Warm Water: A Collection of Memories

By T.J. Richards

Warm Water is a medley of memoriesa patchwork of twenty-two personal stories from the life of T. J. Richards. Beginning at age four, with the imprinting sound of warm water gushing from a bathtub faucet, the author travels through time on a storytelling trip that carries the reader across a bridge that spans seventy years of the authors life. Autobiographical in nature, anecdotal and confessional at times, this book by T. J. Richards paints colorful portraits of boyhood while growing up in a government housing project known as the Patch. His description of hopping cars in the winter or witnessing a friend fall from a tree offers colorful accounts of his youth that continue through his rebellious teenage years into adulthood, where his personal and professional life as a commercial photographer in the latter half of the 1960s in Los Angeles comes alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546240433

T.J. Richards

Tim Richards is a former Program 60 Ohio State student and began his sunset years education at Cleveland State University in 2005, while still employed. In 2000 he earned a master of financial services degree from the American College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Following a thirty-four-year career in the insurance business on Clevelands west side, he retired in 2008 and focused his field of study in the arts: creative writing, poetry, screen/playwriting, motion picture film and digital photography. With an associate of arts degree in photography from Los Angeles City College, Tim worked for six years as a commercial photographer prior to becoming an insurance agent. He served in the United States Army (Germany) from 1961-64 as section chief, artillery fire direction, and lives in Olmsted Twp., Ohio, with his artist wife, Betz. They have been married for more than thirty years and have two children and eight grandchildren.

Book preview

Warm Water

A Collection of Memories

T.J. Richards

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AuthorHouse™

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© 2018 Timothy J. Richards. All rights reserved.

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Edited by Jim Hogg

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No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/14/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-4045-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-4044-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-4043-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018905214

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

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.

Contents

Warm Water

Stirring the Coals

Death of a Parakeet

Monkey See, Monkey Do

The Minnow Badge

My Given Name

Impure Thoughts

Chrome Bumpers

Hopping Cars

The Move

It Was an Agfa…

Roaches

Family Secrets

Finding Capel Gwynfe

Pocono Kid

The Shorter Side of Alice

Bad Hair Day

Bad Sound

Chatter

Green Grass

Puerto Vallarta

Growing Old

ALSO BY T. J. RICHARDS

Afternoon Tomatoes

— Accessible Poetry —

Reader-friendly & Easy to Read

Buggy

A Fictional Account of

Generational Family Abuse

Ship Happens!

A Tiger Cruise Tale or

How to Spend Six Nights on a Navy Warship for $70

The Richards and Barry Families

The Genealogical and Personal History of the

Richards and Barry Families

of Cleveland, Ohio

DEDICATED TO

Dr. Neal Chandler

Professor of English, Creative Writing

Cleveland State University

Cleveland, Ohio

Thank you for guiding me through the steps of creative writing.

Your helpful classroom critiques encouraged me to keep trying.

A Collection of Memories

Warm Water

MY OLDER BROTHER pulled up to our mother’s Cleveland Heights house in his late-model Chevy Impala, parked over the oil spot in the driveway and waited for me to come out. I had recently moved back from California in December 1971 after a ten-year absence, and I wanted to see the old housing project in Euclid, Ohio, where we used to live, maybe visit some old friends. We were both excited about our rendezvous with the past, but for different reasons. I was about to find out his.

You’re in for a surprise, Timmy, Barry said, on the drive over to Euclid.

What do you mean?

You’ll see. There are only a couple of houses left in the project.

What?

That’s right, he said. The city is just waitin’ to tear down the rest of ’em to finish the golf course. They’ve already got the back nine in.

"Huh? The back nine?

Yeah.

Where’d they put that?

On the other end, near east two-fifty.

I stared at Barry, stunned by what he said.

Briardale dead-ends now, he said, half way through the project at the community center. It’s been converted into a club house.

There were like… eight-hundred houses there. You say the city tore ’em down?

That’s right. All but six, and one of them is ours.

You’re kidding? I said, in disbelief. Does Mrs. Jamnick still live there?

Who’s she?

She moved in when we moved out.

I don’t remember that, he said.

You don’t remember Mrs. Jamnick?

Barry shook his head.

Oh, yeah, I quickly recalled. You were in the army then. That’s right. You wouldn’t remember. I used to pick up her monthly payment after we moved to Cleveland Heights. They bought our furnace, you know.

How could they buy our furnace? We rented.

Beats me. All I know is we were the first family in the project to convert our coal furnace to gas. I guess Dad was allowed to sell it, or somethin’. I really don’t know, but they bought it, and I used to pick up their check. That’s how I got to know Mrs. Jamnick. I wonder if she’s still there.

Heading east out of Cleveland on the interstate shoreway, we got off onto the marginal road leading to Babbitt Road, which took us north under the overpass, passing Noble Elementary School at the corner of Lakeland Boulevard and Babbitt Road. The school was still standing, but vacant. The old ghost had seen a better day. I began my school days there in 1949 when I was six years old and stayed through Mrs. Donahue’s fifth-grade class, until Mom sent me to St. Robert parochial school to straighten me out. She thought the nuns could do it. So did Sister Mary Leonard, who kept a wooden yardstick hidden in the folds of her pleated black dress.

We continued north towards Briardale Avenue, the only main street through the Lake Shore Village housing project, and passed the old familiar houses on Babbitt Road—the ones I used to know when I walked to school: the cube-looking two-story bricks and the frame bungalows that lined each side of the road. I recognized one of them as we drove by. It had been under construction when I was in Mrs. Sweitzer’s third-grade class. I used to stop at that house on my way home from school to play inside. It was my private little playground. The dirt front yard was littered with construction scraps and piles of short-cut lumber. Although the bungalow was framed and the siding was up, there were no windows or doors installed yet. Inside were open stud walls and a lot of sawdust scattered on the plywood floor. I remembered the sweet scent of freshly cut lumber when I entered the house and the wet musty smell of newly poured cement rising out of the basement that had no stairway down.

A faint spike of guilt surfaced when I recalled peeing on the plywood floor. I remembered feeling sneaky when I did it, thinking I might get caught. I’d pinch my penis to hold back the pee and then release it, shooting a strong stream that arced over the plywood floor as I spelled out my name. I even dotted the i with a carefully placed spurt. In more ways than one, I was a pisser of a kid in those days. For years afterward, as I passed what was then an occupied home, I wondered if the new owner knew I had peed on his living room floor.

Several blocks farther, I knew what was coming: Howard’s Gulf gas station, featuring Super No-nox leaded gasoline. The late thirties brick landmark had a gabled canopy that covered two filling pumps. I used to stop there to buy five-cent Cokes that stood upright in a cold-water bath contained in a red metal Coca-Cola cooler. Attached to its side was a vertical bottle opener/container that collected caps as they popped off and fell in. It was thick with sticky black gunk from the carbonized spray that often exploded out of the gassy bottles when opened.

About the only thing older than the building was its owner, Howard, a one-man business on the decline. He was still rocking in the same old rolling swivel chair when Barry and I pulled up onto the side apron and parked next to the building. I peered through a large, dirty paneled window at an old man in mechanic’s work clothes, wearing a soiled-looking Greek fisherman’s cap.

There’s Howard, I said, to Barry with astonishment. The old geezer’s still alive! Hell, he was old when I was eight.

Barry laughed. He knew who Howard was. Barry had gone to Noble School, too, as many of the kids in neighborhood had. Yeah, I know what you mean, he said. He’s still here, but not for long, not the way he looks.

We got out of the car and walked beneath the canopy that sheltered Howard from the weather when motorists pulled up for gas. The smell of grime and grease permeated the air as we approached the front door. A week’s worth of washing would not have dissolved away the smell. The rickety old door had a metal kick plate at its base. It was scuffed and scarred by decades of use. The doorway’s wooden threshold was worn shiny and smooth by foot traffic and was heavily blackened with the stain of engine oil. The place had not changed; neither had its owner.

Howard, how the heck are you? I greeted, coming through the door, half expecting him to recognize me, but he just kept rocking in his wooden swivel chair, nodding hello to me. Tim Richards, I said, extending my hand. I used to buy candy here on my way to school.

Howard nonchalantly extended his leathered old hand, and in a flash, I wondered how many other guys like me had come through his front door and got that same reception. I felt a little awkward standing in front of him, expecting some sort of recognition, but nothing happened. He just kept quiet.

Slouched in his spring-loaded swivel chair on casters, Howard tucked in a foot beneath him and then propped it up onto one of the chair legs below. When he settled into position, his posture slouched even more, causing him to slide forward on the smooth wooden seat. So he readjusted his position and then leaned back as far as the chair would tilt, and when it did, the old worn-out spring beneath the seat groaned for oil.

I looked around the gas station office. The rotary telephone with a grimy-looking hand receiver was cradled in its base on the desk. It sat next to a two-tiered metal tray piled high with smudged business receipts. The edges of the grease-stained wooden desk were scored with burn marks—deep black channels—the result of burning cigarettes left unattended. The channels reminded me of the same kind of burns on my parents’ furniture at home. Mom and Dad were both smokers in the old days and had the bad habit of sometimes not using an ashtray. Rather, they’d set their lit cigarettes on the edge of the kitchen table or living room furniture when they needed to free up a hand, and then walked away forgetting, leaving their cigarettes burning in place. The black channels were quite apparent and especially numerous on their bedroom furniture, where eight or nine lengthy burn marks had ruined the surface of their mahogany dresser and chest of drawers. Howard’s desk looked no different.

Barry chatted with Howard while I poked my nose into the grungy work bay. It was empty of cars. A stack of unbalanced used tires leaned precariously towards the dirty paneled window that overlooked the parking space where Barry had parked his car. Nearby, a cast iron tire mount was bolted to the floor, its grimy changing tools scattered at its base. A used transmission case sat alongside a grubby workbench piled with hand tools and used car parts. Dusty fan belts and odd-shaped machine tools hung on a pegboard blackened with use. I wondered how long Howard would stay in business.

When I glanced back at him leaning comfortably in his swivel chair, I noticed scratches on the old glass display cases across from him. The cases were now filled with FRAM oil filters and quart cans of engine oil. The glass shelves were covered with grit. There were no more one- and two-penny candies lined up behind the glass in open boxes. There were no more neatly stacked packs of Lucky Strike and Philip Morris cigarettes. There was only the memory of passing Howard’s gas station countless times with no money to spend on candy.

The rattling glass in the wooden front door echoed, as I pulled the door closed behind me when we left.

WHAT REMAINED of the Briardale housing project—what we called the Patch—came into view when we passed the Y.M.C.A. building on Babbitt Road across from Euclid Memorial Park. I stared at what were now vacant lots where houses once stood. The former 127 acres of low-rent government housing were gone, now overgrown with tall grass and weeds, except for six random houses standing in the distance. I was suddenly saddened—feeling like I felt after an old girlfriend had brushed me off, knowing I’d never see her again. The old stomping ground had vanished. The baseball backstop was gone and so was the sliding board and Jungle Jim monkey bar set on the asphalt playground. The winding dirt pathway that cut through the wide-open grassy field—the one we took when we walked to Noble School—had long disappeared under the overgrown grass.

I can’t believe it, Barry. Look at this place, I said, with astonishment as we approached the corner traffic signal at Briardale Avenue and Babbitt Road. There’s nothing left. You say our house is still standing?

Yeah, it’s still there.

How come?

I don’t know.

Where is it? I asked, as I searched the open landscape trying to distinguish which of the six remaining houses used to be ours.

I’ll show you in a minute.

Barry turned east onto Briardale, nearly slowing to a stop as he did, providing time for us to absorb what was no longer there. There was no traffic on what was now a dead-end road. It was strange to see nothing but the side streets and sidewalks still in place, their cement edges heavily overgrown with creeping crabgrass. Some of the original trees, I thought, were still standing, but no houses other than the six—no side-by-sides, no four-family up-and-downs, just cracked, black asphalt side streets that looped around, connecting to one another, all of them leading back to the only route through the project—Briardale Avenue.

That’s the field where we used to hit golf balls, I said, pointing in the direction of a tree I thought we used as the target. Do you remember that tree, Barry?

Which one, he asked.

I pointed as best I could. The one over there, I said. "We used to use it as the first hole. Remember that? We