My Life in a Paper Sack

My Life in a Paper Sack

JMBlondin 12/26/2016

 

When I was a child I rarely saw my father. Mother rule our world. She was the rock that we relied on to stay anchored to the life we had, simple as it was. My father owned a business and spent all his time there. Whenever we questioned her as to, “when is daddy coming home?” she would explain that he was trying to build the business so that one day we would have the things that we wanted and needed. “But until then” she would say, “We must do the best we can.”

We weren’t poor you understand but we had very little. Mother never splurged on anything. Birthdays came and went without fanfare; Christmas would arrive with no decorations and one gift each. Things were fixed rather than replaced. My socks for example were nothing but one large sock shaped mend having been mended so many times. I do not think that there was any of the original material left in them. My jeans were patched and shirts thread bare. My baby sister fared no better. Her favorite blue dress had not been blue for many years, it too was patched repeatedly. Mother had three dresses. They were all alike but I could tell which one she wore because of each had different patches.

We did not suffer because of this but rather felt pride in what little we had. My sister and I slept in the same bed, in the same room for most of our growing up time. My mother and father, when he was home, slept in the only other room. That room also being the living, kitchen and dining room. In later years I would look back and still fail to understand why mother had made that arrangement. I never remember my father ever saying anything about it one way or the other.

Our home was very small. Five steps wide and twenty five steps long. It was sandwiched between two larger buildings that held many people. Sis and I played with some of the other children that lived in various apartments from either side. I felt that somehow we were special even though we had so little and the house was so small. We had it to ourselves and was not living stacked one upon another like the others.

Usually when father came home it was a quick hug and kiss on the head for my sister and a stern question of “have you taken care of the family today?” to me. My answer was always the same. I would stand as straight as I could and answer boldly but softly “yes sir!” to this response he would nod, pat me on the head and go to my mother. My sister and I both knew that was our que to go outside for a while if it was not nearly bed time and if it was then off to bed we would go.

Father owned a business making paper sacks. The round ones with the conical bottoms. His factory was blocks from our home in a large dark red brick building with tall narrow windows around the second floor. There were three smoke stacks sticking out of the brick square. In the colder months black smoke would billow out of them like a dragon exhaling. Sometimes mother would walk us down the cracked sidewalk, past the few trees that grew there to the corner across from the factory.

There was always sound coming out from the walls themselves. Not a loud sound but a deep sound like the building had its own heartbeat. Most of the time we would just stand there looking at the building, smelling the not unpleasant smell that I had come to associate with my father. His clothing bore this smell. Sometimes the doors would open and people would stream out. Turning left and right and some crossing towards us as they made their way home. Some would greet my mother, men would tip their hats but no one ever stopped to talk.

Sometimes we would see people streaming into these same doors and sometimes father would come out and hurry tiredly across the street to us. In these cases mother was the first to greet him with a hug and some murmured words then he would bend down to my sister then ask me the same question he always did to which I always responded the same.  Father would smile sometimes when I responded. I felt that he was saying to me, in his own way, that he felt better because I was taking care of the family when he was away.

One day, in the spring as I remember, mother came into our room. Sis and I were playing jacks on the floor at the foot of the bed. They had been given to us by a boy next door. There had been a knock at the door. Sis and I had stopped playing long enough to turn an ear to the sound of mother’s voice talking to someone.  Nothing unusual about this. Whenever father needed to get information to mother he would send a runner. Usually a young boy slightly older than me.

When mother opened the bedroom door she was smiling. She told us to hurry and put away the jacks and get dressed, father wanted us to come to the factory. I tried to put on my coat but mother insisted that I change to longer pants and scrub my face first.

Walking down the street you could tell that spring was in the air. There was a freshness about, birds flitted from branch to branch gathering makings for nests. People that we met where dressed in the less somber coats of winter and everyone seemed happier and lighter of foot.

When we arrived at our usual place across from the factory we stopped and waited. There was something different about today. Father never sent for us like this before. Mother did not seem upset but rather excited in a subdue sort of way.

The door of the factory opened and father stepped out stopping for a moment to let his eyes adjust I suppose and then stepped out to cross the street. His movements were lighter today. He did not seem so tired and worn. He hugged mother as I expected him to do then bent and cupped my sister’s face in his big calloused hands and kissed her on the forehead then turned to me.

I expected the question and stood straighter to provide the answer. “Leon” he said. I was shocked and swayed back, father never called me by my given name. “Have you taken care of the family today son?” I choked on the answer. He called me by name and called me son, my mind tumbled over this. “Yes sir” I managed to get out looking up at him. He was smiling. Then he said the words that I shall never forget. “I want you to go into the factory with me.”

I looked at sis, I looked at mother. Sis was as dumbfounded as I but mother was smiling and had that twinkle in her eye. Smiling she placed her hand on my shoulder and urged me to step up beside father who had turned around and was facing the factory. I could hardly breathe. I was going to the factory with my father. I had never been so excited in my life.

I looked at father and he twitched his head indicating that we should go. As my foot came off the curb in step with him, I was terrified and excited at the same time. Half way across the street I glanced back to see mother and sis watching. Mother gave a little wave which I returned then she turned with sis in tow and head back down the street towards home.

The factory doors loomed large as we approached. The beating of the factory heart became louder in sound and in the air of my lungs. I could feel it as well as hear it. Father opened the door and ushered me in. it took a moment for my eyes to adjust the dimmer light but when they did I stood in amazement. The first thing was the sound, not overly loud but pervasive. Then the smell. The air smelled like my father.

Looking around there were rows and rows of machines with people at each. Everywhere there was movement. People moving, machines moving, people pushing carts loaded with brown piles I would learn were paper sacks. Giant rolls of brown paper moving in jerks as it was fed into the machines Father started walking down the center of a wide isle through the heart of the huge room. Looking everywhere and at everything I moved alongside him. People smiled when he looked at them, some saying something that was lost in the din of the machines.

Dust motes in the air looking a bit like dandelion fluff floating in the shafts of sunlight from the windows. There were rows of machine and people deeper to the left and right of the isle we walked. I could not take it all in. My father placed his hand on the back of my shoulder and turned me to the left towards a small brown cube sitting in the middle of the floor. As we walked pass I read the sign on the door as it opened. Foreman it said in dirty smeared block letters. A man stepped out and stopped. He said something in a loud voice to my father then listened as my father gestured and pointed responding to him.

We moved on. Ahead a metal stair case rose attached to the wall from the floor to a windowed office area that over looked the factory floor. I looked up to father and he pointed up so I climbed. At the top was a door with a dirty window which I opened and walked through, father followed me.

Father pointed out the windows with a sweeping gesture. “This is the paper bag factory that I own. This will one day be yours” He said with a smile. My chest nearly burst with this news, heart hammering in my ears. I looked with wonder at everything below me.

I’ve spent the fifty one years here with my father and after my father; I am still here. I was twelve on that day. My only birthday present I ever got from my father is still here around me, still breathing still alive with the sounds and smells. My father was found in his old desk chair staring out across the factory floor years later. His sightless eyes still watching the workings below. Mother survived him by a few years and died in her sleep in the large bed in the large house that father had built for her as he had promised. Sis married young and moved away never to return.

My life in a paper sack remains here. I married only once, when I was twelve. My wife is this factory, my children are small brown paper sacks that I send away every day.