Ostria

 Well I'm back. I woke up at around 8 this morning because I actually went to sleep at a normal time. Now if I can just do this tomorrow morning also... 

Yesterday I'd fought really strong wind to get packages to the post office, and went to Sprouts for various groceries and got back here and by then had 15 things listed so the day worked out well. 

Today I just read a lot. First I read the ArtScroll haggadah I have that I bought in the temple gift shop for $2. The other two, the Jewish Boston one we used, and another one, are really lightweight and the ArtScroll one goes into things a lot deeper. 

It's funny because maybe a month ago, before I thought of going to a seder at all, I'd been thinking that I'd kind of done an "escape from Egypt" in a way. My two younger sisters and I were living with our mom, mom's (useless) boyfriend, and and older lady and her daughter who had been neighbors of ours in Punaluu. Now we all lived in a large house in Waikane, large in that my room was what had been the laundry room or more like an add-on to the laundry room. My two sisters slept on a bunk bed in the actual laundry room. 

Anyway, the thing is, the way Welfare worked at the time, my mom had to work a job which would of course not pay for a house this big and food and all that, but the Welfare system would, as long as she was working and making an effort, "level her up" to be able to pay the rent and we'd have our food stamps and Mom would have some money besides. Her boyfriend was not in these calculations, being a pure leech. 

In this way a single mother with a few kids could live a nice life in a big house as long as those kids were under 18. The gov't was paying her to raise us. This was all well and fine except for a couple of things: Firstly, Waikane, about a mile south of Kualoa Ranch, had very little in the way of jobs or future prospects. The whole Windward side had hardly any jobs and those jobs would not go to us kids as we looked too white. Mom, OK. She was brown enough. And her boyfriend did at one time try working at the bakery in Hau'ula in the shopping center where Mom worked in the department store, but at least his side of the story was that he got harassed so badly he could not do it. He was a scumbag but I actually believe him. He had baking experience and probably really wanted to make a go of it. 

So, no jobs and no prospects. Also, we were nearing age 18, which meant no more gov't support. If we'd just stuck there in Waikane, the only future would be to join the Mormons, for my sisters to get knocked up and start putting out kids, "farming" them to have a living off of the government, probably supporting some apish "local" babydaddy, or work at some kind of job that's too dirty/dangerous/demeaning (and lot paid) for anyone else to do. 

The Windward Side is beautiful but you can have pretty paintings on the walls and still be in a prison. And my "art career" didn't look like it was going to save anything as you can't swing a cat without hitting an artist who's painting the same mountains and palm trees as you'd paint. 

But I had an idea. I'd heard my dad was in town, and so my youngest sister and I took off. We ran away from home. Ran away, that is, by getting on the bus. I'd told my mom's boyfriend that were were going to Coral Kingdom, the local tourist trap, so he'd now we'd be gone for a while. (We did go there fairly often, because if the right gal was working there, she'd sell us almost-spoiled hamburgers for something like 25c each. Gamiest burgers this side of the Pearl City Drive In.) 

It worked out pretty well. Dad was in town, I think we went to his aunt's place first and she called him and he came and got us. While Dad was short on the "Steady" and "Provider" parts of "Steady Provider" it was nowhere near the squalor and hopelessness of the Windward Side. Hell, my youngest sister and that daughter of the older lady who lived with us, one day they were at the bus stop and some local guys stopped and tried to abduct them. They fought them off and told us about it, and there was not much to be done. That's how Hawaii works. WFBWB. Waiting For Bus While Blonde (which both were). 

On Passover there's a lot of talk about "escaping your personal Egypt" and I suppose in a small way that's what I did. And got my 2 sisters out too. (The 2nd youngest, who we didn't think would go with the plan, was still in school that way, the school where a local kid had bashed her front teeth out with a golf club. She ended up a teenager wearing a bridge like an older person does. Again: Nothing could be done and the only repercussions would be against us if we'd made a peep.)

You'd think my going off to the Army would be leaving my personal Egypt, but joining the Army was the logical thing for tons of young people to do who don't want to become homeless. My dad said something like, "I can't guarantee you a place to live here 6 months from now" and I interpreted it as, he wanted me out in 6 months. After all, I was 18, the traditional age Americans kick their kids out to sink or swim with no further help. 

As it turned out, it didn't seem he meant that. He was just commenting on the financial instability he was always in, as a guy who'd done the stupid thing and become a computer programmer. But I thought he wanted me out, met up with an Army recruiter, told Joe Sweeny at the gas station I was working at (dirty, dangerous, demeaning...) and ol' Joe was happy for me. Then when it was time for me to go to the airport, both my father and my older sister said they'd take me, and neither one was in the house to take me so they both managed to fail. I ended up taking a taxi, and the last time I'd been in a taxi was when I was 5 and my mother called one to take me to school in since it was raining heavily, back in California. 

Since I've decided I've had enough of the political craziness and am going to stand up and be counted, I'm doing all the Jewish things I can, that fit in with my work and well, maybe even some busking once in a while.I never thought Passover would have as much personal meaning for me as it has. 

After reading the haggadah, I read the 2nd half of Eichman In Jerusalem, which is a great book. Read some of the Yiddish Folk Tales, and the book about Jewish "Tenement Songs". That last one's a banger. I figure Mom must have been doing her sister act playing the accordion on stage in the latter half of the 1940s and I wonder now if she actually did Yiddish material. She did have a book when I was a kid, called "The Joys Of Yiddish". Thanks to MAD Magazine I kind of knew what Yiddish was, but that's not a common book to find in an American non-Jewish home, especially in the 70s. 

Another interesting memory: This was at our house in Costa Mesa and I must have been 5 years old, shortly before we left for Hawaii. There was an older lady and Mom sitting at a table on our back lawn under the avocado trees. The old lady was from ... Australia? "Austria" she said. "Ostria? Like an ostrich" I concluded. She was talking about another place she was going to, I'm pretty sure. "Israel" She coached me on saying the name and I wanted to be sure to remember it so I said half to myself... "Is... real... like it is-real!" She approved of that and I chirped again, "It is real". Being only 5 I didn't know to look to see if she had a tattoo on her arm. 

Free pants: I just tried on some Nike running pants I picked up behind the gym along with a pair of shorts that look really good. The pants fit great and look good. I'll eat my hat if they didn't cost someone $75 at least. I only search their trash area for bubble wrap and boxes but ... there are perks.