Asparagus and the Stick

Each of us kids didn’t get to spend a lot of alone time with Dad. Looking at it mathematically, if you divide any small number by 12, you get an even smaller quotient.

Looking back after all these years, though, the amount of time doesn’t seem small. It feels like enough, and I suspect most of my sibs would agree. When Dad was with you, he was with you.

The longest period of alone time Dad regularly spent with any of us (boys) was when he was cutting our hair. He was meticulous with everything he did, and it took almost an hour for a haircut. The irony here is that most of us hated how long it took and couldn’t wait to get back to playing. What I wouldn’t give for one of his haircuts now. And he never just gave us a buzz cut (except when we were very young); he always left something in front to comb.
 

My look during junior high was the flat top. (C’mon…it was the ‘50s!) This was challenging, but Dad never tried to talk me out of it. He would take his time – walk around me, snip, pause, snip. Another look, another snip… Patience was his strong suit, not mine.

The most cherished alone time I had with Dad was when we hunted wild asparagus along the railroad tracks near our house. Mostly it was just the two of us. Why no one else wanted to go always puzzled me. Maybe they preferred hunting strawberries or black raspberries with him, which also grew wild along the track. Picking something sweet had to be more appealing than hunting for something most of us didn’t like. Sometimes Mom would fry the asparagus, which was tolerable, but creamed asparagus made me gag. 

I liked hunting asparagus with dad. He had a slow and steady gait and didn’t miss much. We were silent most of the time, but when I would ask a question, he would answer. It’s a memory I cherish.

“Cherish” is the point here. Memories of Dad bring up words like that, cherish, warmth, gentleness, emotions about Dad that I share with my siblings. Memories of Mom bring up thoughts of admiration, respect, even awe. I can’t speak for the rest of my sibs, especially my sisters, but Mom was more complex. (No doubt you’ll hear more about this in a later post.)

Other memories of Dad bring up different emotions, though. I feared his anger, which could boil up suddenly, over milk spilled at the supper table or an insolent child. At times he whacked us on the butt with a stick, a 30-inch piece of plaster lath that he kept above the kitchen counter. His spankings touched all of us, except the two girls. And there was anger in his whacks, never an empathetic comment like “This will hurt me more than it hurts you.” The spankings hurt! But they weren’t hard enough to leave any marks.

As serious and emotionally laden as the spankings were, my fear of them and of his anger didn’t linger after childhood. With Dad’s anger, it was quick and furious, and then gone. That was just how he was.

Even as kids, the harshness of his actions didn’t linger after the spanking. I remember how my younger brothers made up a skit and song about the “stick,” which they performed for the family, even when Dad was around. As adults, we still joke about the stick. I wish that I could carry my anger so lightly.

—Bob

Delivering Newspapers

 

 My paper-boy career started with my subbing for my two oldest brothers, Dan and Bill, earning dimes and quarters. But I didn’t achieve the elite status of an income earner until I had a route of my own. That happened at the start of the fourth grade.

I don’t remember how I got that route. Maybe Mom made phone calls to the Sidney Daily News circulation manager, maybe she didn’t. But I had a SDN route and I was cool.

 Carrying a new, white canvas newspaper bag to school with my books in it meant I had joined the world of workingmen. (A world I still like to think I inhabit today.) I felt like I wasn’t a kid anymore, even though as a shrimp of a kid, my route bag hung nearly to the ground. Not only did I have a job, but I had the accoutrement to prove it. Ahh, status!

When I first had a delivery route, the carriers picked up their papers at the SDN office in downtown Sidney. It was here that I spent a large chunk of my earnings. There was a bakery across the alley and an ice cream parlor three doors down. Plus, on the way to my route there were two gas stations that sold sodas and ice cream.

Being a wage earner meant that I could be a consumer of other things, too. Soon I had a used but nice red Huffy Flyer and then a basket on the front to hold my paper bag. Using a bike to deliver papers meant doing the route faster, but I learned walking had it advantages, too. My aim for tossing the papers onto the front porch was much better while walking, and missing a porch while riding meant getting off my bike, correcting my bad throw, and returning to my bike. It probably didn’t take that much time, but an errant throw interrupted my day-dreaming, a habit I frequently engaged in as a child.

My favorite time for flights of fancy was on a rainy fall day, when the street gutters ran with rain, carrying fallen leaves with it. I liked making leaf and stick dams, patching the leaks until my dam could hold no more, then breaching it. I would fantasize about what would happen to the townspeople, houses, and cars carried away in the flood. Delivering papers was where I really honed my fantasizing skills. And it made the route seem shorter.

There was a down side with being a paper carrier, too - collecting payment for my deliveries. Every Friday I had to knock at each customer’s door and ask for money. This wasn’t too much of a concern with most of my customers because I had a “good” route. This meant clean, stable, middle-class families who didn’t move out without paying, who answered the door on the first knock, and didn’t say, “Come back next week, I don’t have any money.”



I had a few of these customers, enough to affect my income a little and my equilibrium a lot. Because the next week when they asked what they owed, I’d reply, “One week, 42 cents.” I was too afraid to ask for two weeks’ pay. Or more probably, I’d just skip collecting there the next week. The best solution (and the weasel -iest) was to pay my younger sister Nancy to collect for me.)



The trauma of collecting from overdue customers left me with “collecting dreams” for decades. Several of my brothers recently told me that they too had the same problem with some of their customers - they wouldn’t always collect from them either. And they had the same type of dreams. Even so, I still feel that I was a wimp back then. But hey, that was back then. These days I don’t feel like a wimp, very often.

--Bob

The Paper Route Dynasty

Kids seem to need money. It helps them feel like an adult. If they earn their own money, it helps them feel like they have status outside their home. So it was with us Kerbers, certainly it was with me.

Delivering newspapers brought in the first regular income to all ten of us Kerber boys. (Sorry, no girls need apply – we’re talking the 1950s and 60s.) My oldest brother Dan got his first route in the early 1950s, delivering the Dayton Journal Herald, a morning paper. His route was a twenty-minute walk or a ten-minute bike ride from home.

The rest of us boys followed in his footsteps, often literally. When Dan eventually got an evening Sidney Daily News route, Bill, the second oldest, took over Dan’s morning route. This turning over of routes from one brother to the next continued through Gary, the last born.

This wasn’t as smooth as it may seem. Lots of boys wanted paper routes, not just us Kerbers. Those first SDN routes were acquired through regular channels, by being on a waiting list until one became available. I suspect, but don’t know for sure, that John and I got our routes with the help of a phone call from Mom. By the time I stopped delivering papers at the start of my 11^th grade—when I got a job packing groceries—Mom, via the telephone, lobbied the circulation manager to let John carry both routes with a little help from George, Mike, and Fred (brothers # 5, 6, and 7). I also had a JH morning route at that time, which I passed on to George, who passed it on to Mike who passed it to Fred.

When John graduated from being a paper boy to being a grocery packer, Mom “talked” the SDN circulation manager into splitting John’s route into three and giving them to George, Mike, and Fred. A precedent had been set and eventually the routes trickled down to Alan, Joe, and Gary (brothers # 8, 9, and 10).

The route passing was an ongoing negotiation between Mom and the SDN circulation manager. We Kerber boys were reliable carriers, Mom saw to that, so keeping it in the family worked well for the SDN, too. But it was also favoritism, which is never good for a small-town business.

But their most memorable clash came over the rubber bands used to fasten the papers into a roll. The bands came in a Kleenex-sized box, and when a carrier ran out, he’d call the circulation manager. Once the manager harassed a Kerber carrier for ordering a box too soon, implying that he was wasting rubber bands. (We did have rubber-band wars, but always picked up (most of) the ammo when we were finished.) He insisted that a box contained so many bands, and that they should last a certain amount of time.

Mom, never one to back away from someone challenging the integrity of the Kerber family, decided to count them. Spreading a box of bands out on the dining room table, she had us kids count them. She was right; there weren’t enough bands to last as long as SDN said. Her call back to the circulation manager vindicated her accused child, and that’s the last we heard of that issue. I don’t think she ever lost a fight with that poor manager.

In the end, Kerbers delivered newspapers for twenty-plus years. Carrying papers gave us kids a little spending money, and it taught us responsibility, punctuality, simple mathematics, and other skills. I also learned that having a supporting authoritative person in the background (Mom) makes life a little easier.

This particular legacy is a mixed bag for me. What makes one a “mama’s boy”? Where one’s battles are decided by the adult in the background. And where is the line between “supportive” and “pushy”? I’m sure Mom stepped over that line whenever she felt she had to; and I can’t picture her stepping over it only because she knew she could. In the end, all I really know is Mom was Mom, and I am me.

        --Bob

Thoughts of spring... and of Mom

A robin bumped against my bedroom window this morning. It happens every year around this time. The bird must hate hitting a cold hard surface as it forages for food, but I like knowing it’s out there. It reminds me of the coming of spring, and of Mother.

I think of Mom often at this time of year, for it is when she died. She’s been gone eight years today, Feb. 24, but the events surrounding her death remain crystal clear.

 It was 2008, and I was at work when my sister Nancy called to tell me that Mom wasn’t doing well. Congestive heart failure. I didn’t know exactly what that meant then, but I knew from her voice it was serious. Mom had been in a nursing home for five years, so it wasn’t a shock to hear she had a serious health problem. But it still hit hard. Aren’t mothers suppose to live forever?

 At the hospital the next day, Mom had a brief period of awareness. My brother Fred, his wife Julie, and I were standing by her bed. And once, when I moved from her line of sight, she called my name. “Linda.” She said it three times, weak and distant. “Linda.” That was the last distinct, physical connection I had with her.

Mom lingered another twelve days, and as her death seemed more certain, some of us stayed through the night. On her last night, a Saturday, Fred, Julie, Nancy, and I were there. We took turns sleeping in a chair or on a small mattress I’d brought to the nursing home. But one of us was always by her side. 

Very early Sunday morning, Fred woke to be with Mom so Nancy and I could sleep. The three of us stood together in the middle of the room talking quietly, a short distance from where she lay. When Fred moved towards her, though, I touched his arm to slow his progress. “Wait a moment,” I said.

Did I want to tell Fred something, or was I remembering what Mother had told me when she and her siblings were with their mother when she was dying—that when my aunt left the room briefly to use the bathroom, Grandma died.

As Fred, Nancy, and I stood together in her darkened room, Mother let go. When we looked again, she was gone.

 Mom’s dying moments are crystallized in my mind’s eye by the beauty of that early morning. Looking through the nursing home window, past two empty bird feeders that stood like sentries outside her room, I saw the frost-covered earth and ice-laced branches sparkling in the first light. It was a surreal moment. Cold and barren yet breathtakingly beautiful.

Returning to Pennsylvania following the funeral, I remember seeing a large flock of robins in a field near our home. I’ve always thought of robins in the singular, like the ones Mom pointed out to us kids when we were young. “Come look,” she’d say, “See. The first robin of spring.” And there would be a lone robin hopping across the brown grass or tugging at a worm in our back yard.

Mother liked robins, especially in early spring. But seeing those robins in the field, hundreds of them, I felt the full force of my loss. But feeling this, I also understood that she was with me in many of the things we shared. Our appearance and mannerisms. Our love of literature and writing. In the way we lived our lives and managed our homes. And in the joy of seeing a robin in spring.

—Linda

Nancy (right) and I in a lighter moment at the cemetery

Expansion

In my last blog post, I talked about how the 828 house was “Mom’s domain.” Another way of saying this is “Mom ruled the roost.” When I think of Mom, the word ‘rule’ often comes to mind. 

She seemed perfectly fit for the task of making and guarding a roost, a nest, a brood house where we 12 chicks could learn to be roosters and hens before heading out into the big world. By working energetically themselves and by assigning jobs to us kids, our parents created a clean, safe refuge where we could come of age.

Writing this I thought, “No, that’s not right!” Although not realizing it at the time, when I left home at age 18, I was utterly unprepared to live in the world. Eventually I came to believe that “Mom and Dad didn’t get me ready for shit!”

 I was socially awkward, crippled by shyness and inhibitions; unable to play the “dating game”, I joined a seminary. Although not realizing it when I first left home at age 18, I certainly didn’t have what it took to navigate the world. Nor did I at 23, when I was drafted into the army. Not at age 28, when I was first married. Nor at 30, when I became a parent. It pains me to admit how totally unprepared I was to relate to others—to my son especially, and to my wife, to my coworkers, to everyone except my siblings.

Looking back, I see how becoming a parent gave me my first dose of genuine responsibility. Someone was depending on me, not only for food and shelter (I had those areas easily covered), but also for his self-esteem and as a model for manhood (which I didn’t have covered).

Talking with my brothers and sisters (not all at the same time nor to the same depth), I began to figure out who I was and who I wasn’t. It was they who first helped me keep the possibilities of living as an adult life alive. (Later, when I remarried, my wife Mary Ann played a part in this, as did true friends whom I confided in.) It was all these people who encouraged me to seek professional (and unprofessional although not inferior) counseling and make changes in my life.

And it was much, much later that I came to realize that it was my parents who ultimately planted the seeds that would help me emerge from under my basket. (How I got under that basket is for a later blog post.) By assuming that we boys would go to college (the girls went too, although that wasn’t necessarily assumed), they planted in us the ability to grow after high school, not under their supervision, but under our own.

I came to see how we kids came to inherit Dad’s curiosity about the universe. And how we absorbed Mom’s interest in people and places and language. This inheritance allowed us to expand beyond 828.

In retrospect, I see how our parents taught us to be self-sufficient and independent, even (especially) in our thinking. Although some of us strayed from their teachings (on religion, lifestyle, politics, etc.), we never strayed from their idea that we were a family, and that we would always be a family. (Of course from time to time many/most/all of us kept our distance from 828 and the family in order to gain perspective and to just back away from the intensity.) And they taught us that life could be enjoyable – this allowed us to relax a little and to not be afraid of life. All of this was no small gift.

So I’ll just end this with, Thanks, Mom and Dad.

Bob