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I Love You, Miss Huddleston LP
And Other Inappropriate Longings of My Indiana Childhood
Chapter One
My Perilous Start
When I was four months old, a few days after a photographer had taken my baby picture, my father lost his job. When the photographer returned bearing the proofs for my parents to choose from, they could no longer afford the photos. The man took pity and gave them a proof for free, which my parents displayed on our living room wall, alongside pictures of my siblings. I wore a cute little Onesie. My right hand was extended in a posture of blessing, a beatific smile lay upon my features, purple ink etched the word PROOF across my belly. Adding to this indignity, I was afflicted with cradle cap, which, in combination with a stray shadow, gave me the appearance of wearing a yarmulke. I looked like a miniature rabbi whom the Lord, in that fickle way of the Divine, had placed among the Gentiles. Like my brothers and sister, I was baptized Catholic, though I now believe that was done to throw me off.
When I was old enough to notice my picture, I asked why I was branded so peculiarly.
Glenn, my oldest brother, took it upon himself to explain this and other mysteries to me. "You're not one of us," he said. "Someone left you in a banana box on our front porch."
"We thought someone had given us bananas," my father said. "It was a real disappointment."
Shaken by this revelation, I looked at my mother.
"We love you just the same," she said, patting me on the head.
Thus, I was as Moses among the Egyptians, set adrift in the reeds, a stranger in a strange land.
As a young child I was prone to illness, lurchingfrom one infirmity to another. After one was healed, another rose and took its place. When I was finally healed of the cradle cap, my eyes became inexplicably crossed and my legs turned inward. My mother drove me to Indianapolis to the Shimp Optical Company, where I was fitted with binocular-like glasses. A few weeks later, splints were lashed to my legs and I lay on my back for several days, like a bug-eyed beetle stunned by a spritz of Raid, which is where I was when John F. Kennedy was shot. But I had my own problems and gave his predicament little thought.
In addition to my poor vision and limited mobility, I had a profound speech impediment and could barely make myself understood. My parents employed a speech therapist who came to our home each Thursday and had me repeat words with the letter r.
"The wed caw dwove down the gwavel woad," I would say, over and over again.
The therapist, a Mr. Wobewt Fowtnew, eventually diagnosed me with a weak tongue that couldn't curl sufficiently to make the r sound. He advised my mother to have me take up bubble gum and brought a bag of Bazooka each week for me to chew. This gave me little incentive to correct the problem, and I continued to suffer.
Suffering was the common theme of that decade—the 1960s. Although my parents tried to hide its more violent aspects from us, I sensed something nefarious was under way. It had been our custom to watch Walter Cronkite after supper, but more and more often my siblings and I were shooed outside to play, where we would consult with the other children about world affairs.
Tom Keen—who lived three doors down, was four years older than I, and knew everything there was to know—told us we were at war, fighting the communists in Vietnam. I wasn't sure who the communists were, but knew they were bad since we had drills at school in the event they attacked us. Ours was a passive resistance—we crouched in the hallway, hands over our heads, until the theoretical bombs stopped falling and Mr. Michaels, our principal, came on the intercom to tell us it was safe to return to our desks.
Mr. Vaughn, our immediate neighbor, blamed every social ill on the commies. I deduced from him that communists had long hair, didn't bathe, listened to rock music, and lived, not only in Vietnam, but also in California, which I looked up in the atlas my father kept next to his recliner. California seemed perilously close, less than a foot from Indiana. I would lie awake at night, worrying about the communists and their near proximity.
The communists weren't the only threat to our well-being. Mr. Vaughn also warned us about the Japanese. "Gotta watch those little Nippers. Turn our backs on 'em for a second and they'll sneak attack us. Feisty little devils, the whole lot of 'em." Mr. Vaughn had a German shepherd named King, ostensibly to protect him against the Japanese and communists. But I fed him dog biscuits through the fence and we were thicker than thieves, King and I.
Despite these threats to my well-being, I reached the age of seven and went with my father to the town dump on a Saturday morning in search of a bicycle. Doc Foster, our town's garbage man, guided us past heaps of trash, scavenging various parts of bicycles until we had enough components to fashion suitable transportation. It was, when we finished assembling it, an object of kaleidoscope beauty—a Schwinn Typhoon, consisting of a green, slightly bent frame, two tires of differing sizes, a blue back fender and a yellow front one, and Sting-Ray handlebars. The bike lacked a seat, adding to its uniqueness, so I learned to ride standing up.
Thus equipped, I set out with my brothers to explore our surroundings, riding east down Mill Street and north on Jefferson to the Danner's Five and Dime, where we visited the parrots and listened while hoodlums taught them dirty words. The hoodlums not only led the birds astray, they played pinball, an activity I have ever since associated with moral delinquency.
I Love You, Miss Huddleston LP
And Other Inappropriate Longings of My Indiana Childhood. Copyright (c) by Philip Gulley . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
