Rambling Institute Lane Reminiscences
Leaves are just starting to fall. The moths hatching now look like dead leaves. And I wax maudlin over times gone by.
We begin with the cruel things kids do to each other...or at least the wicked things done unto me by my aunts EllenCharlottteLibby&Laura, a.k.a. “the Girls,” for such they were spoken of once, a feminine Mount Rushmore of teen and pre-teen Taylordom.
To make a long story shortish, EllenCharlottteLibby&Laura were more like sisters to me -- we were all born within ten years each other, with Laura a scant five years my senior, and they were all born within five years of each other. Yes indeed, it does sound a wee Appalachian, but those are the bare facts.
So when I would come to Houston to visit we were like a little pack, with me sort of the mascot / bratty little brother. We’d toddle down Bissonnet to go see “The Red Balloon” in the basement cinema, or up Bissonnet to avail ourselves of charge-account po’ boys, Cokes and Twixes from the Butera’s deli.
I can’t recall us venturing far north or south — ours was an east-west axis that only verged north when the younger contingent — Libby&Laura — would take me up to Laurie Johnson’s on Banks Street, where I would play with her little brother Stevie. He was two or three years older than men and I idolized him — he had a pellet gun that could destroy Matchbox cars, and he would let me shoot it.
After long days like that we'd all go to bed together some nights in our creepy attic bedroom known always as “the Third Floor” and pretend we were the Waltons, with that long litany of "Night Bessy Sue," "Night Earlene," and then I was inevitably John-Boy, and I would rage out. I hated being called John Boy — so, tantrum, yelling from me, giggling from them, and then I’d wake up and charge into then the next day.
But that was the least of the tortures they inflicted on me. One specific instance of their more orchestrated schemes will suffice.
Here is how it would go: Libby Taylor Arnold, would tease me near the head of our stairs. I would get so mad I would shove her, and then she would whirl and spin dramatically across about five feet of landing and pretend to fall down the stairs.
This being the ‘70s, I knew that falling down the stairs = death. I’d seen enough TV to know that. And there was Aunt Libby down there at the foot of the stairs, just laying there, still as the gaze of a well-fed heifer.
"Nova! You just killed Libby," Laura yelled. "Ellen, call the police!"
Ellen dialed the police on the slow-whirring rotary phone at the foot of the stairs, right next to her sister’s corpse, and tearfully informed them of a domestic murder at 5302 Institute Lane.
Meanwhile, Charlotte Taylor Hutson was off somewhere out of my vision, making siren noises, simulating the cop cars that were coming to take me away.
Amazing teamwork...
Truth be told I was never all that convinced I had really killed Aunt Libby. They teased me so often I learned to be wary of elaborate ruses. But what if I did? What if this time it was real?
Of course it never was, and truth be told again — I think I enjoyed being the center of attention. I do know that coming to visit grandparents Moe&Susy and EllenCharlottteLibby&Laura were always some of the high points of my year — mainly because of the love in that home amid the disorder, and how I was able to get away from first an out-of-control mother (their big sister Bidy) and later a stepmother I could not abide.
And also Nashville meant school and I hated almost everything about school aside from friends, sports, and gazing at and occasionally slow-dancing with girls I was too frightened to kiss until I moved to Texas full-time. But back in those days, the days of these elaborate fake murders, I was only in Houston when school was out — a few weeks each summer, Thanksgiving and Christmas. So Houston meant freedom as well as escape from other stuff.
And, dangit, it was just always home to me. To this day I don’t have dreams about any of the other 20 or so places I’ve hung my hat and laid down my head in this life. Only 5302 Institute, ever. I dream of it as it was; I dream of it with hidden rooms I’d never found. It is not a mind-palace, but it is the palace of my mind, from birth to age 30 the only home I knew for more than a few years at a time.
So despite that teasing, I would dread flying back to Nashville like a soldier on leave would transport back to the front.
I’d have insomnia for days before; one time, I intentionally missed the flight so I could stay just one more night in Houston. I learned that just made it worse — you had those night-before blues all over again.
But I would return again and again and my own small family were there when the whole family sold out circa 2000. I was able to afford my son something like the same experience I had, if for a fraction of the time. I know he was there long enough to “pose” for this photo, busted in the same groping for the cookie jar act all of us attempted from the ‘60s onward.
Lovely, if disturbing memoir, wish i had been able to get you out of Bidy's clutches sooner but took several years for Tennessee courts to award me full custody - and I'm not sure I would have gotten it w/o me re-marrying so there was a stepmom in house to help out.