Searching For St Germaine

Picture it: Detroit Michigan 1954. The American Auto industry is booming and the population of Detroit is cresting just above 1 and a half million people. Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney are on the top of the pop charts, Dwight Eisenhower is President of The United States, the average annual household income in the US is $4,200, and Benjamin Lester Schroeder & his wife Betty Jane are at Catholic Social Services adopting a 2 year old orphan that they will come to name, Gregory Louis Schroeder. That would be me!

I was taken, by the couple, to my new home at 442 Colonial Court in Harper Woods to begin my new life. There, I had a built in 4-year-old brother named Michael Benjamin Schroeder, who is also adopted. Les’ brother William Benjamin Schroeder, along with his wife Mary-Joelyn, also adopted two children, Kathy and Billy. Their little brother Danny had just been born when I arrived. I mention that because these two Schroeder families acted more like one.

Dad and Uncle Bill, along with Lee & Dee Demeulemiester ran a combination Bowling Alley, Hotel, and Nightclub in Mount Clemens called Clinton Gables. Although it’s gone now, it was enough of a draw, at the time, to have the likes of Rosemary Clooney headline for New Years Eve at the height of her career.

Grandpa Schroeder was a higher up in the steel industry and Mom’s Parents were the Hutchenreuthers who imported fine china from Europe. Aunt Jo’s Parents were the Bakers who were big in real estate development. Suffice it to say that none of the Schroeders were the least bit concerned about how to put food on the table.

Christmases, for example, were everything a little kid like me could dream of. There would be presents at Grandma Hutch’s, presents at Grandma Schroeder’s and more at Aunt Jo & Uncle Bill’s. It was quite the set-up! It wouldn’t be long before the dream would begin to unravel, though. The evidence would suggest that Mike and I were adopted in an attempt to rescue a faltering 2nd marriage for both Les and Betty. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My earliest memory was of an accident. While rough-housing with my brother in the driveway one day, I fell into the window well just off the side of the driveway, next to the shiny new Crown Victoria that I would often fall asleep in. At least I hope I tumbled through that window rather than learning that my brother had pushed me.

Mom was already in the basement as I came crashing through the window into the laundry sink. Evidently there were several cuts that needed to be addressed, mostly on my head. I proceeded to drive my poor Mom crazy with my picking at the scabs all the time while they were trying to heal. Her discipline technique wasn’t to give me a spanking or send me to my room. No, her thing was pinching. If I didn’t respond to “The Look”, especially in church, she’d reach over and give me a good pinch on the side of my thigh or the back of my arm. She was really serious about those pinches. There was no mistaking them for cute little love pinches like Grandma Schroeder did to my cheek. She meant business and she meant business right now!

Mike and I were trained right from the beginning about things like dressing ourselves neatly, not putting our elbows on the table, shutting up when adults are talking, saying “Please” and “Thank you” and addressing adults with Ma’am or Sir. We were being groomed to take our place among the well heeled of Detroit society. That required meticulous care and strict codes of behavior. Putting my elbows on the dinner table would elicit a pinch from my mom, or maybe the threat of having my elbow stabbed with a fork from my dad.

We were Catholic. My religion was presented to me just that way. No one ever questioned it, least of all me. I couldn’t understand what that meant, but I did know this. When my cousin Kathy would be wearing a pretty pastel dress, white gloves and a frilly little white handkerchief over her head, we were being Catholic and had to be quiet and stoic. We went to a beautiful Church where, for what seemed like an eternity, a man, dressed in colorful robes, would be facing away from us and speaking to a statue in some other language that I didn’t understand. Periodically we would all stand up together, or kneel and then return to a seated position. Me and my brother and my cousins would just do what everyone else was doing. I often wondered how everyone knew when to stand up or kneel because this was all being done in Latin.

***

I loved being at Clinton Gables, one of the reasons was because of a big, beautiful fountain in the park right next to the Bowling Alley. There was a sculpture in the center of a big round pool that had little cherubs around it that were peeing in the water. I loved playing there in the summer. It was kind of sad, in the fall, however, because they would turn the water off and drain it to clean it, I suppose. But it always seemed so sad when it was dormant. It wouldn’t be that way for long, though. Once it started to snow, even though the fountain wasn’t alive, it would regain a different kind of beauty under a blanket of Michigan snow.

Every once in a while, as a kid, I would get weirdly impulsive and do something insanely out of character to break out of that rigid mold I mentioned. Kathy, Mike and I were in the park having an engaged discussion about what would happen if we pulled the fire alarm on the streetlight pole over there by the street that ran in front of Clinton Gables.

We were all curious about it, so I walked over in the direction of the pole it was mounted on. It was a ways off, so Kathy and Mike, remaining at the fountain, had time to frantically shout their pleadings with me not to do it. I was ignoring their cautions. We all wanted to know. I don’t know how I was able to reach that box at my height, but somehow, I did pull the alarm. It was silent, so I thought the coast was clear and headed proudly back to the fountain. Mike and Kathy were both watching in horror. Perhaps they knew something I didn’t.

I had almost reached the fountain when the sirens began to wail. The Fire Station must have been awfully close because it was only seconds after I pulled the alarm. I hadn’t even gotten to the fountain where we had been playing when the fire trucks pulled up, lights flashing and sirens wailing.

It seemed like there were a lot of emergency vehicles converging on the park. Mike and Kathy were squirming with worry that the hammer would come down on them along with me. Both pointed to me within seconds as our parents came rushing out of the bowling alley to see what was happening. Mom and Dad spared nothing in their efforts to make sure I was aware of the seriousness of what I had just done. Aunt Jo, always the first one to take charge of a situation, rushed over to the firemen to explain and apologize profusely.

Aunt Jo was a beautiful, shapely woman with bottled blonde hair. She was quick minded and comedy came easy to her. There was no question that she was in charge of that branch of the Schroeder family. In fact, she was at least partly in charge of ours too. Betty was an Aquarius and not exactly the model of a modern mother. She had always traded on her looks and, as luck would have it, she had plenty of raw materials to work with.

When I was that young, I would often get compliments on my manners and my diction. I assume there was a good reason for it. If not, then it wasn’t for lack of trying. I ordinarily relished behaving myself, so this mess I had gotten us all into was shocking to the entire family. The gist of the admonitions I got for it was “What, in God’s name were you thinking? Why did you do that?” I still don’t have an answer. I don’t think I’ll ever know the answer to that question. I was a little kid, for crying out loud, how would I know? This kind of thing was usually in my brother’s wheelhouse.

***

I spent a lot of time at Grandma Hutch’s tiny but beautifully appointed cottage on Maple Street. She loved beautiful things and made the small space look like a palace. The dining room table was always set with her best china and silver. She was, after all, a Hutchenruether and importing the finest china from Europe was Grandpa Louie’s business. It was like she almost felt obligated to display it.

Her back yard was barely the size of a bedroom, but she made it magic anyway. Adorned with fake flowers attached to the wood fence that surrounded it. It was a quiet and cozy spot for a pleasant afternoon tea. I was fascinated with the little fountain in one corner. It was a series of bowls that looked like sea shells that cascaded the water down to what looked like a little lagoon. It even had little lily pads floating on each level. She would sprinkle a few drops of blue food coloring to make it look even more authentic.

Grandma Hutch and I got along famously. There was something about me that delighted her. She was a Welcome Wagon Ambassador and was the physical embodiment of the June Cleaver model. She was the type to get up before Grandpa Louie to fix her hair and face before climbing back into bed to wait for him to wake up. She was always meticulously groomed and well dressed. Mom was just like her in that regard. They were very close and the apple had not fallen far from the tree.

On the other hand, I only remember Grandpa Louie as being quite old, sickly and bedridden. He was in and out of the hospital a lot. There was only one incident that I can recall about him. I was alone with him in his room one afternoon. He asked me to show him my wee-wee. Grandma Hutch happened to appear at the bedroom door at just that moment and gently chided him about it while quickly gathering me up and escorting me from the room. I had no way to understand what was happening, just then, but I have to admire Grandma Hutch’s restraint.

I vaguely remember Grandpa Louie’s funeral and how I felt so uncomfortable because I couldn’t cry like everyone else. I thought I was supposed to because everyone else was. It was kind of like in church. Try as I might, I just couldn’t force it. He was practically a stranger to me so there was nothing I could think of to make me sad enough to cry.

***

Life on Colonial Court was as close as I have ever come to an idyllic childhood. I’m told, I lived at the corner of Colonial Court and Mack Avenue for a while, but I couldn’t swear to it. Having seen the house as an adult, I still couldn’t attest to it. I have no memory of it at all, but my cousin, Kathy, and my brother, Mike, insist that’s where I was brought into the Schroeder Family from the orphanage. The house around the bend from it was the one that I remember. All three of us agree that was our home for the bulk of the time before the divorce.

Growing up with my brother for the few years we were together was pendulous most of the time. I was loved and protected as well as routinely terrorized. Mike seemed to think of me as his personal toy. A toy he cherished like no other, but a toy, nonetheless. It was OK for him to mess with me until I was in tears or chase me around the house or bowling alley until I was a driveling mess. But, let anyone else even look at me cross eyed and he would spring into action putting himself between me and trouble, like a superhero.

Mike was the first kid in our family to do almost everything. Being two years older, he was the first to ride a bike without training wheels, the first to get to stay up late, the first to go to school and the first to shock the adults by cursing and swearing. He was the first one to learn how to “flip the bird” and wasted no time teaching all of that to his willing baby brother.

I’ve always found it funny how Mom & Dad routinely used such words when they were drinking, yet scratched their heads in wonder, trying to figure out who taught it to us. As luck would have it, one of the few luxuries of being the youngest is being blameless for using foul language at such a tender age. The response will invariably be laughter, followed by hell to pay for whoever tutored the offending language.

Mike ended up on the losing end of some relatively terse pronouncements the first time the folks heard me call him a “Shit-Ass”. Mom & Dad’s disdained scowling would skip over me and be leveled directly at Mike. His guilt and embarrassment were what little revenge I could exact upon him for all the terrorizing he did. His guilty face was priceless revenge.

One particularly active day we were rough-housing around and Mike ended up in the downstairs bathroom off the hallway just outside the kitchen. I was in the hallway taunting Mike about something. Mom was in the kitchen absentmindedly admonishing us to quiet down, as if it was an automatic parental response to noise, rather than something she actually expected us to do.

Mike was in the bathroom opening the door just enough to call me a name and then slamming the door shut to prevent any response I might have. One of those times, I gave him the finger right in his face, which, at that moment, was right at the door jamb. As he had been doing, he slammed the door, this time catching my middle finger in the door jamb. It took me a second to realize what was happening, but my finger began to bleed. The door had split my finger open. As would be expected, I began to scream bloody murder as I realized that my finger was bleeding quite a bit.

Mom, hearing my outburst, came running. In hindsight, I don’t think she knew what to do because she immediately filled up the sink with cold water and stuck my hand in it. It didn’t stop the bleeding even a little bit, so she grabbed a handful of paper towels from the kitchen and hustled me and Mike off to the hospital.

Once there, I’m pretty sure I was feeling pain, rather than the shock of seeing my finger in such a state. It took Mom and a nurse a minute to finally calm me down so the doctor could sew my finger back together. It must have been a pretty bad injury as I still carry the scar all these decades later.

Mike, meanwhile, was standing off to the side watching and, I would imagine, feeling awfully guilty. Suddenly, I shouted, “You did this to me you Shit-ass!” Mom and the doctor were taken aback by my outburst, while Mike just groaned and rolled his eyes. I think he was beginning to realize just how much trouble he was going to be in when we got back home.

Later that night as we had gone through our nightly rituals of brushing our teeth, going to the bathroom, saying our prayers and getting tucked in; Mike came over to my bed and just stood there for a minute. I could only see his silhouette against the light in the hallway shining through the half open bedroom door. He was very sincere. He said something soothing, though I don’t remember what. I could tell he felt badly about what had happened.

I knew that he would never intentionally do anything to cause me any real harm. He was my brother, for crying out loud. It simply wasn’t in his nature. By this time I had calmed down considerably, aided no doubt, by some chemical persuasion prescribed by the doctor earlier that day. Although I couldn’t swear to it, I think I forgave him. He leaned down and hugged me, just for a second and scampered back to his bed. From then on, he seemed a little more careful and a little more attentive to me for the longest time.

***

One of the things I took to early in life was Ice Skating. There was a rink nearby that we went to sometimes. Mike wasn’t satisfied with having to share the rink with everyone, so he rigged one in our back yard, one winter. He talked Dad into shoveling all the snow in the back yard into a big circle. Mike pulled out our garden hose and dragged it over to the circle and filled it with water. He and I immediately went in the house and waited with our noses pressed up against the dining room window, for our new ice rink to freeze so we could get out there and play. It couldn’t freeze quickly enough for us. It took a while before we came to the realization that patience was a thing.

The next day, it was frozen and we were so excited to get out there. Mike, of course, had his trusty Hockey skates and was already in pretty good control of them. Calling what I had a pair of skates, was stretching the definition a bit. They were 2 blades a few inches apart that I strapped on to the soles of my boots somewhat like the rudimentary metal roller skates that were common for kids at the time. The stability of the two blades, rather than one, kept me upright most of the time and I was in heaven. There is something romantic about gliding around without having to move my legs that really appealed to me. It felt like I would imagine a bird feels and it kept my mind and body busy.

Our little private skating rink didn’t last long as freezing and thawing is, sadly, a reality in Michigan winters. Within a day or two, Mike and I were back at the neighborhood rink accidentally slamming into other kids and trying to pick ourselves back up and get back in there.

I think that rink has stuck with me all those years because I maintained an interest in skating, both on wheels and blades for the remainder of my childhood, even through all of the other stuff I was going through. It was like a romance with gracefulness. Grace is not something that would otherwise describe anything about me; then or now. I’m a Taurus and the things you learn about Taurus describe me to a “T”. Well intentioned as I may have been, I have always been a bull in a China shop. I was clumsy, awkward, and oblivious to all of it. I still don’t care what I look like while enveloped in my romantic love of all things graceful. It would surely harshen how it all felt, and how it felt was everything to me.

For a scant few years, I was truly living a kid’s life. If only more of my childhood could have been like those few of years with the Schroeders. It was just about the only period in my life that would feel “Normal” to me; whatever that means. But I did get to have that care-free love and joy for a little while, at least! Not the least of which was because of my brother Mike. He seemed to take no small amount of delight in having me as his little brother.