My Castle, and Unicycles

This is personal and almost boring, but you are all welcome to join me in the backyard and basement, 50 years ago. Most of this exists as “some recent memories.” Today’s are completely different. This took more work than it should have, but it is dedicated to mom.

The Delanys were, by every standard, well-educated, even culturally refined. We also had a side that was solid lower middle class. (Mom and dad, in other words, came from across the tracks. He earned his status and respect.) We never lacked anything as far as I could tell. When I was four, however, mom went to work teaching 5th Grade. As a result, I alone among my older sisters and brothers could eat more than one slice of bacon on a blt. And I sacrificed almost a year and a half to a nice old woman named Mrs. Kaiser, who sat me in a chair in her plump living room that rattled with crystals in cupboards at every move for a few hours after school in front of a portable TV that got two channels until mom got done teaching, collected me, and took me home, 3/4 of a block away. It made no sense, so I simply started walking home in second grade, bypassing Mrs. K. After a severe reprimand. The first day rounded up folks from around the city to find me at home, watching TV. My insubordination was allowed to continue with a big sigh of relief from all and for all of us. Dave Delany became a latchkey kid about 18 months after being diagnosed with diabetes. The first and only in at least three generations.

But I needed no key. We seldom locked our house. The entries remained totally insecure even when battened down. Right through the Detroit riots and to the end of my years in the house as a bachelor pad after college graduation, I could climb into the milk chute far enough to open the side door, slip the little chain on the back door, or shimmy up the back wall and jimmy Rob’s window. Actually, for a long time my room was Rob’s room, Rob’s room was Marg’s room, and the big back bedroom belonged to Sue and Kathy. Mom, dad and I shared the master bedroom, then I spent a short season in Sue and Kathy’s room when they went away to college, got married, and in Sue’s case, set sail for Ankara, Turkey with her new husband, civilian employees of the USAF. Kathy died a decade later, in her early 30s.

Sue and Kathy’s room lasted from a memory of chewing on a windowsill right through to escaping my crib. For some reason, mom and dad seemed to play musical bedrooms each time another family member came or left. Two more times I reluctantly returned, but ultimately I chose the smallest, coldest, remotest, quietest room I was allowed. As the last soul to live in that house under Delany name, I remained dedicated to “my” room until I moved in 1980. To Phoenix. The Longacre house served well as my creative origin. I still admire the image of that blue and green room, our neighborhood, and that house.

The basement was cool! I painted the heavy block walls of the recreation room with a dozen coats of fairly thick ultra-gloss white paint, hung several black light posters on it, hung fluorescent black lights, and had every guest sign a block of the wall with bright-colored markers. All my friends of the era signed that wall. It was my mother’s idea.

But dad, too, would often bring his guests downstairs to sign my wall. We served a stream of international dinner guests from Norbert’s (long story, well worth telling elsewhere) businesses, foreign lesser dignitaries of minor nations, Detroit Symphony Orchestra members, and regional music directors. We also saw plenty of young exchange students from Europe, who worked in tobacco fields on plantations in Ontario, Canada, and then roared away on tours of the United States of America. It really turned out financially better than, “Net Free,” but word has it, they really earned it. And we had high school students from dad’s music classes, including a couple of prodigies.

In all cases, we always ate in the dining room when the fifth person showed, and my mother, as always, seemed completely comfortable. She could handle any necessary rise in social or cultural occasion, and knew the names and uses for every piece of silver, china, and other culinary tools we had. As a family, we could wedge six into our breakfast nook, though it was only comfortable for four.

Every memory of Longacre is a fond one — even those of devastating news. Sue and Kathy both married, got pregnant, and lost their babies in rapid succession. Rob called from the Rockies; he and his friend Craig were not coming home until stuff was resolved. And Craig moved in. (There was no shift in bedrooms.) He lived privately in the basement. What I mean is, these things were horrible, but they could be endured on Longacre. Other people seemed to think so, too. Two girls (20s) in a row. I didn’t like the first one, and she didn’t stay. The other I enjoyed. Her name was Martha. I have no idea where they came from, who they were, or why they were living in our house. Even then, I enjoyed people in this way. Kevin lived with us for a couple of years. He was mother’s student, 5th Grade. I was 4th. Richard, too, lived on Longacre during college.

This family came into existence when a teamster and later a motorized truck driver’s son fell in love with the great professor’s daughter. Dad’s dad remains mostly a host of late life diagnoses. His wife kept an austere, little home on Inkster Rd., on a tributary to the Rouge River. When he was just a little older than I am now, he built a 20 x 42 foot extension that appeared to swallow the original house, sealed it off, and rented it to a schizophrenic who occasionally appeared in the news.

Mom’s dad was an icon of everything I hold dear. We never met, but I know that he peppered his tomatoes, wrote books, and believed in indoctrinating his children. He was quite tall, but the height all passed through my mother’s sister, whose first son was 6’10”. My cousin Julie Anne was 6’2″.

If I had a special talent or ability, it was balance. It was difficult to knock me down, and I seldom fell. Somewhat catlike, I suppose. I rode a unicycle for years over curbs and gravel, achieved splendid height from a POGO-stick, mastered stilts early, and tended to keep my feet under me. That sort of balance never developed in other parts of my life.

Our neighborhood on Longacre was more beautiful than Camelot, Mecca, Babylon, Paris, and Rome. Longacre’s great empire fell, but regular dreams of going into the various basements of my youth still overwhelm my dreams, finding different worlds and vast empires, “down there.” These places exist with fierce certainty. So much so, it is now possible to slide into any of them at will, maintain my objective “self,” and watch another full chapter. No commercials unless I choose, or unless a package shows up and the dogs erupt over it.

This little clot of anecdotes serves no purpose, except it all really happened, and reflects chunks of what I see through my windows. Most current days are eagerly spent in the garden while I may. Again abandoning the “spend nothing” rule, we spent just shy of a hundred bucks at Verde River Growers, on Rocking Chair Rd. in Cottonwood. Two roses, our first Arizona-owned brilliant red (my original favorite color) Oklahoma and another yellow (my now favorite color) floribunda called Fiesta Veranda (but it will be different this time. Floribunda buds spring forth bright yellow, then bleach, shrivel and turn yellow again, and then brown, presenting a nearly dead thorn bush of gun-hole buttons with mustard yellow and rusty gold leaves until another flush comes along) a butterfly bush (they did so well in Michigan and New York, but not yet here) and six seedling six-packs of petunias, snap dragons, verbena, and yes, tomatoes.

And that brings me fully to now. If you read this, it was charitable of you. All I do is grow older, weaker, and more certain than ever that God is waiting for me, training me up in the way I should go. Repeatedly, he says, “Stop!” in His Word, but my flesh refuses to obey.

He rides a unicycle, but he’s a little unbalanced.