The Food Stamp Diet

I hated when mom made shit on a shingle. She always laughed when she said the name, but I didn't. The name and the combination of the ground beef and the cream of mushroom soup and all piled on a piece of toasted bread repulsed me -- a steaming pile of dinner. Seeing it on a plate in front of me made me want to cry. Shit on the shingle was a mid-month meal -- when there was still a bit of meat in the freezer and bread in the cupboard. And who didn't have a few cans of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup in the cabinet circa Jimmy Carter. Shit on the shingle tasted worse than it looked cold, so it was best to eat up while it was still hot, but I often stalled around so long before taking the first bite that it would have already started to cool, the toast soggy and practically indistinguishable from the rest of the glop. My brother always asked for seconds, and Mom would go back to the black cast iron skillet on the stove where the rest of the sticky white mass waited for its cushion of crispy toast. 

          "Michelle, do you want more shit on a shingle, she'd ask laughing, as if she had cracked some great joke.
          Sitting there on an old splintery picnic bench for a chair at the old, splintery picnic table where we ate, I'd shake my head, looking down at the white mass still on my plate. I tried to pretend it was Thanksgiving mashed potatoes. I loved mashed potatoes and gravy and the whole Thanksgiving meal.
          "There's one more piece of toast here, if you want it."
          "No, thank you," I said, not wanting her to think that I didn't like it.
          At the beginning of the month, just after mom got her check and a new batch of food stamps, we'd usually have tacos. Mexican-American tacos with ground beef served in a crunchy corn tortilla that she'd cook in oil, folding each one in half and cooking them until they were crispy on each side, lifting each out of the pan with tongs, and letting the oil drain off into the pan. To soak up as much of the remaining oil as possible, she'd place each hot, crispy corn tortilla on a paper bag. She was careful to make sure each corn tortilla cooked in a way that made it possible to stuff with ground beef, cheddar cheese, lettuce, and tomato without breaking to pieces. Tacos were our favorite even though there was a lot of cutting, chopping, grating, and cooking involved. They made us so happy that Amonie and I didn't argue or even talk until our plates were clean.
           Instead of going through all the trouble of cooking the corn tortillas just so, Mom could have bought taco shells, as they were called in the store, but when it came to cooking Mexican food, Mom didn't usually cut corners, and taco shells were expensive. Tortillas were a staple food in our house, corn and flour, even though she knew how to make the flour tortillas by hand.

     When we got older, my brother and I ate a lot of quesadillas because they were easy to make. Mom usually bought a block of cheddar cheese and a block of jack cheese with her food stamps at the beginning of the month, but when that was gone we made our quesadillas with government cheese that mom would get along with a huge box of powdered milk at the welfare office. Government cheese came in a box. It was sort of cheddar, sort of American in taste, and quite rubbery. The block of cheese was about as long as my arm and weighed about as much as a brick. Hit somebody in the back of the head with that block of cheese, and they might not wake up. You had to use two hands to get that sucker out of the fridge because dropping it on your toe was murder -- I had done it. When mom did make flour tortillas by hand, you didn't dare desecrate them with government cheese -- they were too good for government cheese. A homemade four tortilla just off the cast iron skillet, smothered with butter and rolled up neatly so it fit in your hand, that was the best way to eat one of mom's flour tortillas.
          For breakfast at the beginning of the month we ate Life or Kicks, the only kind of cereal we were allowed to get with WIC vouchers. Cereal, in general, was a treat for all of us because it wasn't something that Mom could usually afford to buy on her own, and because it was easy to prepare without Mom's help. The Kicks always went first. Life Cereal was good in taste, but it got soggy fast. It looked so pretty, those toasty brown squares with a modest sprinkling of sparkling sugar on top, but add milk and get distracted by a fly buzzing around the kitchen table, and it quickly converted into a crappy looking appetite-suppressing goo. Since mom had trouble waking in the morning, having cereal in the cabinet was handy, otherwise we had toast or bread with butter and sugar on top.
          Near the end of the month, we were sure to have some kind of legumes: pinto beans, lentils, and in the winter split peas. Split pea soup with a ham hock was good the first day and even better the second, but by the third or fourth day, it wasn't so good anymore. By the third or fourth day it would harden quite a bit, and Mom would have to add water to stir it. If there was any left in the house, even the ends, mom would serve the four day old lentil soup with buttered bread to cheer it up. Mom always got her biggest pot out to cook in at the end of the month, and if she wasn't cooking some kind of legumes, she'd cook some kind of hearty potato soup or chile beans that would last, and last, and last.

I was careful not to complain because I knew what it was all about, but I made sure to have an extra large glass of water with dinner to wash it all down.

Me and My Flat Tire

           Most kids in Tuolumne knew that once their favorite Christmas toy ran out of batteries or they broke all their new crayons, it was going to be a long time before they got new ones. The same went for a flat bike tire. One of my first bikes was a boy's moto-cross bike. It was neon green with thick nubby tires and a removable Velcro crash pad. I felt tough when I rode that bike. The sound of the nubby tires grinding along the light gravel where the pavement ends at the bottom of the hill in front of our house encouraged me to pedal as hard as I could before hitting the breaks hard, sending up a cloud of dust small bits of gravel all around me as I skidded and swerved to a dramatic stop.

            Recalling a song I had heard on the radio a few times, I sometimes just rode around or headed for town with the words to the song tumbling around in my head as I soared past every large rock and tree I knew by heart along the road to town, passed the field of bachelor buttons that I sometimes picked for my mom, and up toward Mean Irene’s house, passed one of the places where my old friend Sammie had lived, my long hair lifting off my neck as I jammed down the hill before slowing to take the sharp corner on the street at the back of the baseball field: “I want to ride my bicycle/I want to ride my bike/I want to ride my bicycle/I want to ride it where I like.”

            After many miles on the already worn tires, I found the front tire flat  as I was about to jump on and take off down the driveway. Deflated, I reasoned that I had probably ran over of one of those thick pointy thorns, and the tire had developed a slow leak – a term that I heard adults use for car tires that were filled several times a day in order to get around town or to Sonora and back, rather than replaced. No longer able to tell the difference between spring and summer and determined to get back on the road as soon as possible, I asked Mom’s friend T-Bill if he could take it to his shop and fix it for me. T-Bill rented a garage space downtown Tuolumne where he fixed cars, making money under the table to support his various habits. All the kids loved T-Bill; he liked to make jokes and laugh mightily, and he often spoke in funny voices when talking to us kids to get us to laugh along with him. T-Bill got his name because when he was young, he liked Thunderbirds -- used to steal them and other cars which is how he learned his trade as a mechanic.

            Pulling his long dark hair, back into a pony tail, he said, “Sure, Michelle, I’ll fix your bike tire for you,” in his trademark funny voice that sounded like the voices of the Three Stooges all combined into one. I ran to find a wrench that I thought was the right size and brought the bike to the front of the house. With the keys hanging from his belt jingling, T-Bill stepped out of the house, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He was like a hippy burnout version of Schneider on One Day at a Time, and he knew it. He’d pop in to see my mom whenever one or the other of them had a spare joint to share. I handed him the wrench, and he kneeled down on the front step where the bike listed at a diagonal on its funny little kickstand.

            “You even got me the right size,” T-Bill said, squinting up at me, the sun a shock to his blood shot eyes.

            “I just want to get it fixed before summer is over,” I said, taking the opportunity to hint at what a hurry I was in. Everyone who left their wheels with T-Bill knew that not paying what you’d would to get your car fixed in Sonora, meant a lot of waiting. T-Bill didn’t rush his work. If one of his favorite episodes of Star Trek was on, he wasn’t going to be making his way down to the shop until it was over, and if another one came on after that, he may not have made it down there at all. Then there was the thing about the parts. If your vehicle needed a part that he didn’t likely have in his makeshift garage in town, then he’d have to drive to Sonora to get it, and if his own car wasn’t working, then you’d just have to wait until it was. “Do you need me to get some money for the tube from my mom?” I asked reaching out my hand, offering to hold the washer and nut he had finally worked off the bolt.

            “Nah, your mom already took care of that,” he said, yanking the tire

off the bike.

            He handed me the tire and asked where he should put the bike. I pointed to the shed that was up a small slope about twenty feet from the house where the wood to burn in winter was kept. I watched, holding the nubby tire in my hand, as he carried the bike, his keys jingling along the way.

            “Okay, Cheryl, add - ios,” he shouted toward the house. Mom hollered a loud goodbye in return, as he began walking toward the driveway.

            “T-Bill, don’t forget the tire,” I said.

            Chuckling, he said in his Three Stooges voice, “You thought I forgot about your tire?”

            Not wanting to doubt him, I smiled and handed him the tire, saying, “Thank you, T-Bill. Thanks for fixing my bike.”

            Walking down the driveway toward his beat up old sedan, he said, “Don’t thank me yet!”

            What seemed like weeks and weeks passed before I got my tire back. How hard could it be to fix a bike tube? How long could that take? Maybe I could have done it myself? I mean, I didn’t mind walking, but the days were getting longer and Mom didn’t seem to care if I didn’t get inside the house until 8:30 or so, as long as I wasn’t wearing my school clothes outside and as long as it wasn’t dark. As if I had any business in town near the triad of bars in between which T-Bill’s shop sat, stooping to the side, too old to stand up straight, I found myself cruising by on foot. If the garage door was open, I’d slow my walk, nearly stopping and force my eyes to adjust to the dark quickly. Straining to see, I’d look for T-Bill’s shape – tall, square-shouldered, long dark pony tale. Sometimes his big black steel-toed boots would be poking out from under some car with a dented bumper.

            “Hi, T-Bill,” I’d say when I was sure he was there, hoping he’d remember that my tire was fixed and stored away in some corner, waiting for me to come for it. Sometimes T-Bill wasn’t at the shop at all and the heavy door would be closed, my bike tire abandoned and locked away.

            After several weeks, I took to asking my mom about my tire. “Mom do you think my tire is fixed yet?” or “Do you think T-Bill has fixed my tire?” But her answer was always the same, “I don’t know, Michelle.” I knew better to keep asking. I didn’t want to hear her go off on some long tirade about how T-Bill was supposed to finish fixing some friend’s car and how that car was sitting outside the shop without a carburetor, the old one sitting on the ground rusted and useless, when the car was actually drivable before she left it with him. These tirades were full of different angry versions of the “F” word and somehow felt directed at me. I’d listen politely, feeling a bit like I was being held captive then do anything I could to make her forget that I had asked about the bike.

            “Is the laundry on the clothesline dry? Do you want me to take it down?”

If there was laundry on the clothesline that was dry, she’d say, “Yeah, what are you waiting for?”

            Trying not to sulk, I’d head outside toward the back of the house where the sun baked down on the yard most of the day, and I’d pull stiff jeans and crunchy socks off the line, hitting away the pointy black earwigs that fell from the clothes, a sign that the clothes had been on the line already for a day or more.

            I couldn’t say how long it actually took for T-Bill to fix my bike tire, definitely longer than necessary. He had visited the house several times since he took my tire to his shop, but I didn’t always have the nerve to ask if he happened to finish fixing it, fearing the disappointment of being told that he was still working on it. One day when he came over on his motorcycle, I figured I had a good reason for asking. Like I was always told to do when Mom had company, I went outside and wandered around the yard, kicking at green acorns that had fallen from the trees long enough to where Mom wouldn’t send me back out then I went inside. Mom was sitting in her favorite chair and Bill was sitting nearby on the couch.

            “What do you want?” Mom asked, noticing I was sitting there quietly

waiting for my turn to speak.

            “Um, I was just wondering about my bike,” I said looking at T-Bill with

an encouraging smile.

            “Your bike?” he said. “You wanna know about your bike?” He shifted his feet, causing his keys to jingle lightly.

            “Yeah. Did you get a chance to fix the tire yet?”

            “As a matter of fact, I did, but I haven’t gotten a chance to get over to the gas station to air it up. My air compressor broke down on me.”

            “All it needs air?”

            “Just some air and it’s ready.”

            “Can I do it? I can put the air in, can’t I? I mean, it’s not too hard is it?”

            T-Bill laughed, “Nah, it’s not hard. All you gotta do is take the tire to the gas station and use the air there. Just make sure you don’t overfill it, or it will pop.”

            “Can I come down later and pick the tire up,” I asked, looking to T-Bill then to my mom for permission.

            “Sure, I’ll be back down there after I have some lunch up at the house.”   

            Lunch and couple of episodes of Star Trek, I knew better than to rush to town.  

            I strained my ears for an hour or so, listening for the sound of Bill’s motorcyle going by on the road above our house, down the big hill, and toward town. When I thought I heard it go by, I figured it would be safe to head out – slowly. I didn’t even cut through the yard and pass by the Indian grinding rocks just off our property; instead I walked all the way down the driveway, kicking rocks as if I had nowhere important to be. Turning right and heading up the small hill, in front of mom’s house, just above where the pavement ends, I caught myself walking too fast, and forced myself to slow down. I thought about when my brother and I still had a big wheel, we’d take turns going as fast as we could down the hill in front of our to see could skid the longest after getting going real fast and yanking the metal break just before the pavement ended. That hill was where tried out every new bike or remote control toy my brother got for Christmas.  Cars didn’t come down the road too often, so it was a pretty safe place to play.

I stopped at the corner of Bodenhammer and looked into the small creek where all the rainwater drained during winter; it was dry and cracked – a Mohawk of blond weeds grew up through the middle. “I want to ride my …,” I forced the words of the bicycle song out of my head because I knew it would get me walking faster, and I was determined not to have to wait around for T-Bill anymore. I slowed my pace again as I neared the larger opening of another creek and looked for the little gleaming red racer snakes that my brother and I often found there, or racing across the street, or sometimes smashed by a car. They were the size of a plastic snake found in a child’s party favor bag, and they were a shiny silver and red with stripes like a sports car. Cool to the touch and friendly, when we’d find them they’d become our pets until Mom would make us put them back near the creek where we found them before they died from being held too much. Because it had already happened, we knew she was right. Relieved that there were no snakes to be found, I kept walking toward town, realizing that I needed to keep my hands free for riding my bike. Where was I going to put a little snake?

         I decided to turn onto Main Street early, instead of following Oak Street, which runs parallel and down the big hill past Mean Irene’s house. Main Street was always a bit busier and there wasn’t a sidewalk or much shoulder to walk on for a stretch, but it was better than passing by Irene’s on foot. Who knew what kind of mood she’d be in or whether she liked me on that particular day.  It was easy to walk slowly along this stretch on the shoulder, which isn’t really a shoulder at all, and was filled with thistle that scratched and poked your ankles if you went by too fast or carelessly. One block down, only one block from town where the thistles had been cut back. Just then, I noticed that I was now walking at a much faster pace. I allowed myself to run across the street to where the sidewalk began in front of the baseball field then I went back to walking as if I were bored and had no particular place to be. I started to worry about what T-Bill had said about blowing up the tire myself. It could pop if I wasn’t careful. It could pop. I couldn’t stand for that to happen. I just had to be careful; not being careful would mean I’d have to spend all this time waiting on adults all over again.

         I thought about an expression that I had heard my mom use many times: “If you want something done right. Do it yourself.” The expression, I knew, didn’t quite fit my situation. All this waiting wasn’t about getting something done right; it was about getting something done at all. If I wanted something done, I was going to have to do it myself. The adults they never took me seriously. What was important to me seemed trivial to them. Without realizing it, I was coming to understand some important things about adults. There were two types: the type who made a bunch of promises and didn’t keep them and the type who kept their promises but took their time making good on them because what kids wanted wasn't as important.

  

       Nearing T-Bill’s shop, I picked up the pace. The heavy door was open, and I could hear T-Bill talking to someone. Seeing me as I walked up to the door he stopped his conversation with some dude with long hair wearing a baseball cap.

         “Here for your tire? Let me get it,” he said to me grabbing the tire from a nearby table and handing it to me. “Be careful filling it up.”

         “I know -- it could pop. I’ll be careful,” I said, ready to get going again.

         “Are you sure you don’t want me to come over there with you? I’d just need to finish up here,” he said pointing a wrench toward the guy in the baseball hat.

         “I’m sure. Thanks T-Bill,” I said.

         “Who’s going to help you put the tire back on?” he asked, as I was about to get on my way.

         “I can do it,” I said, trying to picture myself doing it with the same wrench I had found for him when he took the tire off at least a few weeks back.

         “Okay,” T-Bill chuckled, “Just be sure to get it on there tight.”

         “I will. Thanks. Bye.”

I practically sprinted up the big hill, the biggest in town, on my way to the gas station. My mind was racing and I was out of breath when I got there, but I slowed down enough to get the air in the tire in quick jerky blasts from the compressor hose. When the tire seemed firm enough, but not too tight, I headed for home, only about fifteen minute walk for someone with short legs, walking with purpose.

         I began to jog once I got to the last little hill that went down in front of our driveway. I jogged down the hill, careful not to whack my leg with the now heavy tire, then made a left and jogged up the driveway. I could see my bike leaning sadly against the house. I had moved it out of the shed a couple of weeks previous in anticipation of having the tire fixed much sooner. As I got closer, I saw that it was covered in dust and fine yellow pollen that came from the oak trees that towered around the yard. Realizing that I would need the wrench again, I went inside and pulled it out of the drawer where I had stored it, and grabbed an old dirty rag from another kitchen drawer.

         “Hi Mom, I’m home,” I shouted toward the empty front room on my way back outside. She must be in the bathroom, or sleeping, I thought to myself.

         It must have been about 4:00 or so by this time, but I wasn’t thinking about time. I just wanted back on that bike. The sun would be up for a few more hours and that’s all that mattered. No curfew until the verge of sundown and a bad ass looking bike equaled freedom.

         Back at the bike, I quickly went to work unloosening the nut that T-Bill had screwed back on the tire bolt for safekeeping. Sitting down on the ground, with the tire between my knees, I reminded myself to work more slowly because I didn’t want to mess up. If I worked too fast, I knew I risked stripping the bolt, which would keep the nut from staying in place. More slowly now, I turned the wrench, working the nut toward the end of the bolt until it fell off into my hand. I took one finger and wound it around the bolt feeling the raised grooves for myself. They had not been flattened or damaged in any way. Standing up, I set the tire down and turned the bike upside down, as I had seen others do. It stood in place anchored to the ground by the seat and the handlebars. Now getting the tire back on would be easy. I slid the bolt into the U shaped groove and took the nut that I had been holding tightly to in my hand all this time, and I began to screw it back on the bolt. I began working the nut inward with my fingers then picked up the wench to get some leverage on it. And when I thought I gotten that nut on tight enough, I wiped the bike down with an old cloth from the kitchen, nearly restoring it to its original splendor. I did it, I thought.  Then I hopped on, keeping my legs up as the front tire wobbled to balance then I peddled off down the driveway. I took a left at the bottom of the driveway, and avoiding the pothole where the pavement ends, I tested the tire on the bumpy gravel. I went down a ways past the first clumpy row of blackberry bushes, made a U-turn then skidded to a stop. Getting back on and turning my legs as hard and as fast as they could go, I sped to the top of the hill just to the first little creek then made a U-turn there -- now for my final test run before riding to town. 

         I stalled, a bit nervous. What are you worried about? You finally have your bike back; now get on it and ride. Shaking off the nerves, I put both legs back up on the pedals and began to pedal with all my nine year old might. I was flying – past the tree near the Indian grinding stone, past the weeds, past the driveway in front of our house, the oak tree, and wham, hit the pothole where the cement ends at about ten miles per hour. In a split second the tire separated from the bike and I went flying too, right over the handlebars and onto my face. Stunned that I had seen myself flying through the air, a sort of out of body experience, and that my face was now covered in gravel and blood and that my lip had instantly begun to swell, I stayed for a few seconds on my hands and knees half hoping that someone would come to my rescue and half hoping that no one had seen the embarrassing results of my new found do-it-yourself spirit.

         Shamed and in pain and crying, I somehow managed to drag the bike to the side of the rode where it wouldn’t get run over and made my way up the driveway to the house. Hearing my cries, my mom came running quickly to the front door.

         “Michelle, what happened?” She looked rather surprised to see me bleeding and with a freakishly fat lip.

         Though sobbing and hiccupping, I managed to tell her about my mishap.  I wanted to be saying any other words than the ones I had to say in that moment, to have to admit that I had screwed up. And by this time my brother had come around and was leaping about, pointing and laughing at my misshapen mouth. Trying not to crack a smile herself, my mom took me inside where she carefully washed the dirt from my wounds, not saying a word about how I should have let an adult help me get that tire on good and tight.

Middle Child

          My brother Amonie was the middle child, but he was actually the baby for many years before my sister was born. Amonie was the kind of little boy who lived the five senses. He smelled everything he got his hands on, ate snails, listened wide-eyed instead of talked, and bit Mom's friend Janet on the boob when he was four. He was shy but mischievous with big eyes and thick dark hair – women loved him.

         Janet was visiting us in Tuolumne after we moved from Sonora. She had been one of our roommates in Palo Alto, and she hadn't seen Amonie in at least a year. He was sitting on her lap on our saggy green couch.

         “Amonie, you're so cute,” Janet crooned.

         Amonie was straddling her lap, making big eyes when he lowered his head in a moment of embarrassment, and Janet let out a surprised yelp.

         “He bit me; he bit my boob,” Janet said, suddenly holding him away from her.

         At times I felt like Amonie's big sister, and other times he was my playmate. We were only twenty-two months apart; I wasn’t even two when Amonie was born. Both with long dark hair, most people thought we were twins. I was short for my age, and he having a tall white father, was not short which meant we were nearly the same size for several years.  We both looked like our mom in different ways, but Amonie could pass for white when I could not, maybe because my skin was darker, my long dark hair was usually in braids, or because my eyes were more almond shaped. His last name was also Thorne and mine was Gonzales. I hated it when people said that we were half brother and sister. I was his sister. I'd run to his aid when I happened to see him crying on the school playground, and I attempted to protect him from our mother's tirades during which she'd yield wooden spoons or sections of his plastic race track, her wild curly hair a mess on her head, cuss words spewing from her mouth. She did not spare the rod.

         We were never sure what would set Mom off, and I was relieved one Christmas season when she found his antics cute rather than infuriating. Still around four years old and still a baby, Amonie was very excited for Christmas and a white Christmas in Tuolumne was a real possibility. The skimpy, leaning, Charlie Brown Christmas tree that Mom found and cut down somewhere not too far from the house didn't dampen his spirits, and no one had threatened to put coal in his stocking. On December twenty-third, also excited about Christmas, I told Amonie that the next day was Christmas eve. There had already been a couple of gifts under the tree, and Mom had wrapped two more the night before, surprising us with them, getting us more and more excited as Christmas day drew near.

         “Amonie, tomorrow is Christmas eve,” I told him as he stumbled out of bed on the morning of the twenty-third. Mom was getting the fire in the wood stove going, putting a large piece of cedar on the kindling that had gotten burning good and strong. The lights on the little tree in the corner were lit. Mom had plugged them back in when she got out of bed, different colors twinkling from the branches: blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. Only one more day until Christmas.

         The next morning, Christmas Eve morning, mom and I got up again at the same time, both probably woken by the same noises. There in the living room Amonie was sitting on the floor in front of the tree with every single gift unwrapped and sitting around him. There were wads of wrapping paper and bows strewn about.

         “Amonie, it's not Christmas, not today,” I said, horrified that he couldn't wait, that someone would do such a thing.

         “You told him yesterday that today was Christmas eve,” Mom said, laughing and snatching some of the gifts from the floor quickly, hiding them under her faded red robe.

         Mom re-wrapped the gifts with what paper she had left. Some of the gifts had gaps where we could peek in and see what we might be getting, if we hadn’t seen already. Within a year or so, Amonie could read and learned the difference between Christmas and Christmas Eve, so we didn't have to worry about him opening all the gifts a day early, even gifts that were not his. Though he did eat all the chocolate kisses used to decorate a friend's tree, crumpling the silver, green, and red wrappers, to reshape them into a kiss shape as best he could before hanging them back where he had found them.

My Plymouth Rock

Four year old MCG on the steps of the Plymouth Rock House

Before moving to Tuolumne County, first Sonora, the county seat, then to Tuolumne, it's namesake, my mom had never been on her own. She had gone from her own dad to my dad who she married because that’s what you did after being kicked out of high school for getting pregnant in 1969. She left my dad and LA in 1970, only eight months after my birth, having had enough of him knocking her down stairs, blackening her eyes, and threatening to take her life.

     She met Amonie’s dad, Bob Thorne, a janitor, at the INS office where she worked making green cards on an IBM punch machine downtown Los Angeles. Mom had grown increasingly afraid for our safety after my dad kidnapped me from my grandfather's house where we had moved, leaving me bruised and scratched because he fell and dropped me. He had snatched me up and ran out of the house, me just a bundle in his arms, my mom running and screaming behind him. Bob swooped in to save us, a white knight, leaving his job in Southern California to move my mom far away from my father.

            Mom and Bob wound up in San Mateo where Bob’s grandmother, the woman who raised him, had lived for many years in a tidy apartment near a small shopping center that had a Dutch Boy paint store – the sign an overwhelmingly large depiction of a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy with a page boy haircut, wearing a painter’s cap and blue overalls, holding a tilted bucket of paint.

            Bob Thorne was tall and handsome, the kind of man who smiled easily in spite of having lost both his parents, traveling musicians, at a very young age. He wore his straight brown hair long but just to his chin, heavy boots, and these black leather wrist cuffs fastened with a heavy silver snaps. He played guitar too, and let me strum the strings of his guitar as he formed the chords and sang my favorite song, “Puff the Magic Dragon.”  It felt like I was almost playing the song myself.  But Mom and Bob split up only a couple of years of living together, and having my brother, and well after I had started calling Bob “Daddy.” I had loved our rides to the corner store in Redwood City, where mom and Bob rented a little house, me on the back of his ram’s-horn-handle-barred ten-speed bike -- on a toddler seat that he had fastened just for me. He'd buy me my own pack of M&M's and a pack of Zig Zag rolling papers for himself each time.

            After the split, Bob got his own apartment, and we lived with mom in a house with several roommates in Menlo Park. One night while spending the night at Bob's, my brother, Amonie, woke up disoriented in the middle of the night and went outside looking for Mom. He was found walking down the street near the 7-11 confused and lost. There were police, and crying, and a call to CPS.

            Poor Bob, I knew it wasn't his fault. But losing track of my brother, or sleeping too heavily to hear him slip out the door in the middle of the night, hastened my mother's decision to move to the country, and Bob had friends living in Sonora – Wendy Ray and some others. So about as quickly as he came into our lives, Bob was gone, not one to settle down for long, perhaps condemned to a life of wandering childless as his parents had done before their early death. He faded slowly from our lives, at first visiting us in Sonora after getting us settled, but the visits grew further and further apart until mom was left really on her own and with two kids to support.

            Before finally settling for good in Tuolumne in 1975, after leaving Bob in the Bay Area, my mom, brother, and I stayed for a year in the nearby town of Sonora. We stayed with Bob's friend Wendy Ray, another single mom and her three kids Tammy, Scotty, and Missy who were quite a bit older than we were. Wendy Ray (everyone always called her by her first and last name; rarely did anyone just call her Wendy) and the kids had been kind to take us in but the gettin’ was good right around the time Amonie had developed a habit of scribbling Z for Zorro on any available wall or flat surface with any type of writing device left accidentally within his three-year old reach: pens, pencils, the stub of an old crayon. He and Scotty had watched Zorro on the family’s black and white TV, sitting side-by side in front of the small screen – all the rest of us could see was the back of Scotty's blond head and a bit of the TV that wasn't covered by my brother's head of dark hair and his swashbuckling arms slicing through a ray of dust-mote-filled light coming through the window.

         Instead of watching TV, Missy, Wendy Ray's youngest who was prone to fits of whiny tantrums played everyone's favorite song on the record player. Music calmed her, helped her forget all the things that she didn't think were fair. She'd pull the record carefully from its brightly colored jacket (Maria Muldaur floating on a magic carpet in the clouds and a radiant yellow sunset) put the record on the turntable, and carefully lowered the needle down on the second groove of the first side -- “ Midnight at the Oasis,”  and she'd sing along in a way I'd never heard someone her age sing – head up,  straight, blond hair floating away behind her. While picking up the house or making dinner, Mom and Wendy Ray would join in, singing their single-mom sadness away, “Midnight at the oasis/send your camel to bed/shadows paintin’ our faces/ traces of romance in our heads.”

         But we never spent much time hanging around in the house before the moms chased us outdoors to play. Children and flies belonged outside. If the sun was shining, Wendy and mom would chase us out, call us in for lunch, and chase us back out again.

          “It's not faaiirr, Tammy gets to stay inside,” Missy would whine because her sister who was already a teen was allowed to hang around with grownups.

         But Tammy, in her thick-framed glasses, wearing her nylon fur collared coat if it was the least bit chilly, liked coming outside too. And neither Tammy, Scotty, nor Missy seemed to mind too much about having my brother and me tag along with them around the lot where their house sat just off of Tuolumne Road amongst a small crop of ragged-looking mobile homes. The only other house on the property was inhabited by a very old man who we didn’t see too often who spooked us from time to time when he’d all of a sudden appear slightly stooped and grumpy looking. We'd dart around on the cracked court that bordered his property a place we often played or met the neighborhood kids -- known tattle-tales, who lived in one of the rickety trailers on the lot, the one with the busted up stairs.

         When we tired of running around on the court, searching for rolly-polly bugs between the weeds that grew through the cracks, or throwing dirt clod bombs at one another, we'd climb the two glacial boulders, or we'd pretend to drive the old rusted out car on blocks, sitting inside it on what was left of the seat, springs poking through, turning the steering wheel round and round. My brother drove recklessly, a funny sight – a little boy with long brown hair in the front seat of a rusted car with no driver side door, unable to see out the windshield, but Tammy always helped him get out of the car so he wouldn't get hurt. Before I graduated high school and left Tuolumne, the houses on the property in Sonora, my family’s Plymouth Rock, was leveled, the boulders and car chassis disappeared; the land was cleared of any evidence of nature, wild children, or Zorro graffiti and replaced with a car dealership.           

         Tammy, Scotty, who bore a striking resemblance to the Dutch Boy in San Mateo, and Missy were good company in spite of missing Bob and his music. Together we made a new kind of music, but after about a year of looking for our own place in Tuolumne, mom found a rent-to-own property for the three of us, just Mom, Amonie, and me.              

         Only seven or so miles away from Sonora, Tuolumne had a distinctly different feel from Sonora. Our new place, a half-acre of property with several tall, acorn-dropping oak trees, seemed to satisfy her pastoral fantasy – the one that she had been nursing along with several house plants since she left East LA, from the time we arrived to Redwood City where we lived with Bob, to the house we lived without him in Menlo Park, to Sonora, and finally to Tuolumne where the schools were still safe, and the land was cheap, filled with trees and promise. If only the dirt road that began at the end of our property didn’t lead down to the sewer treatment plant that we discovered gave off a mighty powerful smell during the summer and attracted plenty of mosquitoes. The house on the property was a problem too. Barely inhabitable, it was filled with garbage, only promising a roof over our heads and plenty of ragged wall space for my brother to cheer up with Zorro’s mark.

         I watched as some old guy name Hoyt, a neighbor who had seen Mom working in the yard all by herself and offered to help, pull bags and bags of trash from the house, faded yellow Coors cans, a broken toilet, and scrap wood from the house. Most of the garbage dragged from the house was taken to the dump, but what Mom couldn’t move herself or afford to take to the dump was thrown in the yard with the rest of the discarded things that lay about – little mountains of kitchen linoleum, pieces of cement, an old tire, nine volt batteries, nails, bolts, a rotted piece of two-by-four, the springs and stuffing from an old chair, and an occasional salvageable toy – an old metal car missing wheels, and a little plastic horse with a melted hoof.

         The scrap wood was burnt in the tin lizzy wood stove that mom scraped up the money to buy after the long cold nights had already settled into deep places where layers couldn’t reach. During the day, I went outside in search of a sunny spot to warm back up after having to snuggle with my bother, who still wet the bed, to keep warm. From outside, the house looked more like a shit shack, something built by a man with a terrible hangover, with its tin roof sloped at odd angles and that leaked rain into dented pots and pans that mom placed strategically around the kitchen floor during thunderstorms, the ping, ping, pinging of water drip, drip dripping and the hiss from the fire in the tin lizzy, keeping us awake and lulling us to sleep. My brother’s habit of writing on the walls subsided, but his bed-wetting got worse.

         Living on our own was noticeably different – quiet and solitary, even though there were three of us. We missed Wendy, Tammy, Scotty, and Missy. Without them we were faced with the realness of our situation. We had nothing. No car, no black and white TV, no wood for the winter, not even enough light bulbs for each room, and no more Maria Muldaur, no more “Midnight at the Oasis/Take your camel to bed,” though mom could be heard humming the tune during the day as she did what she could to make the place feel like home. During dinner, while my brother and I ate, she'd take her plate and sit alone in the front room. Sometime later, she got a small radio and she listened to it quietly during dinner away from us. I couldn’t help sneaking peeks at her from my place at the table, the seat a splintery picnic bench.     

         She looked sad.

My brother and I tried to be good and did what we could to cheer her up, and by extension ourselves – offering to rub her feet or color her toenails with old stubs of crayon, each toe a different waxy color. We knew she’d be okay when she’d get up off the worn saggy couch and put a large oak log into the wood stove, the kind that lasts most way through the night, and then lie back down and pull us toward her. She’d roll onto her side, so one of us could crawl in behind her and the other would lay in front, spooned by her body. Wedged in between the two of us, with her arm around whoever lay closest to the edge, we did not move or fidget; we did not stir, and the coals on the fire, the flame and heat of the single oak log, caused the sides of the tin lizzy to glow red.