And I'm not talking about my Michael Landon addiction! Still, I could be. My love of Little Joe Cartwright started when I was in diapers watching Bonanza with my brother, who was seven years older than me. I grew up on what the elementary age school-kids were watching, even though I was preschool age, mostly due to Mark's control of the television set! Like all boys growing up in the 1950s, he loved Bonanza and all the other cowboys shows of the day.
Here's proof positive. And yes, that's me in my Little Joe hat and rakishly cocked-on-the-hips gun belt!
But I digress....
This past weekend two dear friends and I took a trip to Michael Landon's hometown. Their names are Jessie and Sonya.
The trip was Jessie's idea, but Sonya and I eagerly jumped on the Conestoga band-wagon and headed off merrily to Collingswood, New Jersey, where the inimitable Michael Landon was born as Eugene Orowitz. We left on Friday and drove over 500 miles to arrive at our hotel late that night. The next day we rose early, had breakfast, and then headed over to Cherry Hill, New Jersey where we picked up our wonderful tour guide, Abbe Effron, (and a better guide you could NOT find!).
Abbe holding a tribute she wrote to Michael
Abbe invited us into her house where we met her delightful pets. We stayed for a bit, chatting, and then took off for Collingswood, which is only a few minutes from Cherry Hill. Abbe did the driving (and thank you again, Abbe, for that! We won't go into driving in New Jersey....Yikes!) Due to that, there is NO WAY I am going to be able to keep the timeline of our visit straight. But then this blog is not about what we saw first and last - but what we
saw. Today's post is going to focus on Michael's boyhood home.
Sonya and me
Those of you who are Michael Landon fans no doubt know of the horrific childhood this man had to overcome. As I put it in a poem I wrote about Michael for his 80th birthday -
A tender question asked.
An answer sought.
Life as trial, bravely fought.
Hands of nurture, tortured mind.
Hands to protect, not to find.
Finding no one he chose himself,
To be and become something else.
Michael's mother was a mentally ill woman. For reasons unfathomable to most of us, she simply hated her son. It may have been due to his more Jewish appearance, to the fact that he was a boy (since she accepted and applauded his sister), or to something else. Only she, God rest her soul, knows. Needless to say she did everything she could do to let him know he was NOT acceptable and to shame him, including hanging his urine-soaked sheets out of the front window of the house for all of his friends to see. Michael was a bed-wetter, partially due no doubt to the constant stress he lived under. I was a bed-wetter too. Of course, now its known that the bladder of a child with this condition has simply not reached full maturity. Back then, it could be a shameful thing. Thank goodness my parents were supportive. Michael's were not - neither his father or mother.
Michael's boyhood home in Collingswood, NJ.
As we approached the house, it looked so peaceful, sitting as it does on a hill on a corner in a middle-income section of Collingswood. It faces Newton Lake where Michael fished and looks over the town where he lived, played, went to school, and made the determination that he would survive and succeed and make his life - and the lives of his own family and children - something different.
Collingswood does not recognize or seemingly wish to acknowledge their famous son. Abbe told us that the file on Michael at the public library is hidden away. It is not front and center as it should be. There were two groups of people who were prejudiced against when Michael lived in the town - Jews and Catholics. He was both. His father was Jewish and his mother, Irish Catholic. Because Michael was honest about this - or at least, so it seems - he is not honored in his home town, even though he made visits back to Collingswood and held no ill-will toward the town as an adult. Let us hope the current powers-that-be will step forward and acknowledge him in the way he deserves.
The sheets were hung out of the window on the far left side,
which was Michael's sister's bedroom.
We parked out front of the house and got out of the car to look and take photos It was a very poignant moment. It was exciting and fun to see the place where the man I admire had lived as a child, but at the same time - to the artist and writer in me - it was hard, very hard. I spend a lot of time getting 'into' characters heads when I write, so it was hard not to be 'in' Michael's while I was there. All I could see was this young boy - within those walls - being terrorized by his mother and getting no support from his father. I could see him running to the window to pull the dirty sheets in before anyone could see them, hiding out when he could in his room to escape, fleeing from the mad woman who took a knife to him on occasion - walking into the kitchen and finding that woman - his mother, who should have been the grounding force in his life - with her head in the oven attempting to kill herself. (She did this more than one time.)
It is only by the grace of God that this man -
Michael Landon - did not end up a monster of the first degree
From my Bonanza/Star Trek Crossover fan fiction: The Curse
of Bodie
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12125594/1/The-Curse-of-Bodie
"Michael didn't like being alone. It left him too much time to think. Though
the demons of his past had been imprisoned by the man he'd become, they still
rattled at the bars of his childhood prison and shrieked to be set free."
Sonya and I outside of the rear of Michael's home. His bedroom was where
the small window is above the pediment triangles.
As I stood there at the back of the house - where Michael's bedroom was - I wondered how many times he'd opened that small window and dropped down and goneoff into the night to find some peace and forgetfulness. I could see this lonely little boy needing to escape - to get away from it all.
Home should be a haven. His was nothing but Hell.
In the end, I was glad I went. The story at Michael's childhood is ultimately not about tragedy but triumph. That little boy who was so underappreciated and mistreated, molded the man Michael Landon was to become - a man who determined he would break the cycle of abuse and not visit upon the next generation the sins of his father and mother. A man whose positive influence on our world is still being felt today in the literally millions of people, young and old, who watch his masterfully produced shows, and who find themselves confronted by a challenge to give grace, to offer compassion, and to help those who hurt them all in the name of a deep abiding faith in God and the ultimate hope that mankind can someday learn not only what is important, but what is right.
One saving grace, I'm sure, for young Michael was the view out front of his childhood home. There's nothing quite as good for the soul as time spent on a dock with a fishing pole, tossing the occasional stone and watching the ripples move across the water's placid surface; seeing the clouds reflected in a natural mirror as they roll by overhead - completely detached and unaffected by man.
More about that next time.
