My Childhood, Continued
Nov. 17th, 2006 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
perzephone
I have a small amount of time this morning, so I'll probably keep it short...
To be honest, I don't have a good memory about when I was little. It's more like skippy, choppy scenes from some home video or something. My first strong memory is of a townhouse we had in Rowland Heights, CA. There was a game show on t.v. called 'High Rollers' and in my childhood mind, 'Rowland Heights' became 'High Rollers', so forever after, that's where we lived. High Rollers, CA.
Three themes were prevalent during my childhood - ghosts, talking animals and psychic phenomenon. My earliest encounter with a psychic echo was the first visit I made to the High Rollers townhouse. There were a couple of concrete steps, and a narrow wooden door with a half-moon shaped stained-glass window above it. As I was standing in front of the door, a dark man burst through it, ran through me & I began to have hysterics. I kept screaming about 'the man in the door'! My dad was a little more superstitious than my mom, but even he didn't fully understand why I was pitching a fit. Both my parents thought that maybe I had walked through a spiderweb or maybe the wood pattern formed a scary face only I could imagine. They had a hard time getting me through said door. I guess as the house's memory was constantly replaying, I got used to it. I don't really know for sure, though.
When you first walked through the doorway, the home had a foyer of sorts. There was a wide central landing with steps leading to it, and it split off in a 'V' of stairs leading to bedrooms at the top. Under one side of the stairs was a closet with a sliding door that my dad eventually turned into a book closet for my mother. Every so often, a woman in a white gown would come out of the left bedroom, fall down the stairs and the 'man in black' would run down the stairs behind her & run out the door. Even if the door was closed. What I had seen was this echo in motion - the man running through the door. My dad saw it but never talked about it much. The home had other entities, though, and months before we moved, my dad would never sit inside when he was alone. He kept a workshop in the garage, & would only go inside the house when either my sisters came home when they were staying with us, or when my mom would come home. The ghosts messed with him. My dad was a huge freakin' guy. He was 6'6", an absolute bear of a man - and for him to admit that he couldn't go in the house by himself longer than to get a cup of coffee or a glass of iced tea or use the bathroom was almost funny. Summer heat, Winter chill - there sat my dad in the garage like an exile. There was a Ouija board that was passed between us, my sisters' home with their dad in Vegas, & my cousins' (Penny, Pammy & Danny) home. It had a bad reputation for being able to call in evil spirits. Thinking about it, they weren't exactly 'evil', but probably mean-spirited, eager for attention & willing to take advantage of the unwary - exactly the description of teenagers. (The Ouija board ended up in the garbage because I stopped decorating for Samhain when we moved into the House of the Scorpions here, and Jody was still more than a little afraid of it & didn't want it).
Well, my parents kept the Ouija board, along with other games & jigsaw puzzles & stuff, in the book closet under the stairs. One night my cousin Penny was over visiting (she honestly loved my mother - I'm glad someone did) went into the book closet for one reason or another - and got stuck in there. She said the light went out & she thought my dad was playing a mean trick on her by holding the door shut behind her. When she started pounding on the door, screaming & crying, my dad went over & slid the door open to find Penny huddled on the floor and every book in neat stacks on the floor around her, with the Ouija board displayed prominently on top. She wasn't in there long enough to have done it, especially not legitimately in the dark because the bulb had burned out... The closet door had no locking or latching mechanism. I think my dad took the door out shortly thereafter. I used to hide in that book closet & talk to someone. Sometimes our cat would come in & we'd all have an interesting little chat.
This was basically the mid-70's, and there had been a resurgence of interest in the occult in America at that time. People (like my sister Jody) were learning about Satanism, movies like The Omen & The Exorcist were out in theaters, there was a lot of talk about Black Sabbath & Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page making deals with the devil... in other words, I wish I had been old enough to really enjoy it. My mom kept a rich, full library of books about the occult, psychic powers, UFO's, cryptozoology, things by Charles Forte & H. P. Lovecraft. I learned to read with Ray Bradbury... and Stephen King. My parents were not restrictive when it came to reading material or what I saw in movies & t.v. They answered questions as best they could. I was considered a 'gifted' child, and considering both my parents were high-school drop-outs, that must have been a challenge - that and me being completely clumsy. My mom was psychic - we all knew it - she saw fetches, had prophetic dreams, knew exactly what every single child was doing at any moment (even though she may have been using a communication system for keeping tabs on us with neighbors to rival Marie LaVeau's...). She could be creepy when she wanted to - but she denied everything. My dad was Cajun by experience if not by birth, and he filled me up with Voodoo, hoodoo & loup garous. A lot of shows on t.v. were about vampires, werewolves, there was 'Project Bluebook' & the 'Cliffhanger' series featuring vampires in the Old West. I got to read a lot of Greek & Roman mythology - Hel, I read any kind of mythology I could get my hands on. I distinctly remember a well-illustrated book of Greek mythology. The centerpiece was the story of Persephone & Hades. The picture was Hades in His chariot, drawn by pitch-black horses. Persephone had white skin, black hair and a red dress on... and in her hand was the pomegranate. I wish I could remember the name of the book - it was something like 'The Big Golden Book of Greek Myths' or some French sounding name started with a 'D' and an apostrophe. I used to make altars to Poseidon with my plastic horses. I used to make offerings of food (especially pomegranates) to the various deities I had heard of. I think I was lucky - my dad was from a strict German Lutheran family & he had hated going to church three or four times a week. My mother's family was southern Baptist & Pentecostals. She had also turned her back on her religious history. My parents were also ex-hippies - they sat around naked a lot. They were tolerant of my oldest sister's studies & membership in the Church of Satan, right up until she left a rotting cow tongue in her room. Jody gave me my first pentagram - it was ivory-colored ceramic & I think it was actually an ashtray.
My parents were also tolerant of my strange behavior when it came to animals. Earlier than the High Rollers house, when we lived in Fontana, CA, I brought my dad a rattlesnake. He said it was longer than I was tall. I had it by the tail & it was holding itself up off the floor, just looking around. I brought it to him with childish glee, saying, "Lookit the urm, daddy!" (Translation: "look at the worm, father".) My dad, trying not to scare me or panic the snake, encouraged me to return the snake to the outdoors. I finally did take the snake outside, after showing the snake around the entire house (causing my dad a minor panic attack as he thought about 'dog encounter', 'cat encounter', 'oh god her mom's gonna be home soon') & telling it about my whole 2 years of life. My dad regretfully killed the snake with a shovel & kept the rattles. After that, I spent a brief period of time where I was terrified of worms and snakes, but it wore off probably not too long before we moved to Washington.
We had a series of cats & dogs in my early life. A large black husky named Nero taught me to walk. I'd grab onto his side & he'd pull me up & walk me around the house. I was his puppy & woe anyone who tried to spank me. They had to lock him & his successor, Nikita, outside to discipline me or do things likely to make me cry (baths, brushing my hair, telling me 'no', etc). The dogs we had were all fiercely protective of me. It was Nikki's downfall - he was watching over me as I played ball with a neighbor boy. The boy rolled the ball to me & it stopped a little short of my reach. When the boy made a sudden lunge to retrieve the ball, Nikki jumped over me & bit the boy in the face. Everyone said he was ok til he was exposed to DDT by local crop dusting - after he'd been poisoned, he became obsessive & possessive of me. After the biting incident, he was put down. When I was under 8 or so, I could talk to animals. We had cats - DC(short for Damned Cat!), a solid black cat who wasn't exactly a cat... He was pure evil, but he loved me. He would take showers with me. D.C. had earned his name as a kitten - he would pounce on sleeping faces when he saw REM's. He would also hide in the rhododendron bushes lining our sidewalk & when an unsuspecting person would walk by, he'd run up their legs & back & take a leap off their shoulder or head, inciting cries of "That damned cat again!" DC was struck by a car, and a day or too later, a solid white cat walked into our house & sat on me like he owned the place. I named him 'Ears' - he was almost an albino, except for pink ears & nose & big blue eyes. Ears was a kinder, gentler version of DC. We would sit, forehead to forehead, for hours and tell each other stories. DC's were always scary, but Ears knew about other animals. (Ok, here is where I stop. I'm fucking crying over dead cats).
To be honest, I don't have a good memory about when I was little. It's more like skippy, choppy scenes from some home video or something. My first strong memory is of a townhouse we had in Rowland Heights, CA. There was a game show on t.v. called 'High Rollers' and in my childhood mind, 'Rowland Heights' became 'High Rollers', so forever after, that's where we lived. High Rollers, CA.
Three themes were prevalent during my childhood - ghosts, talking animals and psychic phenomenon. My earliest encounter with a psychic echo was the first visit I made to the High Rollers townhouse. There were a couple of concrete steps, and a narrow wooden door with a half-moon shaped stained-glass window above it. As I was standing in front of the door, a dark man burst through it, ran through me & I began to have hysterics. I kept screaming about 'the man in the door'! My dad was a little more superstitious than my mom, but even he didn't fully understand why I was pitching a fit. Both my parents thought that maybe I had walked through a spiderweb or maybe the wood pattern formed a scary face only I could imagine. They had a hard time getting me through said door. I guess as the house's memory was constantly replaying, I got used to it. I don't really know for sure, though.
When you first walked through the doorway, the home had a foyer of sorts. There was a wide central landing with steps leading to it, and it split off in a 'V' of stairs leading to bedrooms at the top. Under one side of the stairs was a closet with a sliding door that my dad eventually turned into a book closet for my mother. Every so often, a woman in a white gown would come out of the left bedroom, fall down the stairs and the 'man in black' would run down the stairs behind her & run out the door. Even if the door was closed. What I had seen was this echo in motion - the man running through the door. My dad saw it but never talked about it much. The home had other entities, though, and months before we moved, my dad would never sit inside when he was alone. He kept a workshop in the garage, & would only go inside the house when either my sisters came home when they were staying with us, or when my mom would come home. The ghosts messed with him. My dad was a huge freakin' guy. He was 6'6", an absolute bear of a man - and for him to admit that he couldn't go in the house by himself longer than to get a cup of coffee or a glass of iced tea or use the bathroom was almost funny. Summer heat, Winter chill - there sat my dad in the garage like an exile. There was a Ouija board that was passed between us, my sisters' home with their dad in Vegas, & my cousins' (Penny, Pammy & Danny) home. It had a bad reputation for being able to call in evil spirits. Thinking about it, they weren't exactly 'evil', but probably mean-spirited, eager for attention & willing to take advantage of the unwary - exactly the description of teenagers. (The Ouija board ended up in the garbage because I stopped decorating for Samhain when we moved into the House of the Scorpions here, and Jody was still more than a little afraid of it & didn't want it).
Well, my parents kept the Ouija board, along with other games & jigsaw puzzles & stuff, in the book closet under the stairs. One night my cousin Penny was over visiting (she honestly loved my mother - I'm glad someone did) went into the book closet for one reason or another - and got stuck in there. She said the light went out & she thought my dad was playing a mean trick on her by holding the door shut behind her. When she started pounding on the door, screaming & crying, my dad went over & slid the door open to find Penny huddled on the floor and every book in neat stacks on the floor around her, with the Ouija board displayed prominently on top. She wasn't in there long enough to have done it, especially not legitimately in the dark because the bulb had burned out... The closet door had no locking or latching mechanism. I think my dad took the door out shortly thereafter. I used to hide in that book closet & talk to someone. Sometimes our cat would come in & we'd all have an interesting little chat.
This was basically the mid-70's, and there had been a resurgence of interest in the occult in America at that time. People (like my sister Jody) were learning about Satanism, movies like The Omen & The Exorcist were out in theaters, there was a lot of talk about Black Sabbath & Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page making deals with the devil... in other words, I wish I had been old enough to really enjoy it. My mom kept a rich, full library of books about the occult, psychic powers, UFO's, cryptozoology, things by Charles Forte & H. P. Lovecraft. I learned to read with Ray Bradbury... and Stephen King. My parents were not restrictive when it came to reading material or what I saw in movies & t.v. They answered questions as best they could. I was considered a 'gifted' child, and considering both my parents were high-school drop-outs, that must have been a challenge - that and me being completely clumsy. My mom was psychic - we all knew it - she saw fetches, had prophetic dreams, knew exactly what every single child was doing at any moment (even though she may have been using a communication system for keeping tabs on us with neighbors to rival Marie LaVeau's...). She could be creepy when she wanted to - but she denied everything. My dad was Cajun by experience if not by birth, and he filled me up with Voodoo, hoodoo & loup garous. A lot of shows on t.v. were about vampires, werewolves, there was 'Project Bluebook' & the 'Cliffhanger' series featuring vampires in the Old West. I got to read a lot of Greek & Roman mythology - Hel, I read any kind of mythology I could get my hands on. I distinctly remember a well-illustrated book of Greek mythology. The centerpiece was the story of Persephone & Hades. The picture was Hades in His chariot, drawn by pitch-black horses. Persephone had white skin, black hair and a red dress on... and in her hand was the pomegranate. I wish I could remember the name of the book - it was something like 'The Big Golden Book of Greek Myths' or some French sounding name started with a 'D' and an apostrophe. I used to make altars to Poseidon with my plastic horses. I used to make offerings of food (especially pomegranates) to the various deities I had heard of. I think I was lucky - my dad was from a strict German Lutheran family & he had hated going to church three or four times a week. My mother's family was southern Baptist & Pentecostals. She had also turned her back on her religious history. My parents were also ex-hippies - they sat around naked a lot. They were tolerant of my oldest sister's studies & membership in the Church of Satan, right up until she left a rotting cow tongue in her room. Jody gave me my first pentagram - it was ivory-colored ceramic & I think it was actually an ashtray.
My parents were also tolerant of my strange behavior when it came to animals. Earlier than the High Rollers house, when we lived in Fontana, CA, I brought my dad a rattlesnake. He said it was longer than I was tall. I had it by the tail & it was holding itself up off the floor, just looking around. I brought it to him with childish glee, saying, "Lookit the urm, daddy!" (Translation: "look at the worm, father".) My dad, trying not to scare me or panic the snake, encouraged me to return the snake to the outdoors. I finally did take the snake outside, after showing the snake around the entire house (causing my dad a minor panic attack as he thought about 'dog encounter', 'cat encounter', 'oh god her mom's gonna be home soon') & telling it about my whole 2 years of life. My dad regretfully killed the snake with a shovel & kept the rattles. After that, I spent a brief period of time where I was terrified of worms and snakes, but it wore off probably not too long before we moved to Washington.
We had a series of cats & dogs in my early life. A large black husky named Nero taught me to walk. I'd grab onto his side & he'd pull me up & walk me around the house. I was his puppy & woe anyone who tried to spank me. They had to lock him & his successor, Nikita, outside to discipline me or do things likely to make me cry (baths, brushing my hair, telling me 'no', etc). The dogs we had were all fiercely protective of me. It was Nikki's downfall - he was watching over me as I played ball with a neighbor boy. The boy rolled the ball to me & it stopped a little short of my reach. When the boy made a sudden lunge to retrieve the ball, Nikki jumped over me & bit the boy in the face. Everyone said he was ok til he was exposed to DDT by local crop dusting - after he'd been poisoned, he became obsessive & possessive of me. After the biting incident, he was put down. When I was under 8 or so, I could talk to animals. We had cats - DC(short for Damned Cat!), a solid black cat who wasn't exactly a cat... He was pure evil, but he loved me. He would take showers with me. D.C. had earned his name as a kitten - he would pounce on sleeping faces when he saw REM's. He would also hide in the rhododendron bushes lining our sidewalk & when an unsuspecting person would walk by, he'd run up their legs & back & take a leap off their shoulder or head, inciting cries of "That damned cat again!" DC was struck by a car, and a day or too later, a solid white cat walked into our house & sat on me like he owned the place. I named him 'Ears' - he was almost an albino, except for pink ears & nose & big blue eyes. Ears was a kinder, gentler version of DC. We would sit, forehead to forehead, for hours and tell each other stories. DC's were always scary, but Ears knew about other animals. (Ok, here is where I stop. I'm fucking crying over dead cats).
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no subject
Date: 2006-11-18 04:12 pm (UTC)I dunno. I didnt think it really mattered either what I was saying. I had diarrhea of the mouth about the past and for whatever reason, I just needed to talk about it..
Memories...
Date: 2006-11-18 04:20 pm (UTC)