"Them Thar Wheels"

My youngest brother Kevin celebrated his birthday the other day; I did not need face/book to inform me thusly because I can still remember the day he made his Fellowship Street debut. Papa brought Mama and him home from the hospital in the ’64 Rambler Classic Station Wagon,which served-gulp- 

Kevin's grand entrance, captured live on film, by the
author of Mark's Work.

 as the family car.

I know the birthdays of all eight my siblings. I know the dates because as a family we celebrated each and every birthday, with the birthday child dictating the menu of choice on the big day.

Oh, you did that too? Did you also eat meals together as a family? We did, at a picnic table made by Papa, including the fiber-glassing of the table to preserve it. I sat on Papa’s left side my entire life, growing up on Fellowship Street. He liked to have me within easy reach; it did tend to tone my act down just a bit.

We all filled our plates before grace, “to give the little kids an even chance at competing for seconds,” as the old family saying went. Papa would grill us on what we learned in school of an evening, and every Sunday night I would squirm when the subject of what was said during the sermon at mass that morning.

Hell, I never understood much of anything that Father McNamara said my entire life, and I’m not sure my oral-processing ineptitude had anything to do with it. I just think he aimed so much higher than I was capable of reaching. Oh, and by the way, to help me stay focused and to curb my habit of kicking the pew, Papa had me sitting on his immediate left…

I do remember that Father Mac’s Christmas sermon began each year, “Let us take ourselves back in time, to a scene in Bethlehem, and a little child lying in a manger…” and something about “them thar wheels going round and round….”

Did you attend church services as a unit? Our family had a two-pronged approach to church: Papa and the four oldest of us boys went to the eight o’clock mass, while Mama, the girls and the little boys went to a later mass, probably the 10:00 or the 11:15 high mass. After church Mama just might stop by the parish hall to pick up some bonbons for Sunday morning breakfast.

Playing football in Baja, California

Did you go camping in the summertime together? Every summer without fail we went camping at the beach, except for the summer of 1963, when we went up to Shady Oaks in the San Gabriel Mountains. I remember it being ‘63 because it was so crowded in the campground, that after three days, Papa convinced us to come home. 

Mama had stayed home on this excursion and one carrot Papa had dangled in front of us, was that he promised to take us to the movies when we got home. Sure enough we went to the Star Theater in downtown La Puente and saw PT-109, the story of JFK’s WWII South Pacific adventures.

Only three months later we were stunned when John Fitzgerald Kennedy was blown away in Dallas, Texas.

Did your family tackle do-it-yourself projects, as a force with which to be reckoned? Saturdays were always fraught with the possibility that Papa would line us up after breakfast for some day-long chore, hard times for kids on Fellowship Street. 

Mama, aka Pauline, in Baja, 1972

I remember one Fourth of July when we attacked our two apricot trees as a family unit, with the oldest boys stripping the trees of the fat apricots, while the rest of us washed, cut them in half and removed the seeds. Mama froze a bunch, preserved some, and made jam with still more of the same.

“Apricots! Morning, noon and night!” became our lament.

Finally, did you play baseball as a family, especially a family with a total of nine siblings? I exaggerate slightly, because by the time the ninth sibling joined us, Kevin, our baseball-playing days as a family were close to being over. They would resume briefly up on Bell Springs Road, where one year around 1983, our family played the best of the rest of the community, and murdered them, right up at Rex’s home-grown ball-yard, the one we all helped shape in the early part of 1982.

Epic times, those, as the denizens of Bell Springs joined many of those from Cow Mountain, and combined forces for a decade of community baseball.

Families did things together back in the day, and united to show support for anyone in need of it. No better example of this exists than the year my family postponed Christmas for twelve days, leaving the tree and all decorations in place, along with the stacks of yuletide gifts, waiting for none other than me, to come home from overseas.

I was due home on January 8th, for the only leave I would take in the sixteen months I spent in the Republic of South Korea. I took advantage of all the army had taught me, working in Personnel, to forge a new set of orders, ones which stated that my leave actually began on January 5th. 

Imagine that!

I then put on my dress greens and hitched a ride for free from Korea, to Japan, to Travis Air Force Base in California, traveling via stand-by on military aircraft. I waited a total of six hours in Korea and less than an hour in Japan, as I timed my arrival for 45 minutes prior to a Red-Tail leaving for Cali.

This was back in the day when a red-tail did not refer to a hawk.

Are all of my siblings and I as well-connected as we were back in the day? No, of course not, but I never worry because I just remember the words my brother Tom said to me, prior to moving to Hawaii in 1985. “We may go long periods of time without communicating, but that will never change the fact that we are brothers.”

I was in Hawaii once, on my way to Korea, for about an hour-and-a-half, but that was in January of 1973. I wonder. Maybe after 45 years, it’s time for a return visit.

I could even stay longer than ninety minutes this time.