market, where the smell of the fish market against the far wall slapped you in the face all the way across the room. I liked it when we went downtown together for haircuts, and I could sit on the board straddling the red leather armrests of the baroque barber chair and sneak a peek out the window onto Trade Street where the one-legged man was hawking
Blum’s Almanac
on the sidewalk. And I knew the precise location of every gumball machine in every one of these establishments. Some errands were more fun than others. If we stopped at the hospital, I had to cool my heels in the waiting room, because in the fifties, children weren’t allowed on the wards or even in private rooms. Most of my childhood, at least the parts where childhood overlapped with the adult world, was spent waiting for something to happen—waiting to go someplace in the car, waiting while they visited or shopped, waiting to go home—and the nadir of these powerless, impotent, kicking-the-seat-in-front-of-you moments was the hospital waiting room. My uncle never said anything about making it up to me after one of these visits, but more often than not on the way home he would invent an errand to please me. Sometimes it was the Orange Crush bottling factory, where I could stand as long as anyone would let me and watch the bottles coming down the assembly line, getting filled, then capped, then cased. And at the end there was always a bottle of orange soda for the ride home. Or, better yet, we would detour to the train yards at the north end of town. The age of the steam train, like the era of the tent-show circus, was nearly over by the time I was born, but one line, Norfolk & Western, kept the steam engines running a few years after everyone else had converted to diesel. We would roll up into the lot alongside the tracks, park and then sit for half an hour watchingthe switch engines shuttling boxcars back and forth. The endless changes of direction caused the drive-wheels, big as houses to my eye, to spin and scream where they struggled to gain a purchase on the tracks, while white smoke poured from the smokestacks. My uncle got a flat almost every time he drove into that lot, but he never stopped taking me up there.
Tom and Melita weren’t big readers. They didn’t watch much television, even when they got one (although she did become a devoted fan of
I Love Lucy
late in life). They didn’t go to movies unless it was a Bible story or a movie with a Christian theme, such as
Ben-Hur
. During the day, my aunt kept the radio on for company while she cooked, but while everyone I knew had heardElvis Presley, I had only heard
of
Elvis (until one night while riding in someone else’s car—someone with a car radio; I remember sitting in the backseat when a syrupy voice filled the car with a lachrymose ballad—”That’s Elvis,” someone said, and I laughed, because I had thought he would sound scary). The station my aunt tuned in broadcast a mixture of crooners, lush instrumentals from the Percy Faith Orchestra and the occasional novelty tune, Leroy Anderson’s “The Syncopated Clock” or one of Slim Gaillard’s nonsense numbers, such as “Cement Mixer, Putti, Putti.” Mostly, though, my aunt and uncle just worked. After supper, he would return to his study to handle paperwork, type letters, work on his sermon or record the next day’s dial-a-prayer, a phone service he was most proud of having introduced to Winston-Salem. This was about as space-age as things got in our family in the fifties, when no one ever went anywhere and no one ever had a new car or air-conditioning or any appliance more modern than a steam iron.
Uncle Tom and Aunt Melita drank tea, not coffee. She never learned to drive. They didn’t play cards or go dancing, and except at Sunday dinner and on vacation, they never went out to eat. She was the only woman I ever knew who still darned her husband’s socks. Even their vacations were eccentric. Every summer, for two weeks in
Blum’s Almanac
on the sidewalk. And I knew the precise location of every gumball machine in every one of these establishments. Some errands were more fun than others. If we stopped at the hospital, I had to cool my heels in the waiting room, because in the fifties, children weren’t allowed on the wards or even in private rooms. Most of my childhood, at least the parts where childhood overlapped with the adult world, was spent waiting for something to happen—waiting to go someplace in the car, waiting while they visited or shopped, waiting to go home—and the nadir of these powerless, impotent, kicking-the-seat-in-front-of-you moments was the hospital waiting room. My uncle never said anything about making it up to me after one of these visits, but more often than not on the way home he would invent an errand to please me. Sometimes it was the Orange Crush bottling factory, where I could stand as long as anyone would let me and watch the bottles coming down the assembly line, getting filled, then capped, then cased. And at the end there was always a bottle of orange soda for the ride home. Or, better yet, we would detour to the train yards at the north end of town. The age of the steam train, like the era of the tent-show circus, was nearly over by the time I was born, but one line, Norfolk & Western, kept the steam engines running a few years after everyone else had converted to diesel. We would roll up into the lot alongside the tracks, park and then sit for half an hour watchingthe switch engines shuttling boxcars back and forth. The endless changes of direction caused the drive-wheels, big as houses to my eye, to spin and scream where they struggled to gain a purchase on the tracks, while white smoke poured from the smokestacks. My uncle got a flat almost every time he drove into that lot, but he never stopped taking me up there.
Tom and Melita weren’t big readers. They didn’t watch much television, even when they got one (although she did become a devoted fan of
I Love Lucy
late in life). They didn’t go to movies unless it was a Bible story or a movie with a Christian theme, such as
Ben-Hur
. During the day, my aunt kept the radio on for company while she cooked, but while everyone I knew had heardElvis Presley, I had only heard
of
Elvis (until one night while riding in someone else’s car—someone with a car radio; I remember sitting in the backseat when a syrupy voice filled the car with a lachrymose ballad—”That’s Elvis,” someone said, and I laughed, because I had thought he would sound scary). The station my aunt tuned in broadcast a mixture of crooners, lush instrumentals from the Percy Faith Orchestra and the occasional novelty tune, Leroy Anderson’s “The Syncopated Clock” or one of Slim Gaillard’s nonsense numbers, such as “Cement Mixer, Putti, Putti.” Mostly, though, my aunt and uncle just worked. After supper, he would return to his study to handle paperwork, type letters, work on his sermon or record the next day’s dial-a-prayer, a phone service he was most proud of having introduced to Winston-Salem. This was about as space-age as things got in our family in the fifties, when no one ever went anywhere and no one ever had a new car or air-conditioning or any appliance more modern than a steam iron.
Uncle Tom and Aunt Melita drank tea, not coffee. She never learned to drive. They didn’t play cards or go dancing, and except at Sunday dinner and on vacation, they never went out to eat. She was the only woman I ever knew who still darned her husband’s socks. Even their vacations were eccentric. Every summer, for two weeks in
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