BGA Part Six

BUTCH'S GREAT ADVENTURE P A R T VI

Living there on Delridge Way, certain memories rise up into view. Clystie, had become horse-crazy when we lived in Kent, and she rode horses every day with Merlene Pruden, and she kept begging for a horse. This seemed nuts to me since we lived right in town. But being logical was never a long suit for Art Buttkus.

One fine day he showed up with a horse trailer, and he unloaded a nag right there in the alley behind the house. He put some hay in the garage, put up some chicken wire to keep it in, and officially gave the horse to Clystie. God knows what she named it. Art had picked up an old saddle and some tack somewhere, and so completely oblivious to city statures and laws, he let us kids ride that horse up and down the alley, and around the edges of the park.

I thinkClystie fed the nag, and cleaned up the horseshit. All of our friends were able to have a "horse-ride". I think Clys even earned a few dimes for some of those rides. It was crazy, like some strange scene out of a Woody Allen movie; absurd but true. After a week, or two, the Seattle Police stopped by, reporting that several neighbors had complained of the "smell in the alley", and reminded Art that it was, in fact, illegal for him to keep a horse within the city limits.
The horse was gone one day, traded off for a couple of guns and some tools; nothing left but some horse crap, some hoofprints, and some steaming soiled hay.

Two months later, it was my turn. Art delivered a 1934 Buick, four-door sedan, stick-shift, with the original cloth seats, and it ran fairly well. Art announced that this was "my car". I was thrilled. Maybe I could drive it up and down the alley too. But Art had one proviso; to bolster my mechanical confidence, to give me invaluable experience, and to teach me about fixing cars, I was instructed, mandated actually, to use Art's tools and take apart the Buick.

I lept to the task with my usual energy and verve and enthusiasm. In three weeks I had the car completey dismantled. I even took the hood, doors, and trunk off; several huge greasy piles of auto parts.

"Fine, Butch," Art said," Now, put it back together."
"What?" I asked.
" I said put the goddamned thing back together!"he snapped.
"But Dad..." I stammered,"I don't know how."
" I figured as much," he said.

He piled all of the car parts back into the Buick frame, and had a wrecking yard haul it away.

Somehow, I guess, because I had no real mechanical aptitude, no natural abilities for such things, Art began to be disappointed in me. I was never going to be able to even pretend to follow in his footsteps. I was a different kind of animal; not a sissy-boy, but more a reader than a builder, more a dreamer than a doer. Art was a natural around cars and machines; kind of that feeling one had regarding Steve McQueen and machines. He understood them, and they demanded little of him in the way of conversation.

"What the hell is wrong with you, boy?" Art would ask, with real concern in his voice.
"Nothing, Dad...I write stories."

That was the end of my first car, and the beginning of the distancing between Art and I. Being the oldest child, and living a lot in my head, in movies, and in books, I was always very occupied with my own cognition and fantasies; a bit of a loner at home. The best punishment one could inflict on me was to force me to stay in my room. I'd read Steinbeck, Faulkner, and my comic books. I'd sketch and draw. I'd stare out the window toward the Cascades and dream of hiking in them.

Perhaps, even though Clystie was only 1.5 years younger than me, she and I were never real close as kids. I was the first born. Clystie and Bud became close; probably out of necessity. Years later, bothClys and Bud told me that they felt that I had been Mother's favorite. That shocked the hell out of me. I was insulated and self-absorbed; the perfect breeding ground for the future artist and teacher.

But because of my distancing, my dreaming, my projecting...I did not notice Art abusing Clystie since she was 12, and I did not see where Bud became detached, sad, and needful, and I sure as hell did not see Mother's cancer coming.

Things were only about me in those early years. Another interesting thing that occurred after we were there for about a year, was that Mom-Mom and Pop with Dick in tow, moved in with us for a time. I guess they had sold the houseboat, were packed up, and getting ready to "move to Idaho" to become "gold miners", and to live off the land. Mom-Mom seemed a little less than thrilled, but Dick and Pop had that old fire in their eyes as they cleaned their guns, and oiled up their fishing rods.

They were ready to make the Great Escape, and the whole world could kiss their ass. I have a faint memory of them driving a large two-ton truck at that time, as one of their vehicles. They had made the box into a huge camper; something for Mom-Mom to keep clean, and to sleep in while on the road, fishing and hunting their way toward paradise.

On Delridge Way, I remember air mattresses all over the floor at night; five adults, and three kids in a two bedroom house. One particular side note. I had discovered masterbation back on the farm in Kent. One of the farm kid buddies of mine had explained how to do it.

" You just rub and rub, and then your dick explodes. And then it is like you are dying of thirst, and someone gives you a cold cup of spring water."

So when Uncle Dick unearthed my stash of girlie mags and pictures from under some box, or under a mattress...he tried to rib me a bit about them. I denied knowing anything about that material. It was, of course, very embaressing.

The Carpenter Idaho Adventure came to nothing more than a vacation, just a lot of fishing and camping. Mom-Mom and Pop rented a large old house in ColumbiaCity, near a park, north of Alaska street, just off ofRainier Avenue. Ironically, Arnold Bryden, my mother's first husband, my supposed father [that's another story], and Clystie's actual father, had lived for a time only a few blocks from where the Carpenters had moved in. [I still haunt that block to this day. The training center for adult blind rehabilitation for the State of Washington has a campus on Alaska Street].

Mom-Mom raised a lot of roses there. We grandkids knew Columbia City fairly well, thanks to those visits with Arnold earlier. It was Americana, not ghetto then. Dick, at about that point, got married to his first wife, Esther, and they lived with their kids in a project at the bottom, and on the east side of Beacon Hill, below the VA Hospital; a couple of miles from Mom-Mom and Pop.

When Arnold would take Clys and I over to visit with him, and his wife, Janet, we would make a stop down to a local drug store. It had an old fashioned soda fountain and grill in it. They made great hamburgers, and milkshakes and malts from real ice cream; where not only did you get that tall glass of milk shake, but right next to it on the table was the even tall chrome-covered metal container that they whipped it up in; getting two milk shakes for the price of one; what grand times. This was before the fast-food industry began. This was soda fountain slow-food, and as kids we loved it. The only place one could get a hamburger was at cafes and fountains.

At some point in the late 1950's, Art Buttkus gave Arnold Bryden, Dad to Clys and I, and Wayne Stilwell, Dad to Buddy, an offer. They could quit paying child support, if they gave up all visiting rights and priviledges. I think that our Mother had something to do with the making of this offer. Those stalwart "fathers", those princes of the Northwest, jumped at theoffer, and we never offically visited with them for the rest of our childhood. They never sent cards, or made inquiries. Rather sad to reflect upon it. Art,later, offically adopted we three kids. The "real"fathers never darkened our door again.

A cute rememberance about being the child of many fathers...when I started school, my name on my birth certificate read Arnold Glenn Bryden. Arnold, the senior, had a brother Glenn that I never met. There I was, five years old, and in school. As far as I was concerned, willful child that I was, my name was "Butch". I would not answer to Arnold. I did not feel like an Arnold. After a time, the teachers asked me ifI would answer to Glenn. Yes, I replied, Glenn sounded fine to me. So the school records read:(Arnold)"Butch" Glenn Bryden-Stilwell [Mother's second husband], and mostly I responded to being called Butch.

Very soon though, I had to learn to develop two personas, the Butch persona for Home, and the Glenn persona for School, and later the great world at large. Two years later, Art came along, married Mother, and the school records read: Glenn (Arnold)Bryden-(Buttkus). Ten schools later, as Art hung in there, they dropped the Bryden. Before Mother died, she had the whole famly go to the family lawyer, John Coughlin, and get legal name changes to Buttkus. Twenty years later, I had become a professional actor, and there I was in Los Angeles applying for my first passport. I was going to go to Australia with my buddy Keenan Wynn, to be in a play, with an option for a film. [but that's another story]. At that point Mother had been dead for over a decade, and I had no contact with Art.

ThePassport folks demanded to see the Legal Name Change paperwork. I hesitated, and then tried to explain my extenuating circumstances, my crazy tale. They held firm; no name change certificate equaled no passport. Then, out of the blue, Keenan Wynn took advantage of his celebrity status, and he got in the face of that pious uptight civil servant behind the desk.

" I have known this fine young man for most of his life, and I am telling you, I personally assure you that Arnold Glenn Bryden and Glenn Arnold Buttkus are one in the same person."

They gave me the passport. Like a dummy, I let it expire a few years later, and recently I had to go through all the regermaroll again.

1958: The Carpenters still lived in Columbia City, and Art moved the family south up Delridge Way to a house in White Center, only a few blocks from Sealth HighSchool. 8810 15th S.W., I believe it was. I walked to high school for the first couple of years. Clystie went to Denny Junior High, across the street from Sealth.

This was another cheesebox rental, a two bedroom place, rambler style home. A lot of good stories were connected to that domicile. We lived there over three years. That was a long time for Art to stay rooted in one place; my freshman, sophmore, and most of my junior years in High School.

I began to learn to drive there, in the alley that ran north and south behind the garage, between a Johovah's Witness temple on the south end, and a neighborhood store on the north end. Mother always had a designated car, though she drove it little. Most of Art's cars were stick shifts. I learned in a 1950 Chevrolet, four-door sedan; light seafoam green color. I would start it up, and drive back and forth in the alley, perfecting my use of the clutch. North and south in that alley, I would hover on the edge of the street, and then backdown to where I could turn around again; but once in awhile I would venture out into the street, learner's permit in my pocket, and drive around our immediate block; very daring and dangerous it felt; my secret.

Glenn