To recap, at the end of May we moved in with Grandma Maier and during the month of June we got re-acquainted with various members of the Maggi clan due to Grandma Maggi’s terminal illness. The only good development from this tragedy was my new, young-adult rapport with Cousin Leesa, a sophomore in college; she sent me a very nice e-mail about her perceptions then, it made me happier because I always felt I was the taker.
When July rolled around, Mom sprung part two of her plans. This was news to Brian and me; we figured living in Bloomington-Normal, IL was the plan. We’d try to get into University High (the school attached to Illinois State University) and make the best of it until we left for college which was merely a year away for me.
Through the Grandma Maggi situation, Mom had made arrangements with Uncle Chief to visit Tampa. However, this wasn’t going to be a vacation, it was more like a fact-finding mission to move there. The plan seemed to follow this strategy: We’d stay with Chief’s family (Aunt Mary, cousins Matthew and Julie) briefly, get our own place, set up, etc. This didn’t mean my parents were getting divorced or separated. Mom just made it clear she wouldn’t live in a hellhole and she was going to choose the destination while Dad helped pay the bills. My immediate reaction was, “When do we leave?” After spending two winters in Houston followed by a standard Midwestern-Great Plains one, I was automatically in favor of living in a warmer climate regardless of hurricanes (Alicia/Alisha 1983 wasn’t as scary as we imagined). Besides, Tampa was a major city and destination for decent concert tours, something Indiacrapolis was not unless you were into Arena Rock and Heavy Metal.
I should’ve taken the contentious drive there as a warning of all the trouble to come with my mother. Instead, my mind was preoccupied with how much better life in Tampa would be after all the “suffering” I had endured for the last three years. I even looked forward to holding a part-time job to help support us. We can all blame the opening credits from the TV series Alice for this fantasy. What happened? I can’t remember anything specific. Probably the standard back-seat driving and lecturing I endured until we stopped speaking altogether in 2003. The difference in 1985 was my being 16 going on 17 (versus being 34-plus). Adults antagonizing most teenagers are asking for an escalation in kind. After arriving at Uncle Chief’s, we managed to keep the infighting fairly private.
Chief and his family were very generous hosts based upon the circumstances. We got to crash in the den on a hide-a-bed couch for about three weeks, practically the month of July. The downside was weekdays. Back then he owned a business which made wood pallets for cargo ships.
Quick explanation if you don’t know what a pallet is. Whenever you go to Home Depot, Costco or any other big-box store, you’ll see a slug of boxes resting on a wooden thing for the forklift to move them around on. Chief’s business made those wooden things.
Anyway, Uncle Chief, Aunt Mary and the cousins would head off to work at his business because I think they all participated in the manufacturing process. This left the three of us to explore Tampa or hang around their house. During the first couple days, we took in some nearby sites: a museum, a putt-putt golf course and restaurants. Other than a daily downpour every afternoon that lasted 10-30 minutes, I figured this move was a done deal so I wondered about which high school I would be attending for my senior year.
HA!
Mom changed her mind on day two or three. Disappointed, we asked why. The reply was, “This place reminds me too much of Houston.” My rebuttal of “But I liked Houston, especially with how much Indianapolis sucked!” didn’t help. (For many years, I was blamed for making Dad take the job in North Dakota by Mom and Brian.) The remaining time in Florida was a pressure cooker and my poor brother had a front-row seat to a prolonged nasty, bitter fight I eventually lost when Summer ended.
There were brief moments of enjoyment though. We went to Disney World and EPCOT three times. Brian almost got us tossed out for his antics with there other kids at the raceway. No employees caught them fortunately. Seeing Disney World at eight was amazing. Seeing it again at 16…not so much. It appeared rather dated by the mid-Eighties. EPCOT wasn’t much better, it was mostly incomplete. The most “exotic” nation it had was Morocco because it was the only Arabic nation Reagan hadn’t pissed off yet and the technical exhibits were extended advertisements for GM, AT&T and other corporations. It still beat sitting around IL, unemployed and bored to death watching MTV. Beyond the theme park, we got pretty acquainted with the mall near Chief’s house. I killed plenty of time reading the hobby store’s Traveller books. On one other Saturday, Julie took us to a local waterpark. The souvenir of my nylon enema from a multiple-story, high-speed slide became a favorite anecdote in high school and college.
The days we bummed around Chief’s house were usually wasted watching some movies saved on videotape ad nauseum, namely Sixteen Candles and Yellowbeard. I should’ve used the time to do more reading.
As for peer-related company, Matthew and Julie weren’t not as personable as Leesa was.
In Matthew’s defense, he had a lot going on that Summer. He was attending Fordham on an Army ROTC scholarship but living in NYC probably meant he was paying through the nose for an apartment. Matthew also had a girlfriend he tried to keep up with.
Julie on the other hand was the anti-Matthew and anti-Leesa. While Matthew attended a prestigious Jesuit university out East, Julie went to the monstrous University of Florida in Gainesville, aka Florida High School. She was also on an Army ROTC scholarship but based upon her stories about how much she drank, I would’ve guessed she was sponsored by Budweiser or Jack Daniels. I didn’t really gain any intelligence on what college was like from either of them too. What I unfortunately developed was a greater dislike of Julie. I found her bossy, opinionated and often full of crap, or as Brian pointed out, she was just like me! Too bad I didn’t care for his insightful observation then, I wrote off Julie as a jerk until I heard she has been ill.
Uncle Chief and Aunt Mary left me with more pleasant memories except when Chief asked me about my future. How glad I was to receive Leesa’s caveat regarding his inevitable lecture about pursuing an ROTC scholarship. She got this spiel two years earlier and it somehow convinced her parents into making her apply. Leesa’s experience was hilarious, maybe she’ll share it. When Chief talked to me about looking into ROTC for covering college, I got uppity. Back in 1985, Reagan was president and his sabre rattling at the Soviet Union, Cuba, Iran and Nicaragua (never mind selling weapons to Iran and Iraq) was unnerving. With Reagan, Vietnam II was always a likely possibility if he didn’t destroy the world through nuclear weapons first. Therefore, I had no desire to be in the military. Chief got the hint and dropped it.
Other interactions with these family members were better. Two incidents always readily come to mind. The first was Matthew telling us about a classmate in high school using the lyrics from the Cars’ “Just What I Needed” as an example of a compound sentence when the teacher called on him. The second was from Chief about Grandpa Maggi. Brian never met him and I had no recollection since he died in the Spring of 1970. All we knew were Dad’s stories which usually involved how the guy meted out punishment; pretty brutal stuff by our standards. Chief chuckled about our perceptions and replied, “Skip and I were the oldest, by the time your dad was born, the old man was pretty mellow.” He proceeded to tell us graphic demonstrations of Grandpa Maggi’s temper. After the incident involving a hat, the guy made The Great Santini sound like a wussy. I could see why my parents never spoke about him often.
July was nearing its end and I felt so was our welcome in Tampa. If we weren’t making plans to move there, then our stay with Chief was becoming perceived as mooching or couch surfing. Even though we (through Mom) were reimbursing them, nobody really wants to have guests around indefinitely, especially family members.
There were some terse goodbyes yet I doubt any serious long-term relationship damage resulted: Grandma Maggi’s funeral was inevitable, Chief and my parents still spoke to each other long after this and I think they chalked up my behavior to my age. We then hit the road back to Bloomington-Normal on my 17th birthday, arguing, cursing and finger-pointing the whole time. All I could think about was how much I despised my mother. She had become this fickle, indecisive psycho who was proving to be more skilled at “ruining our lives” than Dad. Mom wasn’t keen on being reminded neither.
I think we all know how it panned out but I’ll save it for the conclusion in Summer 1985 – Part III next month. I may finish writing it up while on vacation because writing is actually relaxing for me.