Mom thought that she was coming down with the flu during the late Summer of 1975 but considering she was trying to get pregnant at the time, she bagan to suspect otherwise. I cannot specifically remember much about finding out the good news…or seeing Mom with a big belly, but I’m now told that this little chap who had turned four in October was happy that he would be getting a new sibling. Soon enough Mom became sick for real and remained ill in various ways throughout the duration of carrying the baby. In fact, just weeks before the delivery, our whole family was deathly sick from the flu, a virus that began with me, and there was even a petrified fear of losing the baby.
Of course, this was in the days before it was common – or maybe even possible – to find out the sex of the baby. But I do remember that Mom and I both were hoping for a girl, while Dad was noncommittal. I had even contributed to the name selection: Brian if it was a boy, Denise if it was a girl. Denise was my idea. I had picked up on the name Denise from the 1975 Christmas gathering at the Fraternal Order of Eagles, where several members of my extended family were in attendance. My Grandma Murphy’s brother Lawrence and his wife Lilahmae had two grandchildren through their daughter Carole named Chris and Denise, who were at the party.
Hopefully, this will be the last time you hear me gripe about the lack of pictures from 1975, but the one above was the only shot I could find where Mom was visibly pregnant. It was taken along with the other series of photos from Christmas 1975.
Besides having kids, Mom also loved to bowl. She had been in leagues since before I was born and this was pretty much her one night out when Dad would have to babysit me. Let her tell you the story sometime about how my Dad would conveniently show up to visit her at the bowling alley when I had an uncommonly dirty diaper. So now that Mom was pregnant, would you think she would give up bowling?
I remember the distinct smell of Mom’s bowling ball bag containing the light blue speckled ball and I remember going along with her to the alley quite often as I outgrew diapers – the alley with the cold, hard tiled floor and distinct cigarette smell, the muted sound of the pins falling at the end of the alley, and the heavy balls I would try to lift.
One time Mom entered a radio contest to get on a local game show called Bowling for Dollars. This was a pathetically low-budget program on Channel 2 hosted by David G. McFarland whereby contestants would bowl their ball down a single alley located in the television studio in the hopes of winning, you guessed it, dollars. Each pin was worth one dollar. Bonus dollars were given for an accumulation of three strikes in a row. Believe it or not – and don’t ask me why – I was very familiar with this program. So I was ecstatic to find out that Mom was randomly selected to be on the show. Being four, I drew no distinction between this local piece of crap and a national piece of crap like Gilligan’s Island.
Mom was going to a star. A very pregnant star.
Dad and I both intently watched the show that evening, a cold one in late January or early February, although we didn’t watch it together. Dad had just started not long before at Central Printing on January 22, and was watching from work. Lord knows who I watched it with…but I remember that she was interviewed before she got to bowl and said hi to us over the airwaves. The announcer naturally made the obligatory crack about her already carrying a ‘bowling ball.’ We watched as she hurled her ball down the lane. We watched as nine pins fell. And that was it. She missed the spare and won a total of nine dollars.
Oh well. She was still pregnant and I would have a little brother or sister coming soon…
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