BUTCH'S GREAT ADVENTURE P A R T XI
OH, MY PAPA
"Oh, my papa"...sometimes the strains of that old 1953 popular tune sung by Eddie Fisher comes to mind. To me, he was so wonderful....oh, my papa. Just where the hell are you, father of mine? In 1968, when I got out of the Navy, two years after my Mother had died, wanting assistance to return to college, to the U of W, I stood in Arnold Bryden's office at the Police Station in Enumclaw, and we realized similtaneously that we were not, in fact, related [per my narrative of earlier].
I breathed a sigh of relief on the one hand. Arnold had always been an asshole, and secretly I had feared that in some way or other I could turn out to be like him. But on the other hand, then who the hell was my father? How could I find out? Mom was dead, so I couldn't ask her. I used to be a little resentful, that at some point, she had not set me down and explained the truth of things.It sure would have cleared up huge emotional issues for me.
I guess it was left up to Clystie to set things right...again. Her second son was not fathered by her first husband, and when he grew old enough, she sat him down and told him who his real father was. What a grand and sensitive and heart-warming thing for you to do, little sister. Mother was watching. Hopefully, she learned something from the event.
So Itook my sorrow and confusion to the the patriarch, to Pop, my actual grandfather, my spiritual father. At one point, he said,"Let me be your father, Butch. Iwill always love you, and support your every effort; and I will be here for you as long as I draw breath on this mortal coil."
Pop talked some about what he could recall of Mother/Betty's teenage years. When WWII broke out in 1941, they were living in Spokane, and Mother was 14 years old. She was very talented musically. There used to be talent shows at the local theatres, and she and some of her friends won some of the contests. She played guitar, the accordian, and some piano [what terrific memories we all have of those hot summer evenings, when mother would play guitar, or accordian, and Pop would play the violin, and Mom-Mom would play the piano, and Mother would sing. There was a group of songs they all knew, and I wish I could recall some of them. There used to be a dance hall over in Maple Valley, east of Renton, called the Cottonwood Inn. I never had a chance to go there, because it was a bar too. Mom-Mom and Pop, Dick, and Mother with Art would go there and dance away many Saturday evenings. Art and Mother could jitterbug and swing dance up a storm. It was always fun to just sit and watch them tear up that dance floor. Mother played the accordian especially well.Often these at-home family hootenannys would go on for hours, and sometimes there was drinking accompanying it; usually home brew. Pop brewed some. Art brewed some. All of our basements had large ceramic crocks covered in burlap brewing up the white lightning. Once Pop poured a bad batch out in our sink. The porcelin was old, and there was some rust in the bottom of it; but not for long. That hootch cleaned the rust off it immediately].
Mother was a very striking beautiful young woman, a vivacious sexy teenager, who always looked several years older than she was. She was told she looked like Deanna Durbin. I think she looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor. Her name was Betty...Betty on her birth certificate. Teachers kept trying to call her Elizabeth, and she would have to correct them. She had piercing blue eyes, and knew how to wear make-up early on; short, energetic, and buxom; quite a doll, a dish, a tomato. [much like Clystie grew up to be, blue-eyed, short, energetic, with an ample bust, and an angel's singing voice].
Pop said that Mother began to run with a "fast" crowd; artists, poets, singers, musicians, and other ne'r-de-wells. She got pregnant at 15. It was devastating to the family. Pop had to slink through back rooms, and arrange for an abortion. In 1942, this would have been a huge emotional trauma for all concerned; dark and dangerous, and possibly since it was probably not done by a doctor in a surgery suite, it might have set the seed for that rogue tumor that took her life twenty some years later. These were the war years...the big one; WWII as the veterans like to say. The young men she dated were probably mostly in the service. Most of them were shipping out soon for Europe or the Pacific. Many of them would never return. Young American girls felt a sacred obligation to do their part for the war effort. Our Mother was no exception; lots of dates that ended up in the wide back seats of tall sedans. So, she got pregnant again, in 1943, when she would have been 16; pregnant with me.
Obviously, abortion could not be approached a second time so soon. She had dated several young men, according to Pop. One of them was Arnold Bryden. The next year is a black hole in my information gathering. Pop remembered one stocky young sailor with dark hair that had dated Betty; perhaps he could have been...my real father.
So, as Mother journeyed to Seattle in that Model T, with Dick and Pop, she was very pregnant with me. Was she married to Arnold yet? How long had Mom-Mom already been in Seattle being Rosie the Riveter? Did she and Arnold live with Mom-Mom and Pop for a time?Did Arnold get her an apartment before he shipped out to fight the Japs in Alaska? How did she really feel about Earl, her father? A lot of blood had flowed under the dark bridge. As a kid, I sensed that she loved Pop...but I also sensed there was some baggage, something important and unsaid, a tub of secrets between them that was unrevealed.
I try hard to remember any of the mundane daily conversations that I had with Mother. If I were her favorite child, why had she not confided in me? Why had we never really conversed about the big issues; the universe, life and death, love, parentage? I guess we both figured that we had plenty of time to get to that stuff. She was very proud of me, of my good grades in school, and my fledgling Acting career. She kept a scrapbook on me, filling it with every mention of me in the school paper, or the neighborhood paper, and the programs of those first few plays. I inherited that scrapbook. I kept it up until my career as aactor was finished, in 1977.
If there is a lesson to be learned from any of this history, it is to make an effort to communicate honestly with your loved ones, with your children, and your spouses. Silence is not golden; it is bullshit.
Glenn
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