GMT III

I was born in the U. S. Army Hospital, in Augsburg Germany on, April 1st, 1957. My mother was an Irish — Scottish American Catholic girl, who married an Italian — Mexican Catholic boy. So, I was a true mixed-up American kid, right from the start. The name on my birth certificate is Guillermo Mateo Tieso. Whenever I tell people my real name, they think I’m joking. I guess I don’t look Hispanic enough.

My mother had brown hair and fair skin with Hazel eyes. My father had curly dark brown hair. His hair was so dark, you would call it black. One time when I called his hair black, he proved that it was not black but brown. He held a black comb next to his hair. When you compared the comb to his hair you could clearly see that his hair was in fact brown. His skin had an olive hue to it and his eyes were brown. I had blue eyes and platinum blonde hair. Although as I got older it turned to more of a strawberry blonde color. My father has always joked that they brought the wrong kid back from Germany. He would say, somewhere in Germany, there is a kid running around with black curly hair, brown eyes and speaking German with a Mexican accent.

We moved back to the USA before I turned two years old, so I don’t remember anything about Germany. Everything I know about Germany comes from stories I’ve heard through the years. Mom and dad said they never really learned to speak very much German. They just learned a few words and phrases. They had a landlord who spoke English, so they didn’t have to learn much. My sister Mary is a little more than a year older than I am. As with most kids she had no problem learning another language. Mary played with the little German kids all day and picked up the language from those kids. Almost every day my parents would have to take Mary downstairs to the landlord to find out what she was trying to tell them.

One thing I learned from stories was that my parental units didn’t have the money to spend on a crib. So, I spent the first couple weeks of my life living in a suitcase. As I grew, I was upgraded to the bottom drawer of a chest of drawers in the bedroom of our apartment.

I recently found out from my aunt, that I got another upgrade when we got back to the good old USA. At a family reunion, I was told by aunt Virginia that I slept in a big wicker laundry basket when I moved into Aunt Lucille’s house. So, I went from a suitcase to a drawer, and from the drawer to a laundry basket. I wasn’t even two years old yet and I already received two upgrades. At this point things were looking pretty good for old Billy Boy.

As a baby, I didn’t really need or have any clothes. What I did have was hand-me-downs from the parents of other kids who were friends with my parents. I had a couple dozen cloth diapers, that everyday mom would wash out by hand. I also had a fuzzy blue blanket that I was wrapped up in day and night. That sure is different than the way babies of today grow up. They spend their first few months in designer cribs and have so many clothes and shoes that they outgrow them before they ever get a chance to wear them.

Another story I’ve heard a few times was about going to the grocery store. It was a bitterly cold day, so I was all bundled up in my snowsuit and blankets. I was about 9 months old. Mom and dad were going to take me and Mary with them to go grocery shopping. Dad forgot his billfold, mom had her hands full with Mary, so he set me down at the top of the stairs and ran back into the apartment to retrieve his wallet. This was before I was walking. Somehow, I managed to roll-over, even bundled up in all that cold weather gear. I tumbled down the flight of twenty-two stairs just as dad was coming out of the apartment door. He raced down the steps. He claims he made it in three leaps. That seems to be a little unlikely though. I think he was trying to make us think he was able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. When he picked up the bundle at the bottom of the stairs, he said my eyes and mouth were wide open, but I wasn’t crying. I saved the crying for the moment when mom appeared. Then I started screaming as loud as I could. I guess that is the day I started to shorten my parents lives a little at a time. From my point of view, that was the first in a long line of attempts to get rid of me. I’m happy to say that none of them worked.

I have a small scar and indentation on the back of my head. Mom told me that after they brought me home from the hospital, whenever they laid me on my back, I would cry. They took me to the doctor and found out that I had a gap between the parietal and the occipital bones of my skull. There was tissue poking through that gap. When I was laid on my back, the tissue would press against whatever I was laying on, causing pain, and the pain would make me cry. In other words, my brain was so big, that it was busting through my skull. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

An Army brain surgeon cut open the back of my head and stuffed my brain back in. Then he wrapped my head in a huge bandage. For the next couple of weeks, mom would take me to the hospital, and they would check the surgical site and change the bandages. Mom said she had to prop me up, so my head was higher than the rest of my body, to prevent swelling of my already enormous brain. It was very uncomfortable, but because my brain is so big, I understood at two weeks old, what was going on and I tried not to cry. These days I try to use my scar to my advantage. Whenever my wife Cheri, bumps my head or slaps me across the back of my head, I scream like a little baby grabbing my head and yell, my operation. It never gets me much sympathy, but I keep trying.

We left Germany when I was 18 months old. We stopped over-night in London and then went on to New York the next day. It was mom, me and Mary. Dad was still in Germany finishing up his enlistment. The first few months back home in Clinton Iowa, we stayed at my mother’s aunt Lucile’s house. After dad got out of the Army, we moved into an apartment. We only lived there for a few months, before mom and dad bought a house on 16th Avenue South, in south Clinton.

A couple years later, two kids became four, when Alicia was born in 1960 and then a year later Ramon came along. Alicia and Ramon became known as Lisa and Ray. We moved to a bigger house on 9th Avenue South in 1962. Shortly after we moved to 9th Avenue, I started school. I attended Roosevelt school for kindergarten, my teacher was Mrs. McMahon. By that time dad had quit his job at Pillsbury and took a job at Clinton Corn Processing Company. Every day after work, dad would come home, eat something quickly and then he took us kids to the house in south Clinton. He worked on that house for several weeks, getting it ready to rent. The previous renters had really made a mess out of the house. There were holes in the walls and the garage had been burnt down in a fire that one of the kids started. That is the reason dad had decided to remove them from the house. Dad completely gutted the place re-wired it and put in new walls and floors.

Mom was working part-time as a cashier at Woolworth’s. So, dad had to keep an eye on us four kids while he was working. It was boring most of the time for us kids. But dad tried to keep us busy by assigning us little tasks. Mary and me, would have to help by being gofers and Alicia and Ramon just played.

One day Alicia decided she didn’t want to stay there while dad was working. So, four-year old Alicia took three-year old Ramon by the hand and walked home. To get to the house on 9th Avenue South they had to go from the middle of the block on 16th Avenue South up to 4th Street, then follow 4th Street north to 12th Avenue where they would go through the viaduct under the train tracks to 11th Avenue South. The intersection at 11th Avenue South and South 4th Street, was also known as the corner where highways US 30 and US 67 intersected. In those days third and fourth streets had two-way traffic. Those two little kids, aged three and four, had to cross that busy intersection and then proceed down 4th Street two more blocks turn east and go another half block to get to our house.

Back at the south Clinton house dad said, “Hey where are Lisa and Ray?” Mary said, “I don’t know.” I said, Lisa said she was going home, Dad started running around looking for them inside and out. He loaded us into the car and started driving around looking for my little brother and sister. Then he drove over to the 9th Avenue house. When we got there Lisa and Ray were playing in the front yard. Dad jumped out of the car and grabbed them both. Hugging them both in his arms he said, “Don’t ever do that again. You scared me to death. Why did you leave the other house?” Lisa responded by telling dad “it wasn’t any fun there.”

After that day, Linda a teenager who lived a couple doors up the street started babysitting us, while dad went to the other house to work. Eventually dad finished the house and got new renters. Then “The Flood of ‘65” happened. Dad got so frustrated that he sold the house and that was the end of his landlord business for at least another 15 years.

I have some fond memories of living in “South Clinton” and a couple that are rather scary. I’ll try to tell those stories later.