The St. Joseph Home for Boys
The 11th Short Story
Parade of Dreams and Nightmares
"Parade of Dreams and Nightmares"
ANDY JUNIOR'S CHILDHOOD STORIES
The St. Joseph Home for Boys
My 11th Short Story
The St. Joseph Home for Boys stood on the northwest corner of Blackstone St. and Van Buren St. in Jackson, Michigan for more than 50 years. The Felician Sisters, out of Livonia, Michigan, purchased the mansion from a local banker in the early 1900s and cared for up to 50 boys in the orphanage, between the early 1910s and late 1960s.
When my dad remarried in 1965, he brought us three kids back to live at home on Sandstone Road in Spring Arbor, Michigan. I kicked off another new schoolyear that September at Western Junior High School in Parma, Michigan. My brother and sister went to elementary school in Woodville.
"Parade of Dreams and Nightmares"
“Dreams are an interesting but peculiar phenomenon. Some can be pleasant and useful, while others you’d rather live without.”
--Andy Skrzynski
My youthful years in Michigan provided plenty of fodder for dreams during those childhood days and for years to come. How could I possibly have imagined how long some would haunt me?
The earliest of my nightmarish sleeps began the day my brother and I were dropped off at the orphanage in Jackson, Michigan, for the first time. Well after I had fallen asleep that first night, I suddenly jumped to a sitting position in bed. My heart pounded like a Viking drum while I glanced around the dormitory. The whole area was dark as I gasped for air. Barely visible, everybody else seemed lifeless, and Sister Meanie, from the evening before, had vanished.
Lingering to torment me, my nightmare was as vivid as when it snapped me from my sleep. Everything kept getting smaller, then bigger, then back to smaller again. It was all moving faster and slower, then faster again -- never ending. My head was about to explode. Panting like my dog, Nicky, after chasing a squirrel, I reluctantly touched my pajamas. Soaked to the bone!
Immediately, I sniffed my wet arms. Whew, they don’t smell like pee -- it’s sweat. What’s happening to me?
I plopped my head on the pillow and tried to calm myself, but the same horrible thought kept nagging me. How could Mama and Tata do this to us?
Unfortunately, the turmoil did not end there. During the daylight hours, I pondered how our parents could just drop us off at a strange doorstep and leave us. Such thoughts continued to fester as the lights went out, and my mind relentlessly churned to create terrorizing nightmares that left me exhausted and soaked for many mornings.
The horrific nightmares continued, until I happened upon a way to halt them. Thinking of my wonderful Cousin Sandy and picturing her sweet smile soothed me just enough to prevent me from returning to the unwanted terror dreams. Better yet, I eventually learned to recognize I was having a nightmare and to snap out of it. Such techniques worked fine most of the time, except on evenings when I was very stressed from some of the day’s earlier events.
After I left the orphanage, and for many decades to follow, I’d seldom dream of anything, or at least I couldn’t remember them when I awoke. On very rare occasions, I’d slip into a nightmare, but different and not quite as disturbing as those during my five years at the St. Joseph Home for Boys. Oddly enough, most dreams I did have were mild and almost never included anybody I knew personally. Most of the people or animals in my dreams were totally made up -- nameless faces in unfamiliar places.
A few years after I retired from working at IBM, I decided to write a book about finance and investments so that I could pass the knowledge I had retained from my experiences to our daughters. While critiquing my first couple of chapters of my manuscript at a writer's group, some authors suggested adding something a little more interesting to hold the attention of the younger readers I was targeting.
I decided to interweave a story of a couple of adventurous fictional characters to break the dry and boring material of the financial world. After rereading my earliest attempts, the authors found it much more to their liking, so off I went creating a new world to fold into my book.
Then, out of the clear blue, my dreams kicked back in and soared to a whole new level. When I awoke every morning, my head would be brimming with creative ideas of adventures for my existing and brand-new fictional characters along with the made-up world in which they lived.
I’d immediately hop out of bed, take care of Mother Nature’s calling, turn on the coffee pot, and sit down at my computer. Typing away, I’d continue capturing all of the ideas floating in my head from my dreams.
Sometimes, I’d end up with one chapter, but often the act of writing spurred even more ideas, until I’d end up with two or three chapters. It didn’t take long before my imagination shifted into overdrive. It got to the point where I was wasting my time trying to fit the ever-growing story within my financial investment book, because there was way too much of the fantasy world and all the new characters coming to life.
At that point I just shook my head. Might as well go with the flow and write this new story. That’s when I decided to write the first book of my fictional tale about “The New World.”
This oddly different experience was confusing, to say the least. Why is this happening to me? I’m a logical thinker -- not a creative one. Where is all of this coming from?
At that point, I set the financial manuscript aside and wrote my burgeoning story about life in a futuristic world. Halfway through the book, I decided I better come up with a good title because I needed to get an eye-catching cover designed. To make things more interesting, I held a competition to select the best title for my new book.
I provided a long list of alternatives for my 60-plus Beta Readers and other followers to choose from. When I tallied the results, all I could do was smirk to myself in disbelief. Great.
As luck would have it, the majority voted for one of the titles I didn’t particularly like, but it just so happened to be the title my wife had come up with. I sighed. Of all of the titles, why did they have to like that one so much?
Well, I may have been crazy at times, but I wasn’t stupid. If most of them like it, that’s what it will be! Bonnie will certainly be happy.
Moving forward, the book was called, “The New World: A Step Backward.” It took a bit of getting used to, but even I eventually warmed up to the title.
The dreams continued throughout the writing of not only my first book, but also for the sequel, and a good portion of the finale of the trilogy. My daily routines remained constant. I’d wake up and capture as much of my nightly creations as I could each morning while typing away at my computer for anywhere from 6 to 10 hours a day.
It was quite clear from the progress of my wonderful stories, aided by the brilliantly creative machinations of my mind, that not all dreams turned into nightmares. Some, in fact, ended up being very useful. I couldn’t have been happier.
Of course, the powers from on high wanted to make sure I knew my place on Earth and demonstrated that my dreams could be fickle. There was a 9-month interruption in my writing of the third book, “The New World: Crimson Winter,” due to a health issue in our family.
During this unexpected pause, my creative imagination took a hike. In fact, it never returned even after I started writing again to finish the story. It appeared that once the spigot to my creative dreams had been turned off, there was no turning it back on. Whoa!
My head hurt just thinking about it. Whatcha gonna do now, Einstein?
The few weeks that followed were difficult at best as I tried to fumble my way through the next few chapters. I didn’t like what my fingers were producing. Yuck!
There were plenty of times when all I could do was sit in my chair and wonder. Am I ever going to be able to finish this book?
I started to doubt myself like never before. Finally, with desperately needed help from above, I figured out how to dig deeper into my noggin, and I began to generate my own interesting creations, during the light of day. Whew!
On occasions, I’d even daydream about new ideas while doing something mindless, like taking a shower or relaxing in a chair and pondering my life. It didn’t matter when. If ideas popped into my head, I’d rush to the computer and type whatever was floating around in my cranium to make sure it was securely included in a chapter. If I didn’t, those fleeting thoughts would vanish forever.
For the better part of my adult life, I didn’t have many dreams until those good ones came along to help me create my fictional tales. Then, out of nowhere, came a rude awakening.
While I was writing my second book, a nightmare about swarms of attacking wasps chased me right out of my sleep one morning. The dream itself was terrifying enough, but then I realized that I had dreamt about that same horrific experience for “many” years. What?
The thought of having experienced that same nightmare over and over again, and not realizing it until that moment, shook me to the bone. How on Earth could that be?
After a few weeks, I was finally settling down from the thought of such a strange phenomenon when another one hit me right between the eyes. This time it wasn’t really a nightmare. I awoke from a dream about playing tag football in a field during autumn, back in Michigan. At first, I didn’t think much of it, but suddenly it dawned on me that I had dreamt that same dream over and over again for many years. What? Again?
Now, I was starting to get concerned. How many more of these stupid dreams have been churning in my head over my lifetime? I kept digging deep in my memory banks to see if I could uncover some more, but nothing surfaced.
Like the first repetitive dreams, I finally put this newer one behind me and didn’t think much of it again for a long time. In fact, in both cases, it appeared that my mind had squashed those particular events from surfacing any more.
Well, wouldn’t you know it. A third such dream appeared in 2019. This one was more of the nightmarish kind. I awoke to the frightening experience of walking or often running through mazes of hallways and streets in and around a bunch of unfamiliar buildings and towns -- except they weren’t entirely unfamiliar. I couldn’t recall a real building or city of these types, but once again, I realized that I had dreamt this same exact experience over and over again through the years. Noooo! It can’t be true!
At this point, I was getting more pissed off than scared. Why has this been happening? I’m tired of these stupid dreams! Enough is ENOUGH!
************
That's it for now.
The best I can say at this point in my life, is that I have uncovered at least 4 more repetitive dreams during the last few years. A couple were of the nightmarish kind -- one where I'm tiptoeing through hundreds of slithering snakes after a flood, and another where I'm scrambling to escape several tornadoes, zigzagging across open fields while keeping me guessing which direction they were headed. I'm sure I'll recall more in the future. I suspect I'm not the only one that has become aware of such repetitive dreams.
Fortunately, once I realized a dream was repetitive, I’ve been able to wipe it from existence, up to this point. I pray that continues and there are no new ones to surface.
I hope you enjoyed the latest of my experiences. Thank you so much for your wonderful support!
Andy Skrzynski
Note: The Felician Sister provided the orphanage photographs and gave me permission to share them in "Andy and the St. Joseph Home for Boys" and social media outlets, including my website.
ANDY JUNIOR'S CHILDHOOD STORIES
The St. Joseph Home for Boys
My 11th Short Story
The St. Joseph Home for Boys stood on the northwest corner of Blackstone St. and Van Buren St. in Jackson, Michigan for more than 50 years. The Felician Sisters, out of Livonia, Michigan, purchased the mansion from a local banker in the early 1900s and cared for up to 50 boys in the orphanage, between the early 1910s and late 1960s.
When my dad remarried in 1965, he brought us three kids back to live at home on Sandstone Road in Spring Arbor, Michigan. I kicked off another new schoolyear that September at Western Junior High School in Parma, Michigan. My brother and sister went to elementary school in Woodville.
"Parade of Dreams and Nightmares"
“Dreams are an interesting but peculiar phenomenon. Some can be pleasant and useful, while others you’d rather live without.”
--Andy Skrzynski
My youthful years in Michigan provided plenty of fodder for dreams during those childhood days and for years to come. How could I possibly have imagined how long some would haunt me?
The earliest of my nightmarish sleeps began the day my brother and I were dropped off at the orphanage in Jackson, Michigan, for the first time. Well after I had fallen asleep that first night, I suddenly jumped to a sitting position in bed. My heart pounded like a Viking drum while I glanced around the dormitory. The whole area was dark as I gasped for air. Barely visible, everybody else seemed lifeless, and Sister Meanie, from the evening before, had vanished.
Lingering to torment me, my nightmare was as vivid as when it snapped me from my sleep. Everything kept getting smaller, then bigger, then back to smaller again. It was all moving faster and slower, then faster again -- never ending. My head was about to explode. Panting like my dog, Nicky, after chasing a squirrel, I reluctantly touched my pajamas. Soaked to the bone!
Immediately, I sniffed my wet arms. Whew, they don’t smell like pee -- it’s sweat. What’s happening to me?
I plopped my head on the pillow and tried to calm myself, but the same horrible thought kept nagging me. How could Mama and Tata do this to us?
Unfortunately, the turmoil did not end there. During the daylight hours, I pondered how our parents could just drop us off at a strange doorstep and leave us. Such thoughts continued to fester as the lights went out, and my mind relentlessly churned to create terrorizing nightmares that left me exhausted and soaked for many mornings.
The horrific nightmares continued, until I happened upon a way to halt them. Thinking of my wonderful Cousin Sandy and picturing her sweet smile soothed me just enough to prevent me from returning to the unwanted terror dreams. Better yet, I eventually learned to recognize I was having a nightmare and to snap out of it. Such techniques worked fine most of the time, except on evenings when I was very stressed from some of the day’s earlier events.
After I left the orphanage, and for many decades to follow, I’d seldom dream of anything, or at least I couldn’t remember them when I awoke. On very rare occasions, I’d slip into a nightmare, but different and not quite as disturbing as those during my five years at the St. Joseph Home for Boys. Oddly enough, most dreams I did have were mild and almost never included anybody I knew personally. Most of the people or animals in my dreams were totally made up -- nameless faces in unfamiliar places.
A few years after I retired from working at IBM, I decided to write a book about finance and investments so that I could pass the knowledge I had retained from my experiences to our daughters. While critiquing my first couple of chapters of my manuscript at a writer's group, some authors suggested adding something a little more interesting to hold the attention of the younger readers I was targeting.
I decided to interweave a story of a couple of adventurous fictional characters to break the dry and boring material of the financial world. After rereading my earliest attempts, the authors found it much more to their liking, so off I went creating a new world to fold into my book.
Then, out of the clear blue, my dreams kicked back in and soared to a whole new level. When I awoke every morning, my head would be brimming with creative ideas of adventures for my existing and brand-new fictional characters along with the made-up world in which they lived.
I’d immediately hop out of bed, take care of Mother Nature’s calling, turn on the coffee pot, and sit down at my computer. Typing away, I’d continue capturing all of the ideas floating in my head from my dreams.
Sometimes, I’d end up with one chapter, but often the act of writing spurred even more ideas, until I’d end up with two or three chapters. It didn’t take long before my imagination shifted into overdrive. It got to the point where I was wasting my time trying to fit the ever-growing story within my financial investment book, because there was way too much of the fantasy world and all the new characters coming to life.
At that point I just shook my head. Might as well go with the flow and write this new story. That’s when I decided to write the first book of my fictional tale about “The New World.”
This oddly different experience was confusing, to say the least. Why is this happening to me? I’m a logical thinker -- not a creative one. Where is all of this coming from?
At that point, I set the financial manuscript aside and wrote my burgeoning story about life in a futuristic world. Halfway through the book, I decided I better come up with a good title because I needed to get an eye-catching cover designed. To make things more interesting, I held a competition to select the best title for my new book.
I provided a long list of alternatives for my 60-plus Beta Readers and other followers to choose from. When I tallied the results, all I could do was smirk to myself in disbelief. Great.
As luck would have it, the majority voted for one of the titles I didn’t particularly like, but it just so happened to be the title my wife had come up with. I sighed. Of all of the titles, why did they have to like that one so much?
Well, I may have been crazy at times, but I wasn’t stupid. If most of them like it, that’s what it will be! Bonnie will certainly be happy.
Moving forward, the book was called, “The New World: A Step Backward.” It took a bit of getting used to, but even I eventually warmed up to the title.
The dreams continued throughout the writing of not only my first book, but also for the sequel, and a good portion of the finale of the trilogy. My daily routines remained constant. I’d wake up and capture as much of my nightly creations as I could each morning while typing away at my computer for anywhere from 6 to 10 hours a day.
It was quite clear from the progress of my wonderful stories, aided by the brilliantly creative machinations of my mind, that not all dreams turned into nightmares. Some, in fact, ended up being very useful. I couldn’t have been happier.
Of course, the powers from on high wanted to make sure I knew my place on Earth and demonstrated that my dreams could be fickle. There was a 9-month interruption in my writing of the third book, “The New World: Crimson Winter,” due to a health issue in our family.
During this unexpected pause, my creative imagination took a hike. In fact, it never returned even after I started writing again to finish the story. It appeared that once the spigot to my creative dreams had been turned off, there was no turning it back on. Whoa!
My head hurt just thinking about it. Whatcha gonna do now, Einstein?
The few weeks that followed were difficult at best as I tried to fumble my way through the next few chapters. I didn’t like what my fingers were producing. Yuck!
There were plenty of times when all I could do was sit in my chair and wonder. Am I ever going to be able to finish this book?
I started to doubt myself like never before. Finally, with desperately needed help from above, I figured out how to dig deeper into my noggin, and I began to generate my own interesting creations, during the light of day. Whew!
On occasions, I’d even daydream about new ideas while doing something mindless, like taking a shower or relaxing in a chair and pondering my life. It didn’t matter when. If ideas popped into my head, I’d rush to the computer and type whatever was floating around in my cranium to make sure it was securely included in a chapter. If I didn’t, those fleeting thoughts would vanish forever.
For the better part of my adult life, I didn’t have many dreams until those good ones came along to help me create my fictional tales. Then, out of nowhere, came a rude awakening.
While I was writing my second book, a nightmare about swarms of attacking wasps chased me right out of my sleep one morning. The dream itself was terrifying enough, but then I realized that I had dreamt about that same horrific experience for “many” years. What?
The thought of having experienced that same nightmare over and over again, and not realizing it until that moment, shook me to the bone. How on Earth could that be?
After a few weeks, I was finally settling down from the thought of such a strange phenomenon when another one hit me right between the eyes. This time it wasn’t really a nightmare. I awoke from a dream about playing tag football in a field during autumn, back in Michigan. At first, I didn’t think much of it, but suddenly it dawned on me that I had dreamt that same dream over and over again for many years. What? Again?
Now, I was starting to get concerned. How many more of these stupid dreams have been churning in my head over my lifetime? I kept digging deep in my memory banks to see if I could uncover some more, but nothing surfaced.
Like the first repetitive dreams, I finally put this newer one behind me and didn’t think much of it again for a long time. In fact, in both cases, it appeared that my mind had squashed those particular events from surfacing any more.
Well, wouldn’t you know it. A third such dream appeared in 2019. This one was more of the nightmarish kind. I awoke to the frightening experience of walking or often running through mazes of hallways and streets in and around a bunch of unfamiliar buildings and towns -- except they weren’t entirely unfamiliar. I couldn’t recall a real building or city of these types, but once again, I realized that I had dreamt this same exact experience over and over again through the years. Noooo! It can’t be true!
At this point, I was getting more pissed off than scared. Why has this been happening? I’m tired of these stupid dreams! Enough is ENOUGH!
************
That's it for now.
The best I can say at this point in my life, is that I have uncovered at least 4 more repetitive dreams during the last few years. A couple were of the nightmarish kind -- one where I'm tiptoeing through hundreds of slithering snakes after a flood, and another where I'm scrambling to escape several tornadoes, zigzagging across open fields while keeping me guessing which direction they were headed. I'm sure I'll recall more in the future. I suspect I'm not the only one that has become aware of such repetitive dreams.
Fortunately, once I realized a dream was repetitive, I’ve been able to wipe it from existence, up to this point. I pray that continues and there are no new ones to surface.
I hope you enjoyed the latest of my experiences. Thank you so much for your wonderful support!
Andy Skrzynski
Note: The Felician Sister provided the orphanage photographs and gave me permission to share them in "Andy and the St. Joseph Home for Boys" and social media outlets, including my website.
The St. Joseph Home for Boys orphanage, during its earliest years in the 1910s and 1920s, could look absolutely scary from the southern view from Van Buren St. on Jackson, Michigan's drearier days. Such an appearance alone could generate nightmares for little ones.
The enormous dormitory with a huge central room and 4 wings to the north and south which, together, slept as many as 50 boys and took up the entire 3rd story of the orphanage. This is the scene of Andy Junior's earliest and scariest nightmares while he lived in the orphanage.
The sheds in this picture were the source of many of my harrowing wasp dreams. There is my dog, Nicky, next to his doghouse. Besides that, is the toolshed where I was stung the third time in my story about bees and wasps. The middle building is the shorter dilapidated shed where I got stung the next day. Further in the distance, is the barn that Tata and us boys built out of lumber, recovered from an old house that was torn down in Jackson. My brother, sister, and I spent many an afternoon pounding out and removing the rusty nails from the old lumber that was recovered. My brother and I dug out the path through the snow to get to the barn to feed and water the cows, back then.
Andy Junior, back in the earlier 1960s, when he lived in the orphanage, where his most memorable initial nightmares took fruition.
Andy Junior, as a grown man, during some of his later nightmares and useful dreams while writing his four books between 2014 and 2020.