Invisible Girl on Ames Street (eBook)

A CHILD'S SEARCH FOR GOD, WALT DISNEY, COMMUNISTS, AND FOOD

Vivian Lee (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
272 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-4172-2 (ISBN)

Infos

This enchanting trip down memory lane captures the imaginative and hope-filled desires of the author as a little girl, fueled by the TV shows and movies she watched in the early 1960's. The memoir is wry and humorous and contains numerous scenes that both capture well the color and character of the times, painting pictures of kindness, cruelty, heartbreak and hypocrisy, by showing not telling the reader. She lets the stories speak for themselves, making them all the more powerful. Her memoir of a little girl filled with imagination and hope not only conveys the time and place vividly but also the perspective and character of the little girl she was. These are timeless lessons to be read and discussed for ages. Really, a very fine piece of writing.

---

Synopsis for Vivian Lee's: The Invisible Girl On Ames StreetThis engaging memoir is about Vivian, an impoverished young girl who lived in a small apartment on Ames Street in Saginaw, Michigan in the early 1960's. As the readers follow her many adventures, daily challenges, spiritual hopes, and fantastic dreams, they soon realize that Vivian's story is even more relevant now than it was in that era. From the first chapter when readers begin to learn of the clever ways in which Vivian's vivid imagination shields her from the harsh realities of her life, to the final chapter where they experience the sorrow of the innocent nine-year olds' shattered childhood and eviction from her home, Vivian invites them to see the world of poverty through the filters of a hope-filled green eyed youngster. Written in her unique style, Vivian's message will be received differently by a variety of audiences. Some young readers will enjoy her as a character in an almost fictional way. As she roams the streets, railroad tracks, and buildings of Saginaw, youngsters will experience the day-to-day life of a "e;free-range child"e;. They will read in Chapter 12 Summertime Swimming: "e;There were skills we acquired as "e;children of the streets."e; We learned where the public bathrooms, water fountains and places to get out of the elements were located. We discovered all of the shortcuts and alleys and knew which businesses had front doors and back doors that allowed us to cut through city blocks. Traveling this joint adventure with Vivian may help school-age children see their peers through kinder more tolerant eyes. Those seeking a career in social work, teaching, and community service will benefit with a new insight to hidden trauma and hopefully develop skills to recognize the subtle ways that children are affected by poverty. Through the discussion questions at the end of the book, these mature readers will be encouraged to develop ideas to help the vulnerable children overcome life's obstacles. The reader learns in Chapter 24, Cold And Hungry, that for children living a life of trauma, sometimes the simple act of survival is their biggest accomplishment: "e;With red legs, arms, hands and a face framed with wet hair from melted snow, I entered my classroom ill prepared to face a day of learning. The rest of the class chatted and laughed with each other; oblivious to the frozen expedition I had once again endured. Although I was about to face another day of failed classroom lessons, I had survived another trek to school. Survival was my sole victory. Adult readers of all ages will be enchanted as they relive their own memories of the early 1960's. From the non-stop references of tunes on her AM radio, schoolyard games, children's toys, newscasts, television show, and movies, Vivian takes the hand of the readers on her never-ending search for Walt Disney, God, Communists, and food. From Chapter 16 Influences Wonderful World Of Television: Through the curved glass I went to Mayberry to visit my "e;brother"e; Opie. I was entranced by my "e;real mom"e; June Cleaver and bonded with my "e;other brother"e; Beaver, in Mayfield. I learned about life in the west through the shows Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and Wagon Train. Donna Reed and Harriet Nelson taught me about family life. Hazel taught me that a maid is the smartest person in a house. Perry Mason showed me that innocent people are often accused of horrible crimes but the guilty people always confess in the end. Each week I experienced the magic of Disneyland through Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. Captain Kangaroo read to me in the mornings and Mitch Miller used his bouncing ball to sing with me in the evenings. I learned that the world is a dangerous place through the alarming images on The Hunkley-Brinkley Report. This is book more than a memoir, it is a call to action. It is an invitation for everyone to realize that they can make a difference in the life of another human being. It is a timeless story whose

Textauszug

Chapter 8

Games Behind Closed Doors

Influences

After the streetlights came on and all the neighborhood children were safely in their homes, nightfall forced me indoors. With the shades pulled down and the doors shut and locked, the walls of my small apartment closed in around me. My mind, always racing, sought out my next adventure. Some nights, the source of the adventure was as near as our red, 17-inch RCA black-and-white television with the rabbit ear antennas. Like a dry sponge tossed into a tub of water, my mind totally absorbed whatever show I was watching. Our wooden sofa with blue cushions became a buckboard when “Wagon Train” was on. Life lessons taught to Opie Taylor by his dad, Sheriff Andy Taylor, on “The Andy Griffith Show,” were lessons directed at me. The living room of the Cleaver home on Mapleton Drive in “Leave it To Beaver” replaced my living room on Ames Street. I became so immersed in the fictitious sets that I could not distinguish the facts and images of my life from the scenes that I had witnessed on the television. My evening adventures were as joyful as a merry laugh track-filled sitcom and as weighty and frightening as the news that I saw on “The Huntley-Brinkley Report.”

Other evenings, my adventures began in our shared bedroom where my sister, Darlene, brother, Steve, and I built forts and elaborate structures out of blankets, books, and chairs. With our limitless imaginations we became castaways, pioneers, or soldiers. We played a game that we called “dentist chair.” One of us, usually me, would sit on the edge of a bed, arms bent up at the elbows, knees bent, with feet planted squarely on the floor. Another sibling, usually Steve, would become the patient who had to sit on the human dentist chair. Darlene, the most knowledgeable, would play the role of the dentist. She operated the dentist chair with the patient onboard. By pressing an imaginary button on my shoulder, the “chair” leaned back. By pressing another imaginary button, one arm of the chair went up along with the arm of the patient who was resting their arm on the “chair.” Press another button and the chair’s footrest and patient’s legs extended up in preparation for a tooth extraction or cavity filling. Darlene was an excellent dentist. I was a good chair. And little Steve was an amiable, gap-mouthed patient.

The whole idea that we would even play a game called “dentist chair” was profound. One would think that the subject would be too painful to recreate. Darlene and I went to a dentist once. It was one summer morning. Mom informed us that we had to get our teeth looked at before the new school year began. Obediently, Darlene and I put on freshly pressed dresses and walked hand-in-hand nearly three-quarters of a mile to a Saginaw County Services building near Butman-Fish Library. The dank building smelled musty with an unpleasant chemical odor. Sitting in the waiting area on well-worn cracked leather chairs, we leafed through magazines that were stacked on a nearby coffee table. Darlene and I anxiously waited for our chance to see a real dentist. We had seen an episode of “The Little Rascals” in which the boys went to a dentist who gave them baseball equipment at the end of the program. We hoped that we would have a nice dentist, too. Little did we know what horrors awaited us.

This dentist was not kind like the man on “The Little Rascals.” He was a cruel, sadistic man who inflicted pain on his poverty-stricken patients. I don’t know if it was the policy of the Saginaw County Services, or his personal preference. But he withheld pain-reducing medications from Darlene and me. He used no novocaine or other pain-preventative measures as he filled our cavities.

The horrifying sound of the drill. The foul smell of hot tooth enamel. The organic taste of blood combined with the unimaginable pain nearly made me pass out. As the quiet tears of agony streamed down our cheeks, the cruel man seemed to take pride in the pain he was subjecting us to. Perhaps he was teaching us lessons about the evils of dependence on charity. His methods worked. We learned that we were not worthy of pain-numbing medications unless we could afford to pay for them. We learned that we should be punished for our poverty. We learned that we deserved the brutal torture and should silently accept it.

When the horror was over, Darlene and I walked home. Our heads were spinning, and our legs were wobbly from the pain we had just endured. The dresses we had put on so gaily that morning were wrinkled from our sweaty hands gripping the fabric to reduce our pain. We vowed to never tell anyone about what we had just gone through. After all, we believed the dentist was correct; we deserved the cruelty. We were just those pesky Cinkus kids.

Not all our playtime required our imaginations and memories. We also played a few board games. My favorite was Candy Land. After mixing up the cards face side down and stacking them in a neat pile, each of us selected our favorite gingerbread man token. I liked the yellow one, Darlene the red, and Steve the blue. We would skillfully race our characters across the colorful game board. Passing Peppermint Stick Forest, Gumdrop Mountains, and Lollypop Woods, we joyfully moved our characters until we reached the dreaded Molasses Swamp. It seemed no matter who was ahead in the game, once stuck there in the swamp, the lead could shrink as the other players rapidly advanced. The board leader nervously awaited a chance to draw a blue card. The elusive blue card was the only way to free the unlucky gingerbread token from the swamp.

Another twist in the game was the special cards. The game moved quickly if a player was lucky enough to get one of the special cards in the beginning of the game. Those cards had the power to advance the lucky player’s gingerbread man to the Ice Cream Floats space or the Peanut Brittle House space closer to the finish line. It was heartbreaking to get the special cards near the end of the game, when victory was in sight, just to be sent back on the board, erasing all the forward progress. The entirety of the game’s playing time consumed an evening and often filled us with a mixture of laughter and anxiety.

It wasn’t just the playing of the game that intrigued me. It was also the images of the confections on the game board. From the picture of the happy boy and girl at the starting point of the path all the way to the frosting-and candy-covered house at the end, I related to the candy images and became emotionally absorbed in the board. The blond girl was me. She wasn’t just a picture. It wasn’t just her adventure. It was mine. I could almost taste the peppermint sticks as I remembered the treat from Christmases past. The Lollypop Woods reminded me of the suckers Grandmother bought for me at the meat market.

The image of the chunk of Neapolitan ice cream floating in the Ice Cream Floats made me cringe. I despised the tri-flavored ice cream, and I despised ice cream floats. I was reminded that Mom, Darlene, and Steve made horrid concoctions called floats. They put scoops of vanilla ice cream in a glass and poured orange or root beer pop over it and devoured the mixture with a special plastic spoon that was also a straw. It was beyond anything I was willing to taste. Mom knew that I didn’t like my foods mixed. I liked orange pop, but not root beer. I liked vanilla ice cream.

But why, I thought, after all these years does she continue to ignore my whishes? All I asked of her was that I not have my foods mixed with other foods. I would beg her for a small glass of orange pop and a single scoop of vanilla ice cream in a separate bowl. Was that too much to ask? Apparently so. She would tell me that I could pick only one of the three, orange pop, a scoop of ice cream, or the float. I usually picked the rarest treat: a small glass of orange pop. It sickened me to watch the others consume their polluted mixtures. My victory in the battle of the orange soda was to drink my sweet bubbly pop in a different room.

Another stop on the Candy Land game board was the Crooked Old Peanut Brittle House. Again, I was reminded of my food challenges. Mom loved peanut brittle, a sheet of tan-colored hard candy that coated white skinless peanuts. I liked peanuts and I liked candy. But, not mixed! Mom would make peanut brittle on top of our stove in a double boiler knowing full well that I wouldn’t eat it. Why oh why couldn’t she just save some peanuts for me? Why couldn’t she simply make a piece of the hard candy portion without any peanuts? Those were the things I thought about as I played the game. I was conflicted with the images of the candy, the desire to win the game, and anxiety that I would lose the game. I enjoyed moving my gingerbread token forward but feared drawing an adverse card. I didn’t just play the game. I lived the game.

There were other rooms in our small apartment in which to find adventure. The bathroom with its attached linen closet became a harem hut where Darlene and I draped ourselves in towels and bed sheets, transforming ourselves into desirable princesses like in the movies “The Black Rose,” “The Ten Commandments,” or “Ben-Hur.” Those were among the many movies that we saw at the Court Street Theater. They were in color! They were magnificent.

The laundry/utility room was where Steve was allowed to play with his Tonka fire truck that shot water from a small rubber hose. Sitting on the hard floor near Mom’s wringer washing machine, we extinguished imaginary fires all...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 9.2.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-4172-2 / 9798350941722