The Surrogates

     We live our lives with memories that are our own and then there are the stories that fill in the gaps of our memory timeline. This blog will be partially written by just such stories. 

    Both of my parents had jobs when I was a newborn and when my mom returned to work, my grandma Dorothy took care of me at our home in the Helena Valley. I like to use the word "surrogate:" rather than babysitter. Is that weird? They are like parents, in the case of my grandma, well, she's my parent's parent. 

    There is one story that has been told over and over about the day I went missing. In an age long before Amber Alerts, I went missing and my grandma did not know what to do. The county sheriff was alerted and my father apparently knew someone in the National Guard and they sent in a search party. The story goes on to say that I just came strolling back with my two dogs at my sides as if  I were out on a normal walk. About my two dogs, one was a Dalmatian named Magoo who, according to some baby picture of me at Christmas, was my first dog and a Yellow Lab named Kelly. I have many memories of my dogs, fortified with photos. Pictures are great for building and maintaining memories, so I recommend having a camera with you at all times. Case in point is the time Kelly got into a porcupine and we have a photo of him at the front door, at night, with quills in his nose. It's a sad picture, but it was an event that I was too young to remember when it happened, but the picture is something I will always remember. Pictures along with stories could be considered surrogate memories. 

    The other surrogates that took care of me were a couple that my mom knew and a family that both my mom and father knew. My mom's friend, Diane, took care of other kids too, kind of like a daycare, but I'm sure she wasn't licensed. She was more like the person who took care of her friends' children. Some of the kids were her's and there were different age groups. Diane lived in a trailer court next to an old quarry. This quarry was mostly piles of river rock where dredges used to search for gold that may have washed down out of the hills surrounding Helena. We didn't care why all of that rock was there, we just saw it as an adventure playground where we could easily get lost. There were areas that were wooded where streams and springs provided water. I remember making mud pies and pulling mushroom-like fungus off of trees. The wooded areas were mostly weeping willows. One day, I won't forget, I was playing with the other kids and I fell into a spring and when I returned to Diane's trailer, I was soaked and covered in mud. The only clothes she had that would fit me, were her daughter's. I was young, but still embarrassed by wearing girls clothes home. I also remember when my father picked me up in a new Datsun 280Z. It was a cool car, but looking back on that, I have to wonder; Why did he buy a sports car with a new family?

    The other family that watched me was the White family. My father worked with Clyde White and as fate would have it, their daughter Christy was born the same day I was born. Christy was a couple of hours older than me and she had two older siblings, Gerald and Carol, and one younger brother, Ben. I remember, clearly, the house they lived in, which was an old monastery next to St. Helena's Cathedral. Legend had it that there was a tunnel that connected the cathedral to the monastery, but I never saw a tunnel when I was there. I clearly remember the kitchen with windows that started at counter top level and went all the way to the ceiling. It flooded sunlight into the kitchen and was the family's favorite gathering place before Clyde went to work and Gerald and Carol went off to school. I remember hiding in the space under the stairs, for what ever reason I had to hide. 

    The Whites chose to move to Hamilton one summer and my father must have went with to help them move and he looked at a home there. I remember my first days in kindergarten at Jefferson school in Helena. I loved the playground with its huge log complex with swings and places to climb. I remember an inflatable alphabet, each letter was a character and they hung all around the class room. I also remember a box full of old clothes that we would play dress up like adults with a cardboard house on a stage. I had only attended a couple of months of kindergarten in Helena before we moved to Hamilton. It had to be really early on in the school year, because I remember the trip in the U-Haul and it was hot and miserable and I kept asking "are we there yet?" To which the answer always seemed a terse"NO". I remember when we got to our new house, this old man showed us around. The property had apple trees and plum trees. I remember that first day in the house I would grow up in and the biggest part of that memory were all the fresh picked plums in the kitchen sink.     

    The Whites had an influence on my whole family because of the closeness between the two families. This is why I've called this entry "The Surrogates". Parents are responsible for how they raise their children and it is my experience that those duties aren't always performed by the immediate family. Clyde and my father, for instance were journeymen linemen, meaning that they worked all over the country where the IBEW needed them. The home duties fell to my mom as she became a housewife after the move to Hamilton. My mom didn't even drive. When she needed to go somewhere, she would call up Rhonda White and we would all get in this station wagon to go to the IGA across town. Daily activities always involved the Whites at some level. Rhonda drove me to school and the first day she drove me, she asked if I knew the name of the school, to which I replied; "Jefferson" which was my old school in Helena. However, it was not Jefferson, my new school was Washington, but Gerald and Carol were at the middle school named "Jefferson". I remember the confusion quite clearly. 

    As I got to know my new classmates, I befriended a number of them because they lived directly in my new neighborhood. The Davillas, the Makis, the Hathaways, the Pages, the Newgards, the Ostebauers, just to name a few. Those parents were also my surrogates. Kids couldn't really get into serious trouble in our neighborhood because all the parents knew one another. 

    It wasn't long before I had made two best friends; Geno Hindrichs and Sean Sanders. They both lived in a trailer court at the end of my street. Geno's family was kind of an example of what not to be, even though my mom fully trusted them to take Geno and I to the circus in Missoula every year. It's an interesting story on how I met Geno. I was over at the Davillas; Roger, Joe, Dennis and Robbie. We were outside playing. Everyone was on a bike, except for me because I hadn't yet learned to ride a bike. They all rode around in the same intersection and I really was just watching, when this one kid came swooping by and stopped his bike and he asked why I wasn't riding. I don't know why I did this, but Donaldson Brothers Ready Mix had just poured a new sidewalk next to the Davillas' home and there was a chunk of concrete, extra left behind, and I picked it up and threw it at this kid. Well, I hit him and he wailed and I ran for home. That kid was Geno and when I saw him and his mother, Beverly, walking up to our front door, I hid in the bathroom. There was yelling and I had to come out of hiding to apologize. We became best friends after that. 

    When I would go to Geno's we would play in the large park at the center of the trailer court. This is where I met a lot of other kids in the neighborhood. One of those kids was Sean. Sean's parents were separated and his father, Len, lived in a trailer and his mother, Val, lived in a house down the street, near my house. Val, Rhonda and my mom all became friends as well. Len Sanders' influence on my childhood was one of the core reasons I became a mechanic and have a love of cars. Sean's grandparents, Marshall and Polly, both attended the First Baptist Church we attended. Marshall Sanders was well known for his hand-built cars. He even customized a motorhome that is now on display at The Museum of America in Polson Montana. I really began to grow in Hamilton. 

    Both of my parents' fathers died before I was born, leaving me without grandfathers. My maternal grandmother, Vera, had remarried, but I only met him once or twice. The craziest thing is that when I think of grandpa Harold, I think of Charleston Chew, which was this chewy, sticky candy bar. They lived in Forest Grove Oregon, west of Portland and it must have been something he would give me anytime we were out there visiting. I do remember the mad amount of flora on their property, it was like a rainforest taking over everything. While I didn't have a grandfather, I had a surrogate in one Robert McCluskey. Robert was the man that my parents bought the house from and he was the one who I remember giving us a tour of our new home. He lived directly behind us on another piece of the property. 

    When I would see Mr. McCluskey out in his massive yard, I would tell my mom that I would be over at McCluskey's. He was rather old and appeared frail, especially because he used a cane. He got around quite well on his property with the main house, the garage, a giant root cellar, a trailer that his son lived in and many little outbuildings. In the middle of this compound that everyone in the neighborhood called "Fort McCluskey" was an enormous garden. When he wasn't out on his property he and I would talk through the screen door on his home while he watched Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom or the Lawrence Welk Show. I only learned later on that the reason I was never allowed in the house was that his wife, Nellie, was really ill. Robert McClusky was the grandfather I never had. I remember one day, out in one of the many sheds on the property, I found an unassembled model of Gene Sno's Abominable Sno Man dragster. McCluskey gave me that model and that started my model building in my childhood.  

    My neighborhood was filled with those I befriended and their parents became my parents as well. My life's path was built by surrogate parents and grandparents, and not just my immediate family. A family friend, Bobi Ballard taught me to swim, because I was too terrified to take swim classes in the city pool. I learned to swim in a creek in Wolf Creek Canyon, with a big orange life vest. I also learned to drive on a ranch. Another family that my father knew through his work, had a father, Bob Boggess, who had racehorses and I grew up on that ranch. I learned not only about race horses, but chicken farming too. Raising chickens is disgusting work. I learned to drive the hay truck on that ranch. Later after attending drivers education, I had my permit at age 14. My mom also got her license the same year, in the same car I did. 

    Growing up, we are not raised solely by our parents, there are many, many others who raise us and have that kind of influence on our lives. If that influence is broad, as mine is, you are lucky to have such a fountain of information and knowledge growing up.