Sundays with Stretchy Pants

My hairstyle might say Leather Tuscadero, but everything else says Michael Jackson, all the way.

My first concert. My first bedroom poster. My first celebrity letter-writing experience. My first fan club. My first cassette bought with my own money. My first reason to stay up late to watch Friday Night Videos. My first reason to carry a portable tape player around with me. My first reason to dance in front of the mirror. My first love.

The first thing I ever won was tickets to the Jackson Victory Tour. Packy’s Pizza in Chesaning had a drawing and very late one night while my sister and I were babysitting, we got the phone call. I don’t know who called, but my sister answered the phone and had to wake me up to tell me. I was too tired to be excited, but I think I shit myself when it finally sunk in. I went to the Silverdome with my dad and I didn’t even mind that it was all the Jacksons. It was the shit, man. I still have this picture disc and it’s never been played:

The first time I scraped together my very own money with the intention of buying something specific besides candy, I bought Off the Wall on cassette. I already had Thriller and Victory and I was at the point where I needed MORE! I had the glove, I had all of the pins, I had a concert t-shirt, I had his new music, I fiercely coveted the red leather “Beat It” jacket and tried it on every time I went to the mall. There was nothing else to buy, so I bought Off the Wall. And I carried my first portable tape player around and played it outside until I knew all the words.  And then I put Thriller back in and danced on a picnic table in front of a window until my neighbor saw me and I got embarrassed.

I remember fighting with my cousin over the words to “Beat It!” She said it said “funny,” when clearly it said “funky.”

I remember watching the news and learning about an old celebrity who had died. I don’t remember who it was, but my parents were both kind of like, “NO! I can’t believe he’s dead!” I very clearly remember that seeing my parents react like that made me realize that Michael Jackson would die some day and it would be on the news and I would be an adult and I would be so sad.

I loved him in the maniacal way that 8-year-old girls love celebrities and I don’t think even my love for Eddie Vedder compares to how I felt about Michael Jackson. Nobody compared to him back then. Even my brother, with his heavy metal leanings, learned how to do the Moonwalk and then taught me and my sister. And today I’m teaching it to my kids.

I had a good perm and stuff,which, believe me, can cover a lot of faults so I understand why there was some confusion by my commenters on yesterday’s post as well as on Facebook. I stand behind my statement that my family and I were a little trashy. It’s ok, there’s nothing wrong with being a little bit trashy and I don’t mean it in a mean way at all. We didn’t have a cess pool in our backyard, but let me count the other ways in which we were trashy so you can all agree with me:

1. We didn’t have a phone even though my dad worked at the phone company.

My brother ran the phone bill up talking to his girlfriend. His Ecuadorian girlfriend. She had been an exchange student and when she moved back to Ecuador, my brother called her a million times until we owed $500 or something like that. That’s $500 in 1987 money. This was pretty much right exactly when my dad moved out. Some people might say it was my brother’s fault my dad moved out, but I won’t go that far. Anyway, we owed my father’s employer $500 and we couldn’t pay it. And, in fact, never paid it. That’s a little embarrassing. And trashy.

Some time after we moved to the apartment, my mom decided to just see what would happen if she tried to get a phone in her name.  I think she thought that because she and my dad weren’t divorced, the phone company wouldn’t allow it, but they did! Anyway, she didn’t tell me her plan, but there was a phone attached to the wall in the apartment and one day, it started ringing! I’m not kidding when I tell you I just about shit myself with joy. I was 15 by then, and had been using  payphones for at least 3 years.

2. I thought the Rathskellar was a restaurant, not a bar. It happens.

After my parents separated, my mom spent a lot of time at the Rathskellar, where I would occasionally meet her for food and drunken conversation. Her sister was a waitress there and sometimes we would get free drinks and snacks. This was before the days of the computers in restaurants. God bless the “human error” aspect of keeping a bar tab. Anyway, I always thought of the Rathskellar as a restaurant and it wasn’t until I was much older that Bryan heard me refer to it as a restaurant and he said, “That was a bar, not a restaurant. Just because you could get nachos there, doesn’t make it a restaurant.” I said, “Well, we always ate there when we were kids.” And he said, “Were there ever any other kids eating there after 5 pm? No? That’s because it was a bar.” Know-it-all. I still think this point is debatable, but because most parents wouldn’t have taken their kids to the Rathskellar, I will cop to the fact that the fact that it was my favorite restaurant as a kid might add to the trashiness.

3. At a certain point, none of my friends were allowed to spend time at my house anymore.

My friends’ parents always said, “No, you can’t go Abby’s house, but she can come over here.” There’s a lot of reasons for that, but I think the very last time I had a friend over was when Jenny V. came over and her parents came to pick her up earlier than expected. We lived in a 2-story house in town (walking distance to the Rathskellar of course). When my dad moved away, we rented the upstairs out. At this point, one of my brother’s friends was living there and he happened to be having a party. Mr. and Mrs. V. came to pick Jenny up and accidentally went to the door that lead to the upstairs instead of where my mom, sister, and I actually lived. (Had they gone to the correct door, they would have seen a note, written on a paper plate and shut into the door that said, “At the Rathskellar!” which, in their very stable minds, maybe wouldn’t have been any better than what they found when they went to the upstairs apartment). So they went upstairs to look for 12 or 13-year-old Jenny and there were all of these teenagers and maybe some young 20-somethings drinking and smoking and probably getting high. Mrs. V might have flipped out a little bit and I’m pretty sure my sister accidentally called her a bitch for harshing her mellow or something like that. My sister feels bad about it, but she said, “I might have been a little tipsy,” which totally makes sense. After that, Jenny couldn’t come over anymore.

3a. We used to write notes to each other on paper plates and shut the paper plate in the door. That’s low on the trashiness spectrum, but still. At any given moment, you could find a paper plate note shut in the door that said, “At the Rathskellar!” or “Chicken patties in the freezer!” or “Do the dishes!” or “Stop taking my wine coolers!”

3b. Our upstairs tenant grew pot in my baby cradle.

It wasn’t the cradle that I used as a baby, it was a cradle that my parents made together when they had a folk-art business in the 80s. It was wooden and it had my name stenciled on it. And it was a perfect spot to grow weed. Apparently.

4. One of our porch steps had a great big hole in it, which we covered with a couple of pieces of wood (that’s not the trashy part). One of our porch steps had a great big hole in it, which we covered with a couple of pieces of wood, and that’s where I hid my wine coolers (it gets better). One of our porch steps had a great big hole in it, which we covered with a couple of pieces of wood, and that’s where I hid my wine coolers when I was 12.

*cough* Moving on.

5. I liked Debbie Gibson. (Maybe that doesn’t prove anything, but it’s still embarrassing).

6. I used to drive our Chevette to school when I was 14 or 15.

By then, we lived in that apartment up above the stores and my mom worked at one of those stores, so she never needed the car during the day. I made a bunch of copies of the keys to the Chevette so every time I got caught and my mom told me to “Hand over the keys! All of them!” I could safely hand her 3 copies without running out. Trashy, but clever. Maybe the most clever thing ever!

7. Our family car was a Chevette.

You guys, I could go on and on, I swear. You have no choice but to agree with me. I had a good perm that may have covered up the smell, but I was a bit trashy.

I stole this picture from flickr user oldbrushes. I asked permission, but I haven’t heard back. If she wants me to take it down, I will, so enjoy it while you can.

When I was just a wee little girl, waiting for the school bus in the wee hours of the crispy fall mornings, far off in the distance I could hear the sound of Farmer Peet’s wee little pigs squealing at the slaughterhouse. At least, that’s what my brother and sister told me I was listening to. It was definitely the sound of pigs squealing, but I don’t know if they were actually being slaughtered at that moment in time.

On a related note, pork is my favorite meat.

The pigs were at the Peet Packing Company, which is no longer around thanks, in part, to Denny McLain and his thieving, but I very rarely eat pork without remembering that sound. It’s oddly soothing, like jingle bells at Christmas. If you lived in Chesaning and had a job that wasn’t on the family farm or in one of the family-owned shops and restaurants back then, it’s very likely that you worked for Farmer Peet’s. Or GM. Or maybe you were a teacher, I don’t know. My dad worked at the local phone company and my mom worked at one of the family-owned shops. Bryan’s dad worked at GM and his mom worked at the same shop that my mom did, but lots of my friends’ parents worked at Peet’s. Anyway, it was a huge bummer when they closed.

Chesaning was lovely when I was young, and sometimes I think I would kill a person in order to have a blueberry muffin from the Heritage House. Why were they so yummy, you guys? Because I was white trash, I never ate them at the Heritage House. I ate them at the Heritage House’s basement bar, The Rathskellar, or at the Carriage Shoppe, which was an antique shop behind the Heritage House.

From the time I was 12-15, we didn’t have a phone, which put my popularity at risk, so instead of reading books and embracing my solitude, I walked to the nearest payphone to be in the loop with my friends. That phone was at a “mini mall” called Market Street Square, which was next to the Heritage House/Rathskellar/Carriage Shoppe lot. On the way to the phone, I would stop at the Carriage Shoppe and buy one of those magic muffins for 50 cents! I would have paid a whole dollar. Besides the great payphone, Market Street Square had a bunch of cute shops and a yummy deli, none of which are there anymore. Well, it looks like Market Street Square is still there, but now it’s a church and Christian bookstore, with plans for a deli and resale shop to be added later. But it’s not the mini mall from my childhood. And I think my sister told me that the local phone company took the payphone out of there.

The pigs, payphone, and muffins from my childhood might be gone, but the dominant sounds from my teenhood aren’t. By the time I was a teenager, my parents were divorced and my mom and I lived in an apartment up above a row of shops and bars in downtown Chesaning. Sometimes on summer nights, we would wake up to the sound of drunk people leaving Dave’s Bar and Farmer’s Inn after last call. Drunk people are funny. One time we saw one get hit by a car. He wasn’t hurt, so it was extra funny. He just kind of bounced off the car and then yelled at it as it drove away. We saw a couple of fist fights, but mostly we just eavesdropped on drunken, “I love you soooooo much!” conversations. Farmer’s Inn isn’t there anymore, but Dave’s still is. Dave’s will never die. Never!

During the daytime, there were (usually) no drunks for entertainment, so I had to pass the time by watching the security camera feed from one of the shops underneath our apartment. Do I have to tell you that this shop is no longer there? I didn’t think so. The shop had a camera in the make-up aisle and our tv would pick up the feed. I didn’t have cable so my friends and I would naturally watch the security camera channel sometimes. Or a lot. One lucky, lucky day I saw a girl who was a year ahead of me in school browsing the Bonne Bell display. I was just about to turn it off when I saw her turn her head to the left and right to make sure no one was watching her. That piqued my interest. I thought I was totally going to see her steal a Dr. Pepper-flavored Lip Smacker or something, but she surprised me by picking her nose and then her butt in quick succession. It. Was. Awesome. Way better than cable. Unfortunately, I still didn’t have a phone by then so I had to run to the nearest payphone to call all of my friends and tell them. If that happened today, I totally would have tweeted it. Well, I probably would have missed it because I would have been watching actual tv shows instead of security cameras. Even white trash kids get to have cable and high-speed internet these days. Not like when I was young and only the rich kids had it.

Maybe all of the landmarks from my childhood are gone, but I still have my memories. And Dave’s bar. When one or both of those go under, then it will be like I was never even born.

It’s the little touches that make a house a home and I say the graffiti stays. After all, does your house have graffiti? No? How sad for you. I also think the weight bench is a nice touch and is in keeping with the style of the unfinished part of the basement.

I added some more pictures, if anyone is still interested in the snoozy story of our house. I’m still painting stuff. I don’t have pics of the girls’ rooms all put together and lovely yet because I haven’t done the dots and peace symbols yet. Soon!

Two of my cousins and my sister-in-law (the one who is always a bad influence on me at Easter) are coming to stay with us this weekend because we’re all running the Capital City Half Marathon together. I’m excited about that. My sister-in-law’s name is Tracy and my sister’s name is TracEy. Is that confusing to you? My kids call my sister “Aunt Tracey” and they call my sister-in-law “Different Aunt Tracey.”  They don’t know how right they are. TracEy was going to come down for the race, too, but she is cursed with an ultra-talented daughter who is the lead in her high school’s production of Little Shop of Horrors, which happens to open this weekend. My niece is kind of a big deal. I’m going to buy a copy of the dvd and everybody who visits me over the summer will have to watch it over and over.

One more thing, after I posted that picture of the Pacer with the chick standing next to it, somebody said something about all women in the 70s looking like that, so I want to give you a clearer picture of my mother during the late 70s/early 80s. This is exactly what she looked like, down to the roller skates:

She looked so much like Linda Ronstadt that I would stare at that album cover wondering how in the world they decided to put my mother on the cover. Was there a contest? Did they just see her at the roller rink and snap a picture? And why didn’t they just put this Linda Ronstadt person on the cover? I thought maybe it was because she was ugly and they didn’t want her on the cover. But then I thought about the albums in my dad’s collection with Garfunkel on the cover, and I decided ugliness must not be an issue. It was so perplexing, but I never asked anyone about it and it was years before I realized that my mom was not a famous album cover model. I’m quick like that.

It’s spring break around here for my nieces. Truthfully, my kids have been on spring break since the end of February. That’s how it always goes with us. We take a huge break from doing math from the end of winter until about May and then we get back into the swing of things. Sometimes I have them go to Quizlet.com and play games there, but not while their cousins are here. For sure.

I posted some pictures of my messy, messy, nothing is where it actually goes house. It’s extra messy because of the sleepover/spring break/let’s not make the children do chores attitude that’s going on this week. It felt false to kick the blankets/stuffed animals/toys out of the way before snapping pics like this:

That’s what the basement looks like every morning this week. Oh well. At least there are some sweet pictures like this to maybe redeem me:

How could I make these sweet girls clean up their bedding? What kind of a monster would I be? They’re obviously chillin’.

So I made a couple of pork roasts in the crockpot the other day and turned them into shredded pork bbq. It was yummy, but that’s not the point. Certain foods in my life are tied to memories of certain people. I don’t want to say that the food is the most important part of the memory and the person is just secondary, but it seems like my most vivid memories of people have to do with food.

Every single time I make a pork roast, I think of my ex-stepdad, Marc. When I was a junior in high school, he and my mom got married. Not only were we able to move out of our apartment up above Dave’s bar, but this marriage came with a Sam’s Club card and a dude that was a great cook. (Yes, those facts were more important to me than the fact that my mom was also able to get rid of that perpetually muffler-less Chevette in favof the Beretta of Hotness.) After 7 years eating frozen chicken patties, chili, spaghetti, canned ravioli, steak ums, and the like, I couldn’t believe it when I came home from a greuling softball practice with my friend Katie, “starving for death” as Maya would say and Marc had a pork roast in the crockpot. A pork roast with onions, potatoes, carrots and special seasonings. I instantly started drooling, asked him what it was, and then proceeded to eat half the thing over the kitchen sink. With my hands. Like an orphan. I’m pretty sure I grunted and hunched to warn the other animals not to touch my food. I can’t speak for Katie, but “scarfing it down” doesn’t even begin to describe what I was doing. I know for sure that I didn’t even take the time to put my softball glove down. It was still clutched in my armpit. I was starving for death and there was real food. And my stepdad is the type of person who doesn’t know you love him unless you’re eating his food. Especially if you’re eating it over the sink, straight out of the pot, which, as anybody knows, is the best way to eat food.