My parents found a house on Theota Avenue just west of West 54th Street on the northern edge of Parma. It was basically a one floor cottage with a 'semi-finished' second floor attic that set back from the other homes on the street, built in the 1920's. It had a cement slab floor. We had to be careful since the back addition had a four inch drop from the living room. The floors were covered over with linoleum, there was no carpeting when we first moved in, and when we did get "wall-to-wall", it was only in the living room. In winter, the floors would get really cold. The cottage was heated via a couple of old gas space heaters. In those days, space heaters could be very dangerous. They used pilot lights to ignite, however, if the pilot light went out, the gas didn't shut off. If that happened, the place would build up highly volatile fumes - one spark from anything and BOOM, no more house, and you could have a weenie roast with the embers before the fire department hosed the place down. Most people replaced them with gas furnaces - my dad was cheap!

The house had two bedrooms on the main floor and a finished-off attic storage area on the second. Rather than having slept in the extra bedroom on the main floor, Dan and I were forced to bed-down on the second floor storage room with mattresses on the floor. There was a window, but it couldn't be opened and the storage area was neither heated nor insulated. I really think our dad was trying to kill us. In the summer it was boiling up there, in the winter we'd freeze. If our dad caught us trying to sleep on the stairway between floors, he'd chase us back upstairs with the belt. My mom could do nothing to stop him.

Thoreau Park Elementary School was usually a more peaceful place to be. The teacher was a Norma Albright - a dowdy-looking spinster who drove a mid-1950's black Oldsmobile. The school itself was a block or two away on West 54th Street. The building was constructed in the 1920's, a very large edifice with large windows and a one and a half story entrance. In the back was a gravel and asphalt playground with the usual swings, slides, monkey bar and a particularly dangerous octagon apparatus that would spin around. It was fun to ride on, but make one mistake and off you flew to the surrounding stones - yep, I was its victim a few times.

On the other side of Theota was the Holy Ghost Cemetery which spans backyards from West 54th Street to practically Pearl Road to its west. On the other side of Theota where Pearl intersects with Ridge Road was a bakery and Kitchen Maid Meats where my Grandma Anna DeJean was once a counter person. Also a few doors down on the other side of the street was George and Ruth Malloy. Ruth grew up in the home and befriended Anna DeJean as a girl when my grandmother was working at Kitchen Maid Meats and was a fixture in the family ever since. Eventually, Aunt Ruth was left the home in a will. Aunt Ruth became a school administrator - she always drove large flashy cars, I remember a Ford Crown Victoria she once owned. George Malloy worked in the construction trades as a union laborer and made good money as well. Aunt Ruth worked during the day and her kids like Dan and I were usually in school from eight in the mornings to 3:30 in the afternoons. Aunt Ruth herself didn't pull into her driveway until usually five or six in the evening. Dad usually left for work around two in the afternoon. So there was a stretch of time between 2pm to 3:30pm when the kids and spouses were gone.

George Malloy was a social gadfly, he had a good smile and a unique voice that could be quite charming. When he turned on the charm he could practically make friends with anyone. Bets are he did very good with the women as well. George had a few negatives - he smoked like a chimney, downed a lot of whiskey and beer on a daily basis, his eyes were yellowed and bloodshot, and his skin completion hovered from moderate red to beat red - indicating he was dealing with high blood pressure. For all Georges' sins, he was headed for an early grave.

Meanwhile, my mother was dying for attention and a decent love maker. She also wanted a daughter and after two boys felt my dad would never give her a girl. George had a couple of daughters and one son. My dad's violent behavior didn't win any loyalty for him from Dan and myself - by now we were both alienated. When it came to relations between spouse and offspring, my dad simply sucked badly.

George over the years got more friendly with my mother, first with phone calls and later stopping by to say hi. He even knew how to play Dan and me to his advantage. He may have not realized it, but he wouldn't have any problems from Dan and myself. Things eventually progressed romantically between my mother and George, and soon they shared afternoon delights - George was getting free nooky on the side - than again, so was my mom. George didn't like to use rubbers, no problem for my mom, she was gunning for a daughter. As for George, he was flying so high on hard liquor, he wasn't considering the possibility of my mother getting pregnant. And even if she did, she could easily have sex with my father and make him think he was the one who got her pregnant. It was win-win for them both.

George usually watched for my dad to leave from down the street, either by foot or when one of the nurses picked my dad up. Then he simply walked over to our house and they got their sex on in my parents bedroom. Didn't spend money on gas, never had to take my mom to dinner - it was a free fuck! For George, life was good!

George and my mother usually went longer than they should, and I would get home as they were finishing up. George would often come out the bedroom door first, followed by my mother, sometimes it was the other way around. When George saw I was home, he initially played the good guy, all smiles and joking...he should, he just took the edge off by banging my mother! George knew I was into electronics and kept promising to give me an electronics experimenter kit. However, George had no intentions of keeping his promise. He was very savvy to the fact that if anything appeared that my dad hadn't purchased, my father would be asking a lot of questions my mother couldn't answer. All during the time we lived on Theota, he was a regular in our home. George finally got tired of making empty promises - he flat out threatened to kill me if I said word one. That was stupid on his part - I wasn't gonna tell the guy who continually beat the shit out of me nothing - screw him!

After two or three years of fucking around, it finally happened - my mom got pregnant with George's baby. My mother quickly had a lot of sex with my father and waited for the appropriate time to tell my dad she was expecting - my dad never knew what hit him. She also informed George who suddenly stopped coming around. From the time the affair started, she informed me and Dan that if George called when our dad was home, we were to say the call came from Jesus Christ or JC for short. We were also to inform George our dad was home and to hang up. Thankfully George never called.

Soon after my mom told George she was pregnant, a strange thing happened. We had to pick up my father one night from work at the hospital. It was around midnight when we got back home. The power was out in the house, and so was the pilot light on all three space heaters. Thankfully when my parents opened the door, they could smell the strong odor of gas. We kids were ordered to stay in the yard while my parents opened all the windows and shut off the gas. We waited for better than an hour before the fumes cleared. My parents left the gas and lights turned off until the next day when they called the gas company. According to the serviceman form East Ohio Gas, the heaters were functioning fine - however, it was a mystery to the gas company as to why three space heaters in three different locations went out at the same time. My mother said nothing, but within a week, the space heaters were taken out and replaced with a traditional gas furnace. We could have all been dead.

Theota was where I officially met my first girlfriend. We were in Norma Albright's class together and the chemistry really clicked. Diane Gideon and I walked back and forth to school together, ate lunch together and spent recess on the school playground together. It was Love! Now there is a problem with elementary school love for the guy side. Other guys didn't like other guys fraternizing with the female gender. Doing so meant you were a sissy, and sissies are to be ganged-up on and beat up. Yep, it happened to me. When I walked outside to go home after classes, three guys jumped me from behind and beat the living crap out of me. I was warned there would be more if I failed to comply by ignoring Diane. However, the ruffians were caught and their parents called, along with detentions and no further threats were made. Meanwhile, Diane and I picked-up where we left off. One time on the way home we cut through a garden where cherry tomatoes had ripened and had an all natural afternoon snack. Sadly, saying goodbye came all to soon when my parents decided to move again.