Thirty Rooms To Hide In (23 page)
Read Thirty Rooms To Hide In Online
Authors: Luke Sullivan
Tags: #recovery, #alcoholism, #Rochester Minnesota, #50s, #‘60s, #the fifties, #the sixties, #rock&roll, #rock and roll, #Minnesota rock & roll, #Minnesota rock&roll, #garage bands, #45rpms, #AA, #Alcoholics Anonymous, #family history, #doctors, #religion, #addicted doctors, #drinking problem, #Hartford Institute, #family histories, #home movies, #recovery, #Memoir, #Minnesota history, #insanity, #Thirtyroomstohidein.com, #30roomstohidein.com, #Mayo Clinic, #Rochester MN
My mother remembers,
“
He pulled me out of the driver’s seat and when I resisted he socked me in the face, knocking off those big white sunglasses I had at the time. They went flying into the grass. I reached down to get them and as I rose back up I said, ‘You
animal
!’”
Collin’s memory differs slightly: “I think he hit her and she fell down into the grass. The only thing I remember after that is the hurt and rage in Mom’s eyes as she rose to meet him.”
Neither Collin nor I remember how it ends. It just ends. There is no final scene, just that scream, that image of Mom getting back up to face Dad, the fury in her eyes – and then the last sudden foot of film is through the projector, going round and round hitting the empty upper reel, whap, whap, whap, whap.
“Open this door, goddammit!”
BOOM! And the oak door rattles.
My father is outside the door. He is drunk and pounding with a flat hand. In his other hand is either a drink or the rifle. From inside, we think we can hear that ice-in-glass clink but we can’t be sure.
It is July 1965. A half-hour ago I’d been alone down in the fallout shelter reading my super-hero comic book,
The Incredible Hulk
. The basement is cool and quiet in the summer and a good place to hide year-round. Dad had begun drinking at noon and by 3:00 was raging, saying horrible things calibrated to hurt my mother and, by saying them in front of us, hurt her more deeply.
“Couldn’t earn 25 cents by spreading her legs! … Open this door, goddammit!”
BOOM!
Around 4:30 his raging became demonic. The older four brothers whose witness sometimes buffered my father’s anger had gone to see a movie downtown. When he mentioned the gun a second time, Mom gathered me, my little brother Collin, and we retreated to the locked safety of the Tower Library.
Behind us now are the French doors that open onto a small balcony. Square in front of us, is the oak door and it’s standing up well to his blows. But its solidity only makes his rage burn hotter, until we can almost feel it radiating through the keyhole.
“Won’t let me in to see my own goddamn kids!”
BOOM!
Silence.
We sense him leave but when he comes back a minute later we can hear he’s brought the whole sloshing bottle and our retreat has become a siege. Mom puts her arms around the two of us.
BOOM!
The blows on the outside of the door are much harder now. We huddle in closer to Momma. Some nights, the look in her eyes is reassuring.
(“We’ll be fine. He’ll be asleep soon.”)
But this time feels different. The hour seems here for Dad to carry out the threats he’s made so many times but always scuttled when the alcohol took him down for the night.
She cradles my face in her hands. “Honey, do you think you can make the climb down from the balcony? And maybe go get help at the Martins next door?”
This was a climb I’d made many times before, pretending to be Spider-Man escaping Marvel foes like Electro or Mysterio. Climbing down the side of the house isn’t scary. Scary is the heat coming through the keyhole.
I go over the wrought-iron railing and put my left foot out to the rehearsed spot, the stone jutting from the wall over the first-floor window. One last look into Mom’s eyes, a look into my little brother’s – their eyes say
hurry back hurry back
– and I’m climbing down the side of the Millstone. Above me, the pounding continues. Two more handholds, one toehold, and I’m down.
When my feet hit ground I’m running through the July heat down our driveway, past the stone gate posts, out onto the road leading to the Martins.
I will get help. I will be a super-hero. I will tell my big brothers the whole story when they get home. How I climbed down from the library balcony, how I brought back help and everything was okay.
I’m at the Martins. I ring the doorbell. I’m panting. I will tell them and they’ll do something. It’s taking them a long time to come to the door. But they’re here; I know it. Their car is in the driveway.
Wipe the sweat out of the eyes, ring again.
Please be here, please be here.
There’s a fumbling inside at the lock.
Yes!
Mrs. Martin opens the door and she too is terribly drunk, slurring her words, unable to understand my message and unable to do anything for us even if she could. The world reels a little bit. The lesson tattoos itself inside: there are no sane adults in power anywhere in the land.
Notes from Dad’s psychiatrist, Dr. Martin, July 26, 1965
Psychotherapy has continued, however little progress has been made. The focus has tended to remain on the marital conflict and we have made little progress in terms of therapy. The situation has reached the point that he can no longer really function effectively in his work and arrangements have been made for a referral to the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut.
It would take nearly another month, and another bottom to fall out, before Dad agreed to go.
The coolest kids in the neighborhood have circled their bikes in the quiet sun of the Saturday playgrounds at Bamber Valley School. This is the Elite – the coolest of the cool kids – and handsome 9-year-old Steve Carter is there in its center. From here it looks like every word he’s saying is funny; the beautiful Debbie Laney and Jennie Sudor laugh uncontrollably.
It’s noon and the kids’ August shadows fall directly on the warm gravel around their feet. But twenty feet away, just outside the playground, the weather is cold, rainy and gray. Because it’s always cold, rainy and gray around … “Lonely Guy.”
Where Lonely Guy walks there is perpetual November drizzle. The wind blows sad newspapers down the empty street and somewhere far off a dog barks.
Lonely Guy stays at the edges of things. He doesn’t join, but he wants you to know he’s not joining and so he orbits around the action just out of range. If Lonely Guy were to join the group, oh, the smart things he might say. Debbie and Jennie would at last see the flash of true wit, see the sunflare-glint on the knife edge of the perfectly placed word
.
(Jennie giggles: “That was so funny and true, Lonely Guy. Would you mind if I jotted that down?”)
But he doesn’t go into the playground. He could. If he wanted to. But Lonely Guy has a lot on his mind lately and turns to walk away.
If Lonely Guy has a super-power, it happens here: when girls look at him, they see him walking in s l o w m o t i o n, or they should anyway, because in the movies walking in Slow Motion is very cool. Everything looks better in Slow Motion – especially Lonely Guy. If Debbie and Jennie would only glance over, they’d see the graceful poetry of his forward motion; not the clip-clip-clip cadence of ordinary pedestrians, but the slow pistons of his contemplative and determined stride.
As he moves out of sight around the corner, he imagines Debbie sees him from the corner of her eye and in the last second she calls from summer through fall to him, “Stop! Come back. Forever.” But he’s too far down the street now, into late November. He can’t hear her.
But that’s okay. The credits have begun to roll past and the music comes up: it’s the Beatles singing “This Boy.” And Lonely Guy walks in Slow Motion into the cold November dusk.
The Pagans pose in jackets for local menswear store.
From left: Jim Rushton, Jeff Sullivan, Kip Sullivan (sporting a black eye), Steve Rossi, and Jerry Huiting.
The main juvenile officer in the Rochester Police Department was a man with the perfectly cast name of Dutch Link.
Dutch was the guy who sent the hoods upstate to the juve-y in Red Wing. He also had say over which bands were allowed to play in the police-sponsored mixers at the Armory. Dutch became acquainted with the Pagans in both capacities.
The Armory was the best steady gig in town and all the bands wanted to play there. But Dutch was no desk cop and knew all about the Pagans’ occasional drinking during performances. Kip remembers Dutch “calling us in a lot, but he never really busted on us. He was a pretty good guy.”
Dutch’s warnings were avuncular. Jeff remembers a big arm being thrown over his shoulder and a lesson in moral arithmetic: “Now Jeff, it’s like this. There’s nothin’ wrong with a motorcycle, right? And there’s nothin’ wrong with a motorcycle
jacket
, see? But when you put the two of ‘em
together.
... people might get the wrong idea and sort of, well, react poorly, if you take my meanin’.”
In
The Flip Side: An Illustrated History of Southern Minnesota Rock & Roll,
Dutch filled in the rest of the equation in a speech to all five band members: “There’s nothing wrong with calling yourselves the ‘Pagans’ and there’s nothing wrong with young men having a good time. But when you do what you boys
do
, well, people get the wrong idea.”
The Pagans
liked
giving people the wrong idea. So much so that when the organizers of John Marshall High School’s 20th reunion invited the Pagans to play one last nostalgic gig in 1985, they included a caveat: “You guys had a reputation as being rowdy drinkers back then. You’re not going to do that for this, are you?” As far as Kip and Jeff were concerned, Roger drank to exist; the Pagans drank to have fun and make trouble. But the fun came to a head on August 7th, 1965, at the Olmsted County Fair.
The men-with-short-haircuts had arranged another Battle of the Bands for the big Fair and the night began with a 6pm radio interview of the Pagans on Rochester’s KROC. Kip noted in his diary the band was in fine Beatle form: “All of us talking at once, giving wise answers.” The Pagans had sailed through the prelims in the afternoon and had several hours to kill before finals at 8pm. Kip’s diary continues: “Went out on empty road by Plunkett’s, boozed. God, did it ever hit me.”
By the time the Pagans assembled back at the County Fair, everyone realized there was no way Kip would be able to perform. They poured him back into the VW bus and drove out to the Zumbro River. They stripped off his clothes and pushed him into the cold water.
Jeff, interviewed in “The Flip Side,” 1991
I can still see Kip’s naked white body tumbling through brambles and down the muddy slopes into about a foot and a half of water. Kip had a riot, standing there throwing water into the air, naked with his sunglasses still on. We finally got him out of the water and dressed. Behind the stage tent, we started pumping boiling coffee into him to the point where we actually burned his mouth.
It finally came our turn to take the stage in front of a crowd of around 500. Kip still couldn’t even stand up, so we found a little stool backstage for him and brought it out front. We started our set doing all of the songs that Jerry and Steve sang lead on, until it came to the point where Kip had to sing. [It was] quite a sight to see, Kip sitting there on his little stool behind the mike, sunglasses on, wet hair hanging in his eyes, in a clinging wet shirt. I don’t recall exactly which song it was
[Rossi says it was “Dizzy Miss Lizzy”]
but Kip had just completed singing the same verse twice in a row, completely screwing up the words.
As it came time for Jerry’s lead, Kip leaned back on his stool and the whole thing went over – Kip, the stool, and the amplifier behind him. It’s hard to describe what live amplifiers with reverb springs sound like when they’re falling off of bandstands. On his way down, Kip’s head hit Steve’s boom, making the boom swing around in two big circles and Steve had to duck behind his drums as it crossed over him. There were amplifiers crashing all around and in the middle of all this chaos, there was Kip lying amidst a tangle of wires and amps with his guitar half on, looking very confused. The audience went absolutely berserk. People were jumping up and down and screaming for more.
* * *
Phone calls about the incident made their way to the Millstone and Roger’s response was to ground his oldest son “until college” and lay into Myra for being such a poor mother. His drinking increased and then, the same weekend the Beatles played Shea Stadium in New York City and the riots burned in Watts, life in Rochester hit a new low.
Kip’s diary, August 15, 1965
Tomorrow is my birthday. Oh yay. [Sad face drawn in the diary.] It’s a long story. After the band practiced, we went to the liquor store where Rossi managed to buy three 6-packs of Grain Belt. Jim and I went to drink with Eddie P. Had to be in by 10:00 so the band just came back to my house to drink. I announced our arrival home to Dad, then we walked way down to the back yard and drank and talked. 10 minutes later Dad came down with flashlight. “What’s going on, boys?”
He sat down beside me. I held up my beer and asked if he wanted a swig. He started bitching, “You boys get on home. Get going.” He said to me, “Get in the house.” I go, “Have to finish my beer.” He swung at my beer and knocked it away, yelling, “Get in the house!” I said, “You wanna polish it off?” He says, “Wise guy.” “You’re a nosey old bastard.” “What’d you call me?” “A nosey old bastard.” He swung, said I was a “spoiled shit.” I backed down the hill.
He ran down, swung at me again with the big flashlight, I ducked, and put one in his paunch. As he went down, he pulled me on top. I just put my head in his chest and wailed about five blows in his face; I only got my ears boxed. We separated. He said, “Get in the house!” but I just walked back up to driveway. I heard “Get in the house!” again but I headed for the front gate where Eddie’s car was parked. Mom came out and asked, “Is he drunk again?” I just got in car, took off, finished the beer, went to Eddie’s, watched TV and slept.
The next morning Dad came to the breakfast table with bruises on his face and there was no looking away. When the elevator doors opened on the 6th floor of the Mayo Clinic, everyone could see the doctor needed to be in a hospital, not work in one.
