What would you do if you’re dream came true? Are you sure?
Meet Felix Madden. He knew. At least, he thought he did.
Did you ever wonder what you would do if one of those fairy tales came true and happened to you, like the one where you wished upon a star and some guy you don’t know suddenly pops in front of your face and tells you to “hurry it up ‘cause ‘e’s got three other billion stars to cover b'sides you'n ya’ know”?
Felix Madden never wondered. Oh sure, he’d thought about what he would do if he ever hit the lottery (his wife actually. She was always playing the damned thing -- she spent his money on things like that and always wailed when they didn’t they have any more). Felix thought that dumping his shrewish wife and lying on a beach somewhere - drinking margaritas by the bucketful and watching the sun go down - it would be heaven. Matter of fact, he had even said so when some guy from a local TV station had stopped him at a local mall and asked him what he would do if he won the Super Duper Zillion Dollar Lotto. Felix had thought only for a second and then replied "... to hell with giving to the poor and putting my mommy in a new house like everybody else, I would quit my job, leave my wife, and relocate to an isolated beach were I could drink margaritas and watch the sun go down." The reporter had laughed and Felix had gotten to see himself on TV. So if anyone did promise to make his dream come true, Felix had his dream all set, not that he ever thought about it of course.
“Damn its cold” thought Felix as he concentrated to keep the truck between the ruts in the road. He glanced furtively at the thermometer reading on the overhead console, -7. “It has been like this for a week already. When the hell is summer going to get here?” he thought, already knowing the answer. In exactly thirteen weeks, three days and four hours. It was only the first week of January, but it had been a cold winter. They had had snow in November and it was still on the ground, with over a foot more added to it since then. The old Hagerstown Almanac promised eight more bad storms before spring, too. Hell, they had already had nine ice storms already, so what was a few more between friends.
Ice covered everything now - beautiful to view, like a glistening, shimmering sea of stars - but nasty to live with. Felix loved the look of the ice but thought it would look a hell of a lot better on a calendar instead of in his windshield. As far as that went, spending Christmas in a place where Santa Claus wore Bermuda shorts wouldn't bother him either.
The ruts in the road were made by the tires of cars driven by people too stupid to stay home in weather like this. The freeway was covered with snow and the snow covered with ice - except for the ruts in each lane. “I don’t believe I’m doing this.”, thought Felix, “What the hell am I doing this for? Just because some bureaucrat pulled a ‘Due Date’ out of the air for some paperwork? And as long as he can check off the block that says ‘Delivered By:’ he doesn’t care if it’s today, last year, or next century. But its gotta be today because that’s the date he picked. Damn! So here I am, doing fifty where I should be doing maybe ten, only inches away from the TenOClock News. Where’s the beach when you need it?”.
Felix had never liked winter. He hated the cold, gray, ugliness of it. It seemed his disposition was in direct proportion to the weather. When it was sunny and warm so was Felix. When it was cold and ugly, so was Felix.
His earliest memories were of being cold. He could remember quite literally freezing his butt of on cold toilet seats. This jogged his memory and Felix thought back to those seats and why he hated the cold so much. His was a poor family and Felix had tried to run from it; tried to prove that all those people saying “You’re just like that family of yours, no good. Since your one of them, after all!” were wrong. He was only partially successful. His friends and co-workers didn’t know and could care less. It was his relatives and his wife that kept the guilt alive. His wife even had a pet saying whenever she got really mean and wanted to hurt. “Just like a Madden,” she smirk, “I’m no Madden and glad of it. They’re just a bunch of trash.”
Felix supposed they were. The were more than poor; more than poor white trash ... they were the one the 'poor' detested. Felix'd mind easily wandered back to those days, it was easy to do. . .
In a blink, he was back there - reliving the childhood he thought he had left behind . . .
Harley Ave: 1959.
It was the fourth house we'd lived in since last month. This one almost was a real house - doors, walls, floors. Even something that might pass for a bathroom if we held our nose. But it didn't last. They were here again. They had found us - like they always do. . .
We'd run, me and the rest of the kids would be running and hiding in the closets whenever we’d hear momma whisper “Oh gawd, here’s somebody else. Hide kids, go on, git. And keep your mouths shut or I’m gonna’ beat’cha.” I always tried to get the one with the door on it. All of us did. Me . . . I was the oldest and biggest so I usually got it. Except when the girls got it, all the did was cry and then it was too noisy. But I never hid in the bathroom. Never.
Usually I’d crouch in the back of the closet, shivering with fear, stomach turning with excitement, holding my breath afraid that the sound of my pounding heart would be heard if I let it out. I’d strain my ears, listening for sounds that’ll tell us they’d went away.
Pretty soon there would be foot sounds, then banging, then more foot sounds shuffling off into the distance. But I didn’t move. Not yet. Momma’d told us stay hid until she’d come and got us. “Ya’ never know when one of those people be peekin’ through the windows, an if thay catch sight of ya’, thay’ll take ya’ away!” So we stayed hidden . . . at least until we heard momma opening the front door.
We’d come straggling out, following momma through the door. The three girls still be sniffling and wiping their eyes on their sleeves while us five boys just come running, teasing the girls for being scaredy cats . . . all of us wanting to see what they've done this time.
Sometimes they put boards up over the windows, others they just nail a’ piece of paper to the door. Momma’d just cuss and tear the paper down. The boards she left up, saying that they’d just come back and put ‘em up again, but the paper they’d think the wind just blew it off . . . or maybe a rat ate it.
Sometimes they’d catch us. They keep telling us these old houses are condemed and unfit for human habitation - that we can't live there. But they don't - or won't - tell us where we can live. When mom cried "Where we gonna' go??" they just shruggeed their shoulders and muttered ". . . don't know - but it ain't going to be this place...". Then we’d have to move and momma have to promise not to go back to the old house. Sometimes we tried to, but they would tear the house down and we would have to find someplace else. I never liked moving - but some places were better than the last, but mostly they was worst. Looks like we're going to be hunting for another place to live now. Why can't they leave us alone?
Sometimes, when dad’d come home from working in construction, we would have moved and he wouldn’t know where to find us. Most of the time he’d be drunk anyway so nobody really minded. We just kind’a wished he’d stayed away a little longer, if you know what I mean.
There were times when they'd move just so Dad couldn’t find us. Of couse he did and then there’d be a fight and mom’d call the police . . . but not before dad’d cussed and yelled and broken up everything we’d owned . . . and the cop's tell momma “Now this is the last time we’re going to take him. You’re going to have to do something about this.” . . . and they’d put him in the police car and take him away.
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New Shoes: 1961
I remember goin’ and gettin’ new shoes. Most times, momma just give me a couple of dollars and say “Now I want’cha take your brother an’ go up to th’ Dollar Store and get’cha some shoes. An’ not some those cheap tennis shoes either.” You couldn’t buy much for a couple of bucks. Still can’t. ‘Course momma did her best I guess.
About the only shoes you could buy for two dollars was some real shiny, black plastic loafers. I never could stand those shoes. They only lasted couple of days . . . a week at the most. They never quite fit right and pretty soon my toes be poking out from the seem. Then momma’d give us hell about how we could never keep nothing for long without tearing 'em up. Wasn’t our fault, they’s just cheap shoes. At least with raggedy old tennis shoes you’d be in style. Felix hated going to the Dollar Store and even today refuse to buy anything there.
Sometime, when we got lucky, somebody’d find a big load of shoes at the dump and hold a sale in one of the old houses nobody was living in - a quarter a pair, provided you could find a pair. Sometimes the shoes was worn, other times they’d be the shoes that people had tried on when they went shopping. They were as good as new then, but most time there was only one of a kind. There’d be a huge pile of shoes in the middle of the floor. All you had to do was dig through ‘em until you found one you liked. If it fit and you could find the other one, you had yourself a pair of shoes!
Felix had liked those sales, you could find some really good shoes, some even without holes in the bottom. Nice, straight, leather shoes. Once you wiped them off and polished them, nobody could tell where you got them from and think you bought them new.
It was kind la strange going into some of the old houses - spooky even. Some of these old houses we had had lived in and going back was scary. You don' t notice a lot of the problems with something when its right under your nose, but when you step back and look, lots of things just seem to appear.
One of the houses were they'd held a shoe sale was one we’d moved from only about a week before. The front door was done gone . . . probably rotted away, as the bottom half had already been gone when we's was there. The floor in the living room was really sagging in the middle and you could hear it groaning under the weight of all those shoes and people walking around. The floor wood was so worn you could see through it in a couple of places. Several floor joist were worn smooth, the result of our using them as steps between the crawl space an' the floor. Somebody had knocked down what had been remaining of the wall between the kitchen and living room. Dad had knocked the first part of it down during one of his drunks.
Cock-a-roaches still crawled all over the house, even in the daylight. Used to be they'd only come out at night but it seems they're getting braver and braver. I hate those things. Nothing more sickening than the feel of cock-a-roaches being squished under you toes when you have to get up in the middle of the night to whizz. Some nights you just lay there prayin' to go back to sleep just so you don't have to get you feet mucked up. And you never turn on the lights. Never. Feeling them is bad enough, seeing them will make you sick. The rats I didn't mind . . . but the cock-a-roaches . . . the only thing worst was the bathroom.
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Good Times:
I don't aim to say that all if it was bad . . . I mean there was some good an' happy times too ya’ know. Spring time was good. Spring time was the time we gotta stretch out after being cooped up all winter in two or three little rooms.
Some these old house we’d live in was two, three, sometimes four stories, includin' the basement. Most of the floors was empty of everything 'ceptin' spiders and cock-a-roaches. Usually, Momma’d tell us to stay on one floor since we didn't have ‘nuf stuff to really use the others.
One thing in shore short supply was beds. My spot was up top next to the headboard where the pillow was suppos’d t' go. No way I wanted t' sleep in the middle of the bed. That's were my three brothers usually slept, an' somethin' bout wakin' up in the middle of the night layin' in a puddle ‘a pee just never made me happy, if’n ya know what I mean.
Durin' the summer, when there wasn't no need to conserve heat, we'd usually try’n live on the ground floor. It was cooler. We'd open up all those doors and huge windows. In some of them houses there was lot of places to explore. Attics an' basements an' the third floor too. Lots of places to get away from the maddin’ crowd.
But come winter we’d all pack up an' move into a coupl’a rooms around the kitchen. Mom an' dad'd go round makin' sure’d all the doors an' windows over the other parts of the house was closed an' nailed tight. We’d be allowed to bring a few personal things in the kitchen with us, but most the time we never had anything worth it.
All we had for heatin' was a big Warm-Mornin' coal stove and the kitchen oven. We’d drag all our cots we had around that stove and slept. For about two-three hours that worked pretty well; until your front burned an' your tail froze so you turned over an' got your tail burned an' your front froze. Then about three o'clock in the mornin' the fire just died out an' all of you froze.
The worst part about livin' in only a couple ’a rooms was that it seemed the only bathroom that halfway worked was always in the cold side. When it's below freezin' there ain't nothin' like sittin' on a cold seat or takin' a bath in ice water. An' then when it got real cold the pipes would freeze an' the toilet would stop flushin'. After a while it was real hard to go in the bathroom. I learned real quick to take a bath while holdin' my breath. It was like havin' an outhouse inhouse. God... winters sure did last a long time. I don’t exactly hate winter, but I sure as hell liked summer more.
But spring an' summer, they just flew. You just can't beat the feel of runnin' free, nothin' on but a pair of shorts, feet poundin' on the new grass as the wind tangles your hair int'a knots as you run as fast as you can, just knowin' that if you wanted to really fly all you had to do was leap up into the air and you would never come down. Summer meant stayin' out till it got dark an' it didn't get dark until almost daylight an' playin' ball an swimmin. Mostly swimm'n.
Momma an' dad used borrow a car or truck or talk somebody they'd know into haulin' us down to the fork to go swimmin. We’d take a picnic lunch of salad dressing sandwiches and pork ‘n beans. All of us’d get to splash around an' swim. The other boys In I would try ‘n catch frogs an' tadpoles to put down the girls bathin' suits. Sometimes we'd even catch a turtle. There was one swimmin' hole we really liked, but after some kid got killed by bein' bit by water moccasin snakes, mom and dad stopped takin' us.
Ours was an extended family. Seems like most the people in our neighborhood lived at each others houses some time or ‘nuther. Whenever one of my friends moms or dads come home drunk or didn’t come home at all, we’d always have room. Usually it was they'd always have room for us.
We kids lived our whole lives together. All us kids used to run 'round together an' play; gettin' in trouble; stayin' out late an' learnin' 'bout life from each other. We played in the dirt under the barn together. We broke o’le missus Gideon's windows together. We fought the other kids for the hell of it and ourselves when they weren't around. Some of us grew up an' married others of us, havin' more kids to carry on.
I'd always heard 'bout the poor kids; the kids from the wrong side of the tracks. I never could figure out exactly who they was 'til I got old ‘nuf to go to school. We was the poor kids, ones that all the other kids shyed 'way from. I never could really figure out why we was they. I mean, I guess I never had another frame of reference to judge my own childhood from. I always thought anyone who's dad actually owned their own car was rich, like people who shopped at the grocery store without havin' to tell the grocer to charge it 'til the welfare check came.
Nobody had family doctors ... nobody got sick. If 'in you got sick you had to go to the clinic, an' that meant you probably came home sicker than when you went, cause they's always full of poor ol’ sick folks, just sittin' there, lookin' for a place to die, infectin' anybody fool enough to come to a doctor, or even get sick in the first place (or at least admit yous was sick -- unless you was fakin' it to get out of goin' to school).
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Felix groped for the line, instinctively knowing that if he didn’t find it he would never survive. His fingers, already stiff and frozen (the cold had already stolen any warmth and insulation from the thin inner layer of the Thermax gloves), were bearly able to move in the bulky outer gloves. The wind howled and shrieked around Felix, like a room full of six year olds on the warpath, so loud it almost seemed quiet. The storm was the just beginning to swell to its full potential. This was one serious storm and Felix knew that he was in real trouble. He fought the urge to drop to his knees and lean into the driving snow and wind. If he didn’t stay on his feet and find that rope soon, they wouldn’t find him until spring.
Who “they” were Felix had no idea. He didn’t know where he was or how he had gotten there. In every direction, there was nothing but white. Breathing was becoming difficult and it wasn’t until Felix hit himself in the face with his hand that he realized two very important things: One; he was in the middle of the damnedest snow storm he had ever seen, a complete whiteout. There was no vision, no up, down, or around. Everything looked the same - white, and Two, his face was frozen.
Felix slowly moved his gloved hands over his face, trying to urge some feeling into it. As he worked his fingers to his eyes, he discovered that it wasn’t his face that was frozen but the cloth that was wrapped around his head for protection. He had been gasping and his breath had condensed, creating a layer of moisture which quickly froze, making breathing difficult. Felix knew that if he didn’t get the cloth off soon it would become a frozen death mask, but if he did manage to get it off, his face would really freeze. He knew he had to leave it on, but change the way he was breathing, use short breaths, keeping his teeth closed and try to trap any moisture between them - which would then freeze his jaw together. Damned if he did and damned if he didn't.
He dropped his hands from his face and stood as still as he could, his mind reeling. Where was he? How did he get here? Why did he not panic, knowing that to do so would mean his death? How did he know what he had to do to survive? Felix let his instincts take over, knowing somehow that they would be right. He shut his eyes, trying to shout out the noise, and concentrated. Turning slightly, in a slow circle, until he stopped when he thought he was facing north. “Okay”, thought Felix “the barn is directly north, 200 yards behind the house. The rope runs from the corner of the house to the to the small entrance door on the left side of the silo in the barn.” If he was right about facing north, then the rope should be on his left, about shoulder high. Slowly he held his left arm out straight and move it up and down, his fingers straining, hoping contact with the rope would come at any second. No rope. Felix took one step to his left and repeated the action. No rope. He took another step. No rope. Panic was starting to come no matter how hard Felix tried to keep it down. On his fifth try the fingers struck something, although Felix didn’t realize it until his glove got caught on something and wouldn’t come loose. It wasn’t the rope. It was a branch of a tree.
“Tree? What’s a tree doing in the middle of the beltway?”, thought Felix.
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Patricia Madden was thirty-eight years old, had straight black hair and a disposition to match. A preacher’s daughter, she grew up with ideas of finding a man, getting married, and living the way they always showed on television. She wanted a pretty house, pretty kids, pretty clothes, pretty pet, pretty husband, and she expected it the minute she got married. She wanted a doting husband and kids that always smiled and minded their manners, just like she did. She wanted, well . . . she wanted it all perfect and dammit, that’s the way it was going to be.
She found her pretty husband. They had met in church (that was good, the way it was supposed to be) and had a rocky courtship. He wanted to see the world and experience new things. She wanted to set up house and a family. He left to join the peace corp., saying that it was his way of contributing and getting the adventure he craved. Patricia stayed at home and fumed. This was not perfect. This was not the way it was supposed to be. June Cleaver never got letters from Mr. Cleaver from some damned jungle in Africa. Why did she have to stay home and put up with the stares and talk while he had a year long vacation, laying around and taking it easy in some hotel? “Paybacks are hell” she thought. So she’d write him long letters, starting of with the news and trying to sound happy. But by the time she got two paragraphs into the letter, she’d begin to feel a little angry because things weren’t going the way they were supposed to and start complaining, and then she’d get really angry and started blaming him for the little things, like the postman running late and ,because if he’d been home he could have brought the mail in from the box and she’d not had to go out in the cold, and dinner wouldn’t have burned! It was all his fault she told him. Why did he really want to leave her anyway?
Yes, she really missed him, her letters proved that, didn’t they?
It took longer to get her perfect child. She once told Felix that she didn’t ever believe that she would ever get her perfect baby. She became interested in money and job while Felix remained on his sojourn. Patricia had by that time became independent to the point where she didn’t need anyone’s help or want anyone close. She discovered that as long as Felix’s salary was coming in and he wasn’t around to spend it, that she could practically do anything she please and to hell with anyone denying her this enjoyment. This was just perfect, thought Patricia.
After Felix came back, things just weren’t perfect anymore. She resented Felix’s paying the bills, and worse, buying something for himself! But she kept her dream of that perfect house, perfect baby, and perfect family alive.
They moved and built a house in their new town. A nice little town with lots of people their age. The house had a yard and a fence around the back. Just perfect for a baby, thought Patricia. But Felix was traveling again, this time due to his work. She found herself alone with only her friends again. But they were enough. Each time Felix returned from one of his trips, it was a different Patricia he met at the door. After a while, she didn’t even meet him at the door. She had friends, possessions, money, and for all practical purposes, no husband. What more could a young wife want? “Nothing,” thought Patricia, “This is almost perfect. But I still want my baby. I just don’t want a husband anymore.”
Another move, this time to a big city, another house to build. Patricia felt like she was ripped from her perfect home into a life she abhorred. Felix was no longer traveling and his constant presence put her into a tizzy. Why in the hell couldn’t he just see how much she hated him? They fought like cats and dogs. Oh, they had fought before, it seem like a never ending battle to Felix, but this was different. She actually was going nuts. They built a big house, with room for her and him.
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. . . this is a real mess and going nowhere - but it will continue
