On a quiet street sat a large light green house with a stone porch & white pillars. The bay windows on either side of the front door were crowned with leaded glass panels. Inside the house lived five extraordinary girls with two remarkable parents. They were American born Irish catholics. Within this house every emotion was to be played out & sometimes carried to the extreme. Let's take a peek inside, shall we...
Every family tends to label it's family members...this is how i remember it!!
here's the front porch fashion runway. and that is the inner lining of dad's fedora crowning my head. the front of 918 had two landing strips of concrete that made a great perch to view all the coming and going. and it was a very active household with many visitors, always welcomed warmly.
Elle, the third and middle child, did not know any of her sisters were in the garden with her. She came to a stone wall in the exotic place. Light from the other side of the wall glowed and pulsated, and she was drawn to it. She tried to climb over the wall ... but was repulsed by an invisible force. She tried to go around it ... but she could not find the end of the wall. Finally she found a strange looking, almost invisible key lying in the leaves and moss.
This map is from a site on Wisconsin Indian Tribes that is very informative. There were more tribes in the area, for example the Sauk and Fox in southern Wisconsin. The Menominee were very important in our area, as were the Oneidas and Stockbridge.
Today Dad would have been 98 years old. As Botz has said, he loved having his birthday next door to the Fourth of July and all the fireworks. His cousin Tom had his birthday on the 4th, I believe, so they were cousin-twins.
our father's birthday was the third of july, so naturally as a little boy, he assumed that all the fireworks and sparklers were an extension of his celebration. so did we when we were children at otter lake, firing off roman candles and watching their trajectory over the lake. we lit those flat grey disks and watched them grow into thick ash smokey snake squiggles, held sparklers close to our little faces or drew fire line images in the air like an abstract artist painting wildly. then of course we would eat cake (later it had more candles than cake).
In the picture above I was one one side of Gypsy in the back yard and Robyn was on the other side. I was SO possessive of Gypsy, I cut Robyn off the photo.
Gypsy became a neighborhood icon. My parents did not think dogs needed to be restrained, so she roamed free. Every day she followed the mailman on his route. People whom I have never met fed Gypsy treats all day long, and when she got home to her meal of canned dog food, she really was not terribly interested.
Gypsy was frequently infested with fleas, and we bathed her in the basement in a galvanized wash tub, with flea shampoo. During the bath, fleas would leap off her in cascades. At one time, she got some horrible skin thing, possibly mange, and her skin and fur came off easily in smallish patches. Under the skin were squirmy things EEEUW.
One evening when we were sitting on the front porch, Gypsy came up the steps and someone said maybe she would look better with her ears standing up. I held her ears up and everyone laughed. Gypsy was hurt and humiliated, and left immediately. I felt terrible.
I told Gypsy everything. I would sit with her and tell her of my hopes and dreams, my fears and hurts. She never told my secrets. She was a very affectionate and easy-going dog, and would put up with a lot of silliness from us children.
When I left home, Gypsy stayed with the family. Years later, she was napping in the middle of the street, as was her habit, and a neighbor ran her over with their car. Mom used to tell the story that when the sheriff brought her body home, the men present removed their caps in reverence. Gypsy had gone.
