On Saturday,
Sept. 6, the Douglasses will be gathering for a family reunion in Silver
Spring, Maryland. It got me and my
brother JD thinking about a place we had visited as children—the home of Tom
and Tillie. It’s where my dad lived from the time he was born until he was a teenager. I have pretty strong memories of the place
and of Tom and Tillie, and I emailed with JD and talked to my dad, Paul, Jr.,
this weekend to hear their memories and to get details right.
A preface: I
love the names. Tillie’s a good one,
especially when you say “Tom and Tillie.”
Her real name was Leoma Carson (no one seems to know where the name Tillie
came from). Tom’s mother’s name was Ola
Edna but was known simply as Mom. There
was Big Gene and Little Gene and Eugene.
Paul and Pauline. Tom’s sister,
Mary Frances, married a guy named Rivers.
And the middle name of my dad and his dad? Manuel.
No idea about the story behind that.
My mom’s family has some outstanding names as well, but that will wait
for another blog.
Tom was my
dad’s uncle. He and Tillie had two kids,
Jack and Gene (this was Little Gene).
They, along with Mom, lived in a white clapboard house in Clarksburg,
West Virginia on 14th Street, just off West Virginia Avenue. In addition, Paul and Pauline and their kids lived
at the house in a basement apartment.
I had remembered the house as some grand place. Yet several years ago when I took my dad to his 60th high school reunion, we drove by and I was astounded by how modest it seemed compared to my memory.
Paul and
Pauline had a tumultuous relationship.
They had married young, had two sons—my dad, who’s known as Bud, and Donald,
and divorced when my dad was about 10.
They each remarried, and the boys lived for a short time with Paul and
his second wife before moving back to Tom and Tillie’s. Paul and Pauline divorced their second
spouses after just a few months and remarried each other.
Bud, Don,
Jack and Gene were all very close. After
high school my dad and Jack, who were the same age and were in the same class
at school, joined the Navy and were in boot camp together at Naval Station Great
Lakes in Illinois. Occasionally they were
stationed close to one another, at one time near Washington, D.C., and later in
Hampden Roads, Virginia. My dad served
on the U.S.S. Amphion (AR13), an auxiliary
repair ship that spent time in New York Harbor and Hampden Roads. He didn’t get to see much of the world, but
he recalled that liberty in New York wasn’t half bad. Don and Gene also joined the Navy and served
together on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Coral
Sea (CV43).
I remember
visiting Tom and Tillie when I was a little kid. They were characters and I really liked
them. Tom would make me laugh by lifting
up his undershirt and extending out his ample stomach, and I would do the
same. Tillie was pretty animated and had
a high-pitched, raspy voice, and she and Tom could get into it pretty good, but
it always seemed to be in a good-natured way.
Tom and
Paul, Sr. worked at the Hazel-Atlas glass factory, the largest employer in Clarksburg. They worked eight-hour shifts that varied
weekly—day, evening or graveyard. The
women worked too, but only six-hour shifts, which also varied, so there was constant
coming and going. Mom was the designated
cook and she was always cooking. In
fact, as far as I knew, she never left the kitchen. She cooked enormous meals, with more side
dishes than you can imagine. I think I
got my love of heart-stopping breakfasts from the spreads she and Tillie would
prepare—heaps of eggs, biscuits, sausage, gravy, potatoes, pancakes.
The men used
to play bridge after work in the living room on a big circular table. Tom and Paul played with men they had grown
up with since grade school. My dad
remembers sometimes they would start playing at night and would still be at it
the next morning when he was heading off for school.
The basement
apartment my dad grew up in was a magical place for me. In the years our family would visit Tom and
Tillie, either at Christmas or Thanksgiving, nobody was living in it. Above the apartment was a small room that had
been added to the house, behind the kitchen.
When we stayed at the house, my brother and I would sleep in that room
and spy on the men who would be playing cards below. I remember one time being in the apartment
while the men were playing and one of them asked me to go to the corner store
to pick up cigarettes for him. “Just
tell him who sent you,” he said. It
wasn’t a big deal.
The
apartment opened into a large vegetable garden behind the house. Tom and Tillie would can vegetables, as I
suppose most people did in the era of “victory” gardens, and would store the
jars in an unfinished cellar with a dirt floor that was next to the apartment. My dad loved bringing home jars of Tillie’s
peppers and tomatoes. I didn’t
appreciate them as a kid but I would probably love them now.
In addition
to bridge, the men would play pinochle, usually at the firehouse. They played “king of the mountain,” where two
teams would play until one team was eliminated.
Then another twosome would try to unseat the kings. In the Navy my dad and Jack had learned
pinochle and thought they were pretty accomplished. One night while Tom, Tillie, Paul and Pauline
were vacationing in Virginia Beach, the boys took on Paul, Sr. and Tom and got
their clocks cleaned in a humiliating loss. My dad said that knocked them down a peg or two. He also played three-hand cut-throat
pinochle, where the bidder played against the other two, with whoever was
around: Rivers, Tom, Don or his dad.
My dad
doesn’t talk much about the time when his parents were splitting up and he and
Donald were left being raised by their aunt and uncle and Mom. I’m sure it was a confusing, punishing time
for them.
Still, they lived
in a home with people who cared for them.
The four boys bonded as brothers and I’m sure that helped them get
through trying times. And the house on
14th Street, grand or not, stood as a barrier against the crashing
turmoil of an otherwise unmoored childhood.
Copyright ©2014 by David Douglass
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