Of Lard Sandwiches and Licensing Parents

The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls

Here's a sad observation: if prospective parents had to pass a qualifying test to have children, as they must do to get a driver's license, there'd be a lot more childless people among us. In one specific case I can think of, the book The Glass Castle would never have been written, because no one in his right mind would have allowed Rex and Rose Mary Walls to breed. But breed they did, not just once but four times – and second-eldest daughter Jeannette (freelance writer and one-time commentator on MSNBC) has captured a strange and sorrowful childhood within the pages of her memoir.

We'll begin by calling a spade a spade: Rex Walls, Jeannette's father, was a pure-D drunk. The dashing black-haired Air Force vet may have been a mechanical genius who could fix anything he saw in the pre-microchip days, but he also never met a bottle he didn't like. He had great dreams, dreams of striking it rich and building the titular glass castle so his wife and children might live in luxury. Mother Rose Mary Walls had her own dreams: trained as a teacher, she fancied herself the next great artist (or next great novelist; she wasn't choosy), and thus put all her parenting (and working) energy into her "career." From all appearances she suffered from a bipolar disorder, preferring "suffering for her art" to the daily drudgery of working to feed her children. There may have never few people more ill-suited to parenthood than the Wallses, and yet they produced four children: an artist, a writer, a policeman, and a third daughter who apparently inherited her mother's disorder. The Glass Castle documents growing up poor in America in a manner that touches us all. 

With almost clinical detachment, Jeannette Walls recounts details of what little childhood she had. We witness the Walls family's frequent "skedaddles" from rickety shacks just ahead of a visit by a sheriff's deputy bearing eviction papers; hours before the arrival of the bill collector. We're there watching when the rail-thin Walls children rummage through trash cans at school looking for food because there was nothing to eat at home. A poignant moment comes when thirteen-year-old Jeannette asks a classmate's father what the little box on the wall of the living room was for: she didn't know what a thermostat was. 

We watch as Rex Walls disappears for several days, usually returning home in an alcohol-fueled rage to smash dishes and destroy what few sticks of furniture remain in their latest squat. We watch as Rose Mary steals and hides food from her own children, gorging on chocolate bars as the kids choke down lard sandwiches. Even though the family had a small but steady source of income – oil royalties from Rose Mary's family land in Texas – they never seem to have enough money for proper shelter, food, or clothing. They do, however, always have seem to have enough money for Dad's beer and cigarettes and to feed Mom's endless hunger for art supplies. And while Dad hoists a few in the local watering hole, while Mom stacks her oils six deep around the walls of the shack they call home, daughter Jeannette draws black spots on her legs in magic marker in hopes that the holes in her pants won't show. In the '70s, the family of four lived in a 300-square foot house without electricity, running water, or indoor plumbing; heated by a coal stove that also served to cook an occasional meal – assuming they had food to eat. Abe Lincoln probably lived in less primitive conditions. 

And when the kids found a two-carat diamond ring one day? Instead of selling it for food, Rose Mary Walls decided to keep it to wear because she needed to "feel good about herself" more than she needed food. Yep, that licensing idea is looking really good right about now... 

Jeannette Walls's reportorial background rings clear in the pages of The Glass Castle. Refusing to strike a maudlin tone, eschewing preachments about poverty and charity, Walls instead reports the facts of her bizarre childhood in clean, straightforward prose. She hints at her own streak of pyromania, admits petty crimes, lays bare details of foraging through dumpsters and trash cans in hopes of finding a discarded sandwich with only one bite out of it. She also describes the good times; days when Daddy brought home four bags of groceries; afternoons when she and Daddy hiked the desert; times when she and her siblings united as a family. 

As much as The Glass Castle depicts true poverty, as much as it demonstrates the complete unsuitability of some people as parents; the true purpose of this compelling tale is to remind us that no one is doomed by the accident of his or her birth. The Walls children - most of them - escaped from their parents one after the other, emerging from a childhood that in retrospect seems horrific. They came out of adolescence productive members of society: Horatio Alger has nothing on Jeanette Walls. 

Summary

PLUS: a straightforward memoir that refuses to become maudlin

MINUS: none

WHAT THEY'RE SAYING: Don't miss Jeannette Walls's compelling memoir of growing up on the edge of homelessness.

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