And So It Begins...

OK, this is my blog.  This is the blog of an ordinary, dyed in the wool, red-blooded Yankee babe, Connecticut born and bred, and the ordinary happenings of life.  A bit of background:  I was born one year and two weeks after John F. Kennedy was inaugurated President of these United States.  My parents hadn't even selected a girl's name for the impending birth, as the prior five births had all produced children of the male persuasion.  I was to be Andrew; damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.  In what I'm sure was unintended irony ("Mary, Mary, quite Contrary"), I was christened "Mary Anna Alva", thus honoring both matriarchs and step-matriarch of the Denton and Trupp families. It was such a big deal it made page six of the Bridgeport Post:

Unfortunately, the writer obviously tried to rhyme "Cup" with "Trupp"...as we all had to hammer home to teachers, friends, and the world at large:  "It's pronounced TROOP!!"

Anybody unacquainted with the Trupp family could tell our Catholic heritage in an instant, upon hearing my brother's names:  Jon, Mark, Peter, Matthew, Paul.  Mom never could stomach the name "Luke", but I'm sure if she had six more sons, the rest of the apostles would also have been so honored.  Well, maybe not Thaddeus or Judas...

We were not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination; clothes were handed down from brother-to-brother and by the time they got to Paul, were well worn, patched and mismatched.  Dinner was survival of the fittest; Mom would slice link sausage into her spaghetti sauce and if you weren't careful, brother's forks would stray onto your plate to snag the delectable morsels.  Dad had a large organic garden which took up a good portion of the yard.  Corn, tomatoes, peas, beans, cucumbers, lettuce, cabbage and occasionally potatoes were planted and consumed each year. I can recall Mom canning many, many jars of tomatoes for storage in the jelly cupboard in the basement.  Dad supplemented our protein needs by fishing and clamming - but he was a bit of a snob when it came to the fish.  We never ate bluefish ("too oily") or mackerel ("garbage fish, fit for nothing but the lobster traps"), but we had plenty of filet of sole, expertly fileted by his own hand, and woe to you if complained about the stray bone or two.  I remember my Godfather dropping off burlap bags of lobsters, a dozen or so at a time.  I never cared for lobster much; guess it was the screaming noise they made when they were dropped into the pot of boiling water.  You can say it was just the sound of the steam being released from the carapace, and lobsters have no vocal cords - to me, they screamed.

Since the majority of our friends, neighbors and classmates at St. Thomas Aquinas School were of relatively the same socio-economic status as we, I wasn't even aware of the distinction between "rich" and "us" until high school.  Basically, we all played in the swamps and wore hand-me-downs and ate the same stuff.  By the time I started kindergarten at Old Field School (with Mrs. Fuse, pronounced "Fuse-AY") in 1968, my oldest brother was off to college at the University of Connecticut, studying horticulture.  My father's company, Alcoa, had just moved down south for cheaper labor (or so I gleaned from the conversations upon which I eavesdropped) and my mother returned to the workforce, first at Barker's, a department store in Westport, and then as a secretary for the Town of Fairfield's Planning and Zoning Department.  Dad finally found a job in building maintenance at the YMCA; I can remember how scary the boiler room was when I would walk from school to the "Y" to meet him on Wednesday afternoons, when we all three did the grocery shopping at Pantry Pride.  But it was cool to follow him around if I arrived early, and dip my feet in the pool when he wasn't watching.

With both parents working full-time, I was the quintessential latch-key kid.  As much as it may boggle the mind of current schoolkids, we very rarely had homework and thus, the afternoon was largely our own.  With an hour or two before we needed to be home for dinner and whatever evening rituals our parents subscribed to, we invariably got together a game of kickball, or swamp exploration, or snowball fights if the weather was cooperative.  On weekends, we were kicked out of the house (fortunately this usually didn't happen until after Saturday morning cartoons) with a reminder to "be home before dark".  All the parents pretty much knew where we were going and who we were with, and afternoon phone calls - "What's for dinner?"  "Liver."  "Can I eat over Debbie's?" were expected.  We didn't have 'play-dates'; we had freedom.  And sleepovers.  And ghost stories.  And older brothers who probably kept an eye on us, but wouldn't have admitted it under torture.  The sixties and seventies were a great time to be a kid.