Gildiner - After the Falls

A DECADE HAS PASSED since I wrote Too Close to the Falls, my childhood memoir that describes my life in the 1950s in the small town of Lewiston, New York. I couldnt have imagined when I was writing it that it would be the first volume of my memoirs, but I seem to have an uncontrollable desire to chronicle my time on earth. Also, readers have been extremely kind about Too Close to the Falls. Many have written from all over the world sending well wishes and inquiring about what happened to me after my untimely liberation from Catholic school. Those letters not only encouraged me to continue to write, but challenged me to delve into my youth, both the wonderful and the painful parts, and to understand how that little girl who was born with what the nuns called an Irish temper managed to make it to adulthood.

Theres no doubt that I had an unusual childhood, or I was an unusual child I have never been sure which it was. One thing I am sure about is that the idiosyncrasies that began to develop in childhood only deepened in my teenage years.

At a young age I was sent to the doctor because my behaviour had been labelled as too busy and too bossy. The pediatrician in turn added his clinical perspective, saying that I had a metronome that ticked much faster than other peoples, and the cure he recommended was a job. When my mother presented the doctors orders to my father, he pointed out that it would be rather difficult for me to get a job at the age of four. However, the doctor was sacrosanct in the fifties and so my parents embarked upon a solution. My father said I could work before and after school in his drugstore. I had to learn how to read, and it would be my job to decipher the map for Roy, the black delivery car driver, who had never learned to read. Roy and I were a match made in heaven; he would drive and I would navigate. We toured the Niagara Frontier making deliveries from dawn until the coloured lights were turned on at the Falls at night. No one on Gods earth had more adventures or just plain good times than Roy and I had in those years. Only after he disappeared one day did I realize how close wed become.

As an only child I was also lucky to have wonderful parents who accepted me as I was. Though they were certainly unconventional we never ate a meal at home, for exampleI knew they loved me no matter how much trouble I got into. When I was sent home for doing an imitation of Ed Sullivan in grade four during Religious Instruction, my mother said that Sister Agnese had no sense of humour and that God was laughing his head off at heavens gate. Over time this unqualified belief in me gave me a springboard to become whatever I wanted to be.

In 1960 my life changed dramatically. My family moved to Buffalo, and I would never again be known by everyone in town as the pharmacists daughter. Id lost my job and my identity. Having to adjust to a new school was hard enough, but my greatest battle in the sixties was with my father. We had worked together side by side for most of my childhood and now, no longer co-workers, our relationship had to change. In many ways the trajectory of my life during that time mirrored what was happening in the sixties across North America. Residual fifties conservatism evolved into riots in the streets, all in a few years and in my own life I experienced just as radical and tumultuous a transformation.

Writing a memoir is quite a high-wire act. I had to camouflage details to protect the privacy of many of the people represented here, and some scenes and dialogue had to be recreated all these years later. But I also made every effort to be as true as possible to my memories about the personalities and the incidents that occurred. I hope that I have achieved a balance, that I have conveyed the emotional truth of my experiences.

Memory is a tricky business. No two people remember things the same way. Memory is not a recording device; it is the brains way of allowing us to select moments in order to interpret our pasts. All of the images on file in our brains pass through elaborate screens of unconscious needs and emerge as memories. This book is a telling of my story as I remember it.

Catherine McClure Gildiner
June 2009

CHAPTER 1
EXPULSION

A S WE CREPT UP THE NARROW WINDING ROAD that rimmed the Niagara Escarpment in our two-toned grey Plymouth Fury with its huge fins and new car smell, my father pressed the push-button gear, forcing the car to leap up the steep incline and out of our old life. The radio was playing the Ventures hit Walk Dont Run.

I sat in the front seat with my father while my mother sat in the back with Willie, the worlds most stupid dog. We were following the orange Allied moving van, and I kept rereading the motto on the back door: LEAVE THE WORRYING TO US . Two tall steel exhaust pipes rose in the air like minarets from both sides of the trucks cabin. Each had a flap that continually flipped open, belching black smoke and then snapping shut, like the mouth of Ollie, the dragon hand-puppet on the Kukla, Fran and Ollie television show. The smoke mouths kept repeating the same phrase in unison: Its all your fault its all your fault.

I pressed my face to the window as the car crawled up the hill in first gear. Lewiston, where Id grown up, was slowly receding. The town was nestled against the rock cliff of the huge escarpment on one side and bordered by the Niagara River on the other. St. Peters Catholic church spire, which cast such a huge shadow when you were in the town, was barely visible from up here.

The sun was resting on the limestone cliff, setting it ablaze. I squinted at the orange embers on the rock wall, but the reflection was so glaring, I had to look away. My childhood too had gone up in flames.

Yesterday Id stood for the last time in my large bedroom with its wide-plank floor and blue toile wallpaper. My bed, which had been in my family for over 150 years, was now stripped naked, dismantled and propped against the wall. It was going to be left behind in our heritage home, no longer part of my heritage. My father said that the ceilings in our new house would not be high enough for the canopy. Where were we movinga chicken coop?

I looked out my window at our sprawling yard and counted for the last time the thirteen old oak trees my ancestors had planted to celebrate the thirteen states in the union. The dozens of peony bushes near the wraparound porch had just opened. For generations now the church had taken flowers from our expansive gardens for the altar. I loved the part of the Mass when Father Flanagan would say, Todays altar flowers are donated to the glory of God by the McClures.