According to Patterson family lore, on March 22, 1947, I nearly died at birth at St. Luke’s Hospital in Newburgh, New York. I don’t remember, but I did live to tell about it.
Let’s start with my father. Charles Henry Patterson was a quiet but tough man who came from tough times and from a tough river town.
My dad grew up in the Newburgh poorhouse (think about that for a second or two). It was called the Pogie. His mom was the charwoman there. She cleaned the kitchens and bathrooms, worked, she said, from “seven to seven, seven days a week.” For her long, hard work, she and my father got to share a single room on the basement floor. They weren’t homeless, but they were damn close. My father never met his father, at least not as far as he could remember.
My mother, Isabelle Ann, attended high school with my dad. After college she became a fourth-grade teacher at St. Patrick’s, one of the four Catholic schools in Newburgh. She made next to nothing. Maybe even a little less than that. I’m surprised the parish priests didn’t ask her to pay them for the privilege of teaching at their school. Several nights a week, she would be bent over the dining-room table grading papers until nine or ten.
She had a cool mission as a teacher: she wanted to turn mirrors into windows. She pretty much followed the same philosophy at home. Mirrors, physical or symbolic, weren’t big in the Patterson house.
My sisters—Mary Ellen, Carole, and Teresa—ruled the roost. In their view of the world, I was hired help. I was muscle. I was their minion. So I handled the garbage detail, the lawn work, the snow removal, and the repair of bicycles, small electrical appliances, deflated balls of all sizes and shapes. We were a very ball-sy family.
I was always a good student, driven to be number one in, well, everything, but I’d get a ninety-seven on a test and my mom or dad would say, “How come you didn’t get a hundred? You’re slipping, James.”
The idea I had growing up—and I held on to it into my forties—was that my folks only cared about me as long as I was number one in my class. I don’t blame them, because I feel they were doing the best that they could. I think they honestly believed the next Great Depression was just around the corner, and they always clung to Careful. Careful. Go slow. Look both ways. Then look again. Your best isn’t good enough. You’re slipping, James.