It Hits Home: The Glass Castle

Hello,
Sam and I have returned from our month-long journey in Italy (Rick joined us at Week 3). I reread "The Glass Castle" during our trip and took some notes, hoping to better explain to the younger family members why I, Sam, Larry and Craig were so moved by this book. I don't think Phil read it. Anyway, I got the impression from a couple postings that the book seemed somewhat unbelievable to some of you young'uns. I find it very difficult, and who really cares anyway, to adequately describe our upbringing so that people understand the meager-ness of our tangible assets, the wild nastiness of dad's alcoholic rages, and the freedom and relative okay-ness of our overall upbringing, in spite of some awful, by our kids' standards I'm sure, hardships. In spite of everything, we were loved. Well, I think I could write a book. But, for now, I'll point out a few details I noted when rereading the book which hit home for me. I'm too lazy to go back and cite these references in full, so I'm just presenting them as I jotted them down as I reread the book.
1. p. 18: ". . .sleeping in the desert on an army blanket." That was camping out for us! We would drive out to some remote area in the desert and throw an army blanket down and sleep on the rocky, hard ground. No pillows, no blankets over us, no air mattresses, etc. That was it. We slept on the ground out in the open and fished.
2. p. 21: ". . . brushing our teeth with baking soda and hydrogen peroxide. . ." We brushed our teeth with baking soda and salt. This is simply because we could not afford toothpaste.
3. p. 21: ". . .always went barefoot. . ." We bought one pair of shoes just before school started, and it didn't matter whether we outgrew them or not (I remember horrendous oozing infected bloody blisters), that was the only pair of shoes we had for the rest of the year. In the summer, we went barefoot because we had outgrown our shoes for sure by then and because we weren't going to get a new pair until just before school started. The soles of our feet were "tough and thick as cowhide."
4. p. 21: ". . .we'd catch scorpians, snakes and horney toads. . " There aren't scorpians in Eastern Washington, but we caught plenty of horney toads and snakes, and frogs and pollywogs and goldfish. We spent endless hours at the pond near our house(which was eventually turned into a gravel pit).
5. p. 22: ". . .Dad could build or fix anything. . ." I really don't think it's an overstatement to say that our father, Grandpa Tebay, was brilliant. He was also incredibly talented. He really could fix anything.
6. ". . . hard liquor. . " In the book, the father drank mostly beer, and occasionally drank hard liquor, which resulted in terrifying behavior on his part. This is so true of our dad. He was a "beer alcoholic," but I still remember the few times he drank the hard stuff. It was ugly.
7. ". . .West Virginia. . ." Must be something about being from West-By-God-Virginia. Grandpa Tebay was from Parkersburg, West Virginia. Our grandfather was a Ku Klux Klan member. Dad remembers moonshine stills. We have hillbilly roots, no doubt about it.
8. p. 30: ". . .smoking and driving and drinking beer. . ." That was our dad.
9. p. 37: ". . .swearing in general and the use of colorful phrases. . ." To say that Grandpa Tebay "swore" doesn't adequately convey the impact of his cussing language. He also used many "colorful phrases," one of which was, "The air is full of pigeons." It took me years to figure out what the heck that meant.
10. p. 37: ". . .drowning cats. . ." We did not take injured or sick pets to the vet. Dad put them in a burlap bag and drowned them in the river.
11. p. 59: ". . .could go pretty much anywhere and do just about anything we wanted. . ." We had unlimited freedom. We would sleep outside in the summer, get up around 2:00 a.m., Larry and Craig would grab a rifle, and we would walk through town to the river to shoot carp. We all have endless and what seems now amazing remembrances of the almost total freedom we had. We were expected to stay out of trouble, and as long as we didn't bring negative attention to ourselves, we could pretty much do what we wanted.
12. p. 62: ". . .none of us kids got allowances, picked up beer cans and bottles." We had access to plenty of beer cans.
13. p. 67: ". . .being out of food. . ." We were often out of food. I mean down to beans beans beans. I love beans. Sam hates beans.
14. p. 67: ". . turned off gas. . ." I vividly remember the time when the gas had been turned off, due to unpayment of the bill, and all of us had the flu. We huddled together under flimsy blankets trying to keep warm.
15. p. 76: ". . .no school lunches, no new clothes, no class pictures. . . I don't look back on my childhood and think, "Poor me. What a deprived childhood." But, there are some painful memories, and not being able to buy a school lunch (I really don't think I EVER had a school lunch, and not being able to buy new clothes, and not being able to buy my class photos, are sad memories for me.
16. p. 96: ". . . womanizer. . ." Dad had a long history. I've only recently become aware of the fact that mom talked to me about this, but not to her sons.
17. p. 96: ". . . invididual leaves on trees. . ." This was a description of what Jeannette's sister was surpised she could see when she finally got glasses. I was out of high school before I had my eyes checked and realized that to most people, trees were not just a green blur. (I also went to the dentist for the first time when I was 22 and could pay for it myself. I needed extensive dental work. But, that's another story.)
18. p. 112: ". . .drunken rampages. . ." Dad was famous for these (to mom, me and Sam; Phil, Craig and Larry had left home by this time.)
19. p. 115: ". . .Christmas. . ." No tree. No presents. Pretty sad for a little kid.
20. p. 115: ". . .when Dad went crazy, we all had our own ways of shutting down and closing off, . . ."
21. p. 116: ". . .birthdays were not a big deal around our house. . ." I actually do not remember even being aware of my birth dates up until I was a teenager. Let alone celebrating them. When we got older, I think we did start making our own birthday cakes.
22. p. 171: ". . .expert foragers. . ." You should talk to Uncle Larry about the apples and other produce we helped ourselves to in the wee hours of the morning. He was the ringleader.
23. p. 173: ". . .skinny minny. . ." I had a lot of nicknames. All relating to my scrawniness. Skinny Minny. Bony Maroni.
24. p. 278: ". . .smoking 4 packs per day since 13. . ." Dad started smoking when he was about 10 years old (so he told me). He smoked three packs per day of Chesterfields 101s when I was sent down to The Lucky Dollar to buy them for him when I was like 9 years old. 35 cents per pack.
Whew. I could go on. This book really dredges up some reality for me, and Craig, and Sam, and Larry. But, this only scratches the surface!
Love to All--Jennifer