Mildred and Spider

In 1909, the third of seven children is born in Pittsburgh, Pennsyvlania.  Her parents name her Mildred, but everyone calls her Mid.  Mid is a feisty and somewhat difficult child, but her beauty keeps her from ever getting into too much trouble.  She is tall, tall, tall, lean and athletic, with somewhat unruly hair that looks different colors in different lights.  Her family is squarely middle class, and Mid chafes against the normalcy of her upbringing.  In the 20s she is one of the first to bob her hair, an act that gives her father a satisfying shock.  Her high school graduation photograph reveals a somewhat gangly teenager with a very chic short haircut, standing in between her sister, Lila, and her best friend, Lola.  They all look somewhat sullen, but it may just be the sun in their eyes.

 

Mid could never be described as a domestic type of girl, and immediately after graduating high school she launches into a series of exciting jobs.  She works for a while on the radio, making announcements, and also takes classes to be a hairdresser, a job she loves.  She lives a very independent, some might say wild (for the time) life, and has no compunctions about dating scads of men, but her heart is broken by one man in particular when she is in her 20s.  She had loved him in her own contrary way, and in her own contrary way when they split she decides that the best way to get back at him is to marry somebody else, which she does, on a warm spring day in the late 1930s.

 

In 1907, Edmond Ralph is born into a very poor family.  He is one of a handful of children, none of whom would ever finish high school, including him.  Edmond is a gangly, awkward-limbed child and a gangly, awkward-limbed adult, and he earns the nickname Spider because of the way his arms and legs flail when he runs the bases on his baseball team.  Nobody ever calls him anything else after that.  Edmond does what all poor Pittsburgh kids grow up to do in the first half of the twentieth century – he works on the railroad.  It was either that or work in the steel mills, and at least with the railroad job he gets to be outside.  He works the night shift on the track switches, and the fact that he’s on the skeleton crew lets him easily hide his growing alcohol problem from the management.

 

In the late 1930s, Spider and Mid marry on the grass in front of a family farmhouse.  Only family attend.  The bride and groom look happy enough in their photos, but it is not by and large a happy or close marriage.  Neither is particularly suited to a simple domestic life, but neither has the drive or inclination to ignore firmly rooted parental and societal expectations.  When Mid is a startlingly late 33 years old she has her first child, a boy they name Eugene Randall.  Randy looks exactly like his father, and they love him.  A couple of years later, a little girl, Evelyn, is born.  Randy and Evie are great pals, and though their family has very little money, they don’t really notice a lack while growing up.

 

One morning, Mid and Evie are at home, with Spider sleeping in the upstairs bedroom.  Having a dad who works the night shift means little children must learn to be quiet in the day, and Randy has decided he wants to be loud, so he is outside playing.  He is pestering a group of older boys who don’t particularly like having the annoying five year old "baby" around, and they decide to run away from him.  They cross the street, swiftly on their pre-adolescent legs.  Short and chubby Randy follows close behind, but not close enough.  He is small enough that the car, when it hits him, rolls right over his little body.  He misses all four wheels, but the neck of his shirt is caught on some piece of the undercarriage, and he is dragged for several yards before the car finally stops.

 

Randy is rushed to the emergency room, and a neighbor runs to the house on Maple Street to tell Mid and Spider what’s happened.  The family rushes frantically to the hospital, where they eventually are permitted to see Randy.  His cheeks are pink and healthy, and he is resting, sleeping on the hospital bed.  After a long time at his side, Mid is finally persuaded to take herself home and get some rest.  She will return in the morning.  She leaves, confident that her young son is recovering well.

 

Randy dies in the night.

 

For the rest of her life, Mildred will regret leaving her boy.  His healthful glow gave her too much confidence, and the blow is all the more stunning because she was not there when he passed.  She tries to recover, even attending therapy, but she just cannot dig herself out of the deep depression caused by her young son’s death.  Evie asks for him constantly.  It is more than she can bear.  Mid decides that the only way to erase the pain of her lost son is to have another one, and she gets pregnant again at the age of 41.  It is mercifully another boy, and they name him Edmond Dale.  They love this second boy, whom they call EeDee (or E.D.) but they will feel Randy’s loss keenly their whole lives.  When Mildred is old, senile, dying, she takes a handful of labeled pictures of E.D. growing up and scratches out his name, writing in the name "Randy."  There can be no doubt that their years of grief affected their living children.

 

Despite the family tragedy, life continues.  Evie and E.D. are buddies again, though not as close as Evie and Randy had been.  Evie is several years older than E.D., and much more interested in her own friends.  Spider continues to work nights on the railroad, continues to drink and smoke too much, and probably the best that could be said of him as a father is that he never abandoned his family responsibilities.  His wage is small, they are very poor, but they manage to eat enough and buy shoes enough, all due to Spider’s hard work.  Mid tries to get out of the house as much as she can, and tends to drag E.D. along on grown up outings to friends’ houses, which he finds tremendously boring.  He learns early on how to charm adults, though, and becomes a mischievous lad who could get away with saying just about anything.

 

One day, that cheeky tongue would catch the eye of a middle-aged mother of seven, and she would be completely charmed by the young man.  Eventually, she will convince him that he has to come over to her house and meet her youngest daughter, Beth.  Finally, one day he does, and that is how E.D. meets Florence, Charlie, and their seven children.