Growing Up _____

I was born and raised on the west side of Milwaukee.  Gilles Frozen Custard, the long torn down Fruit Ranch, the Milwaukee Brewers, and movies were my young life.  During my childhood I collected over 1,000 baseball players’ autographs, both famous and not so famous (anyone interested in 60 Jeff D’Amico autographs?). 

My dad insisted on “culturing” us.  I spent many late nights at the Starlight and 41 Twin, now defunct outdoor theaters.  The year before the 41 Twin shut down I wandered the parking lot cutting old speakers from their stands.  We watched silent films at the Paradise Theater in West Allis, sometimes set to live piano.  In one week I’d experience a Marx Brothers film or Chaplin film and something like Home Alone or Aladdin.  In retrospect, my parents seem somewhat oblivious to the rating system since I saw Unforgiven when it came out.  I was 7. 

I was captivated by Christopher Columbus, until a couple of films came out that portrayed him and the people around him as violent.  I kind of lost interest after that.  I went to a Lutheran grade school.  A quick snapshot of me/what I thought at the time:

-          The world is 10,000 years old

-          “Evolution” is a dirty word and simply false

-          Jesus Christ died for our sins and God is always watching

-          I’d better be good or I’m not getting one of those finite spots in heaven

-          Christmas should be all of the time because everyone should be nice all of the time

-          Ace of Base is awesome

My block in Milwaukee was almost completely white and it was meant to be that way.  As this cell phone picture shows, only people of “the white race” were allowed to buy property in our area during the 1920’s. From what I can remember there were about three African Americans in my school of 350 kids in West Allis.  I talked to one of them since he was in my sister’s class, but the others were much older or younger.  I learned the harshest racial slurs at school.  Later, my grandmother would bring up racial slurs mostly directed at ethnic whites.  It’s unclear if she thought she was imbuing me with wisdom when she would (and does) say things like “You can call someone a “Pollack,” but never a “Dumb Pollack.”  While my grandmother’s almost apathetic animosity toward anyone not Irish holds, she also clearly loved her grandchildren equally.  Two of my cousins are black by American standards.  I can’t say with any certainty that my cousins always felt equally treated, but my grandmother never said anything about them in my or my siblings’ presence that exhibited racism.  At face value one could see an old racist lady, but she’s made a lot of progress.  Her family dog was named "Nigger."  She goes to Catholic Church every week, but recently said to my sister, “I don’t get why people are so upset about gay people, they’re just like us.”  If I could meet my grandmother of the 1930's or 40's I doubt I'd be very happy or hopeful that she would turn out as tolerant as she has.

I moved on from grade school angry about what I had been taught (“The Jews deserved the Holocaust because they killed Jesus,” etc.) and slowly began realizing that I hadn’t been taught a lot of important things.  As far as I remember, the Civil Rights era never factored into my education from Pre-K – 12.  That’s a fucking problem.  And what about those people that “kidnapped” my ancestor Job in Maine?  Where were they in my history books/classes?   

My parents sent us to a private high school that ended up costing more than my college tuition.  I wasted a good chunk of that time being an awkward teenager.  On September 11^th, my sophomore year, I immediately thought of Osama bin Laden as the prime suspect due to his connection to the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa.  I couldn’t help but know a few things about current events because of my dad’s daily news ritual included local “news,” national news, and then two viewings of the same episode of The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour.  I was shocked by the actions on that day, but I wasn’t too afraid.  My family was never that into being afraid.  When people hyped “Y2K” and asked if we were preparing, my dad would always joke that we had enough baseball bats for each family member to loot.  We just aren’t the type of family to buy plastic wrap and duct tape to completely seal our house from a biological terrorist attack.  We'd rather laugh at that suggestion.

In summary, I think we could say that my siblings and I had a fairly sterile white, middle class, suburban Christian upbringing.  Our mom grilled us to see if we were doing or were ever offered drugs, wouldn’t allow us to go to the mall because we’d be raped (seriously), and generally looked to Barbara Walters, Hugh Downs, and the rest of the crew at 20/20 to tell her about all of the new destructive fads that kids were getting into.  We were sheltered as children and that’s probably what ultimately led me to spend a lot of time outside of Milwaukee in the past seven years.