It All Started with Bill and Ginny

Of course, every crazy family has to start somewhere.

Ours started with Bill and Ginny.

They met on a blind date.

Dad was quiet and passive. Mom was the life of the party—a little crazy and a great storyteller.

After their third date, Mom started calling Dad “Wallet.”

Dad couldn’t figure it out.

Did she think he had money? Came from money?

Finally, after several weeks, he asked:

“Why do you keep calling me Wallet?”

Mom stared at him.

“How could a family with the last name Fold name their son Bill?”

There was only one problem.

His last name was Voll.

Didn’t matter.

For the next 60-plus years, every card Mom gave Dad was signed:

Wallet.

The Drake Hotel

Mom and Dad didn’t exactly master the Catholic rhythm method.

Nancy was conceived on their honeymoon, and the rest of us started arriving one after another.

Years later, we asked Mom:

“How did you end up with 11 kids?”

She explained.

“After Nancy was born, I had three months of no sleep, diapers and baby food. I needed a break.

“So Dad and I would go to the Drake Hotel in Chicago for the weekend.

“And every time I came home from the Drake, I was pregnant.”

Apparently the Drake had an exceptionally effective turn-down service.

Years later, we actually went back to the Drake bar for a conception celebration.

And every Father’s Day we’d tell Dad:

“Thank God you didn’t take piano lessons—or none of us would be here.”

Then Came Nancy

Nancy was the oldest.

And apparently responsible for training the rest of us.

At seven years old, she taught her younger siblings how to fill empty bleach bottles with water, add dry ice, screw on the caps, run—

and watch them explode.

At the next parent-teacher conference, the nun told Mom:

“Nancy is a wonderful student. Very well behaved. But she has the wildest imagination.”

Apparently the class had been asked what exciting things they’d done over summer vacation.

Nancy answered:

“I taught my brothers and sisters how to blow up bleach bottles.”

It wasn’t imagination.

Nancy Finds Religion

Nancy also took her Catholic education seriously.

She’d been taught Catholicism was the road to Heaven, so she worried about our Jewish neighbors, the Altmans.

She brought them cookies because, as she explained:

“They’re not going to make the bus.”

Then came Good Friday.

Nancy had us build a wooden cross and plant it in the backyard.

Next she recruited Kim, our seven-year-old Protestant neighbor.

She stripped him down to his shorts, tied him to the cross and smeared ketchup across his stomach.

And who had a perfect view of the Crucifixion?

The Jewish neighbors we’d just given cookies to.

The Backyard Funeral Home

Nancy also conducted funerals.

Lots of funerals.

Dogs. Cats. Birds. Chipmunks. Turtles. Goldfish. Guinea pigs.

Even an alligator.

Shoeboxes became caskets. We became mourners.

Nancy conducted full funeral Masses wearing a bedsheet for vestments, drinking grape juice from a wineglass and distributing Wonder Bread communion.

By the time we eventually sold the house, the backyard had so many graves it practically needed its own cemetery map.

We had to resod the whole thing.

And remember—

Nancy was only the first of eleven.