Mixed Metaphors

Stories of Home 

As a writer, I write for different reasons. I journal to maintain a record of my life, to examine my life, reflect on the past, and look ahead to the future. As a reminiscence writer, I capture the stories of my lived experience and those of my family, friends, and loved ones. As an activist-essayist, I comment on the culture and politics of current events in hopes of galvanizing change.

I sometimes submit my work for consideration for the stage, screen, or publication. For me, those are the most challenging experiences as a writer. In addition to telling a story, I let go of control of whether it’s performed, viewed, or read by the target audience. I make myself vulnerable to the readers, producers, publishers and selection committees. My ego is in play.

This fall during the pandemic, I wrote and submitted two stories in response to the theme, Within these Walls: Stories of Home for Forward Theater Co.’s (FTC) sixth Monologue Festival. I’ve submitted to five of the six monologue festivals, links to the monologues at the end of this story. For one of my submissions, I received my favorite rejection letter as a writer for the Someone’s Gotta Do It! Monologue Festival, for my submission Maria from the Sewing Room (and Gloria from the Lay-Up Department), which wasn’t selected, but made the semifinals out of 300 submissions.

This year’s Forward Theater Co. Monologue Festival, Within these Walls: Stories of Home, is described as follows from the FTC website “It can mean something different for everyone. For some it is a place, or people, or simply memories made over time. But “home” defines us all in one way or another, and this evocative word serves as the inspiration for FTC’s sixth monologue festival, featuring original pieces written just for us by playwrights from across our community and around the nation. A collection of stories in places borrowed and possessed, offering a thoughtful look at what it means to belong.”  

Following is the first of two monologue submissions, Oral History. I dedicate this to the storytellers in my family, my paternal great grandmother, Helen Tillie Annie Flanigan, my maternal grandmother, Clara (Mulder) Holly, and my father, Richard (Dick) Lenzke, Sr. The second submission is Moving Stories. See link at the end of this reminscence.

Oral History

When I was a young teen, growing up in my working-class home during the tumultuous sixties, I was the eldest of four children, soon to be followed by two more. We were the offspring of a German-Irish father and Dutch-Norwegian mother in Racine, Wisconsin, a manufacturing community that boasted many Northern-European and African-American families. Many had emigrated or relocated to Racine to work in the factories and settled in neighborhoods that were magnets for their ethnic heritage and the churches where they worshipped.

My parents were teenagers when they married and gave birth to me. We virtually grew up together. I toasted them on their wedding anniversary and boasted that I brought my parents together. When I was a young teenager on Sundays following Mass at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, our family made a pilgrimage to the neighborhood tavern. My parents would bribe us kids with orange pop, potato chips, and quarters for the bowling machine while they visited with their friends. I was stubborn, refusing to join them and instead would remain in the car and read a book, or write in my diary. My parents described my behavior as “She’s having another mad-on!”

Now, don’t assume I was always contrary. I was at that age when I was beginning to assert my independence. After church, and the visit to the bar, my father and I would share the Sunday newspapers. We’d often read articles out loud to gauge each other’s opinion on subjects, ranging from civil rights, to the war in Viet Nam, and the music of our respective generations. We’d argue passionately. We were both ‘right-fighters.’ The rest of the family would slip out of the room to stay out of the fray.

Our arguments were heated. We were cut from the same cloth, stubborn, auditory, and opinionated. Dad and I were both debaters and storytellers. One Sunday, when the whole family convened in the living room telling stories, often gossip about relatives, or some silly thing one of us kids did or said, I threatened, “Someday I’m going to write stories about our family!” My mother, who loved her children unconditionally, replied, “I’m already looking forward to reading them!”

I admit, I loved hearing Dad’s stories about growing up; the neighborhoods where he lived and the people who inhabited them with names like Gertie Gatty, plus the oral history of our ancestors, and tales about his school years, his first jobs as a movie theater usher and a sign painter for a hardware store.

My favorite stories were how he met our mother, his first and only love, his soulmate and best friend. Dad was raised by his mother, plus his German grandmother, Helen Tillie Annie Freitag, and Irish grandfather, Francis Flanigan. His birth father abandoned the family, another story for another time. After the death of her father, my mother was raised by a single mother until her mother remarried. My maternal grandmother was also a born storyteller.

The two matriarchs, the paternal and maternal heads of their families would decide the fate of their adolescent offspring and the generations that followed, when they approved the wedding of an 18-year-old, soon-to-be husband and father, and his 16-year-old, soon-to be-wife and mother.

As a child, I loved my maternal grandmother, Clara Holly, and her stories. Her parents emigrated from the Netherlands, wearing their wooden shoes and carried their Christian Scientist beliefs with them to America. Grandma Holly would often regale us with stories in her kitchen while she prepared the food of her family heritage.

My maternal relatives were also farmers, hunters, and fishermen and women anglers. Grandma canned preserves and vegetables in her summer kitchen, while the men in the family would butcher game and debone and fillet fish. One of her specialties, since she grew up on a farm and nothing was wasted, was her head cheese. Yes, again, another story for another time.

When we visited our father’s family, his mother and grandmother, who we affectionately referred to as “The Grams,” lived and worked together for many years. Dad’s grandmother, Grandma Flanigan, was the storyteller in that family, and passed the gift on to my father, who passed it down to me.

Yes, I’m grateful that I hail from a long line of oral historians, beloved family members who knew the value of a story and the pleasure in sharing it. Stories about home, our ancestors, family traditions, and yes, our quirks, missteps, and foibles too, the very attributes which made us who we are.  My paternal great grandmother, maternal grandmother, and finally my father, each remembered almost every person they had ever met and relished in the telling and retelling of their stories, adding and subtracting details in the service of the tale or life lesson.

Dick & Ethel Lenzke (Mom and Dad) being interviewed by me.

I consider my family’s oral history and storytelling gifts my legacy. Before my mother died, I recorded my parents’ oral history about their families, their courtship, the challenges they faced, their work lives, and favorite memories. My 91-year-old father still lives in the house I grew up in. When I visit him, I always beg him to tell me stories.

Family Home

Today, I’m the family historian, storyteller, writer, and blogger. You’ll often hear me say, “Do I have a story for you!”  

Forward Theater Co. Monologue Submissions

Within these Walls: Moving Stories

Fifteen Valentines

The Orphan Holidays

Good Morning

Oleo Run

Maria From the Sewing Room (Gloria from the Lay-Up Department)

1968 – Flashback & Fast Forward