David & Tawny

While we lived on Wyoming Street, I finally ceased being an only child. David came along in 1951, and Tawny was two years later.

The house only had two bedrooms when we moved in. David and I shared a bedroom. I was really glad I didn't have to sleep alone anymore. When he became old enough to get out of his crib, we got bunk beds. However, they were set up as twin beds at first.

David was kept in the bedroom much of the time by a gate with a little latch that you had to press with a thumb and finger to open. He didn't have the finger strength to open it by himself. One day I taught him to open it with his teeth. He did have enough jaw strength to do it. I really got in trouble about that one.

David used to get bloody noses a lot. One night he got one in the middle of the night. He climbed off his bed, and climbed onto me to awaken me to help him get it stopped. I was a very sound sleeper, and he couldn't wake me. Mom and Dad heard the springs squeaking on my bed and came in and helped him. When I awoke in the morning, I discovered that I had on different pajamas than when I went to bed. After taking care of David, she had cleaned me up and redressed me. I slept through the whole process, even though she used cold water to wash off the blood.

Another time I got in trouble was on a Christmas morning. I got up really early to see what Santa Claus had brought. I carried the toys that Santa brought for David to the bedroom and awakened him. That was before I taught him to open the gate. So Mom and Dad didn't get to see David discover his toys and stuff. They were quite upset with me.

While Mom was pregnant with Tawny, Jackie Gleason's orchestra released a recording entitled "Tawny". Dad then had a dream about a 'tawny' blond woman. That's where they got the idea for her name. She did turn out to be a blond, so the name fit.

About the time Tawny was born we got a piano and I started taking piano lessons. I had a hard time with learning to play. My teacher, Mrs. Catmull, lived in a house that I passed while walking to and from Dilworth Elementary. After I had been taking lessons for awhile, Mrs. Catmull told me she was retiring as a piano teacher and would no longer be able to teach me. That was a kind way of saying that she was giving up on me because I was making such poor progress. I did notice that other kids continued to go there for lessons and I heard them as I walked by. She just retired from teaching me.

After I stopped going to Mrs. Catmull, a recent Dutch immigrant stopped by the house looking for piano students and Mom signed me up. He was going door to door on a motorized bicycle. When he asked Mom about other kids in the neighborhood, she told him where every other child lived. He was amazed at the number of children and he exclaimed, "How fertile these women are!" A couple of years later, when we moved to East Mill Creek, he gave up on me, too. He said we were moving too far away for him to come all the way out to teach me. But after we had been there a few days, I saw him on his motor bike right in the same neighborhood. He was teaching someone else just two streets away. I was just a very slow learner and frustrated these two teachers. I think it was just poor finger dexterity. But I did learn to read music.

When Tawny came along, we needed an additional bedroom. So Dad built one in the basement for me. The walls of the bedroom were knotty pine tongue and groove boards. The ceiling was acoustic tiles, and the light for the room was a circular fluorescent fixture.

The bunk beds were moved to my new room and stacked. David and Tawny got new beds and shared the bedroom upstairs. I did not particularly like sleeping alone in that new room. I frequently let my imagination run away with me and scared myself silly. I often slept completely under the covers, so I could hide from the monsters and boogey men that I knew were out to get me. I especially avoided looking out the back window at night, because I was afraid that dinosaurs would be out there and would then break in and get me.

One night while I was trying to get to sleep, a dog was barking and snarling somewhere outside. I was under the covers, because I knew that dog was about to break through the window and come in and attack me. Then there was a loud crash. I knew that dog had come through the window and I started screaming. Dad and Mom came rushing downstairs to find out what I was screaming about. Turned out the crash was from one of the circular tubes on the fluorescent fixture which had fallen to the floor and shattered. I had nightmares about that dog for months after that.