"JOHNNNNNN!..........athan."
Ah yes, one of the favorite pastimes of the boys at 48 Broad St. Well hey, most of them couldn't drive in May of '86, when these stories take place. They had to entertain themselves somehow, right? The Commodore 64 and Cheers could only cut so much mustard before their pre-pubescent brains started looking elsewhere for stimulation. One such example that never got old was making eleven-year-old John Peterson, the second youngest of the seven boys, run all the way down the three-story Queen Anne before letting him know they'd actually been calling for Jonathan. John always fell for it. Seriously, each and every time someone called his name at the top of their lungs, John would come out of his room on the third floor, stand at the stairs, and say, "What is it?" And then whoever it was would keep calling until John finally hurried down the stairs. "What, what, what?" And then as he begin the descent to the first floor, "..........athan." Upon which time, depending on his mood and the state of his nerves, John would either laugh it off, march silently and deliberately back up to the third floor, or throw up his hands and fume. Everyone ended up doing it to him at some point. Frank, John's stepdad and the 48 Broad patriarch, fooled him one night when he was drunk on Scotch.
Even nine-year-old Barry, the youngest of the household and the 48 Broad protagonist, got in on it. Like a lot of kids who are the youngest, whatever the older siblings are doing is probably the right thing to do. It's certainly the cool thing to do, right or wrong, so best just to follow suit. If you get in trouble, you just say, "Hey, but they do it too!" And so one day Barry tried his hand at the "John..........athan" trick. At first nothing happened. Had John even heard him? Barry walked halfway up to the second floor and let his voice rip. Sure enough, he heard John's door open, followed by, "What?" Barry said, "Come here a minute!" When John started coming down, Barry realized he'd messed up. You're not supposed to answer the "What?" You just keep shouting "JOHNNNNNN!" until he comes down. Barry tried to make up for it by shouting his name again. He couldn't help laughing at his own goofiness. John came to a stop halfway down the stairs and gave Barry a deadpan look, just waiting to get it over with. Doubled over with his face red in crooked, Bell's palsy-scarred laughter, Barry could barely say, "..........athan." John maintained his deadpan look for one more beat before storming down the stairs and kicking the living shit out of Barry.
Yes, our boy John Peterson could be quite the moody little bugger, his reactions impossible to predict in most situations. Nothing else illustrates that better than the John......athan prank. As for Jonathan, if you read my notes on him, you'll know he was 48 Broad's tyrant, the last person in the house--scratch that, the last person in all of Mount Holly--you'd want to cross. But at least he was consistently an asshole, right? You never had to roll the dice to predict his behavior, although being around him was sort of a roll of the dice if you know what I mean.
John? He was a completely different, and very high-strung, story. Seriously, check it out. This one night, he had some homework to do. Math homework. Now in May of 1986 John was approaching the end of sixth grade. His math that year was pre-algebra. He was ahead of the curve. Like a lot of high-strung people, John was pretty bright. Hey, once you've demonstrated a certain level of intellect, your elders will no doubt expect that same level from you consistently. No matter what. At least, that's what it seems like when you're a kid. It's tough maintaining par, you know? So you get worked up easily. Most of the pre-algebra kids in John's class were seventh graders. A few were eighth. Only two others were sixth. Sometimes the curve can catch up with you, right? Even the best and brightest can feel it nipping at their heels. John was no exception. So on this night, he went berserk over his pre-algebra homework. He'd started at his desk in the pool room. Then he'd gone up to his bedroom, which he shared with Alexander, his only biological brother at 48 Broad, and then he came back down and parked himself at the roll-up desk in the music room. While Jonathan and Barry wrestled out in the hallway, John wrestled with equations. He developed a migraine and started crying and shaking his little fists at the textbook, which lay there with clean black ink on that special kind of crisp white paper you never see outside school textbooks. The kind that's a tad bit thicker and smoother. John positively fumed. He punched the air, then opened his hands and pleaded. "What?! What do I have to do?!"
Because John was the closest to him in age, Barry used him as a crystal ball. You might think Barry didn't have the time to notice his stepbrother cursing the heavens while Jonathan used him to wipe the hallway carpet. Well, you'd be wrong. Barry did notice. No sooner did he slip some cash to his brother Louis to protect him from Jonathan than he noticed John. Barry was on his way to the family room to watch Cheers (he loved yelling "NORM!" with the rest of the bar whenever the big man made his entrance) with dad Frank and stepmom Faith. The family room and music room were opposite each other. Sure enough, Barry stopped when he saw John mid tantrum.
Frank said hello, but Barry was too captivated by John's red face and tears to notice. Frank interpreted his son's silence as a form of passive-aggressive rebellion, reciprocity for his divorcing Barry's mother. When Barry walked into the family room and sat on the couch next to Gorbie, the family dog, Frank said hello one more time. He gave him one more chance. Barry said nothing. He was too busy wondering if homework-induced migraines and bouts of crying were in his future. But if so, at least it was two long years away (don't you remember how long two years seemed when you were nine?). That cheered him up so he could enjoy Cheers. NORM!
Barry himself could excite John's high-strung nerves. I mean besides for obvious reasons like failing miserably at the John......athan prank. Indeed, it was usually for reasons not obvious at all. At least not to Barry. A prime example would be Barry's hardcore movie fandom. Starting around second grade, about two years before 48 Broad and soon after Barry survived the Bell's palsy near-death experience, he discovered he loved movies. Certainly he'd seen plenty of movies before. His first was The Empire Strikes Back in the summer of '80, but it wasn't until second grade or so when he started inheriting the fandom from his older half-brothers on his mom's side, Daniel and Louis. We're talking mainly comedies and horror. The inestimable A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge was the first film Barry admired enough for repeated viewings. That didn't bug John too much. He watched it too. Truth is, he liked most of what Barry liked. But Barry took liking movies to a whole new level. From Freddy Krueger he graduated to stuff like Amadeus (neither comedy nor horror, I know, but hey, Barry was complicated), House (a bit of both), and Goonies. It was Goonies, in fact, that Barry was watching after school one day, for the who-knew-how-manyth time. John came home, tossed his backpack on the loveseat in the hallway where Gorbie liked to sleep because of its proximity to the window, grabbed a Pepsi from the third fridge in the laundry room, and headed down to the family room to channel surf. It was great to have cable. A lot of his friends at Holbein didn't. When he saw Barry watching Goonies, however, John positively freaked. He threw up his hands, in the process sloshing some Pepsi onto the hallway carpet (for which Faith later grilled Barry, assuming he'd done it), and howled his bafflement at the high ceiling. How could Barry still enjoy Goonies after watching it almost every day for months? For his part, Barry was completely caught off-guard. Goonies was celluloid art. Whence came his stepbrother's confusion?
Now let's go back a bit and put John in better context. When he was born in Boulder, Colorado in 1974, his mom and dad were already on the downslope of their marriage. If you've been following the notes on the other kids, you'll recognize this as a recurring theme, kids born into homes that, if not yet broken, were betraying cracks in the foundation. Faith and Ford Peterson were no exception. They held it together a little while, long enough for Alexander and John to get started with middle school and elementary school, respectively. At first Faith thought she could hang in there with Ford until their kids were done with high school, but after a particularly nasty spat when John was in first grade, Faith took a walk in the snow around their Boulder neighborhood and pondered the idea of another dozen years with a man with whom she couldn't even agree on what time dinner should be. The idea seemed as bleak as the white landscape.
Ford was a brilliant guy, a PhD in mathematics who cut a fine reputation for himself in the aeronautical industry. His weakness was insecurity: Ford Peterson couldn't handle a wife working, much less succeeding, in the same industry. Which is why, after scoring her master's in math, Faith went right back to school to get her bachelor's in music. That didn't help much, though. Ford's insecurity didn't stop at his wife's mathematical acumen. He was insecure in general, which might make you wonder why he'd marry a woman who was so obviously bright. But men do funny things all the time.
Ford could be a fun dad too, despite everything. John developed an interest in coffee early on. Yes, you read that right. Coffee. During one particular weekend breakfast, practically the only time the Peterson family could be together, John watched his dad absently eat his heavily buttered white toast and sip his coffee while reading the business section. Ford did this all the time. And John watched him do it all the time. Only this time, John decided to ask about the coffee his dad kept slurping like it was going out of style. Ford let his boy have a sip, thinking he'd find it disgusting and that would be the end of it. Not only was that not the case, but John was hooked on coffee from that day forward. Perhaps it was the Swedish in him. Coffee flows like water in Scandinavia. Heck, in Finland, people hook up via personal ads that always start out with, "Let's meet for coffee." The Peterson clan had settled in the Midwest in the nineteenth century, but not even a hundred-plus years away from the motherland could distill their passion for that divine caffeinated nectar.
Faith, as all you moms might imagine, was appalled that her four-year-old should be drinking coffee. She didn't say anything to Ford at the table, but when they were alone, she gave him the third degree. Ford didn't raise his voice. He never did. That was one of the things that drove Faith batty about him. Ford always softened his tone commensurate with his wife's shrillness. Sometimes it reached the point where Faith would be screaming her lungs out while Ford whispered. That's pretty much how it went during the coffee drama. John's a big boy, he could make certain decisions on his own now. "But he's four!" Faith protested. Her argument was that all John knows is that coffee tastes great. His gene pool tells him that. But as his parents and guardians, they need to intervene when it's in his best interest, and it's not in his best interest to drink coffee at four years old. Caffeine stunts growth, it's just not what you give little kiddies. Ford tried to compromise. He knew his boy would cry and sulk if told this morning's coffee was a one-time deal. So he got decaf. Just to show you, though, that you can't escape who you are, John absolutely hated decaf. He could instantly tell the difference, that this wasn't what Daddy drank, and he wanted what Daddy always drank. Ford complied. Faith didn't bother getting mad this time, but she did let her disgust be known in other, more passive aggressive, ways, like pretending to forget to buy Ford a new set of razors. Or leaving his car windows down when she knew a blizzard was coming. At any rate, seven years later, when 48 Broad takes place, the junior high John still loved his coffee. He was the only one of the seven boys who joined Frank in the kitchen over a cup before heading off to Holbein.
Around the same time that he discovered coffee, John discovered baseball and joined Little League. Ford and John would go out now and again to play catch. Only, pitch and catch became scarcer as time went on. By the time Faith met Frank Roggebusch at a math conference in Boulder, her marriage to Ford was as good as gone. Sure, symbolically Faith could be viewed as the bad guy here. She cheated first, right? Well okay. But I don't think Ford was exactly a heart-crushed Romeo over here. He relocated to the San Fernando Valley, landed a job in an aeronautical consulting firm, met and married a hippie who had no career aspirations whatsoever, and bought a house in the West Valley community of Woodland Hills.
And that's how John and Alexander became bi-coastal kids. They'd spend the school year at 48 Broad, and then literally the day after school ended, they'd hop on a plane to L.A. When they came back to Jersey, it always seemed to be John who had more stories to tell. As you'll see in Alexander's post, John's cerebral older brother didn't betray emotion very much, nor did he betray, well, his voice. Dude barely talked. And when he did, he was usually deadpan. John, in stark contrast, and as I pointed out above, was easily excitable. One summer he came back going on and on about seeing Alyssa Milano at the Sherman Oaks Galleria. The rest of the boys were quite impressed. Jealous, even. Including Barry. He may have been several years from puberty, but he could spot a babe same as any male.
John's Alyssa Milano moment notwithstanding, when he wasn't around, the others at 48 Broad had the occasional exchange about his sexuality. See, John had a pal at Holbein named Donald. He was a black kid who lived in the Gardens, a predominantly black neighborhood in the southwest part of town. By the time the events of 48 Broad roll around in May of '86, they'd been best pals going on two full school years. Or were they more than pals? Whatever the case, John always insisted on having Donald to himself. When they were watching a movie in the family room, John would shoo away anyone who tried to watch with them. When they were playing G.I. Joe in John's bedroom, while listening to songs like "It's My Life" by Talk Talk, John would shut the door and not answer if anyone knocked. When he and Donald had the Commodore 64 to themselves in the pool room, again, John wouldn't tolerate anyone playing with them, or even watching for that matter. John had the occasional girlfriend too. So what was his deal?
One thing Barry noticed early on was that John was more of a follower than a leader. Yes, Barry noticed this because he was one of the people John followed. When Barry took piano lessons, so did John. When Barry decided to give Pop Warner football a shot, so did John. When Barry switched from Thousand Island dressing to Ranch, once again John followed suit. Barry wasn't exactly a model of originality himself. He only switched to Ranch to be like Louis.
