Home Alone

[Reminder: Some of my posts, including this one, are memoirs of my abusive childhood. In this post I'm relating events that happened around and after my 5th birthday, in July and August 1954. The links to the right can be used to follow backward through the memoirs, or to restrict viewing to other kinds of posts.]

I was so entranced by the TV my parents figured they didn't need to waste so much money on babysitters. On days when my Father was off work they would just help me out of my pants and turn the TV on with instructions to watch it while they were gone until they got back, often as much as five hours later.

One of my favorite shows was a Boston area kids show hosted by a guy called Big Brother Bob Emery. There's a long article about him here, which talks about his whole career -- it turns out he created the Big Brother character for radio all the way back in the 20s.

Between Dave Garroway's "Peace" and Bob Emery's "The Grass Is Always Greener On the Other Side" and toasts of glasses of milk to a picture of Eisenhower with Hail to the Chief playing, there were soaps that made no sense but intrigued me (I was already a xenomaniac) as well as Queen For A Day and numerous shows featuring travel in foreign lands and other exotica. You Asked For It was another favorite along those lines. It was a human interest magazine that did stories that viewers requested by postcard.

It all kept me glued to the set, so maybe it made sense to leave me alone like that, most of the time. But one time my parents definitely crossed a line.

On the 31st of August 1954 Hurricane Carol was approaching Massachusetts. There were already reports of it doing damage when my parents decided they wanted to ride out the hurricane at a nearby bar, and I couldn't go with them. So they left me in the house with instructions not to go outside. The instructions were quite detailed: They told me that after a while the storm that came might stop, but that wouldn't mean it was over, that was just the eye of the storm. "Don't go out in the eye of the storm; it could start up again faster than you could get back in."


[Above: Carol's storm surge on the Connecticut coast.]

Meanwhile, I was in a house with a flat tar-papered roof that leaked throughout, with trees within ten feet of two sides of it, in a storm that, while it was no Katrina, was capable of snapping thick branches and downing old trees.

The eye did appear. I could gaze out the living room window and see the sun shining through the column of clouds all around the house for maybe five minutes, and then the storm resumed. When the storm was at full strength you could see almost nothing out the window, it was like looking out your car windows in a car wash during the rinse.

Then the hurricane ended and half an hour later my parents drove up. Everything was fine. They were happy. I was happy. Why do I complain?