Winter Is My Middle Name

Chapter 1

There I was, trudging home from school. Normally I would be running home; the sooner I got away from the school the better. Christmas vacation was too short; they should give us the three winter months off from school and let us go to school in the summer. It was January 2; this was always the saddest day of the year. Not only did I have to go back to school, but it would also mean that when I got home, my mother would be taking down the Christmas tree! I hated to see the Christmas season come to an end. I loved Christmas and anything that involved snow or ice. "Winter" was my middle name! I could not stand being in the house. It didn't matter how cold it was outside, I would spend every minute I could sled riding, skiing, or just walking in the snow. I loved it! When I came into the house, my fingers would start to sting and I would run cold water over them to take the pain away.

We had snow at Christmas, but now there were only traces of it where the snowplows piled it up along the streets or where it was heaped up along the sidewalks after being shoveled. The piled up snow was turning black from the soot and coal smoke spewing out of the chimneys on houses and from the smokestacks at the mill. At the other end of town, the snow piles were turning a rusty brown color from the open hearths and the blast furnaces. We lived in the west end of town and the wind blew everything toward the east end.

At least my father would not be at home with his yelling "Fiddlesticks!" at everything he didn't agree with. He was working 3-11 in the steel mill and I would be in bed long before he got home. He was from England and believed in the class system, and of course he was at the top. He thought everyone was put on earth to serve him and "children should be seen, and not heard."

During World War II, he was a radioman in the British Navy; he always called it the "Royal Navy." He had a way of using words like "lorry, flat, loo, fag, blimey, and cheerio." My friends had no idea what he was talking about, and for the longest time I thought "little bugger" was a term of endearment. When I would bring a friend home, he would ask me, "What's that little bugger up to?" It wasn't until I was grownup that I found out that it had a very different meaning.

When he was home my mother had to cook meat, potatoes, gravy, and vegetables for every meal; I hated all these big meals. I only "ate to live," I didn't "live to eat" like my pal Tubby, he would eat constantly! Now mom could open a can of soup, or make hamburgers or hotdogs, and we both would be happy.

My father had been stationed in Baltimore for a month while they made repairs to his ship and my mother had been working there at the Social Security office as a keypunch operator. It was New Year's Eve and they met in a dark, smoke-filled little bar. Three weeks later they were married. That is how my mother was, very impulsive, I think everyone who knew her must of thought she had lost her mind. A week later, he shipped out and occasionally she would receive a letter from him. It was during the war and they could only send mail when they went into a port. The letters would be postmarked "Cape Town," "Sierra Leone," or some other exotic place. The remainder of the time they were out looking for Nazi warships. After the war was over, my father returned to England and sent for my mother. They lived there for several years and that is where I was born during the "storm of the century." I imagine that was why I enjoyed winter so much.

My mother did not like living in England; she said it was too wet and cold. It was a custom in England to put the babies outside for at least twenty minutes everyday. They believed it was very healthy for them; perhaps they were right.

My mother would go shopping and leave me outside in the pram with all the other babies. One day she came out and there was a horse looking into the pram and she almost had a heart attack. That was when she finally convinced my father to come back to Johnstown. He found a job in the steel mill and they rented a house in "Ducky Beach." There were no ducks and no beach, just a great view of the Conemaugh Gap and the steel mills. This section of town did not have sewers, so we had an outhouse, cold running water, and electricity. We eventually got a telephone.