Thirty Rooms To Hide In

by Sullivan, Luke

  Rats were our favorite pets. We liked how their tails gave girls the willies and we appreciated rats’ under-dog status. They were just, well, rats. We’d hold our rats, look ‘em in the eye and say in a James Cagney voice, “Why, you dirty rat. You killed my broth-ah.”

  Our first pair of rats (we called them “blats”) was a gift from Dr. Zollman, presented after a tour of the Mayo Clinic’s Institute Hills facility, just up the road from the Millstone. We figured we’d saved them from getting cancer and so they were accorded special status at the Millstone. But after the first batch of babies, and then a second, special status was revoked and Mom had us move the blats from the Rumpus Room to the garden shed in the back yard.

  We emptied out the shed, threw away the small cages, and turned the entire structure into one huge blat fraternity house. Without cages the blats had run of the place resulting in, of course, more blats. At its peak, the population of Blatopolis was 46.

  Lying on the shed floor and letting the city of rodents crawl over you was a delight we found visitors generally eschewed. We even fashioned a dinner bell for them. Pulling a string on the outside of the shed clanged together two Folger’s coffee cans hanging inside and if you waited a minute for the congregation to assemble, when you opened the door 46 dirty rats would be lined up at the threshold to greet you, with a few scrubby souls hanging high on the interior of the door itself like hippies on the scaffolding at Woodstock.

  With the green shed as the only available gene pool, mutations occurred and we loved these deformed rats more than the others. One of the Institute’s great-grand-blats was born with his head permanently tilted to about 2 o’clock, making him look as if he was always checking to see if that was his name they just called over the intercom. Our favorite was a poor little rat born without the use of his hind legs. He was a happy little guy and seemed to get along fine dragging himself around, though after a few months we noticed the fur had rubbed off his belly. Perversely, we called him “Jim Walker.”

  Jim, of course, was the rat we proudly displayed to surprised visitors at the Millstone – rushing into the room to show off Mr. Walker’s scraggly-assed mutant rat belly to the ladies in Mom’s bridge club.

  In the front yard of the Millstone, circa 1956.

  Our dog Ceasar, Kip, Dan, Jeff and Luke.

  CAUSE OF DEATH: UNKNOWN

  Death was introduced to me by a hamster.

  The Millstone was home to many hamsters over the years; so many we had a nickname for the species. The word hamster, when spoken as if you had a cold, was “habster.” We shortened it to “hab.”

  The hab I loved the most was Mama Hab. Mama lived in a small cage on my desk, which filled my bedroom with the comforting smell of cedar shavings. It was here she bore six babies that looked like pink kidney beans; and it was here I watched in horror as she ate them. I wasn’t familiar with the species’ natural tendency for infanticide when they feel unsafe and so I was angry with Mama Hab for awhile. After a successful litter, however, I came to forgive her and the little wheel in her cage spun regularly every night for a year or so until one morning I discovered her paws-up.

  Using the funeral of JFK as a model, I immediately chose a room in the Millstone where my hamster could lie in state – the quiet of my mother’s Tower Library seemed fit for the rites. To fashion a coffin, I emptied a box of the large wooden kitchen matches and with a little toilet paper serving as bed and pillow, Mama Hab was respectfully displayed for viewing on the ornate desk in the middle of my mother’s oval library.

  Though Mom and all five brothers were invited to pay their respects, attendance was low. So I set the burial date back a week, extended the invitation to neighborhood kids, and waited for the lines to form.

  With time running out and the crowds somewhat thinner than expected, my agenda shifted from crowd control to odor control. A liberal application of my Dad’s Old Spice would have been the preferred mortuary science, but I was unable to locate the frosted green glass bottle and settled for spraying a half a can of Right Guard antiperspirant onto my ex-hamster. After a few more days of mourning, my mother discovered my above-ground pet cemetery and told me to commit the critter to the elements. Mama Hab was finally buried in the pine grove near the garden with only myself in attendance.

  Death came next for our most beloved pet; the family collie, Caesar. But this wasn’t just death – it was murder.

  Caesar was part of our family long before I was. He’d been with us since the family lived on the farm, when the oldest boys – Kip, Jeff, and Chris – were toddlers.

  He was a beautiful collie and to us looked prettier than Lassie (and she was on television). When we moved into the Millstone, Caesar inherited a dog’s kingdom of four acres to find sticks and six boys to throw them. Then came the morning I found Caesar dying on the front lawn. It was long before his time and there were no apparent injuries, but there he lay. By the time the family had all gathered around his fallen regal form, he was gone.

  Caesar was no hamster. He was our dog; our guard, our angel, the one you met coming home from school, waiting for you by the mailbox. His sudden death changed everything. JFK’s assassination hadn’t happened yet nor had our parents separated; we’d never felt loss before. All of our little-boy lives had been about addition; new little brothers arriving, Grandpa and Monnie pulling into the driveway bearing Florida oranges, big homes being bought, Christmas following Christmas. And now something was taken. Loss was new to us.

  It was just minutes after my father’s graveside pronouncement “Cause of death: unknown” that the rumor began of Mrs. Hartman and her “orange dog food.”

  Mrs. Hartman, who lived over the fence to the south of us, had been known to complain about Caesar from time to time. Caesar would dig the occasional hole in her garden. She’d shoo him off and then mention the trespasses to Mom at every opportunity.

  Our grief turned to anger and, needing an outlet, we chose her. It seems one of us (today nobody recalls exactly who) remembered seeing Mrs. Hartman “feed Caesar some orange dog food.” Of course this was nonsense and Mom did her best to disabuse us of the notion, but the conspiracy theory took. Mrs. Hartman officially entered the Family Shit List and shot to #1. And though none of the boys ever confronted her with our suspicions, urinating through the fence into her garden became common practice and our passive aggressions continued for some time. Even six years later, whenever Kip’s and Jeff’s rock-and-roll band The Pagans practiced on the porch at the Millstone, we would point the big amplifiers in the direction of Mrs. Hartman’s house, just to rattle the old dog-killer’s china cabinet.

  The Pagans

  THE PAGANS

  Article in the Rochester Post Bulletin, October 17, 1964, headlined “Pagans Teen-Band Named After Dog”

  The new “sound of music” is defined simply – play it as loud, long and hard as you can. The Pagans, to put it mildly, follow this recipe – as does any other teen band. None of them apologize for it – in fact there is sort of a contest to see which group can play the loudest.

  The sexual and political repression of the ‘50s created its own worst nightmare – longhairs playing rock-and-roll that made the girls shake their boobies. It made the men with short haircuts and white short-sleeved shirts put down their slide-rules and try to stop all the tomfoolery. But by 1964 guitars and amplifiers were being dragged into basements all over America, including the Millstone’s.

  For a Sprinter, this was the coolest thing that could possibly happen. Real rock-and-roll right in your own house, with cigarettes and everything. The Pagans were just five high-school boys but to us Sprinters they were living gods and two of them were my big brothers – Kip on lead guitar and Jeff on bass.

  Kip, like many first-borns, had an easy confidence that helped him succeed in most of the things he took on. Dark-haired and Irish handsome like his father, Kip was an Eagle Scout, a state debate champion, a competitor for the state high-school diving championship, leader of the Pagans, but m
ore than anything he was The Big Brother. Sprinters who were seen using The Big Brother’s bathroom heard about it, and if Kip’s toothbrush was discovered wet to the touch, woe be onto any Sprinter with Crest on his breath. Kip should also have won the state championship for Best Girlfriend. Linda, his steady of several years, was a stunning ‘60s beauty who had a devoted following of Sprinters trailing her like dwarves behind Snow White.

  The vice-president of Cool, on the other hand, was brother Jeff. He was Bobby Kennedy to Kip’s Jack; The Man from U.N.C.L.E’s Illya Kuryakin to Kip’s Napoleon Solo. Jeff dressed cool, walked cool, and slumped cool. He had a bonelessness to his gait and a way of draping himself over chairs that said, “I care less than anybody in this room.” Making Jeff laugh counted for something; Kip would laugh just to be nice. To add to his mystique, Jeff was an artist. He painted in oils and acrylics as well as pen and ink and had undeniable talent.

  Kip remembers learning boogie-woogie piano by ear around 6th grade, playing along to Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis. The band got its start when Kip was on the diving team at John Marshall High School. There he recruited friends for a one-time performance at a high school talent show: Jay Gleason on drums and Collin Gentling on piano. They enjoyed it enough to keep playing and though the band’s line-up changed a few times they settled finally on a roster of Kip, Jeff, Jerry Huiting (sharing lead guitar with Kip), Jim Rushton (rhythm guitar), and Jay Gleason behind the drums.

  Jeff’s best friend, Chris Hallenbeck was the Stu Sutcliffe of the Pagans. Chris was a decent keyboard player and could sing, but was with the band only briefly; he died in a car accident. In 1965, the Pagans’ first drummer, Jay Gleason, would also die in a car.

  In an article on The Pagans, the Rochester Post-Bulletin said the band’s name was “unusual” and “might bother some people.” Kip and Jeff liked its subversive, anti-religious connotations but assured the reporters with short haircuts that Pagan was simply the name of Caesar’s replacement, one of our new Irish Wolfhounds – “a constant presence at their practices.” (The fact that pagans were godless creatures, heathens without religion, also likely figured in the choice.)

  Dad was a drunk by the time the Pagans formed, but not the bourbon-guzzling, elbow-bending, ethyl-to-urine system of his final days. Some part of him enjoyed the confidence it took his sons to get up there on stage and bang it out and on one occasion he even paid them to play at a Mayo Clinic party hosted at the Millstone. He also put up with having band practices at the Millstone, this to the great delight of the sweaty group of Sprinters who attended every session. In between songs we’d try to bum cigarettes or slip behind the Ludwig drum set when Jay went to the bathroom.

  “Hey look, Kip! I can do the drum roll from ‘Wipe Out’!”

  Everything the Pagans had, we Sprinters wanted. Their cigarettes, the cool VW van they used to haul their equipment, even Kip’s and Jeff’s girlfriends, Linda and Bonnie. With my father slowly checking out of family life, the Pagans became our male authority figures. A joke wasn’t funny until it made Kip or Jeff laugh; clothes weren’t cool unless they wore them first. When the local menswear shop, M.C.Lawler’s, had the Pagans pose for an ad in the store’s new blazers, I carried the newspaper ad around for a week as proof I knew somebody famous.

  The first time the Pagans played in public tellingly set the tone for their short, lively career. In April of ’64 one of Jeff’s friends, Steve Rossi, threw a party and invited the Pagans to be the entertainment. The Pagans played 10 songs to an appreciative, slightly drunk audience. At 11pm, word filtered through the crowd that “the cops had the place surrounded,” which they in fact had. Almost every kid at the party had something to lose and panic spread. There were student council leaders, sons and daughters of doctors, football team members and other athletes, even cheerleaders. Most of the crowd managed to scatter past the police. Caught in the net were Rossi (it was his place) and the Pagans (who couldn’t abandon their equipment).

  Rossi’s statement to the Rochester Sheriff’s Department is still in their files. His words are in that stilted “I-Am-Now-Talking-To-The-Police” cadence some people get in the presence of Johnny Heat. (“Officer, I had no previous knowledge that beverages of an alcoholic nature were in the trunkular space of my motorized vehicle.”) It’s also evident he didn’t rat out his friends.

  Rossi’s statement

  … I would assume that a few of the kids brought beer but I couldn’t identify who or how many. Kids started coming about 9, and the band started playing. I do know that beer was consumed in my apartment but am unable to identify the parties who did consume. I myself did not consume any beer. This is a true statement to the best of my knowledge.

  But the next morning every athlete who’d been at the party was kicked off their teams for a year, including Kip and Jay. It upset them because as juniors they’d both made the diving finals in the state meet; Jay placed fifth, Kip sixth. They were eager to do even better in their senior years. Strangely, there were no recriminations from Dad.

  Looking back, Kip thinks Dad was so checked out by then he simply didn’t care. Though he was still on the high school debate team (Kip won first place at state the next year), without sports he now had more time to put into the band.

  From Kip’s 1964 diary

  Great night!! Curtain opened and we smashed out “Good Golly Miss Molly.” For the first time, everybody clowned. I tickled back of Steve’s head with guitar, Jerry swiped Steve’s mike, Jim made Jerry laugh on “Boys.” Speakers excellent. Wait till we get new amp with 110 watts! At home last night, Mom broke down and cried when the little ones argued about TV. Tensions increasing around here.

  Mom and Dad pose in front of the fireplace before going to a Mayo Clinic Party.

  “SPATS WITH THE WIFE”

  1992 interview with Dr. Mark Coventry, my father’s boss at the Mayo Clinic

  Roger confided in me only once. He would come to my house, only occasionally, to talk about his troubles. He claimed his problems stemmed from serious marital difficulties he was having. He defined them as a competition between him and Myra. Competition, mostly on intellectual matters. Your father told me he thought Myra “put him down.”

  I had to go out [to the Millstone] more than once.

  One incident happened on the front steps and I remember that very clearly. I was called to see if I could come talk to him, to settle him down. He was extremely angry and did a great deal of shouting. Just a lot of verbal abuse from Roger. He’d get out of control. His face would get red. He’d rant, rave. [Raving about?] About Myra. Conflict. A conflict between the two as to who was going to dominate the other. He felt dominated by her and said he “didn’t want to be dominated”.

  * * *

  Chris Raymer is a chemical dependency counselor at La Hacienda, a treatment center in Hunt, Texas. He says he’s heard a thousand reasons for alcoholic drinking:

  “My job is so hard.”

  “My boss is so mean.”

  “I have so many responsibilities.”

  “I need to relax.”

  (For fun, we’ll throw in “My wife tries to dominate me.”)

  Chris says every “reason” is simply an excuse to drink. As an example he facetiously mimics one patient whose circular logic went, “One day, it’s ‘Yay! The Yankees won! Let’s have a drink.’ And the next it’s, ‘Shit! The Yankees lost. Let’s have a drink.’ There’s always a reason. But the fact of the matter is alcoholics drink because they like the feeling.”

  After several years of heavy drinking, every cell in the alcoholic’s body becomes addicted and drinking moves from being an emotional medication to a cellular requirement for continued existence. What once gave a pleasant buzz is now required simply to get from below-zero up to feeling normal. The intake of booze reaches a point where the alcoholic faces a double horror: a continued life with drinking – impossible – or facing life without drinking – also impossible.

  If asked, the alcoholic will cheerfully point out t
he things that cause his drinking. In an early interview with his Mayo psychiatrist, my father said, “The drinking always increased after a ‘spat with my wife’.” Whether Roger was lying or actually believed this, he’d say with a straight face he drank a quart of bourbon a day because his wife was angry. The idea that his wife was angry because he drank a quart of bourbon a day, well, it just didn’t seem to come up.

  Lots of stuff didn’t come up when you were talking with Roger.

  Regarding that “spat with his wife”? Roger probably didn’t go into details, but had he done so the psychiatrist would’ve heard about the time Roger was shit-faced, sitting in the passenger seat of the car while his wife drove. Too drunk to be able to yell at her any longer, he took out his anger by shaking her as she tried to drive. Unable to steer safely because of this “spat,” Myra stopped the car, got out, and hoped the change of venue might calm him down. Roger stumbled out of the car but couldn’t walk steadily.