The Blue House

Just a note-please forgive my random tangents and ramblings.  I'll try my best to stay on task but it comes out as I remember it.

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I drive past the blue house occasionally.  It looks like they've torn it down and rebuilt it, but I can still picture the rooms.  And the smell....at the risk of people judging my grandmother (and I really wish you wouldn't, she was wonderful), the house was filthy.  Chihuahua feces and urine were sprinkled *everywhere*.  The coarse green carpet resembled a Brillo pad, and believe me-you did NOT want to sit or lie on that floor.  The stench would permeate your skin and it took several days to wash it off.  The furniture wasn't much better given that Tiny, the chihuahua responsible for the foul odor, was given free reign in the house.  There were three small bedrooms.  My grandparents shared the first, my uncle had the second, and my three siblings and I slept in the back bedroom with our parents.  It wasn't uncommon to find us randomly sharing a bed with our grandparents or uncle because the space was so limited.  It was directly across the street from the Lonsdale projects-I guess some people call them housing developments, but for most of my youth several different housing projects in Knoxville were merely "home."

The few good memories I have of that house involved my grandparents and uncle. Mamaw Granny was the best, sweetest, loving, most caring Christian woman I had ever known.  I would even venture to say she was one of the only true Christians I ever met-and she didn't even go to church (In my opinion most actual Christians don't).  I never heard her utter a cross word about anyone regardless of their faults.  If there were ever a true hero in my life it was her. The only fault I could ever find in her was that she was an absolutely terrible housekeeper; there were roaches and dog crap and general unsanitary conditions to deal with when you went to visit.  I knew these weren't normal conditions but it just wasn't a big deal to me.  Mamaw Granny cooked the best biscuits and gravy I've ever had in my life, she secretly slipped me $20 every birthday, and she loved me unconditionally and wholeheartedly.  I wanted to spend time with her and my siblings, and that's all I cared about.

[After she passed we found her journals, and Mom gave me the page she wrote the day I was born.  I'll locate it later and scan it so that I can preserve it in digital form as well.]

Mamaw was a dedicated wife to an extremely difficult man.  Papaw was temperamental and cranky, but was simultaneously a big-hearted softie.  I watched as he and Mom screamed and threw things at each other, the infuriated redheads both too stubborn to cave on the issue.  Then I watched as he would hug us and tell us all jokes to lighten the mood.  I remember him primarily as a resident of his chair.  My grandfather was around 500 pounds when he died.  As a child he had been deprived of food and when he was older he ate his fill-and then some.  There were a few occasions we went out, all of us piled up in the van with the ladder on the back.  It also had a foul aroma.  Usually our expeditions were going "junking," which meant we walked up and down the alleys digging through other people's trash for recyclable materials like aluminum and copper so that Papaw could trade them in for money.  I found one of my favorite doll houses during one of our adventures, and it never occurred to me that it might be unusual for my prized toy to have come from someone else's garbage.  If I remember correctly it was white and purple and missing a few pieces, but it was gorgeous.

Interestingly enough, my father's mother (henceforth known as Minnie) worked with Papaw.  She always told the best stories about him.  There are two that I make her retell time and time again and always end up laughing hysterically.  Papaw was very mischievous.  Minnie got her hair done at a beauty parlor every week and did her best to keep it pristine until her next appointment.  She came to work after getting her hair done one day (they packed tomatoes in a produce plant) only to find Papaw puffing away at a cigar and blowing the smoke into her hair.  Mamaw detested the smell of smoke above anything else.  She went to the boss and he warned Papaw to knock it off.  Of course Papaw was having none of it and continued blowing smoke at her.  He laid the cigar down to move a pallet jack, during which time Minnie sprayed it down with Lysol.  The boss wouldn't reprimand her and there was no more smoke around Minnie's hair after that point.

The second and best story about Papaw was just him on his own.  Apparently he ran around the plant going "Woooooooooo wooooooooo woooooo!"  His boss told him to go home and not come back until he was done riding his firetruck.  Minnie said it took him a week to finish riding his firetruck.  Even today I can't stop smiling even when I just think about it.

Then there was my uncle.  He is an exceptionally special person to me. He's missing one of his chromosomes and it caused him some developmental issues.  He's in his forties but looks like he's much younger, maybe in his twenties because he never hit puberty.  He is now battling Hepatitis C and cirrhosis of the liver (I never saw him drink anything more than a Zima) and is very ill, but he's always been an immense amount of just plain fun.  He used to put duct tape all over his dresser and we'd color in parking lots and buildings with permanent markers so that we could play with our Hotwheels.  We loved those little makeshift towns.  He also made delicious grilled cheese sandwiches.

That's about where the good memories from the blue house end.  There aren't many things that I even want to remember from that moment in time, and I honestly let a lot of it go.  Most of the time there was spent finding ways to play in the tiny backyard and alley.  We weren't allowed to stay in the house before Days of Our Lives went off-of course it usually airs around 1:00 PM. I remember baking in the sun, not allowed to go in the house to get more water because Mom and Dad were sleeping and we weren't to disturb them.  We found a little bit of comfort in the trees that lined the alley.  Sometimes there would be little puddles in the gravel and we'd play in those to cool off-but only our arms and legs so we didn't get dirty.  It was during one of the times I tried to slip in and out of the house that I accidentally let Rachel out.  Rachel was our full-blooded German Shepard that Dad paid a crap ton of money for.  She had pushed past me and ran out into the street and was gone.  Dad panicked and went and tracked her down with the assistance of my brothers.  Because I lived with Minnie primarily at this point dad knew that if he left a mark on me she would report it to the authorities.  Since he couldn't directly hurt me he was gonna find someone to punish and still make sure to leave emotional scars on me.  He bent my little brother over a wooden kitchen chair, making him hold his head against the seat.  Dad then took his spiked dog collar and made me watch while he slammed it repeatedly across my brother's back.  I was terrified, crying and waiting for it to stop.  We had already learned that with Dad you didn't say a word-if you begged for mercy or cried out in anger or hurt it only made it worse.  I felt terrible, knowing I was responsible for the beating my brother was receiving.  I was in elementary school at the time, around third grade, which would have made me about 8 years old.  If I was 8, my brother was 6.  I can still see the hurt in his eyes, the tears streaming down his face.  Some images never go away.  I still picture it sometimes when I see his feelings are hurt.

That little brother-let's call him James-has a twin.  We'll say the twin is named Jeff.  While James was a very sensitive little boy, Jeff was determined to prove himself as a tough guy.  He didn't cry when he received beatings-on the contrary, he liked to laugh in Dad's face, almost as if challenging him.  Dad admired that trait and would usually leave Jeff alone from that point forward. Jeff and I liked to play "fight" a lot as well.  I remember one game of "fight" in the blue house that left us all in tears.  Dad had decided to watch our little game, finding it amusing to watch his children duke it out.  Needless to say we felt extremely pressured under his scrutiny, like we needed to prove how tough we both were in front of him.  I needed to show that I could hold my own even though I was a girl.  We got a little carried away and began pulling each others' hair....and that's when the dragon exploded.  Dad proceeded to pick both of us up by the hair on our heads-and we both had substantial amounts-and held us up about a foot off the floor.  He proceeded to tell us that his kids don't pull hair-that's a sucker's move and it's not a fair fight.  He then threw us against opposite walls and ordered us to stay there until he told us to move.  This is where Mom would act as if she gave a damn about her children and attempt to stand up to Dad.  She got another pounding that day too, and while she threatened to end the marriage, things just continued on from that point forward.

That's all I can recall from that house, and it's where I'll stop for tonight.  I'm finding it more difficult than I thought to dredge these memories back from the far reaches of my mind.