Military Madness

I received my draft notice in January 1969. I don't remember the exact date. I went to Key West with Stan Ferrell after getting the notice. 

Contrary to what many think I was not part of the Selective Service lottery; that didn't start until almost a year later. I was part of a massive draft during the first three months of 1969 - over 30,000 young men per month were drafted to feed the war machine in January, February, and March of 1969.

I weighed my options. The chances of getting in the National Guard or Reserves were slim at best. It seemed you had to know someone and I didn't. I went to Boston and talked to some draft resistance groups but what they proposed wasn't all that appealing (take copious amounts of drugs before the physical, feign homosexuality, or outright refuse and go to prison). I figured I was a smart guy, I drove a large tow truck, and was a budding auto mechanic so I figured I'd get some cushy job in Germany. Yeah sure. 

I was sent to Fort Dix, New Jersey for Basic Training. At the end of February. Fort Dix in the winter is not a nice place. Basic Training was eight weeks - two months. I lasted four weeks give or take. It was the weather that did me in.

I turned twenty on March 28, 1949. 

One morning while standing at attention waiting for breakfast I passed out. The Sargent thought it was just because I hadn't eaten but once I came to he sent me to 'sick call'. By myself. "Hotchkiss report to sick call!" Sure thing Sarge, I just fell flat on my back and was still wobbly but I'll get there.

So I made my way to the medical unit, kind of like an urgent care place. They looked me over, listened to my lungs, and said you need to go to the hospital for x-rays. Okay, how do I get there? I was directed to a bus stop. On my own. Again.

Now let me tell you a bit about medical care at Fort Dix in 1969. It was terrible. There had been deaths from spinal meningitis recently. It was a scandal. Add in the suicides and Dix was not a healthy place.

Anyway I made it to the hospital and got my chest x-rays. I was told to go back to the medical unit. When I got there the medic said, "Where's the x-rays?" Uh I don't know, at the hospital? So the medic did the smart thing, he told me to go back and get them! And I'd missed the bus. Thanks. It was a couple of miles and I trudged to the hospital and back with my x-rays. When the medics looked at the x-rays they said, and I'm not kidding, "You need to be in the hospital." No shit Sherlock. This time someone drove me. I was diagnosed with pneumonia in both lungs. 

I spent over a week in the main hospital. Every other day they x-rayed my chest and on the alternate days they took blood. I felt like a pin-cushion and thought I might glow in the dark. When I had recuperated enough they transferred me to the hospital annex, a run-down, one-story, group of buildings with peeling paint (probably lead based) built most likely for WWII. I spent two weeks in the annex.

By the time I was fit for duty it was too late to rejoin my unit so I was sent home for a 'rest and recuperation' of six weeks. Then I was supposed to report back to Fort Dix and start all over again. 

I left Fort Dix with the clothes on my back. I took a bus from Dix to Newark airport figuring I'd get a plane home to Bradley. That didn't work out. So I took a bus from Newark to the Port Authority in New York City, where I connected with a bus to Hartford, CT. I called my mom to meet me at the Hartford bus depot. 

When I climbed down out of the bus my mom was there to meet me. She gave me a hug and I looked at her and said, "I'm not going back." She didn't believe me. 

It seems like some people have opinions about my going AWOL. One I've heard is that I was afraid of dying. Well that's partially true. I figured the Army had one chance to kill me (pneumonia) and I survived. Once was enough. But there was more to it.

I had been against the Vietnam War for a long, long time. I really didn't want to join the military because I had a decent job and was a productive member of society. But I wasn't anti-military.

I doubt that anyone drafted wanted to die. Or be maimed. I think many of the kids drafted just thought it wouldn't happen to them. But they were wrong. Ask my friend Doug Fraser - oh wait you can’t, he died in Vietnam.

Besides not wanting to die, especially not for some ill-defined 'domino theory' war, I saw no reason to kill others. By the time I was drafted it was pretty clear to me and millions of others that the war was wrong. 

I was lucky that my family supported, or at least accepted, my decision. Doing what I did was difficult. I left my friends, family, and country. I went to Canada and became a refugee. But I wasn't alone. And I don’t regret it.

 

Chapter 4 - South Street, Coventry, CT

I don’t remember exactly when we moved back to Coventry but it wasn’t that long after mom and dad split, probably late winter or early spring of 1961.

We moved into a 3-story house on South Street. It was kind of diagonally across the street from Hank Keane’s burned out house that sat on the corner of South Street and Judd Road. That 3-story house is gone now; I think it burned down. We lived on the second floor. It was a shit hole. It had two separate bedrooms (my mom's was at the front, Sandy's was in the rear next to the kitchen, and my brother and I shared a room that may have originally been a parlor or dining room (two doors, one into the kitchen the other into the front hall), living room, kitchen/dining room and bathroom. I think there was a rear staircase but I don't remember ever using it.

Mom was a school teacher but she couldn’t get into a school that late into the year. She got a job at some company in Willimantic working for peanuts. She definitely wasn’t happy. I think all three of us kids started acting up when we lived on South Street. I started smoking.

A few memories of South Street - Sandy met Billy Powell when we lived there. Billy was from Rockville, his sister and her two (I think) daughters lived on the ground floor. I only have a vague memory of the couple that lived on the top floor. I do remember that they set up a tent during the summer probably because it was so hot on the third floor. I remember exploring the ruins of Hank Keane's house with Bud Hansen. Bud found a copy of a newspaper from September 1, 1939 with the headline Hitler Invades Poland. I wonder if Burt still has it?

School was terrible when I returned to Coventry. Instead of being in the class I had been in, the class with my friends, I was in with kids I didn’t hang out with. I felt stigmatized by my parents split and the fact that we were now poor.  But I guess I did okay grade wise in school that year.

One event sticks in my mind that exemplifies our poverty and my mom’s mindset. The company she worked for had a company picnic at Ocean Beach Park, New London. Everyone had to bring their own food. Mom dug some hot dogs out of the freezer and barbecued them. They were bad. I told mom that I couldn’t eat them. She was so horrified that someone might see that she only had rotten hot dogs she told me to eat them anyway. They made me sick.

Mom started teaching in Marlborough, Connecticut, at the start of the 1962 school year. It was about a thirty mile drive but she was happy to be back teaching.

Our stay on South Street was thankfully short.

Chapter 3 - Bridgeport, CT

In the fall of 1960, we moved to Bridgeport, CT. Dad had lost his business, gone to work for a friend, Al Booth, at a factory in Willington, CT (156 River Road, Willington). Al sold the business to Stewart Die Casting and they shut down the business. Dad had a job with them in Bridgeport. We eventually moved to a house on Harvey Street, almost across the street from my new school, Edison Elementary School (115 Boston Terrace, Bridgeport). It was a traumatic time. I had started 6^th grade in Coventry with my friends and now I was in an inner city school.

We lived in a house like this on Harvey Street.

During the winter of '60-'61 the snow was almost up to the roof of the one story part of the school.

Edison Elementary School. To me it seemed like a prison.

School was terrible. I was the new kid. At least a quarter of the kids in the class were black. I didn’t consider myself a racist but I didn’t know any blacks in Coventry. One kid was 15, almost 16 (I was 11). He was waiting to turn 16 so he could quit school. I remember he had a hole in his forehead (covered with flesh, just a hole in the skull) that pulsed when he got angry. Scared the hell out of me. The rumor was he'd knifed another kid for making fun of him.

This was the first school I'd attended that had a strict dress code. I had to wear a dress shirt and tie. The girls had to wear either a dress, or skirt and blouse. No jeans. 

It was a terrible winter, cold and a lot of snow. If you look up Edison Elementary School on Google maps you see that it is a two-story building. But on the Birdsley Street side there is a one story addition; the snow was almost up to the roof of that addition. 

I was a crossing-monitor while at school. I got to wear a vest and sash. 

My sister, Sandy, went to Harding High School. It must have been weird for her there too. It was overcrowded, so overcrowded they had to have a split schedule, morning and afternoon schedules. My only memory of the school was of going to a football game, it must have been Homecoming or Thanksgiving because it was a big deal.

The house we lived in was okay. It was probably built in the 1940s. Bridgeport was an industrial town so it, like all the others in the area, were probably built to house defense industry workers. We never knew for sure but based on the small vineyard in the backyard, and the wine press in the basement, our house most likely was originally owned by Italians.

The worst part of Bridgeport was that my parents’ marriage disintegrated there. I’m sure their marriage was not in great shape before but it ended in Bridgeport. Before we moved to Bridgeport my dad lived there during the week and I guess he met someone. Dad moved out in November but he moved back in for Christmas. I remember hearing my mom and dad, not fighting but talking in their bedroom (my room, that I shared with my brother Doug was next to theirs). Mom cried a lot. Dad moved out for good after Christmas.

It wasn't that long after dad moved out that we moved back to Coventry. 

Chapter 2, Seagraves Road, Coventry, CT 1952-1960

 Chapter Two - Seagraves Road, Coventry 1952-1960

We moved to 26 (I don't remember the houses having numbers back then) Seagraves Road, Coventry, Connecticut, in 1952. Dad had gone into partnership with Bill Dorsey at a Shell Station. Their company was D&H (Dorsey and Hotchkiss) Auto Service, 1960 South Street (near Beebe Farms Road and Camposio Drive).

Coventry was a strange town. It had been a farm town and a mill town. In the '50s, there were still a few mills and a fair number of working farms. We got our milk from a local farm. Like many post-war (WW2) towns, things were changing.

Connecticut was a manufacturing state, and there was nothing bigger than Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford. It seemed like half the adult population of Coventry worked for Pratt, or a company with military contracts.

By 1960, Coventry's population had grown to 6,356, from 4,043 in 1950, according to the US Census. There was one new development in town off Flanders Road, near South Street. I think it was called Nathan Hale Heights. It was built by Joe Gorris. Many of the summer cottages became year-round homes. 

Official policing was done by the Connecticut State Police, although there were some men with "Sheriff" badges. From what I remember, they were derisively called the Coventry Cowboys. And not because the rode horses. 

The Coventry Fire Department (there were two, one in North Coventry and one in South Coventry) was a volunteer affair. My  Dad was a member of the South Coventry FD. I don't want to cast aspersions on present-day volunteer fire departments, but back in the '50s my Dad used to say their primary job was to keep a fire from spreading.

In some ways, Coventry was like the Wild West. There were shootings - one I remember was over a woman, a married woman. Evidently, hubby found out this known Lothario was messing with his wife. Hubby grabbed his .22 rifle and tracked down Lothario, shooting him. I don't think there were any charges. 

There were three or four drinking establishments in town, none of which were family-friendly. At the north end of the lake, at the intersection of Daly Road and Main Street (Rt. 32) was The Cove. The Cove had a restaurant with "dinner and dancing" and a separate bar.

The Cove. The restauant on the left, the bar on the right.

At the south end of the Lake was, ta-da, Lakeside, another restaurant and bar, that was even more of a dive than The Cove. Lakeside is now Lakeview Restaurant & Bar, a nice family place. 

In the center of town was Bidwell's, next to Flaherty's Package Store, in the old Bidwell Hotel. I think Bidwell's was the diviest dive in town. Bidwell's was reborn in a brick building just up the street in the late '60s, and has become another respectable restaurant and bar.

Bidwell's Hotel. The original Bidwell's bar was on the ground floor, left side. The package (liquor) store on the right side.

In the late 1960s this brick building, formerly a mill office, and then the Town Office, became Bidwell's.

Coventry at that time was a very small town. Virtually everyone knew everyone. Strangely, the town was split into North and South Coventry, even though it was legally one unified town. 

We were Protestants, and there were two Congregational churches in Coventry: the First Congregational Church in South Coventry and the Second Congregational Church in North Coventry. For some reason, we went to the North although our house was about an equal distance to either. I doubt that Dad went with us every Sunday, but my memories are of us going as a family. We kids went to Sunday School and then the service. Often, we would then drive to Clarence's downtown (South Coventry) to get the Sunday Hartford Courant.

Our new house seemed huge, but in reality, it wasn’t. Many of the houses in that area were originally summer cottages clustered around Lake Wangumbaug. In fact, one part of Coventry was known as the Actors' Colony, because many New York actors had homes, or summer homes in that particular area. 

Mom and Dad had what seemed to us a big bedroom with a walk-in closet. I think the house originally had only one bedroom. Sandy’s room was once the front porch (it had been closed in). I don’t remember where my room was the first couple of years; most likely, I shared Sandy's room.

Rooms were added onto the original cottage until it became kind of a rambling ranch house. The front door used to be in the sun porch, but it was never used. The entrance was between the dining room and what became my brother Doug's and my bedroom.

Doug and my bedroom was another porch that was closed in.

From the left side of the house was the garage, then a bedroom. The original house is the right section. Along Seagraves Rd. was a row of fir trees that blocked the house from the street.

I have a feeling we moved into the house in the early spring because the daffodils were beginning to appear in the garden along the driveway.

My brother Douglas John Hotchkiss was born in April 1953. At some point after Doug was born, the next bedroom was added (to the left of the middle section). 

Mom had the garage converted into a rec/living room, albeit an unheated one. Remember that this was the '50s; Mom had the room panelled with knotty pine. She also had a brick fireplace built; Mom really wanted a fireplace. I know we held at least one Christmas in that room, and my sister Sandy had a dance party there.

I think for us three kids, Seagraves Road was the best time of our lives. Our family was intact, and life was good. Our house was on a fairly large lot, a half-acre if I’m correct. Most of the houses in the immediate area were on smaller lots. There were a couple of cottages behind our house, and we shared the driveway with them. On the corner of Seagraves and South Street, facing South Street, was the house the 'old man' lived in. I don’t remember his name or that of anyone else who lived in the house.

The old man's house on South Street.

Our house was the first that faced Seagraves. The Grays lived next to us and then the Forsts. After the Forst’s house was a shack of a place full of kids and love. It really wasn’t much of a house; it didn’t have running water or an indoor toilet. It had a pump in the kitchen sink for water. They had an old hand-crank phonograph. I guess they were poor, but we didn’t realize it.

Further down Seagraves lived the Dorys, Mrs. Covell (Sandy’s and my piano teacher), and the Murrays. Many of the neighborhood kids played in our yard because it was bigger but most of them were older than I was, except Tommy Forst, who was a year younger. Gary Gray, Russ Dory and Tim Murray were two years older.

We lived on Seagraves from 1952 until the fall of 1960. It seems like we lived there forever, but I guess eight years is a lifetime to kids.

Whoever owned Seagraves before us cared for the place. There was a flower garden (Mom called it a rock garden) along the left side of the driveway that had the most beautiful daffodils in the spring. There was a row of fir trees at the front of the property and a big weeping willow tree in the middle of the front yard (we used to break off branches to make whips and pretend we were Zorro). In the summer, when the willow was full, it was like an oasis from the summer heat. Out back there was a large oak tree. Dad hung an old tire from one of the branches to make a tire swing. Along the backside of the garage was a group of lilac bushes, a bit overgrown but so beautiful in bloom. There was also a crab apple and a cherry tree. 

Mom drove a school bus for the Coventry Day School for a time. I know she drove at least right up until just a week before my brother Doug was born on April 11, 1953. She said it snowed on the day he was born.

So many memories from Seagraves, most good. Christmas was always great. Mom would always pack our stockings with comics and coloring books to keep us occupied while Dad slept. It seems like we always had a big breakfast and then – Ta-Dah – Dad would pass out the gifts. I remember one year, once all the gifts had been handed out, I asked Mom if there wasn’t one more. She seemed puzzled, so I ran to her closet and pulled out one more gift. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew where it was hidden!

For some reason, we used to go through mom and dad’s bureaus; both had a junk drawer. Dad had all sorts of neat stuff in his, some from the military, some just stuff from different places. There were some Sheriff badges from Coventry (Coventry did not have its own police department until the ‘60s and they used to hand out badges to just about anyone who wanted one).

Among Dad’s stuff were some letters from his mom, my grandmother, when he was in Belgium during the last year of the war. In one letter, my grandmother chastised him for “falling in love” with a Belgian girl and to remember he had a wife back home. Grandma Hotchkiss was like that; she’d tell you to just stop being foolish (she later did it to me). (It seems like I am the only one who remembers this.)

Dad had been a Sergeant in supply for the Army during World War II. He had 'accumulated' a lot of stuff. The bunk bed Doug and I slept in (and in New Britain Sandy and I) was Army-issue. We had so many Army-issue green, itchy wool blankets that I figured that was what everyone used. We had four or five field telephones - they were great for giving an electric buzz to anyone daring enough to place a finger on both posts. Dad had a couple M1 Garands along with about a thousand rounds of ammo, helmets, sleeping bags (Dad called them 'mummy sacks', and they were that same itchy wool), and so much more stuff.

Summers were great because we lived close to Wangumbaug Lake, otherwise known as Coventry Lake, and had the right to use the beach in Waterfront Park. For a year or two, they showed movies on a big sheet there. Unfortunately, I was plagued with ear infections for a few summers, probably because the houses around the lake fouled the lake. 

One spring, I broke my right collarbone and was in a bulky cast for the whole summer. Gary Gray let me sit on the crossbar of his bike, and I fell off. Gary ran over me. Boy, did it hurt, but not as much as not being able to go swimming that summer.

Dad’s garage, D&H, was only a few minutes away. I used to love going there. There was a little mezzanine over the bathroom that had all kinds of gas station stuff (probably worth a fortune now). I probably saw my first risque art up in that mezzanine. Many gas station ads and calendars showed shapely women scantily dressed. Hot stuff for a kid. If I were good, Dad would let me have a soda from the cooler out front. I idolized my Dad, but he really wasn't there for me that much.

Imagine this with two gas pumps on a small island, a soda cooler to the left of the office door.

A few events stand out in my mind about Dad and the Shell Station. One day, when I was at the gas station (I must have been out of school for some reason), Dad got a call from a woman he knew (I found out many years later that he was having an affair with her); her house had been invaded by squirrels. Honestly. The assumption was the squirrels came down the chimney and couldn't get out. Dad threw a few burlap sacks in the pack of his 1950 Ford F-1 pickup, and he, Carl Sweager, and I headed off to the rescue. I remember standing completely still in the living room of the house on Dooley Drive as Dad and Carl chased squirrels around the house. Carl was badly bitten by a squirrel and had to get stitches.

There was also a time when I was in first grade. This was at the old schoolhouse at the corner of Main Street and School Street. There was a slight rise from Main Street to the school, and some of us kids were rolling down the "hill" at recess. I got nauseous. Dad was called and came and got me. On the way back to his gas station, he stopped for lunch at Gorris' place on South Street. All of a sudden, my nausea was gone, and I wanted to eat.

This place has seen many businesses come and go. It was Gorris' when I was a kid.

Once, Dad had to go to Albany, New York, to get a rebuilt engine. I wanted to go with him so badly. This was probably around 1957. I begged, and I cried and finally he said I could go. Even though it was a long trip, probably around three hours back then (no Interstate yet), and there would be three in the cab of that Ford pickup (I think one of the Morgan boys went with us), I was overjoyed to spend time with my Dad.

We, as a family, had friends. The Gronbacks, and the Morgans (there were two Morgan families in town; we knew Helen and Ford Morgan, and their four sons). They lived on Merrow Road and had horses and a great pond. Mrs. Morgan used to make homemade root beer.

Around 1958, Dad moved his business. At first, he was going to rent the gas station that is now Coventry Pizza (1467 South Street), but for some reason, that didn't work out. He ended up at what is now Coventry Automotive (2767 Boston Turnpike). That didn't last.

This new looking restaurant was once a Texaco station @ 1467 South Street.

I don't remember what brand this was when Dad had his shop here @ 2767 Boston Turnpike.

In either late 1959 or early 1960, Dad closed his business and went to work for a friend, Al Booth, at a factory in Willington, CT. 

Throughout the years at Seagraves, I had some really good friends. There were the kids in the neighborhood. And Burt (then Bud) Hansen, Pete Hoffman, John Howland (we all went to kindergarten together), a cousin Philip Gronback, Joey Maulucci, I'm probably forgetting many because it seemed like I had so many friends.

We used to play in the Nathan Hale State Forest across the street from us. Directly across the street was a swamp, and further down Seagraves, there was a pine forest. We used to play in the forest a lot. We'd built "huts" (just some branches put together like a lean-to), pretending we were hunting, doing kid stuff. It was a magical place.

One day, probably a Sunday, a cousin, Betty Jean Lacells, was visiting. Late in the afternoon, as she was getting ready to leave, we couldn't find my brother Doug. Everybody, Mom, Dad, Betty Jean, Sandy, neighbors, and I scoured the swamp and forest. We couldn't find him anywhere. I think Mom was just about ready to call the State Police (Coventry didn't have its own police force yet) or the Fire Department to help find him. For some reason, Betty Jean decided to search the house - yup, he was sound asleep UNDER his bed!

My sister, Sandy, sent me what she remembered about the Seagraves' house - "I do remember that what became Hotch's and your bedroom eventually was a screened-in porch when we first got there.  So, you and I shared the sunporch for a bedroom.  Closing in that porch was the first remodeling I remember--it became the front door and hall, and our bedroom.  I think moving the door to the porch came later, and the coat closet was put there then.  Not sure why you and I shared the new bedroom, but I remember sleeping in the top bunk there.

The next remodeling was building a kitchen where the open porch had been, making the entry to the kitchen from the dining room where a window had been, excavating more of the basement (and new access), and adding a new porch to the back.  I think that's when the coat closet got put in from of where there had been a door to the porch. Oh, and the wall between the dining room and the hallway got a large opening to make the room feel bigger.

When Hotch was almost ready to move out of the crib, they added a closet to the sunroom, papered it in a girly flowered wallpaper, and bought a daybed for me.

I don't remember when the garage got paneled, or why they thought we needed a fireplace out there.

Oh, and the "rock garden" was on the opposite side of the front lawn from the driveway, and there was a house between ours and the "old man"--my friend Betty Bednarz lived there for a while."

Chapter 1 - Leahy Court, New Britain, CT 1949-1952

Prologue

These are my best recollections of my life. Sometimes I think I remember being told things. I don't remember too much of my life as a toddler. 

The best, and in some ways, the worst times of my life were in Coventry, Connecticut. 

My first forty years on this earth were split pretty evenly: 1949-1969 in Connecticut, and 1969-1990 in Ontario, Canada. And from December 1990 until the present, the West. These are my remembrances.

The Connecticut years started in New Britain, a period I really don’t remember except through what I’ve been told and seen in photographs.  Then there were the Seagraves Road, Coventry, CT years, followed by the Dark Ages, otherwise known as Bridgeport, and South Street in Coventry, then the turning point of Wall Street and Avery Shores Drive, Coventry.

Chapter One - Leahy Court, New Britain

New Britain 1949-1952

I was born at 4:58 PM, on March 28, 1949, in New Britain General Hospital, New Britain, Connecticut. Of course, I don’t remember being born at all. I do remember some of my first few years, the years we lived in New Britain, or at least I think I do. I could be remembering things I’ve been told.

Yup, that's me.

I was the second son (the first, John Edward Hotchkiss, died shortly after birth) and second of three children (after my sister Sandra Jean Hotchkiss and before my brother, Douglas John Hotchkiss) of Elaine C. Hotchkiss (nee Clark) and William C. Hotchkiss. We lived at 37A Leahy Court in temporary housing for returning G.I.s. Each one-story unit had two separate apartments with four rooms (two bedrooms, kitchen/dining room, living room) and a bathroom. My sister and I shared a bedroom with a bunkbed (liberated from the Army), my parents had their bedroom, and the living room had a TV!

This is my family on my Dad's side taken in 1952. Back row from left: Laura Ann Donahue (cousin in her father's arms), Leo Donahue (uncle), Elaine C. Hotchkiss (Mom), William C. Hotchkiss (Dad), Gordon B. Hotchkiss (Grandfather), Gilbert Hotchkiss (uncle). Front row from left: Sandra Hotchkiss (sister), Lucille Hotchkiss (aunt and wife of Gilbert), Bruce Hotchkiss (me), Dorothy Hotchkiss (Grandmother), Gregg Hotchkiss (cousin and Lucille and Gilbert's first), Cyrus J. Hotchkiss (Great-grandfather), Laura Donahue (aunt, wife of Leo and my Dad's sister), and Richard Donahue (cousin with his mom). Mom was not happy because Dad didn't dress up.

Although my memories are limited, I do remember my mom had her upright piano in the living room as well. It must have been crowded. I remember mom singing “Little Curly Hair In A High Chair” to me (I had curly blond hair):

Little curly hair in a high chair
What's your order for today
Little curly hair in a high chair
I'll do anything you say
When you're near the room seems to brighten
The sun comes streaming through you're eyes
You're the reason they still keep writin'
All those tender lullabies
Hm, there you go
Bangin' with your blocks
Pullin' off your socks
Hm, there you go
Tryin' to make your toes
Touch your baby nose
Heaven's close to your chair and my chair
When you smile the way you do
Little curly hair in a high chair
My day begins and ends with you

I know I did a somersault off the top bunk of the bunkbed, but I don’t remember it – my sister told me the story. I landed on my feet! 

My sister was my best friend and playmate. Sandy is two and a half years older than I am. There was a field behind the houses with a small wooded area and a hill with a water tank at the top. In the spring, the field was full of Black-eyed Susans and Buttercups. Sandy taught me “she loves me, she loves me not” as you pluck off the petals of the Black-eyed Susans, and showed me that you could find out if someone liked butter by holding a Buttercup under their chin to see if there was a yellow reflection.

My time in New Britain was idyllic, but for some reason, I don’t remember much of my Dad. I know he worked long hours as a mechanic. I think he worked at a Texaco station. It was near a firehouse, I do remember that. A firehouse with a brass pole to slide down. Dad took us there at least once.

My Uncle Kenny (mom’s younger brother, who was in the Navy and saw action in the South Pacific), Aunt Rose, and Cousin Judy lived nearby.

Living in that housing complex must have been like living in an American Legion or VFW; every man, and maybe some women, had served. I suspect everyone couldn't wait to move out and get back into the real world.

My grandparents on my mom’s side, Frank and Edna Clark, lived at 57 Ridgewood Street, New Britain. My Dad’s parents, Gordon and Dorothy Hotchkiss, lived at 38 Foxon Place, New Britain. I have fond memories of both houses, probably more of Ridgewood because my grandparents lived there until 1979. My grandfather Hotchkiss died in 1952, and not long after that, my grandmother moved to Kensington to live with her father-in-law, my great-grandfather, Cyrus Hotchkiss, on 272 Corbin Avenue near Doerr’s Pond.

57 Ridgewood Street, New Britain as it is today. 

38 Foxon Place, New Britain as it is today. 

272 Corbin Avenue as it is today. (Pictures of the houses taken from Google). 

Our car was a 1949 Packard, a huge 4-door sedan. I think Dad drove it most of the time; I’m pretty sure we were a one-car family. I don’t know how we afforded it. Maybe Dad got a lump sum when he left the Army? A Super Eight was just over $2,600 brand new in ’49.

Dad painted our Packard a couple of times, trying to get this color. It was close. (This is not our car.)

We had a lot of family in and around New Britain. My grandparents, of course, but also aunts and uncles, and cousins. My parents had friends they'd grown up with. That is what made New Britain so special for me, all the love around us. I had no idea of the hurt and scars so many of these young men and women bore. War is hell. 

Life went on. We moved to Coventry in 1952.

Why Am I The Way I Am?

Taking a short hiatus from posting political and/or religious topics on Facebook got me thinking about how I came to my world view. What makes me so different from so many of my friends and family? The answer will probably never be known but I'll try to deconstruct my life.

I think I was always a little different. My earliest memories don't seem so different but then who really remembers their life in the first two or three years? Life seems to have been idyllic for the first couple of years in New Britain but I know they probably weren't. My memories are of playing in the Buttercups and Black-eyed Susans in the field behind our temporary housing for returning GIs. I remember my mother singing to me, My Little Curly Hair In A High Chair. My memories of my father are faint.

I remember moving to Coventry and how wonderful and big it seemed. There were flowers all over and a giant Weeping Willow in the front yard, a cherry crab apple and large oak in the back yard. Life was pretty good I guess.

Somewhere along the line though I became aware of inequities in our country. I remember some of the voters' rights marches in the south, the standoff at Old Miss, things like that. I remember in either the 5th or 6th grade there were some of us who wanted to lawyers; we wanted to defend the wrongly accused. We watched Perry Mason, The Defenders and any other lawyer shows I've forgotten.

It must have been in the early '60s that I really became politicized (although I don't think I realized that was what it was). Things just didn't feel right. LBJ declare war on poverty and I, along with so many others, found it abhorrent that so many in this great country lived in squalor because they couldn't afford anything better.

By the mid-60s we were fully engaged in Vietnam, a war I just couldn't wrap my head around. First there was the self-immolation by monks. How could anyone do that? They must be desperate.

Then came the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, the President of South Vietnam. Ultimately we found out that this was a CIA backed coup d'etat.

All of that is background to my own experiences that started with being drafted in February 1969. Drafted to go fight in a war I did not believe in at all. Drafted to be cannon fodder.

I'll admit that being drafted, being torn from my comfortable (more or less) left, was traumatic. I had no desire to go anywhere. My whole life was in east central Connecticut. I tried like hell to avoid going but it was to no avail. It seemed to me that my options were severely limited. So I submitted.

I figured what the heck I'd get an easy job as a mechanic or truck driver, things that I knew a bit about. But my Uncle Sam had a different idea. Vietnam was in full swing. The months of January, February and March 1969 saw the Army draft 30,000 men (boys really) a month.

The Army was worse than I expected but really no worse for me than anyone else except I was not athletic. Fate intervened and I became sick, well double-pneumonia. I then witnessed first hand the callousness of the Army. I passed out during morning inspection; a couple of guys including the one who caught me as I fell said I turned ashy white and thought I was dead. I just couldn't breathe.

But I passed out after sick call so I was on my own. I walked to the infirmary and after being berated for malingering I was told I had to go to the hospital for chest x-rays. Except I'd missed the bus so I had to walk. Which I did. And then I had to walk back to the infirmary where I was told I should have brought the x-rays back with me so I had to walk back to the hospital. Thankfully someone at the hospital took a look at the x-ray and I was immediately put into a ward.

During the time I was in the hospital there was an outbreak of spinal meningitis and soldiers died. There was a Congressional investigation. It made those of us in the pneumonia ward feel so secure.

The only good thing about getting pneumonia is that I got out of Fort Dix on a six week medical leave. That was the start of the next chapter in my life.

Friends and Why

As I sat down to write this, this piece about friendships come and gone, and some come again, this song by Robert Earl Keen came on Pandora and seemed appropriate.

Coming Home of the Son and Brother

Time for the singer

Time for the singer boy to make his way home

A prodigal I’ve been distressed

This lonely child can’t make it on his own

I’ve been traveling states away

I’ve been playing in a bluegrass band

Now it’s the coming home

Of the son and brother again
Time has slipped away

I don’t know if I can play another tune

They want me to build single handed

A road up to the moon

They only pay me nickels and dimes

In a game that I can never win

So it’s the coming home

Of the son and brother again
It’s been a long long time

Since I’ve seen all of my family and friends

I want to hear them tell their stories

Tell ‘em all about the places I have been

So open all your doors up wide

Invite all the neighbors in

For the coming home

Of the son and brother again

A couple of days ago I posted pictures from what shoulda/woulda been my high school year book (I didn’t get in the year book because I dropped out – twice). The pictures were of three friends from early high school; Bud Hansen, Stan Ferrell and Tony Hansen.  Another friend, Pete Hoffman, emailed me and apologized if it was his fault we had drifted apart. It wasn’t Pete, it really wasn’t.

My life has been periods of ups and downs in many, many ways. My early life, let’s say from birth (1949) to Sixth grade (1961) was a pretty normal, middleclass, rural life. For those twelve years I had basically the same circle of friends, some school friends, some neighborhood friends and some both. Twelve years is a long time for some friendships.

But in 1961 my life, or my family’s life, took a nose dive. We started the school year in Coventry but I think in late October we moved to Bridgeport. The move, even if everything else had gone well, was hell for us kids (my older sister Sandy, younger brother Doug, and me) because we went from a very idyllic rural life to living in a “big” dirty, ugly city. For the first time in our lives we encountered other races, mainly African American and Latinos, (I think there were two African-American families in Coventry) in fairly large numbers. Sandy was just starting high school and her school had a split day – one group went in the morning and one in the afternoon.

But everything else didn’t go well. It was the end for my mom and dad – they split, reconciled, and split again. Each one of us kids dealt, or didn’t, with it in a different way.

Early spring we moved back to Coventry. I don’t remember that much about school when we got back. I think I ended up in a different class than where my friends. But that wasn’t the hardest part.

I think we all tried to be “normal” but let’s face it, we weren’t. We now came from a broken family. And we were poor. Mom was a teacher but there were no teaching jobs available when we moved back. She finally found a job with some small manufacturing company South Windham but it didn’t pay much. We lived in an apartment on South Street, some old 3-story Victorian house that had been made into apartments. We lived on the second floor.

September 1962, I entered 7^th grade, then at the one year old Coventry High School. I was with most of my friends still. Coventry like I guess many schools had different levels for each class (something like A, B, C & D) with A being the “smart” kids. I, along with most of my friends, was in the A class. But something was wrong with me. I had been a pretty good academic in grade school but my mind just wasn’t there anymore. Later on in life I realized that I like so many children from a busted marriage blamed myself – if only I had been a better person, blah, blah, blah. At the time I just knew something was wrong with the world and somehow I was a square peg in a round hole.

As happens so often with kids who have lost their way my grades suffered. Maybe not immediately but by the time 9^th grade came I was no longer in the A group. I started acting up, barely passing classes I should have aced. I just didn’t give a shit.

More than likely this affected friendships. I wasn’t in the same classes as my friends anymore so we didn’t hang out together as much. I became a “bad” kid. I smoked, swore and didn’t really fit in with anyone.

Sure I still had friends – Bud from my original group of friends hung in there with me for a bit – but some of my friends were different now.

But I guess I’m off track. My point, the point about friendship, is that they have come and gone. I think I’m to blame. I don’t know why. Oh the best friends I’ve had, so many that I’ve left behind. I moved either emotionally or physically. Maybe it was a defense, to be unemotional so that when the inevitable happens and we are no longer near each other I don’t feel the loss.

Now I’m an old man and sometimes I do feel alone and I wish I had my friends around me. I’ve become a solitary guy. I have Nadine. But really no one else. Part of me is afraid to become close to anyone because it hurts so much when they leave. But still I miss the friendships I’ve had.

I’ve connected with some friends through Facebook. I wonder what they think of me now. Do they think that all the ranting and raving I do is strange?

I sometimes envy them, especially those that stayed so close to home and at the same time I wonder how they put up with it. Yes I miss Coventry and Connecticut but whenever I’m back I feel that I’m being drawn into a time that has passed. There seems to be a complacency that I don’t have and haven’t for so long.

I’ve probably rambled for too long. To all my friends throughout my life, thank you. None of you left me; I left you for reasons therapy would take years to unravel. But I never really left you; I am what I am, at least in part, because of all of you. And if we were physically close again you’d see far too much of me. I can’t list all of the people in my life but I’ll do the best I can. In no particular order; Pete Hoffman, Burt (you’ll always be Bud to me) Hansen, Barry Hansen, Tony Hansen, Stan Ferrell, Bernie Costello, Ronnie Anderson, John Fraser, Richard Brownie, Brian Schwarkopf, Mike Thomas, Tony Leopardo, Danny Dorval, Mark French (who I spent a few weeks with in a haze after leaving the army), Al LaRocque, Pete Crowley, Paul Morgan and some of the girls too; Linda Hazen Adamson, Linda Canfield Garrison, Sue Douville. I miss you all.