Wrestling With Our Pasts

 

                     Wrestling With Our Pasts

Some people, looking back, reconstructing their past, present as their inspiration images of beauty drawn from nature, or the height of human invention in art, thought or architecture. The fount of their inspiration and their motivations to inspire in their own right came from edifying images offered by the Creator or the best that the human spirit can produce. Therefrom they drew their impetus to excel, to achieve, to recreate a world made up of images of the future exploding in their brains. I was drawn to other images that fostered what creative energies I possess.

Time and again I am drawn back to the streetscape I experienced when my imagination took flight. That was when I resolved I would insert, infuse, the hero of my imaginings into the flesh and blood of my own person. Although located where prairie sun and brightness was the rule, the scene through the eyes of my memory was always one of greyness, sootiness, grittiness.

It may be that the reality I believed I was experiencing did not exist for others, that my companions on that journey through time, saw images through glasses entirely different from mine.  But for me, I was passing through time in a place which would forever describe for me the nadir of my existence. It was the place that I swore to myself I would escape. Not only that. I would become a “master of the universe”, performing feats of derring-do.

Our neighborhood at that time was on the downward slope of becoming a slum, in spite of the courageous efforts of some to prettify the street. We dwelt cheek by jowl with industry and dirty retail. On the street in front of our house I fought with the neighborhood boys, intolerant of their Jewish neighbor.

Across the street was a coal and lumber yard and a cold storage facility. Behind that were acres and acres of railyards. Steam engines and moving freight cars offered a backdrop of cacophony day and night. The area was the “happy hunting ground” for the street rabble , of which I was a part, scavenging for bits of coal for our furnaces, and discarded ice for our ice-boxes in those pre-refrigerator days.

Behind our house was the landlord’s junk yard. Our house shared the lot with his. This was my backyard. I considered anything I could find there as accessible to my ownership. It was there I found a sodden copy of the works of one William Shakespeare, destined for pulping, but rescued by me. It provided me with a treasure-house of heroes I could put my name to, and villains to be wary of.

In this working-class neighborhood, with many on welfare, including ourselves, drunken unemployed men beat their wives and children, perhaps out of frustration, and there was more than one suicide. One woman drank hydrogen peroxide.

The children, primarily boys, came together to play under the lights at the street corners on summer evenings, formed gangs to battle rivals, learning from one another about “the birds and the bees”.

Schools were our place of armistice, temporary though it was, from the rigors of our daily lives. School, for me, was about the future when I would be that “master of the universe”. Having failed Grade Two, consequent on the absences caused by continuous childhood diseases, I had the year’s advantage on my classmates, and it showed in my performance. I reveled in my leadership. That may have been where I initially donned my Messiah complex.

Like many others, I expect, I had a rich internal life. There, I was insulated from much was going on around me, even family. I had all these stories I was telling about myself, mirroring the derring-do of the heroes I was reading about. I was a family member, doing the required. But, thinking back, always a book in my hand, I remember how divorced I felt from what was going on around me from a family point of view, even though I did partake of , and absorbed ideas from, the richness of Jewish ritual that we shared.

 I was on the holy course to sainthood that could not be distracted from. Just passing through, thank you, ma’am! My thoughts, unspoken, never articulated, were focused on escape.

In the end, my Dad got a job shoveling coal at the storage on our street, when the plant started making egg powder for Britain, during the War. Without any formal education, he earned an engineering degree through home study. Eventually, he ran the whole plant. Mom used his wages for a down-payment on a house far removed from this street. In changing their own future, they changed mine.

So, what’s the story here?

Where do we draw the inspiration that, looking back, was the source of the drive that carried us forward to tackle the impossibilities in our lives. I have read of other’s stories of inspiration, but they were not there for me. I was driven by the Devil that I saw residing in my backyard, the specter of being trapped into a life I was then leading, no exit available. That was not going to be me, by gum!

I had a friend who felt he should hide his humble past, like it was something shameful. I feel totally the opposite. This was where the spur that drove me forward was created. Humble beginnings are what America is all about. If you are traveling in circles where class matters, you are always hiding something.

Some have accused me of talking only about myself. Should I talk about others whose internals I cannot possibly fully appreciate? I counter that it is only in myself that I can HOPE to find what was the truth for me. And yet, I truly believe that what I share can sometimes unearth parallels for others who wish to examine the truth in their own lives. Doesn’t that make some of this worthwhile for you?