They wrote me back about pool parties and suntans.
Livermore was a small town in a valley of rolling hillsides. In summer the hills were golden with dried grasses and dotted with oak trees. Almost desert, the days' temperatures passed 100 degrees, while the nights "cooled" to the low 80s. We ran barefoot on the warm sidewalks until bedtime, and sometimes the heat made it hard to fall asleep. Once in awhile, on a really hot day, the Fire Department would open a hydrant in our neighborhood. The parched street would fill with water, several inches deep at the kerb, and we'd jump in it, roll in it, scoop it up until it quickly disappeared into the drains.
You wouldn't do that in Anacortes. Water outside the house came in one temperature: bone achingly cold. One entry at West Beach was all I needed to decide that.
Just the summer before this one, our family came to visit my uncle Curt and aunt Shirley at Whidbey Island. Dad saw Puget Sound for the first time and definitely not the last. The next thing we knew, our house was up for sale and we were northbound. We knew no one in this place called Anacortes. And then we got the news that Uncle Curt was transfered to Memphis!
Twelve years old, I was sitting on the steps in front of the 1910 wood frame house that we'd moved into just a month or two before. My dad was in the basement trying to figure out a plumbing problem (those would be endless) while my mom was next door at the Pirak's visiting Sylvia. I was mourning the loss of all things familiar.
The Pirak's were the middle-aged couple next door. They were the first to welcome us, and the only people we knew so far. Mike and Sylvia had three grown children and one daughter named Marie who was about to start her senior year in high school. We hadn't met Marie yet because she was working through summer at an Alaska fish cannery.
I could see Mom and Sylvia through the Pirak's picture window. She and Sylvia were drinking red wine in water glasses, Yugoslavian style. Mike, at the parking strip on the street, was under the hood of Marie's 1959 Chevrolet swearing at the engine. I'd never heard language like that, and was thinking I'd better get used to it.
Sylvia saw me, and like she would anytime she saw one of us kids during happy hour, called me into her kitchen. I hadn't learned yet to stay out of her sight after 4:00.
"You'll come in and meet Marie. She's home from Kodiak."
Marie was in her room, off the kitchen in their shot-gun style house. She was unpacking clothing that smelled faintly of fish guts. About 5'3" and heavy set, Marie had dark hair and dark eyes. She gave me a big smile and said, "You must be Mouse."
Never tell a Yugoslav your childhood nickname. They'll call you that for life. Mom told Sylvia they'd called me Mouse when I was two because I worked very quietly at toddler-mischief. And I do remember thinking, "If I'm caught, I'll be stopped."
Sylvia emptied her glass and went to the kitchen to finish preparing dinner. Mike must eat not one minute after 5:00.
"You come back at 5:30." She said, abruptly.
Marie smiled again and said, "See you later, Mouse."
At our house, Mom made sandwiches. Dad was still struggling with the pipes below us, so Mom told him his supper was in the refrigerator and we'd be at Pirak's.
Sylvia poured herself and Mom a glass of Vino Fino from the gallon jug. Mike stood up.
"On Tuesdays he takes the paper to his mother and his aunt Mary," said Sylvia. Mike asked if I wanted to go along. Marie was on the phone and I was beginning to get uncomfortable with Sylvia. She had lots of opinions and was looking at me a little too closely.
"Sure."
"Get your jacket."
We walked the three blocks to Safeway where Mike purchased three Anacortes Americans. Then we walked Commercial Aven
ue past the storefronts and taverns. Mike glanced inside the taverns, not entering, and made remarks about who should be home and who hadn't been seen at Mass for months. We turned the corner at 4th Street and went up the steps of an old white Cape Cod. An old woman with white hair, coke bottle glasses and a worn housedress greeted us."Mother," said Mike in greeting. Their conversation was in Yugoslavian with an occasional, "No kidding!" or "That's right!" from Mike. Mrs. Pirak offered me some strange smelling cookies that I politely declined. I found out later the aroma I didn't like was aniseed.
We left Mrs. Pirak's house and walked about five blocks zig and zag to Mary Bachlich's house, a big dark bungalow with a wide porch. Old hardwood and wool rugs that looked age-worn and maybe a little grimy. The smell was of stove oil and mothballs.
"Sylvia says I have to watch you take your pills, Mary," said Mike.
Mary, a woman of 80-something, ankles swollen and color terrible, hobbled up to the sink. In the cabinet she found a juice glass and filled it half way with water. Mike handed her several small pills. She tossed the pills down the drain and dumped the water in after them.
"There. Tell Sylvia I took them from you."
Entering the Pirak's front door I could see that Mom and Sylvia had a similar facial expression. Marie stood to greet me and said, "Let's go drag the gut, Mousey." Whatever that is. She got the Chevy going after several tugs at the key and we were on our way.
Up and down Commercial Avenue. Honk and wave. Turn around at Jorgenson's market at the high end, Reisner Distributing at the other end. The Beatles' White Album over and over again. Marie had bought the new eight-track deck with her cannery money and she only had enough left to buy one tape. We got milk shakes at A&W. "You owe me 75 cents, Mouse, but I'll pay for the gas."
We checked it at 9:00. Mom and Sylvia were looking for moths. "Mike found one in his closet so we have to find the other two before we can sit down." There are always three moths in Yugoslavian households. Soon enough, Sylvia was able to present two fresh kills to Mike.
"Now take your heart medicine and go to bed."
She opened a pill bottle and put one in his hand along with a water glass. Mike took a pill and Sylvia took a pill.
Mom said, "I thought that was Mike's medicine."
"It is," replied Sylvia, "He won't take it unless I do." Sylvia described how Mike wore garlic around his neck when they met and she made him get rid of it before she would go out with him. So, he blamed her for every cold he caught and made sure she got one whenever he did.
The adults went off to slumber, and Marie asked me to stay and watch a movie with her. Then another movie. There's no tv in Kodiak, she explained.
At 1:15 a.m. she jumped up and put her coat on. She told me to get in the car. So, I did, and we went back downtown. She pulled into the Thrifty Mart parking lot and took one of the spaces facing Commercial Avenue and Vi & Pete's Cafe.
"We're going to Watch the Drunks Come In," she said. And about then the first car arrived, stopping about three feet from the kerb. The passenger door opened, and a woman put her foot out, misjudging the pavement. Down she tumbled, and she cussed at the driver. He got out, walked behind the car and stood, swaying a bit with both hands pushed into his lower back, elbows out. Squinting, he went back a few paces, then put a hand over one eye. He staggered over to help his companion up from the street and together they made the sidewalk with only two tries. Just in time, too, because the next driver would have hit that first man, and he stopped just short of the rear bumper when he popped the clutch.
It was pretty funny, so I had to laugh out loud with Marie.
When all the Tuesday night revelers were seated at the U shaped counter and taking their black coffee, Marie and I left Thrifty. One more drag up Commercial Avenue and back down, making way for a last-minute arrival to Vi & Petes who'd been on-foot, running down the center line of the street.
We parked on the street in front of Marie's house and saw a man exiting two doors down from hers. He got in a car and drove off. Another man came up the sidewalk, staggering, with a pistol held loosely in his right hand.
"That's Bob, Doris' boyfriend," said Marie. "She's a prostitute. Bob gets jealous sometimes." She turned her back to him as he passed by and I scooted in front of her to her door.
"Ok if I stay a few minutes?" I asked, with an anxious glance toward Doris' house.
"Naw. You can go home. Nighty-night, Misch!" She closed and locked the door. I shivvered and ran home as fast as I could, quiet as a...
Misch? That's Yugoslavian for Mouse.
