A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

As a widow with three children, with winter of 1959 approaching, my mom decided we could not remain in our isolated house down 20 miles of snow-covered, gravel road with no telephone. In mid-October, the first snow fell. Our house grew bitterly cold despite the renovations. And the road outside was still unpaved, and would soon be impassible for all practical purposes. And so she found an "efficiency" apartment available for rent at Val's Motel, about 25 miles from the house, but on a paved highway and with modern conveniences like phone and electricity. She arranged for us to spend the winter there, and piled my sisters and me and Wrags, and enough clothes and cooking utensils to tide us over, into the Country Squire. Once the snow closed in, we would either have to do without anything we forgot, or buy a new one.

We weren't changing schools. We were only moving 20 miles or so down the road. But that road would be paved, and electric lights would flick on instantly instead of waiting a few seconds, and there would be endless hot water for baths.

It would be a different world.

The family that owned Val's Motel had the last name, "Valentine"; hence, the name of the motel. There was Nana, Mr. and Mrs. Valentine, their three children Mike, Debbie, and Bobby, and a "ward of the state" named Gloria. They lived in the grand old "Big House" a hundred yards or so from two strips of motel rooms.

Gloria was a nice girl in her later teens. I'm not sure what a "ward of the state" actually is, but Gloria worked as a maid for the Valentines and also she cleaned the motel rooms after people checked out.

The strip

Val's complex consisted of a big old farmhouse, and two more modern strips of rental rooms behind it. The strip on the right consisted of standard, one-bedroom rooms. The strip on the left was arranged into two-room efficiency apartments, with a kitchen/living room in one, and a bedroom in the other.

Mike was a couple of years younger than I, but he was as tall as me and we naturally became friends, while Mary Joan and Louise spent more time with little Debbie and Bobby. Mike was adopted, while Debbie and Bobby were the Valentine's biological children. (Apparently once the pressure was off, barren Mrs. Valentine turned out to be fertile, after all.)

The Valentines often invited my sisters and me to dinner; and their kids often showed up for dinner at our apartment. This turned out to be a clash of cultures. The Valentine he inviting; Mom expected such arrangements to be made by adults. More than one evening there'd be a knock on the door, which when opened would reveal little Debbie and Bobby lisping, "My mother thaid we could eat here." Mom, who often planned her no-waste meals down to the spaghetti strand, would have to rearrange dinner to fit on all the required plates—and then, too often, Debbie and Bobby wouldn't finish! Mom bought Looney Tunes paper plates and explained that everyone had to keep eating until we could see Bugs Bunny (or Yosemite Sam, or whoever).

The reason Debbie and Bobby lisped was that they had no teeth. Not because their baby teeth had fallen out, but because theirs had rotted. The few that remained were blackened stumps. Mike's teeth were perfect, strong and white. At first we thought he just had better genes. But he and I loved to drink milk; Debbie and Bobby preferred to drink Kool-Aid (something not allowed in our house) and they drank it all the time. In fact, we learned, their mother had given it to them in their bottles!

We had brought Wrags with us. Each evening I had to "let the dog out" so she could go to the bathroom. We had never made an effort to house-train her, but it didn't seem to be a problem. She knew not to go inside, and there was a big meadow adjacent to the motel in which she could run (under my supervision) and poop to her heart's content.