When the trip to Springfield began, Carole, Andrew and I felt like we were part of The Brady Bunch, one of my favourite television shows then and later, but by the end of the expedition, we were lucky not to have become a bunch of roasted chestnuts.
The three of us spent the journey sprawled above the cab laughing, yelling and taking potshots at each other. My mum banged on the roof to settle us down when the squabbling got out of hand, or when I’d start screaming that Andrew was threatening to roll me off the bed and on to the Formica table below.
And then we all noticed the smell.
Now, if you’ve ever travelled any long distances with anyone, I don’t care if it’s with your family, your friends or your co-workers in your carpool, eventually there’s a smell. And when you can no longer seriously continue to blame your brother / sister / driver / dog or the shit spread on the fields outside, you need to turn inward to the car itself.
‘Smells like something’s burning,’ said my mum, who on these trips was never without her knitting, which was why, come Christmas Day, the entire family would receive a home-knitted jumper, cardigan or socks5 along with our toys and other presents.
‘Andrew let off,’6 I exclaimed.
‘Did not.’
‘Did too.’
Andrew attempted to roll me off the bed on to the Formica table.
‘Mu-um, it’s getting worse up here,’ Carole whined. ‘I’m going to be sick.’
‘No, you’re not, young lady!’ shouted my mum. This ability to control random acts of fluid loss on car trips was one of my mother’s superpowers. Her other special gift was the use of eyes in the back of her head, which I’ve heard is common among all mothers.
She turned to my dad. ‘We should stop.’
‘Where? There are no lay-bys in America.’
According to my dad, metaphorically, this became the mantra for the entire year my family spent tooling around the US nonstop, frantically packing in as many sights as possible in short bursts of time; however, my dad was also literally correct. There are no lay-bys in America. If cars need to stop, unless it’s a mechanical emergency, they have to wait for a corporate-sponsored food stop or a state-sanctioned rest area. None of us had seen either in miles. Finally, my dad took an exit ramp off the motorway and pulled over.
When we all climbed out, the smell was smothering the entire camper.
‘Andrew stinks.’
‘John, be quiet.’
My dad walked gingerly around the camper, Andrew following him. While my mum gripped my arm, holding me back from the traffic, Carole sat on the grassy verge.
‘It smells worse back here,’ announced my dad.
‘That’s ‘cause Andrew let off.’
‘John, enough!’
My dad decided to crawl underneath the camper, which in retrospect was probably not the smartest thing to do because what he discovered solved the problem of the smell, but later that evening almost got Carole, Andrew and me killed.
‘It looks like tar,’ my dad explained. ‘I must have driven through it when we passed that construction earlier.’
The mystery of the smell solved, we all climbed back inside.
As had been the case when we holidayed with our caravan in the UK, finding a place to stop and park for the night with the camper was always a test of my dad’s mechanical fortitude and my mum’s patience. She’d have to entertain three overly tired cranky kids, while he’d hook the vehicular beast to its various lifelines. In the campsite we found on this particular night, my dad had to string the electrical connection from the roof of the camper across a grassy area and round a couple of big trees in order to connect it to the electricity pole supplied by the camp ground. He’d just finished doing this and was walking back toward the camper, where my mum had hustled the three of us inside, when there was a loud pop, a blinding flash, some sparking wires, and a flaming current shot from the electricity hook-up near the trees and raced along the wire toward the camper.
My dad sprinted to the camper like a bat out of hell. My mum screamed, ‘Get Out Of The Camper!’ And for once in our lives, we listened the first time she yelled. Carole, Andrew and I came flying out of the door as the shot of electricity hit the vehicle and the entire camper lit up.
Thankfully, the fire was minor and the electrical damage to the camper minimal, but the trip was over. Neither my mum nor my dad trusted the vehicle anymore, so we headed to a motel for the night. We later realized that if the camper’s faulty wiring hadn’t been masked by the smell of the tar, the real culprit for the bad stench might have been discovered.
During this year of Barrowmans’ Excellent Adventure, my parents met a couple, Madelyn and Glenn Brown, whom to this day remain close family friends. Glenn worked at Caterpillar with my dad in Aurora. Once or twice a week, whenever we weren’t on one of our road trips, my parents would have dinner or drinks with Maddie and Glenn.
One night, they were at the Browns’ home in Oswego, Illinois, enjoying an after-dinner drink in their study. I was playing with my Matchbox cars on the floor at their feet. Also on the floor was a full-size bearskin rug, a real one with the head stuffed and lounging stoically against the hardwood floor. I was asked politely to drive my cars far away from the rug.
Imagine this. I’m about three years old. I’m playing cars. I have a large dead animal spread across the floor next to me. What would any self-respecting child do? Exactly. And that’s just what this child did. According to my mum, I began to rev my cars and drive them nearer and nearer to the rug.
‘John, get your cars away from that bear. Now!’ called my mum before I could get too close.
I wheeled my cars across the floor again and then, when I thought the coast was clear, I crept closer. On this occasion, my dad grabbed me by the collar and pulled me out of reach before I could actually touch the bear.
This time, I stayed away a bit longer, but the bear was calling to me – ‘John, John, touch me’ – and pretty soon I was inching closer again. My parents had had enough. My mum picked me up, carried me into the hallway and deposited me on the floor. She gathered up my cars, and she and my dad said their goodbyes. But just as Maddie opened the front door, I turned around, sprinted back into the study, and with all my might kicked the bear hard on the side of its head.
My parents were furious. The next time we were at the Browns, the rug was nowhere to be seen. For the Browns and for my parents, the incident with the bear has become one of those moments when adults believe they see the spark of some future personality trait in a child. Thankfully, for all concerned – including wildlife – the story has had more to do with my mischievous and stubborn streak than with my choice of career.
Barrowmans’ Excellent Adventure ended with our return trip to the UK via the QE2, a voyage where I participated in my first talent contest, winning first prize – not because of my voice, but because of how cute I looked in a bikini. Seriously. My dad dressed me up, stuffed my boobs, dolloped on generous amounts of make-up, and put a banner across my chest that read ‘Queen of the Nile’.7
The Excellent Adventure turned out to be a prequel to our emigrating to the States five years later, when my dad accepted the position of Manufacturing Manager at Caterpillar’s Aurora plant. With this move, I officially became a legal alien.
Murn had her stroke soon after we returned from the Adventure, and subsequently moved in with us. As she was already living with us in Mount Vernon when my dad landed his new job, she too came to America. For her, the trip was both more and less of an ordeal than it was for the rest of us. For one, we were her family, my mum her only child, and Carole, Andrew and I her only grandchildren. For that reason, the move was a no-brainer for her; however, she was in her sixties, debilitated from the stroke and had never left the UK, so psychologically I know it had to be a tough move.
The stroke had left Murn with speech difficulties and she seemed to regress to a childlike state at times, but I never had any problems understanding her. She never lost
her sense of humour or her sweet tooth. When she’d go to bed at night, our dog Pagan and I would follow her. I’d climb into bed next to her for a wee ‘coorie’,8 while Pagan would climb up on to the bed, salivating a little because Murn always kept a secret stash of sweeties in her night-table drawer.
Eight years after we emigrated, in 1984, Murn passed away. The morning she died, I was supposed to be picked up from high school by my mum. We had planned to go into Chicago for an audition for a television commercial. I stepped into the school’s parking lot and saw my dad’s secretary Leota standing next to the car instead of my mother, and I knew something was wrong. I didn’t say a word or utter a cry until I got home, where I went straight to the kitchen to find my mum. As soon as I saw her, we both collapsed against each other. We were devastated – the whole family was. My siblings and I felt the loss especially, because Murn had been a major part of our lives since birth. At that time, Carole was teaching in South Dakota and Andrew was living in Chicago. They both came home immediately.
Although Murn had left Scotland with us in 1976 – and always thought she’d left behind all her friends – I think the number of people who attended her memorial service in Joliet would’ve moved her. I was then a member of Joliet West High School’s swing choir and the choir sang at the funeral. In her lifetime, Murn had travelled with my mum to all of our concerts. After the service, my mum remained behind at the church, while Carole, Andrew and I went with my dad to the crematorium, where we stayed with the coffin until it was out of our sight.
In the last years of her life, Murn was convinced Lake Michigan was the Atlantic. Whenever my mum and I went into Chicago with her, Murn would insist on sitting on the boardwalk, where she’d stare across the water with a bittersweet longing. A few months after her death, my mum and dad carried Murn’s ashes back to Scotland, sprinkling some on the grave of her husband, Andrew ‘Papa’ Butler; the rest they sprinkled near Loch Lomond.
The Barrowmans arrived in the United States as permanent residents in the May of 1976. When I started school in Aurora, Illinois that September, my Scottish accent became an audible characteristic of difference and the easiest way for others to taunt me. So, I adapted. Over the course of the next couple of years, I became bidialectical, a term Carole uses to describe our ability to switch dialects. A few have suggested that there may be something a bit schizophrenic about this vocal-code switching; my response to that is bring on the padded suit, because it’s the least crazy thing about me. My sister mastered this dialect switching for similar reasons and she does it effortlessly too. My brother Andrew’s accent, though, is more a blend of Scottish and American. His voice sounds pretty much the same no matter who his audience; whereas Carole and I talk with our Scottish accents to each other and to our parents, but with American accents to everyone else. My mum and dad, on the other hand, still sound as Scottish as the day they climbed on the plane at Prestwick.
Carole was seventeen when we emigrated, Andrew was fourteen, and they were not happy campers. Actually, this is an understatement. They were pissed. They hated leaving their friends and did not want to rethink their futures, which as teenagers they had already planned out in considerable detail. But my parents pulled a slick move on them. They cut a deal. Give it a year, my parents said. If after that either of you still wants to return to Scotland, then you may.
Of course, they knew what would happen. Carole went off to university in Illinois, finished degrees in journalism and English, and met her husband, Kevin Casey, in a postgraduate history seminar. She’s now a writer and a Professor of English at Alverno College in Wisconsin. Carole and Kevin have two children, Clare and Turner, and they’ve been married since 1982.
Someone tossed a ball at Andrew and that’s all it took for him. He became a kicker for his high-school football team9 and a leader on Aurora University’s soccer team. He even made the initial draft of the US Olympic soccer squad in 1980. He’s now in sales management for Nicor Inc. in Illinois. In 1997, Andrew married Dorothy (Dot), and they have a son, Andrew,10 whose soccer skills may well rival his dad’s, and two beautiful and feisty daughters, Yvonne and Bridgett.
As for my opinion of the emigration, I was nine when we left Scotland and my main concern was that the only way to get to America was on a plane – I was seriously freaked about flying, a phobia that still plagues me despite my stunts on Hawk fighter jets and frequent trips on Concorde.
The area in which my parents bought their first house in America was Prestbury, a suburb of Aurora. It had a private swimming pool for the residents and as soon as we moved in, my parents made a rule. Lifeguard or no lifeguard, I couldn’t hang out at the pool until I learned to swim. Every day after school, I’d ride in the school bus from my grade school to swimming lessons at the nearby high school, and every day this large spotty dick of a kid would get on the bus and at some point on the journey he’d climb over the seats and sit on me, flicking my face with his dirty fingernails.
As a child I had a few phobias, and as an adult I’ve added a couple more – okay, I’ve added a lot. Then and now, I can’t stand anyone touching my face or my neck. Obviously this is a bit of a challenge when I have to wear make-up for TV or photo shoots. I’ve learned to suck it up and be brave. My Torchwood make-up artists, Claire Pritchard-Jones and Marie Doris, have tricks they pull when they need to chunk my hair or use their fingers near my face or neck, distracting me with shopping catalogues, sweeties or cute bums when they need to. When I played Che in a concert production of Evita in Oslo, Norway, I loved the show, but it was torture every night having a beard glued to my face. My immediate family shares this peculiar phobia for face and neck fondling. Being able to use this odd trait to annoy my big sister was one of my great triumphs as a little brother.
When Clare and Turner were young but old enough to use this power wisely, I taught them how to harass their mother this way. Think of me as Obi Wan to their Luke and Princess Leia. Whenever we get together as a family, Carole is on edge for a while because she knows at some point, usually early in the morning, usually right after Kevin sneaks out from the room, Clare, Turner and I are going to attack her with our ferocious morning breath and lick every inch of her face and neck.
So, in grade school when Spotty Dick began to sit on me daily and violently rub my face and neck, I made a decision to do something about it. Even at nine years old, I knew that bullying happens for lots of reasons, ones that are usually more complicated for the bully than for the bullyee,11 but knowing this never made the face-flicking and the chest-sitting any less painful. I knew exactly what I needed to do to make it stop. I had to get off that fucking bus.
After dinner one night, I excused myself from the table, went downstairs to the basement and dug my swimming trunks out of the laundry, where I’d tossed them when I’d come home from lessons that afternoon. They were still damp, but I didn’t care. I stripped off my clothes, pulled on the damp trunks, grabbed a towel from the rack in the bathroom and snuck out of the house. I ran to the Prestbury swimming pool, where I climbed the locked gate, and then I chucked myself in at the deep end.
My plan was to sink or swim. After a handful of lessons, I believed I knew enough of the basics to figure out the necessities, but no matter what happened, I wasn’t getting on that school bus with Flicka ever again. After thrashing wildly for a few panicked moments and swallowing gallons of water, I finally figured out a rhythm and within a half-hour I was gliding effortlessly – at least in my mind – up and down the pool.
I learned later that my clandestine getaway to the pool was not as stealthy as I’d hoped. My parents had followed me, my dad fully prepared to dive to my rescue at any gagging moment.
I went from grade school into junior high while we lived in Prestbury and it was at this time, like Ponyboy in Hinton’s The Outsiders, that I experienced the first real challenges to my identity and the boy I perceived myself to be.
I chose to play the flute in the junior-high band because I loved listening to Je
an-Pierre Rampal and James Galway, and because Juleen and Nadine Johnson, the daughters of close family friends, also played. The other boys in the school band played the bigger, brassier instruments.12 Before going into band practice after school, the band director would line us up according to our sections: wind and strings on left, brass and percussion on right. John on left, most of the other boys on right.
During this time in my adolescence, my love of music was channelled through playing the flute. I stayed with it and continued to play in the band all the way through junior high and into high school, at which time I realized, during my high-school freshman year, that my voice was a better, stronger instrument for me. Although I was never great on the flute, I was good enough to play at Carole and Kevin’s wedding in 1982 and I still love to listen to a flute played well.
In the course of my first year in junior high, someone somehow learned that my family nickname was ‘Wee John’. This became a regular taunt as the boys in the brass section strutted down the hall to get in line. Years later, after we’d moved to Joliet, Illinois, where my dad became Plant Manager of Caterpillar and I was a student at Joliet West High School, one of my best friends in Aurora, Laura Mickey, invited me back to Aurora for a high-school dance. We walked up to the table, and there with his date sat one of the Brass Boys who’d regularly harassed me in junior high.
After some inane conversation, he finally broached the subject and asked, ‘Why did you never fight back, John?’
I shrugged. ‘I figured one day, you’d regret it.’
He was quiet for a few beats. My pulse quickened. I wasn’t sure which way the night was going to go. I’d managed to avoid wrestling with him all through junior high; I really didn’t want to take him now. Oh, I could have. But as much as I loved West Side Story, I’d rather this particular dinner avoided musical plot lines.
Anything Goes Page 5