Deaf Peddler: Confessions of an Inside Man

CHAPTER TWO My Story

CHAPTER TWO My Story My parents are hearing. They are hardworking mic westerners with high moral standards. My mother is registered nurse, my father was in the military befm taking a civilian job at Wright Patterson Air Force BasI I am the fourth child offive. We were all born and raise in Ohio. My three older siblings-Brian, Pamela, an Melissa-are hearing. Although my deafness is genetil only my younger brother, Mark, and I are deaf. In 1967, when I was six years old, a sixty-nine acr farm down the road wentup for sale. My father decide to buy the land and take up farming as a second job. AI ter we moved to the farm, Mark and I attended a dec program housed in a public school setting. There wer small classes for deaf students, and the entire schoc was strictly oral: only speech and voice were used, n signing was allowed. I got in trouble a lot in this pre gram and didn't learn very much. In 1971 my parents placed us at St. Rita School fc the Deaf in Cincinnati. They had been learning mOl about deaf education, and thought that St. Rita woul, 12 My Story 13 improve our communication skills and provide us with more challenging classes. Our new school used Total Communication-in other words, you communicated using any methods necessary, including AmericanSign Language, gestures, and spoken English. Like many deaf children who attend residential schools, we lived in a school dorm during the week and came home on weekends. My parents have always communicated with me using the oral method because I speechread well. Mark, however, is not a good speechreader. He has always used his own method of gestures with me, our parents, and our siblings; I often act as an interpreter. After I moved away, my parents were forced to become more fluent in Mark's homemade signs. Growing up on the farm, I loved to work hard and enjoyed every chore-yard work, driving a tractor, planting the soy beans, corn, and hay. Often, at ten or elevenat night, my father would have to call me in from the field by flashing the floodlight from the porch. Itook pleasure in farming and never minded any of the hard physical labor necessary to keep the farm running. Even cleaning out the manure in the horse stalls wasn't something I balked at. But farming wasn't the only type of work I enjoyed. Iwas hired for my first job when I was eleven years old. I mowed a neighbor's five-acre lawn with an old fashioned push mower. Idid it in record time, too, and Ikept that job for five years. The summer of 1978, following my junior year of 14 MyStory high school, I went to work at Morgan Steel Company. I was a custodian, cleaning the floors and the greasy machines. I also cut the grass. My wage was $3.10 an hour. I was a student at St. Rita until 1979. I maintained high grades and loved playing sports during those years. Despite my academic and athletic talents, I had trouble, especially as I got older, following the strict rules set by the priests and nuns. Because of my academic standing, they seemed to expect me to act as a role model. After I was caught venturing into restricted areas with a girlfriend and experimenting with marijuana, I was expelled in December of my senior year. I transferred to Catholic Central High School, which my older brother and sisters attended, to finish out the year. I joined the track team and started aggressively looking for a summerjob, since I planned to attend Gallaudet College (now, Gallaudet University) in the fall. Catholic Central had no interpreters at all, but I still managed to graduate thirteenth out of 139 hearing students , with a grade point average of 94·5. By late spring, my job search took me to the Evans Potato Company, where I applied for a custodial position . The personnel office kept telling me to come back the next day, saying they weren't sure when a position would be available. After an entire week of showing up daily to ask about work, I was hired. They must have admired my persistence. I averaged eighty-five to My Story 15 ninety hours a week at Evans that entire summer, including seven hours every...