He's Not My Hero -- He's My Dad: Little Gems

Memphis – Spring and Summer, 1976

In May of 1976, when I had just four weeks left in the seventh grade, Mom decided to secretly take me and Cousin away from Dad. He was drinking pretty heavily then, but she had recently gotten out of a half-way house after having her latest nervous breakdown. So, of course, she was in much better shape to take care of us kids.

For the life of me, I will never understand why she didn’t wait for us to finish the school year. That put us in the third school and our second state for the school year of 1975-76. We were still living in Central Florida when she took us.

The plan to take us divided my loyalties between parents. At the time I wanted to stay with Dad because he was more emotionally balanced and functionally stable; it felt safer with him. Mom had lost it many times and would probably lose it again. But if I was to refuse to go with her or blow the whistle on her plan, then I could become the cause of the next breakdown. That’s a lot for a 12-year-old kid to process and make a decision on.

As sad as it made me to leave Dad, I kept the secret and off we went to Memphis. We packed everything we could into our 1972 Chevrolet Kingswood Estate Station Wagon. It was the three of us and our loyal German Shepherd Dog named Shama.

The drive from Florida to Memphis had its moments. We had little money, so a motel was out of the question. I remember stopping a few times so that she could nap while us kids waited nervously. There was a scary episode while driving at night; we got lost trying to change from one interstate highway to another. I remember Mom getting angry as we drove around in circles trying to find the right ramp. I remember feeling very scared.

I remember Mom losing it over an eye-liner pencil. It had fallen out of her purse into the floor board of the wagon. We were in a parking lot searching for this pencil in the front seat clutter of the car, “that pencil cost me ninety-seven cents! Do you know how long it took for me to save up for that!?” We just stood there meekly saying, “we’re sorry” and hoping she that didn’t take it out on us. I don’t remember if she found the pencil or not.

Another memory of that drive was having only one eight-track tape to listen to the whole way. It was John Denver’s Back Home Again. You would think that I would hate that album, but I still love it to this day and I can still sing most of the songs on it.

Skipping ahead a bit in the timeline, later that summer when we finally set up house in a three-room apartment we had very little to our names. We needed almost all household items, including dinnerware. We were receiving welfare checks and food stamps by then, and so had little money. But what Mom did have was a stack of S&H Green Stamp Saver Books. With these books you could go to an S&H Green Stamp store and redeem the stamps for all sorts of merchandise. Memphis in 1976 had an S&H Green Stamp store. Mom had enough trading stamps to redeem them for a set of Mikasa Avitra dinnerware, a set of flatware, and a few other things.

Mom died about nine months after taking us to Memphis. Those kitchen items ended up with Dad and me when I went to live with him in Houston. Cleaning out Dad’s mobile home did not reveal any treasure, but it did reveal the Mikasa dinnerware and a few other small house hold gems.

Today I went through the two boxes of kitchen things that I saved from his mobile home, intending to clean up the items and donate them to Goodwill. Along with the Mikasa Avitra dinnerware are two turquoise Pyrex Butterprint casserole bowls, one Federal Glass batter bowl and one set of Lefton china canisters. (I used the Internet to discover all these names). The casseroles and batter bowl I rember from my childhood. I have no idea where the china canisters came from.

These little gems don’t have a great value assigned to them, but through the Internet I can get them to collectors who will love them for the nostalgic pieces that they are.