the big house

The house was as big as a large barn, although in shape it in no way resembled a barn, being of some plain unadorned vague architectural style that has no name. It had been built in 1910, by the local banker, and had obviously been designed more for social entertaining, and not for the usual domestic sort of life.

This was my childhood home alongside the Platte River of Nebraska, from the time I was a year old, until we moved away into the heart of Nebraska, the Sandhills, when I was ten years old.

The house was perhaps the largest house in this town of 3,000, but that in no way implied great wealth of my parents, both registered nurses and my father additionally the administrator of the local hospital. In fact, they had purchased the house because it was so cheap, there being hardly any market at the time for such enormous dwellings.

My older brothers and sisters at times betrayed disdain for the house, at the time being teenagers who wished to be hip, cool, trendy, with it, like most of their friends, who lived the northern and western parts of the town, in newer, but much smaller, houses. My younger brother and I had no opinion; this was where we lived, right in the center of town, next to the city park, two blocks from the hospital and two blocks another way from the grade school, four blocks north of downtown, and the two of us simply accepted it as being wholly natural and reasonable.

Great stuff Frank. Sounds like an interesting childhood and your parents sound like wonderful, caring people. You were greatly blessed.

A couple of questions:

Can you say that you had a happy childhood?

Why did people come from near and far to meet you and spend time with you when you were a child? Besides being deaf, what was so unusual about you?

Thanks for pinging and keep writing.

Can you say that you had a happy childhood?

Of course, madam, at least as far as I was concerned, it was all strawberries-and-cream. But the perception of a child is considerably different from the perception of an adult, and it appears I caused many nervous or frustrating moments for the adults around me.

Why did people come from near and far to meet you and spend time with you when you were a child? Besides being deaf, what was so unusual about you?

I was considered a radical experiment. The absence of ears greatly surprised my parents when I emerged into the world, and apparently they got upset about it. Even though medical professionals of long standing by then, they had never had to deal with such a thing.

The conventional wisdom at the time was that the deaf should be sent away to be with others like them, or at least "specially educated" in the local school. The parents, especially my father, thought that was all wrong; that I belonged out in the real world.

The choices were two, neither of them good--to do the usual conventional thing, or to raise me as if there was nothing wrong at all. Life is that way; it rarely presents a choice between something good and something bad; it more usually presents a choice between something bad and something even worse.

My parents gambled, based upon that they were medical professionals, the family was large, it was a small town full of caring and concerned people, the local culture was laid-back and mellow, and God is good.

The gamble of raising me as a hearing person paid off, although not nearly as great as had been hoped.

What seemed to intrigue specialists in the treatment and education of the deaf was my self-evolved methods of "communication." They never figured it out, but I did, a long time ago. I came from a family greatly prolific in communication (despite that everybody read at the dinner table), both vocal and written. It was probably pretty close to a genetic tendency, this strong communication thing, and so was likely to bust out of me in some way or another, somehow.

People came to see me because of their professional associations with the parents, and also the parents used to correspond a great deal with specialists in the education of the deaf. They would come to see us, or we would go to see them (and thus the childhood fascination with big-city hotels).

All things considered, the parents did the best job they possibly could. Life has been no bed of roses, and I consistently fall short of hopes and expectations, but my fate has been much happier than the fates of those like me.

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