The Day I Started My Period

The day I started my period I was 13 years old and had recently moved to Florida from Michigan.  I was in the eighth grade attending Wm J Bryan junior high in North Miami.   

I had been told by my older sister when I was eight or nine that someday something like this would happen to me.  But that was the extent of my education in these matters.  At school one morning,  I spotted blood in my panties during a bathroom break.  I didn't know what to do. 

 I solved my dilemma by stuffing toilet paper into my panties.  Wearing a dress as girls did in those days made this a less than desirable solution as my panties did not have very secure elastic around the legs.  But what else was a girl to do?  I know what you are thinking.  Why did I not go to the school nurse?  Because I was entirely too shy and embarrassed, that is why. 

But after losing my bloody wad of toilet paper in the hallway while changing classes, I was totally humiliated.  I decided I must tell the teacher I was sick and needed to go home. 

The fact that I lived nearly two miles away and had to walk a very long lonely road by myself in the hottest part of the day did not deter me.  I wanted to go home.  So off I went. 

I trudged along the secluded road that had a railroad track bordered by acres of very tall grasses on one side and a dense jungle on the other.  The sun beat hotly down on the top of my head.  The heat and humidity formed beads of sweat on my forehead and neck. I passed a chain gang that was working on the railroad track.  The chain gang consisted of colored (this was 1950) men in sweat-stained black and white striped pajamas laboring under the broiling sun.  Their ankles were chained to each other to keep them from escaping.  There were two white armed guards intently watching them from the shade of their brimmed hats while they toiled.  It was a common sight on the walk home from school but it always made me sad and being alone made it scary.  So I walked a good deal faster while trying not to look. 

About five minutes before I came to the Arch Creek Natural Bridge, I noticed a car parked in a small clearing in the jungle on my right.  The engine was running and there was a man in the driver's seat.  I had slowed my walk because of fatigue and heat but now I increased my pace and quickly crossed the bridge into the trailer park.  I later found out the guy had a hose connected to his exhaust pipe and into the car.  He was in the process of committing suicide.

I hurried to the small trailer where our family was living at the time.  I opened the trailer door and found myself staring at two naked people standing in a close embrace just inside the door.  They stared back at me.  It was my mother and a male "family friend".  I quickly closed the door and walked away. 

I wandered the park for awhile.  Then I walked back over to the natural bridge.  There were now police cars parked there and a few spectators watching while the police pulled one of my girlfriend's mother out of the creek.  She was on the far side where one could walk into the deep water and she supposedly had been trying to commit suicide. 

This poor woman had seemed to be mentally ill ever since she had her last baby.  Whenever I went to visit my girlfriend, her gaunt-looking mother would be sitting in a dark corner of the screened porch, holding her blanket-wrapped baby.   When she saw me come in the door, she appeared to be terrified and clutched the baby tighter to her chest.  My friend would whisper, don't mind her, and hurry me into the trailer.  

But on this day her arms were empty.  I suspect she had placed the baby into the murky black water.  I watched them drag her limp wet form up the embankment.   Her eyes and mouth were open wide.  Her arms were outstretched.  She was at once wailing and whimpering.  The small crowd was mute.  The family moved away shortly after that.  That was one thing about living in a trailer park.  A family could disappear overnight and never be heard from again. 

I sat on the bridge for awhile and then walked over to another girlfriend's trailer.  I was happy to see that Shirley was home alone.  Shirley was actually a few months younger than I.  I told her about my bloody panties and asked her what I should do.  She said I needed to tell my mother.  I cried (it had been a long day) and said I was too scared. 

Shirley took me by the hand and led me back to my trailer.  We found my mother clothed and sitting at the table.  We both sat down opposite of my mother and Shirley told her I had started my period, while I looked at the floor.  My mother said nothing as she tore off a sheet of paper and wrote something on it.  She handed it to me with a dollar and said to give it to the man at the Golden Beach grocery store.  I read it on the way and it said, 1 box Kotex, 1 sanitary belt. 

Later in a dark cement toilet stall in the large dank community bathhouse, I figured out how to wear the contraption and nothing else was ever said about this day in my life.

Damn. Another Cop Story

I just have to tell this stupid story.  It is bugging the hell out of me and no one seems to understand my displeasure about a recent event.  I have even thought of writing a letter to the Editor to warn Greg and Lisa that the sheriff's office is looking for them.  Maybe.  Maybe not. 

This was my day a few weeks ago.  I am doing light duty around the house and talking to my daughter on the phone.  I look out the window and see a sheriff's patrol car sitting at the stop sign across the street.  It sits there and sits there for a very long time.  I say to my daughter, I wonder what is up with that officer?

Finally it crosses the intersection that has had no other traffic in some while and drives slowly by my house.  He is looking very hard at my house.  I think he may be lost.  Maybe I should go outside and see if he needs directions.  Nawww..

I look out a few minutes later and he is driving slowly by again, gawking at my house.  Then I hear on the scanner that he should go one street over.  Just by happenstance that would be the street directly behind my house and the only place where one can actually see the back of my house.   

I watch him drive by a couple more times and then I forget about it and get busy with something in the kitchen.

About 20 minutes later the doorbell rings and rings again.  At the same time comes a hard steady fist pounding on my front door.  I thought the door was going to be knocked down before I could get there and I was only in the kitchen.  This same officer is standing at my door pounding until I finally get it opened.

I open the door and say hello.  He does not.  He shows me a hand-printed form that is truly illegible.  I could not make out what type of form it was.  He pointed to one of two words on the form that were legible.  The word was Greg (last name scribbled in two-year-old style).  He says do you know him?  I say, no.  He points at the second word somewhere else on the form.  That word was Lisa. (again, last name illegible).   The words Greg and Lisa were clearly printed but the whole rest of the form a scribbled mess.  Could this have been a ploy in order to knock on my door?  hmmm... He says, do you know her?  No, I say rather hesitantly.
 
 He says OK and starts to walk away.  I call out to him, Are they supposed to be at this address?  No, he says, I was just wondering if you know them.

I am left standing there, saying, to myself of course, what the heck was that about?    My other story about a run-in with the police left a smile on my face.  This did not and I am still asking myself, WTF?  Yeah, Greg and Lisa.  You better watch out.  The cops are closing in.

Question to the Sheriff's Department:  What the hell is up with the Gestapo style pounding on my front door?  What if I was on the toilet?  What if I was in the shower?  Would you have kicked my door in?  It sure seemed that way.  

Arch Creek Natural Bridge

Arch Creek Natural Bridge

played a big part in my life during the ages of 13 and 14.  This bridge was a natural limestone formation spanning 40 feet (or 60 feet depending on the narrator) across a creek that was once pristine but had grown muddy brown before my arrival on the scene in January of 1950.  The creek was full of ugly garfish and other creatures, though I have to admit that I don't remember seeing alligators in it.  Which is surprising since they seem to be everywhere now.  The bridge is located in North Miami, Florida and is presently a Miami-Dade County park.  But at that time it was simply a rarely traveled, very secluded, narrow, paved road that crossed over the natural limestone formation, and entered Sea Breeze Trailer Park in which we had lived since our arrival from Michigan.  (The natural bridge collapsed in 1973 and a replica has since been rebuilt.)

Living in a trailer, in that large park, was environmentally challenging.  Though the trailer park was full of oak trees dripping with Spanish moss which made for shaded days and pitch dark nights, vicious biting no-seeums, billions of hungry mosquitoes, heat and humidity, mildew and mold, hurricanes, cockroaches, etc. were just some of the things we had to quickly become accustomed to. There was a dense jungle bordering two sides of the park into which we kids never ventured.  There was no place we had not fearlessly ventured back in Michigan but somehow we used our common sense and stayed away from this tightly tangled jungle.  Maybe the hobo camps (trains ran through it), poisonous snakes, and rumors of quicksand stymied any desire for exploration. Arch Creek flowed from the jungle, basked briefly in the sunlight, ducked under the bridge, another blast of sunlight, then disappeared back into the jungle.

My friends and I spent countless hours hanging out on the bridge talking and laughing.  Friend Gail told me her father used to swim there when he was young and the water had been clear all the way to the sandy bottom.  That was so hard to believe as one could not see an inch below the muddied surface.

One evening along suppertime, Gail's eight year old brother Boots turned up missing.  We all began looking for him and someone noticed a thick rope that was tied to a branch of an old oak along the creek's edge was now dangling out over the water. The police were informed and they prepared to drag the creek.  As a respectful spectator crowd with front row seats, we perched silently on the metal railing of the bridge and watched them in their small boats dragging a large lethal looking five-pronged hook relentlessly along the bottom, while we listened to the mournful incessant calls of the whip-poor-wills long into the night.  We finally tired and wandered off to our separate homes and left the police to their grisly task.  By early morning we had heard they found Boots upright, the top of his head merely a foot beneath the surface of the water, directly under where we had been sitting, buried nearly to his hips in mud and silt and with a broken leg.  We never knew what happened to him but there was a guess that he had been hit by a car and someone had thrown him over the side. 

A week or so after that on a bright sunny afternoon I took a walk alone to the river.  I suppose I was in a melancholy mood, not particularly depressed, maybe just sad about poor sweet Boots.  I stood on the bridge looking over the railing at the nasty murky water and noticed just over the ledge there sat a huge ugly red necked turkey vulture.  He seemed to be napping as he did not appear to notice me only inches from him.  After a while, for reasons I do not know, I left the bridge and walked around to the edge of the creek itself.  I stood on the high bank next to the vulture and continued to stare down into the water.  I moved closer until my toes were a bit over the edge of the limestone that lined the creek bank and watched the water slowly flowing down below.  I closed my eyes knowing that if I lost my balance I would never climb back out of the water.  I don't know how long I stood there but I did not lose my balance and of course I did not jump or I would not be telling this tale. 

This is but a taste of my experience with the historic Arch Creek Natural Bridge.

My First Words

 Self-diagnosed High-functioning Aspergars

When I was a wee one, I somehow fell out of my high chair. Apparently I received some serious injury to my face. My lower teeth penetrated between my lower lip and my chin. A deep scar for many years ran from the right underside of my chin, slanting up across my lips, and upwards into my left cheek. My mouth is crooked. My palate is slanted toward the left. I have since found out that all the bones in my face were fractured, with everything, including my nose bones, pushed to the left. That is why I do not breath well out of my left nostril. My sinus and cheek bones were fractured. It is likely I had a concussion. I am quite sure I was not taken to the doctor, which is just as well because Daddy was better at treatment than most doctors in those days. The year was1937. I am suspecting that this accident has influenced my life in many ways. 

I did not say my first words until I was 4. Those first words garnered me an embarrassing and painful spanking. My daddy (my mama preferred my silence) was always trying to get me to speak, but I had nothing to say. So I started planning something for my first words. I knew it should be wondrous and impressive. I had watched and listened to adults when they had not seen each other in a long time as they jokingly insulted each other. I had learned what I thought was the most appropriate greeting, therefore these would be my first words. My first words would be spoken when we went to visit Great-Aunt Theresa and Great-Uncle Charley in the wealthy community of Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Refined, reserved, and rich aunt and uncle of my daddy. I rehearsed my words in my head endlessly when I heard we would be going. I rehearsed them in my head for the entire two-hour car ride. 

We were met in the foyer and the adults greeted each other with hugs, warm smiles, and quiet conversation.  Children were generally ignored, as was the rule in those days, children should be seen and not heard.  Of course since I had never been heard, I was unaware of this rule.  I learned it rather quickly though. And I learned there was a very good reason for this rule. I was waiting patiently for my chance to speak my first words as the adult conversation continued for more than a few minutes. In retrospect, my first mistake was opening my mouth.  My second was forgetting that the joking insults only occurred when we visited one of my daddy's five brothers.  It was they who kidded each other about loss of hair or spreading gut.

So there I was down there near the floor waiting for my big opportunity to speak.   Tiny blond skinny 4-year-old with first words at the ready. Finally, a temporary lull in the conversation. OK, big breath, Go! In high-pitched squeaky voice; "Uncle Charley, you have gotten so fat." I was sure that everyone would be impressed and they all would burst into joyful laughter........any minute now.  

Dead silence. They all stood looking down at me. I was looking up expectantly and feeling quite proud of myself. Without a word, my daddy scooped me up, carried me into the dining room and walloped my tiny behind with his big ham-like hands. He was furious. I was mortified. And rightfully so.

My first words, inappropriately spoken. The beginnings of the story of my life.