Thirty Rooms To Hide In (37 page)

Grandpa writing on his birthday, September 28, 1966

Well, I look over these 74 years and consider myself fortunate, a child of Providence, that I have been granted 74 years of life on this interesting planet; that I found a wonderful woman to take care of me and give me two wonderful children; that I have had many friends who out-numbered my enemies; that I was able to get a good education; that I had work of an honorable sort my entire professional life; that I came unharmed through World War I; that I was never tempted to use alcohol or to gamble; that I had excellent teachers in my little Florida college. Oh! I have so much to be thankful for! Even if my 74 years produced no great work. I just was not endowed with the brains to do great things.

Grandpa Rubert James Longstreet, a man who did many great things, died on October 9th, 1969, at age 77. Monnie was with him in Florida when he passed after a short illness. My mother took the train south again and attended the funeral with her little brother Jimmy again at her side. In Rochester, a family friend stayed with the three of us still living at home and when Mom returned a week later she bore with her several boxes full of green books bound by Grandpa. They were the letters – a conversation of 30 years. She never went back to Florida.

I did go back, as I traced this family history, to see the house where my mother grew up; it’s still there in Daytona Beach on Braddock Avenue. I went also to Mt. Dora, Florida, to see Grandpa’s and Monnie’s graves (Monnie lived to age 93). During my visit I made a grave rubbing of that grand name – LONGSTREET – and it hangs here in my study as I write. Next to it is a rubbing of my father’s headstone.

I visited my father’s grave in November of 1988, 22 years after he died. I was driving from Richmond, Virginia, to take a job in Minneapolis and planned my route to take me through Ohio. Dad’s grave is there, in the cemetery of a little town called DeGraff, near his father’s and mother’s headstones.

My map said the town was just an hour’s jog off the main highway and, once I found the cemetery, my map became a 1966 photo of the gravesite. I used the silhouette of the horizon in its background to find the plot.I was videotaping this pilgrimage to show my brothers the final resting place of our father. As I approached his grave, I was giving a matter-of-fact description of the surroundings and when I was finally close enough to read my father’s name on the gravestone, I stopped short and began to weep. The videotape stops there and when it resumes you can see the headstone is wet where I’d laid my head.

This for a man who terrorized us?

Betrayed us? Belittled us? Left us?

I didn’t understand the tears. I still don’t.

Over the years since his death, everyone in the family has gone through phases of anger, of sadness, of bewilderment, and back again, buffeted by contradictory emotions. There were days in the ‘70s when I asked Mom about the things Dad did, she’d wrinkle her face and say, “Why do you want to know such terrible things?” By the ‘90s, she was pulling Grandpa’s old letters off her shelves to clarify an answer. There’s no finality to it. Only, “This is how I feel about it today.”

We all lived it. But not one of us understands it.

Brother Dan, writing in 2005

Even though I can’t think of one single incident when Dad made me feel good about myself, for some reason I can still feel sad about him and feel his loss. About three weeks ago, I had this dream about him, which was surprising because I’ve never had a sad dream about Dad.

In the dream he had that young, clear face of his early days, with none of the puffiness that came with the booze, and of course he had on one of those starched white shirts I always remember. And he was leaving.

To where, I don’t know, but there was a bus he had to catch. He was looking for me because he wanted to say goodbye. But for some reason I avoided him. As he was getting on the bus and waving goodbye to everyone else in the family, all you other guys were calling for me to come, come and say goodbye. But I stayed back, hidden in some sort of place where I could still see all that was happening.

Finally I grudgingly came out of whatever place I was hiding and went to his bus window to say goodbye. But I had come too late. It was somebody else in the window by then and Dad had moved forward. He didn’t see me standing there waving. The bus left and I waved and waved but it just pulled away.

“My name is Luke and I’m an alcoholic.”

I’m in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Austin, Texas.

I’m not visiting. I’m not here trying to learn what my father was like. I’m here because I’m a member of A.A., in recovery, and I belong here. I’m an alcoholic.

I grew up promising myself that no matter what
else
I became, I wasn’t going to be a drunk like my dad. And yet I became one.

How I became dependent on booze and drugs will have to be a story for another day. As for this story – about the years I spent wondering what my father was like – it turns out he was like me.

# # #

The Flip Side: An Illustrated History of Southern Minnesota Rock & Roll Music from 1955-1970
, by Jim Oldsberg (Jordan, Minnesota, 1991) Book #49 out of 400 in first pressing.

Lyrics from the Beatles’
Paperback Writer
and
Can’t Buy Me Love

Quotation about Hemingway in “Zee Tortured Arteest” from www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/features/art_hemingway_one.htm

Lyrics from
Rainy Night In Georgia
by Tony Joe White, sung by Brook Benton

Acknowledgements: Dr. Tony Bianco and the entire Bianco family, Ann Brataas, Maria Carvainis, Dr. Mark Coventry, Mike Ferrer, Karen Gregory, Karen Jacobs, Dr. Tony Lund, Jill Marr, Bonnie Mulligan, Maxine Paetro, Dr. Elizabeth Peacock, Chris Raymer, Col. W.P.Reed, Curlin Reed, Senour Reed, David Smyrk, Jackie Warner, Alexis Wilson, Steve Wolff, and of course my family: Mom, Kip, Jeff, Chris, Dan and Collin.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: There’s no fake stuff in this memoir. All the events in this book happened as depicted. Some content from the diaries or letters has been edited for readability. Many of the original documents are available for review online at
ThirtyRoomsToHideIn.com
. Names of a few family acquaintances have been changed to preserve their privacy. Note regarding title: as children we always said our home had 30 rooms but, looking at the original blueprints of the Millstone today, I count only 26. Thirty sounded better.