Dad, Will You Make Me A Promise?
Yes I will... Issue #3
ifOnlyi… Knew what a great time and what a great life I would have. Looking back there were so many teachings that I had the pleasure of being given. I thought I was being punished but truth be told it was an awesome experience. I will share that in Issue #4
Here’s how it all happened. Yes, I was off to my new school. The fourth since I started Kindergarten only 6 years earlier. Off we went, the parents in the front and I in the back seat of our 1969 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow.
The trunk of the car was packed with all my new clothes. This time it was suits, ties, dress shirts, and leather-soled shoes. I will share why later, but I was off to another new school, this time a boarding school named Howard, and I was scared again. I had zero friends to see and no one I knew.
Howard was located in a beautiful part of southern California near the ocean in a town called Montecito, right next to Santa Barbara. A very weird time in my life, as I was going to be one of only six boys - now that’s small! This time there would be three girl boarders too, as it was not an all-boys school this time, yeah.
I believe the entire school, from Kindergarten through 9th grade, had a whopping 65 students, including the 9 boarders. This was my first of 3 years I would attend there; 5th, 6th, and 7th grade. The school had massive disciplines in place and manners were at the top of the school’s list.
Mr. & Mrs Carpenter, our Headmaster and his wife, also owned the school and were teachers at Howard as well. They were both proper English-born, English-educated couple. We had our lives fully planned out 7 days a week. For the first year, I only went home for Christmas and Easter breaks. I thought the best part about that was that there would be no polishing of all the brass and silver, but no chance - there was a pile waiting when I got home for Christmas break that needed to be done. I was truly a young guy locked in a small, tiny world that I made my own.
So, back to the promise I had asked of my Dad on the first day driving to this new school. I told my father that if he would promise to stop smoking, I would promise not to cry when they dropped me off at school. I never have ever forgotten this one special memory in my life, as my Dad rolled down his driver’s window in the car and having just bought a brand new carton of cigarettes he threw them out on the freeway driving at high speeds, and said “bye-bye, cigarettes” I couldn’t believe my eyes, he did it, right there, right then, and never again did he pick up another smoke! Yeah, Dad, and thank you. I can’t say that about my own self-discipline at all.
Unlike my Mother who went to more smoking clinics, starting with a company called the Schick Smoking Centre, LOL, this company would invite you down and yes you paid for this, asked you to bring a carton or 2 of your favourite cigarettes and sit in a room with all the other smokers who also paid for this service and smoke all morning and all afternoon lighting one smoke after another until the day was over. I don’t know if she ever opened the second carton or how long this went on, but that's gross.
She stopped, I believe, just from being sick of smoking 200-plus cigarettes in a day, with everyone else’s smoke burning her eyes out. Well, it didn’t work for long, and she called them back a month or so later, asking if she could pay again and come back for another session. Can you believe that? Yes, she went back, and no, it didn’t work again for her, so she started something else that she had to pay to learn to do, and that was smoking cinnamon sticks. Yes, you read that right, lighting up a cinnamon stick that seemed crazy, but the room smelled good. That didn’t work either, then she went onto the patches and soon wore patches and smoked at the same time, she struggled hard, and in the end, it took her life, passing away from emphysema, a rough last 10-12 years for sure. I’m so sorry I got sidetracked from the story, just got distracted by my Dad living up to his promise.
ifOnlyi…. short stories are published chronologically, and follow my life growing up in California from 4 years old. If you’ve just found me, the stories will come together when you start reading from….Issue #1