This Isn’t The Wonder Years - a memoir

There are coming of age stories, and then there are memories . . .

Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day you’re in diapers, the next day you’re gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul. I remember a place, a town, a house, like a lot of houses. A yard like a lot of yards. On a street like a lot of other streets. And the thing is, after all these years, I still look back . . . with wonder.

–concluding narration to the final episode of the show “The Wonder Years,” spoken by Daniel Stern.

Many people look back at their lives with wonder, with smiles, with frowns, with sadness and with joy. Many people will see their childhood reflected within the television shows they watch, as they sit upon the couch and relate their family history to the younger generation.

They would say, “My life was like ‘Leave it to Beaver’ with a peaceful neighborhood and two doting parents.” Or they could start with, “My life was like ‘Toddlers with Tiaras’ where my mother tried to relive her dreams of stardom through her children by dressing me up like a miniature Barbie Doll to compete in beauty pageants.”

“My life was like ‘The Cosby Show’ full of laughter and wit and never a dull moment.”

“My life was like ‘Married with Children’ where my father worked as a struggling salesman and my sister was a floozy who slept with everyone.”

“My life was like . . .”

Well, my life was not like “Married with Children.” It was not like “The Cosby Show.” And it was definitely not like “Leave it to Beaver” or “Toddlers with Tiaras.” I cannot compare my life with anything seen on television because of one simple fact: all those shows emulated normal everyday life. This was the reason they gained popularity. Everyone could see a bit of their childhood in those shows. Everyone could smile, frown, feel sadness and joy. Everyone could understand where the plot led.

Normality bred familiarity.

Normal? My childhood? No. My father popped this dream bubble with a certain phrase told to his steelworker buddies during phone conversations loud enough for me to overhear. “This isn’t The Wonder Years.”

For those unfamiliar with the sitcom, “The Wonder Years” was an American Dramedy (comedy/drama) that ran for six seasons in the late 1980s to the early 1990s. It featured Fred Savage as the typical junior high school kid getting into trouble and exploring relationships with the female students while engaged in family drama. The show broke the mold of storytelling by relying on a narrator portraying the main actor in his older years as he retells his misspent youth.

The show was a memoir made for television.

This isn’t “The Wonder Years”; my father did not have to remind me of this fact. I could look at our surroundings and know the truth. I could look into the mirror and see it in my wincing eyes. My place dwelled in an isolated valley out in the countryside. My town existed, but could not be found on a map. My neighbors looked different from me, a difference seen in the shade of skins while shouted from strangers’ cars whenever people passed by our driveway.

“There are niggers living out here.”

My place was a rural valley in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. My town was called New Alexandria, the closest borough willing to take our taxes without providing the basic needs of municipality water and sewage, consisting of a racial makeup of 99.50% White, 0.17% Asian, and 0.34% from two or more races.

My house was a three-bedroom ranch-style dwelling for a family of five, infested with rats for part of the year and bugs for the other six months. My yard consisted of 5.6 acres of farmland with two fields, three pastures, two barns, a separate garage, a shed, and enough grass that took two days on the riding tractor to mow as the cows swished tails while chewing their cuds. My street had no sidewalks, no lights, no curbside, and no guardrail while smelling of tar and chipped stone as it wound around hills to cross over a small bridge.

I stood in the middle of our field, staring at the surrounding hills absent of echoes from children playing hopscotch on the sidewalk, of car horns honking at malfunctioning traffic lights, of jingling bells hanging inside store doors as cash registers rang up purchases of penny candy and cherry bombs. Instead, I heard incessant birdsongs occasionally drowned out by the police helicopter flying low in search of illegal marijuana plots hidden on properties.

I was part of a hillbilly family living on the outskirts of a rural town pretending to be farmers. I was part of the only black family living in a country valley surrounded by white people who held differing viewpoints of those people whose skin color was different from theirs.

Obviously, this was NOT “The Wonder Years.”

Yet, my father’s comment held a deeper meaning than this. It hadn’t meant to describe the area where we lived, but the life we led. On that television show, a family engaged in an average family life doing those things considered instinctual as to what a family was supposed to do. The laughter. The sadness. The arguments. The understanding. The kindness. The love.

A fictional life with fictional ideals, or so my father believed. Love belonged strictly in a sitcom show with their make-believe antics and make-believe hugs and make-believe love not found in the real world. In the real world, there was always pain. In the real world, there was always scorn. In the real world, adults had children for fraudulent purposes with no other obligation except to cash the money until the child was of no further use to them.

I was a black hillbilly girl not knowing how she came to be there in the valley or why she was born on this world. When I looked back at my memories of childhood, I felt wonder . . . on how I even survived.

Aerial photo of old New Alexandria

All photos courtesy of http://www.newalexpa.com/