Utopia

 

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.