SOL 22 #7 Rambling Autobiography

I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio in a house with a sizable back yard. We had a 2-car garage. I mean, there was space for 2 cars but it was actually my dad’s workshop. He was a carpenter by day and a special delivery mailman in the evenings. He used to come home for dinner and then watch Hogan’s Heroes which came on at 7:30 and then he would leave and go back to work. We had a dog then, too. His name was, yes, Blackie. Here was this black dog, mix of cocker spaniel and something else, owned by a Black family and we named him Blackie. I bet that was my aunt Willie Mae’s idea. She had that kind of humor which I now recognize as outrageous and often inappropriate but then she was just funny. Willie Mae actually taught me to swim. She was short and rotund and loved the water. We were traveling across the country – me (5), my brother, Carlton (10), my aunt and my mom – from Cleveland to Los Angeles. Every night we stayed in a motel with a pool and that’s when I had my lessons. I became a great swimmer.

My dad’s carpentry business was called the Lymor Company. I was probably a teen when I realized where that name came from: Lyons and Morris. My dad was Lyons and his partner was Paul Morris. Mr. Morris always called me “Dropout.” I have no idea why. I remember that my dad smelled like sawdust and cigarettes and I felt like I didn’t know him very well. I seemed to spend all my extra time running errands with my mother. She would run all over town to this meeting and that event, go to this special store like the Scientific Shoe Store where I finally got the saddle shoes I really, really wanted. I spent a lot of time in the car, first a blue Chevy impala, then a series of station wagons after that. One of my favorite things was falling asleep on the back seat and my dad having to carry me to bed.

*Special thanks to Elisabeth Ellington who introduced me to this idea in her post a few days ago.

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