Ferocious Centipeded (Reedited 5-2008)
Ferocious Centipedes
(1956, 109 East Arch Street, St. Paul, Minnesota)
As a child I lived for a long period of time in an extended family environment, my grandfather, Anton was the head of the house, and it was my brother and I, my mother, and two of her sisters living in a small three bedroom house, in what was known as the as outer rim of the inner city. The house was heated by a space heater in the living room. The ice man had to bring dried ice to keep our icebox cold; we had a well along side of the house for water, and there were old barns next door on each side of our house, being converted into garages. The City of St. Paul was quite conservative back then [Minnesota]. And many families lived like us—together in an extended family environment; those setups seem to be coming back some nowadays, with the shortage of houses in Minnesota, and high rents. They were hard-working folks, my family: uncles, aunts, grandfather, and my mother; my mother worked for Swifts, at the stockyards, and my grandfather a painter, worked for a few outfits, and eventually, acquired a restaurant, along with his day job as a painter and had someone work it when he couldn’t.
My brother Mike—two years older than I—and I slept in the bedroom next to the dinning room; my mother in the bedroom across from the living room; and my grandfather in the bedroom across from the bathroom. The two sisters slept on the couch and a rollaway bed, in the living room, and sometimes with my mother. This was during the early fifties [1951-57]. We did have plenty to eat on the table back then though, just not much money to do anything else. It was in 1956 we are talking about, in particular, when we got our large black and white television, and what a crown of glory it was for the household—a tank of a television in comparison to those of today, it must had weighted all of fifty pounds.
Of all these days, there are a few select that I kept in my memory vaults in the back of my mind, which I’m am about to tell you of one. My mother, poor woman, she’d be walking in the dinning room setting up lunch, or wiping down the curtains, and a centipede would appear; you know, those little creatures, wormlike animals with a hundred legs, one for each section of its body, slim body, and little antennas (modified legs, that can be poisoned fangs) you can’t really see those legs, unless you are on top of them. Little beady eyes and yellowish in color (they came in all sizes in our warm little house in the winters and cool in the summers: large, medium and small, all sizes I say, long and think and some big and fat), some a little more tan in color than others.
They could run when cornered I’ll tell you that, perhaps faster than the Roadrunner, that cartoon on television, and I suppose that is what made them more creeper than a mouse, more frustrating than a buzzing fly, especially for my mother, whom was deadly afraid of them.
But let me get to the point here. When she saw one, and I am now visualizing a certain day in the living room when she did, the sun leveling a ray right onto the floor, wooden floor, the table long and thick, in the dinning room, and what do you expect but day to lounge about, and do a little house cleaning before lunch, exacting what she was doing, I was in the living room watching cartoons, thus, out of nowhere a fair-sized and yellowish colored centipede with some inherent high energy, and its own separate collective motion for each leg to run in unison with the others, came dashing from its hidden abode, and it went so fast you’d think it had a tail for a kite, right across my mother’s white moccasins, she was wearing.
She’d jump and screamed when she saw the centipede; indeed she scream until her lungs almost collapsed. She definitely looked as though she needed calm down pill. Arrayed in a morbid, pale face, grandpa came running from wherever he was: basement, kitchen, cellar (feeding his pigeons), thinking the roof fell in, fell on top of her—only to find out he had to undertake the killing of a ferocious centipede, one that seemed to be going local, or in circles, and was a tinge skittish, thus, he took his bare foot, readied it like a hammer over this—call of the wild—and smash it, as he continued to chew his tobacco, quick it was, “Oh!! Said my mother, with a sigh of relief, as he walked away saying,
“I cant believe dhis, vhat is dhe matter with that woman!” and then came an entourage of four lettered words, that I do not want to spell out.
Next, she looked down at her white-moccasins, with beady-laced trim around the front of them, and in the center leathered, and asked me to go in the bathroom, get some toilet paper and clean the mess up, she just couldn’t get herself to touch the smashed creature, and I did.
To be quite frank, I never saw a more frightened person over a centipede in my entire life—; during these outbursts (and there really was not all that many), she seemed to suck up all the oxygen in the room she was in; grabbing all the attention to, yes, without a doubt, and I’d seem to get exhausted just watching it, watching these trials of fright, during those now far-off years, the years we lived at 109 East Arch Street. I really felt for her, I mean, I felt helpless wanting to help her, and perplexed at the same time, because I couldn’t; trying to figure out what was so scary about a bug, other than it was creepy looking. But I never made fun of it, we all have our fears, and we all pay a price for them, one way or another, that in itself is enough penance for allowing ourselves to be caught in the web of fear.
Then there was the spiders who loved to entertain my mother, and they seemed to paralyze her like the centipedes, to the point there was no escape from them, but to scream; and scream she did; again I say, old to the point grandpa would look at her when she’d go into those ferocious spells, and he’d utter, “Yeah, yeah (and the four letter words)…” and shake his head as if it was loose at its core. But I kind of miss those days. Well, kind of I say, she’s been gone now for a few years, and just before she passed on, I brought back a large dead tarantula, from South America, and told her if she could hold the dead creature, I’d give her a little pot of gold, and she held it, but only for a five seconds, and she got her five second pot of gold.
Written in St. Paul, Minnesota, 8-2005
(1956, 109 East Arch Street, St. Paul, Minnesota)
As a child I lived for a long period of time in an extended family environment, my grandfather, Anton was the head of the house, and it was my brother and I, my mother, and two of her sisters living in a small three bedroom house, in what was known as the as outer rim of the inner city. The house was heated by a space heater in the living room. The ice man had to bring dried ice to keep our icebox cold; we had a well along side of the house for water, and there were old barns next door on each side of our house, being converted into garages. The City of St. Paul was quite conservative back then [Minnesota]. And many families lived like us—together in an extended family environment; those setups seem to be coming back some nowadays, with the shortage of houses in Minnesota, and high rents. They were hard-working folks, my family: uncles, aunts, grandfather, and my mother; my mother worked for Swifts, at the stockyards, and my grandfather a painter, worked for a few outfits, and eventually, acquired a restaurant, along with his day job as a painter and had someone work it when he couldn’t.
My brother Mike—two years older than I—and I slept in the bedroom next to the dinning room; my mother in the bedroom across from the living room; and my grandfather in the bedroom across from the bathroom. The two sisters slept on the couch and a rollaway bed, in the living room, and sometimes with my mother. This was during the early fifties [1951-57]. We did have plenty to eat on the table back then though, just not much money to do anything else. It was in 1956 we are talking about, in particular, when we got our large black and white television, and what a crown of glory it was for the household—a tank of a television in comparison to those of today, it must had weighted all of fifty pounds.
Of all these days, there are a few select that I kept in my memory vaults in the back of my mind, which I’m am about to tell you of one. My mother, poor woman, she’d be walking in the dinning room setting up lunch, or wiping down the curtains, and a centipede would appear; you know, those little creatures, wormlike animals with a hundred legs, one for each section of its body, slim body, and little antennas (modified legs, that can be poisoned fangs) you can’t really see those legs, unless you are on top of them. Little beady eyes and yellowish in color (they came in all sizes in our warm little house in the winters and cool in the summers: large, medium and small, all sizes I say, long and think and some big and fat), some a little more tan in color than others.
They could run when cornered I’ll tell you that, perhaps faster than the Roadrunner, that cartoon on television, and I suppose that is what made them more creeper than a mouse, more frustrating than a buzzing fly, especially for my mother, whom was deadly afraid of them.
But let me get to the point here. When she saw one, and I am now visualizing a certain day in the living room when she did, the sun leveling a ray right onto the floor, wooden floor, the table long and thick, in the dinning room, and what do you expect but day to lounge about, and do a little house cleaning before lunch, exacting what she was doing, I was in the living room watching cartoons, thus, out of nowhere a fair-sized and yellowish colored centipede with some inherent high energy, and its own separate collective motion for each leg to run in unison with the others, came dashing from its hidden abode, and it went so fast you’d think it had a tail for a kite, right across my mother’s white moccasins, she was wearing.
She’d jump and screamed when she saw the centipede; indeed she scream until her lungs almost collapsed. She definitely looked as though she needed calm down pill. Arrayed in a morbid, pale face, grandpa came running from wherever he was: basement, kitchen, cellar (feeding his pigeons), thinking the roof fell in, fell on top of her—only to find out he had to undertake the killing of a ferocious centipede, one that seemed to be going local, or in circles, and was a tinge skittish, thus, he took his bare foot, readied it like a hammer over this—call of the wild—and smash it, as he continued to chew his tobacco, quick it was, “Oh!! Said my mother, with a sigh of relief, as he walked away saying,
“I cant believe dhis, vhat is dhe matter with that woman!” and then came an entourage of four lettered words, that I do not want to spell out.
Next, she looked down at her white-moccasins, with beady-laced trim around the front of them, and in the center leathered, and asked me to go in the bathroom, get some toilet paper and clean the mess up, she just couldn’t get herself to touch the smashed creature, and I did.
To be quite frank, I never saw a more frightened person over a centipede in my entire life—; during these outbursts (and there really was not all that many), she seemed to suck up all the oxygen in the room she was in; grabbing all the attention to, yes, without a doubt, and I’d seem to get exhausted just watching it, watching these trials of fright, during those now far-off years, the years we lived at 109 East Arch Street. I really felt for her, I mean, I felt helpless wanting to help her, and perplexed at the same time, because I couldn’t; trying to figure out what was so scary about a bug, other than it was creepy looking. But I never made fun of it, we all have our fears, and we all pay a price for them, one way or another, that in itself is enough penance for allowing ourselves to be caught in the web of fear.
Then there was the spiders who loved to entertain my mother, and they seemed to paralyze her like the centipedes, to the point there was no escape from them, but to scream; and scream she did; again I say, old to the point grandpa would look at her when she’d go into those ferocious spells, and he’d utter, “Yeah, yeah (and the four letter words)…” and shake his head as if it was loose at its core. But I kind of miss those days. Well, kind of I say, she’s been gone now for a few years, and just before she passed on, I brought back a large dead tarantula, from South America, and told her if she could hold the dead creature, I’d give her a little pot of gold, and she held it, but only for a five seconds, and she got her five second pot of gold.
Written in St. Paul, Minnesota, 8-2005
Labels: Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D., Poeta Laureado
posted by Dennis and Rosa Siluk at 7:05 PM
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