To The Heartland

When the money ran out, we packed up and headed back to the states. I confess I was a little sad to leave Paris and the relative safety of the situation. The gang had insulated me from pretty much all parental attention and that was, for me, ideal. I disappeared into debauchery and was as depraved and dissolute an 11 year old as you could possibly imagine. Not a real good fit for where we ended up next.

We stopped in New York for a couple weeks to visit the grandparents and make plans. Dennis had a brother who offered him a job in a little town called Girard, Ohio, so off we went to the heartland.

I don't know what it's like now — surely it's full of Starbucks and teenage gangs and meth heads like everywhere else, but in 1971 Girard was a collection of small-town cliches and stereotypes straight off of a Norman Rockwell calendar. There was a town square with a bandshell. There was a cigar store with a wooden Indian out front. There was a Mr. Fix-It. There was a drugstore with a soda fountain. Everyone knew each other and smiled and waved at each other.

I don't remember exactly what I wore that first day at North Avenue School (K-8, no junior high) — but knowing me and my wardrobe at the time, let's say it was striped bellbottoms, a spread collar button-down paisley shirt, and zip up pointy-toed Beatle boots. That or something like it. My hair was down to my shoulders and I wore a peace sign around my neck.

You've heard the expression, “turd in a punch bowl"? It may as well have been 1961 in Girard. The boys wore stiff jeans with six-inches of extra length rolled up over black high-tops. Striped T-shirts or gingham-checked button-downs or flannels, topped off with crewcuts and flattops stinking of Vitalis. The girls wore red dresses, Mary Janes and turned down ankle socks.

I stood up in front of the class while the teacher introduced me. “Class, this is Flynn. He's from California and just spent a year in Europe. Please make him welcome.” I've never felt so alien in my life, and that includes my trips to Mars.

We started the day with the Pledge, and I wasn't so European that I didn't remember that. No problem. However, we weren't through yet.

Next was My Country Tis Of Thee, followed by the Ohio State song which naturally I didn't know. Then I was completely blindsided. “Our father, who art…” What manner of madness was this? I listened incredulously as the class chanted. Were they really praying to God? I had never been inside a church, never opened the Bible. All I knew about God was that the existentialists told me he didn't exist. All I knew about Jesus Christ was that his middle name was H.

I stood there looking stupid until the “amen.” I was about to take my seat when I noticed the teacher staring at me. “Flynn?” she said. “Do you not require the protection of the Lord our Father?” I was completely nonplussed. I started stammering incoherently. “I don't… I never… I… I…” She dismissed me with a fluttering hand. “Take your seats, class. Flynn, see me during recess.”

While the other kids went outside to recreate in their wholesome, middle America fashion — which even at that late date included playing marbles and jacks for keepsies — I stayed inside to face the Inquisition. I stood before her desk while she shuffled papers around. She snorted, clapped her hands down on the desk, and looked up at me. “Mr. Washburne,” she said in that sing-songy tone that means “What are we going to do about you?” “Does your family practice a religion other than Christianity? Are you Jewish or Muslim?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“No what?”

“No, I'm not Jewish or Muslim.”

“No, ma'am,” she intoned with a frown.

“No, ma'am,” I said. What the hell?

“Then why did you not participate in the recitation of the Lord's Prayer?”

“I don't know it. I never heard it.”

“Never heard it? What church do you attend?”

“I've never been to church.”

“Never been to church? Are you saying you were never baptized?”

“No… No, ma'am. We don't have a religion.”

She shook her head and smiled slowly and stood up. “Wait here, son. Wait here, I'll be back in a few minutes.” As I waited, I looked up at the flag, where George Washington and Jesus looked down on me accusingly. What were they going to do to me? Baptize me right here? Kick me out of school? Make me swear an oath?

The teacher came back in with a book and couple sheets of mimeographed paper. “This is a Bible,” she said, handing me the book. “Try to read a little bit every day. Here is the Lord's prayer.”

She handed me a sheet. “Memorize it by morning and be ready to recite it with the class.”

“And this,” she added, handing me the other sheet, “is a list of local churches. Give this to your parents.”

I dutifully took the information home. My mother took one look at what I brought, threw it in the garbage and was on the phone to the school in a moment, screaming about fascism and church and state and lawsuits. After several minutes, she slammed the phone down and turned to me. “You don't have to say the prayer,” she said. Oh, that was a great idea. As if I didn't stand out enough, I'd also be marked as a heathen. The next morning I moved my mouth in as near an approximation of the words as I could and by the end of the week I was Our Fathering like a champ.

* * *

Surprisingly, my exotic mien played pretty well with the other kids. I wasn't ostracized or harassed, and most of my classmates made a genuine effort to help me fit in. I acquired some skill at jacks and marbles, learned a new set of schoolyard rhymes, and made a careful study of the local folkways and mores.

For instance, my free and easy way with the more colorful aspects of the English language shocked, amazed and thrilled my peers. It began one day at recess playing jacks. I was on tensies and ready to clean up when I misjudged my grab, bouncing my hand off the pavement and sending jacks flying all over to hell and gone. “Son of a fucking bitch,” I said, understandably. “Cock-knocker. Shit-ass fuckface.”

I heard a collective gasp from the group as they all looked around nervously. “You said the f-word!” One exclaimed. “And the S, and the B,” another chimed in.

“Fuck yes, I did,” I answered. “Bet your ass.”

Then these kids literally backed slowly away from me as if I were turning into a werewolf or something. They ran over to some other kids to report my audacity. Soon I was surrounded by half the kids on the playground. “Say the swears,” one demanded. “Fuck,” I obliged. “Shit fuck piss. Cocksucker whoremouth bitch-ass pigfucker.”

Oh how they laughed.

“Put Miss Huntsinger in,” one demanded.

“Miss Hunsinger is a big fat ugly whore who sucks dog dicks,” I said. “Her dad fucked a hippopatumus and that's why she's so fuckin' fat.”

This was too much and sent everyone running off, screaming hysterically. Thus did I learn to moderate my tone somewhat. No telling what the administration would do if they caught me befouling the ears of their carefully indoctrinated youth.

One benefit of my otherness was that for every wild boy, there's a good girl who wants to dip a toe in the dark side. For me it was Cindy Ramsey, the cutest and most popular girl in class. One day I was braced at lunch by a pair of giggling girls. They gave me a cootie-catcher quiz, asked me if I liked anybody, then they went giggling off. I didn't know it, but I was being vetted for a post as Cindy's boyfriend. After school the same two minions watched me again and chimed in unison, “Cindy likes you. Do you like her?”

“Sure, I guess,” I said.

“Meet her in the playground at 5:00,” one said.

I did and she was sitting in a swing, flanked by her minions. We made small talk about pets and family and Jacksons versus Osmonds, and by 6:00 I was established as boyfriend. Romance was a strictly codified affair at North Valley and my daily instructions were as follows: meet her at her gate in the morning, walk to class together, eat lunch together, one hour on the playground at 5:00 sitting on the swings and holding hands, and a phone call at 8:00. I think I lasted about three weeks. I thought I was nailing it, but one day the minions approached me and gleefully piped, “Cindy wants to break up!” again in unison, and flounced off without so much as a commiserating pat. That very day she began eating lunch with her ex and I realized I'd been nothing more than a lark, exploited for my singularity. I learned a valuable lesson that day that would hold me in good stead for many years: chicks dig bad boys.

Our little Americana idyll did not last long; we had been staying with Dennis's brother's family, but now that we had acquired a stake it was time to move on. I had mixed feelings about the transition: on the one hand, step-uncle Bill made no secret of his contempt for the lot of us and showed it unrestrainedly; but on the other, Dennis didn't dare wallop me in front of outsiders and so I made it through the entire Girard span with but a few covert pokes and slaps. Unfortunately for me, these periods of relative detente imbued me with a false confidence and got me thinking it was okay to speak my mind, exercise my rights as a member of the family and a human being, and generally behave in a manner befitting an 11-year-old, i.e., not slinking and cringing. No, Dennis was way behind in his spirit crushing and I imagined my carefree attitude was a giant thorn in his misbegotten side.

* * *

We moved to Youngstown, a horrible industrial city just down the road. I was bussed to an inner-city middle school. I had no preconceived notions about people of color because I had literally never met one, having gone from Northern California to Europe to Girard. I got a quick and painful lesson about being a minority though. I spent a month or so of being stuffed into lockers bereft of lunch money before my natural adaptability allowed me ingress with the cool kids. I had no problem at all with becoming black. I couldn't fight a two-front war. Unfortunately, Dennis was not so easily appeased as the young thugs at the middle school. I had yet to find or devise a version of myself that didn't piss him off. His mission, it seemed, was to torment me. I was beaten, belittled, harassed, harried and beset every day of my miserable life. As I simply could not encounter this man without arousing his ire and inviting assaults upon my person and/or psyche, I learned again to disappear. I minimized my presence as much as possible, used back doors and windows, I stayed quiet and slunked through shadows. I was the disappearing boy.

I also found a home away from home. Up the road from us lived the Minottis, an Italian family, eleven kids strong, without a father. They lived in a huge ramshackle farmhouse overseen by a mother who rarely left the kitchen and left discipline to the nuns at the Catholic school the kids all attended. Inside the house it was messy, anarchic, loud, occasionally disturbing, and a hell of a lot of fun. Mrs. Minotti didn't mind another urchin around and whacked me along with the rest if we were foolish enough to wander into her reach. Her shots weren't malicious though, she just wanted to be left alone to cook.

All the Minotti boys were wild, but Bruce, a year younger than me, was truly demented. The strict religious indoctrination he received over at St. Mary's combined with his own naturally sadistic tendencies made for some creative and bizarre behavior. For instance, one day we came upon Bruce in the front yard. He had his five-year-old sister Gina tied to a tree. “Do you love Jesus?” he yelled at her.

“Yes, I love Jesus.”

“Liar,” he snarled, slapping her across the face. “You don't love my Jee-Jee.” Bruce called Jesus Jee-Jee. “If you did, you wouldn't be peeing in the bushes. … Paulie, pee on your sister, that'll teach her,” he ordered his younger brother. Paulie gleefully urinated on the hapless girl. I, no credit to me, was convulsed with laughter. “Go ahead and hit her, Flynny,” Bruce told me. “She likes it.”

I didn't.

Or the time he crucified a dozen frogs on the front lawn. “This one is Jee-Jee,” he explained, pointing at the biggest frog. “He died for your sins,” he said accusingly to Gina, who took off like a scalded cat.

His most egregious escapade, though, had nothing to do with religion (I hope). One day Earl, an older Menotti, and I were in the backyard throwing rocks when we heard shrieking coming from the woods behind the house. We turned to see Bruce, Paulie and my brother Nate emerging from the woods completely naked and bespattered with something brown and stinking.

“Shit machine! Shit machine!” They yelled. “We invented a shit machine!”

A shit machine?

“Come see, come see, you guys! Shit machine!”

Earl and I dutifully followed them into the woods, where, in a small clearing, we came on a couple of cinderblocks covered in human excrement. The way the shit machine worked was as follows: three insane children stripped naked. One crapped on a cinderblock, then they all three surrounded said block while someone lifts the other cinterblock overhead and slams it down on the shit pile, sending it flying in all directions. I don't know why this was fun to them. I don't know how Bruce talked them into it. Bruce was a maniac who did a lot of inexplicable things like sneaking up behind you and screaming “Pinochle!” as he drove a knuckle into your spine. Poor Bruce was born five centuries too late. He'd have been right at home burning heretics and branding adulterers.

Back on the home front, Dennis's alcoholism had progressed in the usual fashion and, being a house painter, regularly found himself in positions both altitudinous and precarious. You get the picture. One fine day he fell off a roof, screwed himself up sufficiently to require a month of recuperation, during which time he reneged on several contracts and lost his business. We were on the move again, headed west to Colorado Springs. ¥¥

Next: Cool Hand Flynn Rocks the Westside.