As more than one author has pointed out, truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction. I would say that my childhood definitely falls into this category.
I was born to desperately poor parents who worked their way west from Wisconsin, following dreams that never materialized. I was the youngest of eight children, six of whom still lived at home. Our tarpaper shack sat on a sandy lot in a forest of dwarfed fir and pine trees a short distance from a blue bay on the Oregon coast. The scrub forest was a thin cover over the top of prehistoric sand dunes. In summertime our lot was ringed with brilliant yellow scotsbroom blossoms. Airy pink rhododendrons and dense huckleberry thickets lined the narrow trail to our outhouse. Yes, we had an outhouse.
Some of my earliest memories center around sitting on the porch of our ramshackle old shack and watching the cats saunter along the outhouse trail as the golden morning sun gleamed in their fur. Time seemed to stand still in this place, each moment an eternity in the static universe of childhood. To this day I need only close my eyes to see the yellow dandelions waving in the summer breeze, the weather-twisted tops of the gnarled fir trees on the low hill out beyond our sandy driveway, their crowns like bristly fingers scratching at fleecy clouds in an azure sky, low wax myrtle and salal shrubs at their bases.
We had no near neighbors. The closest house, belonging to old Mrs. Smith and her stroke-disabled husband, could be reached via a quarter-mile long trail leading through the brush behind our house. To the west of our lot ran the Old County Road which provided access to our place via a long sand driveway that our green '52 Chevy sometimes got stuck in. Beyond the road lay a two-hundred yard wide strip of shore forest leading to a grassy hilltop at the top of a sandy bank leading steeply down to the bay. Within that strip of wind-gnarled trees and brush were scattered the mossy old tombstones of a long-forgotten cemetary. Like a secret maze, close and tangled paths, little more than animal trails, led to various ancient slabs inscribed with forgotten names and dates.
The scrubby little forest overgrown with coastal brush had once been a neat and carefully manicured cemetary overlooking the bay's blue waters. For whatever reason, the locals had always referred to to the place as the Indian Graveyard, in spite of the fact that the mouldering granite and marble slabs were inlaid with names of white, anglo-saxon origin. Through the years I have often wondered what untold stories were buried with the names beneath those cold, eternal stones. The memory of those pitiless slabs hidden amongst the undergrowth still haunts me from time to time, particularly when the night winds of winter whistle about the eaves of my house, whispering of my own mortality.
In the dog days of summer my beloved older sister would spread a blanket over the weeds and sand near the outhouse trail. We would set there together while bees buzzed and dragonflies zipped about like little airplanes in a dogfight. Barbara would tell me stories out of mother's leather-bound bible. Time would stand still as she told me of Noah's ark, the Sermon on the Mount or Moses in the bullrushes. At other times she would read to me of dinosaurs while we both looked at the pictures. She would teach me to pronounce the long names and explain to me that these wonderful creatures no longer existed.
There were times when we would walk the path through the old cemetary and sit on that beachgrass-covered hilltop above the bay. Barbara would work on some sewing project or knit while she entertained me with stories she made up on the spur of the moment. My favorite was about the plane that crash-landed on an island full of dinosaurs. Our surroundings looked like just such a place.
A few yards to the east of our house, a steep hillside covered with impenetrable brush and small trees led down to a small creek. A sinuously winding trail beyond our chicken coup led down to the creek, which I was strictly forbidden to visit alone. David and Walter delighted in fishing there with droplines, catching silvery little brook trout that were seldom larger than five or six inches. I remember my astonishment one day when they climbed back up the trail with an enormous black salamander, nearly two feet long. The thing is what is known as a giant pacific salamander. In retrospect I believe that it may have been record sized.
We were indeed poor, barely above migrant-worker status, but the children were always fed and clothed. No one went barefoot unless by choice. Our supper table always held heaps of mashed potatoes and gravy, chicken, hamburger or pork chops, carrots, green beans or spinach. Mother sometimes baked bread or cinnamon rolls. Suppertime was always a time of happy chatter and optimism. No matter how bad things got, everyone had their dreams and plans. Arguments among the siblings were virtually unheard of.
Obviously, eight people could not sleep in one two-bedroom tarpaper shack. While building a ham radio shack for himself, my father erected a tiny cottage that held two twin beds for my brothers Jerry and Steve, the oldest of the kids still at home. Walt and Dave had to share a bed with my sister Barbara while I, being the only small child, shared a bed with my parents. Thanks to my brothers continually telling me tales of such pleasant creatures as Count Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolfman, I steadfastly resisted all efforts to move me to a makeshift bed in our tiny living room.
Dad worked hard at whatever he could find to do, usually something to do with the wood products industry such as logging or truck driving. In his youth he had been torn between the call of the wild life and his duty as a family man. This culminated in his joining the army and going off to fight in WWII. By the time I was born, his wildness had been reduced to occasional drunken binges. If he came home feeling too rowdy, either Jerry or Steve, both very muscular young men, would take hold of him and contain him until he calmed down. Most of the time when he was not at work he was happy either fixing or making something or sitting in his radio shack, tapping out messages to people on the four corners of the Earth with a worn telegraph key. Unable to afford a new ham radio, he built one out of gradually collected odds and ends.
Inevitably, Christmas came each year and despite our poverty, a huge number of presents would pile up improbably high beneath the tree, glittering boxes filled with promise made for a merry holiday season. Our tiny and humble living room would fill with torn wrapping paper and the house would reverberate with happy laughter and chatter. In the midst of what others called "abject poverty," we found joy and well-being. How different life in that tarpaper shack in the woods was from the sterile surroundings o
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