Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl (16 page)

“Get out of the way, I want to see,” I said, elbowing Sue away.

“Stop it or I’ll tell,” Sue elbowed back. “I want to see, too.”

“I wonder if he’ll come here next?” Sue asked, breathless.

“He has to,” I responded. “It only makes sense. Why would he go anywhere else before coming here?”

We strained our necks and our eyes watching the dark sky. We did not even blink. When a half-hour had passed and we’d seen nary a reindeer, Jane called Jeannie back.

“We’ve been watching ever since you called,” she said. “We didn’t see anything.”

And Santa was already gone.

This was a puzzle. Santa never came to our house on Christmas Eve. Santa always came to our house early on Christmas morning, before we got up. It had never happened any other way. But there we were, with proof that Santa had been right across the highway, right at that very minute. We had to be able to see him. He had to come to our house next. And yet he didn’t come to our house. And we didn’t see him.

We pulled ourselves away from the windows.

“I’m sure you just looked away at the moment he flew away,” Mom said, herding us back into the living room.

“I can’t believe we missed him. How could he get away so fast?” I slumped on the couch.

“Santa can do just about anything he wants to,” Mom responded with irrefutable logic.

“But why wouldn’t he come here next if he was right across the road?” I persisted.

“I’m sure he has a system worked out. Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll get back here sometime tonight. Now let’s open our presents,” Mom turned to the tree. “And you have to get your stockings ready before it’s bed time.”

I thought about Larry’s comments at school, but I did not bring it up. I just couldn’t.

It didn’t take long to open presents even though we did it systematically. Only one person opened a gift at a time and everyone watched them do it, unless we were pretty sure we were all getting the same thing. Like a bowl of chocolate oatmeal cookies.

Before we went to bed, we arranged everything to be ready for Santa to come. We each had a big red flannel stocking with our name written on it in black magic marker. We dragged the kitchen chairs into the living room and hung our stockings from knobs on the backs of these chairs. We made sure there was plenty of room around each chair and that our name on the stocking was in plain sight so Santa would not be confused.

We fixed a plate of sugar cookies topped with red and green sugar crystals (Santa’s favorite, Mom assured us) and a glass of milk and left these beside a stack of carrots on the kitchen table. We also left a note: “Dear Santa: These cookies and the milk are for you. The carrots are for the reindeer. Thank you for all the presents. Love, Jane, Carol, Sue.”

“You better get to bed now,” Mom urged. “Santa won’t come if you don’t.”

We kissed Dad good night and Mom tucked us into bed. Jane had her own room. Sue and I slept together in another bedroom.

“When do you think Santa will come?” I whispered to Sue.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to stay awake.” We said this every year.

“Do you think he’ll be able to get down the chimney?” I asked. We went to the basement every year to talk through the logistics of this feat. There was just no denying that we had a very skinny chimney with an even smaller clean-out door. We agreed that the chimney was too small for anyone to get down, let alone someone with Santa’s girth, and even if someone came down, they’d land in the wood-burning furnace and burn up. If he came down the chimney, it had to be magic.

“He must come in the doors,” I reasoned.

“How does he get down off the roof where the reindeer land?” Sue asked. We knew for a fact he landed the sleigh on the roof because one year it snowed on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day Dad showed us Santa’s footprints in the snow on the roof.

We continued to talk through Santa logistics until Dad growled, “Quiet down in there,” from the living room where he and Mom were watching the news before they went to bed. We giggled.

“Santa won’t come if you’re still awake.” Mom’s more gentle voice drifted in on the heels of Dad’s growl.

Pulling the blankets up over our heads, we agreed to be quiet for two minutes. In two minutes it was morning. Almost morning. It was dark when Sue poked me in the shoulder.

“I’m going to go see if Santa has been here,” she whispered and slipped out of bed. Within seconds of creeping down the hall to the living room she came tearing back and jumped on the bed. “He’s been here, he’s been here! Get up. Let’s open presents.”

In a flash we were both up and we went to get Jane. We tore back down the hall, past Mom and Dad’s room. We didn’t know how early it must really have been. Dad was always up at 4 a.m. to start the milking chores yet he was still in bed.

I crept in and tapped Dad’s shoulder, “Santa’s been here. We’re going to open presents,” I whispered.

Dad groaned, rolled over, woke Mom and they followed us into the living room. Mom plugged in the lights on the tree and we opened presents in the glow of red, green, yellow and blue bubble-light candles. One white light glowed from the tin foil covered cardboard star at the very top.

I headed straight for the chair where my big red stocking bulged with little toys, candy and an orange. I would also check way down in the toe of the stocking, something we all did ever since the year we almost missed finding rings in the very toe tips. This year, however, I bypassed all that and sank right to the floor in happy bliss.

There was Trigger, just as I saw him in the Christmas catalog, just as he existed in my dreams. Roy Rogers was in the saddle holding the reins in one hand while he waved his other hand. Santa Claus came through again.

On New Year’s Eve—the one night of the year we were allowed to stay up until midnight—Zidlickys came to our house to visit. Our parents played cards. Meanwhile, their kids—Jolynn and Paul—joined us roaming from basement to attic. In the course of the evening, we feasted on oyster stew and Norwegian foods like lutefisk and lefse. Sharing our new toys from Christmas was the highlight.

“Look what Santa brought me,” I gloated as I showed Paul my Roy Rogers and Trigger.

“There isn’t any Santa,” Paul stated, the sound of his voice blunt and hard on my ears.

Staring back at Paul’s pale blue eyes, I wanted nothing more than to slap his fat face. “Is too,” I said, but tears sprang up in my eyes and I turned my back to Paul so he wouldn’t see.

Something in the way he said it, something in my mind that couldn’t reconcile Santa at a neighbor’s on Christmas Eve but not at our house until Christmas morning, something in the mounting number of kids who kept saying Santa wasn’t real, sent me to Mom a few days later.

“Mom, Paul says there’s no Santa,” I said, my lower lip quivering, as I looked up at her standing by the stove. “There is, isn’t there?”

She looked at me and hesitated. “Let’s go in the bedroom,” she said at last, wiping her hands on her apron.

Mom led me into her bedroom, closed the door, and came to sit beside me on the bed. The morning sun glared off the snow and through the window, illuminating dust particles that floated in the air and landed on the maple dresser. Mom was quiet, too quiet, I thought, when she said, “Honey, Santa is very important to all of us.”

“But he is real, right?” I pushed. I looked up at her, maybe already knowing the answer, but I had to make her say it anyway.

“Honey, Santa teaches us about getting presents and giving them.”

I listened as Mom talked. She never answered my question. In that moment, I felt old and silly. I wanted Santa to be real and the tears streamed down my cheeks.

“What about the Easter Bunny?” I asked. I did not hear what she said. I expect I didn’t need to. No one past the age of four could really believe rabbits deliver eggs. I enjoyed Easter morning with the basket and hunting for chocolate eggs, but this one I supposed I could shrug off.

“The tooth fairy?” I asked at last, swallowing the hard reality even before she confirmed the suspicion. When she nodded again, I sat there, shoulders hunched, tears wet on my cheeks. Mom kept her arm tight around my shoulders and didn’t say anything else.

I thought about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy. I thought about the last tooth Dad pulled for me. He and I were the only ones to know about that. No one else knew when I snuck that tooth under my pillow. It was a secret . . .

Then I realized that Dad was in on this, too, and I felt even sillier. Of course, Dad would talk to Mom. It was, however, the first time I realized Mom and Dad were in cahoots, that the secrets I thought I had just with Dad maybe weren’t.

“Carol,” Mom broke into my painful reverie, “it’s important for children to believe in Santa. You enjoyed this for a long time. Now you are old enough to help little ones like Sue have dreams.”

Just like that I jumped across a chasm from one world into another. It was all as brilliantly and painfully clear as the morning sun reflecting off the fresh January snow. I squinted against the sun and rocked back and forth in this new, unwelcome knowledge. At that moment, Larry pushed his way back into my mind. I could see plain as day all of us kids standing around our teacher’s desk. I remembered how I’d felt having Miss Fowler support me about Santa, and how angry and confused and maybe even hurt Larry had looked. And here he was right and I was wrong. I didn’t know what I’d say to him now.

Mom gave me a hug, kissed me on the forehead, and left the bedroom, closing the door behind her. I sat on the edge of the bed and then tipped over, curling into a tight ball, giving myself over to crying for dreams I could never get back.

In live theater, they call it “the willing suspension of disbelief,” the ability of the audience to accept that for the duration of the play, what happens up on the stage is real. Looking back, I am mildly embarrassed to admit that I willingly suspended disbelief for nearly 12 years, an unbelievably long time for a child to believe in the Triple Crown of childhood fantasies.

It speaks to the times, though, and the place. The middle of the 20th century, a farm in rural Iowa. A time and a place where a child could just go on believing.

Making Hay

The sun was a glare, the July air dripping with humidity so heavy even the flies thought twice about moving off the window screens when Dad and the hired men came in from the field and retreated to the cool dark of the basement to wash up before dinner. I finished setting the table and followed the men downstairs. Sure enough, Dad had opened the basement fridge and pulled out cold bottles of Schlitz. The bottles sweated cold beads of moisture in the hands of the men who were still sweating themselves. As each one took turns washing up at the small sink, scrubbing sweat and hay dust off with the coarse bar of Lava, the others sat, welcoming the break from the blazing sun of the open fields.

I sidled up to Dad. “Can I have a sip?” I whispered.

“She can hear a bottle of beer open from the Back 40,” he laughed, and I felt a ripple of pleasure as he looked at the men and handed me his bottle.

I tipped a little of the bitter gold liquid into my mouth and handed the bottle back to him. One sip was all I wanted. One sip brought me into the circle of the men. If I couldn’t actually work with the men, I could soak in their talk. I could pretend. I could dream. I leaned against Dad’s leg, listening as the men talked about haying—how many loads they’d put up this morning, how far they figured they’d get in the afternoon.

When it was time to make hay, Dad headed to the field with the hired men as soon as the dew dried. As long as the weather was good, they didn’t leave the fields except to come in for dinner. The men radiated the aura of strength and power in their work. I hung around them soaking in that strength though I was, according to Dad, too young and ‘too light in the poop’ to do more than help Mom with meals.

While the men made hay, the kitchen filled with the sounds of ladles banged against pans and silverware clattering as Mom prepared the noon meal. Each night, Mom selected a roast for the next day’s meal from the freezer and set it out to thaw. After we downed a breakfast that included fried eggs, bacon and fried potatoes, she browned the roast and put it in the Dutch oven to cook slowly. By noon, the roast was so tender you didn’t need a knife to cut it.

In the course of the morning, she’d eventually say to one of us kids, “Go pull some onions and radishes.”

“How many? How big?” we’d ask as we headed out to the garden.

“Oh, about that many and about that big,” she’d respond. “Enough for everyone to eat,” she added, shooing us out the door. We’d go get them and somehow whatever we carried in would be just right. Occasionally Mom joined us to pick peas or green beans. We worked our way down the row, turning the vines from side to side, testing the pods with a gentle squeeze, holding the vines so the roots stayed secure in the ground as we pulled mature pods free. Pods quickly mounded in the pan Mom nudged down the row with her toe.

I liked to pick peas, or more accurately, I liked to eat peas. For each pod I picked, I’d find another one to eat. “Look at this one. It has nine peas,” I’d exclaim after I slit open a pod and just before I tilted it above my mouth, letting the perfect, sweet peas dribble onto my tongue.

Back in the house, Mom directed, “Go get a dozen potatoes.” She was always in motion and we were additional arms and legs. I took a pan down to the fruit cellar in the basement, pulling the string that hung by the door to turn on the bare light bulb.

The cool, musty, earthy smell of the fruit cellar was comforting and reassuring. If we were attacked by the Russians or they dropped a nuclear bomb on us, I thought this would be a good place to wait until the radiation was gone.

The news was full of reports advising everyone to have an air raid shelter and a plan for being safe in case the Russians attacked. Mom and Dad talked about it, too, and I listened with a mixture of anxiety and excitement. We had a cement cistern and I’d never been down in it, but Sue and I did sometimes lift the heavy metal lid to look inside. It was dark but we could see some water and some trash. It definitely didn’t seem like a good place to have to spend any time.

I debated with Jane whether we would get bombed or not. “I don’t think so,” I said one day. “Why would they bomb us? If they were going to attack the United States, they’d want the food we produce. Wouldn’t they?” I asked, hoping against anxiety this would be true.

“Yes, but we’re close to Chicago,” Jane worried. “They’d attack where there were a lot of people. And the missile silos are by Omaha. They’d have to bomb those.”

During those times, I watched the night sky to the north, half expecting to see Russian fighters screaming toward us. Russian soldiers haunted my dreams and I plotted all kinds of places to hide. In the house, I considered the attic crawl space under the eaves as a possibility but discarded this as a real option because there was only one way in or out and no room to run. The bins in the corncrib also received consideration. Running along at such a height, balanced only on the two-by-four boards that separated one bin from another, intimidated me, so I did not count this a prime hiding place either. I felt most at ease when I thought of the gullies in open fields and the trees in the Back 40. The Russians would not know the route I’d taken and I could keep moving anywhere, all the time. Thoughts of avoiding the Russians consumed a major portion of my brain for quite some time.

Dad wasn’t inclined to build a special shelter so as a family we eventually decided on the basement fruit cellar as the place we would go should a bomb drop. The basement was also our retreat from tornadoes: the southwest corner of the basement, under a table.

I did worry that the small window in the fruit cellar would let in nuclear rays that would no doubt bounce off the walls like a cue ball careening around a pool table, but I figured we were mainly underground so maybe the radiation couldn’t get us. At least we’d have food. We could stay there for a long time.

The walls of the fruit cellar were lined with shelves. Each shelf was a constantly shifting storehouse of two-quart jars, quart jars and pints of fruits and vegetables, jams and pickles. No sooner had we canned vegetables that ripened in the garden and placed them on these shelves, than we retrieved jars for the next meal. Toward the end of the winter there may be fewer full jars, but the shelves were never empty.

Now that it was summer, the metal trough at the end of the fruit cellar that we had filled with potatoes last year was close to empty, and I had to search for firm potatoes. That spring, we’d taken out potatoes that had started to grow sprouts, cut them into sections and planted hills in long rows in the garden. As early as June, when the potatoes we’d planted were nowhere near mature, we sometimes dug a hill or two anyway, searching for the tiny new potatoes. These tiny/walnut/baby-sized potatoes were so tender Mom didn’t even have to peel them before she cooked a summer favorite—creamed new potatoes and peas. Later in the summer, when the potato vines shriveled and dried, the potatoes we carried from the garden in bushel baskets filled the bin again. Seldom did we run out.

When I brought up the potatoes, Mom set Grandma up to peel them. Grandma Jensen sat by the table, the pan of potatoes wedged between her knees, her print housedress drawn up revealing rolled-down nylons. Grandma was skilled with a paring knife, sometimes managing to peel an entire potato so the peel held in one long spiral. She cut each potato in quarters and dropped the pieces in the pan of cold water Mom set next to her on the table.

“Can I have a piece?” I asked Grandma.

“You’ll spoil your dinner,” she said, turning a stern look on me.

“Oh, come on. Just one?”

“Just one won’t hurt, Mother,” Mom said.

“Go ahead then,” Grandma said with a grunt.

It was as though Grandma believed the end of the world would come if we ate a potato, I thought. I took a slice, tapped the water off against the side of the pan, sprinkled it with salt and bit into the crisp, white spear.

Mom smiled at me as she slid two pies into the oven. She’d rolled out crusts and made pies for dinner and supper that day. The bubbling pies would come out of the oven by 11:30 so they’d cool enough to serve for dessert but still be warm. I do not ever recall a piece left over.

All this, or something very like it, was going on upstairs that July as I stood by my dad’s knee listening to the men talk about making hay. Their conversation came to a halt when Mom shouted down the stairs.

“Come and get it before I throw it to the dogs.”

Dad drained the last drops of beer, handed the empty Schlitz bottle to me to put in the case and stood up. “Let’s go. Ma won’t wait.”

At exactly noon the men sat down at the table. Dinner was always on the table at exactly noon. Dad could work all morning and count on coming in from the fields and finding it ready. Mom could fix the meal, timing every bowl to hit the table at noon, and count on the men being there to eat it. Roast beef, potatoes, gravy, homemade bread, creamed peas, pickles, apple pie.

Once we’d all sat down, Mom turned to Jane. “Would you say the prayer, please?” Table grace signaled the start of every meal and was followed by a stream of serving dishes passed to the left.

“Dry!” Sue blurted so loudly and suddenly that the hired men looked up from their plates in surprise. Sue’s shout signaled the start of a three-second game we kids played at every meal.

The game related to washing dishes at the end of a meal. It worked like this. We divided dishes into three tasks: washing (least desirable), drying (most desirable), and rinsing/putting dishes away (acceptable). The rule was that none of us could lay claim to a task before the meal started. The first person to think of it after the meal started shouted out their preferred task—almost always drying. Then it was a question of whose reflexes were fast enough to avoid having to wash.

“Rinse and put away,” I sputtered through a full mouth.

“Oh, nuts,” Jane muttered. She would stand at the sink again. Over the years, Jane lost so frequently I came to harbor the suspicion she actually liked to wash.

“Be quiet now,” Dad said as he turned on the radio to catch the noon market reports. Immediately all talk stopped while the announcer read the day’s prices for hogs, cattle and corn. Anyone who talked after the announcer started reeling off the day’s prices earned a knuckle thunk on the head. Dad turned off the radio as soon as the farm report was finished and conversation rose around the table as though it had been switched on when the radio was switched off.

“We’ll get going in a half-hour,” Dad said, after the pie was gone and a last cup of coffee drained. Chairs scuffed back from the table as the men rose and went outside to let dinner settle. Lighting cigarettes, or lying on the ground under the walnut tree by the pump stand, arms flung over their eyes to block the light, they rested. While they lay down outside, Dad took his nap on the kitchen floor, a small pillow under his head.

“Wake me up in 15 minutes,” he said to Mom. Even on a hard floor in the middle of the kitchen, Dad was snoring in under a minute. We tiptoed around and over him, clearing the table, washing the dishes, and cleaning up from dinner.

Mom woke Dad up in exactly 15 minutes. Once she’d thought he could use a little extra rest and let him sleep a half-hour. When she did wake him and he realized he’d lost that time, he grumbled a harsh, “Damn it, Ma,” that made my skin curl. Probably hers, too. After that, she woke him exactly when he asked.

Getting up as though he hadn’t just been snoring loud enough to wake the dead, Dad pulled on his work shoes, grabbed his hat from the hook by the back door and headed out. “Let’s go, men,” he called and the men sleeping or smoking under the walnut tree pulled to their feet and made for the tractor and hayrack.

While haying was going on, in addition to having a full breakfast on the table at 7 a.m., a full dinner on the table at exactly noon, and a full supper on the table at 7 p.m., Mom fixed lunch and took it to the field in the mid-afternoon.

“Grab the thermos bottles,” Mom motioned toward the counter. “We can meet the tractor at the top of the hill.” Mom stacked the ice water chocolate cake she made that afternoon on top of a Tupperware container of lunch meat and cheese sandwiches and headed for the door. With a big silver thermos of coffee in one hand and a two-quart jar of ice water in the other, I backed through the door, bracing it open with my back so Mom could edge through.

Once we had everything in the pickup, Mom wrestled the old Studebaker out across the field while I held the coffee and water jugs upright on the floor between my feet and kept a hand on the sandwiches and cake so they didn’t bounce off the seat. We careened over ruts, stirring up a cloud of dust behind us.

Mom stopped the truck on a hill a ways in front of the oncoming baler. As soon as I swung open the door and stepped out onto the hay stubble, I realized I should have put on shoes before I left the house. Stepping on hay stubble feels every bit like stepping on the point ends of spikes. I stepped lightly, planted my feet in between the hay stubble when I could and pretended it didn’t hurt when I couldn’t. We left lunch on the truck seat and leaned against the fender, watching the tractor and hayrack crawl toward us.