“I wouldn’t feel it if it were on the tip of me tongue.”

My grandfather father Frank’s voice came to me when I was suffering.

I now understood the pain of PSTD

Frank lived in PSTD — AKA Shell-Shock most of his life.

I rarely think of him … instead idealizing my grandfather Henri — eccentric, artistic, French, and dead at 59.

Now I see PSTD all around me.

my kids

my wife

my self… how is it that only today I’m willing to shed a bit of my denial — — a lifelong habit — to commit to virtual paper the reality that I’ve been riding the echoes of trauma for years.

Frank died a million deaths in the trenches of France, marinated in the purgatory of Germany, and shipped back to Omaha with broken mind and the fear … the fear that even hinting at the horrors between his ears would get him executed.

The breakdown finally came in the Great Depression. It was complete. two years chained to a wall? Madness — family shame — the depression, Frank’s sons, my father and unclem, were teenage Irish thugs, breaking faces and muscling mobsters to make a buck and support the family.

They saw him break and were scarred forever.

I saw Jack break.

I was 18. Joanie had been told there was a troubling spot on her lung X Rays.

Jack was terrified.

I came to him, worried over Geri, newly diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

I tried to tell him, and my Father turned on me, furious in his fear and despair over mom.

And I saw it. The family horror in his eyes. The pain. Ripping him into fury.

Was that the breach? Did it start then?

PSTD — the current in my river of denial. Soft valley boy. Sheltered child. Treasured oldest son. Boo Hoo…

Marlyn was on a true spit in hell and I was weeping over pinpricks.

I told Randy and George the other day that what I’d been through with a two stent heart attack was like a walk in the park with a pebble in my shoe.

And it’s true.

But when we start comparing pain we drift from the root, from the truth that what happens to us is the only reality we treasure and measure by.

Erin on the phone shrieking in agony and fear — — there’s the latest PSTD kick in the balls. November 2017.

103 years ago, when World War 1 ended at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, my grandfather was fighting in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. He was alive, and dead inside. Permanetly trauma branded by the battlefields of France forever.

“The Meuse-Argonne Offensive was the largest operation of the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I and the deadliest military campaign in American history. Fought from September 26 — November 11, 1918, by over a million American soldiers, the Meuse-Argonne operation was part of the final Allied offensive that brought an end to World War I.” https://museum.archives.gov/featured-document-display-meuse-argonne-offensive-map

My grandfather, Frank Thomas O’Connor was born on May 29, 1894, in Omaha, Nebraska. He died February 25, 1965, in Hollywood, California, at the age of 70.

Frank came from a big Irish Catholic family of 9 kids. He had a brother and 7 sisters. He was the first son of “Long Tom” O’Connor, a hardscrabble, 6' 9" immigrant from County Clare, who worked building the railroad until he reached Nebraska.

‘Long Tom’ nailed down a life and clawed his way to the top of local politics. Frank’s father controlled South Omaha and had a reputation as an honest politician.

“An honest politician stays loyal once he’s bought.” was the way Frank put it.

A family story tells of Frank and two buddies that loved to harmonize. One day singing their way down a street in the wrong part of Omaha, they saw a sign in a bar window:

“No Irish Need Apply”

Of course, they went in to talk about it.

During the fight, Frank got hit across the face with a broken bottle, cutting his eye.

Five years later in 1917 as the patriotic fervor spread, Frank volunteered to be an officer in the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). He was a college man, A Creighton U boxer and football player. He was the eldest son in a political family and he wanted to do his part. But the Army turned him down because of the eye injury he got in that bar fight as a teenager.

The army wouldn’t take Frank as an officer, but a few months later they drafted him into the infantry.

He was sent to Camp Funston,* Fort Riley, Kansas with all the other Omaha boys.

Frank served in Company A, 341st Machine Gun Battalion, 177th Brigade, 89th Division, of the American Expeditionary Force.

How like the Army, turn you down as an officer because of vision, then draft you and make you machine gunner responsible killing a clear a path forward for the men behind you in the trenches, waiting to go over the top and through the wire.

BATTLE PARTICIPATION OF THE 89TH DIVISION.

341st Machine Gun Battalion

—

(1) Lucey sector, Toul, France, 10 August-ll September 1918.

(2) St. Mihiel offensive, France, 12 September-16 September 1918.

(3) Euvezin sector, Toul, France, 17 September-7 October 1918.

(4) Meuse-Argonne offensive, France, 19 October-11 November 1918.

As a machine gunner, Frank’s job was to clear the way for the infantry. He survived the trenches, gas attacks, bombardment, no man’s land, multiple battles. As a corporal, his squad went through the wire to set up and machine-gun a path for the infantry.

You can see it in his face. 50 years later the pain was still there.

the last deadly campaign of the AEF resulting in over 26,000 US soldiers being killed in action (KIA) and over 120,000 total casualties. He survived the final battle on the final day of the “war to end all wars”. What kind of ironic hopeless hell did he see in those last minutes of mayhem?

Frank having survived the Battle of Argonne Forest, remained in Germany assigned to the military police until he returned home in 1919. Did that time in Germany help him live with what he’d experienced?

I found this letter to my grandmother, dated a few weeks after the end of the war.

“You know darling I can’t write anymore, it seems I can’t keep my mind on a thing long enough to tell about it and I can’t spell even the simplest words. My friends tell me they feel the same way.”

Between the lines, I hear the black moods and depression that will haunt his life.

Coming Home

Frank was part of the first element of the 89th Division to return to the United States. He sailed from Brest France on the Leviathan May l5 (1919).

The troops coming home were the 355th Infantry, the 353rd Infantry, and 340th and 341st Machine Gun Battalions. Frank was in Company A.

I found this commendation a few years ago after inheriting papers from my Uncle Thomas Henry O’Connor. The opening line says so much about his life.

As a boy, I was vaguely aware of family whispers and the saying in our family when something bad happened, “Don’t tell Frank”.

I didn’t know then about the family secret of depression. I just knew that grandpa had moods.

I do remember a few things he’d say with a smile on his face.

“You're as Irish as Paddy’s pig!”

“I wouldn’t feel it if it were on the tip of me tongue.”

“The O’Connors built the castles, and the Obrien’s tore ’em down.”

“The only difference between a Republican and a Democrat is a Republican will give you a sermon, and a Democrat will buy you a beer.”

But I never heard him laugh.

When a war story came, it erupted. I listened. I recall the musky smell of his whiskers. The long silences. We were alone when the stories came out.

“Don’t tell me about religion. I’ll tell you what it gets you. I remember one of the men jumping up and preaching. He was waving his bible and screaming about Jesus. A bunch of the guys gathered around to listen. A shell hit and killed them all. That’s what religion gets you.”

“I got lost in the trenches. No man's land. I was out in the mud forever. No water. It was night and I heard voices nearby. I was so hungry and thirsty I just jumped into the crater. It was full of Germans, they were as scared as I was, I got away before they could shoot me.”

“You must take care of your feet. Keep ’em dry. Otherwise, it’s trench foot and your feet will rot away. You go to keep ’em dry Dennis.” This one he repeated so many times.

Frank couldn’t go back to the law. He left Omaha and all the O’Connor connections to travel with his wife and her family. Moving west in the ’20s looking for a healthy climate. They were in Oregon when my Uncle Tom was born. There might have been an attempt to settle in San Diego. My father Jack was born in Hollywood. That’s where the clan stuck. There must have been some happy days.

Shell shock broke him in the middle of the Great Depression. One day he knew the Germans were coming for the family. They under attack. Frank barricaded the house to protect them all from the Huns.

My grandmother called the police for help.

The cops came on to the porch. Gentle talking through the front door promising my Grandmother Ruth it would be all right. “We can help misses, we can help.”

The sons, Tom, age 14 and Jack age 11, tried to hold Frank back, but he was big powerful man. Eventually my grandmother opened the door, Frank surged forward to attack the Germans. The first cop hit Frank in the side of the head with a shot-weighted sap. Two more pushed in clubs flying. The boxer took over. Frank beat them down, charged down the walk, threw aside the ambulance attendants, and roared off in the ambulance, crashing it into an abutment of the Hollywood Freeway knocking himself out.

For the next two years, Frank was in a straight jacket at the Patton State Hospital. Shock treatments, water treatments, who knows what other horrors? No one could reach him.

Eventually, they found a drug combination that broke through. Eventually, he comes home in time for World War 2.

What is Frank thinking in this photo from 1941? His oldest son Tom is already in the Army, his youngest son, my father, Jack E. O’Connor, is just out of high school and on his way to flight training in the Army Air Corps.

His sons survived the war. They wore the scars of service silently. Like men of their father’s generation they rarely told what they had seen.

My father and grandfather were scarred for life by the war they survived as young men.

War is a sin that echoes in the genes.

Memorial Day is more than a calendar event.

I am the first son in several generations who did not go to war. My son did not go to war. What of my grandchildren, and yours?

• There is speculation that the first cases of Spanish Flu came in Camp Funston Kanas.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-180965222/

These piebald nut trees would fill with green speckled pods every spring, then the heat and light of summer would darken and shrivel the pods into a thin black leather. Finally, the pods dried, exposing the wrinkled veined details of a new walnut shell. The ripe walnuts snapped from the husks, and we collected wagons full!

All my neighborhood pals, Dave DeCamp, Judy Corn, and her sister Sharon, David Olsen, and even the evil and weird Reynolds would gather bag fulls of walnuts. We’d crack the shells with our teeth and extract the brain like walnut meat. Occasionally a nut with bitter dark fibers and spider webs made you shiver. But most of the time, we plucked the delicious light brown nuts from the shell almost whole. You could always find a snack in Walnut Cove during the late spring and summer.

Two big valley streets bordered Walnut Cove. Balboa Blvd and Nordhoff are major commuter roads with fast-moving traffic. Crossing these dangerous streets was forbidden. The valley was quickly filling up with sub-divisions. But Walnut Cove was still surrounded by groves — oranges to the north, acres of pomegranates to the south, and walnuts to the east. West across Balboa was bulldozed into weedless, treeless lots sliced by new black top ribbons of asphalt. The hammering of a new sub-division came next.

We could get into the orange groves without crossing the big streets, which meant their allure was minimal. The oranges were usually small, green, and bitter. Besides, the farmer hated kids and was always on the prowl. The pomegranate groves on the other side of Nordhoff Blvd seemed the most mysterious, remote, and irresistible.

Even though I wasn’t supposed to cross the street, I planned a raid on the pomegranates with Judy Corn. Judy lived down the block. She was part of a Jack Mormon clan that seemed to have no trouble playing cards and drinking coffee. I’d go to Judy’s house to watch American Bandstand with Dave DeCamp and Judy’s older sister Sharon. I was the youngest of the group and always got fidgety waiting for the program to end so we could go out and play. The older kids, especially Sharon and Dave, who must have been at least 13, were fascinated by the dancing couples on the screen. It was boring but neat to be included with the older kids.

Judy was bored too, but she wouldn’t admit that around her big sister. Judy was a hot-tempered tomboy and one of the toughest kids on the block. I fought her once, and she won. Judy hit me ten times as I struggled to wrestle her arms down. She was hard to hold. Her muscles were as big as mine. I told myself I held back during the fight because she was a girl. You weren’t supposed to hit girls. But she punched harder than any boy in the neighborhood except Arty Guftason, the worst bully on the block. I liked Judy, but I was afraid of her. Her punches really hurt.

Judy wasn’t supposed to cross the street either, but she dared me, and I couldn’t back down from a dare. Besides, I wanted to get some pomegranates. We waited for a break in the traffic, then sprinted across the street, through the gully over the wire fence, and into the forbidden groves. A faded no-trespassing sign hung on the wire fence made me feel like we were on the verge of getting caught. There was probably a farmer meaner than the guy at the orange grove just waiting to grab us.

We went far into the grove between the neat rows of trees, disappearing into the mysteries of this banned place. The traffic noise on Balboa faded. The trees were planted in rows, a tractor width apart. The leaves created a canopy that cooled the hot valley sun. It was hot enough to soften the asphalt at the edges of the street, but it was shady and secret here. Dust swirled, suspended in shafts of sunlight that cut through the leaves. We were alone. It was better here than either of us had hoped.

The trees clustered in odd-shaped fruit, a pomegranate’s skin is a bumpy alien terrain, and pods like pale purple wasps nests hung heavy from the burdened limbs. The overripe ones had fallen to the ground and lay half-hidden in the tall grass. These were insect-laden universes, purple, blood-colored clusters swarming with ants where the skin had split. The air smelled rich with growing things, backed by a cloying scent of decay. The skin color told you which pomegranates were ready to be eaten. A baseball-sized pomegranate with a pale purple exterior, firm to the touch, wasn’t ready yet. We wanted the dimpled and swollen, almost violet fruit, bigger than your fist; the ones just a bit soft to the touch were ready to burst with scarlet seeds and sweet juice.

We jumped up to steal the fruit, snatching them from the low limbs. But the best ones were out of reach. Pomegranate trees are hard to climb, and none of the branches are low enough. With my hands, I made a step cradle to boost Judy into the tree. She was surprisingly heavy, and it hurt my hands and shoulders as she climbed over me. Out of reach, She laughed and teased me, bombing me with dozens of pomegranates. I chucked back rotten, ground-softened, ant-covered missiles but never hit her.

Eventually, we called a truce. We stacked pomegranates in pyramids like lumpy cannon balls on the fruit-littered battlefield. We lay back in the grass, gorging ourselves, splitting open the sweet fruit, peeling back the tough fibrous skin, devouring the thick scarlet seeds, biting into massive clusters, chewing the pulp, and swallowing the juice. The crimson drippings ran down our chins and stained our t-shirts. We ate only the thickest seed clusters. After a few mouthfuls and we’d be left with the difficult part of the fruit. We tossed the half-eaten carcasses aside, took a fresh pomegranate from the pile, and began again.

We spent the late afternoon eating, talking, watching the sky through the trees, and reveling in the special secret of the place. It was exciting to spend time with a girl, even if she was a tomboy. It got late quickly. The sky darkened, and the shadows grew. We had to get home. All around us were pomegranates’ split, smashed, and broken remains. We ruined more than we ate. When I looked at empty husks and wasted fruit, I felt uneasy. If the farmer caught us now, he’d be right to be mad. Suddenly I felt guilty. We used a fine place poorly. It was a hopeless mess. Turning away, we ran from the grove.

I came slinking into the house. My conscience is hurting. I’d disobeyed, crossed the street, thieved the pomegranates worse, and wasted as much as I’d eaten. My face and hands were stained in juice and guilt.

Mom’s radar was on maximum. It was dusk, too late to get home. She was waiting for me. My furtive slump-shouldered skulk towards my room tipped her off. She took one look at me and knew something was wrong.

“Dennis, what is it?” was all she needed to say.

“I, uh, I … crossed the street …. took pomegranates…. stole them, I guess.”

My story tumbled out, sneaking away with Judy, the shame of wasting the farmer’s pomegranates. I had to confess. It was a relief to own up.

Surprisingly, Mom wasn’t upset with me. Instead, she had a smile on her face as she nodded and told me not to cross the street again.

I never returned to the pomegranate grove. I never took another of the farmer’s pomegranates, even when Judy brought me an extra. I’d lost my taste for pomegranates, and the ones bought at the store weren’t the same.

The campfire flickered. The small light was a safe place to huddle and tell stories about crazy things that happen in the woods at night. We were camped in a tree-choked gully in the Santa Ynez mountains. Live Oak branches formed a canopy that shut out much of the moonlight. The ground was carpeted with brittle, dry spiny leaves that crunched underfoot. Outside, beyond the light, lurked the beasts of the night.

“Anything could wander into our camp. Some say big cats escaped the Hearst Castle zoo and are still here. Leopards, lions, and bears, the food odors bring ’em in. They take what they want. The cats could eat you. Even a small brown bear can toss a big man like a rag doll. So you better hope you’re not between a beast and what it wants.”

But my stories didn’t scare Susan.

“These are remote mountains. Not many backpackers up here; it’s mainly hunters. Folks get lost forever in these mountains. In 1942 a B24 Liberator disappeared off Big Sur. When hikers found the wreck, the mummified bodies of the airmen were still strapped to their seats. Only the captain’s body was missing. Some say he still walks these woods.”

Coyotes yipped and barked in the distance. Susan shivered, arms folded, huddling inside her down jacket. She smiled but moved no closer. She wasn’t buying my half-baked Jack London/Stephen King routine. Even my most lurid lies about hog wild deep woods crazies failed to move her. Susan was a sophisticated audience. She laughed and rolled her eyes in all the right places. She had a Master’s degree in English and seriously appreciated the structure of my stories.

But Susan didn’t budge.

I exhausted myself telling yarns. We spread our ground cloths on opposite sides of the dwindling campfire, far enough back to keep sparks off the down sleeping bags. My purple prose failed to lure Susan into even a snuggle. I resigned to sleeping alone.

I watched the galaxies slide above the oak branches, looking for shooting stars and satellites. A breeze blew rustling leaves. “If I told her the one about…” I drifted into sleep.

Hideous! The monster’s foul breath is wet on my face. Hair bristling, the fiend’s slavering mouth is stuffed with massive crooked tusks. I can’t breathe. The ogre’s lethal red eyes radiate fury. This swollen evil creature will destroy me. I’m paralyzed, trapped, suffocating. I try to scream, but I can’t hear my voice. I explode.

Suddenly I’m awake. The grotesque face remains in my mind. My fists are clenched, my back is arched, my legs are tensed to run, but I’m frozen in fear.

Nightmare!

I spooked myself. My skin crawls. I look at Susan asleep in her bag. I feel ashamed. The mighty woodsman, the big-time climber, the all-knowing backpacker has scared himself shitless.

But the nightmare gargoyle’s grin was so real. I’m ready to fight for my life. Trembling, stabbed by the claw of an adrenal rush, I can’t shake it.

Back in my bag, twitching at every breeze-pushed sound, berating myself for a fool, time crawls. I’m scared to look into the darkness, scared not to. My mind plays a litany of reassurances. “The woods are safe; it’s people who are dangerous. It was just a dream. The woods are safe.” Finally, I fall into a jittery half-sleep and doze until dawn.

Up at first light, I build a fire and warm my back. Then I notice something odd about the ground near my sleeping bag. The dark earth is gouged like it was tossed with a shovel. There are deep tracks in the dirt.

Oh God, it wasn’t a nightmare; it was a wild boar!

Domestic hogs escaped the Hearst menagerie at San Simeon in the 30s. Hogs go feral in two generations. Now the whole Santa Ynez range was haunted by giant wild boars, some reaching 800 pounds. They’re mean, stubborn, unpredictable, and deadly. Wild swine with razor tusks will charge, slash, and even kill.

I remembered the story of hikers chased up an oak by a wild boar. The beast circled the tree, ramming the trunk and slashing the bark all day and night. The treed hikers were in agony with thirst and cramps.

Eventually, the damned pig just forgot about it and wandered away.

Closing my eyes, I saw the demonic brute’s face drooling over me.

Why didn’t it maul me? Why did it run?

I said nothing to Susan.

I didn’t want her to know I was scared.

But I could never get one. I already knew I was one of the dumb six-year-olds. I wasn’t smart. I knew it. I couldn’t read or add. The books were always too hard, and directions confused me. If you weren’t neat and couldn’t follow the directions you didn’t get a star. At least not in the first grade at Our Lady of Perpetual Yearning Elementary

I could read numbers, though, and I had a theory about my situation. I was sure the # 2 on the spine of my reader stood for second grade. I hung on to this belief as an explanation for why I couldn’t read. It was my secret hope that I wasn’t so stupid after all. Despite mounting frustration and embarrassment, I was convinced that my problem was caused by a too-hard book. None of my classmates bought my thinking, but I hung on to the hope that I wasn’t really dumb after all.

Finally, one day late in the year, after the longing for a star had given way to hopelessness, it happened. Sister dropped my paper down in front of me.

There it was, attached proudly to the top of the page near my name, the green star!

I knew that the best stars were the big golden ones. The next best was blue, still larger than the green star I’d gotten. But my first star seemed huge to me. It was a metallic, shadowed shamrock color. I traced my finger over the thin foil ridge on each of the 5 points. Points of achievement there on ‘my page’’ I couldn’t believe it! I was reeling, flabbergasted, overjoyed,

I had a green star!

I proudly turned to the kid beside me and shoved the paper under his nose. “I gotta star!” I crowed.

As the words left my mouth, a shadow descended. The tall, dark habit of Sister blotted out the sunlight. She swept up the paper.

“No Talking!” Sister shrieked in a fury.

Slowly, meticulously, with a pent-up frenzy that said she longed for a world without loud, boastful little boys, Sister tore my paper into shreds.

Sister dropped the crumpled fragments on my desk and stalked away.

I searched through the shreds but couldn’t find my green star.

Now I wouldn’t be able to show my mom.

My green star was gone forever.

Whining, tattling, and confrontations were the cornerstones of our relationship.

I saw myself as the victim of John’s devious and sneaky ambushes. He was always setting me up and I was always falling for it. Of course I was a bully venting my rages on John, building myself up by pushing him around. I had no right to resent the sneaky survivor’s personality he developed to cope with my moods but I resented him anyway.

John lived in the shadows, scurrying behind my back knowing my white-hot rage could explode in his direction at any time. His was a bunker mentality. John would tease. I’d explode. We were trigger and bomb, caught in a need to tear each other apart yet depending on each other to be there as a vent for all the antsy spleen of growing up in the San Fernando Valley. We fell into the habit of sporadically torturing each other. Long weeks of uneasy truce would reign between battles. I’d swear to myself not to let it get started again. But moments of decency and tenderness seemed unnatural and rare.

At Christmas, we could create a semblance of brotherly love that would sustain a holiday mood. I’d stay clear of John. He’d play in his room. We got along by walking way around each other. The uneasy truce would break down as soon as the holiday glow began to fade.

Now I watch my own kids squabble. I see the passion and gleam in their eyes as they tear at each other’s soft spots. I’ve been there, but it doesn’t make it any easier to stand. At least my kids seem to be able to make up quickly. But they’re young. Give ’em time.

“You’re driving us crazy!” Jan and I scream in chorus. “I just hope that someday your kids treat you like this!” I can remember mom hollering that. Now I’ve said it too.

Why do parents say things like that? Is it just desperate rambling induced by sleep deprivation, lack of privacy, and incessant bickering? The prophecy and hex have come true. Now I’m the one who has to drag himself up on weary legs and stagger towards the shrieks and screams of fighting children.

It does no good that I now regret my part in shattering the brief bits of hard earned peace my parents managed to scrape together. John and I could turn a weekend into madness. How many Sunday mornings did we splinter with our screams and accusations?

I was talking to Dad just the other day. Talking about my memories of epic fights with John, and Dad laughed! “You two never really fought. You guys never had black eyes or split lips.” I suppose compared to the beatings my dad took from his brother Tom, my fights with John seemed tame.

My dad had been the younger brother. Tom had punched him clear through a glass door one time. Dad had an adolescence of black eyes and fist-loosened teeth.

“Tom taught me I could take a punch. I’ll say that for him. He hit harder than anybody I ever faced in the ring.” Dad’s voice was mellow and laughing as he looked back. Did I teach John the same lesson?

I was a hitter. Perhaps not a brawling puncher like my uncle, but I liked to hit John. I usually held something back, I can only remember a few times when I really unloaded on him.

Usually I’d pop John a hard one on the back or arm, shouting in rage, my angry bellow pierced by John’s high-pitched scream. He could crack crystal with his air raid siren scream. The scream was John’s first line of defense. His scream made an adult’s spine stiffen. I’d look at him mean barking at some taunt or smirk of his and he’d let loose with a scream that would drive any parent to their feet. His howls would haul mom and dad out of near exhaustion and drag them on a tractor beam of terror right into whatever dispute I was hoping to solve with my fists. John would poke me like a dog through a chain link fence; laugh in my face and then save his own butt with a scream.

When my folks put in their first pool they were thinking of all the positive, family centered, time we’d get lounging around the pool. Maybe they hoped the pool would absorb some of our energy. I was still going to Langdon Ave. Elementary School, sixth grade. John was in the third. The pool would mean a chance for happy family times a chance to relax and be with each other.

Maybe the Romans were thinking of the same thing when they built the coliseum. For John and me it was the beginning of the great sea battles.

Something still happens to me when I get in a pool. Chlorinated water is like Dr. Jekyll’s solution. Layers of civilization peel away. I become a wild man. As a kid I lived to dunk my little brother and strip the trunks off him in the bargain. I had no restraint or remorse. If John got in range he was in for it. I simply wanted to see how close to drowning I could take him every time I could get my hands on him. The two of us in a pool for more than a few minutes meant cannon balls, splashing and mayhem.

It would start innocently enough. We’d both be hot and sweaty, ready for a swim. We’d beg mom for permission to use the pool, swear a double oath not to fight, squabble or hassle each other “Honest mom, honest, we won’t fight!”

We broke all our promises as soon as we hit the water. We’d jump into the pool; angling our entries to splash each other, then jump out again and race walk (no running) to the diving board. A cannon ball contest to see how much water we could splash out of the pool would follow. Eventually one of us would tire and stay in the pool providing a perfect target for the next cannon ball.

I’d get keyed up, cranking the game up to the next level, sending walls of water out into John’s face while he’d give me neyah neyahs and hyena laughs. “Didn’t get me, Ha Ha, didn’t get me!”

Before long I’d be chasing him down and throwing him in. Soon the line would be crossed. Adults have the ability to see the line clearly It’s that act that goes too far. Older children should be mature enough to back away from the line. On the far side of the line is violence and craziness. But once I was wet I’d loose the ability to reason. The concrete edge of our backyard pool was the line for me.

Of course just as I was closing in on John, just before I could corner him and get my hands on his neck, that air raid siren scream would crank in. My hands would be on his shoulders pushing him under, dunking his head. He’d squirm like a seal, gasping for breath with panic beginning to surface in his eyes. I’d get my hand on top of his skull and push him under. We both would smile until we were right up to the line. Then the smiles would change.

Mom would suddenly be screaming at me from the edge of the pool, threatening us with Dad’s vengeance. “Dennis! You stop that this instant! Get out of the Pool! How many times do I have to tell you to leave each other alone in the Pool?”

There was a weary, desperate, near hysterical edge to mom’s voice most of the time. John’s air raid scream saved him for a long time. It got so he was over confident, and careless in its use. He’d sit on the edge of the pool and make faces in my direction.

I lurked in the deep end nursing a grudge.

“Just ignore him.” My mom would say, “As soon as you stop paying attention to him he’ll get bored and quit.” It’s the classic adult answer to teasing. They don’t feel the acid venom of a well-targeted jibe. They have forgotten how a little bother’s neyah neyhas can pierce the soul and scratch up rage.

I was trying the ignore him trick. John was making ape arms at me. He’d jut out his jaw and drag his arms low like a chimp. This routine normally drove me crazy.

Just ignore him.

I floated on my back with my eyes closed. If I don’t look at him, it won’t bother me. Then I realized that a cannon ball attack could be launched at any time. I got out of the pool, not even looking at him, and walked toward the diving board.

“ Dennis is a chicken! Dennis is a sissy!” John was making his shinny grin at me, jutting his jaw out and wagging his head in a way that always made me furious.

“Chicken Fat Chicken Fat!” John grabbed his stomach and pointed at me. I couldn’t believe it, he was begging for it. By ignoring him I’d only challenged his god given ability to tease. My feigned indifference drove John crazy. He had to break through my act. Capering like a chimp he gave me his jaw jutting shinny grin again, rolling his eyes he laughed at me, “Chicken Fat Chicken fat, you jiggle like a girl when you walk!”

That tore it. It was the one I couldn’t ignore. John sensed that he’d stepped over the line too, because he was instantly silent.

I stopped dead. I turned toward him, looking down at the shallow end of the pool. He was twenty feet away. I stared at him furious. He began capering and crowing again, pointing his finger at me and laughing. Holding his belly and swaying his hips; John had a death wish. I was going to oblige.

I started for him and the look on my face must have cut through the fog of his teasing. John froze. I was ready to drown him. I was planning on doing him in this time. 15 feet away I raised my fist up by my head, promising him a punch if only he got into range. He began to scream. John screamed with true horror and conviction.

I figured I was doomed. Mom would be sure I was killing him and I was too far out of range to get even get a single shot in. My insufferable, screaming, ratfink of a brother was going to get me into big trouble again, and there was nothing I could do about it.

“John Henry O’Connor You Be Silent This Instant! It saw it all! Dennis didn’t lay a hand on you!” John’s ear piercing wail died on the spot. He looked guilty, he was caught red handed and open mouthed.

I couldn’t believe it! After all the times I’d been punished for hitting John without ever getting the satisfaction of actually beating him at all he was finally caught!

There was justice after all.

I trapped John by himself later on. I held him by the wrist and slugged him a good one on the arm. I really enjoyed whispering “Go on, scream no one’s gonna believe you this time!” He didn’t make a sound. His eyes were filled with tears and desperation.

Suddenly I felt bad for punching my little brother. It really wasn’t fair. I let him go. As he scurried around the corner he jutted out his chin and gave me a hyena laugh. I just tried to ignore him.

Years later when I was in high school, I just couldn’t ignore him. I was out front at the Teasdale house, raking dry leaves on a fall day. Mom and dad were away. John was in the house playing by himself.

As I bent over to scrape some leaves on to the tarp John turned the hose on me. He soaked me down good, using the high pressure torrent from the brass nozzle to drive me back across the lawn. I was sopping and furious. I charged back into the stinging water and John dropped the hose and sprinted for the door, calling and laughing back over his shoulder. “You’re a wet dope! Yeaaah” I charged on and reached the door just as it swung shut with a thundering slam. I could hear the sounds of the chain and dead bolt falling into place.

John looked out of the window at me, laughing and making faces. “Let me in John, and I’ll let you live. Let me in Damn it!” John just laughed and stuck his chin out at me.

“I locked all the doors! You can’t get in! You can’t get in!”

It was his certainty that drove me over the edge. He was so damn smug. It was too much to bear. I ran for the door, kicking at it with both feet, I felt the door start to give. I kicked again and again.

John was screaming in the background. “You’re gonna get it for breaking the door. Stop! Dad will kill you!”

I drove my shoulder into the door and it gave way, whipping open. The chain was still attached and tore the molding from around the door. John stood frozen in horror on the other side of the gaping door. The look in his eyes almost stopped me from punching him out.

After I dried off and cooled out I was really worried about that door. I did my best to nail things back into place. I was really sweating it, but the folks didn’t seem to notice the damage. Years later Dad admitted that he was puzzled and confused by the intermittent damage around the front door. “I just couldn’t figure out what was causing it. It seemed like I had to putty that door up every 3 months.”

I only remember going through the door after John that one time. Maybe it became a habit.

Dad built a pool at the Teasdale house too. But by this time I was on my way to college at USC and didn’t get much use out of it. By then John and I had lost interest in tormenting each other.

In fact, things had been cooling down between us ever since I’d kicked the door in to get at him. We didn’t become great buddies. We just got busy with our lives and began to ignore each other even more. But you can’t just forget a history like ours and walk away. Little brothers grow up, and I suppose they all hope to settle the score.

I ‘d been away from home for years. I’d transferred from USC to Berkeley and started my own life in Northern California. Then I came back home from Berkeley for a visit. John was still living at the Teasdale house. He was living in my old room. It was a great room with a private entrance, it’s own bathroom, a fireplace in one corner, and built in bookshelves. I’d spent a lot of my teenage in that room waiting for my life to start.

John looked me right in the eyes. “It’s my room now. I had to wait a long time for it.” I just shrugged I was used to sleeping on the floor in a bag.

John was in the middle of his training at the police academy. We were the same size now, but being three years older and his big brother still gave me a psychological advantage.

It was an interesting trip home. The hippy son back from Telegraph Avenue and the little red school house bumps up against the straight arrow son training to be a policeman like his dad.

We danced around each other. A lot of things had changed in our lives. But one thing hadn’t. We shouldn’t have gotten in the pool together. The Teasdale pool was a novelty to me. I’d grown up in the backyard before it had been filled up with concrete and water. We all got into the pool together. John, me, and our little brother Paul.

Paul was about 10 at the time and it soon became apparent that he’d inherited the O’Connor water curse. John and I tossed Paul around like a beach ball for awhile. Paul wiggled, giggled, kicked, and screamed. John and I took turns dunking and tormenting Paul until he finally ran screaming from the pool. Paul had a good scream, but it couldn’t compare to John’s.

I can’t remember who made the first move but soon we were trying to dunk each other. John had been learning some interesting wrist and choke holds at the academy. I’d been taking judo at Cal and working as a warehouseman at the Ice Company. I once figured I lifted about 60,000 pounds of ice a night working that job.

We both knew it was time for a showdown.

He kept trying to spin me around and get a hold on my back and neck. I was slapping at his head with open palms, trying to push him under like I’d done years ago.

We started out laughing. Then the shoves and slaps started to land a little harder. We both slipped across the line before we knew it. This time no one was going to scream for mom.

I slapped John hard in the face. He countered and managed to spin me around. His forearm slid across my throat. I elbowed back at him, catching him in the ribs. Then John pressured his arm up. I rose up on my toes, and then things started to darken. I couldn’t move anymore. Next thing I knew I was hanging on the edge of the pool coughing and vomiting up water.

“Are you all right Den? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” John was really upset. I was stunned and I was never going to think of John as my little brother anymore. We both grew up some that day.

I left and lived my life. After awhile, John left home too.

John was best man at my wedding. It was a big wedding, about 150 guests I knew about 20 people. It was the night of the USC-UCLA football game, just before Thanksgiving. The ushers were having trouble getting the judge who was to marry us out of the bar and away from the game. It was a close game and a lot of people were shouting.

While I waited for the call John and I started talking about growing up. John was dressed in a sport coat and slacks. He was goofing around, laughing, trying to loosen me up. He pointed out the small hand painted Mickey Mouse on his necktie. I grinned. “John, I gained a lot of respect for you when you choked me out in that pool.”

“Man, I’ll never forget your face when you came through that door. I thought I was dead. I always had respect for you after that.” John amazed me that day. I hadn’t seen him in a long time. We never really talked much to begin with. He was standing up with me now. It helped. I was feeling nervous. It was good to have my brother standing by my side.

Finally the game ended and the call came. John was still laughing and cool headed. He was a veteran police officer by then. John pulled me aside just before I was to walk down the isle. “I can still get you outta here if you want.” He said it with a grin on his face as he held open his coat to reveal a pistol in a shoulder holster. I didn’t take him up on the offer.

John’s my brother and I love him. We rarely see each other.

We haven’t been swimming together for years.

I’ve taken too many bullets for the team. I’ve been a Pollyanna with my head stuck up my ass… and a visionary that changed kids lives. I’ve walked picket lines, exposed evil, compromised my integrity, and given freely with all my soul. I’ve ranted across the desks of more than one superintendent, and rolled over for others. I’ve charmed, trashed, ignored, sympathized with and bull shitted hundreds of parents. I’ve gotten up and faced surly classes and then flipped them into open minded learners. I’ve missed as many teachable moments as I’ve caught. I’ve helped some kids gain 4 years on the reading test and ignored others because they were hopeless punks who pissed me off. I’ve hung around in the computer labs and classrooms of my school weeping with inspiration and happiness for simply being part of a learning environment I’d dreamed of building, and I’ve hated the deep rut of driving back to school every morning to participate in the systematic destruction of joy and trust that small minded inane administrators and school board members call education.

I’ve been an American Teacher for 44 years and I’m sick at heart about public education. I want to tear the system down and let the ferrets run free. I want to teach skepticism and critical thinking and create a generation that will fight for their minds, fight for freedom, but I’m so scarred by tilting at windmills that I’ve learned to choose my battles. I’m not sure how much fight is left in me.

Sometimes I just want to scream and tell it all. All the good, all the bad, the lunacy and the laughs and everything in between. Instead, I’ll just blog.

I got my credential in 1974 in spite of a system that kept trying to talk me out of wasting my life in the classroom. All my neurotic friends in the graduate English department at Berkeley thought I was nuts.

“You’re too good for teaching. Why waste your talent in a classroom?”

The application committee at the CSUN asked me the same thing (after beating me up for misspelling the word professional in my writing sample). “You don’t want to teach. There’s no money in it. You wont’ be able to get a job, there’s too many teachers already.”

But I was stubborn and burned out by the life I’d been leading and looking for direction. I’d gone up to Canada found a spot deep in the woods and thought about it all. I’d spend a lot of time on mountain tops and in the wild thinking about it all. It gets old talking to fish and sitting on the high ground with a rifle. Ultimately, you are left with the questions only you can answer…

My career choices came down to law or education. I could be a lawyer or a teacher. I could make a living working with people at their worst or helping kids learn. I chose teaching and despite 44 years of classroom joy and pain, I don’t regret the choice.

It was Mr. Pinto in the 8th grade that sealed the deal. Mr. Pinto saved my mind from the terror.

I was living in gut grinding terror of getting nuked out of existence. Northridge junior high had me cringing under my desk, conditioned like a rat in a Skinner Box by institutionalized drop drills.

“Drop” the teacher would shout.

Every time I curled up under that pitiful flimsy little wooden desk I could imagine the flash and blast of a hydrogen bomb taking out downtown LA and rolling over the hills to the San Fernando Valley where I’d be toasted alive. I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis and the afternoon when everyone thought the button would be pushed.

I remember the sincere horror of thinking the screaming air raid sirens were for real. I remember just wanting to ride my bike home so I could die with my family. Instead I cowered on the floor, weeping, huddled on the dirty linoleum of the overheated classroom, backs to the wall under the windows so the flying glass wouldn’t shred us.

The teacher was crying. She wouldn’t answer when we begged, “Is it real? Is it the bomb?” Hell the teacher was crying, kids were running through the halls screaming…it had to be real and I was going to die, away from my mom and dad and brother.

After fifteen minutes of horror the moron who was principal got on the P.A to announce it was all just a drill.

I learned a lot that day. I learned that faced with certain death I was too afraid to get up off the floor.

Nice lesson.

That’s the lesson of mainstream American education: just curl up in a ball and wait for it… lay on the floor and pray… let’s spend lots of money to train kids this way… “…children, when it comes to fiery death, STOP! DROP! and wait for it like sheep.”

In my day it was the Russians and ICBMs, overkill and nothing left but the cockroaches. Now it’s a Stalinist dictator with a nuke or a Jihadi packing a bomb in a suitcase…or an FBI agent breaking down a door and dragging out an 8th grader for threatening the president on Facebook… and let’s not forget the twisted 15 year old in a trench coat shooting kids in the head while they “shelter in place” and pray.

After the phony air raid, Mr. Pinto gave me a tool to deal with my fear. We were debating nuclear war in his Social Studies class and someone asked him what he’d do if the air raid sirens went off for real. Just thinking about this 50 years later makes my stomach knot… but it makes me smile too.

I can still hear Mr. Pinto’s voice, “Kids, if the bomb drops we’re all finished. We’re to close to prime targets… there’s nothing we can do. I’m not hiding under my desk. I’m getting a six pack of beer, and a folding chair and climbing up on the roof where I can see it all. It will be one hell of a light show.”

We cracked up. “The teacher said hell!” Nuclear annihilation suddenly seemed funny. Mr. Pinto with just a smidgen of honesty, helped me vent the paranoid steam of the arms race. He gave me a way to confront my fear and begin to stand. His fatalistic and funny advice gave me a game plan.

I was 14 years old. That’s when I started thinking seriously about being a teacher. I could say things that might help people… and get summers off!

Now after decades as a teacher, it seems right that my career choice was founded on visions of Armageddon laced with fatalistic humor. My years in the public school classroom have been sublime and mediocre. I love it and I hate it. I’ve gone farther and done more than I ever dreamed and I’m still dissatisfied with what I’ve accomplished. I’ve met some of the finest people on the planet and I’ve uncovered power corrupted evil-doers. I’ve fought the good fight and lost. I’ve stood up for my principles and been cut off at the knees.

I’m not done. I still want to break on through to the other side. If that means taking another beating… I’m going to punch back.

I’m still standing… maybe I’m standing on stumps, but I’m still upright.

I came across this piece and was reminded of the passion I felt at the time. This was one last vent that apparently worked. The anger is gone. The classroom teaching memories mostly good. More sweet than bitter. The past decade of teaching online and working with American Teachers yoked to the nonsense of NCLB have sharpened by empathy and reinforced the wisdom of my decision to leave public school behind.

For many years now I’ve been a teacher of teachers. Working online allows me to look through the windows of so many brave and dedicated teachers. It’s good for my soul.

I still like being an agent of disruption. At the same time I’m happy to report I’m much more optimistic about the future of learning for kids and adults!

Do you know how you can tell the pioneers? … They are the ones with arrows in their backs!

I’ve survived the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”. I still love this journey.

The following audio explains how I got started teaching online with Connected University.

I recorded this story for students in EDUC 764 The E-Learning Practicum. These folks are busy interning as online teaching and working on new careers. The mentored online teaching experience is the last step in earning our Graduate Certificate in E-Learning and Online Teaching.

Sometimes a little history helps!

Listen to my story about getting started with Connected Univeristy

My first paid job online was as a Guide for Connected University. This image is a snap shot of my responses to the Icebreaker prompt in my first ‘audition training’ for Connected U.

The campfire is an evocative image. I was inspired by David Thornburg’s seminal work: Campfires in Cyberspace: Primordial Metaphors for Learning in the 21st Century.

~ Dennis O’Connor