Jean Marie (Hanson) Sullivan

Jean Marie (Hanson) Sullivan

Aunt Jeannie was the next to marry in the Hanson family.  Like her sisters she was a beautiful girl and very popular I am sure.  She was a cheerleader in high school and always vivacious.  She married her sweetheart, Tom Sullivan, when I was about four years old.  I don't remember being at the wedding and it is very unlikely that anyone would have expected me to behave well enough to chance my attendance.

I may have noticed that she wasn't living in the house anymore.  I had my own problems.  Once in a while the time would arrive for me to have the much dreaded "appointment".  The adults would phrase it with special emphasis on the middle syllable.

"Bub has an a-POINT-ment today!"  Followed by chuckling or outright laughter.

An appointment might be anything but it was generally not good.  I would have to get cleaned up and have decent clothes on.  Grandma Lill would inspect my face and if she saw some dirt she would pull out a little handkerchief and spit on it, then rub the dirt off with it.

Then off we would go in the car.  There was a spectrum of misery associated with appointments.  The barbershop was the easiest.  I had to sit still for a few minutes, which was difficult enough, but then the barber would wrap a cloth around my neck and start messing with my hair, snipping here, combing there.  I hated it and would sometimes create quite a disturbance and I'll bet the other customers were quite entertained by it all.

I don't remember it happening but Grandpa Lee had a story he would occasionally tell.  He was walking with me in the tiny downtown when a fellow in a bear costume, for some event in a store, came walking toward us down the street.  I took off running, went down the street until I saw an open doorway and rushed inside, ran across the room and up into a chair.

Then I realized that it was the barber chair and I was in the barber shop.

"I'll be damned!" I supposedly exclaimed, to the barber's delight.

An appointment could also be to the dentist or to the doctor.  These were more miserable, since these guys were interested in prying my mouth open to inspect my teeth or taking down my pants and sticking their finger up my butt.  In addition, there was always the possibility of getting a shot.  These eventualities were enough to warrant a full blown tantrum every single time.

The day came when I had a new kind of appointment.  Lill and Lee talked about it as if preparing me for something really big, so I had a lot of trepidation when the morning arrived that I was going to go visit a place called kindergarten.  I didn't like the idea.  Too many uncertainties.

There is a lot of difference between kindergarten in 1952 and today.  What I was really going to for my appointment was about fifty years ahead of its time, a kindergarten screening, only in reverse.  This was a kindergarten play day and they were only interested in kids that were developmentally behind.  If you looked all right, you didn't go to kindergarten.  They just sent you home and you went to first grade the next year.

Now I don't know how I managed to impress them that I was doing all right, because the story of my entire life has been that I was about five years behind,  maturity-wise.  I can't imagine that I wasn't a little pain in the butt all day. A couple of syrupy women cajoled us to converse with them, scribble on some paper, and to try coloring a picture, all of which I pretty much refused.  I looked at all the other little children skeptically, with sidelong glances, as though we were about to be put in a kibbutz.

We took a nap, and I didn't want to do that, on principle.

I think they probably had their fill of me in one day enough to last all of kindergarten, so they told Lill and Lee and my mom that I should be all right just going to first grade the next year.  They sort of kicked the can down the street and hoped for the best.

So I didn't go to kindergarten.  I frightened them out of the idea. 

I can remember that when I was more of an infant, physically, not just mentally, when Lill and Lee obtained this little play pen.  It was made of sturdy wood with wire mesh sides that were inpenetrable.  There was also a top, which was also of wire mesh and supporting wood, which could be secured to the sides of the actual container with leather straps and metal snaps.

I had realized that this was a cage and I hadn't liked it.  I had noticed how the adults fastened the snaps and as soon as I got bored I started fiddling with them.  Sure enough, if I stuck my finger hard against the metal disc and pried like crazy, sooner or later the snap popped off.  Some of them were much more difficult to release than others, but no matter.  Once two of them were pried open, the top could simply be pushed up and over, using the other snaps as a hinge.

The adults had thought this to be quite amusing at first, hiding around the corner and giggling as I did my work.  But eventually they realized that I could not be contained in the playpen anymore, and were horrified.

I think that they viewed this kindergarten idea as another, more sophisticated, playpen and were somewhat disappointed it hadn't worked out.  They were stuck for another year with this tantruming little monster.

While I was around the house, rather than being in kindergarten like they had hoped, a momentous day arrived.  Aunt Jeannie and Uncle Tom had had a baby and were bringing it over.  The front door opened and people lugged in this apparatus that was like a coffee table with a basket attached to the top.

After all the commotion subsided, my turn came and the adults held the apparatus steady while I placed both hands on it, raised up on my tiptoes and peered inside.  Among some blankets, sure enough, was a gurgling little baby with a cloth cap on its head, a totally foreign concept for me.

I had a little cousin and his name, I was told, was Danny.  Unbeknownst to me, I already had a cousin because my dad's sister had had a baby even before I was born.  I am not even certain whether the oldest of my dad's brother's kids was perhaps born before I was, or at least before Danny was.

Danny was born in early April and I didn't realize it at the time, but this little intruder was now going to get his birthday party before mine forever more.  I had been born in May.

Aunt Jeannie would come in and out of my life many times with the result that Danny and I would be very close, almost like brothers at times, and like demons in need of exorcism at others.  Her marriage to Tom Sullivan mirrored my mother's marriage to my dad, dissolving after about a year, but as in my own case, Lill's and Lee's devotion and love did a lot to carry the day for our mothers and for us as well.

Just as I had a supportive and loving other set of grandparents in the Lathrops, so did Danny in the Sullivan family although the Sullivans were rather politically important in Sparta and Aunt Jeannie was a bit paranoid about them after the marriage ended.  Tom's brother Dave was the owner of a prominent tavern in town.  He was a really nice fellow.  When we were a bit older, Danny and I would wander around town and invariably go in to Sullivan's Tavern, if it was the middle of the day and less than a handful of customers were within.  Dave would be delighted and we got strawberry pop or root beer.

Nevertheless, the Sullivans knew judges and police chiefs and were themselves, at various times, county supervisors and board chairmen, so Jeannie was a bit afraid of their power.  I really believe this was unfounded and a mere result of her desperate love of her child and fear of anything that could pose a threat, unimagined or not, to her fitness as a mother. 

Unnecessary fears, I think.  Aunt Jeannie was one of the most loving and sweet mothers ever.