The trouble began at Providence Lying-In Hospital where I was born November 20, 1945, when the room rate was ten dollars per day. The second child of Hope and Jesse Edwards, they summarily saddled me with the moniker Lance Streeter Edwards, ‘Streeter’ being my mother‘s maiden name. Lance!!! What could my parents having been thinking? They might just as well have tattooed a bull’s eye on my forehead. Although years later I came to appreciate my name – not having to turn my head whenever I heard someone call Billy, Bobby or Sam – as a child it proved to be a burden, especially for a child that would have other differences with which to cope. At the time of my birth my elder brother, Jay, was three.
At age three a new house was being built next door and my mother told me that the family had a little girl my age. They did. Juanita Woolhouse was ten months older, and her arrival was the beginning of my first real friendship. When we had a fight our penance would be each of us punching ourselves in the belly, no doubt the harder we hit ourselves the more sincere our apology. Whenever I got a splinter it was to Mrs. Woolhouse that I ran, she having a special knack for painless extraction, or maybe I was just braver in front of her than my own mother. Soon there was more excitement afoot; construction of an addition to our house had begun.
When my grandfather lost the lease on his gas station, an ‘L’ was added to the first floor of 190, which would house a master bedroom for my parents, as well as a small hallway, closet, and bathroom. The bathroom, however, not becoming a bathroom until we moved next door – while we lived there it was a bunkroom for my brother and me. My grandparents and Uncle Bud moved into the four room apartment upstairs, and we still used that bathroom. A big Bakelite mug kept behind the door in our kitchen was a pee pot for us boys.
Next to our house was a big field, three house lots that extended to the corner. Naturally it was a playground for all of the kids, despite the fact that it was dangerous at times. Reckless drivers would speed diagonally across the lot rather than making the turn at the corner. One such driver almost clipped my brother and me, just as my father was pulling up in front. He chased after the guy and finally caught him. At the very least Dad gave the fellow a good scolding and, knowing my father, probably a smack or two. He told the fellow that he owned the property, and never to cross it again. The next day he went to city hall to find out who did own the lots, contacted the owner and bought them. Planning for his dream house began, which he would build himself. He had already single-handedly built our spacious summer home in 1941 on the beach in Jerusalem, Narragansett, Rhode Island, a small peninsula fishing village cum summer enclave, so he knew his way around a hammer and saw.
More memorable was what seemed like a recurring nightmare. Yelling and screaming. Banging and crashing. Shouting and crying. Often too frightening to comprehend. Sometimes sirens and police lights flashing in front of the house. First one police car, then two, three. My father on the front porch a drunken mad man, flinging policemen off one after the other. Finally overpowered by three officers, cuffed and dragged to the awaiting cruiser. My mother’s tears. Her bruises and wounds. Her shame.
Early images of battered wife syndrome, something I would not recognize or acknowledge until many years after becoming an adult, and after being a battered spouse myself. Dad would come home, all repentant, and life returned to normal; until the next binge. He was an enigma. Always a good provider, but one minute a loving father and husband, kind and generous, and the next a raging maniac. Those ‘nightmares’ continued throughout my childhood, but I was never asleep. As my brother grew older he would try and protect our mother, as I did later, thus making ourselves victims of the same uncontrollable violence.
From an early age I was always at my mother’s vanity when she put on her makeup to go out and, fascinated by the nail polish in particular, I begged to try some and she obliged. From that moment on I always put on nail polish when my mother did, until one day we were visiting friends in Central Falls. Me a little boy from the suburbs, now outside with the ‘city kids’ in an old mill town of factories and three tenement houses. My nail polish did not go over well – this many decades before Kiss and Marilyn Mason, perhaps I was just ahead of my time. Nonetheless, it was my first remembered experience being the victim of derision and harassment, called ‘sissy’ and ‘girlie’ and more. Despite not really knowing what it was all about, it was the last of the nail polish for me.
The next momentous event was my visit to Santa Claus at The Shepard Company Christmas of 1949, it was the first time that I clearly knew what I wanted. Eagerly I went up to Santa’s throne, settled my four-year-old butt on his lap, and asked for a dollhouse. Santa exclaimed, “What are you, a little fairy?” Those were his exact words, and I was as dumbfounded as a child my age could be. We had the colorful and beautifully illustrated A Day in Fairy Land, and I had spent hours looking through that book. I knew what a fairy was. A fairy was a tiny tiny little girl with wings wearing a tutu. Why was Santa calling me a fairy? I wasn’t a girl, I didn’t have wings, and I wasn’t wearing a tutu. No doubt it was my befuddlement that etched this event in my memory.
Whatever I was thinking at the time, some instinct kept me from mentioning this to anyone, not even my mother. The seeds of concealment planted. As Christmas came closer the excitement grew, and then that faithful morning arrived when my older brother and I crept into the living room to see what Santa had left under the tree. And there it was sitting proudly, in full glory for everyone to see, a big metal two-story doll house complete with all the furniture, a gift for a four-year-old boy. Despite his unenlightened comment, Santa had come through.
It was many years later, of course, before I realized the true essence of the gift that my parents, my 1949 parents, had given me. Probably never before or afterward had they expressed their love and support so completely (well, at least my father hadn't) and to this day I remain in awe. Especially in awe of my father, that he would consent to buck social mores and give his son such an unconventional gift. Despite the trauma that his drinking and violence brought to our lives on a more or less regular basis over the years, this gesture superseded his addiction and spoke to the core of a good man and an unconditionally loving father. (Sadly he wasn't so unconditionally loving 14 years later when I came out, more on that event later).
Television and I pretty much grew up together, because we got our first in 1949, a RCA. It was the first in our neighbourhood and, as we soon found out, the only one for a few neighbourhoods around. Although there were just a few hours of broadcast a day, we would be glued to the set after dinner to watch Milton Berle (aka Uncle Milty) – who frequently dressing up like a woman – Ed Sullivan, and the few others. Before long word got out, and a crowd of neighbour kids started congregating on our front porch, peering through the bay window. My father invited them all in. Then other kids, strangers from other neighbourhoods, joined the audience. My memory includes pictures of our living room with twenty to thirty kids packed in all gazing intently, transfixed by that 10” screen.
Despite being a ‘sissy’ or a ‘fairy’ I was a feisty little fellow, and a force to be reckoned with. I didn’t take crap from anyone, and once my dander was up I never backed down. One of the earlier evidences of this trait occurred when my father started building the house on the three lots. The foundation had been poured, the concrete cured, and the forms removed. This left a series of metal spikes about a foot long protruding from the concrete, which we kids were constantly bending and breaking off. Enter the neighbourhood bully, Al LaBeau. A big kid about two years older than my brother, and a foster child living with the Harringtons across the street.
One day Al was picking on my brother who was eight, and I went at him like a mad man. The metal spike was in my hand, and I viciously plunged it into his calf. He ran home crying. Pick on my brother will you! After that the kids were all taunting me, “Al LaBeau is looking for you.” “He’s going to get you.” “You’d better watch out.” Sooner or later Al’s path and mine did cross. It wasn‘t the Okay Corral but it was a showdown, and the kids were on the side-lines ready to pick up my pieces. Despite being half his age and half his size, I walked right up to him undaunted. With my five-year-old head held high, looking up into his eyes I said, “Hey, LaBeau, I hear you’re lookin’ for me.” As I recall his look was incredulous, as though he was thinking, “Is this kid crazy or what?” He didn’t lay a hand on me, and that was the end of that. Crazy is sometimes a good deterrent to violence.
In 1941 my father had built our summer house right on the beach on Succotash Road in Jerusalem, Narragansett, Rhode Island (ADDRESS #2), although my first summer there would not be until be1946.
I hated the Sea Ranch as well as its owner, Dinky O’Conner, a notorious mobster. Not a big deal in Rhode Island, where having some connection to the Mafia – be it first-hand, third, or fifth – was as common as having a celebrity connection when living in Los Angeles. Even if it’s the cousin of your hairdresser’s ex-husband’s third cousin’s brother-in-law‘s sister, there‘s a connection. During my years in business in Rhode Island even I had a few connections, some first-hand. Maybe it was a childish death wish, but it wasn’t just ten year olds that I stood up to. Whenever I saw Dinky I’d taunt him relentlessly, and I always called him “Stinky! “ Nonetheless, the Sea Ranch beach was a good source of income, and once the patrons started leaving each day I’d scour the sand for empty pop bottles and get the refunds.
The hearing loss that I experience today was first diagnosed when I was twenty-nine, and it does seem to keep getting worse as predicted, but I think that I was probably born with it. For example, as a child I always thought that the Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer song ended with, “and he’ll go down and hit the ree.” Not “in history.” I didn’t know what a “ree” was, but I was certain that Rudolf was going to hit it. Also, early on I had a speech impediment, and hearing loss could have been the culprit. Words beginning in ‘P’ and ‘T’ were pronounced with an ‘F’ (‘truck’ was ‘fruck’ which was misinterpreted at times) and on words beginning with an ‘L’ it was ignored all together. My name was ‘Ance’ and I liked ‘ollypops!’
Our property at the beach was titled under an old deed so – unlike the newer deeds for seaside homes which have the ocean boundary designated as “the high water mark” – ours was bounded on the south by the Atlantic Ocean. At low tide we had more land than at high tide, wherever the water was we owned right up to it. Weekends the Sea Ranch beach next door got pretty crowded, and sometimes folks would wander over and plunk their beach chairs, blankets, umbrellas, coolers, etc., on the beach right in front of our house, despite our fence.
Even at five years of age I was pretty territorial, and I’d be down there shooing them away, “This is Frivate Froperty! Get off my Frivate Froperty!” I’d yell. When that resulted in more laughter than retreat, I’d organize a gang of beach urchins to run down to the water right through their little encampment, knocking over chairs and umbrellas, stomping on blankets, kicking sand all over everything. As I said, don’t mess with me, and stay off of my “Frivate Froperty!”
An early hobby of mine was shoplifting; I just couldn’t resist all the little treasures that were there for the taking. Greed was my downfall. One day at the ‘5 & 10’ I really made a killing, and then was so brazen that I actually stole a handful of little brown paper bags. At home I put a sign on the bunkroom door that read “DO NOT DISTURB” and then proceeded to sort all of my loot into the bags. Yeah … do not disturb … that worked. My parents were in my room like a shot and caught me red handed. My father dragged me back to the store, where I returned everything and apologized to the manager, in front of all the people who were there at the time. That was the end of my career in crime.
September 1951 I entered the first grade, a little early as I was still five and on the borderline of starting then or a year later. It was in first grade that I started to be picked on because of my name, “Lancie pancie, pickle pancie.” and the like. This went on for a while, and then one day I returned home crying. When I told my mother what was wrong, she made up some rhymes making fun of my name, that were all much more clever than anything the first graders had created.
“Lancie pancie lost his pants in the fight for France.” “Lancie pancie lost his pants at the high school dance.” That took the wind out of their sails; it was not so much fun when I could do a better job of ridiculing my own name than they did. Of course my mother, Hope, was the one to know. As a child she’d heard more than her fair share of, “Hope, Hope she’s dope.“ “Hope, Hope uses no soap.“ One harassment averted, there were many more to come, and I continued to be a victim of bullying on a regular basis.
Those days we always went home for lunch, even though it was a half mile walk each way. A sandwich, glass of milk, and cookies were the norm. Then one day my mother gave me spaghetti for lunch. Well, that wasn’t lunch that was supper. You don’t go back to school after eating supper, and I wasn‘t going. My mother had different plans. Try as she may I wouldn’t budge, so she grabbed my arm and started pulling me. She pulled me out the door, across the porch, down the stairs, onto the street, and all the way to the school. She dragged me the entire half mile; I dug my heels in the whole way . . . not giving up the fight. Losing, but not giving up.
By the time she dragged me up the stairs and into the old schoolhouse (the one that she and her father and her grandfather had attended) I was in hysterics, and my brother heard the screaming from his second floor classroom. He recognized the tenor, so wasn’t surprised when he was summoned to help calm me down. In the meantime my father had come home, and asked my grandmother where Hope was. She replied, “The last time I saw her, she had Lance by the arm and was dragging him in the direction of the school.” Years later I was to relive that incident, but from the other end of the dragging, when a little boy under my care didn’t want to go to school. What goes around comes around, that story later.
Our new house was finished before the end of 1951, in time for us to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas there that year. When we moved into 184 Pawtuxet Avenue (ADDRESS #3) my mother pinned a note to my shirt with the new address for the teacher.
Punctuality has been second nature to me as an adult, almost an obsession, yet that was not always the case during my school days. My second grade teacher got so frustrated with my tardiness that she assigned Billy McClellan, who lived about a block from us, to pick me up every morning and get me to school on time. He was a fast walker, and always got to school early. From that day on it was a team effort to get me to school. First Juanita would come over and tie my shoes while I was eating my breakfast, then Billy arrived, and I‘d jog along behind him doing my best to keep up. In the end I became a rather fast walker myself.
One year at Easter time Mr. Woolhouse took Juanita and me to Lakewood Hay and Grain, and bought us each a pair of chicks. Mine turned out to be roosters, which was okay with me. Uncle Bud said he’d feed and water them while we were at the beach for the summer. One night though we had fried chicken for dinner, during which my father and brother could hardly contain themselves. My mother kept giving them reproachful looks. When I took my last bite, before I barely had time to swallow, they burst into laughter as I was informed that I had just eaten my pets. There was no end. No wonder I developed a thick skin, a warped sense of humour, and later spent five years in psychotherapy.
As life and torment went on so did my tenacity. Johnson’s Hummocks was on Allens Avenue in Providence, a narrow three story brick building that looked like an old factory. It sat alone on a block in the middle of this expansive industrial area surrounded by refineries and huge oil tanks. An unlikely location for a restaurant to say the least, but it was the best.
At the street level was a wonderful old tavern all finished in dark wood panelled walls, with deep set booths and plush leather seats (we often went there for shrimp cocktails and lobster salad rolls). The next level up was an art deco delight in aqua and peach, a long and narrow dining room with rows of big booths on each side, all divided by glass panels with etched deco designs. The main dining room was on the third level, and it was elegance personified. Tufted velvet chairs, linen table cloths and napkins, cut glass vases with fresh flowers, and a strolling violinist.
We loved going to the Hummocks, and never knew in which venue we would be dining. This evening of my memory we were in the formal dining room. After order-ing and while munching on bread – with gobs of real butter, we only had margarine at home – I motioned to the violinist as I wanted to make a request. While waiting for him to finish his piece and arrive at our table, the teasing began.
“Do you have money?” “You make a request; you have to give a tip.” “How much of a tip are you going to give him?” “How much money do you have?” Suffice it to say that by the time the poor fellow got to our table I was pissed, and when he asked, “Yes, young man, what would you like me to play?” I shot back in a loud angry voice, “FAR FAR AWAY!” That fixed them! My mother was embarrassed almost to tears. Apologizing, Dad gave the fellow a fiver and told him to play whatever he liked.
Now take that obstinate little personality to the carnival and stick it in a Dodge ‘Em aka Bumper Car and see what you get. Well, you get a happy kid who loved the bumper cars . . . until he gets bumped one time too many. The night in question I went on once and begged to stay on for another round, and another. By then this other kid had singled me out, and a couple of others joined in. They were banging and bumping me mercilessly from every direction. Finally I had had enough.
What to do? Please remain seated until all of the cars have stopped? Not bloody likely!. When I’m done, I’m done. I got out of my car and walked off in a huff across the oily metal floor, all of the cars swerving and braking to avoid hitting me. The operators were screaming at me, as were my parents and my brother, but I was out of there. They quickly shut the ride down until I had exited safely. Lance has left the premises, carry on. When I’m done, I’m done. Don’t mess with me, just stay out of my way.
Speaking of carnivals, before they were married and during my parents’ earlier years together my father was an avid motorcyclist, but when he became a father my mother convinced him to give it up. Over the years he would regale us with the stories of his motorcycle days, some spent riding with a carnival. He told us about the Whirl-of-Death aka Wall-of-Death that he used to ride, a motordrome which looked like the bottom section of a sawed off silo. In other words, a straight vertical cylinder about forty feet high, the same across, and slightly ramped around the bottom edge.
The spectators would be at the top of the cylinder and the motorcycles would start in the pit. They kept circling wider and wider, going faster and faster, until they gradually circled up the ramp and began circling on the vertical wall of the cylinder, the bikes and riders horizontal. “Yeah, Dad, sure, we really believe that you did that. Un-huh, yeah, yeah, we do, we really believe you.” We’d snicker.
In a burst of excitement my brother charged through the door one day, late for supper and all out of breath. A carnival had arrived at the fairground on Post Road, and they were setting up a Whirl-of-Death. Can we go? Can we go? Of course we could. We gobbled down our food and then piled into the car. As we approached the Whirl-of-Death this fellow comes walking up to my father in shocked surprise, shaking his hand and patting him on the back, “Jess Edwards, you old son-of-a-gun! Where have you been?” Yeah-yeah. This guy was supposedly an old riding buddy of my father’s, and he was running the motorcycle show.
My brother and I conferred. Dad hadn’t been out of our sight one minute, when did he have the time to get to this guy and bribe him for a good story? We tried to think of every angle. Could Dad have known about the carnival ahead of time? Try as we may we couldn’t come up with a logical scenario that would refute the apparent validity of Dad‘s claims. We had nothing. We had to concede. On this story anyhow, guess the old man wasn’t full of it after all.
His old buddy tried to get him to give the Whirl a whirl for old times’ sake, but Dad begged off as it had been so many years. The buddy understood but gave us free admission, and said he’d give us a very special show. Not knowing what a mundane show would be like, it seemed as though he did. At one point there were four bikes riding around the motordrome at different heights in opposite directions. It was fantastic, well worth the price that my brother and I had to pay . . . eating crow!
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