuuuuuccccckkk! 

Now I’ve done it. 

I was running in the forest and fucking tripped over a fucking root and fucking yanked my left leg forward to stop my fucking fall and, fuck, I heard a loud pop deep in my left leg near my torso and fell, and fell, and fell, letting myself go, falling in the space of an micro-second off the path, onto my side, against my wrist, my arm, my face.  Letting go and letting the impact cover as much of my body as I could, but far, far, far away from my leg, my leg.  My leg!

Fuck, fuck, fuck!  I cannot believe this. 

Slowly getting up.  Sweat from four miles of running hard, heart racing, leaf-litter covering me, coating my left leg, my arm, my palm, dirt all over my fingers.  Hat thrown to the side.  Sunglasses crooked against the trunk of a tree. 

Jeeeesssus Christ. What have I done?

Can I walk?  Where the fuck am I?

Brushing myself off.  Gathering my things.  Stepping down the path. 

Okay.  Okay. 

Tentatively trying to run, an easy trial run, stumbling forward.  Almost falling again. 

Pain in my butt, but no feeling at all in my leg. 

Wait.  My leg.  I killed my leg.

A feeling of dread sweeps through me.  My leg is dead.    

What have I done?  Oh god, what have I done.

***

A week later.  Early Monday morning. 

I am sitting alone in an examination room at the clinic where my doctor practices her magic, especially on sixty-year-old runners who should have known better than to be running down a difficult path at dusk wearing sunglasses, who never should have been out there to begin with, who should have been home making a Sunday dinner for their wives, who instead were trying to get a ten-mile run in before the weekend was over, who clearly don’t know how to fall, and who, now, fretting and oh-so remorseful, are sitting with half of their butts on the hard chair and the other half suspended in space, who would have preferred, by far, to have a broken wrist, a dislocated shoulder, or stitches in their faces to something as stupid as this. 

I am a fucking idiot, I decide.  I know, my doctor will confirm this.

“You really are an idiot!” she will say.  “Take two pills and call me in the morning.” 

Oh, how I wish it was all that simple, but the pain in my rear this past week is not going away.  Something is wrong.

In fact, I knew instantly.  I knew I would need to see my doctor the moment I heard the pop and crashed down hard on the forest floor.  Family and friends this past week only confirmed it. 

Sunday night, in fact, when Karen realized I had limped all the way home and was too hurt to make dinner, she said, “You should go immediately to the doctor’s.”  “Don’t wait,” she said, and my physical trainer on Tuesday evening agreed, especially when she saw the huge black bruise spreading out over my leg.  “You should see a doctor right away,” she advised, feeling like she just told me something I didn’t already know.  Helen on the phone on Wednesday took a more direct approach: “Go to the doctor, dad!  If it was me, you would be furious.”  Then, finally, on Thursday night, when Shaun, my mountain climbing friend whom I bumped into at the gym, saw me limping around the weight room, he put it into perspective:  “Are you a fucking idiot or what? “ he asked. “Didn’t you qualify for the New York Of-All-Things-Fucking City Marathon?  Whatever is wrong, you better get it taken care of fast.”

Jesus H. Christ.  Okay.  Okay.  I called the very next day, late Friday afternoon, and now here I am sitting on half of my butt for an early Monday emergency appointment.   

My doctor knocks and comes into the room.  A tall brunette with long shimmering hair and a short summer dress, she is as beautiful as I remember from my last visit fourteen months earlier.

‘My god!’ I am thinking.  No doctor should be this pretty.

She is smiling at me and I quickly forget I am here for my injury, staring into her eyes, at her nicely proportioned body, her light cotton dress that ends mid-thigh. 

Oh… my thigh… my thigh…  

“I see from the chart, you hurt yourself.  Tell me, what have you done?”

“Oh Doctor, Doctor-too-Cute-for-Comfort, Doctor Wow!  You’re not going to believe this….”

“When did it happen?  You say you heard a ‘pop’ sound?”

“Hmmm… “ She says as she pulls a curtain across the room, “take off your pants and put on the patient gown.  Let me know when you are ready.” 

She steps outside, and I immediately feel the loss of her presence as I put on the putrid-green robe, wincing as I remove the pants from my fucking leg.  Oh no, why am I wearing my white briefs and not one of my dark-colored, cool-looking boxers? 

Jesus, I am an idiot, I decide, as I tell her she can come back. 

She says, “Lean over the examination table and let me feel where it hurts.”

Oh, how embarrassing, I think, as she lifts up the gown and starts feeling my butt through my whities. 

“Ouch, there,” I say as she digs her fingers into my left butt cheek.  “What, what is that?  It’s feels like a hunk of coal there.”

She says, “It’s what I expected.  I was running with my husband and his friend when it happened to me. “

“What?” I say, as she finishes her exam, puts down my gown, and motions me sit on the table.  I am acutely aware of the gown opening my backside and spreading away from my sensitive butt on the cold, blue-cushioned table.

“You tore your upper hamstring tendon,” she says with a sympathetic smile, like she has seen this before.  “It’s a common injury for runners, as common as ‘tennis elbow’ for tennis players, though you never hear of it.”

“Basically, what you have done,” she says, “You tore the tendon that connects your hamstring to your pelvis.” 

“I’ll show you,” she says as she invites me to sit beside her at a small table across the room.  Together we look at the computer monitor on the table. 

Does she realize she is wearing a short, short, super-short, thin, summer dress and I am wearing only my whities and a patient gown that is already completely open at the back?  I sit close to her, even closer, keeping my left cheek off the chair. 

She really is very pretty, I decide.  Maybe in her mid- to late- thirties.  A cute nose.  Lively eyes.  Nice lips.  I can smell a slight perfume fragrance. 

Here,” she says, “I’ve googled it.  Look.” 

“Eeuuw,” I say, “what is that?” smiling at her.

“Muscles on your butt.” She replies, looking at me like I really am an idiot.

She points with her pen to the body on the computer screen displaying all the muscles of the body.  “Your injury is right about here, right on your butt.  Now,” she says, “it didn’t feel to me to be so serious…” She pauses and I wonder if she too feels the sexual charge between us.  “…as to require an MRI or surgery, but we can look into that later if things don’t improve.”

She then pronounces with a quick smile, but long enough for me to revel in it, putting her pen back onto her clipboard and turning me into goo.  “You should be good as new in two or three months.”

Wait a minute.  “I’m sorry.”  I was staring at your breasts.  “What, what did you say?” 

“There’s no treatment other than to let it heal.  In other words, you won’t be running anywhere, anytime soon.”

“But wait.  Wait a minute.  My marathon in the fall.  What about my ‘I-killed-myself-to-be-in-this-marathon’ come November?”

“I don't know," she says, frowning.  "Clearly, you won’t be setting records if you do it, but I just don't know.  You've got give yourself time to heal.”

Oh no.  My god.  "Okay, okay" I say, beginning to comprehend the implication of what this means.

“In the meanwhile,” she sighs, getting up, heading over to the examination table.   “If it will make you feel any better, do you want to fuck me behind this curtain?”

I am stunned.  What?  Wait a minute.  I had been contemplating suicide.  My fall is turning into a disaster.  “What, what did you say?”

She stretches and opens the curtains, heading for the door, “I said, if it will make you feel any better, take some Aleve and let me schedule a physical therapist.”

Fuck!

****

My Life Before I Became Boring, A Documentary

I have decided, enough is enough; enough of this writing business; writing, writing, writing all the damn time, month after month, year after year.  I need a new pursuit.  Something not so boring.  Who reads this stuff anyway?  Maybe I should be a documentary filmmaker.  Everyone watches documentaries.       

I went to a documentary film festival last night.  That’s where I got the idea. 

“Hey, this is cool.” I said to my wife Karen who was standing in line with me at our local cinematic art-house waiting to buy tickets.  All these people swirling around us: young, hip, ever so cool, definitely: cool, cool, cool. 

“Hey, I can be cool.” I said to her as we pushed through the doors into the movie theater with the Roaring Twenties facade.  “Look at these guys.  How hard is it to be a documentary filmmaker?” 

She said, “Dear, let’s just get our seats, before we’re stuck in the back.” 

“What would you need?”  I asked her as we crossed the lobby.  “What?  Look at these guys.  Just a camera and an eyeball.  What else do you need?”

She said, “Hush,” eyeing the blue-jean and beret crowd. “Don’t antagonize anyone.  Let’s just get our seats before it’s too late.” 

Say, didn’t I see ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ back as a kid, I reminded myself as we sat down toward the middle of the theater, and wasn’t that a heck of a study on Arabs?  And what about ‘Midnight Cowboy’?  Didn’t that show me more than I wanted to know about male prostitution in New York City?  Oh, and what about ‘Boys Don’t Cry?’ or ‘Crying Boys,’ or something like that.  Didn’t Karen get me to sit through that one with her for like a night and a day?

And besides, isn’t my life a film in the making?     

The documentary Karen wanted us to watch was about four human rights activists, monitors they call them, as they document human rights violations.  In the film the monitors diligently record the horrors that were perpetuated against the citizens of Syria and Libya during their conflicts.  However, rather than a movie about war-crimes, the ninety-minute film focuses on the activists themselves.  
  

Turns out, the filmmakers, in their negotiations with the human rights group, agreed to film the group's staff members wherever they were sent in the world.  In fact, at first the filmmakers thought they would be documenting the group's work in Pakistan or Central Africa, but a month after the project began, the "Arab Spring" revolution ignited in the middle-East and Northern Africa, and, as a result, the film followed the activists into that region's hotspots.

The point here is the filmmakers had no idea of what their story would be.  No screenplay.  No story adapted to film.  No writing!  

In fact, after three years of filming, the decision of how to tell their story unfolded in the editing room with two editors hired to help the filmmakers sift through 300 hours of video.  They settled on the four people involved in investigations, and, in doing so, focused on their domestic lives as well as their profession. 

To be clear, the camera was in their personal space every bit as much as it was with them in the field.  AND to be doubly clear, the camera was an actual presence and not a "fly on the wall." 

And these people were cool.  They lived cool lives.  They talked directly to the camera and said cool things.  Smoked cool cigarettes.  Did cool things like sneaking into Syria rather than struggling to get out like refugees. 

This was all discussed with us after the movie when the filmmakers were invited on stage and interviewed by some festival muckity-muck.  The filmmakers kept referring to their film as "cinema verite," or some such, which, I took away as filming the "real."

“Karen, I can film ‘real.’  I whispered to my wife when I woke up.  “Jeez, this doesn’t sound hard at all.”

Okay.  I have been thinking about this today and, of course, had to project this onto my life.  I could cut the writing and proceed directly to filming.   

What would it be like to have a camera following me as I go about my day, say, for three years?  Would it take an outside editor to figure out what my story is and, perhaps, spruce it up?  Or would they need to make a sequel. 

Egotism is a captivating thing, maybe even, blinding too – especially about the realities of ‘real’ when ‘real’ isn’t focused on war crimes in Syria.

Maybe I have 30 minutes of interest to an audience of cool people in a documentary film festival like the one we went to last night.  Hmmm… likely, a lot less, I guess.  

Okay, I absolutely need to believe I have five minutes of interest to a group of cool people.  My five minutes!  Not the 15 minutes that Andy Warhol mentions, but FIVE MINUTES surely. 

Okay.  A You-Tube video.  Maybe after living a full life, that’s what I have.  A three-minute You-Tube video.  But maybe it would go viral; something so powerful, film festival producers would throw money at me and demand more. 

Don’t bother writing that stupid monthly blog, they would say, just film the next big thing and try to avoid penguins as they’ve been done before.

         

I decided, while mowing the lawn that afternoon, mowing the lawn being the first opportunity I had to think about this in depth, my first You-Tube video needed to be something that would be good enough for the Academy Awards to consider in their short video competition.  That way, producers would throw even more money at me.   

“The nominations for documentary shorts, once again, are… Jonathan Giles in – ”.  

Hmmmm… but what to focus on… 

Something that’s cool, granted, but something that assures me I haven’t descended into a morass of meaninglessness.  Something I can use to remind me that I am not so aimless and fickled and not fumbling around in life as much as I appear.  Something to motivate me to be more like the me on the screen, especially if I play me and see me doing things at which I am amazed; things not typically me.  Things that Mick Jagger might do, but not me.  Things that are inherently cool.  

My first step, I decided in tugging the lawnmower to behave over my pock-marked lawn, was to come up with a working title for my film.  Something inspirational. How about –

"My life before I became boring."     

I could work with that and it’s a topic in which I am most familiar, especially if the camera keeps filming me mowing the lawn all the fucking time over the next three years. 

“My life before I became boring.” 

But how would I film that? 

At first, I figured, I could go out and interview all of my friends and each would get five to ten minutes to talk about me and what I did prior to becoming boring. 

But, then again, that could be morose:  they might start asking me questions that would be difficult to answer, wanting to know if I died.  When did I die?  Did Karen know?  What was her reaction?   Did she like living with me? 

I know them: they would forget the “boring” thing I was asking them to focus on and go immediately to the “death” thing I was trying to avoid.

Besides, I am not sure any of my friends knew me before they thought I had died, yet alone when I became boring.  In fact, I am not sure I have friends. 

Rather, I decided, jerking the lawn mower back down the next row, I should take a year in my life and film that instead, something like a historical documentary.  You know, like “The year I was not so boring” or “The Year before I descended into the pits of boredom” or “Escape from boredom” or the soon-to-be classic: “Escape from boredom II” with vampires.

Like, say, back in 1998, I could make up something, something cool, like back in the day when I was fighting the forces of darkness in Gotham City.  Zombies, even. You know, Thor and me or Batman and me or, heck, just me.    

Maybe, back then, it would show I was being intentionally boring, to throw people off, especially my wife.  Like I was a Bruce Wayne with my Batman outfit in the closet behind my suits, dress pants, and cotton shirts.    

Looking back, though, 1998 pretty pathetic year. 

Maybe it was 1985.  

For this concept to work, I realized, picking up a pine cone in front of the mower and throwing it into the woods, I had to believe, one year out of my life, surely, I was not boring.  Maybe when I was a kid.  Not when I was a teenager, that's for sure….hmmm….

Maybe I should focus on the opposite. 

“The year I became boring.”

Back in 2003. 

It was all going so well, then summer hit… 

Suddenly one day my wife could not remember my name and she could care less if I was in the same room with her, or, worse, actually preferred me out of the room unless she wanted to take a nap…. 

And my family couldn't remember if I came to the reunion as recently as a week earlier, even though, I swear, I made a spectacle of myself….

 

Or even, my office mates didn't ask me where I've been when I spent a month out of work for no reason.  

You know that sort of thing, back then, back in 2003, or was it earlier?  

Hey, I could confess on camera and talk about when I knew I had passed over.

“Just the facts, sir” Detective Joe Friday on Dragnet would say.  “Just the facts.”

“Oh my god, I didn’t mean to, I swear.” I would say, throwing myself down and sobbing on the couch.  “I had been flirting with it for awhile, but no one told me if I put on those navy blue and white striped pants with the orange dotted polo shirt and white belt and loafers, I would cross the point of no return.  No one told me!” 

“ – Detective Friday, sir, you’ve got to believe me, I tried to clean it up, burn the pants, paint the shirt, but it was too late.  Too late.  Oh my god what have I done!”

Or maybe in mowing the lawn: the lawn mower engine sputters to a stop, but I keep pushing the mover onward across my yard, then the neighbor’s yard, the one who never talks to me, and then, that crazy woman’s yard down the street, and then…. 

“Dr. Kildare, Dr. Casey, he’s mowing incessantly. He won’t stop even though our neighbors' yards don’t need mowing.  Please doctors, you’ve got to get him to stop.”

“I’m afraid, Mam,” they would say after a moment or two of consultation.  “He's caught a dreaded disease and may die of it.”

Maybe it should be an expose' movie.  Behind the scenes.  Focusing on me, of course, but then expanding outward.  “America’s hidden plague,” I would call it, answering the big question: Like me, how many suffer from this debilitating state and don’t even realize it?   

Perhaps, though, I needed a less-sensational and more action-packed title, something like:

"When boring people do extraordinary things."

But I can't decide on what I would do to be extraordinary.  

Go to Costco?  

Maybe, a title like:

"The time my friends and me went to Walmart."  

The camera could follow us up-and-down the aisles as we buy things.

Maybe, the thought occurred to me as I put away the mower, maybe, I could arrange to film a series of “selfie” sessions.  As I go through my life, with the camera turned on me and filming it all, I could stop at various spots throughout my day, like in the grocery store parking lot, and scream.

Then when my angst fades and the silence becomes deafening, I can film me buy gas with my membership card and go home and mow the yard.  

I could go on and on, I guess, but the point is, I wouldn’t have to write anything. No monthly meditations.  No verbose verbage.  Just daily doses of 'cinema verite.'    

Still, my three-minute documentary would need to be a very subtle film.  If you were a cool person, or someone on the Academy Awards nominations committee, or say, my friends watching to see if I died and had yet to find out, by necessity, you would have to pick up on the nuances to really enjoy it.  Otherwise, unless you liked endless scenes with sputtering lawn movers, it could get pretty.... oh never mind.

****

My Family Story # 10: The Road to Somerset

Helen Allison Giles and Charles Edgar Giles 

Being next to the youngest in my family was not always a good thing, especially during the seven-year period on the farm when I was between the ages of five and eleven.  From my vantage point, then, with no information to guide me other than what I saw and the odd comments from my older brother and sisters, I had no idea the farm was losing money.  My parents went from raising cattle to pigs to raising nothing at all, from growing our own crops, to growing crops for the government, to renting our fields and barn to local farmers, all the while searching for an agricultural formula that would pay the bills.  In turn, our hired hands never stayed long and frequently left our farm in worse shape than when they arrived.  All this seemed natural to me. 

From what I recall, Daddy rarely managed the farm’s business, and, I suspect, looking back, he knew less about farming than Mother and, with his commute, was simply not around to learn how to be a farmer, even if he wanted to be one, which I realized as a kid, he decidedly did not.  He came and went like the sun – up in the early morning hours to drive to Pittsburgh and back in time for dinner by seven o’clock that night.  Ultimately, his income as a commodities broker provided the critical revenue necessary to keep the farm operating, the family in good health, and the profitability to free Mother at night after being alone all day with a newborn baby.     

Jerry was born shortly after I started first grade and almost to the year after we had moved from Linshaw Avenue in Pittsburgh.  No longer did Mother see herself as the farmer’s wife with four children in school out to manage the farm, cut costs, and live on what the farm produced, like her grandparents did so proudly for years when she was child, but, rather, she saw herself as a beautiful young mother, once again.  With her focus on the baby, no longer did our daily chores include feeding the livestock or cleaning stalls and over time we stopped going to the barn at all.

Beginning our second year, we shifted from being an active farm family, like the hundreds of other farm families in Somerset County, to becoming what we really were: the landed gentry living far removed from the urbane world of Pittsburgh.  As kids, free of farm work, our chores focused instead on the house, the yard, and the flower gardens around the house.  Likewise, Mother turned to the city of Somerset, where most of the region’s gentry lived, for her friendships and social activities.  Starting with an art class in the evening that second fall, driving to Somerset soon became a daily part of our lives.

Our farm to Somerset was nine miles and took fifteen to twenty minutes.  Mother, though, was a fast driver and, I bet, could do it in ten.  We became used to the commute and went o Somerset for everything from groceries to gas, from necessities to doctor and dentist appointments to trips to the library and music lessons, from movies on Friday and Saturday nights to the Presbyterian church on Sunday.  At night, Mother drove to art classes, bridge games, and social engagements at the country club; Daddy drove to the community theatre and meetings with the Rotary.  As the years progressed, the reasons to make this drive increased, but the distance never became shorter.    

Mother was a no-nonsense driver and didn’t tolerate distractions in her car, the family station wagon.  Not like in the Falcon with Daddy, with whom we could sing camp songs, or listen to stories of him and his friends growing up in Pittsburgh, or play the radio as loud as we wanted.  In Mother’s car, in an era before seat belts – with Holly in the front passenger seat, Jerry on her lap or beside her between her and Mother, and Charley, Allison, and me tight together in the back seat – we sat, staring out the windows and listened to the radio on low, if on at all, as we charged off to Somerset perpetually late for one thing or another. 

At the top of our lane, we would turn left onto Route 31, the main highway to Somerset from the east, especially for truckers who chose not to pay the toll on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  Quickly we would get on the busy road and breeze past the large state-run cemetery on the right; after burials, after family members and mourners returned to their homes, my bother and sisters and I would run up to the cemetery and take our pick of the flowers from the new graves, filling our house with the mournful scent of lilies and lilacs. 

A mile past the cemetery was the crossroads of Brotherton.  On our side of the crossroads was the Brotherton Methodist Church and, on the other side, the entrance to the Scotts’ farm.  The Scotts had a son my age, if not a year younger.  However, our wildness overwhelmed their family and his parents rarely allowed him to play with us.  I could see him playing in his yard by himself and sometime would stop on my bike.  One summer I got up early and peddled down to the Scott’s barn and helped his dad milk their cows.  Mr. Scott, who invited me to join him when he walked by me talking to his son, was surprised I showed up and, even more so, when I came back after that first morning.   

The Scotts and other local families went to the Brotherton Methodist Church at the crossroads, but our family was Presbyterian.  That same summer, though, Mother enrolled Charley, Allison, and me in the bible camp at the Brotherton church, and it was the only time we ever stepped into its sanctuary – to me, it was just as equally dark and holy, with stained glass windows depicting Jesus and his disciples, as the Presbyterian sanctuary in Somerset.  In the community room downstairs, along with other kids from the area, we learned to make outlines of Jesus’ hands on thin sheets of cooper.  I gave mine to Mother, but, like a lot of inconsequential gifts we gave her, she lost it after a couple of weeks.    

At the Brotherton crossroads, if Mother took a left past the church, the next house was where Kenny Peel’s grandparents lived.  Kenny was a boy one year older than me who lived most of the time in Johnstown, but spent weekends and parts of the summer with his grandparents in Brotherton.  When he was around, he frequently played with Allison and me.  Kenny was street-wise and slick and told us thrilling stories of what he and his friends did in the city and how they would get into trouble.  Allison and I wanted to get into trouble too, but we couldn’t think of what we could do in Brotherton. 

Past Kenny’s house, the road went on like a needle sewing farm after farm after farm to its black thread, until, seven miles later, it reached the tiny town of Berlin where at the far end of Main Street our elementary and high schools were located.  Next to the entrance to the schools was a potato chip factory, Snyder’s of Berlin; my memory of recess was the pervasive smell of potato chips frying in the factory's deep vats of fat. 

At the Brotherton crossroads, if, instead of turning left, we took the right, as we often did on our bikes, we would continue into farm country for about a half-mile before the road turned into dirt.  Down a short way an artesian well and a small pond lay hidden in the tall grass.  On the edge of the pond, in the weeds coming out of the water, we would find hundreds of milky white globs of frog eggs.  Cold in our hands and so squishy, I couldn’t help but wonder how many frogs would be born if we left the white globules alone in the water – my brother Charley, though, had other ideas and threw them at us like they were spring’s snowballs.  

Mother always raced straight through the crossroads with all of us packed together in the station wagon.  We now were on our way to Somerset and would quickly pass the Brotherton Garage, the last significant structure on the edge of our farm world.  

The Brotherton Garage was the commercial center of the crossroads; with its three large bays for tractors and farm trucks and two old gas pumps near the office, vehicles of one sort or another from the local area constantly pulled up to the dirty white, wooden clapboard structure.  

The Sikes family lived upstairs above the garage and had three kids in ages close to Holly, Charley, and Allison; their kids often came to our farm to play British Bulldog and build forts in the barn.  At one point, Nancy Sikes, who was Allison’s friend, along with Kenny Peel, who was mine, formed a club with Allison and me, and, together, we ran around our farm, Kenny’s grandparents’ house, the Methodist Church yard, and the Brotherton Garage calling ourselves the SPGs. 

Mr. Sykes was a mechanic in the garage; a heavy-set man with powerful, hairy arms, he was nice enough to us in the apartment upstairs, but not at all friendly when we hung out at the garage.  He always wore dirty, mechanics, short-sleeve work shirts.  Mrs. Sikes, his heavy-set housewife, often watched soap operas on their TV, and every time we came into their apartment, she would be ironing to As the World Turns, Guiding Light, or All My Children.

As kids, if we scraped together enough money, between us we could buy a bottle of root beer, birch beer, or Coca-Cola in the coke machine within the dirty office of the Brotherton Garage.  With no extra money to pay a five-cent deposit for the glass bottle, we would sit on our bikes outside the big bays and share the soda between us, trying to stay out of the way of the trucks coming into the garage and beyond Mr. Sykes’ threats to send us home. 

Inside the small office an old, wooden-frame, plate glass counter partitioned the room in half and separated the red horizontal Coke machine from the wooden desks cluttered thick with papers and receipts.  I remember staring down through the glass counter at the Clark candy bars and packs of Doublemint gum on the glass shelve next to boxes of Lucky Strikes, cans of oil, and black rubber belts for trucks and tractors.  However, what I most vividly recall was the calendar on the sidewall behind the counter.  Somehow I knew I shouldn’t stare, but each month the calendar showcased a busty woman posing in a one-piece bathing suit.  It was enough to distract me into forgetting what I came to buy or even I had friends waiting outside.  

Mother never spent time in the Brotherton Garage.  Never bought a soda and never shared a Clark bar.  She never saw the calendar nor met Mr. and Mrs. Sykes except to call and tell us to come home.  For her, the garage was simply a reminder of how remote we were as we shot past and sped out of our little valley.  

Still, before crossing the first set of hills, we would pass the dirt road where Sadie Moss lived.  This road, on the left, with its haphazard cluster of gray mailboxes on dirty two-by-fours, provided the only access to five log cabins on the distant mountainside.  In the middle of those one-room cabins lived Sadie Moss, an older woman who babysat us for the first couple of years of our lives on the farm.  To me, Sadie came from the earth itself; she was a thin, wiry woman with a face and hands weathered through the accumulation of years of hard work.  She had a high voice with a lilting country accent that reflected the very tenor of the mountains and the surrounding farms, but her instructions were never to be ignored.  I remember too she had gray hair that she kept braided and knotted in a bun on the back of her head. Only when she was spending the night did we ever see it down: it went all the way to her waist and it shimmered like a wave when she brushed it.  Her log cabin, she told us, with a twinkle in her eye as she put us to bed, was where she grew up and it had only a wood stove for heat; given how cold winters were, I would go to sleep wondering how she survived all those years.

Driving through the woods at the top of the ridge, leaving all vestiges of Brotheron behind, we would pass a small, one-room, roadside shack of a bar on the right just before descending into Dead Man’s Curve.  This was the only bar in the area before Somerset or long past our house heading east, and Daddy would stop here to drink and, on occasion, take Allison or me with him.  It smelled of sweat, farmers, and stale beer, and we would crack peanuts from a little barrel at a shaky table while Daddy, looking incongruent amongst all the farmers, drank beer at the bar.  

The shack was just above Dead Man’s Curve, which consisted of a sweeping left turn to circumvent an old, open quarry on the right as we headed down into the next valley.  When Ricky Nelson’s sang “Tell Laura I Love Her” on the car radio, I often thought he died at Dead Man’s Curve, having crashed his car through the guard rail and down into the rock quarry below.  No wonder Laura needed someone to tell her – how could anyone ever survive such a crash!

Driving across the farm land of the next valley was like crossing a pastoral ‘no-man’s’ land between tiny Brotherton with its farm-centered life and the vivacious influence of Somerset, the largest town in the area, with its court house and law offices, its hospitals and doctors’ offices, its post office and county library, and its downtown movie theater, drug stores, and retail stores, and, like an artery of the heart, it’s access to the Pennsylvania Turnpike with hotels and restaurants surrounding the turn-in to the toll-road.  

Crossing this agricultural valley, we could see off in the distance cars and trucks on the turnpike speeding to Pittsburgh, a route we knew from countless trips to baseball games or special events, such as when the Pittsburg Pirates won the World Series, or when we shopped for clothes at the Kaufman’s Department Store downtown, or when we visited Daddy’s mother when she lived in the Presbyterian Home.  The other direction was the way to Philadelphia, where our Uncle Tommy and Aunt Nelda lived.  Allison, Charley and I traveled to Philadelphia every summer to visit our aunt and uncle who lived in a split-level house in the suburbs, and Aunt Ned would take us to battlefields, the liberty bell, museums, gardens, and zoos.  We loved Aunt Ned and Uncle Tommy, and when they visited us on the farm at Christmas, their car would be full of gifts and food and our time together would be magical.

Closer to Somerset Mother would slow down as we went past the State Police Barrack on the left and then speed up again as we drove past the state hospital on the right.  This facility was not a typical hospital, like the Somerset Hospital or the Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh; rather this hospital was fenced in and centered on a hillside far from the highway.  The complex consisted of four very large, brick dormitories, each with a central entrance and five long rows of dark windows on either side.  Holly told us it was a hospital for insane people; Charley said this was where Allison and I belonged and swore it was where Mother and Daddy found Jerry.  I didn’t know what to believe, but I never saw anyone on the grounds and only a small smattering of cars in front. 

I often thought of who might be staring out those dark windows, counting the number of times we drove past; in my mind it was never a kid like me but always some crazy old person who likely would be buried some day with grey, horrible flowers in the cemetery near our house.

Shortly after the police barrack was the turn off to one of the two Howard Johnson service areas located on either side of the turnpike.  Later, when Mother was desperate for money, she worked the night shift at the Howard Johnson on our side of the turnpike, but that was near the tail end of our time on the farm.

By this point countless small brick houses and manufactured houses with yellow plastic siding indicated we were approaching Somerset.  Quickly we would zoom past these nameless homes and shoot down a short hill into the beginnings of the city.  Before us lay a mile-long stretch of shopping centers and tractor dealerships on the right, including the A&P grocery store, always an important stop for Mother before returning to the farm, and beauty parlors and insurance agencies on the left. On the right, too, was the Old Farm Drive-in; here waitresses roller-skated to our car and delivered hamburgers, French fries, and chocolate milkshakes.  Though this was something we rarely did with Mother, we could convince Daddy to take us after going to the hardware store or the Ag store for dog food and other supplies.    

At the bottom of the hill another major road merged from the left onto our road.  Often, rather than drive the strip into Somerset, we would take that sharp fork and head back out of the city.  This highway was the direct route between Somerset and Berlin eleven miles away; for us, it was the road to the Somerset Country Club a mile down the pike and a key destination for many of Mother’s runs. 

That second winter Mother and Daddy joined the Somerset Country Club to give Daddy access to Somerset's wealthier citizens and, in the summer, so we could swim in the club’s Olympic-size pool under the watchful eyes of the town's college-age lifeguards.  Of course, the nine-hole golf course and the large clubhouse with its dark, manly bar, its active dining facilities, and its banquet hall complete with organized dances, holiday parties, and bridge tournaments, only added to the membership.  For mother and daddy, it was like leaving behind the dull and frustrating world of the farm for a life of sanity among normal people, people who enjoyed manhattans and martinis, who owned sailboats and went skiing, who could dance the twist, and who purchased the latest color TVs and princess phones for their kids. 

I hated Somerset, the Somerset Country Club, the suave and sophisticated Somerset members and their Somerset children, all of whom we had absolutely nothing in common.  I hated the social life Mother and Daddy now conceived for themselves and us far from our farm, the SPGs, Berlin, and the Crossroads of Brotherton.  I knew, even as the one who was next to the youngest in our family, with no understanding of the outside world other than what I saw and heard, this new life, a life into which we now were thrust, would grow and fester and be like a open sore that refused to heal until long after Mother and Daddy's relationship disintegrated and we were gone.   

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