Leaving Lemon: A White Trash Odyssey Part One

I ain’t got it all that bad
There’s tougher lives I might’ve had
Sometimes I live hand to mouth
But there are those who go without
Might be things I wish I had
But when I look at where I’m at
I ain’t got it all that bad.
-Montgomery Gentry

Prologue: Welcome home, Sanitarium

I was born poor white trash in a small town in Northeastern Pennsylvania called Lemon, in the year of America's bicentennial, 1976. Lemon is technically a village, the closest actual town being Tunkhannock (a Native American word meaning “small town, too many red lights”). I am the youngest of seven; from oldest on down: Esther, Jacob, Ezekiel, Jebediah, Zachariah, Abraham, and me. My name is Shiloh.

There is a seven year span between myself and Abraham, which has led to speculation (particularly by me) about the manner and means of my conception. You see, by 1976, Mom was so...robust no one even knew she was pregnant with me until she brought me home. Literally, none of my siblings had any clue until I showed up in my lil' bassinet. I imagine a rousing chorus of "what the hell is that?!" went rumbling through the household.

One of the main questions produced by the fact of Mom's largeness is whether or not her and Dad still made the double-backed beast but that particular conundrum was answered (horrifically) in a conversation that occurred in the late nineties. Mom was complaining to Ezekiel's wife, Ruth that Dad wasn't "giving it up any more" (and one assumes she meant within at least the last decade). Dad replied, "And you ain't gonna get it, either." Mom's disturbing rejoinder: "Then I'll just get it elsewhere."

The questions concerning my conception arise from a number of other factors. Mom was fond of waddling along Route 29 the half mile to the Tea Kettle Tavern and drinking like a – well, like a large white trash woman of loose morals, I would guess. It has been suggested that when Dad inevitably went to retrieve Mom's drunk ass she sometimes was in the "company" of other drunk (and quite possibly toothless) white trash men. This knowledge has also left me to wonder if, as I lay nestled in her womb as a fetus, I wasn't bathed in an amniotic fluid composed mostly of Genesee.

My brother Jebediah has also added to the mystery that is my existence by finding Dad's stash of condoms (suggesting that Dad did still, at least occasionally, go whaling) and poking tiny pin holes in the tips. Coincidental, after my birth, Dad finally got a vasectomy. Talk about too little, too late.

I've also been told that in the late spring of '75 there were several UFO sightings in the area, so who the hell knows (except, of course, Mom, Dad, and maybe some visitor from Rigillious VII).

I don't have many details about my infancy and early childhood (mostly because I'm too afraid to ask), but I do know I was, in point of fact, dropped on my head as a baby. Twice. Once by Jacob, once by Zachariah. Some would say that explains a lot, such as my inability to do math in my head or total lack of a sense of direction. Beyond that, my earliest childhood memory is running from Mom.

Apparently, I really didn't want to eat whatever was for supper, so I got up and ran for it. I remember, quite clearly, tear-assing around the lawn and looking back in horror as Mom, all 300 some odd pounds of pure rage, lumbered after me with her hair tightly wound in curlers and a pea-soup green ladle wielded in one meaty fist. Starting from that memory, my life's been pretty much downhill.

One: Family Tradition

As near as I've been able to piece together, Lilah Sorper (Mom) married Elijah McMillan (Dad) sometime in the late '50s. Dad would have been in his mid to late 20s (or even older), having served in the Army during the Korean War. Mom quit high school shortly before graduation in 1957, because my Grandmother (whom we all called "Nanna") bought Mom's sister Madea a graduation ring and not Mom. Or something. Mom was generally assed-off about many things, real and imagined, so it's hard to sort through the anger chaff to get to the heart of her issues. I also don't know the story of how Mom and Dad met, when and where they were married, or if they even ever really loved each other. I've been told Mom married Dad as a means to escape her own family, and if that's true, it is bitterly ironic, as her own children would eventually seek to escape her. Some sad, silly part of me likes to think maybe they did love each other at first, for a little while. Maybe Esther was conceived in love, maybe even Jacob. I once saw a picture of Mom and Dad with an infant Esther in front of the families original homestead, somewhere in Lacyville (like anybody will know where the hell that is). If I didn't know it was my clan in that black and white picture, I would have sworn it was a snapshot of a happy, normal middle class family. Who says the camera doesn't lie?

Dad's families came from New York State, and have hardworking and respected names in their communities. Mom's family, on the other hand... well. My Grandfather died in the early fifties of alcoholism. Mom told me on more than one occasion that he died from diabetes complications. His wife, Minnie (my Nanna), was left to look after their children: son Henry, and daughters Madea, Lilah, and May. By all accounts Nanna was a decent, hardworking and loving person, although Mom was a little raw towards her for some unspoken reason until the day Nanna died.

I'm not sure why, but every one of Nanna's children grew up to be the epitomes of white trash. Uncle Henry was an unrepentant drunk most of his life. In fact, I can only remember seeing him sober twice: Nanna's funeral in 1984 (well, I'm pretty sure he was sober) and many years later, in 1998. I ran into him quite unexpectedly at a wake for a family member of a fellow National Guardsman. He had no hair, two yellow fangs, and a squinty eye. He saw the name tag on my dress greens and re-introduced himself. He told me that he'd been sober ever since his doctor told him if he so much as gargled with Scope he would cack-off instantly. He died the next day, with minty fresh breath. Nah, not really.

Mom and Aunt Madea both lived most of their lives in various degrees of squalor, hatefulness, and acidic bitterness. In fact, I suspect Mom and Aunt Madea were pretty much interchangeable. If Dad were blind, I doubt he'd be able to tell the difference.

A typical encounter with Mom at home would find her sprawled on the couch (for a good visual, think of Jabba the Hutt on his throne), often adorned with her crown of hair curlers. Sprawled isn't really a good word, either- more like... lumped, I guess. That has been the typical scene most people entering Castle McMillan were greeted with, and lemme tell ya, it isn’t a pretty one. If people would ask Mom, “How are you?” her standard answer was almost always, “Mean, miserable, and bitchy.” At least she was honest.

Aunt May seems the least screwed up emotionally of the Sorper sisters, but she did eventually grow quite a respectable beard and lived in a house with dirt floors.

Looking on the bright side, at least Mom married a normal husband, compared to her sisters, though Dad was deaf as a rock for as long as I can remember. Any conversation with him would begin as thusly:

"Dad."

...

"Dad."

...

"Dad!"

...

"DAD!!"

...

"What?"

Phone calls were even better. My friends had told me they would call at a time they knew I would be home. The phone would ring and ring, until finally the sound would somehow penetrate Dad's deafness. The phone would be answered, and my friends would hear a cautious, "Hello?" from Dad. They would say, "Is Shiloh there?" A pause. "No." And the phone would be hung up. I guess Dad figured "no" was the safest route to go. I myself seem to be slightly hard of hearing at times (and no, not selectively either.) I have a hard time hearing someone if there is background noise of even moderate levels. I wonder if that would have anything to do with Mom cleaning my ears with a booby pin, and not stopping when I would say “Ow. Ow. OW!”

I suspect Dad's deafness emerged as a survival function after being married to Mom for a few years. In another bitter bit of life's ironies, Dad now has a hearing aid, so shouting at him is no longer necessary, but he is instead going blind. Guy can't win.

Dad was a hard worker, and at least wasn’t abusive towards us. Having said that, I can't remember Dad ever saying, "I love you" or "I'm proud of you" or giving me a hug or showing any other kind of emotions. He did, however, make me, on occasion, dress up like a little blonde Dutch girl and sing "I'm a little tea pot". Nah, not really. Anyway, I know it's not just me; Jacob has confirmed Dad treated all of his children the same, with the exception of Esther. Dad has warmed up to me in the recent years, especially after my tour in Iraq with my National Guard unit.

As I stated earlier, Dad was the most normal husband to be had by the Sorper women. Aunt Madea married the now late Nathan "Butch" Winchester, also a Korean War vet. One of my earliest memories of Uncle Butch took place when I was five or six. Aunt Madea was babysitting me, and as I sat on the kitchen floor, playing with Star Wars action figures, Uncle Butch came shuffling by, wearing nothing but baggy, dingy briefs, his graying, thinning hair wild and unkempt, and his toenails painted bright red. He went into the laundry room, bent down to the dog dish, picked up a handful of dry dog food-- and ate it as he shuffled back the way he came. No, really. Even at that tender young, innocent age I stopped in mid motion and thought, "WTF?"

I cannot remember Uncle Butch ever speaking coherently, either. A typical conversation with him would consist of: "Hey, Uncle Butch, how are you today?" "Grumble grumble mumble teaberry memf grumble train snort." Many years later, I would find myself at the Tunkhannock Area High School gym to pick up soup and blankets for victims of the Lake Carey tornado of 1997 (my National Guard unit was on hand to aid in security). As I entered the gym, lo and behold, there was my cousin Autumn, and her father-- my Uncle Butch. One of the people killed in the disaster was Uncle Butch's soon-to-be son in law, and Autumn brought Uncle Butch to see the Red Cross nurse "because he is so upset." I said, "Hey, Uncle Butch, how are you doing?" and he replied, "Grumble grumble glurf monkey mumble mumble gargle sock snort." The Red Cross nurse took me aside and said, "Wow, your uncle is pretty distraught, huh?" "Actually," I said, "He's exactly the same as he's always been"- except, of course, he was wearing clothes and not eating pet food.

Aunt May married Lewis Franks. I’m not sure about Uncle Lew’s mental state, because unlike Uncle Butch, who’s never said anything that makes sense, I can’t recall Uncle Lew ever actually saying anything, ever. Uncle Lew would just kind of laugh, almost a sinister bray- “Henh, henh, henh.” He has always been short, about sixty (for the last twenty years or so), his jaw covered in wiry stubble, no teeth, squinty eyes, sporting a dingy CAT cap, and chewing on a three inch stub of unlit cigar. (I suspect it’s been the same exact cigar.)

I also have to wonder about the genetic stock of Butch and Lew. While we McMillan children are not exactly paragons of human achievement, Butch/Madea and Lewis/May have produced a veritable white trash pantheon. It’s as if they were the Titans of White Trash, birthing the Red Neck Olympians. Their offspring are too numerous and disreputable to fully enumerate here; suffice it to say I will certainly not be embarrassing any doctors, lawyers, or politicians in these pages. (Well, maybe my sister’s husband, but I’ll get to that.)

My sister Esther was born sometime in the late 50’s or early 60’s (records from that era are spotty at best). It has been suggested she was the apple of my parent’s eyes, at least until she was a teenager. I’ve heard from my other brothers she was always a bit ashamed of being poor (we didn’t become truly white trash until the late 70’s). The turning point in the relationship between Esther and Mom occurred when Esther turned 16, and she left home to live with Dad’s sister and her husband, Marsha and Rick. This aunt and uncle, swinging on Dad’s side of the family tree, lived comfortably, if not well-off. Esther’s audacity to improve her station in life incurred the ire of Mother McMillan, it seems, because the first family rift soon tore open.

Sometime after she turned 18, Esther married Andrew Wiseman, a podiatrist and a well respected member of the community whose family is on the higher end of the social scale than ours. I don’t know Dad’s take on this little drama, as he isn’t exactly Mr. Forthcoming, but Mom was most certainly miffed. I’ve seen a picture from Esther and Andrew’s wedding, with the happy couple flanked by Mom and Dad. Dad is staring at the camera with an expression of amiable disinterest, but Mom is glaring at the bride and groom with an aspect of barely controlled fury- and possibly indigestion. Chilling. I’ve little information about the events after the wedding, but I do know this: by the time I was five, Mom wasn’t speaking to Esther and vice versa. I remember Dad taking me and whatever brothers still at home to visit Esther at a really nice country home, possible even a ranch, for they had a horse and room to ride it (I was too young to notice much important detail). We visited once, maybe twice a year until I was eight or nine, and then the visits stopped. It wasn’t until I grew older that I realized we no longer had anything to do with each other as family members. I have no idea what caused this final split.

I do know over the years a few of my older brothers have either tried to contact her or ran into her accidentally somewhere, and all have been told the same thing: “I have no brothers.” My lovely (and saintly) wife, Annie, through some coincidence, befriended a woman who just happened to be one of Esther’s best friends. This woman was amazed to learn not only did Esther have brothers, her parents were still alive. It seems Esther never brought up her background or family around her Andrew's later circle of friends. Their friends always just thought of Andrew’s family as Esther’s, and kind of assumed her parents were dead.

The nearest I’ve ever come to Esther was in the winter of 1996. I was working at the local Pizza Hut during a snow squall. I noticed the last name on an order for pickup was Wiseman. When the man came to pickup the order I asked him if he knew Andrew, and he replied, “I’m Andrew.” I said, “Well, I’m your brother-in-law, Shiloh. The youngest.” Andrew was visibly taken aback, and muttered something about being sure to give Esther my best. Oddly, I never saw him in that Pizza Hut again.

During my tour in Iraq from 2004 to 2005, I often wondered what Esther thought about my two local TV interviews, given as I was deploying. Well, now that I think about it, I kinda hope she didn’t catch the first one. I’m a husky boy, you see, and if I’m not careful, I leave husky land and venture into chubby-ville. The interviewer asked me if I was planning on having one last can of coke, or something like that, and I happily replied, “Well, since I’m sure to lose weight over there, I’ve been eating all the pizza and wings that I can.” She went on to ask me other questions to which I gave thoughtful, insightful answers. So, when the broadcast aired, the anchor said, “This National Guard Soldier is preparing by eating his favorite foods,” and then only playing the food quote. They may as well have said, “Fat-ass Guardsman talks about food. Film at eleven.” Anyway, I was too young to have ever done anything to Esther to deserve her contempt, not directly anyhow. I would imagine her attempts to completely disavow her family ties are done out of shame, and I can relate, but running from the past doesn’t make the past go away, but with the right talent (which I, lamentably, lack) you can parlay a crappy past into a successful Country Music Career.

My brother Jacob is ‘round about a year younger than Esther. Among my earliest memories not involving running in terror from my mother is sitting on his bed as he packed to go off to boot camp for the Army, just after he graduated from High School. In the years to follow, he would have an initial falling out with Mom, making him a family pariah for a few years. I’m fuzzy on the details, but I think it had something to do with Aunt Madea, who at that time was also on Mrs. Mcmillan's shitlist. Eventually, Jacob would be let back into Mom’s good... er... graces. In the mid ‘80s Jacob fell in love with and married Myrna Huntsman. Myrna put up with a lot concerning the family, not the least of which was two separate stays at Casa de McMillan. Each stay culminated with clashes and rifts between Jacob and Myrna and Mom. The feuds have since settled down again, and with mom seemingly mellowing in her old age, maybe it's a permanent truce this time. I believe Mom caused, or at least came up, with the reasons for the bad blood, as has always been her modus operandi. Jacob and Myrna have three children: Angel, Marianne, and Jacob Jr.

Next up on the McMillan sibling hit parade is Ezekial (or Zeke.) Being dark-haired, dark-eyed, having a dark complexion, he looks little like the rest of his brown-haired, fair-skinned, blue-eyed brethren (and they wonder who my Dad was). Zeke does share a trait in common with Jacob-- both are very terse, sometimes laconic. You don't get much out of them, which makes it real fun to go on road trips. You usually end up talking to yourself just for the conversation.

Zeke moved out when he was 18, eventually hooking up with a woman named Aisha, with whom he had a daughter. Zeke and Aisha eventually broke up (it seems that Aisha is a few quarters short of regulation play, and about as sharp as a sack full of wet mice) and Zeke shacked up with one Yvonne Smith. Flying in the face of by now well documented historical fact that a McMillan son and his wife/girlfriend should never live in the same house (or neighborhood) as Lilah McMillan, Zeke and Yvonne came to stay with us anyway, towards the end of Jacob and Myrna's second and final tenure at the seat of McMillan power. Needless to say, it all ended in tears and bloodshed. I think all those people living under one roof put a crimp in Mom and Dad’s wife-swapping, key-club swinging lifestyle. Just kidding. I mean, there was no wife-swapping. I’m pretty sure. Anyways, as I understand it, Zeke took up the Sorper mantle of alcoholism for awhile, until he met his current wife, Ruth, with whom he was two kids, Ariana and Tyler.

Not long after being married, the disks in Zeke’s back began to deteriorate to the point that he could no longer work, or even sit or stand for long periods of time. The doctor told him the deterioration was the result of having his back broken some time ago. When Zeke was ten, Mom threw him against the wood stove in the living room, breaking his back. Mom had no problem beating the hell out of the older brothers, it seems. When Jacob was a teenager, Mom decided he hadn’t done the dishes to her satisfaction and smashed a stack of them over his head. Mom was all about the Rage, and she had no problem sharing the Rage with people in addition to her own flesh and blood. On at least two separate occasions, Mom put grown men through closed trailer doors, head first. I think the fact that they were trailer doors is significant, somehow.

Mom changed tactics when it came to raising me, but she wasn’t averse to administering the occasional hill country ass-beating as the situation warranted. Once, I was told to "go find me something to beat you with," so I decided to try a little psychology on Mommy Dearest. I grabbed a baseball bat, thinking heh heh, Mom will take a look at this bat, and feel all bad, and I’m out of a beating. Well, I handed her the bat, she looked it up and down, shrugged, and proceeded with the ass-whooping. Many years later, I read a letter in Reader’s Digest where a woman wrote that she used to make her son find a switch when he needed a whooping. One day, he brought her a rock and said, "Mommy, I couldn’t find a stick, but you could hit me with this rock." So, she cried, and promised to never hit him again. I had two reactions; I thought sucker, and also: see! My theory was sound!

Perhaps the most... colorful of the McMillan children would be Jebediah. That boy ain’t right. Aside from the aforementioned condom sabotage, he has perpetrated many an outlandish caper. In High School he made a Captain America costume (quite good, as I recall), changed into it at school, and ran through the cafeteria. Another time he had Jacob lie down on the kitchen floor and cover his face with ketchup. Jeb then fired Dad’s pistol in the house, so when brother Zachariah came in to see what was happening, Jeb said, "Jacob and I got into an argument, so I shot him." Zach, who was never in danger of winning a gold medal in the Quick-Uptake Olympics, immediately began to panic. Jeb calmly said, "Hey, its no big deal. We’ll bury him in the back yard and tell Mom and Dad that he ran away." Zach began to babble about calling 911. "Zach," Jeb said, "I’ve already killed one brother; don’t think I’m above doing it again." At this point Jacob burst out laughing. There was no official word as to whether or not Zach soiled his underwear.

After High School Jeb joined the Navy for a while, then moved back home, then quickly went on to the Big City: Scranton (well, big city for around here, anyways). Jeb’s last few days in Tunkhannock were very... interesting. He was at a party somewhere in town, hanging out, having a good time when a rather rotund woman took a... romantic, shall we say, interest in him. She expressed her interest by exposing her pendulous, flabby teats and shoving them in his face. Jeb, against all reason, was not impressed, and shoved the fatty off. Thing was, some little scamp had slipped acid in Jeb's beer, unbeknownst to him. So, three days later, he comes to, making sweet, sweet love to the previously mentioned girthy fine young lass in front of a crowd of onlookers, spectators, and general well-wishers. Needless to say, that was his last day in green, green Tunkhannock.

Jeb eventually married a portly lass named Shanna. Shanna certainly came from a better class of folk than Jeb, as her parents were upper-middle class Catholics who lived on the better side of the tracks in Scranton. Jeb and Shanna had two kids, David and Gregory. Jeb divorced Shanna a few years after Greg was born. After being a swinging bachelor he hooked up with the daughter of a wealthy German heiress named Helga. Yeah, actually, beleive it or not. Jeb and Helga had a daughter named Nebraska and a son named Burt.

Jeb has a unique fashion sense I can only describe as a cross between a biker, commando, and mental patient. Once he was relating a story to me about getting into an altercation with another man over a parking space. Whilst regaling me with his tale of bravado, he was wearing military-style cargo pants, but instead of the traditional woodland, desert, or urban camo scheme it was colored in... clown camo? I swear, it looked like Bozo the clown exploded onto his pants. As he neared the climax of his story, I couldn't help but ask, "So, when this guy was giving you a hard time, you weren't wearing those, where you?"

Now we come to Zachariah, mentioned previously. How best to describe Zach? If some insane geneticist combined the DNA of Barney Fife, Gilligan, Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane, and Steve Urkel into one Uberdork, you’d have a close approximation of Zacariah Robert Mcmillan. I honestly wonder if he’s not mildly retarded, or a highly functional autistic. That’s not to say he’s stupid; quite to the contrary, he is very book smart, but he has the social skills of Herman Munster, minus the charm. Zach, as far as I know, has had one girlfriend in his life, and I’m willing to put down good money that he never even got a decent open-mouth kiss from her. If that boy has ever gotten laid, he’s either paid for it or taken advantage of local livestock. Zach still, as of this writing, lives at home. Factor in the equation that he’s in his forties, and the sum total equals loser.

A lifelong fan of country music, Zach labors under the strange misconception that he looks like Travis Tritt. Now, to be fair, from a distance, in poor light, when he’s not talking or smiling, a good natured liar could say he vaguely resembles Travis Tritt. Zach isn’t bad looking, but any hope or pretext of anything even remotely resembling charm evaporates the second he opens his mouth, coupled with a fashion sense that can only be described as "color blind gay cowboy." He is fond of wearing tortoise blue cowboy boots and western style shirts unbuttoned to the stomach, in complete defiance of the fact that he lacks both chest hair and a chest. Zach generally evokes two kinds of emotions in the opposite sex: pity and/or disgust.

Other than country music, the only other thing in Zach’s life is his odd love (or obsession) of sitcoms, particularly Andy Griffith, Gilligan’s Island (go fig) and Three’s Company. If Don Knotts had known what kind of effect his stint as Mr. Furley on Three's Company would have had on the impressionable mind of Zach McMillan, he would have retired from acting.

Last up is Abraham. Nearest in age to me, he was probably my best friend when I was very young. He liked all of the same things I did: Star Wars, G.I. Joe, Transformers- but I was a kid, he was a teenager, so in hindsight, he was kind of a dweeb. Joining the Army should have been a good influence on him- giving him both freedom and responsibility (I remember him being big into responsibility as I grew up; I tended to have a messy room, and to be honest, I didn’t take care of my toys like I should have, and he was fond of giving me crap for it) but instead he became kind of a tool. He eventually married Sharona Torrance from Oklahoma, and man, what a freakshow that turned out to be. More on that later.

So, there you have it; a down and dirty rundown of my family. Now come with me (if you dare!) as I delve into my life growing up McMillan, in a small town called Lemon.

Next-- Two: If That Ain't Country, I'll Kiss Your Ass

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