Hoover Dam

I don’t know when most people come face to face with mortality. Maybe when they hear the word cancer, or when someone they love dies. I don’t know when most people come face to face with theirs, but I know when I saw mine for the very first time.

I was 5, on top of the Hoover Dam in Columbus Ohio. It was the early 70’s and safety wasn’t the hot button it is today. There were rails along the walking path to keep a person from falling, but once you were in the grass there was nothing between you and the several hundred foot drop.

The dam was a favorite gathering spot for families. Thousands of gallons of water burst forth daily in a huge deafening roar. The gusher landed hundreds of feet below in a deep pool of water that trickled out over large moss covered boulders.

I loved Hoover Dam because the wildness of the crashing water seemed to match the wildness I often felt well up inside my little body. I could stand and scream and never ever out shout the gusher.

My mom wasn’t a fan of the dam. The rushing water spraying sparkling drops of water in the air, picnicking families, and moldy rocks held no appeal for her. When my brother, sister and I went to the dam it was usually with our grandparents or some other family member who thought kids might like to see something besides their back yard once in awhile.

We lived in a three bedroom concrete block house in a middle income neighborhood. The hot summer sun caused the tar road out in front of our house to bubble. I spent countless hours poking hot tar bubbles with branches pulled off trees, and pressing stone designs into the dark sticky goo.

A rusted metal swing set out back, a nice size garden with corn and tomatoes, and a railroad track. Our back door was the old aluminum screen doors with two panels. The lower panel was removable for glass in winter and screen in summer.

Long before I can remember, the much abused screen door lost its screen, and opened its belly for us to crawl through whenever we were leaving or entering the house. Since my mom didn’t waste time trying to keep the house clean, the screen door, sans screen, fit in nicely with its surroundings.

I spent many hours on my swing set singing at the top of my lungs, hair flying. Playing Queen of the Hill and shoving my sister off every time she came near.

I wore stringy white blond hair with long bangs constantly in my eyes. I never wore shoes and the bottom of my feet were pitch black, just like my mom’s.

At night, I walked down the vinyl tiled hall squashing roaches with my bare feet. Then I crawled into bed with my siblings, roach guts and all. I’d shove my sister, three years my senior, over so I could have her warm spot. Then I’d proceed to take my baby brother’s bottle, because it had chocolate milk in it and I LOVED chocolate milk, especially out of a bottle. And the fact it came from my baby brother made it all the sweeter. I wasn’t especially fond of the newest member of the family.

The day my brother came home from the hospital, my grandma and papal planted a small bush in our front yard to commemorate his birth. I wasn’t impressed with the bush, mostly because I didn’t have one, or with him.

My sister told me if I peed on the bush it would die. So for a week straight every time I needed to pee, I dropped my pants and pissed on that little bush in the front yard. Day or night, that bush was getting its fair share of piss.

It never died though.

Once when I was doing it, one of the older boys in the neighborhood walked by. He started making fun of me so I picked up a rock and threw it at him. He picked up a bigger one and threw it at me. It hit me on the head and blood stained my white blond hair. I got stitches.

The next time I threw a rock at that kid, I filled my entire wagon full of them so I could make sure he didn’t have time to get close enough to throw one back. I waited on him and then when he passed I threw every single rock I toted in my wagon. He never threw rocks at me again.

My mom drove a 1967 blue Mustang with white leather interior. My dad worked at a factory in Columbus and played music on the weekends. He bought my mom the car and she was very proud of it. He gave her money every month to make the payment. It was quite a celebration when it was paid off. Dad was happy because he was a hillbilly from Kentucky with no education, but one of the first in his family to own, outright, a new nice car.

When my dad went to work, my mom invited friends over. They would smoke pot and eat all day and then leave just before dad arrived home. This was one of my first memories and it continued up until my parent’s eventual divorce.

There was a man who hung around a lot when dad was gone. He didn’t like me. I didn’t like him. He wore dark hair and an olive complexion. My sister looked a lot like him.

I was sitting at the table one day watching him roll a joint and I said in my meanest five year old voice, “Is that DOPE?”

He slapped me so hard I flew backward in my chair and flipped completely over. It wasn’t exactly unexpected.

The one time my mom did take us to Hoover Dam he accompanied us. He was stoned and thought it hilarious to stand at the top of the gusher on the concrete path and hold my little body out over the rail.

Oh how I hated him.

On one particular day my dad came home early from work. He ran my mom’s friends off and once the house was clear, dragged her into their bedroom by the hair. I wasn’t worried. They were a hands on couple, each giving as good as he or she got. I watched them batter and beat each other just about every weekend while my brother and sister hid under the bed.

Once, during late winter when old brown snow was still piled on the ground, but spring rain was dwindling it, they had a whopper. Most of their arguments stemmed around the groupies who followed my dad’s band, or about her friends.

I was sitting on the linoleum floor in our bedroom peeking out the crack in the door and biting my toenails. My dad was beating my mom pretty bad. He ripped off every stitch of clothing she wore, then shoved her out the front door. Once she was out I knew it was over so I crawled back into bed listening to the rain.

A few minutes later, I heard something at the window. The glass broke and a bloody hand started cranking open the pane. Blood mixed with rain and dripped on the white marble window sash. I wasn’t scared. I knew it was my mom.

She told us to be quiet and crawl out to her. We did. The rain was cold. She took us around to the back of the house where we all sat down on the small concrete slab at the bottom of the back door. I watched little rivers of blood flow from her hand, onto the concrete, hastened by the rain into the melting snow.

My dad found us a few minutes later. He yanked her in the house and beat her some more. We went back to bed. I was tired so I shut the door and didn’t watch.

The day dad came home from work and ran my mom’s friends off was to be for me, a very special day. He shut the bedroom door.

I listened.

The arguing centered around the blue Mustang sitting outside in the driveway. My mom was supposed to have paid if off. However,the bank called my dad that day threatening repossession. No payment was made for several months.

They began to scuffle. My mom came storming out of the bedroom tripping over me. She grabbed me by my too long bangs and dragged me down the hall. She told my sister and brother to get our asses in the car.

The three of us pushed into the backseat of the blue mustang with me taking my traditional middle spot. My mom peeled out in the drive and we were off.

Despite having my hair pulled and my mom being mad I leaned over the front seat, dirty arms beating a rhythm on the seat, and asked where we were going. She didn’t answer. So I persisted. She told me to shut up and sit back. I did. My mom nurtured a vicious temper. I could see even at the age of five, she was at her limit.

I sat back between my brother and sister and began pinching, shoving, making faces. They were always afraid of my mom’s temper but I wasn't always so wise. So I did like so many times before, I ignored her and proceeded to pick fights with my siblings to relieve the boredom.

I pressed black bare foot prints into the white leather back of the front seat. My mom was only dangerous if I invaded her reaching space.

When I saw the “big hill” ahead through the windshield of the Mustang my heart soared. I knew this big hill! It was the way we always came when my grandma and papal took us to the Hoover Dam.

They let me crawl all over the slime covered boulders, and put my hands in the water. Then they usually opened a basket of food and we ate. My grandma prepared buckeyes, wonderfully sweet chocolate balls with peanut butter inside. I would stuff myself until sick.

Yes, except for the one time with the man I hated, Hoover Dam was always a good time.

I jumped around in the back, hollering and singing about how excited I was we were going to Hoover Dam. We drove into the park but didn’t stop at the bottom where the picnic tables and gazebos stood empty. It was cold, the park empty of any but the blue Mustang speeding along its paths.

My mom drove up a steep incline on a little used dirt road. I knew on some level we were not supposed to be on that road because it was too close to the damn. I couldn’t read yet, but I knew the road we traveled was meant for the “workers.”

It just added to my excitement.

My mom tore up the dirt road until we reached the top of the dam. I was still singing and hollering at a fever pitch.

At the top when my mom should have went left, she went right. She pulled our blue Mustang up to the very edge of the top of the dam. I leaned forward and looked out the windshield. There was nothing but sky and the sound of the gusher far below us.

“Say goodbye kids. This is the last day of your lives,” she said from the front.

I was still happy to be at the dam, the place held such wonderful memories for me. I was still jumping and talking about getting out of the car to “see down.”

I heard what she said, but before I could think about something to say, and I always had something to say, I heard another voice, a softer one.

It said, “Be still.”

I immediately calmed and leaned back into my place between Jay and Wanda. It felt like someone had just given me a warm bath and nice hard hug.

My sister was crying silently. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes.

Ever.

My brother started crying when he saw Wanda crying.

I did not cry. I was still.

With those two internally whispered words I knew everything was going to be ok. And for the first time in my life, I was silent. I was still.

We sat at the top of that dam looking down for a long time. Darkness came and sometime in the night my mom put the blue Mustang in reverse and drove us all home.

She left my brother, my sister and myself for good not too long after. It wasn’t a “Oh I’m going out for bread,” never to be seen again type of abandonment. No it happened in slower, smaller, more numbing bites. By the time she left we were not surprised or even all that hurt.

I never questioned the source of the calming voice. I didn’t attribute it to God or angels or craziness. I was five, and there was no self knowledge of these things.

No one in my family was “religious” and we never “got out.”

But that voice in my head, was familiar to me. I didn’t think to question it being there. Never understanding why it was there or even how, just accepting it the way kids accept things. It was part of me.

Years later, when I was twelve and lived in the trailer court with my dad and brother, after my sister was “sent” away, I was invited to church with a girl in my bicycle gang. They were giving away a free bike so I figured it was worth a shot.

I went into an old converted garage and sat on hard wooden benches. It was cold and damp outside so they had the oil heat going and it stank so bad I wanted to gag. I was hating it, and ready to leave and forget about winning the bike when they started singing.

Now I liked singing. I could get over the smell for awhile for the singing.

Then a man stood up and started talking about Jesus. Hadn’t ever heard of him and wasn’t all that convinced by this fella either.

I was no dummy. I figured nobody rises from the dead, some never rise from the living either.

He wasn’t fooling me. I knew plenty about life and I never heard of no Jesus.

But then I felt that warm bath, hard hug feeling again, and it threw my mind back to the top of the Hoover Dam.

I was no longer in a cramped, damp cold converted double garage, rolling my eyes listening to the man up front tell story tales about God on earth.

I was listening to the roar of the gusher.

I was looking out the front window of that blue mustang and seeing nothing but sky.

I was still.

And I heard that still small voice, the one I never questioned but was always with me say, “And now you know my name.”