The Double Life

Before I continue talking about the first grade I feel like I need to say a bit more about what was happening between my parents at the time...

I've mentioned that my father traveled on business a lot and his absences were a constant point of contention between my parents. Unfortunately, my sister and I were stuck in the middle:
Mom would say that if dad really loved us he'd find a different job. And dad would give us his "beachcomber" speech - if he didn't have to support a family he would live idyllically in a shack by the sea and make his living selling shells and driftwood he found in the morning surf.
Now anyone who knew him can tell you what a complete load of BS that was. He saw himself as a person of monumental importance and he spent his entire life trying to achieve a commensurate level of success...

During those years mom tried very hard to be the perfect wife and mother but it really didn't come naturally to her. When dad was away she rarely cooked and only did minimal housework. We were such regulars at the local HoJo's that the waitresses often wouldn't even bother to take our order. (We always had a exactly the same thing...)
But when dad was around we had to be on our best behavior - and sometimes we fell a bit short. I recall one evening we were having spaghetti for dinner and dad was horrified that my sister and I had bits of food dribbling down our chins. So he demanded our attention as he demonstrated the 'proper way' to eat spaghetti... And as we were watching (intently) he dropped a big blob onto his silk necktie.
Now, although my sister and I didn't laugh out loud we simply couldn't hide our amusement - that fact that he was being so pompous about it made it that much funnier :-) And, of course, dad blew up and made everyone (including mom) leave the table until after he finished his dinner...

And rather than being supportive of dad's absences mom saw them as an opportunity to antagonize him:
While dad was on one of his trips we went to the pound and got a dog (Bozo the retriever) knowing full well that he didn't want us to have one. When dad got home he was quite irate that he hadn't been consulted and mom said "Well, if you had been around you could have participated in the decision!".
Another time mom bought roller skates for my sister and I and told us to hide them from dad because he'd think they were too dangerous. So we spent a couple of summers skating (when dad wasn't around) and got pretty good. One day he came home unexpectedly and found us running a slalom course in the driveway. When he acted surprised mom told him "Well, of course our kids can skate... They've been doing it for years! If you were home more often you'd know these things!"

All of this seemed perfectly normal at the time but it affected me more than I realized... And my greatest frustration was that neither of my parents ever acknowledged that they could have done anything better. They were both perfect parents and perfect spouses and everything was 100% the other one's fault... And that's how you ensure your children end up in therapy :-)

A final story - it's only vaguely related but it's really (albeit tragically) funny:
Back in the late 1950s my dad was selling some mining equipment in Bozeman, MT and took the customers to a restaurant for dinner. Dad had been spending a lot of time outdoors and had a bit of a sunburn, and when the waitress saw his tanned reddish face and heard his Hungarian accent she pointed to dad and told his guests "He's gonna have to leave! We don't allow Indians in here..."