Monday, June 20, 2005
I Remember 1963 When My Life Changed
I was born in 1951 in a small southern Illinois town, Chester, the home of Popeye. I lived in a smaller town, Percy, until Christmas vacation of 1962-63. I was comfortable in this small town environment. I felt alive there. My father worked in a shoe factory and had worked there since 1932. The wages were poor, I think he made about $40 a week back then, but he did have a steady job.
Until the shoe factory closed down. My dad tried to make a living doing something he loved to do, work with chemicals. He moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, and got involved with an old friend trying to make some money inventing products using chemicals. It didn't work our so well. My mother had to go to work at a nursing home to help pay the bills. I hated that!
By the summer of 1962 it was obvious my dad wasn't going to get rich, or even close, by working with chemicals, so he took a job in a steel-fabrication plant in Aurora, Illinois, about 40 miles west of Chicago. Wow, the big city! He got a little bit ahead and found an apartment and mom and I moved 300 miles north during Christmas vacation. It was a brand new awakening to life all around me.
I had a very rough time adjusting to this new life. Going to my new school, Lincoln Elementary, in the middle of the sixth grade, made me realize how far behind the school in Percy was compared to the big city. I had been used to getting straight E's, which equated to A's, in Percy, and I had a tough time eking out B's and C's in Lincoln. I was so far behind in arithmetic, and I didn't ask for help, that it took me the rest of the school year to figure out how to do math with fractions on my own.
I was a little boy in stature, and I had absolutely no self confidence. I cried when we left Percy and I felt like crying nearly every day as I went to grade school and longed for my old familiar friends from Percy. So much so that I spent that summer vacation back in Percy. I stayed with my sister Lila, who had four sons, the oldest of which was 4 years younger than me. We played a lot of wiffleball that summer.
I cried again when I had to leave Percy at the end of summer and go back home to Aurora. I was very nervous because in the fall I had to start a Junior High School and there were hundreds and hundreds of new students there. Classes in different rooms and different parts of the building, even different floors. So hard to get around and so much to learn. I felt so lost at Ben Frankiln Junior High and missed my small town life.
I think I had been holding on to hope that Aurora was just a temporary thing. That my dad would get back on his feet and somehow we would be able to move back to Percy again where I was happy. Of course that was never going to happen. Aurora was our new home.
While I was gone that summer, my parents bought a small, and I mean small, house not very far away from the apartment we had been renting. Good thing, cause I had friends living close by and I didn't want to start all over again. Since Junior High was a new experience for all the seventh graders, it became a lot easier than I thought. I had to learn to eat my lunch a lot faster, though. Time went quickly at Franklin but I managed to adjust.
I was riding a bus to school on my own now. Sometimes I would ride my bike but it was quite a pedal so the bus became my preferred means of transportaion. I felt like a big boy in a big city. I was making friend with new kids, and some of them were black. That was a new experience for me, also. No black people in Percy. I found a best friend in Greg Crenshaw, a portly and happy black kid with a great outlook on life. After high school, Greg came out of the closet and revealed his homosexuality. A fact that didn't surprise me at the time, he was always a bit faggy, but in the seventh grade, I didn't even know what homosexuality meant. Hell, I didn't know anything about sex yet.
I learned all I needed to know in time but it was comforting to me to know that other kids my age didn't know things either. We were many ignorant kids trying to find our way into adulthood. Life was changing all around me and I was growing up. I wasn't ready to grow up but it was happening just the same.
A year earlier I was happily living in small town comfort, in a world where everything made sense to me. It was a world I had known all my life, the only life I knew. Now it was 1963 and everything was different. Life was hard and it was faster and I was not ready for it. I missed the comfort of small town life. The warmth of the small town life. City life was cold, especially in northern Illinois. Below zero temperatures in the winter were very common. And I was essentially an only child by now. The only one left at home and I found out what it was like to be truly lonely.
What surprises me about that experience is that I actually liked being alone. Perhaps I would not have discovered that fact if we had stayed in Percy. Perhaps it took the indifference and coldness of a big city to instill some confidence in myself. Being exposed to new experiences will do that but given a choice, I probably would have opted for the familiar. I loved Percy.
Nowadays I am older and wiser and realize that 1963 was the year that changed my life for the good. One can always look back upon a time of life with fondness and longing. Percy has a happy place in my memories. But I know that Percy would have held me back. My true potential would have been lost there. I love the small town but I also needed the big city.
Memories by
OH
Until the shoe factory closed down. My dad tried to make a living doing something he loved to do, work with chemicals. He moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, and got involved with an old friend trying to make some money inventing products using chemicals. It didn't work our so well. My mother had to go to work at a nursing home to help pay the bills. I hated that!
By the summer of 1962 it was obvious my dad wasn't going to get rich, or even close, by working with chemicals, so he took a job in a steel-fabrication plant in Aurora, Illinois, about 40 miles west of Chicago. Wow, the big city! He got a little bit ahead and found an apartment and mom and I moved 300 miles north during Christmas vacation. It was a brand new awakening to life all around me.
I had a very rough time adjusting to this new life. Going to my new school, Lincoln Elementary, in the middle of the sixth grade, made me realize how far behind the school in Percy was compared to the big city. I had been used to getting straight E's, which equated to A's, in Percy, and I had a tough time eking out B's and C's in Lincoln. I was so far behind in arithmetic, and I didn't ask for help, that it took me the rest of the school year to figure out how to do math with fractions on my own.
I was a little boy in stature, and I had absolutely no self confidence. I cried when we left Percy and I felt like crying nearly every day as I went to grade school and longed for my old familiar friends from Percy. So much so that I spent that summer vacation back in Percy. I stayed with my sister Lila, who had four sons, the oldest of which was 4 years younger than me. We played a lot of wiffleball that summer.
I cried again when I had to leave Percy at the end of summer and go back home to Aurora. I was very nervous because in the fall I had to start a Junior High School and there were hundreds and hundreds of new students there. Classes in different rooms and different parts of the building, even different floors. So hard to get around and so much to learn. I felt so lost at Ben Frankiln Junior High and missed my small town life.
I think I had been holding on to hope that Aurora was just a temporary thing. That my dad would get back on his feet and somehow we would be able to move back to Percy again where I was happy. Of course that was never going to happen. Aurora was our new home.
While I was gone that summer, my parents bought a small, and I mean small, house not very far away from the apartment we had been renting. Good thing, cause I had friends living close by and I didn't want to start all over again. Since Junior High was a new experience for all the seventh graders, it became a lot easier than I thought. I had to learn to eat my lunch a lot faster, though. Time went quickly at Franklin but I managed to adjust.
I was riding a bus to school on my own now. Sometimes I would ride my bike but it was quite a pedal so the bus became my preferred means of transportaion. I felt like a big boy in a big city. I was making friend with new kids, and some of them were black. That was a new experience for me, also. No black people in Percy. I found a best friend in Greg Crenshaw, a portly and happy black kid with a great outlook on life. After high school, Greg came out of the closet and revealed his homosexuality. A fact that didn't surprise me at the time, he was always a bit faggy, but in the seventh grade, I didn't even know what homosexuality meant. Hell, I didn't know anything about sex yet.
I learned all I needed to know in time but it was comforting to me to know that other kids my age didn't know things either. We were many ignorant kids trying to find our way into adulthood. Life was changing all around me and I was growing up. I wasn't ready to grow up but it was happening just the same.
A year earlier I was happily living in small town comfort, in a world where everything made sense to me. It was a world I had known all my life, the only life I knew. Now it was 1963 and everything was different. Life was hard and it was faster and I was not ready for it. I missed the comfort of small town life. The warmth of the small town life. City life was cold, especially in northern Illinois. Below zero temperatures in the winter were very common. And I was essentially an only child by now. The only one left at home and I found out what it was like to be truly lonely.
What surprises me about that experience is that I actually liked being alone. Perhaps I would not have discovered that fact if we had stayed in Percy. Perhaps it took the indifference and coldness of a big city to instill some confidence in myself. Being exposed to new experiences will do that but given a choice, I probably would have opted for the familiar. I loved Percy.
Nowadays I am older and wiser and realize that 1963 was the year that changed my life for the good. One can always look back upon a time of life with fondness and longing. Percy has a happy place in my memories. But I know that Percy would have held me back. My true potential would have been lost there. I love the small town but I also needed the big city.
Memories by
OH
# posted by OH @ 6:42 AM 
