Mitchell - Somewhere Children Shout

Somewhere Children Shout

By John Keeler Mitchell

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 John Keeler Mitchell

TABLE OF CONTENTS

With affection for Kris, who after hearing all ofthese stories for about the hundredth time, finally said, Whydont you put them into a stinkin book? So I did.

JKM

PREFACE

Youd probably be right ifyou concluded that people a couple of millennia ago complainedabout the kids down the road as being mere shadows of what they were like back inthe day. And for the most part theyd have been as wrong as we arewhen we assess the current crop. We were all rotten kids in our owntime because growing up is complex, convoluted and nearlyimpossible, given the demands and changes that hit us from everydirection. Expectations are never clearly understood, and thebattle to do the right thing is exhausting. By themselves,aspirations are a trial to even identify, let alone accomplish if, in fact you have any, or can come up with reasons to have them.And more, you no sooner discover you live in the nest than everyeffort is made to expel you from it, wings or not.

I remember a great deal from those formativeyears, the good, the bad, and the highly questionable.

The distance of time and events, of course,tends to make recollections more benign, and I do see the old timesin a gentle way. Being a kid in a small town had genuine andinherent value, and generally was a good thing. Scale andperspective, as I will credit many times later, had the majorresponsibility for my development, such as it was.

What struck me most in looking back was how much funit all was, made possible more than anything else, by the freedom Ihad, first, to do what I wanted to within the law and thefreedom from genuine fear. I always slept well.

John Keeler Mitchell

2013

Thats me on the right, at age ten, with brothersMauri and Billy,
left and center. Kid brother Steve would arrive soon.

I.SMALL TOWN CULTURE

Chapter 1

Townies

FOR A KID in Delhi, NewYork in the 1950s, the only real danger was growing up Republican.Quite beyond question, the town was that safe. No gangs, no drugs,no serial anything, the in-town speed limit was 25 mph (27 wouldget you a ticket), and there was just one police car and two copswho shared duties at different parts of the day. Thenow-defunct Saturday Evening Post once featured a cover painting of the villagesquare, cannons and all. Kids and leash-less dogs ran free. If aguy pulled up and offered you a ride home on a rainy afternoon, youcould hop in, because your dad could probably vouch for him. At thelocal movie theater they ran nothing but G-films not that therewas anything more lurid available (unless you happened to have yourown 16-mm projector at home).

Delhi was my home from age six to nearly 17,and what follows is a collection of anecdotes that flesh out whatthe experience was like, an experience that is no more likely torecur in current times than the reappearance of Dwight DavidEisenhower. Even Delhi itself is different now, thanks in part toAmazon where you can order all sorts of life enhancements. But backin the 1950s we really were a kinder, easier place, if you dontconsider a tinge of racism that we decided was an over-blown issueconfined to the Deep South. And smack was something delivered byyour mom if you farted in public. In Delhi, like countless othersmall American towns, the key was scale, and expectations were heldlow.

Looking back, the view is green lawns,two-lane streets, the practical advantage of being able to walkalmost anywhere in town, and a population that you knew, eventhough the people struggled a bit with congeniality.

There were limitations in cold, wintermonths, requiring layers of clothes and few play areas. A ballfield smothered in snow was disconcerting; a bike confined to theback of the garage declared that there would be months of waitingbefore you could sail away down the streets.

Yet the old neighborhood had genuine beauty,and most of it had just happened, without so much as a hoe beingdrawn, a seed thrown, or a sprinkler system turned on

A few years ago I was in Upstate, as theycall it. I left the house where I had been visiting and set out forNew York to rendezvous with a plane bound for California. I hit theroad at about 6:30 in the morning, just in time to see mist risingfrom the Mohawk River, even as the new sun struck hills that werecrowded with tens of thousands of hardwood trees.

It was magnificent, and I slowed the car toprolong the experience. Traffic was light and as I moved eastward Iwas aware of the trees coming ever closer to the road, eventuallycreating green walls that soared fifty to seventy feet, with thehills now rolling away in the distance.

For ten years of my early life, such couldbe seen from the back door. We played in the midst of that. Theland that land had a palpable life cycle (as opposed to todaybeing Tuesday, so tomorrow will be limited to being Wednesday), andour lives moved in accordance with it.

Delhi pronounced phonetically inreference to New Delhi in India, remains surrounded by small townsof similar size and temperament, all connected by two-lane roadsthat wind unpredictably through small hills and only slightlylarger mountains. If there is any ethnicity of note it would haveto be an influx of Scots from three and four generations back whofound the fields familiar to their homelands.

Those were the times when you tried thingson for the first time, to see if they fit and if you liked them.They were the days of acceptance and rejection, of adapting to arhythm that worked and you could keep, and most important, ofestablishing the people your friends whom you found had asynergy with your own.

In brief ways you got to sample life, to seewhat happened and what the results would be with a measure ofconfidence, or as Mark Twain noted, Providence protects childrenand idiotsI know because I have tested it. Any step over the linewould simply be a matter of going to your room, by choice ordirective.

The ledger is fairly well balanced. Thereare people and events that I am more than pleased to consign to adistant past. Others bring contented memories and value, as well aslearning that has remained, times that even now have worth andpertinence. So the sorting out has value, and maybe an assignationof weight. Well see.

By some rude definition, I was a townie,which is to say that my home was in the village per se, where Icould prowl the streets at will; this as opposed to living on oneof the dozens of dairy farms that existed at our borders.

I was glad of that becauseI have never, ever liked cows: The very idea of those manure-cakedanimals being a food source on several levels was repugnant, thoughdamn it all, few things compare with a great New York steak (thatnotion was later eased by a friend who said that you get steaksfrom the super market where they are encased in cellophane). Thentoo, those of us who lived in cosmopolitan Delhi had littleinterest in the actual work that our farm-born classmates wereobliged to do, plus there was the never spoken opinion that theywere rather crude. And more, we could head downtown on a whim,whereas they hadto show up in pickup trucks only on Friday nights the one timethe stores would be open past six.

There were times, of course, when I enviedthe kids who were chauffeured to school via a yellow bus, while Dadrefused to cave to my pleas for curb service.

It all looked so easy and convenient,especially on mornings when the snow came up to your knees. Youcould sit in the house and wait until the bus appeared a hundredyards down the road and then run out for the perfect rendezvous.But on further reflection, that scenario required a farmhouse thatwould be situated beside a barnwherein the manure-caked animalslived. Not good. And thus, trudging was in order.