Growing Up (Part 1)

Paul told lots of stories about his childhood and adolescence but he embroidered a lot, too, so I really have no idea how many of them are true, or to what extent they're true.

His earliest memory, he always said, was carrying clothes hangers when the family moved from a house on 2nd Street (maybe?) to 806 N. 5th Street in West Monroe, when Paul was perhaps three or four years old (1935-1936?) He and his siblings and many of his nieces and nephews lived in that house at one point or another. My grandfather, Willy, lived there until he passed away in 1984.

He always sounded aggrieved when talking about his brothers and sisters, still indignant, 40 years later, that one of his older sisters swept him off the back stoop with a broom. (From what I can tell, it's a wonder they didn't murder him in his crib.)

He had very fond memories of his paternal grandfather, John Wilson Jasper, who he recalled as a gentle soul. Paul recalled his grandfather taking him, as a very young boy, for a walk in the park, and in the hollow of tree, finding a little, boy-sized toy hatchet, which they both agreed must have been left there by a long-ago Indian boy, just for Paul. Likewise, he had a memory of riding his tricycle at his grandfather on the sidewalk out their house, pretending like he was going to run over his grandfather, and John would say "no, no, don't do that."

"Then he went inside and died of a heart attack," Paul added, still feeling guilty about it decades later.

Doris, the eldest of the five, when I told her this when I was living in Louisiana in the early 80s, said "Rubbish! That never happened." I think mostly she meant the tricycle incident (which makes sense; John died in 1939, when Paul was 7, so he probably was not still riding a tricycle at that point) but I think she doubted the hatchet story, too, although it always sounded authentic to me.

It was always clear, though, that Paul thought John was the only one who understood him, and that he was taken too soon.

When he was probably in 1st or 2nd grade, Paul was diagnosed as having amblyopia, or "lazy eye." The standard treatment at the time (late 1930s) was an eyepatch over the good eye to make the "lazy eye" work harder, strengthening the eye muscles etc. Paul had other ideas, of course. It made no sense to his six-year-old self to wear the patch on his good eye, so he wore it on his bad eye, and played pirate. With four older siblings, plus grandpartents, aunts, uncles and cousins (at various points), all living under one roof, it is no great surprise that no one noticed Paul's patch was on the wrong eye.

More about that in a subsequent posting.