Riding With No Hands

By Harrison Wilde

This biographical memoir set in the Midwest chronicles a boy's 13th year and the challenges he faces as he approaches puberty, the power of his sexual awakening, and the loneliness of a child living with an authoritarian, abusive father. This nostalgic trip through a simpler time of early morning paper routes and Saturday afternoon little league baseball games, follows the childhood challenges of transitioning from childhood to young adult as he learns about friendships, sex, bullying, himself, and death. This sometimes humorous and other times thought provoking story combines humor, thoughtfulness, and introspection which unfold in the context of a child carrying the heavy secret of sexual abuse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harrison Wilde
• Release date: Mar 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311400390

Harrison Wilde

Harrison Wilde, a writer in the Southestern United States, is a pen name. He writes many books and articles and is known in varied professional circles. Privacy is of utmost important to him, but his stories cannot be contained.

Book preview

Riding With No Hands

By

Harrison Wilde

Riding With No Hands

Harrison Wilde

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 Harrison Wilde

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ISBN: 9781311400390

Table of Contents

Chapter One - Beginnings

Chapter Two – Pop Tarts and Maraschino Cherries

Chapter Three – The Nature of Boys

Chapter Four – Hidden Hurts

Chapter Five – The Metamorphosis

Chapter Six – Be Careful What You Wish For

Chapter Seven – Swimming Naked

Chapter Eight – My Favorite Season

Chapter Nine – Epilog – Riding With No Hands

Postscript and Acknowledgements

About the Author

Chapter One

Beginnings

1

I was the middle child of three born in the transition between the bobby socks and poodle skirts of the 1950’s and the tie-dyed t-shirts and flower power of the 1960’s. The closing of the 1950’s saw the end of the days when one was a rebel because he wore a leather jacket, rode a motorcycle, or had a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the short sleeve of a bleached white t-shirt. That form of rebellion gave way to rock and roll, drugs, and the great chasm between those who supported the established traditions of government, finance, and education, and those who did not. The French were leaving Vietnam and we were gradually taking up where they left off. Eisenhower and Kennedy should have learned from the French that traditional methods were insufficient in Southeast Asia, but the fear of dreaded communism was palpable and the U.S. was eager to stop its spread even if it meant taking the fight to them half-way around the world. In the 1950’s the civil rights movement was embryonic and there was no such thing as political correctness, but the 1960’s saw a complete transition. In polite company, people of color were called colored, negro, or black. They were called things much worse in impolite company, but by the time I started grade school, forced bussing was seriously being considered in cities around the country and the rules were changing. There were very few black children in my school and I didn’t know what the big deal was or why people didn’t like others because of their skin color.

My first few years of life were years of records. Roger Maris beat Babe Ruth’s single season home run record with 61, Mickey Mantel set a record as the highest-paid baseball player in history, and Neil Armstrong set an air speed record in a rocket-powered aircraft of more than 4,000 miles per hour. Newly elected President Kennedy announced that an American would set foot on the moon before the decade was out, a major challenge to the Soviets in the space race. This happened less than two months before Gus Grissom nearly sank in the ocean shortly after splash down following a sub-orbit of the earth, but it was the beginning of a complete commitment to space exploration.

Columbus, Indiana, my home town, was an ideal place to grow up. It was a small, rural, Midwestern town, but we had a supermarket, Hills Department store, little league soccer and baseball, and Columbus was known as an architectural center. Unusual churches, businesses, and private residences even caught the attention of National Geographic who published a story on the architecture of our town. The 70’s were an era before mega-plex Cinemas. Our single-screen movie theater was called The Crump. The Crump was a traditional theater. The lobby was decorated with deep red carpeting and brightly polished brass trim and always smelled of popcorn. The seats were tiered and on the sides of the stage from floor to ceiling were the facades of the outside of two houses separated by a large stage. As you looked at the screen from the balcony, it looked as if you were looking down the street between two, two-story homes, complete with an occasional bat that flitted about during the film. But I was never allowed to sit in the balcony. My mother forbade it. In her view, the balcony was a place for lovers and boys who were looking for trouble. But it didn’t matter to me. The floor was just fine and I loved going to The Crump. For fifty cents I could watch a Saturday afternoon matinee double-feature. It was a twenty minute bike ride from home to The Crump and going to the movies on my own made me feel grown up.

My sisters rarely went to the theater. My younger sister, Elizabeth, rode her bike to The Crump only one time. She went to see Gone With The Wind one Saturday afternoon and in less than two hours she was walking in the back door. When we asked why she was home so soon, she said the movie ended kind of weird and it became apparent that she mistook intermission for the end of the movie. So she got back on her bicycle and went back to see the end of the movie. Otherwise, I thought of The Crump as my theater.

Columbus was safe. I rode my bicycle everywhere I wanted to go, delivered my newspaper route at 4AM without fear, and even though we locked our doors at night, crime was something that happened to strangers in faraway places. Only occasionally was I afraid of anything. When members of the Manson Family brutally killed actress Sharon Tate in 1969, I feared Manson might break into our house and do the same to me. In the darkness of my bedroom I envisioned him slipping between the bicycles on the back porch and creeping through my window, but these were the fears of a child. By the time I knew of these crimes, Manson and his cohorts were permanently behind bars on the other side of the country. Other than that, I had few fears.

I was sandwiched tightly between two sisters – Sandy who was one year older than I and Elizabeth who was eighteen months younger. They were polar opposites. Sandy was studious, well-mannered, and well-behaved. Elizabeth was impish and a Tomboy. She looked for trouble and often found it. Elizabeth and I made a better match than Sandy and I. Elizabeth liked playing in the sand, climbing trees, and riding bicycles. Sandy liked reading, playing the piano, and sewing. Throughout childhood, Elizabeth and I routinely sided against Sandy creating solidarity between us, but undoubtedly creating a lonely world for Sandy at the same time.

I never saw myself as exceptional in any way. Rather, I thought of myself as something less than average. Not really dumb, but more boring than average. I made average grades (sometimes below average). Prior to the sixth grade, I supposed I wasn’t very smart and my grades confirmed it. It was an assumption that caused me little motivation to study or prepare for tests. Even in the fifth grade when Mrs. Littleton, a rather homely and stereotypical single old-maid school teacher, gave us the answers to our homework before we turned it in, I didn’t even bother to correct my work. It was too much trouble and I didn’t think it mattered. That changed the next year in the sixth grade. Mr. Rouse, the most amazing teacher I ever had, chewed me out one day for a mistake I’d made on a test. He was terribly disappointed in me and I felt awful that I’d let him down until he said, Wilde, you’re too smart to make a mistake like this. I was stunned. No one had ever used the word smart in reference to me without the word ass following it. His words caused me to think that perhaps I could do more than I had come to believe, but once I left McKinley Elementary School for Northside Junior High, Mr. Rouse and his positive thinking faded into my past.

I loved to read, but I was more an outdoor kid. I loved to ride my bicycle, play baseball and soccer, and I ran track. I must admit that my first experience at track and field was a disaster. It was in the sixth grade, the same year Mr. Rouse helped me to believe in myself, and the first year McKinley Elementary had a track team. For weeks workers painted lines on the asphalt surface of our playground and prepared it for competition. I had little understanding of track and field, but I knew it involved running and Mr. Rouse told me I should try out so I did. The first day of track practice I stayed after school to attend. I had no running shoes and nobody in those days wore sweats. That afternoon twenty-five fifth and sixth graders lined up in rows and columns on the playground as the late afternoon sun began to set and we waited for instructions. In our dress shoes and school pants we began calisthenics with jumping jacks. Before the set of exercises was over, I just didn’t feel right. I didn’t understand what was going on. I didn’t know why we weren’t running yet, and the whole experience was awkwardly unfamiliar to me. The sun was setting and it just didn’t seem right not to be home so I looked for an opportunity when I wasn’t being noticed and then I bolted. I ran the twelve blocks home and felt much better by the time I came through the back door and smelled dinner cooking. This was the way it was supposed to be and nobody ever said anything to me about leaving practice so I assumed I did the right thing.

I was an awkward boy never quite sure what was going on or what I was supposed to do. I lived each moment for the moment itself and usually that worked for me. Just a year later I tried out for the junior high school track team and I made it – as did everyone else who tried out. This included Mary Beth Donaldson and Adam Collingsworth, two grossly overweight seventh graders who got short of breath just talking about running. Some of my friends complained to each other that the fat kids should have been cut, attempting to create an air of exclusivity, but I liked the fact that Mary Beth and Adam weren’t cut. As long as they were on the team I knew I wouldn’t be the slowest kid. Adam passed gas without restraint and Mary Beth was known to eat things she withdrew from her nose, so they were bigger targets than me to make fun of – both figuratively and literally. That gave me a comforting feeling of invisibility.

2

The year was 1973 – a year that changed my life. It was my twelfth year and a year that saw three pivotal events. That was the year we got our first color television set, a console model with walnut veneer. As was true of nearly all televisions in those days, it had four legs and huge knobs on the front. Solid state circuitry was relatively new and our previous TV’s had been filled with vacuum tubes. It was routine to have a vacuum tube blow when the set was turned on, requiring us to take the problem tube to the drug store where we plugged it into a tube tester to confirm it was bad. It wasn’t uncommon to pull three or four tubes from the set and test them all at the drug store to make sure we got the right one. Then we would purchase a new tube and re-install it when we got home. But a blown tube meant no TV sometimes for days as we waited for my father to go through the testing and replacement routine. Our new TV not only had no vacuum tubes to worry with, but we could now watch Bonanza, My Three Sons, The Mod Squad, and the Wednesday Mystery Movie in living color! I didn’t like to admit that I still watched the Friday night double-header of The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch, but secretly I still enjoyed them. Anything was fun to watch in color. I had experienced a decade of The Andy Griffith Show, Perry Mason, and The Lone Ranger in black and white. With a color set I even loved the commercials and the NBC voice-over announcing, Broadcast in living color! followed by the NBC peacock thrilled me.

The second significant event was the purchase of our second car. It sounds like a cliché, but we actually bought it from a little old lady who only drove it a few times a week – my grandmother. It was a 1964 powder blue Ford Falcon. Four doors, three speed transmission with a column shifter and a pitifully underpowered six-cylinder engine. The car was nearly ten years old and yet it had been driven less than 20,000 miles and it was in pristine condition. Seat covers were installed the day it was new and when I started driving several years later, I removed them to find the seats, front and back, in absolutely show-room condition. My sisters and I all learned to drive on that car and my mother drove it for years after we were grown. We bought it for $750 and my father sold it for $1500 over twenty years later. Not a bad deal, but what mattered most at the time was the fact that we had transportation during the day other than our bicycles. My father didn’t like my mother driving his car. Even on long car trips my father would drive for hours on end while the rest of us slept. Once each week he handed over the keys for a few hours so my mother could go to the grocery, but other than that, it was his car. We biked or walked if we wanted to go someplace.

The third event was less concrete, but equally important. I don’t know if I actually reached puberty that year. I was slow at everything so I suppose I might have been slow at coming of age, too, but one thing I know for certain; things changed for me in 1973. Don’t get me wrong. I’d always been interested in girls. My first girlfriend was in Kindergarten. Gail Manly. At the time I was infatuated with two girls, Gail and another child named Kim Debor, but Gail won my heart in the end. She shared her space in the book corner with me and she didn’t seem to mind the time I threw up all over Mrs. Spratt’s writing table when I ate too many pancakes for breakfast. She lived directly across the street from our elementary school making it easy to walk her home when I dared to offer. She was the first girl I ever kissed. I kissed her on the coat collar when we were playing tag during recess in the second grade. I was behind her taking her to prison and I kissed her furry hooded collar as gently as I could so she wouldn’t feel it. It was heavenly and she never knew of the stolen kiss. The scent of her youth in the winter cold of the playground is a memory I’ll never let go of and we flirted back and forth into our high school years. I liked the way girls dressed and the way they smelled, standing together on the playground in their maxi-length winter coats and white fuzzy ear muffs. All very proper. They would make fun of me, call me names, and whisper and giggle to each other, but the teasing just encouraged me. Somehow I think I realized they enjoyed boys as much as we enjoyed them.

But in 1973 my eyes were opened to something I’d never been aware of before. I started to notice breasts. Big ones. Small ones. I even dreamed about them. I had no idea what was happening to me or why I had never noticed them before, but something had awakened inside me. Sitting in Social Studies class as I had done every day since school started in the fall of 1972, I turned around to talk to Jessica Peal who sat behind me. It was January and we had just returned from Christmas break. Our row of seats was along a row of windows on the right side of the classroom. The sun was breaking through the trees outside the window, but the room was cold and a chill radiated from the window beside us. As I turned to talk to her I first noticed her sweater. It was an ordinary sweater, not unlike ones that I had seen before. It was white with thin blue, yellow, and green horizontal stripes. I suppose it is possible that she had worn it before, but that day I noticed that the shadow cast from the window and the curve of the stripes accented her developing body. She was looking down at her homework and hadn’t yet noticed that I had turned around as I stared.

I had talked to Jessica a thousand times and even though we were friends, I had never thought of her in that way. My eyes traced the lines of the sweater and the curve of her young breasts. In reaction to the frosty air beside the window, her firm, maturing protuberances embossed against the woolen fabric of her sweater. Suddenly, I realized what my parents meant when they had told my older sister that she needed a bra. I thought bras were only to hold breasts. My sister’s chest was too small at the time to need any holding. I didn’t realize bras were supposed to cover them as well, but now I was experiencing something novel – something fully sexual for the first time. Like an epiphany, it all started to make sense. I felt an overwhelming desire to see these hidden jewels. From that day forward I began to look at girls differently. I was an awkward boy and my sexual awakening tore me in two directions. My quest for a sexual experience dominated my thinking almost beyond my control, but at the same time it fed my already insecure ego and caused me to view myself as dysfunctional; as if I were the only one ever to experience this personal and possessive drive. While my mother was open to teaching me about the facts of life, I didn’t know enough to ask intelligent questions and most of the time when we had those talks, I had no idea what she was talking about. My awakening was confusing and I needed guidance, but this new secret was something I could never trust with my mother.

3

Our home was a square shoebox of a house covered in cold gray shingle siding. It measured less than 1,000 square feet, a mansion by some world standards, but hardly larger than a garage by US tradition. With its low ceilings, galley kitchen, single bathroom, and three tiny bedrooms, it was what real estate agents undoubtedly described as cozy. We thought of it as small. The front porch was adorned with a window box that rarely had any flowers in it and the porch itself was only about four feet deep, concrete, and no stoop. Our front door had a tarnished brass mail slot and each day a mail carrier pushed his three-wheeled cart along our sidewalk and literally dropped our mail into our living room. But we never used the front porch. The back door was the main entrance unless you were a stranger. On the covered porch in the back of the house was a metal milk box. Early each morning, while it was still dark outside, from the warmth of my bed I could hear the milkman’s idling diesel in the alley beside our house as he stopped to refill our milk box with two full bottles and pick up our empty milk bottles and notes on an order pad from my mother for the coming week. Also on the back porch were our bicycles – one for each of us children and one for my mother. All four bicycles were purchased used from the Schwinn bicycle shop for less than $20. They were in various stages of disrepair, rust and scratches painted over several times with spray paint even before we owned them, but they worked and we rode many miles on them to and from school, the swimming pool, and the park.

Through the back door one entered what we called the playroom. It was a tiny tiled room with pine paneling and three closets. One closet contained our toys and games. A second was for coats and snow boots, and the third contained dishes, my father’s electric guitar, old record players and a variety of other items that belonged to my parents. The playroom also doubled as our dining room. A formica table where we ate all of our meals occupied half the room and the other half included a small desk, a console stereo and a rocking chair.

The playroom led to the kitchen with a small utility room to the right. The kitchen cabinets were 50’s era knotty pine and our only appliances were a refrigerator and a gas stove and oven. Through the kitchen was the living room, the only room with carpeting and the place where my parents spent most of their time. If my father was home, he could almost always be found sitting in his chair at the kitchen end of the living room doing a crossword puzzle, watching a baseball game on television, or sleeping. He sat in that recliner so much that it formed to his shape and made it difficult for anyone else to use without sinking awkwardly into the cavity formed by his posterior. Not that anyone would be allowed to use it anyway. Mother had her small chair next to his and the three of us were allowed to sit on the couch along the wall,