In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

108 7 a picnic, a proposal, a passage Most people marry upon mingled motives, between convenience and inclination. —SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709–1784), English essayist, poet, and biographer THE PRICE OF FREEDOM Richard Stone endlessly pondered the fate that would befall Helen and his bungalow now that Marge had flown the coop. What would the poor girl do once he was gone? More than anything now, he desired to find a life companion for his poor homely daughter. But who would have her? The men of the Moose had shown no interest beyond a few beers and a few friendly dances at Moose Hall. And despite years of slaving over Emma’s battered metal pots boiling hambones and potato sausage, lutfisk, and rotmos, Helen had tried but failed to become even an adequate cook. “My daughter Helen is a good girl, but she doesn’t seem to want to get out of the house,” he opined to Oscar Lindberg, a man close to his own age, as the two men shared a few forlorn memories of Mother Sweden in Simon Lundberg’s tavern late one night. Richard Stone wore dungarees, checked flannel shirts, and the biggest shoes my father had ever seen on a man. His face smudged by coal dust, Grandfather clutched his beer stein with a meaty, weather-beaten hand. “Helen could make some man a good wife if she was given half a chance.” Richard’s voice lowered, but he hoped his words would sink in as he glanced uneasily at Oscar Lindberg out of the corner of his eye and drew a long sip of the rich, soothing lager. In 1947, the year my mother approached her dreaded thirty-fourth birthday, the fate of little Charley Lindberg continued to weigh heavily on my father’s conscience. The court had granted his custody petition, but he hadn’t done very much to live up to his responsibilities as a father during the intervening year. Within the walls of the Lake Bluff Children’s Home, that joyless a picnic, a proposal, a passage 109 compound of frightened and homesick children governed by steely-eyed matrons who firmly believed that sparing the rod would indeed spoil the child, Charley slipped off to bed each night fighting the desperate impulse to slide down the drainpipe attached to the outer wall and escape his captors. His memories of the little alcove with only the bare essentials provided by the Methodist trustees remain clear: a wobbly wooden table, an empty drawer, and a foot-and-a-half-wide closet where his Hopalong Cassidy clothes were kept neatly folded and tucked away in a duffle bag Evelyn had given him as a going-away present. Years later as we discussed our childhoods, my brother recalled the embarrassment of communal baths with shivering boys seated at opposite ends of a large, cast-iron tub perched on legs. A stream of hot water gushed from a long fire hose into the tub. The humiliating “drying-off” ritual followed. Soaking wet, Charles and the other boys were hustled into an adjoining room to be toweled down with assembly-line precision by coarse female attendants armed with harsh towels that chafed the boys’ skin and dampened their mood. On haircut day, the long march down the winding underground corridor connecting the buildings of the compound presented unusual terrors for the impressionable boys. The overhead pipes that ran the length of the damp passageway resembled enormous sea serpents. At the end of the gauntlet of monsters, dripping pipes, and sweating concrete, the slylooking barber and his lift chair waited. It was no wonder the towheaded little boy looked forward to Sundays, when Daddy came to visit, with a great sense of relief. It meant the world to Charles to ride into Chicago in the fancy black Buick Roadmaster with its shiny grillwork, side portholes, luxurious textured velour upholstery, and cream-colored plastic dials on the dashboard. On Sunday afternoons, my father, sitting firm and erect with the anxious little boy at his side, exited Scranton Avenue, cruising past the rows of North Shore estates just south of the Children’s Home on Sheridan Road. Through the hedges, ancient oak trees, and security fences installed to keep the hoi polloi at a safe distance, Charley, on one such afternoon, observed children his own age happily gamboling on the spacious grounds of the Onwentsia Country Club on Green Bay Road. His eyes grew wide at the sight of balloons...

Share