The Beatles & The Packard

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I got to the doctor yesterday, because when the Paratransit driver knocked on my door I was asleep - I pulled my coat over my caftan, put on my sandals, didn't brush my hair, and went as is. That's how it is with panic attacks - I've decided if I'm "asleep" (fainted) then I'll go as I am, so long as I get there. This time people noticed I really looked weird but at least I got there.

The doctor gave me painkillers for my hand, which is red and has sharp pain, don't know why. She didn't know if they would be much use and said I could take them if they help. they knock me out.

Every time I wake, I lie there remembering my horrible youth. But with these pills it's even worse. I was reliving (flashback?) the 3rd time the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan Show. It was morning and my father had bought a car - a very old junky Packard - this was 1965, long before a Packard could be a respectable antique. It was humiliating to have to sit in it. My father bought that because my mother insisted it have to be a family car and not just his. He was enraged, permanently.

That day, we were invited by the Army to go watch my brother, the high school army cadet, to visit Army Summer Camp where the boys were living as soldiers. It was 50 miles away. Mom insisted that Pa drive her - he didn't even want to go. The idea that us 2 sisters would was ridiculous - our brother wouldn't be caught dead with his sisters. We were lying around in our pajamas - the only clothes we had were school tunics and pajamas - when Pa announced that it was time to leave and we would have to come as we are.

See? the "come as you are" thing. He wouldn't let us even brush our hair. He had a huge thing about his paternal authority and us respecting him - if we were respectful he wasn't allowed to beat us up, which he did anyway. And somehow this whole humiliating thing became my fault because I wore a beret to cover my hair, which looked military to my Cadet brother and his friends. He took me aside and asked me why I didn't fix myself up; it was so embarrassing to him to have me as a sister. I wonder who told him to do that?

The military ceremony was over in an hour or two. We were anxious to get home in time for the Beatles and stupid enough to say so in Pa's hearing. He did everything he think of to delay our return, including stop for take-out food after dark in the pouring rain, and insisting that we not drive and eat. He, the driver, wasn't eating anyway. Finally, with rain pounding on the roof in dark, Mom blew up and said "This is ridiculous!" and Pa blew up and started the car. He drove us - very slowly - home. It was about 3 minutes to 9pm - he thought we had missed the Beatles. But he didn't reckon with Ed Sullivan, who always saved the best for last - we caught the Beatles singing! Pa wanted to forbid us to watch but Mom stood between us and him, so he went to his bedroom and slammed the door.

I don't know if you're still reading? Sorry!

But that was what I was reliving when I woke this morning - go as you are, don't even brush your hair. Pa is still here, even if he died in 1975. Now I see I've been having flashbacks.

And the humiliation is worse because I moved and I'm too weak to unpack without help, and the janitor & owner know this place is a horrible mess.

I knew Pa would never really leave - he kept leaving but came back - he's still here. Why isn't my mother still here? They're both dead; the one I get to keep is the evil one?

I read the whole thing, Claradoon.

I'm sorry your dad was the way he was. Your mother wanted to instill good values in you, in seemed.

I wish I could come up there and help you unpack.

My first "Beatle memory" was listening to "Ticket to Ride" on the radio. This was the first time I knew that a song was "by the Beatles." I was about 5 or 6, even though the song was a hit when I was 4.

We had a white 1963 Mercury Comet with red seats until early 1967, when my father bought a new 1967 Oldsmobile Delta 88 with a dark gray exterior, and lighter gray interior.

Thank you!

The problem with my parents was completely mismatched values, which I didn't figure out till I was middle-aged. Pa was mean poor Irish and Mom was rich artistic French. Both spoke English & French, this being Quebec and all.

My father believed reading was a sin.

So was music, even Beethoven. Mom could play classical piano but Pa wouldn't allow a piano in the house - or a radio. We had a TV because it was a new invention (1954) and was free. Cable was free too (NBC, ABC, CBS) so long as we invited our neighbours to watch it. All TV's carried CBC, which carried hockey games for free and was the reason we had peace in the neighbourhood. All families gathered to watch The Game.

Taking a bath was not only a sin but dangerous, "You can drown in an inch of water." Pa won that argument when Bro (age 7?) lay under the water blowing bubbles, so Pa climbed to the bathroom window on a ladder to rescue him. That's when Mom put her foot down and said her children would be clean and that's that. Even so, we waited for a time when Pa wasn't home to take a really fast shower - he would be lurking and burst in. Even now I hate showers and it's not because of Hitchcock. There's another mystery solved.

Whether Pa was home was a mystery. He worked shift, or not at all, and would pretend to leave and then sneak back in and lurk and pounce on us. Sneaking up on us and announcing his presence by ambush was his way. No wonder I have PTSD.

Once I caught Pa looking at a magazine and I yelled "Pa's reading!" to the family. There was dead silence. Then Pa said, "I am not reading; I am looking at the pictures." It was Mad magazine. Talk about values.

Thanks for listening!

Any time you can brave the Border and an itsy-bitsy apartment, you're welcome.

Was the change from white/red to gray/gray anything to do with family responsibilities, such as how often you needed to wash the car?

Do you have any alternative or can you talk with you doc about possibly finding one? In any case, the trauma of your childhood is *much* greater than mine from my own father and possibly the worst I have ever heard. If there might ever be a time when it seems no one hears you, understands or cares, please know there are those of us here who truly do...and always be certain to keep posting!

Gosh, thanks, I've never had that kind of validation before. I think it was awful but most people tell me there are worse. That's true but not helpful to hear.

Pa never used any weapon but his hands/fists. His lurking was the silence discipline he had learned in WWII. I think most of his meanness was behaviour from the Army. Or rather to say, learned in his own childhood and fine-tuned by the Army. Lest people think I'm bad-mouthing the Army, let me say I respect those who serve. But garbage in, garbage out. He signed up in 1939, came home in uniform as a surprise to my 8 months pregnant mother, spent the night on base and went AWOL to his mother the next day. The Army stopped going to fetch him until they shipped him overseas.

Now my mind's going all over the place.

The therapy that works on PTSD is EMDR. I should go. I should win the lottery. Actually, insurance covers most of it. There's some kind of blackness inside that won't let me go. It *always* makes me better and I *always* have a lot of trouble getting there - like a blizzard, for example. The Metro goes down. A mistake on my Paratransit card.

Thank you.

Your father had serious problems, I feel.

How can one not like reading? How can one think that taking a bath is a sin? There was really a screw loose somewhere! He must have stank to high heaven!

Did your mother ever talk about how he met your dad, and why she married him? She seems like she was an aesthete; perhaps she was looking for her opposite?

Usually, I've experienced little problem crossing into Canada from the US. Once, I ran out of gas right at the Canadian border! The border people gave us a little gas so we could get to the gas station at the previous exit. Then he let me and my friend into Canada.

I'm no interior decorator LOL. I'd do the heavy lifting and the dusting. You do the rest.

LOL - the understatement!


To the Irish community that produced him, the Catholic Church taught that holy reading was good and anything else was the sin of sloth. As for music, his family could not tell a piano from a piccolo. They never heard music because they were good Catholics.


Same thing - the Catholic Church taught that touching one's naked body was a terrible sin. Catholic girls wore a slip in the bath.



2 loose screws - Irish and Catholic.



He might have sponge bathed with his underwear on, which got wet & soapy? I don't know. I do know that my cousin went in to be a nun and wore a garment to take a bath with supervision.

But for how he smelled - the men of that day chain-smoked strong cigarettes everywhere and drank a lot. Everybody reeked. I remember his smell but that was just more of him. Add sweat to that - he worked in construction.


She met him on her first job as a secretary in an office and fell for him like a ton of bricks. He looked like Henry Fonda. She called it "un coup de foudre" do we say that in English? A stroke of lightning. When I became a teen, Mom warned me seriously, "Falling in love is the strongest force on earth. You have no choice. Get married immediately."


She was an aesthete but she wasn't looking for anything at the time. It was just her first day on her first job.


Ah, but is that recent? Since Trump, I'm not crossing. It used to be a nice thing to do on Saturday - go shopping in Vermont. But not any more. They're nasty.


Deal!

LOL...I've met many Irish people, and many Catholic people....and I've never heard such as what you've told me.

Yep.....in the 1960's, adults used to smoke and drink as a matter of routine. Even on TV sitcoms, the wife used to "make" the husband drinks.

It seems as if the father of the Dionne Quintuplets had similar screws loose as your father.

I'm sorry you've experienced nastiness coming across the border. If I were their boss, I wouldn't allow it. I wish they'd get Trump out of there already.

It would be a nice drive, indeed, to Montreal.

I, too, have a connection to The Beatles and a motor vehicle. Having created several neologisms at about two years of age (in 1964), I called the Volkswagen Beetle a "'yeah, yeah' car." After all, any vehicle named "Beetle" must be connected to The Beatles who sang "yeah, yeah, yeah." I believed that the Beatles drove Beetles.

I even owned a banana-yellow Beetle with sunroof when I was in college!

Thank you for helping me through my crisis! i'm better today.