The Beginning - My Life

Chapter three -THE BEGINNING

I was born in a small town in Illinois in December of 1949, just before Christmas.  I spent the first five years of my life in an even smaller town in Illinois. I was the second child of Jim and Henrietta Brown.  My one sibling was eight years old at the time. She was excited when I was brought home.  That didn’t last very long.  I was told my parents wanted more children. My mother must have had difficulty carrying a pregnancy to term. They were thrilled when I was born. I don’t know if they tried having another after me.  I don’t remember anything that may have indicated another pregnancy.  In hindsight, I’m really happy they didn’t have more children. They really fucked up the two they had. Thank God, they didn’t have more to fuck up.

My father was 32 years old when he married my mother in 1937.  She was 20.  I’m not sure why my father waited so long before he married.  Maybe it was the economy after the depression or maybe it was because my father hadn’t met a woman who would tolerate his rigid views. 

After my father graduated from high school in 1923 he did some odd jobs in the town. He kept busy, but had no direction.  His older brother lived in Moscow, Idaho so dad hopped a freight train and rode the rails to Idaho.  He spent time with his older brother and his wife for a while, finding odd jobs to help with the expenses. I’m not sure what happened, but my father did mention that his sister-on-law was the meanest woman in the world.  He left Idaho.

He and his younger brother spent time riding the rails around the country for a number of years.  They always found odd jobs to make a bit of money, which they sent to the folks in Ramsey.

I’m not real sure about what he did during the intervening years although his stories about riding the rails were always entertaining.

Sometime during this period of uncertainty, he started apprenticing as a brickmason. After he made journeyman he must have believed that he could care for a wife and family. He met my mother in 1932.  

According to my father’s second cousin, dad was rabidly anti-catholic. She said that he would expound on the evils of Catholicism.  When he met my mother, who was raised Catholic he made a 180 degree change in his opinions. I know she was not putting out so he converted to Catholicism so he could marry her and get some. He married her in 1937.  In 1937 he was 32 years old and I’m sure horny as hell.

Mom had her own issues. Her mother had an affair with a young Sicilian immigrant while she was still married to her husband. Her husband, my grandfather, was a Baptist minister. My mother’s half-brother was born out of wedlock (oh! the shame). My grandmother then divorced my grandfather and married her Sicilian lover.

Grandma’s Sicilian lover, Sam, was the only grandfather I ever knew. He was a warm and gentle soul who always saw the good in people although he was treated like shit by the German immigrants in the area. When they needed someone to do the shit work they always called Sammy. He always did the work because he had a family for which he needed to care.

I met my real grandfather once when I was 12 years old. I was not positively impressed. He came across as a real asshole.

My mother seemed to assume the guilt she believed my grandmother should have felt. I still can’t understand that.  I’m well educated and insightful, but still can’t comprehend my mother’s guilt.

My mother’s half-brother, George, had his own issues.  He was married at least four times of which I know.  Something like nine children. He never held a job long enough to care for his children.  He was always dependent upon my grandparents to care for him and his families. I believe my mother was always jealous of how my grandparents always took care of George and his family at the expense of her family.

More about this inequality later.