John Creighton

January 29th, 2010 by John Creighton in Snapshots

Tags: Atwood, Longmont, Mom, Neighbors

“I’m home,” I yelled as I walked in the front door returning from a neighbor’s.  I threw my jacket on the bench in the front hall knowing full well I’d be called back to pick it up when Mom discovered it later in the day.  Still, it seemed like the right place to keep the jacket until I was asked to hang it in the closet.

Mom stuck her head around the kitchen door, “How was it?”

“Fine,” I said, giving the answer I assumed was complete and self-explanatory.  It’s the same answer my kids give me when I ask them about something they’ve done.  I don’t know what happens between ages seven and forty that causes a simple “fine” to be completely insufficient.

Mom, like most parents, like me now, insisted on more information.  “What did you do,” she asked.

“Not much,” I replied.  But eager to get on to other things and in an effort to fend off more questions I volunteered, “We watched a little T.V.  Mostly we rolled cigarettes.”

“Well, I hope you said thank you,” Mom called after me as I ran up the stairs to my room.

“I did,” I yelled back.

This exchange between Mom and me is a small window on what it was like to come of age in Atwood, Kansas in the 1970s compared to coming of age in Longmont, Colorado today.

Some things don’t change.  Parents always want more information than children feel necessary to give.  The children might be right.  Why clutter a mind with details when things are “fine”?

The rest of the scene paints very different experiences than those my children have.

My children went nowhere by themselves when they were seven years old.  We still limit the places they are allowed to go without adult supervision.  I had the run of the town from my earliest memories.  Joni tells me that’s a function of size.  Though Longmont’s not large by most people’s standards it is more than forty-five times bigger than Atwood.  There are always “strangers” about in Longmont.

The amount of adult supervision children are subjected to is also a function of the times.  Parents of my generation are far more fearful than my parents and their peers.   I don’t know if there are really new dangers that make it more risky for kids to be alone or whether these dangers are just perceived.  I do know many parents give a wary look when I dare to suggest the world’s not so unsafe.

You might be wondering about “rolling cigarettes” and the fact that Mom did not blanch in the slightest when I told her that’s what I’d been doing.  Clearly social sensibilities around smoking were much different in the 1970s.  I would help Mom ready the house for dinner parties by cleaning ash trays and setting them out in the living room.  I don’t even know, now, where to by an ashtray.

We teach children today that smoking is evil.  My son Joe was aghast to learn that President Obama is a smoker.  He quizzed me relentlessly to understand how an adult in a position of such stature could do something that he’s been told will kill you.  He walks within inches and stares at people on the rare occasion we are at a function where an adult smokes.  He’s mesmerized by the sight as if he’s watching the freak show at a long ago carnival.  He’d sell tickets to his friends if we’d let him.

I did not smoke as child.  My parents would not have tolerated it.  But, they didn’t give a first thought to me spending time with adults who did.  Brian Luedke and I rode back from a kid wrestling tournament held in Manhattan, Kansas with two smoking adults – not our parents.  We tried to sneak gasps of fresh air cracking the back window and putting our mouths close to the opening.  Each time, we were quickly scolded for letting in the frigid March winds.  We sat in a cloud for four hours.

I spent significant time with older adults – not just parents of my friends.  The only adults without children at home my kids visit are their grandparents in Atwood.  I don’t know if that really counts.

I went to my next door neighbor Jimmy Greason’s house on a regular basis.  He always had a cigarette in hand and his living room was perpetually fogged.  But, it never occurred to me that the second hand smoke might be bad.  Mom never expressed concern, either.

I also hung out from time to time at Mrs. Pochop’s house – a neighbor and regular baby sitter who lived a block or so to the south in a house that is not longer there.  Mrs. Pochop lived with her daughter Patsy who often worked for Mom cleaning house and doing our ironing.  Their third roommate was Irene Forten, Mrs. Pochop’s sister.

Irene was a smoker.  She wore a green work shirt with a pack of cigarettes stuck in the front pocket every day.  The outfit was like her uniform.

One of my favorite things to do at their house was to help Irene roll her cigarettes.  We set up on the Formica folding table a little machine that looked a lot like an automatic card shuffler.  We put tobacco in one compartment and her Zig Zag cigarette papers in another.  A turn of the handle would let out a bit of tobacco and fold the paper into the shape of a small cylinder.  I was never a master but learned well enough to satisfy Irene.  I was probably seven or eight the last time I practiced this trade.

My children would consider such practices to be of the medieval ages not just one generation ago.  But, back in the 1970s, going over to a grown up’s house to roll cigarettes was just something you did.

And, it was all fine…  If you remembered to say thank you before going home.