Life is a Beach!

Life's a beach!

My mother was walking up the stairs of my Great Grandma Puckett Huntington's house in Galveston Island, Texas and went into labor with me. I was born at 1:30 p.m. at John Sealy Hospital on thanksgiving day November 25, 1976. My grandma worked at Bank of Galveston and my dad would carry me in my baby carrier showing me off to everyone in the bank saying “See my daughter!”. He was so proud of me and so was my mom and they nicknamed me “Love”. My mother was born in Port Isabel, Texas on August 1, 1952. Port Isabel is a small island in south Texas near South Padre Island, Texas. My mom has five sisters Margie, Irma, Minerva, Chave and Dolores and one brother Norberto Jr. My grandparents Isabel and Norberto Perez were active in their community. They were restaurant owners and the President and Vice President of the V.F.W. because my grandpa was in the navy. My grandmother was also the President of the Auxiliary and they would raise money for the V.F.W. by having dances and selling plates of BBQ. My grandmother said that they raised so much money that they could buy a new facility for the V.F.W. in Port Isabel.

My mom was beautiful and very popular in school. She played clarinet in the school band and she raised enough money to travel to Europe for one year. She also was in the marching band as a majorette and was in school parades twirling her baton. My mom later moved to Galveston with her older sister Margie and my uncle Paul where she met my dad. My dad's name is Carl Frank Johnson IIII he was born in Galveston, Texas August 29, 1950. He grew up two blocks from the beach in a house my Great Grandfather Huntington “Paw Paw”, built for my great grandmother and grandma in the 1930s with his three younger sisters Ann, Julie and Sue. My Grandma Marion Huntington (later Alderete) also grew up in the same house. My dad was a surfer and drummer in a band before he went into the Marines. When he met my mom, he was twenty-four years old and still playing drums and surfing. My mom was twenty-one working at The Galveston Daily News, a local newspaper where she started working when she was nineteen. I also grew up there with my younger sister Patricia Linda Johnson (Patsy) and my younger brother William Collis Johnson (Collie). Patsy is a year and five days younger than me and my brother William (Collie) was five years younger. We had a great childhood, my dad worked on the waves as a longshoreman so that my mom could stay at home with us. It was so much fun growing up in Galveston with my aunts, uncles and cousins. I remember going to the beach every day. It was an easy way to wear us kids out! My mom would take us crabbing and shrimping all the time, down we would walk on the pier with my sister’s Godmother Margie Perez (Comadre). We called her Comadre because my mom would speak Spanish to us all the time but we didn't always get it. So when we heard my mom calling my sister's Godmother "commodore" we started calling her that too! We loved her so much she was always making us laugh all the time. Comadre is actually a Spanish term for ``God sister” or someone who is your child's Godmother. My mom and dad would have friends and family get-togethers at our house often. They would play classic rock songs and my dad would bring home a flounder he caught at the beach with my uncles. They were good times! My sister Paty shared a room and my parents painted the walls in our room pink. Growing up there we had a lot of neighbors come and go that had children that we became friends with. My dad built a treehouse in our backyard and the neighborhood kids would come over and play all the time. My dad was pretty laid back most of the time but he did kind of raise me like I was a boy. He taught me how to swim at four years old by throwing me in the water when I wasn’t expecting it. He was also strict at discipline even though he was positive and happy most of the time we definitely never disobeyed him because we would get spanked with the “switch”. The “switch” was an old broken fishing pole he used to spank us with.

When we started school, we went to a private Lutheran school called St. John's elementary. I remember the first day of school my mom curled me and my sister’s hair and took photos of us dressed up standing outside of our house. My sister and I loved the small school atmosphere and took part in school plays. We would go to church once a week on Wednesdays and we would sing songs in the church that come from the Bible. My Grandma Marion would take us to First Lutheran Church in Galveston all the time and we would learn songs about Jesus and do arts and crafts. One of the first songs I learned was "Jesus loves the little children".

When I and my sister Patsy came home from school at first, we used to watch “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood” and “Sesame Street”. My dad told us one time that if we watched t.v. Before we did our homework he would take the TV away from us. We didn’t think he was serious, so we came home from school one day and threw our backpacks to the side to watch our usual after school shows and two men picked the TV up and walked away with it. We NEVER had a TV again, so we were like the “weird” kids in school after that.

Mt dad and I were very close. He taught me things in a rough sort of way but he called me “Love”. When I was born he went around to all the bank tellers at the Bank of Galveston where my Grandma worked carrying me in my baby carrier telling all the people in the bank “See my daughter!” When I was around four years old my dad started to teach me how to “swim”, basically he would throw me in any water that was around when I wasn’t expecting it, so I had to choose but to learn how to swim. I just remember going down under water in a pool one time and my dad talking to some lady at the side of the pool saying “she’s doing good!”. Then I remember the last time he did it we were fishing at the bayou on 61 street in Galveston with all of our cousins and him throwing me in the water this time it was salt water, and all I saw was dirty water and me going under water then seeing my dad’s feet with his white flip-flops still on after he jumped in the water to save me. Then I got out and started throwing up blood on the side of the water and all my cousins were just looking at me in horror. It was the last time he did it, then I remember being five and my dad playing the drums with me in the middle drum and my mom came home and got me out and started yelling at him. Then one time she said that I used to have curly hair then my dad cut my curls off so then I had straight hair after that. I remember one time after he took our t.v. I got straight A’s, and he bought me a purple radio. He also painted our room purple and white and put up a mirror with the trim painted purple also because purple was my favorite color. The first time he heard me sing was when i was 14 years old after being in choir for a year and taking voice lessons for a year at my first recital. It was at a church and it was the first time I ever had sang alone in front of people besides my voice lesson teacher. After he heard me sing, he said he didn’t know that I could sing like that and that he wanted me to be an opera singer. I remember my dad always sitting on the sofa reading the newspaper listening to classical music. It was the first time I heard it as a kid then I started taking piano lessons then studying classical composer’s in an honors choir and singing in six languages. He loves hearing me sing. It's funny, one time I called him and his wife Cheri and I sang him “Oh Sherry” by Journey, he was all happy. I think unless it is for a competition, I only sing from myself for therapy or to make other people happy. I just love seeing the look on their faces smiling when I sing a song to them. I started singing for my family like my sister will always ask me to sing at this place in Austin called the Common Interest where we go every year for her birthday. Then my mom asks me to sing at her and my step dad’s favorite hangout Kat’s Place. My Grandma asked me to sing at her 98th birthday party last year for her and her sister’s. It was funny they kept coming to get me saying: Who sings?”, they want you to sing Selena!”. I didn’t realize it but my Grandma Irene who I am named after used to sing also and one of my Granma Perez’s sisters used to sing. Both my parents played instruments and so did me and my sister and my cousin Angélica used to play the saxophone. My cousins Pamela, Bert, and her husband also play instruments and have bands in Austin, My other cousin Paul is a D.J. and Evie used to sing.

Around the second grade my parents argued a lot. I didn't know why but when my parents argued I started singing "Jesus loves the little children" thinking it would help because I didn't know what else to do. At a young age I would sing to help me deal with hard situations that I didn’t understand. Often the fights involved alcohol and violence. My dad would drink and throw things. One time my dad threw a mickey mouse piggy bank on the floor and the coins inside went everywhere. Then he told us, kids, to clean it up.

Mom remarried when I was around 12 or 13 we moved into a bigger house with our step dad Ken. My dad used to babysit us at night while my mom worked at the newspaper with Ken. Now that I look back I guess it's understandable why he was irritable a lot. All he really did was just sit on the sofa reading the newspaper and listening to classical music. He tried hard even though sometimes he would make the spaghetti too hard to eat or make us eat Brazil sprouts. Or sometimes he would get powdered milk. It was so gross because not only was it powdery but warm. He took us to the beach to teach us how to surf but we had to share this one big long yellow surfboard. Then I remember us growing out of our purple and white bikes and sharing a Giant yellow bike with wide handlebars that we crashed on it the first time because it was too big. I know we must have annoyed my dad because all he heard was “Dad I’m bored or dad we’re bored”. He still never got us a t.v. but he would take us to Palm Beach or to the museum in Houston and to church. I think therefore I started doing music because I didn’t have a choice. I remember getting obsessed with recording with the purple radio cassette player/radio my dad got me. I used to write songs and make my sister sing them with me. She hated me for that. Sometimes I would record and she would boo in the background on purpose to ruin the recording. We weren’t allowed to listen to regular pop radio stations only Christian music but sometimes we would sneak them in one of the first songs I remember hearing was U2 “With or without you”. Another song we made a dance to was Michael Jackson “The way you make me feel”. But my dad caught us and we got in trouble. We started recording songs from the radio on cassettes and I remember us listening to that song and it getting cut off at “I like the feeling of kin and me”. My mom used to take us to Comadre’s house all the time and we would play dress us with her step daughter Mandy. That was our age and we would learn oldie songs Comadre would teach us like from the 50s. We used to make up dances and do performances and sometimes have dance contests at birthday parties and BBQ’s. Angelica, our cousin, my sister Patsy and I danced to “Venus” by Bananarama, that is the last one I remember.

We lived in my Uncle Paul and Aunt Margie’s house they had on Ave 54 for a little while before my mom married Ken and my dad babysat us at night.My sister; I listened to New Kids on the Block. My mom would travel with us to Houston often to visit her cousin Lupita and her husband Carl. We would hang out with our cousins Evie and Nicole a lot and we would go to New Kids on the Block concert.I remember my mom would take us to a water park called Fame City, we would go to the mall then the water park afterward. Inside the mall there was a place where you could pick a popular song and sing to the background music while it recorded it onto a cassette tape. I remember my cousin Evie used to love to sing and made many recordings. It inspired me to see her sing, and I recorded a song. “The wind beneath my wings” by Bette Midler was a beautiful song challenging to sing but I think I did a good job because my cousin Evie said she liked it. We went everywhere when we were kids. We saw New Kids on the Block with Tiffany in concert at AstroWorld. It was so much fun! I miss those days! We would also hang out with our other cousins Jessica and Jason who were my mom's cousin Emma's kids. Emma was a hairdresser and married to Howard who was a singer and keyboard player. He would play this giant keyboard and it was so awesome! Grandma Johnson re married Malcolm,,,, and they had a house in Galveston that was beautiful, I believe it was on Avenue R. Malcolm was a veteran he talked about being captured one time from I believe Japanese and being hung by his thumbs and needles put under his nails. They had a dog named Mugsy and Great Grandma Huntington had a red dog. The Cocker spaniel was cute, I remember seeing him on holiday’s and at Grandma Huntington’s house. Paw Paw Huntington died when I was three years old but my mom, dad, Grandma and Aunts Ann, Sue and Julie always asked me and my sister “Do you remember Paw Paw?”. I always said “No” but the last time I saw my dad and he asked me I said :Yes”, not because I vividly remember visually seeing him but because since then I have seen many photos and research on PAw PAw. His name was Collis Power's Hunington he was born in Galveston on August 16, 1902 , his father, Charles was 37 and his mother Helen, was 27. He had one daughter with Maud Louise Puckett, Marion (Grandma) in 1929 in Galveston. He built the house we grew up in for Great Grandma and Grandma in 1932 and he used to drive tug boats. He was a boat Captain and he had a plaque at Grandma;s house, now at Aunt Julie’s, that he was the first man to cross the equator in a boat. Paw Paw’s dad, Charles, was born in New York on May 26, 1865 and he married Helen Amelia Heinsohn in 1900 in Galveston, Texas. 1874. Her father Fredrick Heinsohn was born in Germany he married Augusta Ohring who was also born in Germany

Charles’s father Eli Allen Hunington M.D. was born on June 4, 1827 in Burlington, New York his father Eli was 27 and his mother, Aurelia was 22. Helen was born in Galveston October 21, 1874, she was the only child of Fredrick Heinsohn and Augusta Ohring who were born in Germany but I could not find out when or where or when they came to Texas.

When I was in 5th grade, I did a science project in which I won an award. The project was me experimenting with various fabrics and dye. I made a board with different fabrics where I experimented to see which ones would absorb dye the best. I also took part in my first protest when my teacher was upset because there was asbestos inside the ceiling and the school did not want to take it out so our class would walk around the halls wearing white surgical masks.

When I was in the 6th grade me and my sister were in the band and she played the flute and I played the clarinet. I remember loving the art class and getting my first boyfriend Daniel. It was funny because my step dad and mom, sister and brother would pick him up at his parents and we would go to the roller skating rink. Then my sister started "dating" his little brother Javier. I also remember my first kiss at a party, my friend, Amanda's parents had every so often.

In the 7th grade I met my best friend Jennifer in French class. I remember my mom being upset because she wanted me to take Spanish instead. But I took a French class and remembered my teacher being thrilled. I also met many other friends and experienced a lot of drama and fights being that it was in a bad area. My first incident was with a girl in the cafeteria who pulled a chair from out from under me when I attempted to sit down. When I got another chair and sat down my friend Naomi said that I better do something or they would keep doing it.

The following year in the 8th grade I remember seeing the choir singing one day while I was walking by their classroom. I remembered how as a child I always wanted to sing but at that point I had missed the audition date for that year. The next incident I ran into was with another girl in the hallway telling me to give her my lunch money. I told her "I will do this once but don't ask again". She never did again. I also went to my first prom that year with Jennifer at the Opera house, it was so cool. Both years 7th and 8th we would walk to school every morning and evening. I remember walking home and another girl trying to fight me and I just ignored her.

The next year was high school, and I tried out for the symphonic choral. I made it and I was so happy I could actually really sing. My grandmother started paying for my voice lessons and soon I was in the honors choir and studied musical classic composers and writing essays on them. It was marvelous. I also started writing poetry a lot and drawing a lot. My first essay was on Elvis Presley and how I wanted to marry an Italian man one day.

When I was in 9th grade, my mom refused to go to my first voice lesson recital for reasons I can't remember. It was heartbreaking to me but I sang, anyway. My sister and her boyfriend showed up and eventually my dad. I had been working all year to improve my singing voice. I sang two songs in a church in front of an audience for the first time. I remember the other members of the choir giving me compliments afterward because I had improved so much. When I first started singing, I was very shy but slowly gained confidence as I continued to practice and take voice lessons.

I ended up getting told by my mom to move to my dad's house because I went to a party when my mom said no. She never let us go ANYWHERE. I ended up moving in with my friend Jennifer at the beginning of the 10th grade. Things had gotten too crazy for me at that point with my dad when he tore down my James Dean and Elvis posters and broke my Cure tapes. I don't know what his deal was anymore but my friend Jennifer (my best friend) lived across the alley and I was always over there anyway her mom Kay became like my other mom I loved being with them. When I was a sophomore I moved in with Jennifer we met in middle school in French class. We started hanging out more after she moved in behind my Dad's house. Her mom was a single mom with a two-year-old daughter named Kori. She was in college and worked at the University of Texas medical branch in Galveston.

We would help her babysit when she went to school and as long as we went to school and did well we could do what we wanted within reason. She was cool; she let us take her car all the time to school. By that time I was in the honors choir and honors English. I made straight A's and so did Jennifer and soon I got a job at Marble Slab, an ice cream place near the beach. My second job was at Chalmers Hardware where I worked throughout high school and got my first car a red small four-door. When I was 16, I met my first boyfriend Robert Lee. He was a senior, and I was a sophomore and then the following year he graduated and I was in 11th grade. Jennifer Kay and Kori moved across the ferry to Port Bolivar. It was a huge house right by the water. We would have parties in the summer and invite our friends over. Eventually, I had to tell my dad I had a boyfriend, and he said it was okay as long as he went to the church! Anyway, he went to church with us regularly.

He embraced it very well, and we also played music. He played guitar and so did I.

I had a dark time briefly after we moved to Port Bolivar at sixteen because I had memories of being molested. When I was four years old, my parents had a get together with some of their friends. I went to sleep and woke up in the middle of the night to a man molesting me. I woke up the next morning feeling strange and I walked into the living room to see the man talking to my parents. I just looked at him and said “I hate you”. My mom came up to me and took me to the other room to ask me what was wrong. I tried to explain to her what had happened the best I could, and she said that everyone was drinking the night before. I don’t think she really understood what I was saying now that I look back on it because I was so little. I remember that after that I felt very sad a lot and wouldn’t smile in pictures. I also became silent and introverted. I believe it was the beginning of my insecurity that continued to follow me throughout my life. I believe I had pushed the incident out of my mind until then and started having memories of it again. I called my mom and dad and kept asking who the man was that was there that day but neither one of them knew what I was talking about. Later that there was a man everyone called “Blue” who had been a friend of my dad’s who had molested his daughter and was in jail.

At the end of the school year I went on tour with the choir but needed four hundred dollars to go on the trip. Kay helped me raise the money we would get up at five in the morning to catch the ferry to the hospital where she worked. We would make breakfast burritos and go to the hospital during shift change and sell them to all the nurses. It was awesome I eventually made the money and went to Orlando Florida where I competed in solo and ensemble contests. I can't remember what songs I sang but I know one was an Italian song and one was a Latin song. I had a blast with my two friends and we got to go to Universal Studios and Disney World. It was so cool! I got all 1's points in heaven for grandma I love you!

In my senior year in 1995 Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam was always playing on the radio. It was a time called the Grunge era. I was secretary of the choir this year. It was a strange year at first for me. Robert and I broke up and the school principal wanted me to go to summer school for missing too much school. They had given me the option to take classes after school but I stopped going because my male teachers were always hitting on me. Two weeks before graduation, even though I had straight A's, I dropped out, got a GED and started going to college. I studied music, guitar and voice lessons. I also started singing in a coffee shop called the Acoustic Cafe. I would play guitar and sing for my friend Kenna and her boyfriend who worked at Gaido's favorite restaurant in Galveston Texas. Kenna was the granddaughter of Loretta, my Grandma's best friend she grew up with. Kenna, her mother and father had moved into our old house from California. Kenna said to Brian her boyfriend one day in front of me "We should set up Irene with Nic".