An Apple Core, a Toilet: Misadventures of a 1970s Childhood (12 page)

Left Behind

If it happened today, my five sisters and I would be shipped off to foster homes, my parents would be sent to the clink and my entire family would be humiliated on the local television news.

In 1971, when I was 9, my family left my 4-year-old sister, Mary, at a drive-in theater.

***

Here’s a dirty little secret from the ‘70s: lots of big families lost a kid now and again.

The baby boom ran from 1946 through 1964, but there were still lots of big young families in the early ‘70s.
As it went, Americans, following World War II, were in an optimistic mood. Unlike the Depression era, they had jobs, a growing economy and promising futures.
They married young.
In the late ‘40s into the ‘50s and ‘60s, the average age of a person marrying was 22.5 years for men, 20.1 years for women — down from 24.3 and 21.5, respectively, in 1940.
Marrying immediately after high school was commonplace in the ‘50s, when my parents married.
Fewer people went onto college then, and many of the small percentage of women who did, the stereotype of the times suggested, did so only to get their “Mrs. degree.”
With Americans marrying young, the baby boom kicked into high gear. Statistics show most couples became pregnant within seven months of marriage.
And so it was that American family size increased sharply.
In 1950, the average mom had 3.09 children. By 1957, she had 3.77. Between 1940 and 1960, the number of families with three children doubled. The number having a fourth child quadrupled.
That was the pattern my mother and father followed.
They married in 1956, when my mother was 19 and my father had just turned 23. My oldest sister, Kathy, was born 10 months later. My mother would have five more children — and two miscarriages — through 1971.
In the 1970s there were lots of big families in America — and in my neighborhood.
The Kriegers, next door, had five. The Gillens, Hrivnacs and Greenaways, across the street, all had four. Most families had at least three. Heck, the Hueys had 13 — I went to St. Germaine School with them.
 

As I said, there were plenty of big families in the ‘70s and every one of them lost, forgot, or left behind one of their kids now and again.

***

Family vacations were a preferred time to lose a kid.

Every family with at least three kids left at least one of them in a rest-stop bathroom during at least one vacation.
Mothers generally were in charge of counting heads before the family got back onto the highway, but fathers generally were so eager to “make good time” that they would rush the mothers — who would, sure enough, miss a kid.
I know of one family that left a son and his best friend at a Chicago rest stop and had no idea the two were missing until they were halfway across Iowa.
Another family set off for a camping trip to Deep Creek Lake in Maryland.
“We had a 1964 Volkswagen van and the 10 kids were all piling in,” that mother told me. “I checked the house one last time and climbed in. My husband pulled away from the driveway and we were on our way! We were several miles from home when I re-counted the kids and only came up with nine heads!”
The family rushed home to find its baby daughter locked in the house with her best friend, both of them crying their hearts out.
One of my old neighbors told me she had been left behind at her older brother’s Little League game.
Her father brought her with him and — I don’t know how you can forget having your 6-year-old daughter with you — became so consumed with the eventual win that he brought his son home without ever once realizing he’d left his daughter at the ballpark.
As a rule, moms hardly ever lost one of their kids, but dads did — all the time.
Fortunately for my neighbor, her father got a real tongue-lashing when he arrived home without her, then raced back to the ballpark to find his daughter waiting for him, unharmed.
It could have been much worse. His son could have lost his game.
One of the most common places where families in my neighborhood lost their kids was Kennywood, an amusement park that was a regular black hole for children.
One June day every year, our suburban school district had its own day there. Every family in our neighborhood went.
My mother would pack cold fried chicken, potato salad, chocolate chip cookies, potato chips, sodas and some Pabst Blue Ribbon for my father, and we’d carry our provisions from the station wagon to the picnic area. Over time, every family would claim its own table. And, every year, they’d go back to the same one.
Every family established the same rules, more or less, for its kids. The parents would take the little ones to Kiddie Land, leaving us older kids — 10 and up — free to roam, so long as we returned to the picnic table at the assigned times for dinner and departure.
Regardless, every year, a little kid would wander off — he’d exit the wrong way after a kiddie ride or another kid carrying cotton candy would catch his eye, and he’d disappear.
Parents were more agitated than fearful about such things, as cable news had not yet been invented, and there were no 24-hour stories about kids being abducted in amusement parks.
The agitated parents would lock down the kids who weren’t lost, form a posse of sorts and begin searching for the runt.
Sooner or later, a crabby older man would announce on the loudspeaker that a crying kid was looking for his parents and ask them to please come to lost and found to claim the little snot-nose.
Later, at both dinner and departure, us older kids would be nowhere to be found and our parents, really agitated by now, would fan out until they found us and gave us a tremendous grounding for not showing up for dinner or departure on time.
As I said, in the early ‘70s, where lost kids were concerned, parents were more agitated than worried.

***

My family had better luck than most families. We hadn’t lost any of our kids until the drive-in incident in 1971.
It’s true that in 1966, when I was 4, I slipped out of the house undetected for 10 minutes or so.
Krissy and Kathy, 7 and 9, respectively, had been instructed to keep an eye on me while my mother went downstairs with a load of laundry.
Krissy, eager to get me out of her hair, gave me a coin she'd made from a piece of cardboard. She told me I could buy candy with it.
I walked out the back door and made my way through the woods and onto Diane Drive. It was only one block to the "little store," the mom-and-pop shop at the bottom of the hill.
I remember standing there, mesmerized by the incredible potpourri of penny candy and begging to buy some, while the old fellow who owned the joint grunted that my money was no good.
Unbeknownst to me, a great hullabaloo was taking place at my house. My mother quickly figured out what Krissy had done, and with Krissy and Kathy in tow, raced to the store to retrieve me.
It’s also true that when I was 6, after getting in trouble when Kevin Greenaway and I put gravel in my father’s gas tank — Kevin assured me it was fuel — I snuck out again and hid under Kevin’s side porch.
I could hear Mom and Dad, as well as my Aunt Jane and Uncle Mike who were visiting from Syracuse, calling for me, but I felt so ashamed that I didn’t come out for a while.
Other than those two incidents, none of the kids in our family had ever been misplaced.
This was partly because my family didn’t leave the house often — not the way families do today as they rush their kids to one event after another all weekend long.
Aside from church and rare family events, we were always home. I can recall our family going out to dinner once throughout my entire childhood — if you don’t count vacations.
For starters, there was the issue of cost. My father was the sole breadwinner. Taking six kids and two adults to even a modestly priced restaurant cost well over $100 in today’s dollars — money my parents simply could not spare.
Then there was logistics. In the early 1970s, my father drove a Plymouth Fury III — a Starship-Enterprise-looking thing with faux wood paneling on its sides.
My sisters were embarrassed to ride in it and, besides, they refused to ride next to me, their “stinky, sweaty” brother.
They’d complain so loudly that my father would banish me to the seat all the way in the back, which faced the rear window and was designed, apparently, to keep a kid in a perpetual state of motion sickness.
I’d soon be moaning, telling my father I was going to lose my lunch, which made my sisters all the more disgusted, which caused them to complain even more.
It was such a hassle for my parents to take us anywhere, we hardly ever went out — which limited their opportunities to lose a kid.
Boy, would that change when we went to the drive-in.

***

The outing started off well enough.
My father spent several minutes searching for the perfect spot (dads back then were obsessed with finding the perfect window speaker).

And, of course, he needed to be near the restroom — not just because we’d be in and out of there all night, but because he’d brought a few Pabst Blue Ribbons to help him survive the evening and he’d be spending plenty of time in there himself.
We got out of the car as he opened the tailgate and folded down the back seats, then got back in. I began devouring corn curls, potato chips, onion dip and pretzels, and washed it down with Regent soda pop.

Alas, they don’t make Regent, a regional brand, anymore, which came in 64 oz. glass bottles in a worn-out wood case.

Each bottle displayed an image of a king on the front sticker. Our favorite flavors were, in this order, orange, grape, cherry, cola and root beer, and, after sitting in the melting icy water in the cooler my father packed, there was no finer beverage on earth to a kid.

In any event, as the blue sky soon darkened and the projector began rattling. Black-and-white numbers — "5, 4, 3, 2, 1 …" — flashed onto the screen. Yellowed footage advertised hot dogs, popcorn and other concession items we could never get our father to buy.
“For goodness sakes, we brought all those snacks, and we’re not going to pay 35 cents for a lousy hot dog!” he’d grumble.

It didn't take long before we began squabbling over pillows, blankets and positioning. My sisters complained that my big noggin was blocking their view, and so I was banished to the back of the car.
As I recollect, we went to see "Paper Moon" that night — a movie about a Depression-era con man and a young girl who travel around taking people's money — but my sisters say it was "Herbie the Love Bug."
Whatever the case, I was so busy devouring snacks — we didn't have them often, so I was taking advantage of my good fortune — I didn't care about the movie. My stomach soon was so full, however, that I ended up on my back, groaning in agony.
It's important to understand how everyone was situated. My father sat in the driver's seat. My mother sat to his right, holding my sister Jennifer. Mom "shooshed" us constantly to keep us from waking the baby. In the back, under the pile of blankets and pillows, were my sisters Kathy, 14; Krissy, 12; Lisa, 6; and Mary, 4.
Throughout the first and second movies, there was plenty of sleeping, snoring, waking, squabbling, shooshing, complaining ("Mommy, Tommy stinks!) and restroom usage.
Unbeknownst to everyone, however, Mary — who always had a touch of wanderlust — had slipped out the back of the car to go to the restroom. Preoccupied with my aching belly — I was groaning pretty loudly by then — I didn’t notice her slip by me.
About then, the second movie was coming to a close. My father, always eager to beat the rush, hurriedly packed up the cooler and fired up the car. It never occurred to anyone that Mary might not be under the blankets. Off we drove as the final credits began to roll.
I don't recall how far we got before Lisa shouted, "Where's Mary?"
My mother, trying not to disturb the baby, instinctively began shooshing. It took five minutes or more before Lisa persuaded everyone that Mary was still at the drive-in.
Panic overcame us. My father made a hard U-turn and floored it. Our fake-wood-paneled Plymouth wagon roared down the road like the car in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang."
We fishtailed as we hit the gravel parking lot. The lot was empty, except for the car that had been next to ours.
Mary stood next to it, crying as she held the hand of somebody else's dad — a dad who waited patiently for the idiot family that lost one of its kids.

It never occurred to the fellow to call the cops or report my family to Children and Youth Services, as might happen today.

He probably figured it would only be a matter of time before he lost one of his own kids.

Our Snapshot of America
 

It was a fine night that offered an interesting snapshot of America.
Over the Thanksgiving break, I joined with 50 others for an impromptu high school reunion.
We grew up in Bethel Park, a typical American suburb in Pittsburgh, PA that exploded in population in the '60s and '70s.
Many of our parents had grown up in the city in the '20s, '30s and '40s. They were brimming with optimism by the time they moved to Bethel.
By 1946, America had won World War II. The baby boom was under way and would last some 18 years.
My parents, born in 1933 and 1937, were of the Silent Generation. In 1956, soon after my father returned from the Army — he was drafted just after the Korean War ended — he took a secure job with the telephone company and married my mother, his high school sweetheart. They had very little money, but, like many couples then, began a family right away.
By 1964, they'd saved enough to move to a brand-new suburban home in the "Promised Land" — Bethel Park.
They did so because they dreamed of a better life for their children — better schools, a finer home, a safer neighborhood with huge backyards where their children could play.
Bethel Park delivered.
Through the mid-'70s, my classmates and I experienced what was essentially a 1950s upbringing.
As I said earlier, most moms stayed home and ran our neighborhoods like well-oiled machines.
Though it was a rigid time for adults — women had limited opportunities outside the home and dads carried most of the financial burden — it was a great time to be a kid.
There were no 24-hour cable news channels to scare parents into locking their kids in the house.
We played outside all day — we jumped on our bikes and rode throughout South Park, several miles away.
We lived by two basic rules: We better not be late for supper and we better come home when the street lights come on.
Our childhood was marked by a total lack of chaos — an abundance of orderliness and innocence.
I remember one night when our father made us turn off "Love, American Style," a TV comedy series about romance. Such "racy fare" was not permitted in our home.
We were protected from most of the adult world. We had little awareness of the war in Vietnam, riots and other turmoil rocking the country.
Our childhood world was one of security and hopefulness, a world in which we were free to dream.
Though the economy was bad during our high school years, it didn't trouble most of us. We had a raucous good time — many of us had college and bright futures ahead of us.
Our timing was great. When we graduated from college in 1984, the economy was booming — and would continue to grow, for the most part, until 2008.
Now here we are, nearly a half-century old. Our hair is thinning. We've put on a few more pounds than we'd like. Many of our surviving parents are ill.
The optimism infused in us from our start is being challenged as we worry about our future, our children's future, our country's future.
But one Saturday night after Thanksgiving, we enjoyed a respite from our adult world.
Our formal 30-year reunion had been canceled due to a lack of attendees, but four classmates organized our impromptu reunion instead at a Bethel Park pub.
What a grand time it was to chat and laugh with 50 others who share the common experience of a distinct time and place now gone forever.