Insanity Is Too Mild Of A Word

I’ll be 72 in November 2024 and reflecting back on my life I’m seeing the wonder of it all. My parents were old enough to be my grandparents, Bill and Kate. Dad was born in 1897, mom in 1904. Mom was in her late forties and thought she had cancer, so she went to Doc. Carson and was informed that she was four months pregnant. I was born in 1952, and she always referred to me as her little tumor. Martins Ferry, Oh. is a small town directly across the river from Wheeling, W.Va. I’m a baby boomer born after the Second World War. The Ohio Valley economy revolved around the steel mills and coal mines. The men were thankful for the high paying jobs and never missed work. If you have a cold, you go to work, hangover, go to work, flu, go to work, family outings, go to work, a broken arm, go to work. The mothers didn’t need employment, so the children were raised in stable homes, and all were well provided for. Years later I lived in Columbus and was talking to a captain in the fire department. I mentioned being raised in the Ohio Valley, and he said they loved hiring men and women from the Valley due to their strong work ethic.

My brother Bill was twenty-one years older; Sue was nineteen and each had four children. My parents raised them through the Great Depression, they put the car up on blocks to preserve the rubber. Mom had eight siblings and if it wasn’t for her parents’ huge garden they wouldn’t have had any food. I was spoiled. Dad was superintendent at Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, so our family was middle class. There were dozens of children in the surrounding neighborhoods, and we played constantly. Catchers, hide n seek, marbles, wiffle ball, basketball, football, and king on the hill. Summers were joyfully spent playing in the sprinklers, hiking from morning to dusk, catching lightning bugs, sleep outs in the backyards, and telling ghost stories while roasting marshmallows. Winters were snowball fights, sled rides, building snow forts, ice skating and cozy evenings around the fireplace. We knew to come home when the streetlights came on and seldom locked our doors. The big surprise one beautiful spring day was when dad arrived with a brand new 1960 Buick Electra Sedan with blue metallic paint. Life was fun, life was safe, and life was good. This all drastically changed.

Christmas and Easter were magical.

Mom and dad went to New Orleans over a dozen times, they loved Bourbon Street jazz. The Dukes of Dixieland were extremely popular with four albums marketed nationally; we received Christmas cards from the band. Our mantle over the fireplace would have hundreds of cards taped up every Christmas. Our living room was always decorated with a live tree and on the mystical night of Christmas Eve had a soft golden glow due to the lights and a simmering fire. Christmas morning I’d always have to wait at the top of the stairs, the happy excitement was beautiful. When I was eight, I naturally still believed in Santa and the Easter Bunny. Saturday night before Easter I was sitting in the living room and was astonished when I saw a big pair of bunny ears flash by the window. Enchantingly, the next morning there were bunny prints all around the candy. I was thankfully raised by parents who loved one another.

Some of our family gatherings were hilarious. On Christmas Eve, mom had worked all day on dinner, dad had been nipping on his vodka. My brother and sister’s families were home and all 15 of us were sitting around the dining room table. I was 7. Dads at the head of the table, his job being to carve the turkey. He’s drunk. After putting a fork in and holding it with the knife, he gave a big heave, and the turkey flew into the Christmas tree. Instantly my mother’s face became a brilliant red, I was a little scared because I’d never seen anything like that before. “Bill, get the g_ damn turkey out of the Christmas tree.” We could hear a pin drop until my sister’s laugh broke the tension. After picking the needles out, we ate. I quit believing in Santa at the age of 17. Sam weighed over 300 lbs. and claimed the Santa role for as many Christmases in memory. He’d taken numerous shots of varying alcohols at every visited home and was extremely merry when reaching ours. After staggering upstairs to the bathroom, he tripped and landed in the bathtub. He was so big that dad had to call the fire department. The squad getting drunk Santa out of the bathtub raised questions. Actually, I was 9.

I had a vivid imagination as a child. My invisible friend was always there when I needed to talk. I just couldn’t receive any answers about the Big Ball. I experienced a dream quite often about a ball of light as huge as the world. It was always rolling towards me from a far distance at a high rate of speed. A Native American Indian was always smirking and watching from a distance. When it was about to crush, I’d wake up. My first terrifying fear was due to a comic book about Count Dracula. When I found out he’d come in on moonbeams, I was petrified because there was a full moon. I slept between mom and dad that night. Weeks before my seventh Halloween mom bought me a superman costume. I was overjoyed because he was my ultimate hero. I flew around the neighbor every day for weeks and would not take my suit off because it was the source of all my powers. When trick or treating I was a little confused because all the neighbors knew it was me. When I was 13 my next great hero was James Bond in the movie Goldfinger. Sean Connery as 007 and his Aston Martin were the epitome of cool. Upon turning 22 I was somewhat fearless until I saw The Exorcist, that movie scared the crap out of me. However, this was as nothing compared to the trauma I experienced during my 8th year of life. The power of our mind is such that if we believe something is real it becomes real to us. Every time I heard a bump in the night, I’d think Oh no. To this day, I still feel it’s highly entertaining and the scariest movie ever made. I find it amusing that every horror movie made since follows the same theme. The man or woman of God has to battle the incredibly powerful entity and after finally getting rid of the thing it pops up in the beloved dog and the movie ends. The sequel, Our Demonic Cocker Spaniel Ate The Baby will be released next year.

The Screaming Skull was a movie we’d talked about for weeks, remembering I was superman I could easily beat the Skull. Here’s little Bobbie Hall striding fearlessly into the theater. As soon as the movie started, the Skull came at us with flaming eyes, and I’m instantly gone. That first scene scared the daylights out of me, and I ran crying all the way home. Every day after school for weeks, my friend George punched and slapped me around because I was superman. Mom and his mother were friends, and this started to wear on them both. Mother told me several times to hit him back. He’d backed me up to my front door, I’m crying, and suddenly I punched him in the face. I’d knocked him down, and his mouth was bleeding. Mom was right, this was the last time he ever hit me during the short life he had left to live.

One beautiful spring day I came home from school and in the living room mom had placed a little gift-wrapped box. I could hear muffled sounds and when I opened it, I tearfully saw the cutest basset hound puppy with big brown eyes and huge, adorable ears. We named him Pokey. This was the spring I became great friends with Dave and his dog Rusty. That summer we’d leave early in the mornings with our dogs and hike for hours on end. We discovered caves, bull pens, cliffs, creeks, waterfalls, rocks we named Indian and Cowboy, tree houses and an old farmhouse with a barn. We used to climb up in the rafters and jump twenty feet into the hay. Dave’s mom would call him every night, Davieee could be heard all through the neighborhood. This was a summer full of wonder and excitement and the last we’d ever enjoy. Stark and horrible terror was on the horizon, and thankfully we didn’t know it.