1 The World''s Longest Main Street I grew up in a place called Belleville, a town of about forty thousand in Southern Illinois, a half-hour drive outside of St. Louis. It''s the "stove capital of the world," or at least it was at the turn of the century. That''s what we were told, anyway. It''s also the home of Jimmy Connors and Buddy Ebsen (Uncle Jed from The Beverly Hillbillies), and when I was growing up they made Stag Beer there. So as you can imagine, my childhood was pretty magical. In reality it was pretty depressing. Depressing and depressed in all of the familiar ways common to dying midwestern manufacturing hubs: a lot of old empty buildings and a lot of occupied barstools.
The things that made our town unique and special were hard to get super excited about. Belleville has (purportedly) the longest Main Street in the U.S., spanning 9.2 miles and ending somewhere around East St. Louis. One stretch of road and so many opportunities to get loaded and almost zero chance of getting lost. I don''t know how many bars were on Main Street, but there must''ve been a lot, because Belleville''s other claim to fame was having the most taverns per capita.
I found out later that wasn''t true, which was kind of a relief, because it never felt like something worth bragging about. As if day drinking was a commodity we could have exported and sold to the rest of the world. I lived just a half block off the Main Street with too many bars, on a tree-lined street with a name like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting: Fortieth. Our small single-family wood-framed house with a porch and a swing ended up being the last home my folks would ever own after my mother impulsively paid $16,000 for it at an auction in the early spring of 1967. Apparently she knew she was pregnant with me but hadn''t told my dad. I was the card up her proverbial sleeve to ease his expected top-blowing at her fiscal irresponsibility. The previous owner had died in that house, which creeped me out as a kid, and as it turned out both of my parents ended up dying there as well. So everyone who ever owned the house I grew up in died there.
Which is, I think, the main reason my siblings and I weren''t overly sentimental about hanging on to it after we buried my dad in 2017. Aside from all of that backstory, the place was fairly nondescript. The one word I think would be most useful in setting the scene of my childhood? Mauve. There was a lot of mauve. Mauve carpets, mauve wallpaper, mauve furniture. Everything was mauve. Think of a smaller me, and then picture the color mauve, and you''ve conjured my childhood in a nutshell. I''m not sure if my parents intended to have me.
I''ve heard different accounts. The popular story is that I was an accident. Regardless, I was late to the family party. My older sister, Debbie, who''s fifteen years my senior, was born when my dad was just eighteen. They had two more kids, Steve and Greg, and by the time I showed up, my dad was in his midthirties, an age that most men of his generation considered well past prime baby-making years. My dad changed his story over time. He once told me, "I remember your mother called me at work and said, ''I want another one,'' and I was home before she hung up the phone." I don''t know if that''s true.
He always told that version with at least a six-pack under his belt, so I can''t vouch for its veracity. It''s possible he was trying to spare my feelings. Who wants to be an accident? That''s a hard way to come into the world, created just because the responsible parties weren''t paying attention. On the other hand, aren''t we all accidents? Sorry, moving on . My dad-his name was Bob, but for the purposes of this narrative, let''s stick with Dad-worked on the railroad (yes, all the livelong day). He dropped out of high school after he got my mom pregnant when she was fifteen and got a job as a diesel mechanic for the Alton and Southern Railway. In the early 1960s, some higher-up figured out that Dad was way smarter than his lack of a high school diploma would indicate, so they sent him to Arizona to study computers and learn how to program with punch cards, and eventually he got promoted to superintendent of the switching yard. That''s almost the extent of what I know about what my dad did all day.
I only went down to the railroad to see him once, as far as I can remember. I never had much curiosity about his job. For his part, he didn''t seem that curious about me, either, and I never felt much pressure from him to care about trains. Which is odd, because what kid doesn''t like trains? However, my dad did have a record I was fascinated by, Sounds of Steam Locomotives. It was a collection of recordings of train engines. That''s all it was; the rhythmic clanging of steel wheels on steel tracks, the heavy chuff of heated steam being pushed through a locomotive''s smokestack, a train''s moaning whistle that always sounded to me like voices. It was a weird record, even more so because it was owned by my dad, who spent the vast majority of his waking hours around trains. Wouldn''t that be the last thing he''d want to hear after coming home? Was there a time before I was born when, after work, he would sit with a beer next to the hi-fi, listening to tracks like "2-8-2 No.
2599, Chicago Northwestern" and "4-8-4 No. 801, Union Pacific" and nodding along like they were pop songs? I guess when I think back on it, it makes total sense how I developed a fondness for almost any recorded sound. Maybe indirectly (because my dad and I never openly discussed it), I learned from him how you could find music in just about anything. I wasn''t an only child, but I grew up like one. Since my sister and brothers were so much older, most of the time it was just my parents and me. My dad was on call at the railroad twenty-four hours a day, so he''d always be gone or in bed early. It got pretty lonely in my house growing up. Most nights I''d stay close to my mother, who was born JoAnn Werkmeister, as she watched TV and smoked cigarettes on the couch.
It was the best she could do. She''d been a mother for so much of her life that by the time I came around, she''d kind of given up on parenting. Well, maybe not given up, but she wasn''t interested in being an authority figure. I wasn''t given a lot of boundaries or rules. I didn''t have a bedtime. If I made it to bed at all, it was usually my decision. She was a night owl-she took occasional naps throughout the day, like a house cat-so she always stayed up late, and she''d let me stay up with her. We''d watch Johnny Carson, and then later, on channel 4''s late-night Bijou Picture Show-the Turner Classic Movies of its day-old movies my mom would tell me she''d seen in theaters when they were brand-new.
She adored Judy Garland, so I especially have memories of watching movies like Presenting Lily Mars, Meet Me in St. Louis, For Me and My Gal, Strike Up the Band, Babes in Arms with her. Sometimes I''d drift off-it''s hard to stay awake at 3:00 a.m. when you''re a little kid-and sometimes she''d fall asleep. With a lit cigarette still dangling in her mouth. I''d watch mesmerized as it slowly burned down to the filter and hold my breath in suspense as an ash the length of an entire cigarette would somehow balance itself against her breathing for whole minutes before plopping onto the lap of her robe. That might sound like really irresponsible and dangerous parenting, I know, but it''s a memory that evokes nothing but warm feelings for me.
The smell of the cigarettes and the black-and-white TV flickering in the dark, the only sounds being Judy Garland''s familiar voice-"Psychologically, I''m very confused, but personally I feel just wonderful"-and my mom''s gentle breathing nearby. I never felt so content. Almost every night we''d wake up my dad, who was trying to sleep in the next room. We had a small house, so the master bedroom was inconveniently located right next to the living room. There was just a wall-not even a particularly thick wall-separating him and whatever we were blaring on the TV. He''d burst out of the bedroom in his saggy white briefs and start screaming, "Goddammit, shut this place down, JoAnn!" "Go back to bed, Bob!" she''d scream right back at him. "Do you know what time it is? It''s two o''clock in the goddamn morning! I have to be up before you even know what day it is!" He''d slam the door shut and my mom would light another cigarette. "Mom," I''d whisper, trying to be conciliatory.
"Maybe the TV is a little bit loud." "Don''t let him tell you what to do," she''d say. I''d turn the volume down anyway, at least until we heard snoring coming from the next room and we knew he was asleep again, and then the volume would go right back up. It was a nightly battle of wills, and my mother always won. I tried to be the arbitrator between my parents, the neutral voice of reason, but they both knew I was on her side. My mom was very permissive with me about a lot of things, because she was more interested in having me as a friend and an ally than being my parent. We were a unified front against an unfair and unreasonable world (i.e.
, my dad and his demands for a quiet home after midnight). She took great strides to keep me by her side. If I ever said, "I''m lonely," she wouldn''t suggest something rational like "Why don''t you call that kid who lives down the block and go play with him?" She''d teach me how to play solitaire. That was her solution to my loneliness. "Here, I''ll get you some cards." Because she wanted me there.