Oh, Beautiful: An American Family in the 20th Century (33 page)

But one day, Dad spotted one fresh accident too many. He could contain his revulsion no longer. “It’s the dog or me!” he gave Mom an ultimatum.

Taco knew exactly where he stood with everyone, and he knew exactly what he had to do. He hopped up on the master bed, detected the strong eucalyptus scent of Dad’s hair cream, and peed directly onto Dad’s pillow, completely missing Mom’s. Taco knew his days were numbered, but he got in at least one last good shot.

And then Mom gave him away.

Dad was beside himself. He could break record albums. He could battle Satan. He could banish dogs. But none of that solved any of his real problems. If anything, every salvo he fired seemed only to backfire against him.

We argued about music. We argued about Genie. We argued about Geri. We argued about Taco, even as Mary Jo surreptitiously supplied him gourmet morsels of beef.

“
Why can’t we have peace in this house?” Dad pleaded with us to stop arguing. “Our original family name of ‘Godzisz’ in Polish means ‘to agree.’”

But the more he argued for agreement, the more we disagreed with him. The more he tried to mend the family fabric, the more intent we seemed on shredding it.

To Dad, all hell was breaking loose. The family once so painstakingly shielded from the corrupting influences of the outside world had become abruptly assaulted by nefarious forces from within: Stan’s mildly suicidal tendencies, Genie’s resolutely rebellious tendencies, Geri’s undeniably psychotic tendencies, and Mom’s disruptively independent tendencies.

Everything Dad had worked so hard to build throughout nearly 20 years of marriage seemed to be collapsing all around him at the age of 45, leaving him on shaky ground at work, his children exposed to dangers in their home and at their schools, and his marriage all but buckling under the strain. He knew he had to shore up the greatest structural weakness in the sanctuary he had built. And that weakness, by far, was Geri’s illness. All he could do was try harder to reason with her and pray harder to God.

Neither seemed to listen.

8. Heartland

Ironically, Mom’s best answer to the family problems became the town that she had fled in a hurry after high school: Mason City, Iowa. Since the death of Grandpa Di Gregorio there in late 1966, Mom felt inexorably drawn to the town, if only to visit her father’s grave, to pray at his side, to seek his guidance, and to feel his reply. But she had other motivations, too. During the summers of the late 1960s, when all hell was breaking loose at home in California, Mom brought us to the pastoral serenity of Iowa. If Dad could take the time off work and drive us, great. If not, Mom took the rest of us by train.

We chugged over the Rockies on the Union Pacific or the Rock Island Line and beheld the bison grazing across the plains. We gazed upon the oceans of corn, aware that we, too, would soon be swimming in the silk tassels, sacking the ears by the dozen, and selling them on the sidewalk as fast as our aunts could pick and shuck them. Mom hoped that the two-day train rides that took us halfway across the country would take us even further away psychologically.

We set up summer camp at the big farmhouse with Grandma Di Gregorio and Aunt Elsie. By then, Grandma was in her seventies. Although she rarely left the house, she often stood just behind the glass-paned door on the front porch, observing the action in the garden with a palpable yearning. As she watched her daughters hoe, weed, sweat, plod through row after row of muddy earth, and maneuver wheelbarrows overflowing with produce, she pressed her lips together and furrowed her brows, as though she didn’t entirely approve of what she saw happening out there—and just wanted to get her own hands dirty.

But Aunt Elsie had become the undisputed boss of the house and garden. She bore little resemblance to the sickly nine-year-old girl who had narrowly escaped death from tonsillitis. In her mid-forties, Aunt Elsie seemed invincible. She stood barely five feet tall, but she was sturdy as a rock. Her solid arms, stomach, thighs, and calves formed a bulwark beneath her elfin eyes and petite mouth. A supremely self-sufficient and self-satisfied source of energy, she was the only one of the seven Di Gregorio children who never married. She loved her job of driving trucks at the packinghouse and using her powerful Farindola hands to do the men’s jobs better than the men. She loved working in her garden with its corn, tomatoes, string beans, asparagus, garlic, peppers, cantaloupes, zucchinis, and strawberries. She loved drying and grinding up her fiery hot red peppers and canning her vegetables to keep her warm and happy through the winter and beyond. She loved to see her industrial-size freezers in the basement brimming with bricks of meats from the packinghouse and with gallons of fudge swirl ice cream from Grupp’s Food Store around the corner. She loved her perpetually replenished supply of fresh T-bone steaks that she broiled and bathed in butter and garlic cloves fresh from the garden. What else could a woman need? Aunt Elsie never met a man who could make her life any happier than it already was.

Her profound contentment with life seemed to sprout directly from the rich black soil of her garden. Like many folks in Mason City, Aunt Elsie seemed to be so satisfied with her share of nature and what came from it that she felt little craving for anything else. Both at the packinghouse and in the garden, she thought of her work as a privilege: to provide sustenance for all mankind. She seemed to relish everything about her life and demanded little more than to make the most of each day.

She hardly knew the meaning of expectations. If she had one expectation, it was for a good next meal. Yet she never took any good next meal for granted. “Oh, GAWD, that’s delicious!” she swung her head and wiggled her butt from side to side. She was so proud of her latest T-bone drenched in garlic butter. “Great balls o’ fire!” she hollered in delight. Aunt Elsie loved to holler in delight.

“
Aunt Elsie,” Stan asked her one day as they slogged through the muddy garden. “Why are you always so happy?”

She thought for two seconds. “I’m single!” she hollered.

Aunt Elsie made Stan laugh.

Stan thrived in Aunt Elsie’s world. He went to work repairing the old electrical wiring around the house and installing push-button light switches so that Grandma would never again have to strain in the dark to reach for those ridiculous strings that dangled heartlessly from the light fixtures situated in the middle of the ceiling over each room. He dug a trench from the basement fuse box to the garage and installed floodlights above the garage and porch so that everyone could maneuver outside in the dark without tripping over the ecstatic dogs. He checked out books from the library and talked to electricians at the hardware store to make sure he was doing things correctly. He fixed the faucets and the toilets. He toiled in the garden. No matter what he did, he went far beyond any expectations of Aunt Elsie. The more thrilled she became with his exploits, the more work he found for himself to do. As far as she was concerned, nothing he could do was short of brilliant.

“
That’s my boy,” Aunt Elsie crowed.

Mom didn’t argue.

Stan grew up in Iowa, because he could escape there from thinking about Vietnam. In California, everyone knew far too well that the country was at war. Soldiers walked around in uniforms, if they were brazen enough to risk the derision of passersby. Television news crews covered the protests at local universities and military bases. But on Iowa television, the newscasters discussed agriculture and the weather. The prime time hit was the “Hee Haw” country-western variety show. And there were only three television channels in Iowa, compared with the nine—channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 28, and 52—that hounded Stan in California.

Teenage boys in Iowa faced the draft, too, but Stan never met them. He never went to school there. He went just for the summers. He fled the horror stories, daily demonstrations, and nightly news, merrily escaping into the work. He didn’t have to worry, as he did at home, about the cost of tools and supplies. Thousands of dollars worth of tools were already there, and Aunt Elsie gladly paid for the supplies. Stan found himself playing in a handyman’s candy land. Whenever he suggested doing something, Aunt Elsie said, “Go do it!” He went back as many summers as he could.

Genie’s protestations also took a retreat in Iowa, if not a surrender. There was scarcely anything for a teenage girl to rebel against in Mason City except for boredom, routine, and the lack of anything to rebel against. Genie hung out with her three teenage cousins: Sally, Cyndi, and Lynne. The four girls danced to the songs on the radio at night and swam during the day at a public pool, where Genie painted flowers and “LOVE” tattoos on the arms of the other kids. That was the closest Genie ever came to the Summer of Love.

Mom hoped that Mason City would work for Geri, too. Upon her release from Camarillo State Mental Hospital in January 1969, Geri had seen a psychiatrist once a week for four months. Apparently, the psychiatrist detected too much arguing, blaming, moralizing, or something going on at home, with Geri perhaps being caught in the crossfire, because he recommended that she live away from home. Mom thought Mason City might be just what the doctor ordered. The small town surrounded by the corn could be a sedative, if not a cure.

“
Life was simpler and slower there,” Mom reflected. Big events in Mason City were when a neighbor bought a new tractor, when thunder shook the houses, or when 1.25-gallon tubs of fudge swirl ice cream went on sale at the Piggly Wiggly store. “There was a lot less fighting in Iowa,” Mom continued. Maybe Geri could be at peace there. She could go at her own pace without so many pressures from her family or society. There were enough aunts, uncles, and cousins around to give Geri support, if she needed it. And her big brother Stan would be there for the summers as surely as the fireflies.

Geri liked the idea. Her single biggest fear was still Camarillo. There was always a reason why she might end up back at that “pretty-near insane asylum.” She became tormented by the fear, crying to herself because of it. Even if she did okay in school, she still worried that she might end up back in Camarillo because of either doing something wrong or not doing something right. She thought she could end up back in Camarillo if she didn’t shampoo, shower, shave her legs, wear jewelry, wear makeup, play the piano, vacuum, or do other chores. While in Redondo Beach, she escaped to the Jersins’ house in the evenings. For some reason, she could escape the fear of Camarillo by hanging out next door. But she eventually had to return home, which meant returning to the fear that became so all-consuming that she refused to utter its name—for fear that simply mentioning the dreaded place might increase the probability of her returning there. “I knew I’d end up back in C,” she recalled, “because I was too lazy or I wasn’t there long enough.” C became a constant threat. She never knew when she might have to go back. It could happen at any time. The idea of moving to Iowa instead sounded excellent.

Aunt Leola volunteered to take Geri in. In the 1930s, Aunt Leola had saved the family home by dropping out of school after ninth grade and going to work slaughtering pigs. In the 1960s, Aunt Leola invited Geri to stay for as long as she wanted. Aunt Leola had received the least education of anyone in her family, and she often sounded like the most bigoted of anyone in her family. Yet she was also, hands down, the most generous.

In her scratchy, chain-smoking voice, Aunt Leola branded any supporter of the 1960s civil rights movement as a “nigger lover.” She vilified Mexican “wetbacks” for swarming our southern borders and “stealing our jobs.” Every Friday night during summer, she and her husband, Uncle Doc, treated us to dinner at “The Chinks.” The real name of the restaurant was the Midway Café. It served the best fried chicken in Northern Iowa. The food was so good that Aunt Leola and Uncle Doc rolled their immaculate white Cadillac for ten miles on dirt roads just to take us there every Friday night. But because a Chinese family ran the place, it became forever known as “The Chinks.” We all grew up calling it “The Chinks.” Aunt Leola could turn every invective once spewed against Italians into an equally offensive invective spewed against some other group. Her language and attitudes could be socially poisonous, but she was the only person in our extended family who offered Geri a second home.

“
Why, sure!” Aunt Leola replied without hesitation upon being asked by Mom. For Aunt Leola, it was an honor and a privilege to help.

Uncle Doc was a character, too. His given name was Leonard, but he preferred the nickname Doc, because he enjoyed introducing himself to people as a “Ph.D.,” or “packinghouse dummy.” Each night after work, he drove his proud Cadillac a mile home from the packinghouse, retired to his leather recliner in front of the television, beckoned his adoring chihuahua to his lap, and drank beer. He occasionally asked Aunt Leola to bring him another beer, but he paid most of his attention to the chihuahua. Uncle Doc made wisecracks to anyone who walked into his living room. He continued grinning even when he had nothing more to say. He did his best to make life a joke.

Geri flew to Minneapolis in May 1969 at the age of 14. Aunt Leola and Uncle Doc picked her up and drove her 100 miles south to Mason City to live with them and their daughter, Lynne. Mom and Dad hoped and prayed that Geri would grow out of her awkward phase and that everything would be okay.

However, within two weeks of her arrival in Mason City, Geri stopped eating. She didn’t eat for three days, because she was afraid that she’d end up back in Camarillo if she ate. She didn’t know what eating had to do with Camarillo, but she didn’t eat for fear of Camarillo anyway. Poor Aunt Leola could cook nothing that would convince Geri to eat.