The Adventures of a Latchkey Kid

by Robert Hodum

  And that’s when I heard a creaking sound, incredibly distinct, seeming to move with the wind. It sounded like the rocker on the porch of the “Widow of the Woods.”

  “Did you hear that, Fran?”

  “No, Bobby, I didn’t hear a thing, not at all.”

  I scanned the trees at the corner; saw no movement, no hands, and no fingernails. I started to pull my sister to move faster, and then I looked up at the moon.

  At first it appeared to hover just out of the ring of moonlight, but slowly, very clearly a black shape tracked across the face of the moon, and disappeared out of the light and into the darkness of the night sky. I was afraid to look back.

  I started running down the street, hoping that I’d make it to my stoop and front door before those fingernails could reach me.

  Fran, in pursuit, called out, “Bobby, slow down. It’s all right. Stop running.”

  I was at my door and in the house, calling for my parents long before Fran made it to our front yard.

  When she came in, I was seated at the kitchen table telling Mom and Dad about the creaking rocker, the fingernails, and the flying shape across the moon. They assured me that it was only trees scraping up against one another and only the night winds blowing clouds past the shining moon. I was unconvinced.

  I wanted to tell Fran and my parents about how that old witchy lady of the woods would stare at us from her porch and once, even pointed her finger in my direction, how she seemed to know us, seemed to know me! But I knew those encounters had to remain unmentioned.

  My parents announced the following Halloweens that if I wanted to, I could go out on my own. All of us kids hoped to hear these words after our ninth birthday, and here it was, solo runs were finally sanctioned, baring school reports of bad behavior. The countdown scraped along the first weeks of October, by the third, our many revisions of costumes, schemes of trickery, and jostling for leadership of the night’s outing feverishly occupied our time. At last the day had arrived.

  That morning Miss Rice, our music teacher, wisely chose Halloween songs for us to bellow. After she rolled her piano out of our room, our teacher recognized that the inmates had taken over. She pulled out the orange, yellow and black construction paper, scissors and glue, and sent us merrily on our way. Ordered to produce seasonal icons, we plastered the place with the most horrific scenes possible.

  Finally the night had arrived. My parents reviewed all the rules, warnings and consequences, as I fidgeted with my costume. My sister looked at me and smiled. She walked me to the door. Fran seemed disappointed that she wouldn’t be taking me out anymore.

  I stood at the front door, costumed with pillowcase in hand. I reminded her of that night and asked whether she really had seen anything. She gave me a look of certainty and surprise that I had even doubted the events of that night, and said, “Bobby, remember, keep your eyes on the moon and don’t forget that anything is possible on Halloween.”

  “And by the way,” she bent down and whispered, “I hope you kids left that widow alone this summer.”

  As I stepped out onto the stoop, she half smiled, winked and closed the front door.

  Rough Knocks

  “See you at the Hill” was the afternoon mantra that we’d shout after exiting our elementary school. We were learning the joys of being part of the gang and enjoyed that sense of belonging to a tribe. But there was always a price to pay for that solidarity. The oldest would initiate the younger ones with some type of minor brutality for which they would ask forgiveness at the close of the day. They’d push past the initiated that was holding back tears and murmur to him as they headed home, “Sorry about that. Don’t tell your mom.”

  Moms were the enforcers on our block. Most dads got home late and spent their weeks battling in the city. They rarely took local rifts to heart. True enough, but the moms wouldn’t hesitate to ring a transgressor’s doorbell and denounce misbehaviors or other assorted misdemeanors. Their timing was impeccable. They’d show up during dinner and you’d be trapped at the table. Getting up would have been an admission of guilt. Best thing to do was steel yourself, do your best to hear the conversation at the door, wait for the scream, and use your few words as adroitly as possible to delay the thrashing.

  We all knew what we’d done, no mystery there, and pleading innocent was too transparently false. Denials, and too many words only compounded the gravity of the punishment. Just sit there and take it. Crying was not an option, although I must say we all resorted to it on occasion.

  Child rearing usually involved a healthy dose of corporal punishment. Everybody got hit for not only the infraction, but also for embarrassing the family. Slaps across the face were one technique, very public, noisy and quick, and were usually a response to foul language, disrespectful comments, and threatening a sibling. One slap usually did it, and was almost always well deserved. If the infraction was greater and there were a host of them, parents employed the belt or the wooden spoon. In my home, to add insult to injury, I had to remove my own belt or get the wooden spoon out of the kitchen drawer. The anticipation was generally worse than the pair of whacks I’d be apportioned. It unquestionably hurt my parents as much as it did me, and the punishment was later followed by an admonishment of sorts that reinforced the whacking, and at times a hug or a kiss. All of us kids got whacked. It was the way of the world.

  I’d learn my lesson until the next time I’d put a rock through a school window, play with fire, steal someone’s bike for a joy ride or give someone a glass of cold water drawn from the toilet bowl. Yes, that last one, was a real head shaker and cost me two red buttocks, but it seemed like a great idea at the time. Most of the parents expected that sometime before puberty, whatever that was, that the message to do right, not wrong would be learned. We kids knew that they expected better behavior from us. It was just so hard towing the line.

  We’d jump off roofs, cut off the heads of the neighbors’ flowers, unscrew Christmas light bulbs from our neighbors’ decorations and pop them on their doorsteps, have crab apple wars that we harvested from ornamental shrubs, throw rocks, bottles, pipes, two by fours, shingles, our childhood Frisbees, which could be thrown a great distance, and would cut when they hit you. Once in the heat of the summer, with sharpened sticks as spears, we ran around naked in the woods just to see what it was like to be cavemen. We chucked ice balls during the winter and itchy balls in the spring, and dirt bombs all summer. So much for peace and tranquility in suburbia!

  Rocks, dirt bombs, those hardened pieces of mud that sailed so easily through the air, and switches or tree limbs fashioned into rifles were always in our hands. We relived every war story that our uncles or fathers had told us or reenacted scenes from the most recent action or science fiction movie we had seen in the local movie house.

  We’d climb on the picnic tables in our backyards and sail off to tropical islands, fending off sharks and Moby Dick-like white whales. We loosened the nails in the cross beams of those tabletops and benches, and snapped broom-handle paddles as we fought tidal waves and typhoons. We battled Japanese frogmen, kicking them off our sinking PT boat, and fought off crews from Nazi U-boats. All of us took turns rolling off the deck into the churning waters, screaming to be saved. An outstretched arm always pulled us to safety, and though precarious as our situations might have appeared, we always fashioned a victory against impossible odds.

  At the end of those sessions, we’d lay back on the well-worn picnic tabletops, chatting about recent episodes of the newest TV shows like The Twilight Zone or Outer Limits. We created new scenarios and scripts for our favorites, watching every episode without fail, homework or not, on our black and white TVs. There were only four or five channels, but their shows were as much a part of our lives as were our families. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. could have been a distant relative. We all knew the characters’ names and loved to imitate their voices. Alfred Hitchcock looked like
a grandfather that we’d seen going into a neighbor’s house for Sunday dinner.

  War figured in much of our play. We fashioned every imaginable weapon from branches, strips of snow fencing, broken plastic toys or discarded tools making ray guns, spears, rifles, machine guns, cannons, grenades, bows and arrows, swords with handles and sharpened tips, of course. If we had any red paint, we festooned them with the blood of fallen gladiators, Confederate soldiers, Nazis or Japanese kamikaze shock troops.

  Our understanding of war was purely anecdotal, gleaned from movies and TV. Our portrayals of heroes infrequently involved their deaths, and foes always fell vanquished. Though we acted out being shot and dramatically collapsed on the ground with simulated death throes, all fatalities resurrected for the next scene, wounds were bloodless and healed instantly. We saw blood only when we over enthusiastically threw ourselves into bushes or didn’t pull our punches or stabs with wood bayonets. Though we often played at war, we understood so little of the reality of any of it.

  Most of our fathers, uncles or older brothers who might have experienced any of this first hand, didn’t discourage this play. Perhaps they saw it as a youngster’s expression of patriotism. But there were a few that silently turned away. All we kids knew was that Americans never lost, and heroes never died.

  Our play scenarios never included atomic warfare. Blistering death rays from invading Martians and combating giant praying mantis or monster ants figured most certainly in playtime. But Russians and nuclear bombs were conspicuously absent from our playtime agenda. Though sometimes we discussed news events, which included our new nemesis, the Soviet Union. I remember we kids would talk about who in our group would survive going off to war. We wondered which neighbor might build a bomb shelter, and how something invisible like radioactivity could be worse than a bullet. I never felt better after these talks, just worried. I knew there’d be no bomb shelter in my basement.

  Anyway, this nuclear war threat was drummed into us in school, but not mentioned much at home. At the dinner table when I talked about our school’s bomb drills and short films with scenes that showed homes and trees burning, bending, and exploding in the nuclear shockwave, Mom and Dad changed the topic. They’d ask whether I had been sent to the Principal’s office that day or whether I had any homework. My sister, Fran looked down at her plate, quiet. My older brother Harry was already stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, one of the East Coast’s largest naval bases. If I ever wanted silence at dinner, particularly if I suspected that my teacher might have called or had sent a note home about me, I knew what to bring up for a quick reprieve or at least a few moments of silence before the real shock wave hit.

  None of us kids ever doubted that we’d somehow survive a nuclear attack. We’d still play baseball and ride bikes, no matter what. One of the big kids on the block bragged that his family installed a basement bomb shelter, complete with cinder block walls and a metal door. It was supposed to be a secret. So, he swore us to secrecy and shared his family’s rules for survival: only family allowed when the sirens sounded, leave the dog outside, and, he made this very clear, if anyone tries to get in, don’t open up, and any intruders that are successful, should be shot. When we asked whether he’d shoot us, he said firmly, “No one gets in except our family.”

  Maybe it wasn’t the Russians that posed the worst threat. Neighbors would shoot neighbors and this older kid that I liked but feared now more than ever might have to shoot me. I was saddened that he would feel obligated to do that. When his folks weren’t home, he would invite us over and we’d rummage through the bomb shelter, imitating the shrill of a siren and closing the metal door with a bang. Last time we were down there, I saw a rifle leaning against a crate of canned food.

  His comment made all this talk of nuclear war and radiation, the “duck and tuck” and sheltering drills in elementary school and our teachers’ survival tips very real and frightening. At first our teachers instructed us to squeeze under our desks, face away from the windows and remain silent. Later that drill was changed, and we had to exit to the hallways, curl up, knees tucked tight with arms covering our heads, and lean against the wall. No one laughed or joked.

  Once I asked my fifth grade teacher whether this drill would really protect us. Though he often had to discipline me, I liked and trusted him. He looked straight at me, and whispered, “Imagine the fires of Hell rushing down these halls. What do you think?”

  Sledding on the Hill

  Snow came joyously heavy most winters, covering our old haunts and hiding places. Walking to school after overnight storms concerned our parents, but we saw them as adventures in the making. Snow days were announced by the blasts of the fire siren. More than once I didn’t hear them, and walked to school, trudging through snowdrifts sometimes hip-high. Only to find the doors locked. Back then there were no phone chains.

  Once heavy snows drifted to the roof of our one-story elementary school, and kids trying to climb up, would sink down to their chests. Winter storms always transformed our hill into a sleigh rider’s paradise. The heavy snows were emblematic of our December, January, and February. Snow would be on the ground intermittently from the first week of December to the last of February. The latter half of March was the big thaw, and April, believe it or not, did have sunny, warm days, and intermittent showers. The seasons were unfailing in their weather and timing, and we relished it all, most particularly those winter storms.

  I never could understand why our parents bemoaned the evenings’ forecasts of early morning snow. I’d get up early and listen for the siren that would come some time around seven. No announcements came across the radio or the TV. We home-alone kids lived on an informational wild frontier, where sirens weren’t always heard, and sometimes their silence went unheeded.

  If one kid headed to the hill, we’d assume a snow-day had been called. I’d wait to see the first kid open his garage door, sled in hand, and head out. I’d rush to the garage, grabbing galoshes, gloves, and snowsuit, and trek out, pulling my sled.

  We had names for our sleds. I wrote mine on the front of the hard wood frame in black paint, Ramrod. I waxed the metal runners in anticipation. We didn’t just sled, we crashed our way down the slopes of the hill in wintry demolition derbies, taking out anyone to the side, rammed those in the front, and braced ourselves for attacks from behind.

  If the snow fell heavy, I’d follow the tracks of the first kid out to the hill, crunching and stomping the path, deeper and wider for my return before sundown. There would be only a few of us early-morning sleigh riders. We diehards braved the frigid, morning winds and faint sun. But soon, the morning would warm up and the hill would be covered with speeding sleds.

  We’d form trains, hitching our boots into the spaces in the metal frames near the steering ropes of the sled behind us. Plastic sleds and flying saucers weren’t realities yet, however some had toboggans and would blast past with ease the individual sleds. Time was not an issue for us. The morning turned into the afternoon, which muted into dusk. No lunch was eaten; parents were at work, and we were adrift. Schedules meant nothing to us. Only twilight signaled the arrival of our parents and the end of our day.

  Moms generally came home first. Soon, just before sunset, the distinctive calls to dinner would echo out over the field. Few hesitated to take one extra run as the sun went down. With goodbyes said, and our parents’ calls more harsh, we’d sled down and out across the well-compacted snow heading home. The great runs of the day were on my mind as I trekked down to the morning’s snowy path, reduced to a few inches of glistening hard muddied snow in the early evening’s cold.

  I’d leave my sled next to the door. School or not, I’d be back out there, knowing that the night’s freeze would make the runs cut into the hill, icier and faster the next afternoon. Stripping off my boots, gloves and snowsuit, my mom would marvel at how raw and red my thighs were and how lucky I was not to have frostbite.

 
; The hill stood silent now, notched deep by our sleds. How much it must have wanted us to return! I imagined that it felt alone and abandoned, as it disappeared slowly under the dark blue of a winter evening.

  A Snow Walk’s Lessons

  For some reason there was an enormous disconnect between logic and Santa. All disbelief was suspended at the mere mention of his name. From the first door opened on the advent calendar to the cookies and hot milk on Christmas Eve, Santa and all things magical were everyday considerations in school, out of school, before bed, and upon rising from it during the month of December. And, of course, being good weighed heavily on me.

  I was reminded frequently that teasing my sister, Fran, not helping with the dishes, forgetting to bring in the garbage cans, and not taking out the garbage was noted by Santa’s helpers, the ever-present, yet invisible elves. Christmas vacation always gave us a day or two before the blessed morning. There was plenty of time to try and set things right, remember my chores, and be in as cheery a mood as I could muster. Baking cookies, making window paintings made with stencils and white, water-soluble furniture polish were the day’s activities. The sound of wrapping paper being moved from room to room was the final sign that Christmas Eve was approaching. Picking out the tree, one of my favorite activities was a sacred obligation, which had to be accompanied by perfect behavior.

  I particularly remember one tree-buying outing. It was late Saturday afternoon, and dusk had fallen quickly. Bundled against the cold, my parents, sister Fran, Aunt Mae and I decided to take a walk to the Ketcham farm and its worn, rust red barn to buy that year’s Christmas tree. It had snowed in the morning and later that afternoon, and the roads were slippery. But it was unanimous that despite the wind and cold that night, such a beautiful winter evening had to be experienced firsthand. We set out on foot, slogging through the snow.