FRESH YARN PRESENTS:

I Blame Dennis Hopper
By Illeana Douglas

PAGE TWO:
There were other changes.

My mother belonged to the garden club. Once a month they met at our house. The other housewives looked down their noses at our new lifestyle so she quit. "They were a bunch of snobs anyway," she said. I was mortified. I loved the garden club. A bunch of wealthy snobby women talking about hydrangeas. And they all smelled like Chanel Number 5. Hippies didn't smell like Chanel No. 5 that's for sure.

Just as my father had changed, now my mother was changing. Into an Italian Catholic drill sergeant. "Time," she'd yell out in the morning. My mother started standing outside the bathroom door and timing how long we were running the hot water.

"That's too long Illeana," she'd say through the door. "We can't afford it any more. We're poor, remember?" It became her favorite expression. My father's favorite expression was, "Where's my herb?"

One day my father unscrewed every chandelier in the house and sold them at auction. He needed money for the commune. My mother said, "I look up at the ceiling where my lights used to be and all I see are wires."

This was soon followed by, in no particular order, the sale of our china, silver, furniture, a first edition of Moby Dick, my horse, more furniture, more china, etc.

My mother took it in stride. She started taking classes at night, and eventually got a teaching job to support us all. I used to watch her drive down the driveway in her Volkswagen bug on the way to school. My father bought an ambulance and painted it yellow. It was covered with flowers and had a giant American flag painted on the side. You know -- a yellow ambulance -- to fit the instruments for the band he started.

I blame Dennis Hopper for that band.

On Wednesdays we used to have to go to Stop and Shop and get the free day-old bread they threw away. Sometimes there were donuts. I hid in the car when my mother got them, but they tasted pretty good back home. One morning I was getting ready for school and she cheerfully yelled upstairs to me, "Peanut butter or jelly?"

I only became a vegetarian because I never saw any meat as a child. "It's too expensive, we can't afford it. We're poor now, remember? Have a donut."

My mother loved being poor. I think it finally gave her an identity. Apparently that we were living through the Great Depression. I didn't get it. We were once rich. I remember that. And we were living in Connecticut. You can't be poor in Connecticut! It's like a law or something. I had friends, rich friends, who thought we were still rich, and as I got older it was becoming harder and harder to keep the truth from them.

One day Elspeth Higgins asked me at the bus stop, "Um... isn't your dad the guy that drives around town with goats in his car?"

"Yeah, that's him."

"Um... Why do you have goats?"

"Oh look, there's the bus. Let's get on."

We couldn't afford an antenna for the television so I missed the greatest social debate of the '70s. No, not Watergate. The other, better debate. The Which is Better, The Partridge Family or The Brady Bunch Debate. With no antenna, we could only get one channel -- CBS. So when all the other kids were asking, "What do you like better, The Brady Bunch or The Partridge Family?" I was like, "Hey, did anyone see Cannon last night? Man, he's so... He couldn't catch that bad guy. What about Barnaby Jones?? Anybody? Anybody?"

I desperately wanted to go out for band but a clarinet was "too expensive. We can't afford it," so I had to get a recorder instead. You try learning "Eleanor Rigby" on the recorder. You feel poor.

God damn you Dennis Hopper!

At night, bundled in my blankets, sweaters and knit cap, I would curse you. You took my father away from me. We could have been bonding around the time I graduated high school. Poring over brochures, and deciding which Ivy League school I'd go to. Instead I spent time at a local bar watching his band 40 Acres and a Mule perform. They did a lot of Stones covers… and were mostly stoned. We couldn't afford to send me to college, but I can do a mean rendition of "Angie"!

Eventually I accepted the truth. The family that God had chosen for me to live with was poor. One day rich relatives would call and ask me to come live with them.

In the meantime, I'd help my mother shop even if it meant the shame of buying things with food stamps. It wasn't the food stamps so much. It was the third degree every time we used them. Food stamps had just been invented, and they were for poor people. We had chosen to be poor! It was a difficult concept to explain. My mother not accepting why chicken wasn't on the government approved list but Hamburger Helper was didn't help our cause. "I can buy Hamburger Helper but I can't buy a fresh chicken?" "I can buy fish sticks but I can't buy a piece of fish?"

Oh well. We were poor, but we were happy. Whoever invented that phrase needs to be confronted in an intervention because denial is a river in Egypt. I never found that expression to be true. We were poor but we were like a circus! Or we were poor but we were happy-sad-happy-sad-happy-sad-happy-sad was more like it. That being said, it was never boring -- having dodged the rut of an upper middle class life for the sheer excitement of childhood filled with Hell's Angels, Black Panthers, and police officers.

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