There is something that my children will never know that I knew all too well. It was a portent of ill. It was sign of turmoil in wait. It was the sighting of a lighthouse at a place where it meant you were already upon the shoals. If was the red glow of the old man’s cigarette as he sat on the back steps waiting as I tried to sneak into the house.
My brothers, my sister and then ultimately me we all had boundaries and curfews. There were places we were not to go. There were times when we had to be in. Beyond this we had a fair amount of freedom. But those limits, they were not negotiable things with permeable boundaries. Rules were rules. We were allowed out, we weren’t followed, we weren’t told exactly where we had to be or who we had to be with like the current generation. We just had to be back by a set time and we were not to be seen in certain places.
Do kids these days even understand that concept of freedom? I am not sure because their lives are so penciled in and booked and their lives are so arranged. I just don’t know if they understand the concept of freedom to screw around.
But as I always I digress. If you missed the time line by a few minutes there would be a short conversation when you came into the house. If you missed the mark by a great deal Mom would go to bed but Dad would wait. This was especially true if the car you were driving was seen in a place you were not to have been. This was also true if he heard from a friend (and the old man had lots of friends) that you might have been up to something less than good.
You would try to avoid the confrontation by sneaking into the house. I know my one brother would climb up the roof and come in a second story window. I was not that agile.
For me to get into my yard I had to come through a gate. Each gate had its own nuances. You had to lift that horseshoe shaped latch just right so it wouldn’t scrape or screech metal on metal. You then had to inch in so as not to make any other noise and then you had to replace the latch, quietly, really quietly. You also had to have your key out because jangling keys by the side door, our entrance would alert someone you were sneaking in. You had to get you night vision acclimated because mom would have pulled out different chairs around the dining room table and you dare not flip on the light switch. That mere click would wake them. The chair thing was a form of sobriety test really. Nothing quite like whacking your shin and causing the chair to scretch alerting everyone in the house to the exact hour you were returning.
But hell you didn’t get this far if trouble was in the wind. Coming around the back of the house you knew you had better have your story straight if you smelled even the hint of tobacco in the air. Sometimes the wind brought that warning to you before you saw the red glowing end of the cigarette. It gave you a chance to firm up your story with details to make whatever lie you were going to spin more plausible. But you should have been working on that before you got to the steps. When you saw that light you knew judgment was come to be visited upon you.
I don’t remember any screaming or yelling but I remember a commanding bass voice that would start out a question “Boy, where have…what have…” you get the gist of the questions. He cigarette held down now he would be smelling for the scent of alcohol. He would be gauging your reaction. I don’t think he yelled because he wasn’t supposed to smoke and if Mom came down he would have to explain that. But you knew there would be consequences.
I always thought I was alone in facing this situation until one night in 1975 or 76 I went to see Bruce Springsteen at the MSU Auditorium. He did a cover of “It’s My Life” that began with a long rap about meeting his old man in the darkened kitchen with the glow of the cigarette. Yeah my kids will never know that.
