A New Friend, Baseball and Disappointment

One day before Mom returned from Cincinnati a car pulled up in front of Grandma’s house. A tiny woman and a boy about my age climbed out. Grandma came out on the porch and told me that the woman was Catherine Darling and the boy was her son Jeff. They wanted to know if I would like to play catch. That was how I made my first friend in Genoa City, Jeff Darling.

Jeff was a year older than I, a sports nut, and we hit it off immediately. While we played I noticed that he moved in a sort or herky-jerky manner. I later found out that he had cerebral palsy and had worked his butt off learning to deal with it.

Genoa City was about as big as my old neighborhood only with less to do. When you entered town down cemetery hill (I already knew that place too well) the population sign said:

 

Genoa City

population 1005

When you entered from State Highway 12 it read:

Genoa City

population 990

Later I drew my Uncle Bill’s attention to it. I think he must have said something to somebody on the town council because within a month or two both signs said 1005.

I’ll write more about Genoa City (We called it Genoa, but there was another Wisconsin town across the state to the west called Genoa) later but now I want to get back to that game of catch with Jeff.

He loved the Cubs, and I the Reds, but we both loved baseball so we always had something to talk about. While we played catch that afternoon he invited me to come to the town ballpark and join their Pony League team.

The last picture of me taken in Cincinnati

I can’t say that everyone on the team was happy to see me. Pony League ball was for kids 14-16 and I had just turned 13, but the coach, Chuck “Skeets” Schuren welcomed me and promised me a uniform. Now I was going to be on the team.

My role was official bench warmer for a couple of games. Then, in a game against Elkhorn, Skeets got mad at the whole team for taking too many pitches. After one kid took three straight strikes for the second time, Skeets threw his hat down, looked at me and asked, “Will you at least swing the damn bat?” I said I would and he had me pinch-hit for the next batter. I swung at the first pitch and hit a hard ground ball to the third baseman who threw me out. I was disappointed but Skeets was ecstatic. “That’s what I want. That’s what I want,” he bellowed. “Just swing the damn bat.”

After that I played the rest of the season—and kept swinging the bat. Being a numbers freak I know exactly what I hit; 9 for 19 for a .474 average.

Jeff’s invitation to play probably kept me sane that summer. I will always be thankful to him (and his mom—more about her later) for what that game of catch did for a lost and angry young boy.

The other good thing that happened was that my Uncle Bill (for convenience sake I am just going to write “Bill” from here forward) began to let me ride with him and help on his truck. Bill worked for the local co-op picking up bulk milk from area farms. His was one of three local trucks operating there.

My uncle Bill, his wife Dorothy at my grandparent's house, with their first child, Nancy

Riding with him I learned the difference between beef cattle (Angus and Hereford) and dairy cows: Guernseys, Jerseys, and the big producers, Holsteins. Holsteins gave the most milk, but Guernseys and Jerseys produced higher butterfat content. Farmers were paid on both total weight and percentage of butterfat so it wasn’t unusual to see mixed herds.

I also learned to see the difference between sweet corn and feed corn, wheat, hay, straw, and silage as well as an assortment of other things about farm work.

 Every farm had a dog and I met them all—and all were nice except a little mutt at one of our final stops. He would wait behind Bill or me until we started to climb into the truck and then take a nip at our fanny. Bill talked to the farmer a couple of times but the farmer did nothing. One day as we left the truck to hook things up I saw Bill put a small pipe wrench on the seat. When we finished and went back to the truck, the dog jumped at Bill he turned and whacked it in the head with the wrench. The dog staggered around like a drunk as we drove away and never came near the truck again.

With me helping Bill hook and unhook from the bulk tanks he saved about an hour and an hour and a half each day. He told me that later in the year he would take me to the Walworth County Fair as a reward. I was excited about that because I knew that mom and dad had first met there.

Fair time came, and I wasn’t going to ask, but Bill didn’t call. Looking back I suppose he was just too caught up in his own family things and forgot—He and his family went, but it hurt a lot that I wasn’t invited.

The Congregational Church had a youth group and I went on several outings with them. They were pretty much strangers to me—none were on the baseball team—so I mostly felt like a 5^th wheel.

There was one funny event I can share. We were swimming at a lake (I can’t remember which one) and were having “chicken fights.” These were boy/girl teams. The girls would sit on the boy’s shoulders and try to pull the girl from the shoulders of the other guy. It was mayhem, and fun. 

My teammate, (whose name I cannot remember—forgive me) pulled a girl from someone else’s shoulder. That girl fell, (whose name I do remember but won’t embarrass here) and as she fell her leg slid down my chest and into and through my bathing trunks. I still laugh when I picture how red her face was as she worked to get her leg out of my pants without looking at me. It was quite an introduction—and kinda sexy, too.

So this was how I survived my first summer in Genoa; baseball and Jeff, bulk milk and Bill. Except for sadness and tears when I thought of dad it was pretty good.

Things all went to hell quietly but quickly when school started.

First day of school for the McCalester kids, fall 1961. Karen in the center, Leta on the right.

Genoa’s school covered grades K-8, and I was entering 8^th grade. The only people I knew were my cousin Peggy Kautz and a few kids from the church—none of the players from the baseball team where there because they were all one or two grades above me. 

The teacher, Aenola Schuren, by way of introducing me to the class had me stand as she said, “This is Wray McCalester, he is from Cincinnati where he was in a special program for smart students.” I would rather she had punched me in the gut. It was very embarrassing.  When I started "dating" my first real girl friend, Linda West, she told me that some of the girls called me "The handsome brain from Cincinnati." That made me feel a little better!

Luckily, there were two guys in class I had gotten along well with at church; Rob Schuren (distant relation to Aenola) and Keith Crawford. Rob’s dad, Bud, ran the local grocery and Keith’s dad worked for him, so I wasn’t entirely without allies. But after Aenolia’s intro the other kids probably thought I was a strange bird. What’s worse, they were right.

If you remember from an earlier blog, while I was in 6^th grade the school (or representatives thereof) had wanted me to skip 7^th and 8^th grades and go directly into high school. Mom and dad had nixed that, feeling I would be too out of place. Instead I had entered the college prep program in 7^th grade.

Here lay the problem which soon led me to despise everything about school except sports: I had already learned everything that was to be covered in Genoa’s eighth grade. And I mean everything. I told mom not long after school began and, so, she told me, she tried to get me moved ahead to 9^th grade. The school refused. I suspect they didn’t want some “big city” people telling them how backward they were.

Stuck in a school which couldn’t teach me anything I did what most bored, angry kids would do; I raised hell.

Mom and dad had made what they sincerely believed was the right decision at the time—but neither had anticipated dad’s death and our move to Wisconsin. Had I skipped the grades in Ohio I would have entered 10^th grade in Wisconsin and may have retained some interest in school. Instead I was stuck in a grade that could teach me nothing with a teacher who was known for strictness (some might say meanness) with few allies.

I was a bad enough influence on Rob and Keith that on one of our several trips to the principal’s office Mr. Behrens asked, “Who do you guys think you are, the terrible three?” We immediately adopted it as our “team” name.

Mrs. Schuren had an annoying little bell she would pound when the class was too loud or when she wanted to scold someone, or simply get our attention. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding it would ring before she would begin her rant. I hated that bell—and while I am certain others did too—I decided to do something about it.

By this time she had moved me to a desk immediately in front of hers to better watch me. While the class was on recess I chewed 3-4 sticks of gum into a gooey ball, went back to the room and packed the gum into the bell. I clued Rob and Keith in, and when recess ended we all started talking, slamming desk lids, etc.

Aenola sprang into action and immediately began pounding on her now silent bell. The more she pounded the madder she got so the more she pounded, etc. Finally she upended the bell and found the gum. She did try to remove the gum, but it’s sogginess must have been revolting and she made a disgusted face and let things be. 

For some strange reason, she sent Rob, Keith and I to the office. (Put your shocked face here.)

The terrible three took our chewing out (Wisconsin, unlike Ohio, didn’t have corporal punishment) and then went back to class. We didn’t hear that damnable bell for at least one day.

By now you may have realized that this entire post has been about me, me, me. You’d be right. What you are reading about is the beginning of my descent into a selfish personal hell that was soon hurtful to everyone around me. But before I go into that in the coming posts I want to catch up with what mom was doing to try and keep things together. After that I'd like to end this one on a positive note.

Mom began looking for work as soon as she had finished things up in Cincinnati. She found a job at International Register Company (IRC). She rode with another woman from town (I think this was Vivian Coan, but I can’t be certain).

The pay was a munificent $1.15/hour—but since it was piecework she could earn $1.65 if she “made rate” plus 50%. The women, and all were women except set-up and maintenance men who made significantly more, had to be careful not to exceed rate + 50% or the rate would be raised. Mom, who had only worked as a waitress, ticket taker and at the games at Coney Island until I was born, now had to transition to factory work.

She was good at the work, which allowed her to make about $3000/year. She still received ADC for us kids and that had been raised to about $60/month/kid. Add that to the $3000 and she made about $5000/year.

The problem was that mom wanted to provide for us as well as dad had been able to before he died and this was impossible. She finally inherited a car in 1963 from my dad’s dad when he died; a 1953 Pontiac, She then obtained her first driving license ever at the age of 46!—But she wanted a house for us kids.

She saved every nickel she could—spending nothing on herself—and managed to put together a down payment on a 100 year old two story just down the street. It's cost was $7200 and her payments were, if I remember correctly, about $71.00/month. The house we were living in was also for sale for about $5000, but she wanted something bigger for us kids. Had she realized how quickly we kids would grow and be gone she would have opted for the smaller, more affordable house.

The house she bought had been owned by an old woman who had painted the entire interior of the house park bench green. Mom wouldn’t even let us see it until she had repainted it. She worked repainting it every night after her factory job. Here I must mention that she received no help from her family. She did it all on her own, all while paying rent on the Zindler house (where we rented) AND making payments on the new place. She was continuously in a state of exhaustion.

Worst of all my sisters and I didn’t care. The house was a great victory for mom and completely unappreciated by us. I was even upset because there was more lawn to mow.

There is much more to tell in this vein, but I would like to end on a positive note. Here it is:

In June of 2011 I came back to visit Genoa. That itself was nothing unusual. I try to come back once or twice a year. But this time was special. It was the 50th anniversary of Jeff’s coming to Grandma’s house to play catch.

Jeff and I, with his wife, sister and others in tow, went to my grandmother’s old house and, for a few minutes, played catch to celebrate our friendship. There are no pictures to mark the event or I certainly would post them here, but it was a wonderful moment. This time I played catch with joy and with an old and treasured friend, not as an angry and lonely child. I thank God for that first, and that 50^th anniversary.