Martha Randolph Carr

~ lives within each of us and is the best part each of us carries around. The portion capable of forgiveness in the face of tragedy, and a gesture of love when anger would seem the more logical response. Faith is the state of grace we find in the words, "everything will be alright", when we can't know the ending and take off on the journey anyway. Wherever you are in your journey, celebrate and step out onto the path.

~ is where the root of inspiration comes from, and the place you can go to heal from despair. The source that believes in every idea you have, even when they don't understand exactly what it is you're doing. Even when you're having trouble believing in yourself. Enrich the family you've made by sharing all the joy you've found and remind them, all the time, of the greatness you've found in them.

For your pleasure, short personal stories about my family through the years. The stories will occasionally change, the laughter, some tragedy, and a little average family weirdness will always be here.

The end of summer eventually comes and school begins, and in 1966 it was second grade for me and Mrs. Zarinksy, an old Polish woman who was kind enough but humorless. Better than Mrs. Bilger from first grade, though. Mrs. Bilger had believed in the old idea that being left-handed was a curse and had made me sit in from recess with nothing to do every time I used my left hand. Kids floated by me snickering because I had absentmindedly picked up a pencil and started writing with the loser hand. My parents said nothing, parents didn’t interfere in those days, and forever- old Mrs. Bilger was pretty intimidating anyway.

By second grade I was officially right-handed and a little savvier on handling teachers in general. Mrs. Zarinsky and I got along fine.

The next good holiday to look forward to was Halloween. That’s how kids mark the calendar. Holiday to holiday. The newness of school could make some of the time fly by but by mid-October we were all excited about what costume we’d wear and how much candy we might snag.

Candy was always separated into categories of chocolate and everything else and counted before anybody ate anything. It was a competition as well as a great sugar-high.

As the holiday approached, we discussed what we might be. I always wanted to be a gypsy so I could wear a lot of cheap jewelry and heavy makeup. With my blonde hair, the makeup always made a dramatic difference. The jewelry, a drawer full of it, was from years of Christmas gifts Jeffy and I bought at the gift shop at Dad’s church, Christ Church, in downtown Philadelphia. None of it was subtle or small. Mom always looked appropriately thrilled and wore it on a rare occasion. I globbed it on for Halloween, layer after layer. Large rhinestone pins, big shiny blue beads, large gold cat pins that could pull on your clothes with their weight. Loved the stuff.

Jeffy wanted to be a skeleton, Mom made his costume, and Cary was thinking of trying to outdo me as another gypsy, which wasn’t sitting very well with me. Linda at thirteen was too old to go door to door and was heading down the street to the Williams’ for a teenage party, her first.

Our next door neighbors, the Schraeders were our favorite stop. An older couple with no children, they were warm and friendly and treated all the kids in the neighborhood like grandchildren. If one of us scraped up a knee, which happened on a regular basis, and passed the Schraeder’s bawling on the way home, Mrs. Schraeder fixed you up before you got all the way home and gave you something to eat. The Daft’s weren’t allowed to accept the food without prior permission. We didn’t have any restrictions on us and felt appropriately sorry for the Dafts.

Mr. Schraeder spent endless hours on his lawn, it was his hobby for most of the year, carefully grooming the thick lush carpet. Jeffy and I regularly rolled across it on our way to the Daft’s and rolled back across, the entire length, on our way home. There was never a twig or acorn and it was so thick we couldn’t feel the hard ground. He never came out and yelled at us, even once, to cut it out. Sometimes we rolled right in front of him.

Besides tending his lawn, he was one of the big executives at the Acme grocery store chain and along with what we’d collect at his door on Halloween night, there would be something special and huge he’d pass along to the Carr children every year. The year of 1966 was a bag standing over two feet tall of malted milk balls. We all dug in with abandon and ate until we couldn’t eat any longer, were temporarily disgusted by malt balls, and ignored them for a day or two before we’d try again. We’d eventually go back, they were covered in chocolate. Mom and Dad didn’t say much about how much of those things to eat or when, abandoning it to the basement and figuring we’d figure it out.

Herbie Fisher, from across Cotler Drive, wanted to be Frankenstein, big and tough. Herbie was normally small and sickly. I have no idea what might have been wrong with him, if anything beyond doting parents of an only child, because nobody asked questions like that before talk shows taught us we should. And, back in the 60’s people still wondered if cancer might be contagious and it was okay to fire someone for having a bad heart. People just didn’t have those conversations.

If someone seemed ill all the time or frail we called them sickly and left it at that. Herbie never seemed ill to me but we took it for granted he wasn’t supposed to rough around with us, like his mother told us, and we played around him more than with him. I was in awe of him though because he possessed a self-assurance not normally found in seven-year-old kids.

Herbie ran a constant yard sale every Saturday from his front yard selling pretty good do-dads, tiny tea sets, used comic books, old GI Joe’s, that he’d picked up during the week. A lot of his inventory he bartered for and Herbie was very good at talking you down on price. I knew before I’d start talking to him I was coming out on the lower end of the deal, but I'd talk anyway. Herbie had good stuff and was so convenient, right across the street. Besides possessions weren’t that important to me. I was forever leaving change piled around the house that would disappear into Jeffy’s large milk bottle. He never spent any of it, except for that tea set he bought Marcia Daft at Herbie’s stand. Between those two I’ll bet the bartering was fierce. Jeffy protected his stash fiercely and wouldn’t have gone down without a battle.

Jeffy was the other kid in the neighborhood who wasn’t supposed to play too hard. He had the family asthma and wasn’t supposed to put his face near grass or breathe too hard. Jeffy though, unlike Herbie, came from a large family and Cary and I thought the punishment was too harsh. We helped him get away with being as rough as we were. Mom’s occasional yells down into the basement of, “Is Jeffy playing too hard? Is he sitting on the couch like he’s supposed to?” were met with all of us holding still and yelling back in a tired chorus, “Nooooo. Yessssss.” We’d wait till the door closed again and then put him back on the bottom of the pile. His wheezing was never that bad.

Besides the Dafts and Herbie, the other notable kids right around us were the mean McKuen boys on the far side of the block. They’d ride their banana bikes past our house yelling something stupid and Mrs. Daft would mutter, “wait and see what they turn out to be”. Occasionally we’d ride past their house and yell something stupid and get chased the rest of the way home till we were safely on our half-acre, the thrill of living through the danger making our hearts race. Daniel and Mark McConnell lived two houses down right next to the Dafts. Daniel was my age and never stopped moving, annoying everybody with his small pranks and getting in the way. We’d put up with it for as long as we could because, as kids know without being told, we knew he couldn’t help it. When we’d had enough as a group, and it was the unwritten code that you waited until it was a group annoyance, we’d tell his mother and she’d tie him to a kitchen chair for awhile with her apron. He’d calm down, fall asleep and we’d all get a break for a couple hours before he was back amongst us, talking a blue streak.

Near the McKuens was Frankie Hines, a nice quiet kid with a short temper and a dad in a wheelchair who we almost never saw. Theirs was the only driveway paved in nice, white cement, rather than blacktop to make it easier for Frankie’s dad to get in and out of the house. Really, only two things got Frankie into fights, making stupid comments about his dad and calling him Frankie Hiney. Of course, the McKuens regularly did both.

Halloween that year fell on a Thursday, which was almost perfection. Only one day to sit in school after the loot was ours and dream about Heath bars, Tootsie Rolls and M&M’s before the whole weekend, broken up only by church or temple, when we’d be free to eat and trade, and eat and trade.

We trick or treated as a group, Frankie as a soldier wearing a lot of his dad’s old army gear, the Dafts in their fourth of July costumes, which were good but we’d seen it, and Jeffy and I looking like a round skeleton and gypsy. Philadelphia in late October was already cold and ours was the only mother who made our costumes so our coats would fit underneath. “You wouldn’t make it to five houses,” she’d say in a surprised voice. We always protested but we were the only two kids who lasted out there until every door was knocked on.

Our favorites were the Schraeders, who gave out full-size candy bars, the Williams’ who gave out a penny for each year of your age, and our own house where Mom would let you take two. Our least favorite was the dentist down at the other end of Juniper Drive who gave out toothbrushes. Occasionally he got his house t-peed, but not by us, even if we did smile at the sight.

We weren’t fond of him as a dentist either. I went to him only once and remember his strained face leaning over me telling me to quit screaming, it was hurting his ear. I screamed louder straight into his offered ear. After that we went to the twin Katz brothers who gave out small ceramics I could paint or animal erasers and had heard of novocaine.

By the time we came around the curve and back up Juniper Drive, stopping at the Dafts, they would be out of the candy Mrs. Daft had bought and Andrea, Paula and Marcia would be forced to chip in with the candy they collected. A horrible parental decision, but we still took what was offered. Thank goodness Mom always bought plenty.

Besides being able to go to as many houses as we could stand, and eating as much of the candy when we wanted to, the other cool part was being able to trick or treat without a parent standing right behind us. We went alone, running from house to house, slowing down only near the end, me nagging Jeffy into going down one more street until I sensed I’d pushed him far enough and we headed home.

Dad always lurked two houses behind us, carefully hidden in the shadows, creeping around by the bushes so we wouldn’t see him. We may have had to wear coats but he wasn’t going to humiliate us by letting us know he was babysitting us. The neighbors knew, they saw him bringing up the rear, but they never told.