The Girl from Gladden Street

By Jeannette McDonald

Sometimes, life plays little jokes. For Jeannette McDonald, growing up in a small town in West Virginia in the 1950s, life had three particular jokes in mind: naming her after a famous movie star, giving her a birthday just after Valentines Day, and letting her grow up on a street named Gladdena place as far from glad as Jeannette was from being a movie star.

Growing up is supposed to be a time of wonder and joy. For the girl on Gladden Street, the wonder was in discovering that when life plays jokes, anything is possible if you keep a healthy attitude. Ms. McDonald relates that some of lifes harshest realities can lead to new awakenings and a better life.

Peppered with a series of brief, episodic, coming-of-age vignettes that illustrate Ms. McDonalds life and much of the American landscape of the 1950s, The Girl from Gladden Street provides a reminder that some of our most valuable lessons come from events experienced during the most impressionable times of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 12, 2009
• ISBN: 9780595894574

Jeannette McDonald

Jeannette McDonald, originally from Fairmont, West Virginia, has traveled all over the United States. She has two children, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. She lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Book preview

Contents

Acknowledgments

The Visit

Sentimental Journey

The Piano

Wishes Do Come True

The Man I Love

She Came Undone

The Broken Promise

Sixteen Candles

The Nightmare

I’ll Never Dance

Death

Memories from Gladden Street

The Smell of Death

The Sixteenth Birthday Curse Speech

What’s Up with My Retirement Plan?

How I Became a Clown

Failure = Success

W-O-M-A-N

My Elusive Dream

The Happy Life

Crazy Because of Lady

A Different Kind of Soul Mate

Growing Up in Poverty

Relay for Life

In Memory of Florence

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

I want to thank the Unity Church for providing me with the love and support I need to pursue my dreams.

I also want to thank my daughter, Tina Marie, for her encouragement and help with this book. If it weren’t for her, there wouldn’t be a book.

The Visit

I run ahead of my teacher, who is coming to visit my mother. I live on a big hill, and I see how hard it is for my teacher as she climbs the hill. I am full of energy. I keep running ahead of her and then running back to her to make sure she is really coming.

I am not exactly sure what the visit is all about. I only know that my teacher cares about me. I feel a lot of love for this teacher. I am worried that she won’t be able to climb the hill. She might change her mind and turn back. I am so happy when she finally makes it to the top and to my house.

It is dark and dreary in the parlor where my mother and teacher are talking. My mom looks tired and worn.

I can tell, as I look at my mother, that she does not understand this important moment. She does not know what I know: that my teacher climbed all the way up this huge hill to my house because she cares about me.

My mom has dark circles under her eyes and has on a shabby housedress. Her hair is uncombed and looks wild. I can feel the sadness all around her. I can see that the sadness has penetrated her soul.

There is no joy in this house. The air feels heavy with foreboding and depression. There is an atmosphere of death in this house.

I was keenly aware of the decaying house, of how my mother looked, and how my teacher must have felt in a place like that. But with the innocence of a child, I felt excited and full of joy. I felt very much alive, because my teacher had climbed the hill, entered the decaying house, and talked to my mother about me. Her visit was a gift, a gift that helped me feel hope in a hopeless situation.

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Sentimental Journey

Gonna take a sentimental journey, gonna set my heart at ease. … at seven I’ll be waitin’ up for heaven. When I hear this song, I take a journey in my mind back in time, to when I was a little girl living in Fairmont, West Virginia. I am sitting in the audience with my mom and dad, watching a girl tap-dance to the song. She looks about my age, ten or eleven. (Even as I write this, I can see her in her dancing costume, her feet tapping across the stage. And I hear that song, Sentimental Journey.)

The show that the girl is tapping in is supposed to cheer up the patients. But I know these patients can never be cheered up. I noticed, as I walked down the long hall to this auditorium with my dad, that none of the patients were walking; they all shuffled their feet. It is as though they have the world on their shoulders. The air feels depressing, and there is no laughter. Yes, when I hear that song, my thoughts and feelings take me back to the day I watched this show with my dad in the mental ward of the Veterans Hospital.

I also remember my dad at home, right before he went to the hospital. He is pacing back and forth, back and forth. While he paces, he wrings his hands and weeps. I watch him, wondering if he is ever going to quit pacing. It seems to me that he’s been pacing and crying for hours. I am scared as I look at my dad. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what is wrong. He seems to be in so much pain. I want someone to explain to me what his problem is.

My dad asks me to go and get him a six-pack of beer at the corner store, CV News, the store where he spends most of his free time, drinking beer. I slowly walk down our hill to go to the store for my dad. I want to help him, but I don’t want to go to the CV News and buy him beer. Will they sell beer to a little girl? I am afraid of those men in the beer joint. I have gone in there before to get my dad, and everyone looked scary to me.

I know I have to do this, because my dad asked me to. But what I really want to do is run away from home. I don’t like it here.

I need to tell someone there is a problem at my house, but I don’t have anyone to talk to. I feel sad, scared, and depressed. I take the shortcut through the alley to go to the store. The shortcut takes me to my grade school, which is right across the street from the store. Before going over to the store, I sit down on the wall that overlooks my school playground and look up into the sky.

I feel so alone. I wish I could describe the feeling. It’s like being the only one in the world and having no one to turn to, no family or friends, no one to help you. I know I need help, because I am just a little girl, and I can’t take care of everything by myself.

Even today, after all these years, when I hear Sentimental Journey, I see that little girl. She sits on the wall, crying out for help, but there is no one to help her.

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The Piano

I’m almost there, almost to the top of the hill. I’m running. I have to get there in time. I can see the old pickup truck in front of my house. I rush inside. I have to rescue the sheet music, because if I don’t, the music will be gone forever. I am so angry. The men who’ve come to buy our piano can’t even pronounce the word piano. What right do they have to take the piano away? They are farmers, and surely they can’t play the piano. Nobody can play like my mom.

They appear very happy and excited as they load our broken-down piano into their truck. It is an old upright piano. It needs to be tuned, and it has a few broken keys. I wonder if they would feel so wonderful about their purchase if they knew that this is not just a piano. It is joy, it is music, and, for my mother, it is happiness. The only time she is happy is when she is playing the piano.

If you have ever lost someone you love, can you bring him or her back to mind at certain times? I do that every Sunday at church. I bring my mom back to me when we sing the Lord’s Prayer. You see, all I have to do is close my eyes, and there I am, watching my mother at