ON THE STREET WHERE I LIVED
Sharon Ehlinger Porcari - POW! Pottsville, PA - Henry's Group
The day started in the usual normal way. We went to town to buy me a new bathing suit. It was so hot that July day in 1955 the tar on the street in front of our house bubbled. Swimming up at the East Side public pool was my favorite pastime.
Happy, contented and quite smug, I sat sipping my Shirley Temple like drink while he drank his Bloody Mary in the only bar open in town that morning, The Oasis. Dark brown hair, deep set dark eyes, tall, lanky and very handsome, I was so proud sitting next to him, my father. As he told me I could go home and go swimming but be sure to stop at the house and tell my mother but be home by supper. I skipped my way up the steep hill home and was ecstatically happy. I anticipated the ice cold water from the reservoir that filled the pool being most refreshing and delightful that sweltering day.
Someone was calling my name. Over the splashing sounds of the water mingled with all the chatter and squealing of kids rough housing, dunking each other, I heard it again and again. I spotted Ritchie as I came out of the pool and looked down the road towards the parking area. A teenage neighborhood boy, I secretly had a puppy crush on was waving frantically trying to get me to hurry and “come onâ€.
When I reached Richie and his hot rod of a car, the first kid on our block to get one, his usual happy go lucky way and smiling face was quite stoic and stern. He said I had go home immediately, but it was only 3 o’clock and I argued, pleaded and begged but to no avail. My mother’s orders were to take me home now.
As we rode down our street, I sensed something was terribly wrong and Ritchie was unnaturally quiet. There were cops cars, flashing lights, an ambulance and neighbors all outside up and down the street and in front on my house. “What’s going on?†I asked. “Your mother is at our house†(which was at the end of the street, about 5 houses away) “You are to go thereâ€, he answered.
As I entered his house, I could feel the somber doom. My mother sat slumped over in an old, overstuffed winged backed chair in the corner of their living room. Her hands covering her face, her head nodding back and forth and saying “No, no, noâ€. She looked broken. Frightened, confused I approached her slowly, aware that eyes of others in the room were watching me, I put my arm around her shoulder and asked “What’s wrong Mom?â€
“Your father shot and killed himself.†“He’s deadâ€.
Running from her, running from the room of others, out the door across the street to the hill and only stopped when I was breathless and found a hidden spot under the iron steps which sloped the steep hill and sat in the damp earth. No one could see me but I peered out and could see the house in the distance and yet seeing nothing at all.
