Storytellersunplugged

By Dick Hill

Forget the madeleine, it was the taste of paste that brought me back. Not even the taste of paste, but the memory of the taste of paste. Staples is where we buy all our business supplies, mostly paper and blank cd’s for sending off wave files of our latest job. We also do a lot of copying. We get our books for recording on standard 8 ½ by 11 loose sheets, and go to Staples to make a copy of the script for Susie to follow as she engineers and directs my reading. While she handles the copying (I tend to muck things up and elevate my blood pressure dealing with copiers) I wander around looking at all the swell stuff. The other day I was looking for things that would could occupy the grandkids, and though I found a good supply of glue sticks, and Elmer’s Glue, and something called Power Pritt gel adhesive that “Features a unique “top down” dispenser bottle to ensure immediate application!”, the days when you could find a dependable, snackable adhesive seem to be gone. The days of paste are past. And I was a little saddened by the passing. It’s funny what sticks in your mind. Just thinking of paste brought back an intense and immediate memory of its taste, and with it other memories.

Third grade. Donna Smith. A quiet, pretty girl, with smooth lovely skin. Glowing amber is how I described it years later in high school when I wrote adolescent poems trying to win her favor, but when she came into our third grade class, the new kid from exotic Atlanta, I remember marveling at that skin and comparing it to my Sanford gum eraser. The gum eraser is inextricably linked to a bright red pencil box, which in turn reminds me of the bike.

It was a standard, one-speed, with coaster brakes. Might have been one of those Schwinns that you can see now in bike shops. Expensive retro conveyances. My dad had one of his old pals pick it up for him at the salvage yard where he’d once worked and bring it down to the basement of our four unit. We lived in the upper rear flat, and I learned sometime later that while I was at school he would lock the brakes on his wheelchair, hoist himself out, scoot to the hall, then use his still powerful workingman’s arms to lower his butt step by step down to the basement, no ramps in those days, then work his way over to the padlocked wire cage assigned to us. There he sanded the frame, applied a glossy new coat of paint, added chromed fenders, cleaned and oiled all the working parts.

He gave it new white handle grips with pink plastic streamers, and a chromed basket attached to the handle bars.

Money was always in short supply. A series of illnesses and an explosion while he was torching a car in the junkyard where he had worked part time after his shift at the plant had put my dad in that chair. He had, I think, a sixth grade education, and had left the family farm during the depression and moved to Milwaukee. His life lost it’s definition when he could no longer work. He spent his days carefully reading the paper, hauling himself to his feet to wash dishes at the sink, or make dinner. My mother worked as a nurse’s assistant, and there was a terrible and dangerous and twisted shift in our family’s existence when she became the breadwinner. When he was forced to surrender his identity as a working man, he surrendered much much more. He was an intelligent man, with a good sense of humor and a love of music, but these qualities only rarely surfaced. For the most part he was very quiet, and humble and submissive. Defeated.

He occupied himself for many hours each day making potholders out of nylon loops, stretching them across a little metal frame, weaving other loops through. The sort of thing an eight year old might spend a rainy afternoon doing. Reduced as he was to being as powerless as a child, stuck in that upper rear flat overlooking the alley out the north facing windows, I imagine all his afternoons felt clouded and gray. Some potholders were sold for pennies, most we gave away to relatives at Christmas. He was sure to keep track of what colors or color combinations he gave people, making sure they didn’t receive duplicates. They were our family’s offerings when the extended clan gathered to exchange gifts at Christmas. The bike was a real accomplishment. Product of god knows how many hours painfully balancing against the work bench carefully sanding and painting and cleaning and reassembling, how many trips up and down those flights of stairs on his hands and ass. A great investment of love and labor and careful workmanship that transformed a worn rusted discard into what I can now recognize for its real value. Its real value. It must have given him a rare and fleeting sense of accomplishment.

On my birthday I was told there was a special present waiting for me in the basement. I knew what that meant. I’d been borrowing a neighbor’s bike to work toward earning my Boy Scout merit badge in cycling. Now I’d finally have a bike of my own, one I could use for the final step toward the badge, a fifty mile trip up and down the glacier carved hills and hollows of the kettle morraine outside Milwaukee. My dad sat in the open doorway in his wheelchair as I thundered down the stairs, then listened for the whoops and hollers of joy that never came.

In those days, long before the appearance of 10 speeds, and 21 speeds, and four thousand dollar mountain bikes, the ultimate dream for me was a black, three-speed English “racer” with skinny tires and hand brakes like the other guys had. What I saw was a bloated, vulgar, hand me down obscenity. I stood there staring at it, bitter tears of disappointment coursing down my cheeks. The bike was like the county issued boots I wore instead of new sneakers, it left a taste as unsatisfying as the processed charity cheese that was a staple in our house. My dad finally called down, asked what I thought of my present. I screamed back that it was stupid, that I hated it. I ran out of the house and didn’t come back till late that night. I never rode the bike, and it disappeared from the basement a few weeks later.

My dad died while I was in Nam. He was a good man, and I did love him, but not as much or as well as I should have. Funny the things you remember. Funny what sticks in your mind. Like paste.

–Dick Hill