Good God! Why Would Anyone Want To Be A Redhead?

       My good friend, Pat Lown, and I have quite a history together. She ended up running away. The other girl, Susan Erickson, ended up having a pretty serious nervous breakdown. Her parents were really upset by the way she was acting. David Lawrence went and only stayed two years. He came back. Carol VanKleak went and I don’t think she was up there for more than four months. I think she was back before the spring was over. And that was the end—the end of the all-knowing superior group of fourth-graders who were destined and chosen to move on to bigger and better things. I found that all very interesting.

       So, the one thing that I keep failing to bring up here is this West Chestnut gang, which was a gang. There were 11 households of 5–8 children. What really blows me away is being a parent right now as I think back to this time. Usually, at any one time, there were probably 20–25 kids all out playing. We lived at the end of a road overlooking The Hudson River Valley, a beautiful, beautiful view. Maybe 25 kids at one time were all running around playing tag or M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I. There was never an adult, not one. Needless to say, there was always a firecracker blowing off somebody’s foot, and maybe somebody was getting hit with a BB gun here or there, not in any one specific place. There was always one person during the summertime that was always getting raced into Kingston Hospital for some broken something. We lived up on top of this huge hill. It was a skateboarding hill. There was nothing else we could have done but utilized it. And in the wintertime, when the snow came down, before they plowed, we would race to the bottom as fast as lightning.

       At this particular point, I was starting to realize that I have a real tendency coming into being; that I was a real thrill seeker and sought total enjoyment through being really physically endangered.

       So, I grew up with this whole environment where there were tons of children, which basically set a lot of my ideas  against going on to some stupid fifth grade with a bunch of stuck up fifth- or sixth-graders. I was happy where I was. It was great. We had tons of friends. There was a household where there was at least one person my age, and if it wasn’t a girl, it was a boy.

       We had this family who were named the McGarrys. The McGarrys were real Irish Catholics. She was very staunch, very stuck-in-the-mud. They would throw once a year, maybe once a summer, a block party. These people put on a whole new meaning of block party. They had this rock, at the back of their house, up on a hill. It probably went up about 20 feet and probably about 60 feet long. We would jump off in the fall into the leaves. When there was snow, we would take whatever it was that we were riding, maybe sleighs, and then jump off with them into a pile of snow or even into a pile of ice, and whoever could hurt themselves first won. Then there was good old Mr. McGarry. He would go into this singing thing of singing “My Wild Irish Rose” and other songs. He would just sing until dawn. He was about 6’5”. Mac McGarry. I could never forget this man. He was incredible. He would just sing till probably 2 or 3 in the morning. We would all be running around—35, maybe 40 kids—while our parents were singing and drinking and having a grand old time. 

       One of the families that I have been failing to mention is the Fitzgeralds. I was very good friends with this little redhead, another redhead gal from up the street. Her name was Peg Fitzgerald. The Fitzgeralds had seven children, two boys and five girls, of which there were five girls that had red hair. The guys had red hair also—not as characteristically red as Rosey, Judy and Peg. What happened here was that Lois, the mother, was also a Phys Ed teacher. So she and my mom were almost too much alike, and they really didn’t get along too well. I think they were cut too much from the same cloth, so to speak. And Lois—poor old Lois—Lois died at a very early age from alcoholism.