1973c - Never My Love

by the Association

You ask me if there will ever come a time
When I grow tired of you.
Never My Love, Never My Love.

You wonder if this heart of mine
WIll ever lose its desire for you
Never My Love, Never My Love

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In the spring of 1973, I was four years old. I was still full of fire and fuse, my head full of dreams. Life was a big, wide-open country.

Reynoldsburg was a city of barely 14,000 and the Tomato Festival was a town-wide event. The Festival occupied all of Huber Park, which only had one entrance, at the intersection of Haft Drive and Retton Road. A fence line of 40-year-old oaks and maples closed off the north side between the park and the Swim Club. In fact, the sight lines between the park and the pool were barely visible, except at night when the lights of one shined through the canopy of tree leaves to the other.

Most of America suffered through an identity crisis in 1973. College-aged kids had or had not come back from Vietnam. Attitudes towards institutions were changing. Everyone had also just lived through the era of burning flags and burning bras. Norman Rockwell portraits of Americana that splashed the covers of the Saturday Evening Post no longer resembled anything American.

Dad and I still went to the Pinewood Derby. On Saturdays, I sat in the bleachers between my parents to watch my big brother play Reynoldsburg Youth Football or my big sister cheer for either of the traveling teams, the Mustangs or Broncos.

Back then, we also made it a regular occasion to jump into the station wagon and travel south to Lynchburg, Ohio.

Like Reynoldsburg, Lynchburg was a bedroom community – a modern-day mix of “The Waltons”, “Family”, and “Eight is Enough”. Our family, however, was somewhat insulated from all of that. We were complete back then; five of us together, doing whatever families did in suburban Columbus in the seventies.

The car bumped and bounced as it twisted and turned along rural routes through southwestern Ohio. Us three kids hopped back and forth between the back seat and rumble seat, Angie in an old pair of khaki shorts and tank top, Boot in a pair of cut off jeans and a plain t-shirt, me in whatever mom pulled over my head. I usually wore plain scarlet t-shirts with “Buckeyes” and the number 45 emblazoned on the chest. I often had old red and gray sneakers to match.

Our tube socks were ragged by today’s standards, but they were general issue. We always pulled them up to the knee and they had three wide multi-colored stripes at the top. There were no tennis shoes in the early seventies, only sneakers. They were often run of the mill and flat-soled. They had plain cloth outers and plain gray shoelaces. It was 1974. Middle America hadn’t yet discovered Nike or Asics or Saucony. We just relied on our good old Converse and Hush Puppies.

Two hours after embarking on our journey, we arrived at our destination: the Irwin house. It was an old two-level with three bedrooms and an attic. The two oldest boys, Mark and Mike, lived together in the big room at the front of the house. Kelly lived in the cramped bedroom beside it. Shelly lived in the attic loft. Uncle Fred and Aunt Joyce lived upstairs, just down the hall from a bathroom with a bathtub that had brass lion’s feet. I remember it, because those metallic feet were the reason I tried to never go inside.

We always visited after Thanksgiving and Christmas, but we also dropped on other occasions, like marriages, births, and deaths. We also went to all of our cousins’ graduations in Lynchburg.

Sometimes, we went for non-occasions, too. We’d gather in the immense kitchen for an extended meal or a game of cards. Meanwhile, other family members (usually the oldest men) stuffed themselves into the cramped living room. It could not have been more than 6’ x 7’.

During holidays, it’s where four children crowded around a standard card table. Aunt Joyce moved the ottoman to one of the extra rooms. Sometimes, my cousin Kelly would join us, putting a TV tray in front of Uncle Fred’s recliner and leaning forward to eat.

All this reminiscing romanticizes things a bit. Uncle Fred suffered from alcoholism. Mike was Gay while Mark was soon to be a Baptist preacher. There are the same two brothers that shared the big bedroom in the front. With polar opposite views, it would be hard to believe that it was all smooth sailing. Aunt Joyce dealt with all that turmoil the best she could.

My mom and dad puttered along, living more like the people from “An American Family” than anyone from any other 70s TV family. They would be unhappily divorced within 7 years.

The Schuyler children, meanwhile, would follow in their parents’ footsteps, collecting marriages and divorces like they were going out of style. All of that simmered somewhere below the surface. Whenever we got together, problems seemed to drift away.

Maybe they didn’t. I was only 4 years old. Maybe I was sheltered, but I’d like to think that the outside pressures seemed to wither away when all of us gathered in that house.

….romantic recollections.

There is a mural of Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” painted in Columbus’ Short North District. If you don’t know the painting, it’s the one where the old couple stands in front of their old whitewashed barn, dressed in their Sunday best. The husband grips a pitchfork in his right hand while the wife peers crossways against his direct gaze. It should not be the least bit funny that it stands in a gay neighborhood.

Then again, even in the most dysfunctional of families, all seems to be perfect more often than not.

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