He Was There: Memoirs of a Flower Child

By Carol Brown

In He Was There: Memoirs of a Flower Child, Carol L. Brown unpacks the story of a girl born into an amazing changing American culture from the end of WWII, in the middle 40s through the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the turn of the century, and on into our present time. Along with changing culture adjustments came challenging

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Mar 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781640888838

Carol Brown

Carol Brown was born in Ohio. She lived in Pennsylvania for over 30 years and presently lives in New Jersey near her children and grandchildren who are her pride and joy. Her own life experiences have inspired the stories she writes because when she was young, she also had dreams of one day going to Nashville and becoming a famous singer. Those memories have helped her become deeply connected to her characters and her fiction novels are always filled with romance, drama and tragedy that are sure to tug at your heartstrings.  

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Acknowledgments/Contributors

To the human heroes in my life, I want to thank all who gave this scrawny worthless child encouragement to become a courageous woman of God who can encourage others in their treacherous journey through life. As I look back at the people who have encouraged me, there are many. Here is the list of the pivotal heroes that made the greatest impact on the direction of my life.

My first hero was my Sunday school teacher who taught me not only the love of Jesus but also, through song, that I can be a Christian soldier marching through war, just like the men who returned home from WWII like my dad, as wounded as he was. Those wonderful songs helped me feel a part of something bigger than I am and not so alone.

My second hero was my fifth-grade teacher who recognized an unguided child in her flailing attempts to quench her insatiable brain with knowledge as she walked through life. Mr. Marcus stayed after school more often than not, giving me extra projects to learn more as I think I was easily bored with the standard curriculum and had no one to go home to after school. He was so kind and encouraging like a dad’s attention I desired so much. I hope to see him again someday in heaven.

My third hero was a female high school counselor who, in one encounter, planted the idea in my head that I was smart enough to go to college and that was the next step I needed to take in my life journey. Even though it took me thirty years after high school, struggling through life, to attain the goal of being the first college graduate in either side of my family lineage, I realized persistence is the key to accomplish the deepest desires of your heart.

Enter my final human hero, Jimmy, the Vietnam War hero, who had faith in God and faith in me. He showed me that I could trust people with my heart and my life, that he would always be there for me and even risk his own life to save mine. He helped me attain those scholastic goals, getting my bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and my career goals, becoming a marriage and family therapist, which was fulfilling the purpose God put in me when I was in high school. Jim also joined with me and grew with me in attaining not only our individual goals but also our spiritual goals and marriage and family goals that gave us fulfilled lives. I thank him for his contributions to this book, to my life and countless others, and to our country, the United States of America. Without his encouragement, this book may never have been written. I love you, Jim.

I want to add a special thank you to my pastor, Kevin David Meyer, at Wayzata Free Church who, with the Holy Spirit, humbly and unknowingly helped so many congregants search through, discover, name, and own their true identity. Your unacknowledged yet continued service will ripple through future generations into eternity. For that, I am forever grateful.

Last but not least, I want to thank every client I ever had in my career. As we walk through life, trying to do good, others respond and return the goodness. It is with deep fondness for those individuals and families that I will miss most as I retire by Christmas of this year.

Thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to experience yet another new adventure in my life.

Your story isn’t over.¹

And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.²

Introduction

I, Carol Brown, am a licensed marriage and family psychotherapist at the time of this writing. I must tell you about a marvelous woman I met recently. She seemed to have light beaming from her twinkling eyes and a glorious inviting smile that could make you feel so accepted and loved. I was intrigued by the beauty of who she was that I hardly noticed the old-aged fragile scarred body and thinning hair that is common for a woman her age. So many questions came to my mind. I decided she would become my friend for life. I wanted to know more about her passions, her stamina, her deep inner joy; and so, the journey begins.

As I began this journey, I was reminded of the philosophy of the famous psychotherapist and medical doctor Alfred Adler who believed that our perceptions are our reality.

Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.

It is very obvious that we are not influenced by facts but by our interpretation of the facts.

—Alfred Adler

My hope, as you read this book, is that the story gives you hope and courage as you walk this challenging journey through life. Life is too short to not have joy amidst the sorrow, courage in the fear, and hope in the disappointments. I pray for you to discover and retain your true identity, who God created you to be, who He will help you become. Most of all, I hope that you learn and believe that you are not alone.

The main character in this book, Peewee, experiences many trials and tribulations, defeats and failures, abandonment and neglect, betrayal and misunderstandings, poor choices and much forgiveness. Her life is not an easy one, by any means, but she was able to withstand the traumatic events and learned to open herself up entirely to deep intimate relationships. Here is my hope for you, the reader, have courage, my friend, it’s just a book but a true story of courage and hope and true love.

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength

while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

—Lao Tzu

Prologue: Behind the Veil

The reader of this book will find snippets throughout, named Behind the Veil. These snippets describe what God was doing behind the scenes to fulfill Peewee’s deepest desires. It’s truly amazing how God orchestrates timing for us humans. God created time for our human means of organizing our lives; time limits us. This earth, as it is today, is temporary as is all of earthly creation. This concept is difficult for people to understand until we continue to read His story (history) and understand that His motives are good and pure.

Simply put, I think that our whole purpose on earth is to: 1) decide where we want to spend eternity, and 2) invite as many people as possible to join us. The first point is not an easy yes-no decision. It is more like answering the question, How bad do you want to spend eternity with the God of the universe? In other words, how much of your selfish desire will you relinquish to God’s will? Until we give up all of our wants to Him, we are not ready yet for Him to receive us. How do we know what His desires are? By reading His love letter to us in the Holy Scriptures. How do we invite people to join us? By reading His Word. He gives us the answers in the Holy Bible.

Enjoy!

Part 1

Flailing at Its Best

Behind the Veil, 1943–1948

It was a very chilly Spring morning, March 16, 1943, at 10:30 a.m., to be exact, in Baltimore, Maryland, that a loud cry was heard. It was a boy seeing earthly light and feeling the pain in his lungs expand with air while taking his first breath. That was quite a trip down the birth canal for this ten-pound, eight-ounce boy, the youngest of two boys by one year and three months. Jimmy was born with the lungs and voice of an opera singer.

Tommy, Jimmy’s older brother, was born December 13, 1941, and was teasingly blamed for starting WWII. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president of the United States at the time Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese, December 7, 1941. The first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, broke the news on her scheduled weekly radio broadcast where she told Americans that although the United States had been thrust reluctantly into the war, she was confident that Whatever is asked of [America] we shall accomplish it; we are the free and unconquerable people of the USA.³ Eleanor Roosevelt was a well-educated and well-spoken woman of the day. She is known for her wit and wisdom.

The Italian campaign began with the British forces landing in Southern Italy on September 3, 1943, in Operation Baytown. The Italian government surrendered five days later, but the Germans continued to defend that area. The Americans landed at Salerno and additional British forces at Taranto in Operation Slapstick. The Allied forces continued to push the Germans further north, for months, until they reached the Winter Line, which was a German defensive line halting the advance. They finally broke through that line in the spring of 1944 at Monte Cassino. The Germans captured Rome in June. Then came the landings famous at Normandy where most of the war focus turned. Finally the Gothic Line, north of Rome, broke in the spring of 1945. On May 1, the German armed forces in Italy were ordered to cease hostilities and signed their surrender unconditionally to the Allies on the following day.

This newborn named Jimmy has no recollection of his birth mother as she quickly left the family when she told her husband, Ben, that she didn’t want the responsibility of two children. This left Ben responsible for the two young boys alone. Ben travelled for work and had no one to care for his two sons, so he moved with Jimmy and Tommy to North Little Rock, Arkansas, to be near his parents so they could care for the boys. Jimmy remembers his grandparents’ house as a big two-story white house with a big front porch with a swing hanging on it and a large pine tree in the corner of the front yard. The neighbors had a large magnolia tree in their front yard that smelled so good when it bloomed each year. Heavy rains would flood the streets and all the neighborhood kids would come to the corner at their house to swim.

Jimmy recalled that his grandfather opened a little neighborhood grocery store on the corner across the street from his home. His aunt and uncle built a house behind Jimmy’s grandparents. They had two daughters, his first cousins Mary Jane and Becky. All of these cousins played together often. Jimmy would get free candy often from his grandfather, But not too much. My grandad was pretty strict.

Jimmy recalled, There was a time when my brother and I were out walking around, not sure where we were going, but we went there and were on our way back to my grandparents’ house, and we had to walk over a viaduct. That’s what we called a small bridge over a railroad track. When we got up to the top of it, I wasn’t paying attention and I ran out into the middle of the road and got hit by a pickup truck. I broke my collar bone and I had to go to the hospital to get it X-rayed and my arm put in a sling. The guy that hit me was arrested for DWI.

This would have been the summer of 1948. I wonder how he miraculously survived getting hit by a truck and survive the event. What did God have planned for this boy’s life?

Chapter 1

Discovering Peewee, 1946–1950

Recently I met a marvelous woman. I want to tell you about her. Tidbits of her story were very intriguing as the woman began to reveal herself to me. I met her in the creepiest hospital you could ever imagine. This place was like something out of a horror novel by Stephen King. The halls were dark and had big plastic sheets up lining the halls where walls should have been. There was construction everywhere. Her room had a huge window that let bright light in every second of the day and night, yet when you looked out, there was only a dark brick wall staring at you. If you peered out close to the window, toward the side, you could see in another patient’s room, but this was not possible from the bed.

The weirdest thing for a hospital room, there were no blinds or drapes or covering of any kind on the window and, of course, it didn’t open for fresh air. This room had a twin-sized hospital bed and a chair in it, the standard table on wheels, and the room was packed with just the bed, chair, and table as well as the usual medical equipment such as the IV unit on wheels. The floor had dirty worn carpet on it, also not typical of a clean hospital room. I truly think this had previously been a cleaning closet, supply room, or nurse’s office as directly outside the door was a counter with a gaggle of assistants in hijabs, constantly laughing loud and chattering in another language 24/7.

Another strange thing in this room was the bed—it never stopped moving and making noise. But the saddest thing in this room was the fact that she had no fight left in her. She accepted this as her lot and took it. She decided that she had been thrown into another dimension where English was not spoken and her requests would be unheard. That’s when I decided to step in and be her advocate. Lord knows she needed an advocate.

So to make a long story short, this poor woman, with all the bones broken and tendons ripped off in her left elbow, her left shoulder and clavicle, her torn biceps, and her left hand looked like a black bowling ball, swollen from the broken blood vessels, was willing to devote some of her energy to tell me her story. She went by the name of Peewee. Either it was her real nickname or she wanted to protect her identity. I was summoned to help her because she was experiencing quite a bit of anxiety and slight depression. These appeared to be unusual symptoms for her, thus her concern and request for a psychotherapist.

When I introduced myself to Peewee, she seemed to have light beaming from her twinkling eyes and a glorious smile that would make you feel so accepted and loved. I was intrigued by the beauty of who she was that I hardly noticed the old-aged fragile scarred body and thinning hair that is common for a woman her age.

So many questions came to my mind. How does Peewee still get up every day to serve others all day and through the evening hours? How does she sleep at night with all the aches and pains of her deteriorating physical condition? And with all the grief and trauma she carries from the people she serves, how does she get up in the middle of the night to pray for them? I decided she would become my friend for life. I wanted to know more about her passion, her stamina, her deep inner joy; and so the journey begins.

This humble woman was amazed that anyone was at all interested in her life story, especially me as she considered me to be worldly, critical, and maybe judgmental. Strange she would come to that conclusion, just having met me, but sometimes, that’s how a person’s emotions make up their minds. I’m more a person of truth and science, so I like to research and investigate to make conclusions based more on factual evidence. As you can imagine, the introduction dynamics were quite interesting.

The pain for Peewee was excruciating. Everyone that has ever had shoulder and elbow injuries knows that you do not lie down during the healing process. That’s the first rule of care for these injuries. She described for me her first incident in this room.

Soon this patient realized she had to go to the bathroom and a nurse told her that she should not get up herself with the IV and felt dizzy from pain meds, so she searched around the bed for a button to summon a nurse. She found a thick black cord dangling off the side of the bed onto the floor. Struggling to reach through the crib rail to get the buzzer, without being dumped on the dirty carpet by the moving bed, she felt the terrible agony on her whole left side screaming at her. She managed to push the button, and ten minutes later, a very strange small girl appeared in a dark hijab, covered from head to toe in black. Peewee looked at this girl and wondered who she was as she did not speak.

The girl came over and found a different button to push and the moving bed started to lower to a flat position. My new friend immediately spoke up and firmly said, No! and struggled to push the button to make the bed sit up for her. The girl was like a trained robot to do the same thing for every patient and not allowed to speak or touch the patient. Very helpful indeed. My friend got up and walked to the bathroom, took care of herself, and went back to the bed. The robot was gone. As Peewee looked at the bed, she decided she did not want to be disturbed every second by the movement of creeping up and down under the mattress, so she sat in the chair instead, trying to get away from the noise.

Ah, this was a relief for her body to be still. A few minutes later, she got very cold; so gingerly getting up, being careful not to trip over the cords and IV contraption, she reached the bed and pulled off a blanket to cover. This predicament was a challenge about which she had not thought through. How does one do this with a swollen bowling ball hand at the end of her left arm harnessed to her ribs and the other movable arm strapped to an IV unit? She resigned herself to the fact that a partially covered body is better than a frozen body and she drifted off to sleep for the first time in about forty-eight hours.

A short time later, Peewee was awakened by the gaggle noise in the hallway just outside her door. She could see shadows on the wall of the women constantly moving around and hear loud laughter. No wonder the head nurse that had this room as her office moved out. She probably never got any work done with that constant noise. It was still light out, and Peewee thought, This is going to be a long couple of days!

As often occurred, an appropriate song for the moment came into Peewee’s head and she started singing softly, This Ole House.⁴

Three days later, a pain medication doctor came in to check her level of pain for dismissal from the hospital. From zero to ten, what is your level of pain right now? No matter which pain medication they gave her during the past few days, nothing diminished the pain she felt. Her response was simply 12! The doctor drilled her to make sure she heard him correctly, as they already tried many different meds. She assured him that none of them made any difference for her. He left the room for a while and returned later. He decided to give her a dose of morphine to see if that would help. Yes, the morphine took the edge off the pain enough to get a couple of hours of sleep sitting up in the chair. The bed next to her continued to roar and move every few minutes, but she was so tired that she slept peacefully.

Later, I returned to see how she was. Peewee was awake and alert. She mentioned the morphine lessened the pain enough for her to sleep, thus helping her to think more clearly. Her smile returned, and she was able to converse. The first question I asked her was When were you born? She responded the summer of 1946, on August second.

What is the very first memory you can recall?

She thought only a moment. Then a small smile came on her face. She recalled, "My mom was carrying me. I was toddler-age, just learning to walk. It was a bright summer evening in Northeast Minneapolis. I had been playing with my sister and two cousins in the yard. I especially liked to hide in the flowering bushes so they could not find me. It was getting late and Mother thought I should go to bed. I was picked up and carried into the house from the backyard, interrupting my fabulous play of hiding in the big bushes from my cousins and my sister. It was wonderful exploring nature, picking up sticks, tasting grass, smelling flowers, listening to the bigger kids laugh and play, hearing the birds sing their lovely songs, and watching as the sun went lower in the sky and it began to get darker.

I didn’t want to go in because I knew she would put me to bed alone. She carried me up the first set of steps, at the back of the two-story duplex, into a pitch-dark entry into the building. She stopped at the door to a bright kitchen where my Auntie Vi, Uncle Mike, and two older cousins lived. Her kitchen was always cheerful with a flurry of activity and wonderful smells of great cooking. It brought a huge smile to my face to see my Auntie Vi. She was fun, happy, upbeat, cheerful, and humorous. They joked about how Dad’s cocker spaniel, Duke, would steal my diapers and hide them under the stove. In those days, stoves were up on legs, and the dog could crawl under it. I saw a bright light contrasting the darkness of the hallway where we were and marveled at the sense of peace, fun, and joy I felt observing my Auntie Vi’s vibrancy. She reminded me of Lucille Ball, a funny lady with lots of energy, smiling and positive.

The joyful emotions suddenly shifted as my mother said good night to her sister and turned to the left, facing a tall narrow very dark set of steep stairs as far as I could see up the stairs to our apartment. There was no one up there. Everyone else was outside having fun, including our cocker spaniel, Duke; my sister, Darlene, and my cousins were allowed to play outside until much later. An ominous feeling encroached me as we moved into the darkness I deeply did not want to enter. It didn’t feel happy at all. It felt like dread and trepidation."

Then Peewee went very quiet and stared off. Wow. I suddenly wanted to know more about her. Why was her home so dark and ominous while in the same structure as this wonderful bright and happy place she longed to inhabit? What goes on up there in the dark? I wondered if she would ever tell me. I looked at her curiously. She seemed so very tired, so I promised her I would see her tomorrow and we parted our ways until next time.

That’s all she ever wanted was to be loved, not left alone, and to be accepted for who she was created to be. She had a few dreams, however. One was to love, care for, and help others. Another was to make the world a better place. Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate, you have not wasted your time but have done your best.⁵ The third was to seek the truth—no, the first was to seek the truth.

These were lofty dreams for a skinny little blonde girl that couldn’t even ride a bike or swim, who was ridiculed consistently and never felt like enough. Was there hope for her, hope to grow up and survive, hope to attain any dream in her life, hope to overcome all the obstacles life has to throw at us and thrive? Let’s walk this journey with her and see.

Behind the Veil, 1947–1949

While Jimmy’s family was living in Arkansas, his dad got laid off from his job and received a great job at Douglas Aircraft in California. When he went there for an interview, the two young sons were put into an orphanage in North Little Rock. Their grandparents couldn’t keep them all the time, as the boys were too much to handle, and the orphanage wasn’t very far from their house. Jimmy remembered having to go to Mass. He was four years old at the time. This would be in 1947. The sisters were pretty strict. He joked, I know that had nothing to do with my being a little bit rowdy.

The boys were at the orphanage for just a few months until their dad got settled in his new job in California. After what felt like a lifetime to Jimmy, his dad came back to get them. They then moved into a trailer park in Compton, California. Jimmy just turned five years old on March 16, 1948. His dad built a small bench that fit in the space between the front seat and back seat. It was a bed for the trip West. It took them three days and two nights to get there. They lived in a mobile home park.

Jimmy then remembered, My brother, a friend of ours, and I were playing Toro the bull bullfight and the bull’s horns were a barbecue fork. I was the bull and I ran through the cape and came out on the other side with the fork in my head. That hurt a bit.

Jimmy told me another memory of him and his brother walking around the trailer park, picking up Coke bottles. They could return them to the grocery store and get two cents for each bottle. Then they used that money to buy cigarettes. His dad and stepmother were divorced, but she occasionally stopped by to visit. When Tommy had the measles, she would give both of them cigarettes while their dad was at work.

Any mention of buttermilk pancakes always reminds Jimmy of a time they were all sitting at the table, eating supper when he took a drink of milk. His dad accidently switched their glasses, and it turned out to be buttermilk. His expression after taking a swallow of that buttermilk was a Western phrase, You dirty double crosser! to which he was quickly backhanded by his father and fell back out of his chair. Needless to say, Jimmy never used that expression again, at least around his father. He figured he watched too many cowboy movies and TV shows. They were very popular back then. To this day, Jimmy enjoys Louis Lamour novels repeatedly.

Jimmy had several good friends when he was six years old. The early morning fog in California was so thick that they could hide in an open field. They really had fun with that sensation, kind of like being in a different world among the clouds.

Jimmy had to get a small pox vaccination, among other shots, to start school, but this one caused a bad reaction for him. It turned red and inflamed for a few weeks but eventually went away. He spent a lot of time at the beach when he lived there. His dad would take the kids to Long Beach State Park which had sand that was super fine, almost like powder. Jimmy learned to body surf there. They lived in Compton, near Anaheim’s Disneyland. They visited the park several times. Jimmy commented, That was when Walt Disney was alive. Disney was really for kids and didn’t try to push a social agenda on kids.

While they lived in California, the family took a trip to Mexico City. That was Jimmy’s first trip out of his home country, USA. His greatest memory of Mexico was the food. The second greatest memory of that trip was swimming pools at the hotels.

Chapter 2

Nordeast, 1951

Nordeast is a famous term for the neighborhood in Northeast Minneapolis where Peewee grew up. I think the Nord part of the term is about all the Norwegian immigrants, although the area was immigrant families from around the world. Nordeast was quite a hodgepodge of many cultures, birthed out of all the immigrants that came to escape communist rule in Europe. People from just her long city block were first-generation immigrants from Germany, Russia, and other Eastern European countries like Poland, the Ukraine, and Slovakia. There were families from Lebanon, Italy, France, the Philippines, and all of the Scandinavian countries as well and probably other countries of which she was not aware. This diversity is what made America great and interesting. The homes in this area and during this era were over fifty years old, about the age that old generations die and new families moved in.

Up until almost five years old, Peewee lived in the upstairs of Auntie Vi’s duplex. The family then moved to a big fifty-year-old house that was now fourplex apartments. Friends helped them move what little furniture they had. It was just before Peewee’s fifth birthday, so she thought of this excitement as a birthday party which she never had before. Her parents may have framed it that way for her.

As promised, I entered her hospital room the second day. She was still pensively staring out the window at the dark brick wall, so I sat down on the moving bed and waited until she wanted to talk. After a little while, I saw a glimpse of that smile creeping into the corners of her mouth and the twinkle in her eyes as she turned toward me and began to tell another memory that was on her mind.

"I was thinking about age four when our family moved a little further out from downtown, still in Northeast Minneapolis to a really big old house that was very daunting, gothic, and dark. It looked so huge and massive and it had a fabulous front porch and majestic steps up to the house sitting on a hill. There were houses on either side of ours, but on the right of our house, as you face it, just on the other side of that house, was a magnificent field on the hill, full of long wild grasses waving in the breeze. I was drawn to nature, always.

At the old white two-story house, the small backyard with flowering bushes to hide behind drew me in. This new field looked like a wonderful place to run and play. We never had that much space to play before. I decided this would be a great place to live.

As I looked back at the dark daunting big old house, I climbed the steps on the hill. To my left was a very large mattress, lying on the grass. I could not resist running to it and jumping on it over and over. Then I looked at that magnificent porch that was nearly the width and height of the house and got even more excited until I saw my sister run into the house. A few seconds later, she appeared on the edge of the half-wall surrounding the top porch, threatening to jump into the landlady’s beautiful garden full of tall blooming Siberian irises. Agasp, I ran up the steps to the lower porch to try to rescue her. At once, my curiosity got the best of me and I opened the door and walked in.

At first, I could not see much as my eyes tried to adjust from the sunny outdoors to this two-story very wide dark entrance into what would be our home. Dead center of the large entry was a majestic staircase with very dark-stained wooden steps, huge banisters, and railings that were beautifully carved and rounded. Oh, how I dreamed of climbing all those stairs and straddling that banister and riding the rails down to the huge round ball at the end post.

Suddenly a man came out of a door halfway down the hall to the right of the staircase. He walked