One: The Major Players
Being in the theatre, I realize how important a program can be to an audience member. You want to know who the players are before the curtain rises, right? So, let's get to dramatis personae:
The father is played by Charles Luther Harris, born a year or so before the Great Depression hit the little Appalachian town of Kingsport, Tennessee. The aforementioned cataclysm will redirect the course of many children born in the era known as the Roaring Twenties (although I very much doubt that life made much more than a peep in the hills and hollers of East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia) and certainly made Charlie's young life challenging. He dropped out of school and joined the Army as soon as he was able. As a teenager, he learned to drive and ran moonshine...or so he told me in one of his rare moments of self-disclosure. He also shared that he enjoyed summers as a kid/teen on the old homeplace working with a bachelor uncle. The family farm (my grandmother's line) was located in Virgina close to the North Fork of the Holston River. Dad said that he and other boys from neighboring farms used to gather at the swimming hole at the end of the work day to wash off and play. In just the few sentences he'd utter his voice was laced with nostalgia. Otherwise, he was a tight-lipped man.
He spent a lot of time out of the house. He understood that as his function in the family dynamic. Go out and make as much money as he could. Now whether he understood it as a right or he was only reacting to the stresses posed by acquiring wealth without an education, he gambled, drank heavily, and whored around a lot when he wasn't working. Actually, as time went by, I feel certain that the boundaries between work and play got "mushy." More details will follow.
The mother is a native of Brussels, Belgium, and was born to a professional family in the year 1923, although as the child grew up she repeatedly maintained that she was born the same year as the father. When little Gary pointed to her date of birth on her immigration papers, she explained, "It was a clerical error." The difference in the ages between husband and wife were a matter of major concern for Yvonne Stoefs. Her story is easier to tell because of the hours she spent at the kitchen table regaling her son with stories of her life before her marriage. Much of her tale will spill into this account.
Yvonne met Charlie on the sidewalk in front of the stock exchange--the Bourse--in Brussels during the Allied Occupation following World War II. She asked him if he could sing like Bing Crosby. She never introduced him to her parents. With a one-way ticket, she arrived in America in 1948. She married my father in 1950 (there was a "delay" in their relationship which is a story in itself) and little Gary (me) arrived in 1953. She became a naturalized citizen in 1956. As above, her details will emerge in the body of this story.
And, then
The child is me who my father named Gary Marcel. The middle name was my Belgian uncle's and, according to my mom, my dad liked the sound of it. I am now looking down the barrel of an approaching fifty-fourth birthday (an Aries, a real ram-headed individual with occasional horns.) I consider myself a survivor, as well, and the story of that struggle is the one I'm going to tell.
There are character roles along the way: nuns, priests, doctors, coaches, a barber, men at the fruit stand, etc. They, too, will come forward and speak as necessary
The father is played by Charles Luther Harris, born a year or so before the Great Depression hit the little Appalachian town of Kingsport, Tennessee. The aforementioned cataclysm will redirect the course of many children born in the era known as the Roaring Twenties (although I very much doubt that life made much more than a peep in the hills and hollers of East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia) and certainly made Charlie's young life challenging. He dropped out of school and joined the Army as soon as he was able. As a teenager, he learned to drive and ran moonshine...or so he told me in one of his rare moments of self-disclosure. He also shared that he enjoyed summers as a kid/teen on the old homeplace working with a bachelor uncle. The family farm (my grandmother's line) was located in Virgina close to the North Fork of the Holston River. Dad said that he and other boys from neighboring farms used to gather at the swimming hole at the end of the work day to wash off and play. In just the few sentences he'd utter his voice was laced with nostalgia. Otherwise, he was a tight-lipped man.
He spent a lot of time out of the house. He understood that as his function in the family dynamic. Go out and make as much money as he could. Now whether he understood it as a right or he was only reacting to the stresses posed by acquiring wealth without an education, he gambled, drank heavily, and whored around a lot when he wasn't working. Actually, as time went by, I feel certain that the boundaries between work and play got "mushy." More details will follow.
The mother is a native of Brussels, Belgium, and was born to a professional family in the year 1923, although as the child grew up she repeatedly maintained that she was born the same year as the father. When little Gary pointed to her date of birth on her immigration papers, she explained, "It was a clerical error." The difference in the ages between husband and wife were a matter of major concern for Yvonne Stoefs. Her story is easier to tell because of the hours she spent at the kitchen table regaling her son with stories of her life before her marriage. Much of her tale will spill into this account.
Yvonne met Charlie on the sidewalk in front of the stock exchange--the Bourse--in Brussels during the Allied Occupation following World War II. She asked him if he could sing like Bing Crosby. She never introduced him to her parents. With a one-way ticket, she arrived in America in 1948. She married my father in 1950 (there was a "delay" in their relationship which is a story in itself) and little Gary (me) arrived in 1953. She became a naturalized citizen in 1956. As above, her details will emerge in the body of this story.
And, then
The child is me who my father named Gary Marcel. The middle name was my Belgian uncle's and, according to my mom, my dad liked the sound of it. I am now looking down the barrel of an approaching fifty-fourth birthday (an Aries, a real ram-headed individual with occasional horns.) I consider myself a survivor, as well, and the story of that struggle is the one I'm going to tell.
There are character roles along the way: nuns, priests, doctors, coaches, a barber, men at the fruit stand, etc. They, too, will come forward and speak as necessary
posted by GMarc | 9:59 AM
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