Cord in the Kitchen: Adventures of a Thirteen Year Old Adolescent

By Malio Valente

This story is about a thirteen year old boy who finds him-self living with a family of people who are half Native American and Half European. The boy had been abandoned by his birth parents and he had become a member of Oregons Foster Care System. He has difficulty adjusting to his life in foster care and almost finds himself being sent to reform school but his best friend ever, Kenny Proud-foot Schneider, saves him from being sent to reform school.
Frankie Martin follows his nose and his heart and with the help of God and his Guardian Angel he finds himself working at a reform school as a Mechanical Drawing Teacher, where he discovers a startling fact about himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469141992

Malio Valente

Malio Valente was born in Oakland, California and spent his formative years in the Pacific North West United States, in Oregon and Washington. He is a graduate of the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. He worked in the electronics industry for thirty years and spent the final sixteen years of his work history as a middle school math/science teacher. He retired from a middle school teaching career in 2009. Today he lives in Northern California where he enjoys his retirement, cooking and writing.

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FORWARD

This is my story. It is a fictional story in that the names of the people and the names of the places have been changed to protect their privacy, however, the events described within did happen and I feel compelled to share this story with you.

The purpose of this book, hopefully, will motivate the reader to move forward with his life with positive intent and hopefully he will gain an appreciation of the knowledge that we are not alone in this sometimes cruel, cold, world we live. I believe with all of my heart we are loved and cared for by a loving, kind, considerate compassionate, altruistic, God and He is with us each step of our journey. We are loved and cared for deeply, especially, when we feel unloved and uncared for most. It is during our darkest hours, when the burden of our life seems unbearable that God is with us. Have faith! You are not alone! You are cared about! You matter!

Comments about my birth mother and other women who were a part of my formative years, may seem unfair or untrue and might be offensive to some but my birth mother was who she was, as were other female role models in my life, and I need to describe my reality concerning them. It is important that I tell my story with candor and that in itself is what this book is all about. Honesty! Looking a demon in the eye and not being afraid. Looking at reality and accepting it for what it is.

God is with us, he cares about us and he isn’t going to forsake us. The relationship between us and our God is unconditional, he doesn’t care about our peripheral features, what we look like, what we possess, what our positive and negative traits might seem to be, he cares only about us. He isn’t looking to make a deal with us. He loves us unconditionally and we have a place with him. His loves is unconditional! Too many similarities and coincidences have occurred in my life to convince me otherwise. God exists, he loves us, and we have a place with him regardless of who we are and what we may have done or not done. We are his creation and he cares about us!

Earlier this year I spoke with a woman who was living in a storage locker. It was one of those storage places that advertizes one month for one dollar after you sign up. Some of the storage units in this particular storage location had units as big as a garage with roll up doors and immediate access. Other storage unit’s (the storage unit the woman was living in) wasn’t garage sized and it didn’t have immediate access. In fact, her unit was very small, about the size of a walk in closet, and it was located down a dark hallway next door to a similar unit I was renting and we happened to be at our storage units at the same time one afternoon and it was then that I learned of her plight. The woman was middle age, thirtyish, and she was obviously homeless. The shopping cart and the many layers of clothing she wore and her disheveled appearance told me this woman was living on the streets. We conversed that afternoon, as we both stirred around in our storage units, packing, unpacking, arranging and rearranging our things and I asked her bluntly, during the course of our conversation, what it was like being homeless and I was surprised by her remarkable presence as she answered my brusque and unadorned question. Smiling, in a mild, even-tempered, voice she sweetly said to me that she wasn’t homeless! She

was houseless because her home was in heaven with God. God had a place in Heaven for her when she would die.

Recently, I read the best-selling book "Steve Jobs" written by Walter Isaacson. I enjoyed reading the book and found myself identifying with Steve Jobs. I wasn’t indentifying with his genius but I did identify with Steve Jobs’ mannerisms and his view of the world we live in and his reality that it can be made to be better. Steve Jobs’ was abandoned by his birth parents but beyond his brilliance he was jaded by the rejection, of his birth parents. In his book Isaacson describes Jobs as being impetuous, cynical, short tempered and occasionally unrealistic. Isaacson may be spot on with his observation but I don’t think he could relate to the essence of who Steve Jobs was deep inside. I feel that Steve Jobs was a good man. He lived his life honestly, without varnish, on his terms, his merits and I believe Steve Jobs is in heaven with God.

This story you are about to read centers on the life of Frankie, a thirteen year old adolescent who suddenly finds his life turned upside down, living with strangers, as an award of the courts in Oregon’s Foster Care System, and Frankie is amazed at the behavior of some of the people he encounters along the way. I hope the story will benefit you.

CHAPTER ONE

It was early March, a typical dreary, overcast day in the little town and I was getting ready to go to school. In 1957 few people owned their own T.V. The internet hadn’t been thought of and if you wanted to make a telephone call, you made one from a black rotary phone connected to a cord in the kitchen. No touch tone, no speed dial; nothing wireless.

Someone had just walked into my house uninvited that morning. It was 8:00 a.m. and standing in the front doorway of my house was a strange man. He was middle aged, he had beady eyes, and a flat nose you would expect to see on a professional fighter and he was dressed in a cheap brown suit that hung loosely, on his slightly overweight body. He was hatless, a comb-over on his partially bald head, and he had a Lucky Strike cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. I could see the Lucky Strike package in his shirt pocket. I was thirteen years old at the time and my life was about to change forever.

"Get your things, son. You’re coming with me! said the ugly man standing there in the middle of the living room with a disgusted look on his face. His suit was wrinkled and in need of cleaning… .

Who are you?

I’m Ned Scarponi! He said.

You’re coming with me and you’ve got ten minutes, now get dressed!

I thought about my situation. There was no plumbing nor was the house wired for electricity. The drinking water came from a hand pump located outside next to the front porch, my food had been purchased at a local Mom & Pop on credit and lately Mom & Pop had been asking me when I would be making a payment on the food bill. The house was heated by a wood stove in the kitchen but there wasn’t any wood to burn. Any standing water was usually frozen the next morning, including liquids in a ten gallon can on the floor in the bathroom. I was scared! I didn’t trust this stranger Scarponi. Who was he? What did he want?

I wasn’t dressed for school yet but decided to make a run for it anyway. I sprinted for the backdoor of the house as fast as I could run but Scarponi was

surprisingly quick for a slightly overweight, middle

aged man, and graceful as an antelope. He had me before I could open the backdoor, grabbing me just above my elbow on my right arm.

Where do you think you’re going son? Did you really think I was just gonna let you take off like that?

I stood there halfway up on my toes. Scarponi was holding my right arm tightly, high above my shoulder.

"Are you gonna cooperate with me son?"

The stranger Scarponi glared at me as I stood helplessly in his grasp. I didn’t know what to do or say. I was terrified. What was this ugly man trying to do? He had dirty fingernails and reeked of cigarette smoke. My arm hurt where he pinched it!

What are you doing? I said, almost in tears.

What do you want?

Scarponi turned out to be an employee of the Oregon Welfare Departments, Child Protective Division.

I’m taking you to a group home! he said.

"I’m not gonna hurt you but you got to come with me!

Anyway, you’ll like it, lot of other kids your age there.

Now git dressed!"

I could see that Scarponi wasn’t going to take no for an answer so I quickly got dressed. I put my shirt and shoes on and was ready to go within a minute.

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Downtown North Bend, Oregon

The group home wasn’t that far from my house

in Empire. It was less than ten miles away and in

a nice part of town that had sidewalks, indoor

plumbing, electricity and full basements. Nice new, well kept cars were parked on paved streets. No pot holes, no junked out cars. Everything around me in that neighborhood seemed fixed in place. It had a feeling of secure quality and permanency. I liked the neighborhood.

As I entered the group home I could smell something cooking on the electric stove and it smelled great. The front entrance to the house was encased in a covered veranda that looked out on Liberty Street.

We were in the small hamlet of North Bend, Oregon, located adjacent to Empire and Coos Bay, Oregon with the three little towns forming an equilateral triangle of sorts. The view from the back yard of Liberty Street showed the vast Coos Bay, with its scenic view of the majestic North Bend Bridge and the meandering bay stretching beneath it. Later on I would be reminded of this majestic Bridge in North Bend as I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge from Marin County into San Francisco. Not surprisingly, the people of Coos Bay/North Bend and San Francisco/ Marin County refer to their regions as the Bay Area!

The living room at 2517 Liberty Street actually had comfortable furniture sitting on the floor including a large over stuffed couch sitting in front of an open hearth fire place. The floor of the living room in Empire was only a sub floor that had never been finished, and from wear and tear cracks had appeared here and there, and if you got down on your knees and looked closely you could see the ground below.

I remember looking down at the ground through those cracks, with the excitement of a child’s imagination as I explored that mysterious dark area under the floor of that primitive house. I never had the nerve to crawl under the house at Norman and Stark. I was always content to let that mysterious dark area under the floor be what it may.

During the short ride from Norman to 2517 Liberty Street I had felt apprehensive and a little bit giddy, at the same time. I was alarmed to find myself in a car with a complete stranger, I knew absolutely nothing about, and couldn’t believe strangers could actually barge their way into houses uninvited and order people around against their will. That wouldn’t have happened if my father was home but he was out of the country working construction and I didn’t know how to get a hold of him.

I learned that a group home was a temporary housing unit designed to provide temporary shelter for displaced children, who live in the group homes until rulings are made about the suitability of their previous environments.

The process involved gathering evidence where State Social Workers examined the evidence to consider if the adult supervision, present was adequate, if the shelter was adequate and hygiene acceptable. Were the adults responsible? Was the shelter structurally sound? And was the environment healthy?

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Stark and Norman

Anyone eighteen years or younger, not managed by a responsible adult, is considered to be displaced, and if their environments don’t pass the Child Protection guidelines they are made awards of the court and

placed in Foster Care. I would learn a few days later that I wouldn’t be returned to the house in Empire at Stark and Norman, it didn’t pass the guidelines and during the early spring of 1957 I became a member of Oregon’s Foster Care System.

The group home at Liberty Street, in North Bend, was managed by one of the nicest people I had ever met or would ever meet in my life time. Her name was Grace Welch. She and her husband Art, a mill worker, ran the group home at 2517 Liberty Street. Both of these people were kind, honest, hard working and as dependable as the sun that rises in the morning. I immediately felt drawn to Grace that damp overcast morning.

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2517 Liberty St.

Grace was a somewhat matronly middle aged woman who had years ago lost her matinee childhood figure as she was not slender any more but she wasn’t fat either. She was what you would expect to find of a middle aged woman from the 1950’s; slightly plump, her dress almost to her ankles, she was wearing an apron that morning and with it she wore a genuine smile. It wasn’t a department store "give a waitress a tip" smile. It was an honest, nice, warm smile.

Her eyes were hazel, warm, her gray hair was combed and she had such a nice easy way about her. She immediately defused all of my resentment towards the pushy Scarponi and suddenly the sun started shining. It had been damp, dreary, and foggy, moments earlier and now it suddenly became sunny, warm and bright.

Grace met Scarponi and me at the front door of her big beautiful house. Big smile!

Come in!

She said smiling at Scarponi and me.

"What do we have here?"

Grace was still smiling, as she looked me in the eyes and suddenly I felt at ease. I felt welcomed and I felt safe. I have met some wonderful people in my sixty nine years on Mother Earth and standing before me was the nicest, warmest, most considerate person I would ever meet.

I was asked to sit on the couch while Grace and Scarponi talked together in the kitchen. After a short conversation they both came back into the living room with Scarponi doing the talking.

You’re going to stay here awhile! he said.

Do what you’re told and everything will be fine!

With that Scarponi was out the door leaving Grace and me alone. I sat there staring at Scarponi as he exited Graces house, not realizing I would be seeing him again soon. What a total jerk I thought to myself as he exited Grace’s house.

"Make yourself comfortable." Grace said after Scarponi had gone.

I’ll fix some lunch.

The other kids are at school right now and won’t be home until after 3:00 p.m.

And so began my new life as an award of the State of Oregon’s Child Protective Agency. From that very moment, in the living room of that beautiful house at 2517 Liberty Street, in 1957, I would begin a journey and I would find myself traveling to many parts of our planet with visits to all of the major continents before I would return back to the Pacific Northwest. Along the way I would become convinced to my very core that my God had been with me the entire journey and he had assigned an Angel to watch over me, protect me, and keep me out of harm’s way.

I would see much in the coming years and each adventure would strengthen and reinforce my belief that God was with me and my good Angel was protecting me. It wasn’t simply luck or a random occurrence that had brought Scarponi to Stark and Norman that morning. Scarponi had no choice in the matter. God wanted him there!

Before my involvement began with Oregon’s Foster Care, Child Protective Agency, I had lived happily with my father for thirteen years. We were poor and by today’s standards we would have been classified way below the poverty line, which we were, but it didn’t seem so bad to me back then and it didn’t seem to really matter. I wasn’t aware we were poor, although it was strange one Christmas when my neighbor friends showed me their cool trucks and toys while I showed them a quarter my father had just given me that morning.

I grew up thinking it was normal to shop for school clothes at the Salvation Army. I had never gone to the dentist before I became an award of the courts and if I got sick I simply rode it out. I remember one time, when I got the mumps. I had been laying in bed for a few days and had struggled into the kitchen to get a drink of water. No one was home at the time and I was startled to see a grotesque figure with a head the size of a basketball staring back at me when I looked in the mirror. My head had swollen double its normal size.

It had been me and my father since I was nine years old. In 1951 my birth mother had decided to abandon my father and me. I will refer to the woman whose body brought me into the world as my birth mother because giving birth to me was the only motherly thing the woman ever did for me and she was my birth mother only. Grace was my mother.

I was happy living with my father. He was a good man and I loved him. We may have been poor but I never went to bed hungry and I always had a roof over my head. The main thing about my father was his love. He was my best friend and he loved me. I could see it in his blue eyes when he looked at me. I didn’t miss my mother at all when she left, in fact, I was glad she had left. Unlike my father she was the opposite with me. She didn’t love me and I was glad she was gone.

One time I remember running to my father, at age six, terrified and desperate. I can’t remember what I had done to set my birth mother off that morning but something had her chasing me like a maniac and I ran for my life to my father. I found him before she caught me and I remember my relief seeing my father with him smiling down to me while I reached up to him for protection and his words of comfort telling me that everything was OK! She wouldn’t bother me now with my father present. I felt safe!

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Frankie And His Father

As a first born male child, of a Spaniard, I held a special place with my father. Ours was a relationship based on love and it wasn’t something we had to speak of or even mentioned, it was something intuitive between us. It was something we felt. My father made me feel special, important, cared for and safe. I knew that no matter what I did or didn’t do my father would be there for me and I was protected and comforted by him, always. I loved my father and nothing in the universe will ever change how I feel about him.

CHAPTER TWO

As I sat there waiting for Grace to fix lunch I thought about my situation and the rough treatment I had received from the ugly Scarponi jerk.

Who had called the Child Protection Agency on me? Was it Thelma, my father’s friend, who was supposed to take care of me while my father worked overseas? Was it her who tricked my father into letting me become a ward of the court? Did she realize how difficult it would be for me to be under the thumb of the Oregon Child Protective Agency? I didn’t think my father would ever turn his back on me so it must have been Thelma. I hated her!

As it turned out someone from the neighborhood had called the Child Protective Agency. The neighbors could see children running in and out of my house, indiscriminately, and they didn’t want their children unsupervised. But, it was Thelma, I am positive, who talked my father into letting me go. She knew I hated her and ours was a spiteful, nasty, vengeful relationship and with me out of the picture she would have my father all to herself.

My father had met Thelma in a beer joint when I was 10. He had brought her home with him and she never left. I was in my twenty’s, and a member of the U.S.A.F. before they finally married.

Thelma was Scotch/Irish, culturally. She and a sister had been raised by a single, school teacher mother. Thelma was a divorcee with two grown children when she met my father and I couldn’t see what my father saw in Thelma. I thought she was a slob.

How should I feel about my neighbors meddling in my private affairs? Should I be grateful? Who can say where I might have landed had I continued on without supervision. I was getting good at shop lifting and breaking into cars. Would I have morphed into a hardened criminal felon?

As soon as the kids in the neighborhood found out about Thelma’s absence we immediately turned the house at Stark and Norman into the neighborhood clubhouse. It became our headquarters, our protection from authority. We could eat whenever we wanted and whatever we wanted, smoke cigarettes, if we wanted and no one was there to tell us otherwise. We were the captains of our fate and happier kids couldn’t be found anywhere.

As my shop lifting skills improved, and I learned how to break into cars; I came and went as I pleased. I was young, energetic, healthy, loved by my father and I was free. I liked doing what I wanted and I liked the freedom from the oppression of self serving adults.

My name is Frankie and I was about to embark on an incredible journey that would take me around the world and bring me back to my starting point with a profound awareness. I would see things I never dreamed of seeing and I would learn a lot about my fellow human beings.

It wasn’t easy for me to make the transition from that of a carefree, loved, independent teenager to a ward of the court. I almost didn’t make the transition. Luck and God kept me out of reform school. Early on it was made clear to me that reform school would