Utopia
We are
living in intense times. Perhaps this
story from my childhood will lighten things up just a bit. It was a time when America was great. America has always been great for some
people. The quest has always been to
make it great for as many people as possible.
And yes I put 2 spaces after sentences.
I’m old. It’s the way I
roll. Kick back for a little while.
While growing up I was blessed with
having two sets of grandparents who lived in the same small town in Missouri
and whom my parents took us to visit often.
It was typical of small-town America then. An incredible number of churches. Big wide streets. White houses on big lots. Picket fences.
Big gardens. Alley ways. There were 3 gas stations, a Co-op, 3 grocery
stores, a drug store, a pool hall and a thriving downtown business community. (All of that’s gone now. There’s a convenience store/gas station at
the edge of town.)
One set of my grandparents lived on
a street paralleling the main street, separated by an alley. Grandma Thomas had guinea chickens. When I went to the store with my grandmother we
went in through the unlocked door on the alley, through the storeroom and into
the main part of the store. An unlocked
back door to a business. Can you imagine?
My Pence grandparents lived out at
the edge of town close to fields and forest that we would hunt in. They had indoor plumbing but no indoor
bathroom. They had not one but two
outhouses, one of which was a two-holer.
Nothing quite like taking a shit next to someone. Baths were taken in a washtub in the kitchen. In later years they did get an indoor
bathroom. They had ducks and chickens
for a while. There were several outbuildings. A work shed for Granddad pence. A coal shed.
A wash house. Their home was
heated by coal in the winter.
After the war my dad moved our
family to a much bigger city in Kansas where he had found work at a defense
plant. We traveled back to our hometown throughout
the year every couple of weeks back then but summers were special. One joyous summer in particular I remember.
I was, after much cajoling, left
there alone, without my brother (my younger brother wasn’t born yet), for an
extended visit. Naturally there was a friendly rivalry between the grandparents
for the attention of grandchildren.
Being a somewhat opportunistic eight-year-old, I was prepared to take
full advantage of it. I quickly had
those oldsters in the palm of my hand. What
a summer I had!
It was on the second day my stay I
realized that none of these people cared whether I took a bath or not—so I
didn’t. After that revelation I quickly
reverted to my natural primal state.
Animal boy.
My grandparents lived about a mile
apart, and in between were gardens full of beautiful flowers. I would ask for flower picking rights from the
owners. Telling the woman of the house
that I wanted to pick flowers for my grandmothers was a definite winner. There were lots of wildflowers to choose from
as well.
I would start my day at Granddad
and Grandmother Pence’s, where I slept, with a great breakfast featuring large
quantities of her homemade jelly. Then I
would stroll over to my Thomas grandparents’ house, taking time to pick a
lovely bouquet of flowers along the way, and arrive just in time for my second
breakfast of the day. I suspect that no
matter what time I arrived I would have been “just in time.”
Grandmother Thomas got milk from my
aunt and uncle’s farm, delivered by my aunt in big glass jars, waxed paper
sticking out from underneath their lids to seal them. Real unpasteurized milk with a thick layer of
cream on top. Some mornings I liked to
get a big bowl, the likes of which would hold a salad for a family of four,
fill it with Corn Flakes and pour pure cream over it. Other times Grandmother Thomas would fix
homemade biscuits and gravy. My god that
woman could make good biscuits and gravy!
It was always fun watching her
light the oven. The gas stove was kind
of blinky so she would just turn the gas on for a bit, throw in a lighted match
and quickly shut the oven door. Usually
there was a nice explosion. Sometimes it
would even blow the oven door back open.
Great fun for me. Routine for Grandma. She lived to be 96. Go figure.
In later years after Granddad had
passed she finally moved into a little fourplex apartment that the state had
built. Of course I still kept up my
visits. Sometimes when I was there for a
visit, I would notice the smoke detector all busted up hanging from the ceiling. She was still cooking for herself and when
she heated up the oven sometimes she would forget that something was in
there. It would smoke and set off the alarm
and the only way that she knew to turn it off was to swat it with a broom until
it stopped. She eventually moved in with
a widowed daughter that lived in another small town not too far away. But I digress.
After breakfast I would keep
Grandmother Thomas busy playing an “Authors of the bible” card game. While we played, I would tell her jokes I had
overheard uptown from the domino players at the pool hall. Yes, I was underage and had absolutely no
business being in there. (In later years
the church ladies were finally successful in getting it shut down. Might have had something to do with letting
underage children drink beer out of schooners that were sitting on the edge of
pool tables.)
Another digression…When we visited Dad
and Granddad would take the grandkid for a walk. A picture of the 3 of us walking down the
street, me between them, with Granddad smoking his pipe while holding the hand
of his sweet cherubic grandson, would have made a great Norman Rockwell picture.
We went straight to the pool
hall. Granddad would play dominoes while
Dad shot pool. Dad would have a schooner
of beer beside him. I would stand
looking at that beautiful golden orb with the bubbles still floating to the top
joining that gorgeous layer of white foam.
Dad would let me take a sip. Just
one. I would usually get candy on the
way home along with an admonishment NOT to mention where we had been. My lips were sealed. I wasn’t about to spoil that sweet setup.
I overheard some doozies of stories
too because I mastered the art of being there without being there. Usually I knew which key words to leave out
when repeating a joke to grandma but sometimes when they were unfamiliar, I
would tell the joke anyway. If it evoked
an “Oh my!” from my very religious grandmother I filed that word away for
future use.
Anyway, back to my account of my
days. After I had kept her away from her
chores long enough, Grandmother would shoo me to Granddad Thomas (about whom
more later). He would be reading the
morning paper. When it was time for
lunch, I would eat first at Grandmother Thomas’ and then repeat the flower
trick in reverse. I managed to pack in 4
to 6 meals a day this way not counting snacks.
(There were days that I just couldn’t keep up with the grind.)
With Granddad Thomas I mastered the
Zen art of staring without moving for interminable lengths of time unless the
situation required fidgeting or being too helpful. Then when Granddad Thomas had enough distraction,
he would invariably give me a dollar to go uptown and buy comic books. They were 10 cents apiece (can you believe
it?) at the Francis Jones Drug Store.
Flash! The Green Lantern! Superman! I would spend the dollar on comic books,
carefully counting and digging every last coin out of my pocket while Francis
watched.
Francis would let me make several
transactions so I could avoid tax that kicked in at thirty cents. After my purchases were complete, I would glance
wistfully at the soda fountain. Nine times out of 10 Francis would treat me to
a Cherry Coke in a real Coca-Cola glass; after all, I was one of his best
customers.
Replete, I would beat feet over to
my Granddad Pence, a comic book strategically stuck in the back pocket of my
jeans. In the afternoon I generally
found Granddad in one of the sheds around their house or in the garden. I helped him plow that garden with a hand
plow. I would also climb their cherry
tree like a monkey when it was time to pick cherries and then would sit with
grandma and remove the pits. Homemade
cherry pie!
I wouldn’t have to fiddle around
for very long before the comic book would catch Granddad’s eye. He’d usually ask me if I wanted some candy or
peanuts and then give me some money. Typically
he would discover that he needed some small item, like nails, from the Hardware
store on Main Street and tell me that I could have any leftover change.
Then it was time to scoot back to
town for nickel bags of peanuts or a couple of Baby Ruth candy bars. I loved drinking a little Coke and then
pouring peanuts in the bottle. A delectable
mix to drink and chew! I also loved Baby
Ruth candy bars. There had been a rumor
once that they had worms in them so naturally, they became my candy bar of
choice.
I would often sit beside Granddad
Pence for hours in one of those green metal lawn chairs and we would pull the
legs and wings off sweat bees. Sometimes
we would pull the legs and wings on one side off and then watch them go around
in circles. If you pulled off all their legs,
they would just kind of buzz around on top of the matching green metal table in
front of us. A tad sadistic I know. But there wasn’t any cable TV in those days
so we had to provide our own entertainment.
To the best of my knowledge there were no serial killers in the family.
Granddad Pence had a dislike of
cats because they ate his birds. For a bird house he had an old coffee pot
wedged in the fork of a tree and one fiery summer morning we walked out onto
the porch to go and work in the garden and caught a cat with his paw in that
old coffee pot, telltale feathers still clinging to his mouth.
The next few minutes were pretty
intense: the cat was down and making for
the fence, Granddad ran into the house for his 410 shotgun and was back out at
a dead run, me at his heels. The cat was
really stretching them out—the fence, with its cover of brush, was
tantalizingly close. Still running,
Granddad snapped off a shot and rolled the hapless cat right up to the fence.
I have a feeling that what happened
next wasn’t Granddad’s usual ceremony for a fallen foe, but he had me fetch a
shovel and we buried the cat right where he dropped it with the 410. As we put the last shovelful of dirt on top,
Granddad Pence reached up, took off his hat (that didn’t happen often, so I
knew something heavy was going on) and spoke these words over the cat: “You ate my birds and I killed you.” He put his hat back on and that was that. Goodbye Mr. Cat.
I was enjoying myself so much that
summer that I wrote a letter to my folks telling them what a great time I was
having. Big mistake. When they got the letter, my dad decided he
missed me so much they came down the next weekend to get me. I couldn’t believe it—hoist with my own
petard. It was then that I learned the
power of the pen or in this case pencil and block printing.
When my folks showed up, I was out
playing in the yard at Grandma and Granddad Pence’s and ran my crusty self
right up to them. I swear their noses
wrinkled up when I was 10 feet away from them.
My dad said, “GET IN THE CAR!” He
was not happy. Not happy at all.
There was a quick exchange of words
between him and Mom and then Dad got back in the car while she went up to the
door to talk with her mom and dad. I
couldn’t overhear the conversation but even from a distance I could tell it
wasn’t good. There was a lot of gesturing
and pointing in my direction on my mom’s part and head hanging on theirs before
she headed back to the car. They did not
go inside to visit. They didn’t even get
my stuff!
Then they headed over to Granddad
and Grandma Thomas’ house. Just my dad
went up to the door. Once again there
was gesturing and pointing in my direction and head hanging from the grandparents. No going inside. This was not good. Not good at all.
They drove back home with me in the
backseat and all the windows rolled down.
Periodically dad would ask me if I had been to a particular
location. Drug store? Me:
“yes.” Dad: “Oh my god” muttered under his breath
accompanied by head shaking back and forth.
This was repeated after every subsequent question. Hardware store? Yes.
Gas station? Yes. Other gas station? Yes.
Pool hall? Yes. Church?
Yes. I mean really, Dad! Grandma always took me to church! Did I happen to see so and so? Yes.
How about this person? Yes. How about that person? Yes. The
grilling went on and on. Frankly it was
getting a little monotonous. I didn’t say
that out loud.
Animal boy had pretty much covered
the entire town and even a couple of places out of town in the few weeks that I
had been there and Dad knew everybody.
There didn’t seem to be any place that I hadn’t brought shame down upon
our entire family for generations to come.
A witness protection program would have been useful.
Back then it was a 4-hour and some
change trip to my grandparents’ hometown.
It seemed longer. (When we
arrived at night Dad would always announce when we got close enough that it was
time to look for the tower. The tower
being a grain elevator with a red light on top.)
When we got home, I was marched
straight to the bathroom and forced to take a bath. It was all the more
humiliating punishment because Dad and Mom gave me the bath. I can remember standing in the tub and
watching the dirt swirling around my feet as they hosed me off in the
shower. Not kidding. I was that crusty. The bath removed a lot of what I thought was
tan. A little bit of a downer.
Then my mom uttered “Homer, he’s
got a rash!”
“Of course he’s got a rash! He hasn’t had a bath in a couple of
weeks! He’s filthy!”
And then I heard the words from my
mom that saved my sorry little crusty ass,
“He’s got the measles.” German
measles was going around then. Yay
me! Yeah, I was sick BUT my recent
Animal Boy transgressions were laid off to the side due to parental
concern. In other words, I was home
free. I got to stay out of school and
sleep a lot in a darkened room.
I didn’t understand why they were
mad at me anyway. I was under adult
supervision the entire time and was obviously the victim in this drama.
My summer had held life, death,
disease (but no famine, needless to say) and I had learned some valuable life
lessons that would serve me well in the years to come. Like, maybe take a bath once in a while.
