Tag: fiction

ESCAPE FROM SCARBERIA: School Days

November 13th, 2025

ESCAPE FROM SCARBERIA: School days, school days

As he trudges his way toward school in the winter of 1956, seven-year-old Daniel Lehman hopes today the bullies will find a different victim. The thought of more bullying makes him check that the manilla envelope he is carrying is still under his coat. He hopes today won’t be as bad as yesterday. Maybe today will be different. That morning when his mother gave him the envelope he is carrying, she told him it just might make things better.

Walking the mile to his school in the winter means Daniel has to wear long johns under his breeks. His two older brothers wore the same pants to school when they were younger. But now he is the only kid in school who wears them. Getting his clothes off to pee is always a race, one which today he did not win. It was not a minor loss. The wet stain he tried to hide attracted some older boys who decided making fun of him was their job that day.

“Hey look at you. You’ve pissed your pants. What’s the matter; did your mother forget to put your diaper on you this morning? And where did you get those pants? Did your grandfather leave them to you? No one wears those kinds of pants anymore. Maybe your mother doesn’t know how to dress the ton the kids she has.”

From past experience, Daniel has learned that it is better to say nothing. Trying to defend himself only made the bullies try harder. The best he could do was to hope his pants dried out before lunch hour was over. They didn’t. When his teacher, Mrs. Brown, asked him what had happened, he told her that some bigger boys had made him wet with their squirt guns. She was nice enough. to ask only once.

As he walks home after school that afternoon, Daniel is glad it is Friday. He will have two days free from being made the butt of jokes by other students. He is glad the fact he must eat in the basement with his two older brothers is not common knowledge. Neither is the fact the older children had to repaint and repackage their toys to give to the younger kids, and the Christmas and birthday presents he tells his fellow students about are imaginary. He doesn’t have Gene Autry six guns, a slinky dog, or a kiddie car.

Unfortunately, Daniel has provided lots of ammunition for any bullies in waiting. He wears too-big hand-me-downs from his two older brothers. He has virtually the same things to eat every day. If it is not a cheese sandwich, it is peanut butter and jam. Every once in a while, there will be tuna fish or bologna. There is never any desert. He rarely gets anything he really likes to eat. The only exception is on First Fridays of the month. He doesn’t have breakfast so he can receive communion. Instead, he is given a slightly warm fried egg sandwich wrapped in tinfoil to eat at his desk after Mass. He wishes there were more than one First Friday a month.

As Daniel nears home, he begins to think about his mother. She is a mystery to him. What exactly does his mother do when he is at school? He knows she must take care of her three small children and his father when he is at home during the day. But that doesn’t take up all her time, does it? What does she do when she has time to herself? Does she ever have time for herself? He is about to find out.

When Daniel enters the house, he finds his mother at their grey, melamine kitchen table. She looks at him and puts a finger to her lips to tell him he should be quiet because his younger brother and sisters are sleeping. She points to the chair beside her indicating she wants Daniel to sit down. Daniel sits on his special chair, the one with plastic covered magazines stacked on it that allows him to sit at a proper height at the table.

When his mother looks at Daniel’s face, she sees something is bothering her normally happy child. “Did something happen at school today?” she asks. She does not have to ask twice. The events of the day are recounted in full detail as are Daniel’s feeling of not belonging and not having anything he can brag about like the other students do. As a virtual orphan who grew up in a convent, his mother feels Daniel’s pain.

There is only so much time that can be spent feeling sorry for yourself in his mother’s world. She wipes away the tears on Daniel’s cheeks and returns to drinking her tea and sketching on the pieces of carboard that keep the layers in the box of Muffets breakfast cereal separate. Daniel leans in to get a closer look at what she is doing.

On the card his mother is currently using are a series of boxes. The others on the table feature pictures of houses as well as landscapes. “Can you really draw?” he asks her. “Oh yes, I can draw,” says his mother. “Do you want to see what I can do?” Daniel nods his head. “Come with me,” she says, standing up and motioning for him to follow her to her bedroom.

This is an exciting invitation into a room Daniel has repeatedly been told to keep out of. Once inside, his mother motions for him to sit on the bed while she rummages through her closet. She finds what she is looking for and sits down beside him.

His mother is holding a green portfolio tied in the front with a ribbon. “Did you know I went to art school before the war? Daniel shakes his head and wonders how he could possibly know that. He knows almost nothing about the lives of his parents before they became parents. “Well, I did,” she says. “Are here are some of the kinds of things I drew and painted.”

His mother opens her portfolio and Daniel is surprised by what he sees. It is a coloured chalk sketch of a beautiful woman with impossibly long legs and more than ample breasts. That’s my copy of a Vargas girl,” his mother says. And when she notices how intently Daniel is examining every bit of the drawing, she turns the page and then another and another. “This is a Gibson girl, and this is just a little water colour I did. This is a still life.”

Daniel stares at page after page of drawings he had no idea his mother was capable of producing. When she closes the portfolio, he has a hundred questions. “What is C-h-l-o-e? And why is it on all your pictures?” “Not what but who. Just someone I used to know,” his mother responds with a tone that says he should not ask any more questions.

Later that evening when brothers and sisters are in bed and his father is at work until after midnight, Daniel’s mother sits in the living room wondering just what she can do to make Daniel’s time at school more pleasant. She can’t buy him new clothes or toys. She can’t even change what she makes him for lunch. After a few minutes, she realizes there is something she can do that just might make a difference.

Daniel’s mother goes to her bedroom and finds the shirt cardboards she has been saving for something, but can’t remember for what. Having his shirts laundered is one of her husband’s only nonessential expenses. She has no problem with that because she does not have to wash and iron them to a military standard. They come back from the cleaners wrapped, folded, and made stiff with a piece of cardboard. The cardboard the cleaners use is smooth and white on one side and unfinished and gray on the other. She needs eight pieces for what she has in mind. Once she has them, she goes into her closet looking for the other things she needs for her task. She works on her project for several hours on each night of the weekend. Monday morning before school, she hands Daniel the envelop he is now carrying.

“What is it?” Daniel asks.”

“It’s something to make your classroom better, responds his mother. I put a note inside for your teacher.”

Daniel, who is rarely excited about going to his classroom, cannot wait to find out what is in the envelope his mother has told him to give to Mrs. Brown. As soon as he gets into his classroom, Daniel tells Mrs. Brown his mother told him to give the envelope to her and it is something for the classroom. Mrs. Brown puts the envelope on her desk without opening it. Daniel wonders if she is not interested in it. He is wrong.

Mrs. Brown respects both order and ritual. Before she does anything else that morning, she will lead her students in the singing of Come Holy Ghost and the recitation of the Apostle’s Creed. Next her students will sing the national anthem. Then they will sit down at their desks in silence with their hands clasped on their desktops. That is the way of the day. That is the way of every day.

Normally, Daniel likes singing in class in the morning. It makes him feel good. But today, he is frustrated. He wants Mrs. Brown to open the envelope right now. That is not to be. There are administrative matters she needs to deal with. Report cards are coming. The school inspector is coming. Father Leo is coming to talk about confirmation. Daniel wonders if the list of things she needs to talk about will never end. He wants to ask her to open the envelope right away. But he doesn’t. You don’t talk in Mrs. Brown’s class without first raising your hand and being given permission to do so.

When she has finished admonishing her class for myriad things, Daniel watches as Mrs. Brown opens the envelope and reads his mother’s note. She pulls out shirt cardboards and looks at the first one. She smiles. She looks at the next and the next. The smile remains. “Well class. You’re in for a special treat today. Mrs. Lehmann has drawn some pictures for our classroom.”

This statement causes a minor ripple of interest through the class. “What I am going to do is show you one picture at a time and you will tell me who it is. For this exercise, and for this exercise only, you do not have to raise your hands. Just say the name as soon as you know it. This statement creates actual surprise and anticipation. His mother would say the students looked like they have St. Vitus dance. Everyone keeps looking over at Daniel. Many of his classmates are smiling at him. For the first time ever, Daniel feels special.

“So, who is this?” Mrs. Brown asks, knowing that the movie recently played on television.

“Doc,” the class says almost in unison.

“And this”

“Sleepy.”

This goes on until she reaches the last picture and once more asks who it is. And again, in unison, “Snow White” is the class response.

“Very good class,” Mrs. Brown says. “I will put Mrs. Lehman’s drawings on the front desks and you can come by and take a look at them. When they do, it is clear from their reactions Daniel’s fellow students are impressed with his mother’s work.

When all the students have taken their turn looking at the drawings of Snow White and the seven dwarves, Mrs. Brown tell the class that she will tack them up around the room. When Daniel is leaving that day, Mrs. Brown asks him to stay back. When they are alone, Mrs. Brown touches him on the shoulder. “Tell your mother that she is both wise and talented,” she says. This makes Daniel wonder just exactly what her mother wrote in her note to Ms. Brown.

When Daniel enters the classroom the next morning, the first thing he sees is one of his mother’s drawings. As he looks around at the rest of the pictures, he thinks about how the other kids have better toys and clothes, have smaller families, and live in bigger houses, but he asks himself if his classmates have mothers who can draw. As he sits there waiting for the day’s rituals to begin, he realizes that he is not special at all. It is his talented mother who is the special one.

Five decades later and shortly after his mother’s death, Daniel finds himself in an art gallery in Santa Barbara. On display are original drawings from several of Disney’s animated films. Part of the displays are original animation cels that can be purchased for an exorbitant cost. When he come to cels from the Snow White movie, he is transfixed by what he sees. He realizes just how truly talented and special his mother was.
ESCAPE FROM SCARBERIA: Lost in London

September 11th, 2025

It is 1961, and soon to be 11-years old Scarberian, Daniel Lehman, is standing on Hyde Park corner in London watching the red, double decker bus containing his brother and father disappear into a never-ending stream of traffic. The bus they got on was crowded and the clippy, who was selling tickets, enforced the maximum standing rule by announcing it loudly and then pushing Daniel off the platform at the back of the bus. He isn’t frightened because he is sure that in a few minutes his brother and father will realize he is not on the bus and then make their way back to him. They have to realize he has no money and can’t pay for his ticket.

As he waits, he checks out his surroundings. He finds out that Hyde Park corner has a number of war memorials. He examines the Australian War Memorial, the Royal Artillery Memorial, the Royal Artillery Memorial, the New Zealand War Memorial, and the Machine Gun Corps Memorial. He wonders why all these memorials are on this particular corner. He wonders if his father could tell him why. He was in England for part of the war, but he never talks about it. His standard response to “Did you fight in the war?” is “I fought and fought, but still they took me.” So much for what the one-time shoe salesman had to say about the war.

After what seems like an eternity of walking back and for and watching people get on bus after bus, he eventually realizes no one is going to come and save him. He is lost in a huge, strange city. He doesn’t know what to do and is trying to push away the fear that is beginning to edge its way into his brain. He is wondering how he came to be in the position he is in. He shouldn’t be in London. No one he knows has been to London. He doesn’t even know anyone who has been outside the country. His father doesn’t even own a car, but because he works for an airline, he managed to get he and his brother onto a jet plane that took them across the Atlantic Ocean only to lose him in London.

Daniel is a naturally curious child. He started delivering newspapers at seven-years old and has been reading the newspaper every day before he starts his deliveries. At 11, he knows a lot about what is going on in the world. He knows Fidel Castro is the leader of Cuba and has turned communist. He has read about the French and the pending independence of Algeria. He knows Kennedy is the new President of the United States and Eisenhower was the old one. He knows about the Russians and Sputnik. He knows who Yuri Gargarin is and he has read about Bishop Mikarios who is the President of Cyprus, though he doesn’t know exactly where Cyprus is. And he knows who Adolf Eichmann is and what he did to Jews during the war.

From very early on, Daniel has made a point of noticing and remembering things. He knows they are staying at the Strand Palace Hotel and that the hotel is down the street from Trafalgar Square. All he has to do is to get to Trafalgar Square and then find the Strand and follow it to the hotel. How to do that? It doesn’t occur to him that he could just find the nearest policeman, tell him he is lost and let the cop do the rest. But it does occur to him that he noticed maps in the tube that show the underground routes and a surface street map as well. All he needs to do is to find Trafalgar Square on the map in relation to the underground stop he is at which will be highlighted by a red dot. But first he has to find a tube station. He saw one as his father, brother and he were walking toward Hyde Park. But where? He does not want to walk in any direction if he is only to find our he has gone the wrong way. The best thing to do is to ask someone.

Daniel picks a well-dressed man wearing a bowler hat and carrying an umbrella who is standing on the corner waiting for the traffic light to change so he can cross the street. He looks familiar somehow.

“Sir, can you tell me how to get to the nearest subway station? asks Daniel.

“Subway? I’d be happy to help, but I don’t know what you’re looking for, “ responds the bowler hat.

Daniel is flummoxed. He doesn’t know what the problem is. Then he remembers he’s not at home. He is in London and Londoners call it the tube or the underground. “Sorry. I’m looking for the nearest underground station,” he says.

“Ah, a little American. That depends on where you want to get to. Different lines go in different directions,” says the man with the umbrella who is wondering why the little boy in the tweed blazer and oxford shoes is wandering around alone.

“Trafalgar Square,” says Daniel.

“Piccadilly line then. The tube station is just around this corner,” says the man using his umbrella to point out the right direction.

Daniel wants to tell the helpful man that he is not an American, but the bowler hat has already started to cross the road.

Daniel sets off in the direction the man has indicated with his umbrella, and in a few minutes, he is in the Piccadilly tube station staring at the map that shows the surface routes as well as the path of the underground line. Daniel is surprised at the large spiderweb of streets that all lead toward Trafalgar Square. He decides the easiest thing to do is to trace from Trafalgar Square back to the red dot that shows the station he is at. Several attempts either lead to dead ends or go away from his tube station. Eventually he figures it out. If he follows Piccadilly Street, if will eventually take him to Trafalgar Square.

Daniel leaves the underground station and sets out for his walk. He wishes he wasn’t wearing the sensible shoes his parents insist on buying for him. His toes are pinched and his feet are already sore from the walking he his father and brother did to get to Hyde Park. Once he has found Piccadilly Street, he finally asks himself if he should just ask a policeman for help. It would not be hard to find one. They seem to be all over the place. But some part of him wants to find his way back to his father and brother without having to ask anyone for help. His father, the shoe salesman, survived a war. He should be able to survive a walk. Based on the map he looked at, the first thing he has to do is get to Piccadilly Circus, which he is pretty sure is not an actual circus. From there it was a short distance to Trafalgar Square. He wishes he could have brought the map with him. He would like to be absolutely sure he is walking in the right direction.

As Daniel walks, he realizes Piccadilly is quite the street. There is lots for a kid from Scarberia to see. He passes by an apartment building called the Albany, the likes of which he has never seen before. London is very different than his home city where everything seems new and modern. Everything in London seems old. There are still signs of buildings that were bombed during the war. As he walks, Daniel sees a shopping arcade. It looks like an interesting place and he would like to visit, but he knows his father and brother will be sick with worry about him. He needs to get to the hotel as fast as he can. He is sure that by now, his father has called the police. There are probably a lot of cops looking for him.

Daniel passes by the Ritz Hotel and wishes he were staying there. He wonders if the Ritz Hotel is why people talk about putting on the ritz. He knows there is a song by that name that he heard in an old movie on television. He is getting hungry and all the restaurants he walks by taunt the penniless Daniel. A bookshop called Hatchard’s catches his eye. He has never been in a store that sells nothing but books, especially one which says it was founded in 1797. Daniel continues to walk and passes by the impressive St. James Church and then an outdoor market that looks very interesting. He passes by Fortnum and Mason. He doesn’t know what that is, but a lot of people are going in and out the front doors of the building. He continues to walk past Green Park and eventually he arrives in Piccadilly Circus, which as he expected, is not a circus.

According to the map he looked at, he has to make a turn to get to Trafalgar Square. But the real world doesn’t look anything like the map. He hesitates for a moment and then decides to ask someone for directions. In a few seconds, he is again off to Trafalgar Square. The directions he was given sent him to Coventry Street where he must turn to the right and follow Whitcomb Street until he hits Pall Mall. And then he must turn to the right and Trafalgar Square will be right there. He does, and it is. He walks around looking at street names until he locates the Strand.

As he nears the hotel, Daniel is sure there will be police cars outside. There aren’t. But maybe they don’t look the same as they do at home. When he arrives at the door of the hotel, he assumes the police must be inside. They could be in the lobby. They aren’t. Maybe the cops are talking to his father in their room. As he rides the elevator, he imagines how happy and relieved his father and brother will be to see him.

There are no cops and no expressions of joy at his return. He expected it to be like an episode of Leave It to Beaver he had seen. Beaver got lost and his parents were frantic to find him. When he got back home, everyone was ecstatic. And that was only after he was gone for a couple of hours in their neighbourhood. The reaction Daniel gets on his return makes him think that life is nothing like it is shown to be on television. When his brother Mikey opens the hotel room door, Daniel sees his father sitting on his bed smoking a cigar. He looks over at Daniel and says, “Glad you found your way back.”

That’s it? Glad you found your way. No tears of joy. No expressions of worry. Just a quick comment and that’s all a 10-year-old boy who was lost in London gets?

“Why didn’t you come looking for me?” Daniel asks his father.

“We did. I sent Mikey out to look for you,’ answers his father.

“I went back to Hyde Park corner, but you weren’t there. I looked around and stayed for a while before I came back,” says Mikey.

As it turns out, Mikey did not come back to the hotel and Daniel’s father went out to look for him. He found him in a penny arcade playing a shooting game.

“Why didn’t you call the police?” Daniel asks his father.

“Because I knew you are a smart kid and that you wouldn’t wander off with a stranger or do anything stupid that would put you at risk,” says his father.

What was meant to comfort Daniel didn’t. Later that night as he is lying in bed going over the events of the day, Daniel realizes that something has changed. Somehow, he knows he has learned something about his life and what it will demand of him. It is not good news.
Escape from Scarberia: Prologue

October 28th, 2024

It is July 1969, and a man is walking on the moon. Daniel, 19-year-old high school dropout, father of a baby girl, supposed seller of printing and bindery supplies, and extremely flawed individual, is with eight other salesmen in the waiting room of the buyer for Women’s College Hospital.

None of Daniel’s friends have a square-john job like his. Most of them are growing their hair down to their knees and half of them are in Goa smoking joints the size of his arm, dropping acid, and fucking on the beach. This is not how he expected things to turn out for him. He doesn’t know exactly what he was expecting, but he knows that it wasn’t being a salesman.

Sales calls, especially cold calls, are not something Daniel enjoys. He only took the job because it paid enough for him to escape the House of Pain. Before becoming a salesman, he worked in a factory for $1.25 per hour. Fifty dollars per week was not enough for him, his wife and daughter to live in their own place. He was tired of having to sleep in their bedroom in his wife’s parents house that was barely big enough for both a queen-sized bed and a crib. He was unhappy living in a house he shared with his mother and father in-law, three sisters-in-law and a brother-in law, all of whom he did not enjoy sharing space with.

Moving into the House of Pain introduced him to an entirely new world. Initially it seemed like a much better world. I was a much nice house. There was better food than he was used to, nobody expected him to do stuff around the house, and he had access to a car. It came as a surprise to find out both his mother and father-in-law were upper-middleclass alcoholics. His parents didn’t drink, and he had never met an alcoholic. He soon learned that his father-in-law’s real job wasn’t as a petroleum engineer but as an overworked beast of burden. He worked so the rest of the family could spend all he earned and then demand he earn some more. Except for Daniel’s wife, Jan, his father-in-law’s children treated him with a complete lack of respect. They said things to him that Daniel could never imagine saying to his father.

Daniel learned that his mother-in-law was a recovering alcoholic. As near as he could determine, she quit drinking so she could lord it over her husband whom she often describes as a weak man. Daniel had never heard a wife badmouth her husband in front of their children. It was an even bigger surprise that they slept in different bedrooms. His father-in-law slept in his young son’s room. The son slept his mother’s bedroom. Daniel couldn’t get his head around that even when he was told it was only because his father-in-law snored and it kept his mother-in-law awake. The situation was far too Freudian for Daniel to contemplate. As for his three sisters-in-law, when they weren’t stealing his cigarettes, they spent most of their time screaming at each other and languishing in the basement smoking dope.

Daniel’s job as a salesman paid $100 per week and provided access to a car. It was his ticket to freedom. Or so he thought. He hadn’t counted on being told by his boss to get his hair cut, not once but twice. He was also instructed to always wear a suit and a shirt and tie. He no longer looked like any of his friends. Now he looked like a guy from a 1950s movie. He was relieved he didn’t have to wear a hat the same way the older salesmen did.

As Daniel sits waiting his turn to plead his case with the buyer, he catches sight of his reflection in the glass door of the buyer’s office. What Daniel sees comes as no surprise. He is wearing his one and only cheap, blue, windowpane-check, suit that he got married in and has his green, faux leather, plastic briefcase on his lap.

As Daniel looks around, he realizes he is by far the youngest person in the room. Only his moustache keeps him from looking like the high school-aged kid he is. None of the other salesmen warrant more than a short look. Except for one.

Daniel is focused on a guy in the corner of the room. He is older than the rest of the salesmen, and as near as Daniel can determine, he is asleep. The old man’s socks have fallen around his ankles exposing what appears to be varicose veins on his lower calves. The grey suit the old man is wearing is rumpled and several years out of fashion. His blue and red striped tie has been tied so many times, the knot has all but turned into a grease spot on his collar, the points of which are turning up. The old man’s suit jacket is unbuttoned and his paunch is pushing against his almost white shirt causing the area just under the button closest to his belt to gape and expose part of his white, hairy belly.

The old man seems familiar. Daniel is sure he has seen or met him someplace before. But where? As he continues to stare, the old man opens his eyes and looks directly at him. As they lock eyes, Daniel hears the old man’s voice even though his lips aren’t moving. He quickly glances around the room. No one else seems to be able to hear the old man.

“Take a good look sonny Jim. Don’t be so judgmental. You think I planned on ending up like this? You think this is how I wanted my life to turn out? Every decision you make or don’t make eventually has some real consequences. What you are looking at now is the amalgam of all my life’s decisions. You might want to keep that in mind.”

Daniel is tempted to respond. But nobody else in the room seems to be able to hear the old man’s voice and he doesn’t want to be seen talking to himself.

“I was once like you, my head full of dreams and fantasies about what my life was going to be like. And then I made a fateful decision. Look at where you are now and ask yourself if because of what you have done, you have fallen down a rabbit hole you will never escape from.”

Daniel does not want to do that. He does not want to think he is drifting down a bottomless hole. He wants to believe he can be a good husband, a good father, a good provider and have a good and meaningful life.

“Good luck with that sonny Jim. You are fooling yourself. Admit it. You are trapped and you are going to stay trapped until one day you find yourself being just like me.

This statement from the old man rocks Daniel. Is the in a trap or is it just a temporary bad time in his life?

“Oh, it’s not temporary. It’s your life. Think of your existence as an overcrowded lifeboat with limited food supplies. The fewer the passengers, the longer you survive. How many people do you want in the boat with you? Are you willing to push some people overboard to ensure your existence?”

This last statement shocks Daniel. He has never considered his wife and child as impediments to his continued existence. Can he only achieve his dreams if he is on his own? The thought of that disturbs him greatly. Daniel needs to get out of the room. He leaves and goes to the washroom. He stares at his face in the washroom mirror for several minutes before he returns to the waiting room. When he gets back, the old man is no longer there. He turns to one of the other salesmen he has been sitting with.

“Is the old guy in with the buyer now?” he asks him.

“What old man?” is the salesman’s response.

Tag: fiction

ESCAPE FROM SCARBERIA: School Days

ESCAPE FROM SCARBERIA: Lost in London

Escape from Scarberia: Prologue