The Aquarian Son: Candide # 2

By George Zidbeck

After Charles Bach learns of his fathers death, he begins a mental journey to find more meaning in his life. Charles, the oldest of three children, holds many questions concerning life and his future. Hes a young married man working toward obtaining a college degree and has been estranged from his alcoholic father for some time.

Knowing intimately the scope of destruction that alcohol abuse hurls upon a family, Charles remembers all too well the details of the damage it wrought upon him and his relatives. He recalls his life of growing up in the American Canal Zone prior to and during WWII before his mother took him and his two siblings to California in 1944. Many of his recollections include countless moments of escalated tension and arguments between his parents as his fathers consumption of alcohol increased.

In The Aquarian Son Charles attempts to make sense of his perceptions which had been greatly distorted by the effects of alcoholism. Which path will Charles select as he continues his life? Will he be able to end the cycle of serious alcohol abuse in his family, or will he follow the destructive path taken by his father?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 10, 2009
• ISBN: 9781440101526

George Zidbeck

George Zidbeck, retired probation officer, is the author of Lady Gemini: The Panama Years, Lady Gemini: The California Years and the Kid Scorpion trilogy.

Book preview

The Aquarian Son

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Candide #2

George Zidbeck

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

The Aquarian Son

Candide #2

Copyright © 2009 by George C Zidbeck

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-4401-0151-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-0153-3 (dj)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-0152-6 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009921066

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 4/1/2009

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

PREFACE

Dear Reader:

Over the past nine years, I scoured all contemporary memory channels to buttress the six volumes comprising The Bach Family Saga. However, brain-mold mummified some recollections, bits and pieces of research proved irrelevant or questionable, and a few characters required personality nips and tucks. I therefore improvised/fabricated a decent measure of story elements in the hope of entwining and enriching those six volumes.

You might ask, ‘But, sir, what part is true; what part false?’ I can only answer that each tale speaks true to each protagonist’s struggle with life. However, under the law, if one doesn’t tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, all testimony is suspect. Therefore, seek and find the truth of your own life in the stories of Kid Scorpion, Lady Gemini, and The Aquarian Son.

Respectfully, the author

That’s all very well and good, but we must cultivate our garden.

Candide by Voltaire

For my brother Bill and my sisters Bootsie and Lu

THE AQUARIAN SON

CANDIDE #2

Chapter 1

THE DEATH NOTICE

"Hello, is this Mr. Charles Bach?

The unfamiliar, formal voice just past 5 o'clock at night made me cautious. Moreover, I had just returned home from my last class at UCLA. Yes, it is. Who’s calling, please?

I'm Larry Orwitz of Bunker Brothers' Mortuary in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm sorry to notify you of the death of a Mister Gus Bach. We've just received the remains from the Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital. The deceased had only a wallet on his person. The billfold had no money, but did have an expired California driver’s license. Plus one photo, a picture of Mr. Gus Bach with three children; and, a piece of paper with three names and addresses. Yours was the first name with the same last name that had a phone number. Are you related to Gus Bach?

Yes, I'm his oldest son, living in Redondo Beach, California. My brother, Eddie, is in the navy, stationed in Florida, and my sister, Annie, lives in La Puente about forty miles away. When I answered the wall-mounted phone in the kitchen, my wife, Julie, sat in the back bedroom with her nine-year-old son, Richard, going over his schoolwork. I appreciated not having to transmit the nature of the message at the same time I talked to the mortuary representative. It made it much easier for me to stay focused.

Yes, those are the other two names, Mr. Orwitz replied, but only you and Annie had phone numbers, and your sister’s last name is not listed as Bach.

She’s married now; so has a different last name.

I see. The man paused as if trying to assimilate the information I had given him, but soon resumed his questioning: May I ask about your mother? Is her last name Bach?

My parents divorced about two years ago, and my mother has remarried.

I am trying to contact a responsible member of the family and make funeral arrangements. May I consider you that responsible party?

I guess. I was the first-born, but I doubt if I can help you much. As far as I know my father always said he wanted to be cremated. I surprised myself on how easily I talked with the guy. After all, he had just told me my father died, and I didn’t feel any special remorse or any curiosity over the reason for his death. Mr. Orwitz paused once again, perhaps waiting for me to ask questions or volunteer more information, but I had nothing further to say.

By December 6th of 1957, at age twenty-six, I had more than two and a half years of marriage behind me. Nevertheless, I still needed another year of college before earning a B.A. degree. Even before I completed two years of lower division courses, I had dropped out for one semester for economic reasons. And then another tight money setback arose when I finished my junior year at UCLA. Luckily, I had found a job quickly with Edison Electric at their Redondo Beach power generating plant.

Therefore, with a loving wife’s support along with a steady supply of paychecks for nearly a year, I succeeded in getting my butt back onto the Westwood campus for the fall semester of 1957. Thus, I wanted to keep my mind on my future, not my old man’s past or the status of his corpse. If that sounds cold, so be it. That’s the way I felt at the time.

Orwitz’s somber voice broke through my reflection above: Well, Sir, we do not have crematorium services here in Las Vegas, and the nearest one near your residence is Mountain View Crematory in San Bernardino, CA. Will that be suitable for you?

I suppose. What will I have to do?

The man gave me the address and phone number of the San Bernardino facility, and provided me with an overview of the procedural steps between Las Vegas and the crematorium. The body would be shipped by rail, and the cost for shipping and cremation would be one hundred and fifty bucks. The bill could be settled at the crematorium. For the third time I felt the man hesitating, the silence triggering some irritation on my part. One more thing, Mr. Bach. Would you like your father to have a suit? I am assuming you will be going to the crematorium to view the body before the cremation. We have a very nice outfit and it costs only forty dollars.

Although I exhaled deeply in an attempt to relax, my shoulders remained tense. For one thing, I had no desire to view my dad’s body, and secondly, it bothered me that to get him cremated, I'd have to pay good money out of my new family’s pocket. But, the question the man put to me -- asking me if I wanted to have my father suited up -- struck me as tragi-comic. I'm not sure I understand. He is going to be cremated, and you ask if I want my father to wear a suit? Don’t you have a shroud or something simple for such cases?

Yes, we do. But most families, when they gather for a final goodbye viewing, desire that a body looks nice and be fully dressed. And the cost of the suit is most reasonable.

Wanting to finish quickly, I likely sounded curt when I told him, I'm sure it is, but a shroud will do, thank you. And, I'll notify my family. Tomorrow I'll call San Bernardino, and get more details from them. Thank you for contacting me.

Oh, Mr. Bach, in case I have need to get back to you for some reason, and you are not at home, could you confirm the telephone for your sister in La Puente?

I got my directory and quickly gave him the number, and then hung up. Having my sister’s phone number in front of me, I first called her. Surprisingly, the announcement saddened her; plus she announced she wanted to go to the crematorium for a viewing, asking me to pick her up. She agreed to phone our brother in Florida and tell him the news of our father’s death.

Then, I headed to the rear of the house to let my wife, Julie, know the full circumstances of the above phone calls. Next, I phoned my mother in Corona. Julie had encouraged me to see my mother and tell her personally -- not over the telephone. Consequently, when Mom answered, I told her I had to see her that night. I explained that I had no time to spend on the phone right then because I'd soon see her. I kind of hinted that the urgency related to our moving the next two days -- over the weekend -- to a new rental in San Pedro. That much was true enough, and helped in some measure to explain my impatience with that mortician in Las Vegas. I had a lot on my mind.

I hated that drive to Corona. Always had ever since I first left in 1947, at age sixteen, to go to Colorado for a year; and then, joined the army the following year. The closer I approached Corona city limits, the more overwhelming the unpleasant associations with that town bubbled up from my psyche. Even though my mother had finally divorced my father, and, Lord knows, I had seen her anger towards him surface many times, I knew she'd want to know about dad dying. And I didn’t want to try and tell her over the busy weekend ahead.

It took close to two hours to drive from Redondo Beach to Corona, Friday evening not being the best time to travel on any road heading inland from the coast. Frankly, I never took to Enos Wishem, the man Mom married after divorcing my father, but he proved to be accommodating that night. He stayed in the front room while I went to the kitchen in the back room where my mother led me. Good, she had a fresh pot of coffee.

As soon as we were seated, I said, Might as well get right to it. I know you and dad divorced, but I was sure you'd want to know that he died in Las Vegas yesterday, and I thought it best for you to hear from me.

Not expecting her to register any sorrow, I thought it strange when her eyes teared. She got up to get a handkerchief from the middle room, and then sat back down, saying, I should have known. What else would have brought you all the way over here at night? I thought it might be that you and Julie had some problem, but when you three do visit here, she seems to be contented. Yes, I should have known it was about your father. Let me show you something.

My mother left again for the middle room and soon returned with a postcard that she placed in front of me. She had received it a couple of weeks earlier. I picked up the card to read it. In his awkward, left-handed scrawl, he had penned a simple sentence: Til death do us part. I never knew my father to write a whole letter to anybody. All his rare postcards were terse, nearly all ending with Kid Scorpion. True to form, he had closed his final postcard with that moniker.

Mom sat silently, apparently waiting for my response. Setting the postcard back on the kitchen table, I said, It’s almost as if he kind of knew he was coming up on the end. Remember how Grandma always claimed to know when someone in the family was going to die? I'll have to check with her and see if she had a premonition about Dad.

Bringing up my maternal grandmother, Marta, helped to change my mother’s solemn mood. Yes, you do that, Mom said. But, she never told anybody in the family ahead of time. Only after someone died did she announce that she had a vision of that person dying the night before. And how do you feel about your father dying? How did you find out? Are you all right? Do the others know?

I explained about the call from Las Vegas, leaving out some of the details. After reassuring her that I was okay, I told her that Annie wanted to go to the crematorium. Mom surprised me by saying she also wanted to go and requested I pick her up. Thus, even if I didn’t care to go, it looked like my sister and my mother locked me into traveling to the crematorium in San Bernardino.

Mom then explained why she married Mr. Enos Wishem after divorcing Dad: We have shared more words with one another in three years than your father and I did in our over twenty years together. To this day, I do not know what made him do what he did? Do you have any idea why he became Kid Scorpion?

You're asking me? I thought you always believed he was born under the sign of Scorpio and that what happened, happened because of the stars.

The stars play a part, but they do not explain everything. If he had just talked to me more, and let me know his feelings. She picked up the post card for a quick glance and then put it back on the tabletop, adding, Now we will never know. As he himself used to say, ‘It’s water under the bridge.’ He never believed in God, but I would not want his soul to burn in Hell forever. May God forgive him. Your father was not an evil man, and he really cared about people being mistreated. Yes, he had a good heart; he just did not know how to share.

I figured the best thing for me to do at that moment was to let her talk about whatever was on her mind. Tears welled up in her eyes once more. When that emotional moment passed, she asked, Do you think your father was a homosexual?

My being incredulous over her question puts the matter lightly. Her question stunned me to the point of silence. Still, Mom didn’t say anything past the question; so I figured I'd best say something. I don’t think so. I never had any suspicion that he was. I spoke truly. My old man never said or did anything to suggest otherwise. Even as a child I remember his teasing my mother about when he was in China as a young man, and he had a Chinese girl friend he should have married. I took his words as a joke, but the teasing related to his caring for a woman.

Then, later on, not long after he began spending more and more time away from home and coming home drunk regularly from Panamanian bars, he kept a ledger that he had people sign. Once, my father at work, Mom went through the ledger, and showed me one entry. I must have been eleven or twelve years old. Obviously some lady of the night had written it and, as best as I could recall, the phrasing went: Aii, the scorpion stings.

Even at that young age, I certainly got the message. I also wondered why my mother showed the entry to me. I certainly had no wish to discuss my father’s infidelity. But, to me it certified my father’s sexual orientation. Plus, I don’t know how many times he'd look at an attractive woman with red hair, and make a comment about how red haired women were the hottest woman a man could get. It got to where her waiting for me to answer eventually compelled me to ask, What makes you think he liked men?

After you children were born, it got to where he didn’t pay any attention to me. Even before we left the Canal Zone, he --- Almost as if her mind hit a wall, she stopped talking. I guessed she tried to cover the subject without getting overly clinical. She closed the sentence by saying: --- well, he stopped touching me completely. She shook her head slightly, side to side, head down, likely uncomfortable in reliving the past. Raising her head, she asked, Do you remember ‘Dinty,’ that sailor your father brought home not long after the Second World War started?

Yeah, I remember.

Your father told me he was a homosexual.

Knowing a homosexual doesn’t make a person one. My answer made sense to me. In the Army I had met more than a handful of queers, but none changed my interest in girls. I decided to change the subject, and talked about UCLA and the family making the move to San Pedro over the weekend. After about a half hour of small talk, she thanked me for coming by, and said it was time for me to get home to my wife and stepson. I replied that she didn’t have to get up and see me to the door; gave her a kiss on the cheek, and then left for the car, giving Enos a nod before stepping into the night.

On the way home, I felt awkward, as if I couldn’t keep my mind and eyes on the road. I guess Mom’s questioning opened up more doors to my past than I wanted to then remember. When I finally reached Redondo, Julie waiting up for me, I couldn’t recall any particulars of traffic flow or weather or passage of time. The drive back from Corona had been devoted totally to my past. I guess the best way to put it is to use that trite phrase about someone in a moment of crisis seeing his lifetime pass before his eyes. Countless memories deluged my mind -- nearly all devoted to my dad and my mother and how separately and together they impacted my past and currently the present.

Chapter 2

A SEED NOT CAST

UPON THE GROUND

(CHARLES REVISITS HIS PAST)

I think the artist Salvadore Dali claimed that he had a memory of that magical DNA moment when his father’s sperm broke through the membrane of his mother’s ovum and he thus began his lifelong journey into surrealism. Well, I’m no Salvadore Dali.

In fact, I don’t believe that clocks and calendars enter the mind of most of us until we begin school – the first major introduction to regimentation directly chained to time’s passage. Not that the fusion of one sperm and one egg doesn’t make some kind of spark. Still, I doubt if extreme pain or ecstasy is involved. I mean, after all, the brain hasn’t yet formed. How then can any memory, for ill or good, be stimulated and filed?

Maybe some day, somebody will figure it out. But, for now, at least in my way of thinking, I suspect separation trauma jumpstarts the infant brain into thinking beyond its own selfish self. Also, if it weren’t for my mother keeping a baby book, I would not have firm dates upon which to fix some of the highlights of my early years.

Baby books are good things. Although one hundred percent subjectively written by biased mothers, they stand as valid historical documents. By law, all parents should record their child’s progress at least through the first twelve years. How else would I, who always thought of myself as Charles (Chuckie) Bach, know that my initially proposed baby nickname was Porky? Or, that I won an Honorable Mention medallion from Sears, Roebuck & Co. for their Beautiful Baby Contest? Moreover, discover that my mother predicted ophthalmology for my future career, because I kept sticking a finger in my younger brother’s eyeballs when he lay in his crib.

The book notes the removal of my tonsils when three years old. Quartered in a hospital and eating ice-cream and given a bath from someone outside the family and left abandoned in the bathtub for a short while are circumstances affixed to my neurons as firmly as an abalone to a rock. Surely, separation from family, the discomfort of the scalpel upon the throat, and not able to understand any part of the process, has to try the infant soul. Anyway, a tonsillectomy jumpstarted my awareness of an outside world. Anything prior to that point is hearsay and not in my memory bank.

Although my birth occurred in the American Gorgas Hospital, Ancon, Canal Zone in 1931, my family moved from the Pacific side of Panama to the Atlantic side before I turned three. My earliest memories are thus affixed to East Cristobal, and the mélange of events in that geographical entity continued until I reached seven plus years.

While my family lived on the Atlantic side, my mother took me and my younger brother, Eddie -- later my baby sister Annie -- to the nearby coastal beach and there taught us to swim. Also, while living in E. Cristobal, I met my extended family from both sides of the family, and learned that the Latin, Mediterranean temperament differed much from that deriving from the Baltic north. And it was in Cristobal that I met the Protestant Christian God and earned a Holy Bible for attending Sunday school for a year straight.

The God of that youth died a long time ago. Lord knows I displayed no scholastic talent nor shone as a seminarian ahead of my age, but when I read in the Bible all the words underlined in red that came from the mouth of Jesus, I -- with my seven year old mind -- believed them to be the words of Jesus, and that Jesus truly was the son of God. I do believe today -- as an adult -- that children should not be ’schooled’ about God. Religion has little to do with words, it’s about example. And since the crucifixion there haven’t been that many people who serve as good examples if you know what I mean.

We lived in the bottom right section of a two story, wooden structure of four separate family units. From that home, at age five, I went to primary school, bypassing kindergarten because no one was gonna keep me confined under such a non challenging, boring environment.

A gymnasium floor contained the space where kindergarteners assembled to string beads and color books; the structure set back but two blocks from the beach. Ocean and sand beckoned, and I had to answer their siren calls. Also, the great outdoors offered grasshoppers to catch and eat their legs. No doubt I drove my mother bananas.

Around the time of my playing hooky from kindergarten, my mother answered a knock on the back door. When she opened the door, a man half shouted, Your boy stole my lock, and you should whip the boy severely to teach him a lesson. Good thing my mother never did pay much mind to people who told her how to raise her children. I remember taking an eye-catching, brass thingamajig hanging from one of the doors of the row of garages set back from our house, and bringing the shiny object home. Who knew locks from private property? From such encounters a growing child assimilates how adults compartmentalize this from that, mine from yours. Takes a long time to tread one’s childhood path amongst the mazes of cultural values.

While living at that Cristobal home, I discovered that the female of the human species -- not counting mothers -- offer a special beauty and attraction. I must've been about five or six when two young girls entered my formative years and imprinted themselves upon me for a lifetime.

The first, a young lass of about thirteen, lived in the neighborhood and babysat us three children now and again. Don’t tell me a five or six-year-old male cannot fall madly in love with an older female. I loved that girl passionately. One time she had a boy friend visit her while she watched me, Eddie, and Annie. The young man hadn’t been there long before I exercised my territorial imperative and brained him hard with a handy stick. Alas, fair heart is not always won by violence.

The second instance of my falling hard for the distaff side occurred one morning shortly after I awakened early, dressed myself for school, and quickly gobbled some bread and butter before leaving the house. I had not gone more than a hundred feet from the front steps, when across the street an eleven or twelve year old girl walked down the side banister of her house to also head for school. Only twice in all the subsequent years have I been as captivated over a female stranger as I was that morning. That vision of such loveliness hypnotized me. From what source does such rapture flow?

Snippets of recollections from those early years are easily retrieved, but individually held little impact on my development. Not necessary for me to share the countless moments when the bits and pieces of the larger world entered my psyche. Yet some memories become indelible even if no immediate lesson emerged. Like that one morning I left the house early. Naked as a newborn, I stepped out past the narrow porch to step down the front entryway leading to the concrete walkway connecting the sidewalk twenty feet away. I could not have been much more than four. But before reaching the landing I saw the motionless body of an English bulldog. His snout lay about five inches from a hamburger patty my mother had thrown out the front door the night before. The neighborhood canine daily made the rounds, going house to house for handouts.

All those grasshoppers I had caught and made lifeless by ripping off their rear legs meant nothing. All those flies that I had seen swatted added up to zero in infantile perceptions. Roaches were to be poisoned, stomped, or in any way possible sent to another world. Ants on their way to the kitchen counter had to be slaughtered. Death had not entered my universe by such overtures. Yet, that dog lying prone and unmoving, signified the certainty that life does not proceed endlessly forever and ever.

The animal had not been wounded; he just up and died. But the transcendental theme of death and old age lies beyond a child’s full apprehension while his own biological clock rapidly manufactures replacement cells. Even so, I sensed some deeper lesson attached to that lifeless canine even if then unfathomable. The phenomena of lifelessness presented itself as a philosophical conundrum even more complex than when I tore an alarm clock apart to see what made it tick, and then unable to put it back together again.

Beyond the few circumstances above, most of my early years at East Cristobal seemed mundane. Is it all that important for you to read about my impulsively tasting some roach poison I had found under the water heater, and my mother rushing me to the hospital to have my stomach pumped? Naagh. Or, that I tell you about that one afternoon, when six, I went with my mother and her sister Johanna in a horse drawn carriage to a theatre in nearby Colón. Likely not, but the movie event warrants a brief mention.

I tried to make sense of that silent picture, but remained utterly confused in that I could not read the subtitles. Albeit, one scene stayed with me: a bearded man is jailed. He has a book, but termites eat the inner pages. Many years later, I realized that the movie had been taken from the novel, The Count of Monte Cristo. I must have fallen asleep soon thereafter. Therefore, I doubt if enumerating a litany of miscellaneous events in my young life will enlighten you much. In later years, however, such mini-videos helped to add to the larger picture of how different the interests of my parents were respectively and how those differences gradually led to the crumbling of my family.

So, I told you about seeing that silent motion picture, and not being able to read the blocks of words at the bottom of the screen. Not that grown ups hadn’t read to me and my siblings. My mother, and her younger three sisters whenever they visited us, read regularly to the three of us Bach children. The magic of the printed word, the mysteries of the alphabet eventually deciphered, conspired to open up the world in glorious fashion.

Thankfully, when I started the first grade a year early, that woman teacher proved herself a sweetheart. Any topic she introduced, I tried to absorb. In later years I concluded that first grade teachers ought to be paid more than college professors.

If you noticed, in all the blathering I’ve done up to now, not one mention about my father. Not much more than a presence, he came and went – either to work or to other places unknown. There were times, when home, he offered his children a horsy ride on his right leg crossed over the left as he sat on a chair in the living room, but he didn’t play with us routinely or talk to us beyond a few words. He ate meals with us, and gave us commands that we knew had to be followed.

Unless he drove the family on a Sunday outing to Gatun or France Field or he accompanied us to the beach, I experienced limited interaction with my father. That’s the way life presented itself. I never expected otherwise. For surely, seeing other fathers behaving similarly affected my expectations. The first time he became a daily part of my life happened in the summer of 1936. I had reached five and a half when the Bach family took an extended summer vacation trip to Costa Rica.

When we disembarked at Limón, the family had a short wait before catching the train to San Jose. My parents decided to wait with my siblings in a nearby bar, but I wanted to check the street outside. I had been out on the sidewalk but a short while when a boy my age approached me. He extended his right hand and said, Deme dinero.

I didn’t speak Spanish with any regularity or with any degree of comprehension, but I clearly understood he wanted some money. His reason for begging stemmed from his having an empty right socket where he should have had an eyeball. Barefooted, his clothes tattered, he waited silently after his two word plea.

I knew that young boy and I lived in two worlds dramatically different from one another. Even if we resided near Colón, República de Panamá, I had not previously encountered any child beggars, especially one half blind. As the dead bulldog taught me that life ends, that young supplicant showed me the schism between those who have and those who don’t.

I put up my left hand to let him know to wait, and went back into the bar. At the table where my family sat, some coins rested in the center of the tabletop. I asked my father if I could have some for a boy outside. He nodded okay, and didn’t question my request. I had no knowledge of coins and their value, especially since some of the coins were strange to me. I took some of the smaller ones and returned to the boy. He took them, said, Gracias, and then walked away. To this day, the inequity of wealth distribution gets into my gut now and again.

In that Costa Rica trip, Daddy spent nearly every day with us. Go visit other families? Sure, all of us together. Go to the community bathhouse at the hot springs? Yes, for the whole family. For some reason, I had my own bathtub in a private room without a ceiling. Bats circling about the tall roof of the huge bathhouse seemed unreal and their skittishness frightened me.

During that one-month vacation, only once did Dad spend a day away from the four of us. He had gone to see some volcano and came back with a gash on his forehead. It drove my mother crazy to see him act as if the wound were nothing. When it came time to return to the Canal Zone, his old behavioral patterns reemerged -- with one major difference.

Without question, Dad drank regularly, and very likely my mother must have nagged him. But, I never witnessed any knock down, drag out fights. At least I don’t remember any shouting matches between the two of them in Cristobal. Nonetheless, from the first night after our return from Costa Rica, my mother made his drinking an issue. Up to then I had no awareness of alcohol being an intoxicant or that the juice might alter one’s disposition. Generally, Daddy sat stoically without uttering hard or threatening words.

I had not observed that many people under the influence. Additionally, there were times when, as a family, we stopped at some Panamanian restaurant in Colón, and Dad might order a pony for me. Nothing more than a small glass of beer served in a juice glass. Discounting foam, likely not more’n four ounces of the beverage, and I never got more than one serving. I don’t remember feeling grown up during such instances, but I knew my getting a glass of beer signified the event as special. Coffee, like beer, also took on a special quality. We children only got one cup of coffee in the morning -- half canned milk with lots of sugar. Still, the lesson came through: grownups can drink more than one glass of beer and sip as many cups of coffee as they might want.

As the months passed subsequent to the Costa Rican adventure, I do know that my father spent more passive time at home after work. He must have stopped drinking because my mother stopped complaining about his staying out. Life proceeded comfortably. A young lady we met in Costa Rica came to live with us, and she just seemed to make everyone feel relaxed.

Never before or since did I hear Spanish spoken so much in the house while Cielita stayed with us. Before, when my aunts and/or grandmother visited and my father wasn’t home, the ladies spoke only Spanish. Whatever Spanish I learned, I acquired by osmosis when my father wasn’t home. Dad had told my mother that his children were American citizens and were going to speak English. Consequently, he did not like anything but English spoken at home. However, my father made no argument over that subject when Cielita lived with us. Unfortunately, the young lady became homesick and returned to Costa Rica by year’s end.

My father’s parents seldom came over, and they kept their visits short. My dad worked for my grandfather who was a foreman. Both were machinists, which told me nothing about that line of work or their emotional attachment to one another. Not likely at that stage of my life did I analyze such matters. Life was; I was; one day followed another….

Not that the flowing weeks didn’t present changing family patterns. For some reason, Dad took a trip to the United States by himself. For a long time after he returned, I just kind of knew things weren’t right between my folks. I do remember that he came home regularly after work for months and months.

As the calendar rolled along, the boundaries of my young mind expanded. A railroad line, not counting the Balboa (foot and/or horse) Trail or the Canal proper, joined the Atlantic to the Pacific. What a magnificent train ride, particularly for a young man. True, the trip to Costa Rica meant taking a locomotive from the Atlantic port of Limón to the capitol up in the mountains. Nevertheless, it did not compare to that train ride in Panama from one coast to another that took just under two hour’s time. Sightseeing opportunities abounded as the coal stoked engine passed Mount Hope and the cemetery, thence the locks at Gatun and the swamps beyond. Skirting Gatun Lake and following the canal for a distance up to the Gamboa Reach and the Chagres River channel, the train soon headed up into the Continental Divide before dropping down to Pedro Miguel. Three military posts: Corozal, Clayton, and Albrook stood between Pedro Miguel and Balboa – a distance of about four miles. After the Balboa station, the train rides ended in Panama City.

Even when I grew older, and took that isthmian traverse by myself, I never tired of riding the rails. Or, for that matter, simply being at the train station watching and listening to the 'iron horse' coming and going....

When I reached halfway through the third grade in Cristobal, my dad transferred back to the Pacific side. We moved into another four family structure similar to the one in Cristobal. The main, all-grades school for Balboa sat at the foot of the Administration Building. Even so, at my end of East Balboa the Canal Administrators offered a wooden, elevated building to be used as an elementary school for students living at that part of greater Balboa. In that structure I completed the third grade.

From my perspective, life seemed comfortable at that E. Balboa location. Maybe true for many young people everywhere during those depression years that they were allowed tremendous freedoms to wander and explore. Nevertheless, I can state that such open ended opportunities daily applied to children in the Canal Zone. When not in school, young people seldom encountered adult supervision outdoors.

By my eighth birthday, I had discovered the art of tree climbing, and had become part of a Tarzan Club, a group loosely put together by a neighborhood associate maybe three years older. To become a member, a young man had to climb this one large tree and step out on a sturdy branch elevated about six feet from the ground. Gingerly maintaining balance, the novitiate moved out four feet and faced an opposing branch three feet higher and about three feet distant. For an older, taller youth, the leap posed no difficulty, but to an eight year old just getting acquainted with monkeying around trees, that leap meant hurtling across empty space and hoping to grasp that opposing branch. Fortunately, I succeeded. Worthy prizes often require risks. The more risks a young man takes to achieve a goal, assuming he doesn’t miss the branch and fall to his death, make taking the next risk a little easier.

Even if we were some distance from the main center of Balboa where Stevens Circle centered the Commissary, Clubhouse, Post Office, the ballpark, and medical clinics, we East Balboans were close to the YMCA, the police station, and the trolley car that ran between Panama City and East Balboa. The tracks paralleled Balboa Boulevard to where it became Fourth of July Avenue. We youngsters placed many a penny on those trolley tracks. Those flattened copper coins bettered a Crackerjack’s prize.

A wooden structure used for bachelor quarters sat close to the elementary school. In the open field behind those quarters numerous land crabs forbade our trespassing their territory. And in front of the bachelor unit, the trees contained, in season, nests of 'electric' caterpillars. Their hairy extensions acted like stinging thistles. One only needed one 'electric shock' to avoid touching them thereafter. Additionally, if we children were lucky, we caught the black man who walked along the main sidewalks spraying kerosene into underground ant nests and setting them afire.

The police station sat on the western edge of La Boca Road leading to the ferry taking traffic across the canal waterway. The building had started as a restaurant years earlier. The police station held no particular interest to me, but not far from its front door, where Balboa Blvd. met La Boca Road, there remained the last water trough for the horse carriages that still sometimes came through from Panama City or from the interior on the other side of the ferry. I routinely checked the trough to see if mosquito larvae squirmed within its waters. Maybe because the still water invited mosquitoes, Canal administrators removed the trough.

Just before I finished the third grade, we took a short drive in the family car, a Model A. We visited one of the concrete, four family buildings located in that part of town around the all grades school. Those concrete buildings, elevated above a tall basement, were common in the streets between the Administration Building and the Clubhouse. Mom told us we were going to move into 757-C Barnebey Street, lower right section, after we got back from a stateside vacation. Six months short of my ninth birthday and on the shy side with strange adults, I stood in the living room as my mother and father walked around the three bedrooms, one bath unit.

A friendly couple living there at the time, as visiting guests from the United States, would be gone by the time our vacation ended. The man talked to me as though he had known me for a long time. He asked, Say, do you know the difference between an airplane and a baby?

No, I said.

The guy laughed and with a light jab to my left shoulder, answered, A plane flies from city to city, but a baby goes from titty to titty.

Frankly, I didn’t know whether to blush or laugh; so I just stood by awkwardly.

He changed the subject. Hey boy, you like to shoot guns?

I never shot any.

Well, a young man can’t learn soon enough about how to shoot guns. Would you like a gun?

I had to acknowledge that I did indeed want to own one. I had seen all the ads in the Sears & Roebuck Co. catalogs and always fantasized having the single shot .22 caliber rifle offered for just over four dollars. I may not have pulled the trigger on any firearm up to that point, but I had seen lots of movies where people used guns to kill other people. Owning a gun certainly seemed exciting. Yeah, I'd like to have a gun.

Tell ya what, kid. I got an eight-gauge shotgun you can have. You get your parent’s permission and I’ll give it to you.

Yes, you bet, as soon as my parents finished their walkthrough and stood back near me in the living room, I asked if I could have the man’s gun. Of course Mom saying no disappointed me. Not until years later did I discover that an eight-gauge barrel meant more of a small cannon than a sporting shotgun. Even magnum powered goose guns designed to bring down high flyers don’t go larger barreled than ten-gauge. In 1939, at age eight, I didn’t know he flimflammed me. I required heavy dosages of bamboozling over many subsequent years before I acquired a patina of cynicism. I must've been born with a gullibility gene.

No need to jump that far ahead now, however. When we left the Barnebey unit, I knew that the next day we'd be on our way to America for a cross country tour. Eager for the excursion ahead, even without a goose gun, I had great expectations for the journey. Plus, it meant taking the train to Cristobal to catch the boat, and I've already told you how much I enjoyed being hauled by a smoking locomotive.

Chapter 3

THAT SUMMER OF 1939

Getting on that ship in Cristobal, heading out to the open sea past the breakwater, officially jumpstarted that three months vacation. Not one ocean storm --going or coming back -- interfered with that voyage. The ship offered a swimming pool and a children’s director who did his best to keep kids busy. We played chuck-a-luck where number four became my lucky number, my winning many nickels on the play horse races. Once, our third day out, I spied the sprays of a whale pod in the far starboard horizon. I fell in love with the glockenspiel calling out eating times, and the dining room seemed super deluxe to me.

What was my favorite meal? You may not believe this, but it was bananas and cream -- my first introduction to fresh cream; I reveled in its flavor. The song, Take Me out to the Ballgame, played regularly on board. All the children quickly learned the words and joined in the singing.

The only unpleasant incident on the ride north took place on the main deck one afternoon. We three kids sat on a deck lounge chair near our mother. A uniformed young man walked around carrying a large oval tray filled with snacks. One snack provided me my first taste of a globe radish. The red skin, artfully carved by a chef into petals that encircled a snowy white center, promised a special taste pleasure. Unfortunately, the sharp tartness that followed my first bite stayed with me for years. Not until reaching adulthood did I give radishes a second chance.

Actually, I had nothing to compare the cruise to other than the overnight passage to Costa Rica four years earlier. That coastal tramp steamer didn’t impress me at the time. Very possibly because I slept through the sailing, only remembering my eagerness to rush down the gangplank once the ship docked in Limón.

New York City overwhelmed me. True, I had seen pictures of the city. Not only in the news shorts that preceded the moving picture shows, but many of the movies had scenes involving the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Grant’s Tomb, the Statue of Liberty, and on and on…. Still, how can an eight year old fresh from a small Canal Zone tropical community, with houses well separated, not feel awestruck with the immensity of that megalopolis? Even Panama City with its crowded buildings gave no clue to what awaited me up in the States.

More than the skyscrapers and the constantly honking traffic were the hordes of scurrying people. And, we planned to live in that area for three weeks, day after day visiting one attraction or another – mainly the New York World’s Fair. The city became a visual feast filled with entertainment, wonder, and consummate pleasure. The metropolis became one large carnival and stage show combined with an Automat and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not thrown in.

Coney Island alone filled a space seemingly bigger than E. Balboa. My dad took me on two rides, the memories lingering a lifetime. The first meant stepping into an elevator that promised to go deep into the center of the earth, but turned out to be an illusion. The second was a whirly bird, loopy sort of spinning machine that wrenched my gut and scared me fiercely. I guess the operator heard me screaming, and stopped the ride. Even that frightening experience only temporarily diminished the wonder of watching the cotton candy machines. Threads of sugary fluff wrapped around a paper cone took second place to the most eye-appealing curiosity: the wonderfully compact unit that made cake donuts on a circular rotating assembly line. Metal flapjack turners coming out from the center to flip each donut bubbling in its own vat of hot grease functioned as an automated magic show.

The first night in town, we stayed with Dad’s sister, Aunt Florence, but soon found an apartment of our own. Later, all by myself, I stayed a night and the next day with her. She took me down Broadway to see a movie before returning me to my family. Not just any movie. One hell of a great movie, starring Gary Cooper when he was in the military shortly after America occupied the Philippines following the Spanish American War.

In the movie, the Muslim Moros fought the occupying American forces. To the naïve eyes of a young boy the cinematic cultural clashes introduced new elements into an evermore-complicated world. Until then, I knew something of Christianity, a bit about Judaism, and even less about Hinduism – that little coming from hearing people talking about those turbaned men running those Hindu stores on Front Street in Cristobal. One movie scene where the American soldiers threatened to bury a Moro in a pigskin made me wonder what kind of religion would make a person tattle-tale against his tribe rather than be buried in a pig’s hide.

Aunt Florence acted different than the aunts on my mother’s side. I can’t put the label of coldness fully upon Florence, but she kept some distance between her and me. I don’t think we exchanged more’n a couple of dozen words. But, her Great Dane was a sweetheart. That dog sure did like me and my younger brother and sister.

When we sailed to the United States, I had no idea that we'd be visiting any of my mother’s side of the family. To me, all her Panamanian relatives lived in Panama. I suppose, though, that some had to have migrated north to America. At any rate, we went to Spanish Harlem to visit one family, and naturally the room soon filled with Spanish chatter.

For the most part, my dad and we three little ones were left to just kind of hang around. I occupied myself by looking at pictures along the wall. One religious scene fascinated me. A bevy of angelic cherubs suspended in the heavens, some pee peeing, caught my attention. It made no sense to me. Why would anybody want to hang a picture showing winged baby angels peeing? At that time I was limited to Protestant teachings, and knew nothing of Catholicism.

Speaking of pissing reminds me of our trip to the Bronx Zoo. We had a snake farm out by Old Panama, but nowhere that I knew of had anybody put any kind of zoo together anywhere on the Isthmus. So, seeing wildlife from around the world excited me. One animal in particular uniquely made his presence known. There had to be maybe thirty people watching that African behemoth. Suddenly, some of the crowd rushed to the side of the cage as the animal turned around from looking at us and introduced his backside. At that point, the hippopotamus let loose a stream of pee-pee. His stream didn’t splash us, but some of the unknowing got hit pretty good. I then understood why so many people kept hanging around to view that one animal. I figured the locals knew the actor and the plot and just hung around like shills for the show to begin.

Soon enough the day came when all NYC sightseeing ended. I joined with my father to pick up the car he had purchased to transport the five of us to California and back. Shortly after, the family hit the road east for the cross country trip. For someone able to travel coast to coast in the Isthmus of Panama in less than two hours by train, the vast width of the United States quickly overwhelmed me. Time passes slowly when young; each day on the road seemed to last forever.

Good thing I could read. I never tired of reading roadway signage that helped to break the monotony of traveling. ALL THE HOT DOGS YOU CAN EAT AND ALL THE BUTTERMILK YOU CAN DRINK 10¢; plus, FLY ONE HALF HOUR $1.50. Every now and then there’d be the Burma-Shave postings. My brother, Eddie, and I played license plates, trying to outdo the other in catching those cars coming from a state other than from the one we might be traveling through.

Now and then we stopped at some tourist site. At one place they had a tall platform and pay-for-view binoculars, five cents for ten minutes I believe. Maybe the other way around. One could see into four states; or even seven maybe. Doesn’t matter. Even before we left Panama, I knew that we'd stop in Iowa to visit my Aunt Sofia’s in-laws. It seemed like it took forever to get there.

Along the way, my dad stopped at some roadside place where the proprietor had a string of Shetland ponies. Whereas Eddie and Annie were escorted -- Daddy holding the reins for Annie and the pony ride operator keeping Eddie’s horse to a walk -- I galloped around the ring. I could've done that all day long.

Not keeping a daily log, I didn’t track the places we stayed for the night, but I’m quite certain my dad avoided the larger cities along the way to Iowa. Most of the days had that 1939 Chevrolet cruising along rural roadways. Finally, we hit Council Bluffs and shortly after the car headed up a curving road leading to an isolated farmhouse.

You’ll have to read The Kid Scorpion Trilogy and the two books about Lady Gemini to get the particulars about the Jensen place. Before Dad stopped the automobile, my mother once more gave us the ritual lecture about behaving ourselves. We were going to visit the parents of our Aunt Sofia’s in-laws. For the all too short period that my family stayed there, the attractions seemed superior to everything I had seen anywhere up to that point, and that included New York City. So much to see and do: a true-honest-to-God-operating-family-farm with livestock of pigs, chickens, plus a cow and a horse. Additionally, whereas most attractions were for looking at, the farm offered many hands on experiences.

I even got to ride the old retired draft horse that Mr. Jensen once used for plowing and tilling before he got a tractor. Even atop that horse, the corn stalks along the dirt roadway rose above my head. Mrs. Jensen let us collect eggs and shell some corn and showed us her root cellar too. Additionally, I enjoyed watching her cook on a woodstove. Man, she moved like she was on fire. Seeing her crank a milk separator where cream flowed from one spout and skim milk from another was nearly as entertaining as her giving me a chance to squeeze the milk from one of the cow’s titties. I could've have stayed on that farm for the whole three months of our summer vacation.

It turned out we didn’t stay long. I didn’t know many of the specifics at the time, but never before that second day on the farm had I heard my mother expressing her anger so openly and fiercely to my father in front of her three kids. Seems like Dad had taken Mr. Jensen to town for some stuff. The two men got back late, and Mr. Jensen was sick. Mom lit into Dad for getting the man drunk and embarrassing the family, et cetera. She gave him the proverbial going over. Anyway, she decided we had to leave early the next morning.

From that next morning on, it looked like my father became hell-bent to rush us to California. Other than short visits at Mt. Rushmore Memorial, the Cody Museum, Yellowstone National Park, and Reno, I felt like Dad drove steadily until we stopped in Oakland to visit the San Francisco World’s Fair. Even then, the two-day layover hardly gave us time to see anything.

The biggest event at the Fair on the West coast, for me, came from witnessing two live locomotives almost coming together on a big stage. Lots of people gathered in front of the engines belching steam, where two guys sledge hammered golden spikes into one track to symbolize the coupling of a nation. Interesting, but the size of those locomotives has stayed in my mind more than the choreographed pageantry. That train running the Isthmus in the Canal Zone looked like a toy in comparison. After the Fair, we motored over some long bridges, but at the time, those spans meant little to me.

No doubt with two adults and three children stuck in one vehicle, after days and days of cruising, travel fatigue got to me. Maybe that’s why I don’t recall much about the long day’s journey from Oakland to Long Beach. In 1939, going about 400 miles in one day meant a long day of being on the road. Moreover, California may well have had the best road system of all the States, but there were no freeways and no business road detours back then. That meant we had to drive through every town’s business center. Taking naps had not been one of my favorite activities, but likely I slept for most of that stretch.

Somehow we reached Long Beach late at night and met my father’s folks that I barely remembered in that my grandfather had retired the year before our vacation. The next day, my parents tried to find a place to rent. They found one close to my grandparent’s apartment, and only two blocks to the beach. Within a couple of days we settled in comfortably.

I liked that month we spent in that city. When we didn’t drive somewhere to sightsee, there was the beach even if the water 'froze my buns' as some people say. In the Isthmus of Panama, we swam year around with the water never chilly like it was in California. When we had gone to Jones' Beach back in New York, the water was just fine there. Nobody explained that on the east coast, the current ran north, but along the west coast the current ran south. Further, the eastern seaboard had a continental shelf whereas along much of the western shoreline the ocean up welled from deep waters not far from shore. I had to wait until I grew up to learn those facts.

In Long Beach I met another of my dad’s sisters, Aunt Alice, who I barely got to know in Balboa before she went to the States with her parents in 1938, after Grandpa retired. She showed the same kind of coolness Aunt Florence displayed back in New York. I guess she tried to act like a decent aunt by taking Eddie, Annie, and me to a park not far from where we lived. We saw a play there, but it was too grown up for me. Like her older sister, Aunt Alice stood even taller than Daddy.

The Pike Amusement Center in front of downtown Long Beach didn’t measure up to Coney Island, but it had its own appeal, especially with their arcades. I liked tossing pennies into floating dishes to try and win a coconut. Between the amusement park and the City Pier, the beach had some tall swings with fixed metal bars rather than flexible chains. Young men strong and daring enough arched their bodies into a full circle over the top post. I tried, but couldn’t pull it off.

The family regularly visited downtown Long Beach. Even at night. Rainbow Pier with its semi-circle of colored lights looked pretty out into the bay where it encircled a large building right along the shore. One night we went to a theater on the north edge of Ocean Blvd, and saw a bunch of live acts. A Chinese