What's Different

Besides the obvious changes in landscaping, can you find a major change to the Brooklyn house? This picture was taken in May of this year. I contend that the roof line has been changed. I'm looking for old pictures to substantiate my claim. If you have any, old pictures, send me a copy.

Discuss!

Knot Head

P.S.: If you look carefully, you can see the Brooklyn Watertower in the background, the scene of Douglas' most famous stunt...more later.

Who Lived Here?

Can you identify this house? Can you name three of the people who lived here? Can you describe it's location? What famous neighborhood was just down the street?

Where's Waldo?

He wore bib-overalls; he wore them all the time and he always wore his “cap.” On fancy occasions, he would switch to a real hat. His glasses were bifocals, his teeth were store-bought and he smelled like, well he smelled like Waldo. It was a unique smell. Part sweat, part hair-oil, part shaving soap all topped off with just a touch of mothballs. It’s a smell I would recognize today, decades later, if I smelled it. Waldo came from the generation that took their once-a-week bath on Saturday night so it was quite common for folks of that era to have their own signature smell.

When we were growing up in Brooklyn, Grampa Waldo was a fixture around our house, My Dad had a tendency to buy homes that needed lot’s of maintenance and it fell to Waldo to keep the place from falling down around us. Dad didn’t know which end of the screwdriver to hold but Waldo was “handy.” He fixed broken windows, repaired leaky faucets, patched holes, cleaned gutters, put up storm windows and he did it all with only one thumb. This meant that from time-to-time he would need someone to hold something for him while he worked; a flashlight for instance. You knew if you were doing it right when Waldo would reward you with the phrase, “ats the stuff!” If you got it wrong, you would hear “Whoop, whoop whoop!” which was Waldo’s multi-purpose phrase to indicate things weren’t going well.

Dropped the screwdriver, “Whoop, whoop whoop!”
Took a wrong turn while driving, “Whoop, whoop whoop!”
Clarence and Gail are having a loud argument, “Whoop, whoop whoop!”

Waldo Hill Witmer was born in 1899 and he didn’t have a thumb on his left hand. He used to have a thumb but the story was that it was blown off when he was cleaning a gun (and they called ME “knothead!” clumsy or not I managed to make it this far with all my digits!) Having a thumb missing was only the beginning of Waldo’s idiosyncrasies. He never drank milk, opting instead for a big glass of water with his meals. The emphasis was always on the word “Big” and he stretched it out like this, “Gimma a B-I-I-I-G glass a water.” His voice came from deep in his throat and was loud, with very little modulation. He spoke in short choppy phrases and the words would sort of burst out of him. Another mealtime oddity was his tendency to mix all the foods on his plate together, “All get’s mixed up in your stomach anyway!” he’d tell us.

I could start a separate Journal with Waldo stories but for now I leave you with: “YOU MAY BE A WALDO.”

If you’ve ever put a rubber band around your wallet to keep everything inside safe and secure…you may be a Waldo.

If, while stopped at an intersection, you’ve ever shouted from the passenger seat of a car, “OKAY THIS WAY, OKAY THIS WAY!…you may be a Waldo.

If you’ve ever used house paint to fix up a pair of shoes…you may be a Waldo.

If you always leave early enough to allow time to change a flat tire…you may be a Waldo.

If you’ve ever felt the need to carry TWO spare tires…you may be a Waldo.

If you have the uncontrollable urge to stop when you go by the day-old bread store…you may be a Waldo.

If you can’t work on any project without muttering to yourself…you may be a Waldo.

If you’ve ever used plywood to fix antique furniture…you may be a Waldo.

If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “I guy could live in a VW-Micro bus…you may be a Waldo.

I will challenge my readers to perform this little exercise called “Where’s Waldo.” You see, each of us have a little Waldo in us. It’s time to fess up, to admit how the Waldo gene manifests itself in your life.

I expect to see LOTS of comments on this one!

The Shoe Brush Story

We moved to Brooklyn when I was five years old, and for the most part, this Blog is dedicated to Indiana events. But no history of our family would be complete without “The Shoe Brush Story.”

The house, in Loveland, Ohio, was a big, old, drafty, two-story frame structure. The winter mornings were cold so when I got out of bed I immediately sought heat sources to keep warm. One of my favorites was the dishwasher. In the old days, dishwashers weren’t built in, so you could sit on top them if you were a little kid, and I was only four. I was perched on top the dishwasher, warming myself and minding my own business, when the events that would lead to the great shoe brush incident began to unfold.

My father, wanting to encourage his children to understand the value of his hard-earned money, would occasionally give us the opportunity to earn a nickel by shining his shoes. Because he was an important FEDERAL employee, he wore a suit to work and he needed shiny shoes. This particular morning, Dad told Dennis he could shine his shoes. “That’s not fair! I protested, “Why does Dennis get a nickel and I don’t?” Dad, exasperated by the fact that he was now dealing with an argument instead of getting ready for work, tried to solve the problem by telling me I could also shine a pair of shoes. At this point, the story should have had a happy ending, with Dennis and I shining our Dad’s shoes and earning our nickels. But there was one problem: Dennis had the black shoe brush and he was shining brown shoes! I had the brown shoe bush and I had black shoes to shine. The solution should have been simple; switch brushes with Dennis.

But he wouldn’t.

“DAAAAD! Dennis won’t give me the right shoe brush!” I yelled in my whiniest voice. By this time, Dad was well into his morning fire drill, desperately trying to get out the door on time and he was not pleased with having to mediate a fight. “Trade Brushes with John!” Dad barked.

But he wouldn’t.

Dennis said it didn’t matter what color the brush was and in direct defiance of my father (a FEDERAL employee,) Dennis would not trade brushes with me. When I tried to bring him into compliance with my father’s orders, by snatching the brush, he bolted from the kitchen. “STOP!” I yelled.

But he wouldn’t.

The kitchen adjoined a room that seemed too big to be a foyer but was not really big enough to be used as a dining room. This room served as the hub of the first floor. You could cross to the front door, the living room, the nursery, the master bedroom or return to the large, eat-in kitchen. The open stairway, to the second floor, also ascended from this room. At the bottom of the staircase were two large windows that looked out over the hill that sloped away from the house into a wooded area. Dennis crossed the room, headed for the stairs, trying to escape into the maze of rooms that made up the second floor. I knew that if he made it upstairs, he would be out of reach, and there would be little chance of Dad being able to deal with him before he left for work.

If the authority of my father was to be protected, if the rule of law were to be upheld, Dennis had to be stopped. I quickly weighed my options and arrived at the only decision that made sense. I cocked my arm back, clutched the brown shoe brush tightly in my right hand and took aim at Dennis’ head. And then, with everything that was in me, I launched the brush toward its mark. I wasn’t trying to kill Dennis, only knock him unconscious. Then, it would be a simple matter to take the brush from his limp hand. (It may seem remarkable to you that a four-year-old child could have had such clarity of thought, but I was a remarkable child.)

From the moment the shoe brush left my hand, time was altered, the world moved in slow motion; the shoe brush rotating though the air, Dennis mounting the first step on the stairway, Dad moving about in his bedroom. I watch as the brush drifted through space, past Dennis’ head and through the large window at the bottom of the stair. The glass splintered and then fell to earth like a shower of diamonds. My father's voice broke the slow-motion spell, “WHAT THE H…” Dad surveyed the scene while spewing venom. “BONEHEAD! KNUCKLEHEAD! BONEHEAD!” he boiled as he realized that not only was he going to be late, he would also have to deal with the colossal window mess.

But it was Dennis’ fault. He was really responsible for the broken window. If he had obeyed my father and traded brushes with me, there would have been no reason for me to try and knock him out. Fortunately for me, my father saw it the same way I did. After all, he had told Dennis to trade brushes with me. Hurling the shoe brush at Dennis’ head was a “reasonable use of force” on my part. Dad realized this, so it was understandable that Dad, even though he was late for work, took the time to give Dennis the whumpin he deserved.

As I watched Dennis take his lickun, my mind drifted back to when I was only a few months old. I was laying on my back, in the crib when suddenly, the silhouette of a boy blocked out the sunlight. I could see that the boy was wielding a weapon. It was a hairbrush. Over and over again, the hairbrush came crashing down on my skull! I was too little to defend myself; all I could do was cry. I screamed for my life and just before I drifted into unconsciousness, my mother came and pulled Dennis out of my crib. The incident left me with an irregularly shaped head; “knot head” became my nickname. “Dennis was too little to know what he was doing”, my Mom told me later, but I knew better. He escaped punishment then, but he was carrying that debt with him. Now the Universe was being brought back into balance, Dennis was being spanked. Not only for the offenses of that morning, but for that long-ago attempt on my life.

There are some that will argue with the accuracy of his account. All I can tell them is to watch for flying shoe brushes.

Maxine

The Hubbards lived directly across the street from us in a house with a brick porch. I’m not sure what the house looked like from the inside because I was never inside. There were several homes in the neighborhood where it was very clear that it was okay to come over and play as long as we stayed outside. The neighbors probably saw us as peculiar. The fact that we were relative newcomers was probably the first concern. The fact that we were a large, rowdy Catholic family, didn’t help matters. For these families, it was a major concession to let their kids play in our yard. The kids had strict instructions to play outside. I think the fear was that, if they came inside our house, we might sprinkle them with Holy Water and turn them into Catholics. Who knew what strange rituals went on in the Witmer household? On summer evenings, when the windows were open, the Witmer’s could be heard reciting what sounded like a Gregorian chant, “blezus olord antheze thigh gifs”* It must have seemed as strange to them as the Nazarene worship service was to us. At any rate, Maxine Hubbard was forbidden to enter the Witmer house.

Anna and Teresa were six or seven years old and often played with Maxine, but it was always outside. That’s why it seem so strange when, one day, Maxine presented herself, at the door, and explained that her mother said it was okay for her to go up to Anna and Teresa’s room and play with Barbie Dolls. It would only be for half and hour, she explained, and so my Mom sent her up to play. It all got stranger when Mrs. Hubbard came to the door looking for Maxine and stranger still when Maxine was no where to be found.

In all the years we lived in Brooklyn, Indiana, I don’t think I ever heard Mrs. Hubbard speak, other than to call the kids for supper. But that day we all wandered through the house, upstairs and down, inside and out, calling out “Maxine!” Did I mention that Maxine’s dad was the town Marshal? It was only his part-time job, but never the less, he was THE Marshal and his 1963 Ford Fairlane patrol car sat across the street in front of the Hubbard household. The Witmers had somehow got themselves involved in the disappearance of the Marshal’s daughter.

More neighbors joined the search, combing the neighborhood, checking and rechecking all the places she might be. The panic level began to rise. But we had all failed to consider one thing: Perhaps little Maxine did not want to be found. Teresa, young as she was, sensed this was the case and went back to her room. This time, instead of calling out for Maxine, Teresa said, in a low voice, “Hey Maxine, you want some candy?” A tiny little voice came back from underneath the bunk beds, “Yes.” Maxine had been simply unwilling to leave Barbie-Doll heaven.

The word went out, “We found her! We found her!” The adults raced upstairs. Now the problem was that Maxine didn’t want to come out. She knew that in the end, she would get a good old Indiana-style lickin, the prescription for all childhood foolishness, and she was in no hurry to settle up with her Mom. Eventually Maxine’s Mom coaxed her out with soft words, promising her that she was not in trouble, that she would not be punished, but we all new better. But in the end we were so relieved, that none of us would be facing kidnapping charges that we didn’t think about Maxine’s appointment with the parental justice system.

*Bless oh Lord and These, Thy Gifts…

The Summer of Boxing

I don’t remember how Dennis cut his hand, but to make the story interesting I’ll say he cut it on a broken pop bottle at the bottom of the creek bed. We were always messing around in the creek and that’s as good as explanation as any, but in any event it was a nasty cut. Now-a-days, he would have been taken to the nearest clinic or hospital to have the wound stitch closed, but my mother grew up believing the doctors and hospitals were only for the nearly dead. Even so, dripping blood all over the house usually got her attention. Mom was pretty good at patching us up and for deep, gaping wounds, she constructed a “butterfly bandage.” She used medical tape to fashion a two-part bandage. It looked sort of like a key and a keyhole. By threading one part of the bandage into the other, after affixing each piece to opposite sides of the wound, she could draw the cut closed. And with any luck, it would hold together long enough to heal. It was after Dennis received just such a mending that the famous “Witmer – Long” fight occurred.

I don’t know where the boxing gloves came from, but if any of the parents, in the neighborhood, had given five seconds of consideration; they might have realized that giving boxing gloves to a bunch of fifth and sixth-graders was a bad idea. Of course there was no corresponding protective gear. No mouth guards, no head gear, no groin cups, just two pair of gloves; two pair of gloves, begging us to put them on and hit somebody. And, of course we did. Who knows how much brain damage we sustained during the “summer of boxing.”

The Dyer twins designated a patch of grass, in their backyard, as “the ring.” The twins’ mom worked during the day so their yard was the best place to commit mayhem without some adult asking why we were beating each other into bloody comas. The grass was on the dry side and the smell of the abandon outhouse wafted over the ring from time to time, but to us, it was as a grand arena; our own version of the Coliseum.

Street fighting was part of our culture. Like animals in the wild, there was usually more posturing than fighting. But when circumstances dictated, we were not averse to mauling each other. The concept of a “fair fight” was not one I encountered until I moved to Wisconsin. In Indiana, a fight was a fight. Punching, pinching, kicking, wresting, biting, separately or in various combination, were all allowed and expected. That’s why boxing seemed so interesting to us. It was a fight with rules, a concept that, until then, was foreign to us.

Charlie Long was an opportunist. Even though he was taller and bigger than Dennis, he wasn’t sure he could beat him in an all out street fight. He had probably seen how vicious Dennis was when fighting with his brothers. Then there was the matter of the scar across Dennis’ navel which was rumored to be the result of a knife fight and was much too jagged to be the result of a hernia repair. But when Charlie saw Dennis’ right hand wrapped in gauze, he couldn’t resist taking advantage of the situation. Charlie started to taunt Dennis. I can’t remember the exact dialog, but typically, the taunting portion of a fight went something like this:

“You think you’re pretty tough”
“Tougher’n you.”
“You think so?”
“I know so!”
“You better shut your mouth before I shut it for ya!”
“Make me!”
“I don’t make trash…I burn it!
“You wanna fight me!?
“I’ll fight ya!”
“Come-on, Right now!”

The neighborhood kids were appalled that Charlie Long was taking advantage of Dennis’ wounded hand, but that didn’t stop them from rounding up everyone in the neighborhood to watch.

“FIGHT, FIGHT! WITMER’S FIGHTIN LONG!”

The gloves went on and the boys went at it. At some point, the butterfly bandage gave out and Dennis’, hand started to bleed and he could no long deliver punches with it. I’ll never forget my brother pummeling Charlie Long with one hand and shouting, “I’ll beat with one hand!” And he did, he beat Charlie Long, he beat Charlie long with one hand. The rumor was that Charlie went home crying. All the Witmer boy’s stock went up that day. If one Witmer could fight like a Tasmanian devil, the rest might be capable of the same thing, and therefore, we were not to be messed with.

Martinsville

The Witmers made two trips to Martinsville every weekend. In addition to the Sunday-morning church trip, there was the Saturday-morning Catechism trip. Since moving from Ohio, we Witmer Children had not had the benefit of a decent Catholic education. Saturday-morning catechism was necessary to straighten us out after hanging around with the public school kids all week. Mom and Dad made good use of the time. Dad went to the Library and Mom did the weekly shopping at the Martinsville A&P, which was just off the town square in downtown Martinsville.

A town square was required, seeing that Martinsville was the county seat of Morgan County. Every Indiana County had a County Seat with a town square and the Courthouse was the center of attention. The Morgan County Courthouse, was typical of southern courthouses, red-brick, three-stories, with a church like spire, surrounded on four sides by green space and park benches. The park benches were populated by old men in overalls with mouths full of chewing tobacco and I never grew tired of watching them spit.

In those days, tobacco use was almost a requirement of being a man. Unlike the northern Baptist Churches, whose motto was, “Don’t smoke, don’t chew, and don’t hang around with folks that do,” the Baptist, in the south, could be seen smoking right in front of their church buildings. The Catholics had no inhibitions about smoking or drinking, we had a zillion rules but smoking and drinking were not a problem. Spitting on the sidewalk, however was very serious.

While being taught the ten commandments, and hearing “Thou shalt not commit adultery” my younger sister, Teresa, was prompted to ask what “Adultery” was. The nun responded that it was "spitting on the sidewalk." We learned later, that adultery was a MORTAL sin. Not the common garden-variety venial sin. Venial sins were things liking cussing, stealing change from your father's dresser and hauling off and slapping your brother a good one upside the head. Mortal sins would send you off to extra innings in purgatory, even if you confessed them. And if you had he misfortune of dying with a mortal sin on your soul, you went straight to H-E-double toothpicks. Sidewalk spitting was very serious. It needed to be promptly repented of in Confession if one wanted to avoid the fires of the afterworld.

The Church of the Nazarene

Catholics, in Brooklyn Indiana were scarce. In fact we were the only Catholic family in town. You could count Mrs. Losh, but she lived on Cabin Row, which I never considered to be part of Brooklyn. She was also just one little old lady, not a Family, and she wasn’t a regular attender, not like the Witmers. In all my years in Brooklyn I only remember one time when we did not all pile into the VW Micro Bus and make the eleven-mile trek to Martinsville to attend St. Martins Church. A blizzard had dumped two-feet of snow, the night before, and the only hope of having the Witmers represented at Sunday Mass was for Mom and Dad to make a run for it in the Rambler. The Rambler had a posi-traction rear-end and, in theory, could cut through the deep snow. Even so, the kids would have to stay behind. Besides there not being enough room for all of us in the sedan; it was too dangerous for children to be out in a blizzard. The possibility of nine children being orphaned when the Rambler slid off the road and plummeted into a ravine, didn’t seem to be an issue.

Brooklyn was protestant through and through. There were three Churches within three blocks of our house, that’s probably what put the “Church" in Church Street. The most mysterious of these Churches was The Brooklyn Church of The Nazarene. The Nazarenes were a “Holiness” denomination which meant the women did not cut their hair, did not wear make-up and kept their arms and legs covered. When they met to worship, the whole neighborhood could hear the exuberant “AMEN”s and “YES LORD”s. Kim and Kevin Dyer used to speculate with us about what was going on in the church. Curiosity got the better of Kevin and he actually went to a service. Kevin was about nine-years old when he recounted, complete with reenactments, his experience in the worship service.

“First they started beatin on the pews, then they started beatin on the floor…” At this point Kevin got down on the ground and demonstrated. “…Then they all ran up and started beatin on the altar!” Whether any of this was true or not I will never know. I could have never pulled off what Kevin did. I would have stuck out like a sore thumb, the catholic boy in a Nazarene church. I would have been spotted as soon as I walked in the door when I would have asked where the holy water was, so that I could make a proper sign-of-the cross. Kevin, on the other hand, blended in.

Uptown

If you stood on the edge of the lot, where the sidewalk should have been, and looked right, it was less than two blocks up the gentle slope of Church Street to Mill Street. The intersection of Mill and Main Street contained a store, a bank, a barbershop, a gas station and the Post Office. Main street also contained the white tumbled-down shack that passed as a restaurant. This was “Uptown” in all its glory. When Kim and Kevin got bored, the asked if we wanted to “go uptown.” “Let’s go uptown and get a Coke.” “You wanna ride bikes uptown? It made the dingy collection of buildings sound like something important.

Past Mill Street on South Church Street was the elementary school, a red brick cube with two stories and a basement that housed the cafeteria, principles office and the boiler room that doubled as the janitor’s apartment. On the outside of the building was a fire escape that looked like a giant tube. In the event of a fire, the students had to slide down it. I dreamed of the day I could use the fire escape. It was rumored that, as part of the periodic fire drill, students had to burst through the two small double doors in the library, and slide down the fire escape tube. But for me, it was not to be. Just before fifth grade, the old school was closed and we moved to the brand-new elementary school which, unfortunately, was only a one-story building.

Sidewalks

There was no sidewalk in front of our house. The sidewalk fairy had passed us over. Two doors down, at the Dyer’s house, a sidewalk proudly separated the street from the lot. The sidewalk transformed itself into small stones and then into dirt as it made its way from their place to ours. That’s the way things were in Brooklyn, Indiana, population 308. Whatever mysterious civic forces, in charge of dispensing sidewalks, decided 108 North Church Street did not need or deserve such an amenity. It’s likely the decision, to omit a sidewalk, took place decades before we moved to town in the early sixties, and now it just had to must be accepted. Any activities, requiring sidewalks, had to be done in front of Kim and Kevin Dyer’s house. And that was fine by us. Kim and Kevin were our best buds and they had been since we moved into town. Kim and Kevin were twins and Dennis and I were almost twins with barely a year separated us. We were the last of “the four boys.”

In a family of nine children, it is necessary to break the children up into working groups such as “The Four Boys” or “The girls,” which referred to my two younger sisters, Teresa and Anna. Ron, Joe, Dennis and I (in chronological order) comprised “The four boys.” Our older sister Marilyn separated us from the eldest boy, Douglas. Douglas was always referred to by his given name, a privilege that came with being the first-born, the same with Marilyn, because she was the first girl in the family. Howard, my youngest brother, was referred to as “the baby.” “Where’s the Baby,” or “The Baby’s crying” or “Who locked the Baby in the closet.”

The Witmer house was large by Brooklyn standards. My father worked for the Federal Government, not the State government or the city government, the Federal Government. Whenever I spoke this truth, the inflection in my voice changed, to emphasize to the listener just how important my Dad was. It was rumored, that in the event of a nuclear holocaust, my Dad could actually become President of the United States. All that would be necessary is for every elected official in the Federal Government and the entire military hierarchy to be wiped out. Then the succession plan named Federal Employees and my dad was a Federal Employee. That’s why we could afford such a big, two-story house. Yes, it may have been located in a no-account town but it was big just the same and we were big fish in a little pond.

We had six bedrooms if you counted the room off the living room that my parents used for their bedroom and the back porch study where we kept a little bed for company. We had two bathrooms and one had a shower, not just a tub. The garage was attached by a “breezeway” a fancy name for an enclosed walkway connecting our back porch and the small two-car garage. The driveway was gravel, crossing a small culvert as it came in from the road. The exterior was a combination of white asbestos siding and brick. Inside the home boasted wood floors and simulated wood grain walls. The simulated wood grain was printed on the sheetrock, almost like contact paper, and to this day, I have never seen anything like it.

It Begins

For years, I have been taunted by my Brothers and Sisters. Why? Because I am the only one who can remember how things REALLY happened when we were little. I come from a family of eleven, Mom and Dad (who have gone on to their reward) and my eight brothers and sisters. Now, through the power of the Internet, I have the opportunity to set the record straight:

• Who really ruined Mom's brand new ironing board cover by leaving the iron on? Teresa, Anna, or the neighbor girls?
• How many times did my brother, Dennis, get paddled in school?
• What ever happened to that big red dog?
• Was the family really the subject of an FBI investigation owing to the fact that Marilyn had "Hippie" friends?
• Did Douglas really dead-short the Tornado Siren on top the Brooklyn water tower in the middle of the night?
• Did Ron really spend all his paper route money playing Pinball at the infamous Brooklyn restaurant and what was in those brown bags the old men, who frequented the place, carried around?
• Was Joe really Dad's favorite?
• Did Howard really get all the attention because he was "The Baby?

Answers; it's time for answers. Follow along with me as we finally put some of these burning questions to rest.