Once Around the Carousel

Chapter Four

As he wormed his way along the road of life, Bob MacCalaster left a distinct trail of slime. And if you followed it back in time, you'd find yourself in Youngstown, Ohio: the year – 1928.

He entered the world into a dimly lit boardinghouse room for women employed by the local "entertainment" industry. The ceiling's pitch made the space smaller than what would one day be his daughter's closet, and in place of a door, a tattered blanket hung across the jamb. However, a vent from the kitchen below more than made up for any deficiencies. The airway kept the room warm and smelling of chicken and dumplings.

Bob's mother, Dahlia Jacobs, gave birth on a cot with the stains to prove it had known this duty in the past. With her sat Sally Krenwinkle, her roommate for the past three years, and Ruth Cushing, a local midwife who directed the blessed event.

A small woman, well past 60, Ruth had tended to hundreds of births over the years – several in that very room. This one piqued her interest. A versatile woman, Ruth had tried her level best six months earlier to purge Dahlia of the circumstance to which she now attended.

To her credit, Ruth did everything in her power to rid the world of Bob. "I done all I know how," she told Leonard Carson, the proud owner of Northeast Ohio's slickest comb-over and proprietor of the Emerald Palace, the speakeasy and gaming establishment where Dahlia worked. "God knows that poor darling gave up enough blood. I have no idea why she didn't let go of that baby. I surely don't." But Bob proved to be a survivor. Despite Ruth's prodding efforts, he found a perch, clung tight, and avoided the business end of Ruth's knitting needle. Now, five months later, he came into the world very much on his own terms.

Bob slid into his place in Youngstown society at nine-plus pounds. Ruth's estimate, as the boardinghouse didn't exactly qualify as an obstetrics ward. He evidently held no grudge against the women who'd conspired against him. Bob came forth with a full head of black hair, blue eyes and appeared to be smiling.

"He's mine?" Dahlias asked, holding up a fistful of her red, curly, sweat-drenched hair as evidence.

"Pretty sure," Sally said, laying him face down on Dahlia's chest.

Dahlia had arrived in Youngstown three years earlier, having fled lower Appalachia at her first opportunity. Unfortunately, the Gilded Age never quite reached her family's swath of America, and they remained poor. "Dirt floor poor," Dahlia would later describe it to friends.

In truth, the Jacobs family frequently moved, usually in response to problems of her father, Lester's, creation. And at times, their living status rose to that of a wood-planked floor. It, however, always stayed beneath the luxurious standards of indoor plumbing.

No stranger to hard work, Dahlia helped her parents eke out a living from as early an age as she could. She helped in the garden and in the house, and worked alongside her mother in the cotton fields when the family headed south during planting and harvest seasons. Her mother was only 16 when she gave birth to Dahlia and bore no more children. She did, however, undergo a series of miscarriages — usually the handiwork of her husband's fist.

"The Good Lord just stopped putting babies in there," Dahlia's mother told her when she questioned her lack of siblings. In God's defense, the success rate ran unpleasantly low, and her parents were not doing a bang-up job with the one he'd initially bestowed upon them.

Lester Jacobs was ostensibly a coal miner but more often embodied the role of an angry drunk. He possessed a strong back, limited mind, foul mouth, and an unbounded ability to foster hate. He rivaled this overall contempt with a penchant to blame others for the myriad of wrongs he accused the world of sending his way. His list of those plotting against him included: Yankees, Blacks, Bosses, Police, the Government, and soon after, the family settled somewhere, his neighbors. Lester typically spread his vitriol relatively evenly. Unfortunately, he directed most of his anger's ensuing violence toward his wife. And, as she grew up, Dahlia was expected to absorb what her mother no longer could.