I was 7 1/2 the year we moved to Florida. I didn't really understand a lot, then. All I knew was that Dad was going to work on the space program.
He dragged us out of bed that first year. When Columbia launched. I can only remember the excitement of it. It was space.
I was already an SF fan. I already thought Americans going to space was cool.
We had to sell so much, to raise money for the move. St. Louis to Florida. Dad had a job with Lockheed, but they weren't paying for us to move. We--my brother and sisters--we played in our empty house, made games of a few boxes. Plotted our time as orphans who were moving to Florida.
I suspect we had to make a game of it.
We were leaving everything we knew, everyone we knew.
The drive down was... unpleasant. I remember rain and very little else. I don't remember why we left the trailor dad and mom had made (it was a very keen thing. Dad liked making things like that). I suspect it was too heavy for our car to tow with everyone in it.
Titusville finally achieved, we set up camp. In a tent, a campsite. I think it's been turned into a mobile home campground now. There was a bit of the ocean, there, an inlet protected from the tide that we used to swim in.
Dad went back for the trailor. Left in... Macon, GA, I think. No, before. Because Macon was where the trailor jack-knifed.
I never understood, then, what that was like. Not really. Mom was probably full of worry about that, but I was just happy to run about on gravel pathways through the campground.
I don't remember anymore. I think the trailor was towed back by someone, or something else. Or perhaps it was all simply transferred.
The back left window of the station wagon had shattered. That side was dented for the rest of the car's life.
Dad was helped by some nice people. I don't remember who they were. I wish I did.
We spent a month in the campground. Maybe more. We moved to the KOA nearby, but they kicked us out after 2 weeks. You couldn't stay longer than that.
But dad had a job with Lockheed. He knew--hell, I assume he did. At some point, we moved again.
This time to a trailor park in Mims. It was two miles from Titusville, and the road out to Kennedy where dad worked.
I saw Evil Dead, in that trailor park. Other things. There was a swamp we used to go walking through that eventually ended in a forest and train tracks.
My parents, for those wondering, were devout Christians. At some level, I suspect I still am. We read the bible to each other, we tried to participate in various churches... Perhaps religion was all my parents had.
Evil Dead was an Evil Movie.
I never told on myself or my brother.
There were... other things. I don't want to remember them. I was 9 years old, and I don't want to know.
When Challenger exploded, my dad lost... something. I'm not sure what. Maybe faith in God. Faith in himself. Faith in the space program--or maybe just faith in the executives who ran en masse layoffs to save their own profit margins.
Dad took a voluntary layoff. I know where I get my wandering feet genes. From my father. Definitely not from my mother.
So we moved. To Pennsylvania.
I don't know why anymore.
It was a disasterous move. Four children, two adults, and a trailor which had crashed once before.
In South Carolina, it came to a head and the car's radiator died.
There was, I think, maybe a day spent there. Very nice mechanic type people helped us. We moved onwards.
I don't remember much until Pittsburgh where we went up and down a lot.
Florida is flat, you know. Dead flat. And PA? Not flat.
The mountains were big.
North of Pitts, though. We headed for Butler. I don't know why.
And, of course, to continue things, our car died.
Really died.
Timing chain went.
$1200 to fix. I doubt we had $10.00 to our names.
Again, we were helped by a very nice, Christian woman. She gave us a place to stay for the night.
I don't know if she put us into contact with the man who would become our landlord or not.
We stayed there two months. The top of this really steep hill. I found it amusing to ride down. Riding up was impossible, though. And the public pool wasn't that far away.
Perhaps he came after our stay at the shelter. I don't know.
I can remember being in downtown Butler, outside the Y, or whatever it was, while my parents asked desperately for assistance. Gabe and I got really bored and took Vehicle Voltron apart with a screwdriver.
We had the clothes on our back, and not much more.
In the back of the building, rather.
There was... a problem with our landlord. My parents thought he was Evil. As if he exuded this evil. I was only 9, I don't know if he did.
I remember hearing something about child molestation, though. A kid who lived behind us in the alley.
Whatever the reason, we left there, and moved in elsewhere.
And that's where my self esteem really got shattered. Genevieve would later put the cap on it, of course.
But to really shatter a 9-year old, you have to give her friends. Make her desperate to connect with anyone, make her willing to put up with anything.
9 years old, and my friends told me weekly they hated me, that they liked other people better. I didn't go to either of their schools, and I was home-schooled--worse, I was smart. Or could have been.
I played barbies, I won their acceptance. As much as I could.
I watched wrestling. I listened to Madonna (True Blue had just come out). Bon Jovi. Every time I hear 'Living on a Prayer', I remember how desperate we were.
It's hard to feel that desperation, anymore. We're not subsisting on food stamps. We don't have to get our Christmas stuff from the homeless shelter downtown. I don't have to give back the Cabbage Patch dolls I was given (I loathed them anyway. I much prefferred Voltron action figures).
There were good times. I know there were. Libraries, learning... Riding my bike up impossible hills, swimming.
Except that's tainted by the one memory I have of that pool. Getting cornered by a bunch of boys. I may have been 10 by then. Probably an over-developed ten, considering I was already over-weight.
They... taunted, I think. I know I ran--swam, rather--away from them. I was shaking for days in some corner of myself.
I never went back there without other people.
You know, I used to love diving. I learned in St. Louis, from the Y on Carondelet. Like a fish, is what they said of me.
PA was a pipe dream. The steel industry had fucked itself into non-existance.
Dad learned computers, yearning to move on from engineering. I think he liked computers, in a way. But he wasn't--he never has been a cut-throat guy. He worked in a factory, iirc. Doing something with plastic for 9 months. One night he spun out on the ice.
The place was over an hour away.
Small town PA is very... Closed in, very odd. It's not a city.
Perhaps that's why I prefer the city. Not everyone knows everyone else, not everyone cares...
Melissa was one of my friends. Her grandparents ran a pizza parlour. She was rich. LaVonne was black, and her family lived. Survived, perhaps. Her parents were always fighting (mine were, too. This always made me wonder if I could do something to stop it).
Jennifer was the manipulative bitch, though. Her mother was divorced, and Jen weekly pitted one of us against the other two. Or perhaps all 3.
I was so gullible.
But I wanted to be loved and liked so much.
Not that I wasn't loved at home, but I should have had friends, I thought. I needed friends. Because solitary people were just sad.
I don't know when that Mare Winningham movie came out. Perhaps it was later. But I remember being told repeatedly--all of us were--that we had only escaped living off the streets by this much. We'd lived in the streets at least a few days.
I suppose I have to go further back to remember my grandparents. Maybe later. I think I'm sobering up enough to hurt.
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