"Summertime and Wintertime, Morningtime and Eveningtime"

   

 

      College is for control freaks. Looking back on four decades of self employment, I realize how little I appreciated the freedom to choose my classes, subject matter, and hours.  Not only that, but college afforded the luxury of almost one-to-one risk/reward and input/output. Want a good grade?  Apply yourself.  Luck had almost nothin' to do with it.  

My father  worked for the government, but when a new Administration decided nuclear power was no longer worthy of research funding, he saw the writing on the wall, moved back to Missouri, got a job as a television repairman (does anyone do that anymore?) and bought a few cows.  Lesson learned: jobs come and jobs go.

Farming is different. I thought I understood that when we left college to return to Blake's family's farm, but I really didn't have a clue. Even though I was raised to keep my "nose to the grindstone"and believed all that Poor Richard's Almanac stuff like "early bird gets the worm", "make hay while the sun shines", "no pain, no gain", I didn't realize that hard work and application were only part of the farming equation.  The summer we married, Blake sent me some Polaroid pictures of beautiful shoulder high corn circa fourth of July, but by our wedding day in August, everyone knew it would be a short droughty crop.  The next spring it rained every weekend we came home from school to help put in the crop.  Instead, we worked to remodel our little house and chased cattle through sodden bottoms when they got out.  Harvest that fall drug on with tractors and chains to pull the combines out of the muddy fields and finally finished with the guys chiseling icy gumbo out of wheels and other moving parts.  The only reward the hard work and long hours could promise was.... an end.  Eventually. Not Thanksgiving, but by Christmas.

That first winter back the dirt road across the bottom drifted higher than our car.  Blake's dad made a way through...for the tractor and wagon to get feed to the cattle.   Chores took all day.  It was a drastic introduction to the invisible elephant in the room of our life: the weather.  I thought I'd been attuned to weather before, but it became...and has remained!...the fallback subject of any casual conversation and the bedrock concern more days than not.  At five past six, KMA would give the weather forecast. One Christmas my present was a satellite dish system that displayed the markets...and the radar.  These days forecast.weather.gov is just a thumbprint away on the front page of my phone. 

The weather doesn't care how hard you work.  The weather won't wait, won't judge, and won't pat you on the back.  Like Matthew 5:45 says:

 "That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."

Nothing personal. Comes with the job.

This was just a warmup, so to speak, for the plant business.  For the summer afternoons and evenings we built greenhouses, for the plants that fried because we missed a spot watering or froze when the wind found a gap or got too big or stayed too small.  If those plants had been animals, we would have been cited for cruelty too many times to count!  Babies, of any species, are vulnerable, a truth we learned through all manner of trial and error.  Diligence may not guarantee success, but it can postpone failure.  There's an alarm to call when the temperature in a greenhouse gets too hot...or too cold.  There's a squadron of portable heaters to deploy and generators in case of catastrophe.  

We have a communal family nightmare and it involves water;  did I shut the hose/hydrant off?   Did I forget to water my steers?  Did I miss some plugs/cuttings in a greenhouse I haven't looked at?  Anyone can wake sweating from the dream that you're testing for a class you forgot you signed up for, but not everyone takes a nocturnal stroll to see if there's water running unabated from a hydrant somewhere.....

If you grew up in outer suburbia, even if it was the borderlands, your antenna picked up 5 television stations, water always came out of the tap and a power outage was not your responsibility. This is what I took for granted growing up  and what most people consider civilized.  But farm life still requires a certain level of self sufficiency, MacGyver-like ingenuity, and a tolerance for both occasional lapses in personal creature comforts..and willingness to forego those for the sake of some other creature.  

Sure, we work for ourselves, and our families.  But we feel responsible for even more.  

Hair Do Well

Well, we all have a face

That we hide away forever

And we take them out

And show ourselves when everyone has gone

Some are satin, some are steel

Some are silk and some are leather

They're the faces of a stranger

But we'd love to try them on

I thought I’d taken some really bad pictures in my life, but until I saw the results of Google’s Arts & Culture ‘Find Your Face in a Museum’ exercise, I would never have guessed that my inner vision could be so different than my outer visage.  Don’t get me wrong...there might be a certain cache’ attached to sharing features with Big Bowl, a Crow Chief (Alfred Jacob Miller), Henry Clay (John B. Neagle) and...wait for it….a youngish George Washington (Charles Willson Peale).  If nothing else, I guess I’m an All American, right?

But...can you give me a break?  Barring the self portrait of a tough looking woman with round glasses and a fedora, not a single Google suggestion is female.  Talk about a stranger!

That disillusionment aside, without a doubt my worst feature is my hair.  Long, it tended to lanky if not downright limp.  Short, it had a life of its own, disdaining the force of gravity and tending to head in every direction but down.  

 

As a result of the flaws of what the Bible has called a woman’s “crowning glory”, what I see repeatedly in family photos are not smile lines, or eyeglasses, but unkempt, uncut, or unruly hair.

A classic case..the classic case, as a matter of fact….are our wedding pictures. Here is the bride, there is the groom, and neither one of them has considered what posterity would make of the “HAIR!” of the 1970s:

 

Let it fly in the breeze

And get caught in the trees

Give a home to the fleas in my hair

A home for fleas

A hive for bees

A nest for birds

There ain't no words

For the beauty, the splendor, the wonder

Of my…

HAIR!  But that’s not the full story.  Look at how Blake’s orange shoes clash with his peachy tux.  I mean peachy as in hue, not ‘peachy’ as a term for just fine.  Look at the general level of hirsutitude (yes, that’s a word..it’s on the internet!) among the wedding party both male and female. No wonder the bride and groom and their friends look happy, while the pictures of the grandparents show a level of gravity at best and gloom at worst.

My next worst photos are recorded shortly thereafter, when I tried to distract attention from the effects of impending motherhood by subjecting my poor happy mop of hair to the chemical treatment of a perm.  Obsessively straight hair required excessive amounts of the noxious fluids necessary to make my hair curl; the final hairdo shot right past body and wave into the red zone of  frizz.  

 

And there it remained for the next couple of years while Lee was a babe in arms, learned to walk, and welcomed her new sister Ann.  

Since then, my bad hair days have mostly been converted to bad hat days.  My short coiffeur inevitably becomes a flattop after a day under a Carhartt stocking hat in the winter or a UVA bucket hat or visor in the summer.

 

Not to worry...after forty years of this kind of behavior, I accept keeping my hair “undercover” is the best way to keep myself out of the camera’s eye. There are worse fates than “hat head”!

From Greenberry Road

I see places.  I don’t know whether it is a blessing or not, but I can tell you more about how a place looked than what I did there.  Perhaps that comes from taking lots of photos..perhaps taking pictures is a consequence of the way my brain functions..either way, asking me to remember someone often begins by recalling a place.

Take Greenberry Road.  My mother’s parents lived at the very end of Greenberry Road, just before the bridge over the Moreau where town ended and Route B took you to Wardsville.  The house was faced with sandstone slabs bound with thick bands of mortar protected by asphalt, a style I now know is called “Ozark Giraffe”. When Laura and I were little and the days were hot, we would amuse ourselves by pressing our fingernails into the asphalt while we played on the deep front porch that protected the front door.  My grandparents had a huge porch swing, big enough and wide enough to lay down on.  The  cushions and pillows were covered in striped canvas; to get the whole assemblage moving was more like launching a ship than taking to the air.  Even though Grandma and Grandpa Froerer had one of the first home air conditioners, a real marvel, I still remember summer days reading on that porch swing.  Second choice was the green canvas butterfly chair; the wooden Adirondack took a distant third.

Not only did Grandpa, a WWI veteran, and Grandma, whose mastery of needle and thread ranged from crocheting doilies and tablecloths...really...to my mother’s lovely pink silk wedding dress, have air conditioning in their home, but they also had the first air-conditioned car I’d ever seen...a 1964 Dodge with a push button transmission.  When we visited, Grandpa would eat ‘mush’ every morning for breakfast and a couple of slices of wheat toast.  There was always a jar of Heinz Chow-chow on the table, an unappetizing concoction of mustard and pickle.

Grandma  made my dad the oatmeal cookies with caramel frosting he loved.  My grandma drank Coca Cola, but the rest of us enjoyed Dr. Pepper, unavailable way up north. We ate cake or cookies and pretzel sticks in a booth in the kitchen, which also featured a fold down ironing board, and a flour bin in the lower cabinet.  When Grandma made home-made noodles she rolled them out on a cutting board that pulled out from the cabinet. In the basement was her washing machine, electric, with a wringer attachment.  There was clothesline spread all across the basement for winter and clotheslines in the backyard.

Grandpa had been a civil engineer with the WPA, helping build the road to the top of Scotts Bluff.  Both he and Grandma hailed from Utah where their ancestors had emigrated with the Latter Day Saints and established their farms and families near Logan.  My mom told me they bought the house on Greenberry Road when my grandpa went to work for the Missouri Department of Transportation because it was the only one for sale.  Grandpa read constantly even when cataracts forced him to use a big lighted magnifier.  His vocabulary was not gentle and he had strong opinions. My father always addressed him as Mr. Froerer.  At Grandma and Grandpa’s, we got to watch Hollywood Squares, Password, Ed Sullivan, and Art Linkletter. Grandpa was a night owl..long after our bedtime, he would still be in his chair listening to the Tonight Show.

Grandpa F. was a superb woodworker before his eyes failed him. He built their dining room table and chairs, hutch and corner cabinet.  He made the hard maple desk on which I did all my schoolwork. He designed and created the big toy train, tender car, flatbed, and caboose large enough to haul our dolls and stuffed animals around their house as well as the multi-hued building blocks and wagon his great-grands still use.  His workshop in the basement was engineer neat with cases of cubbies and jars containing tiny incomprehensible parts.

Granny and Grandpa Renken, my dad’s parents, were the mirror image of my Grandma and Grandpa F.  Where Grandma F. was quiet, Granny was a tiny, talkative, vivacious woman who loved music, children, making up and telling stories and all the world outside her door. Family meals were big, plain affairs with lots of canned or frozen produce from Grandpa’s garden.

 She adored my grandfather, a quiet man who worked in his orchard and his garden after he retired from years as a letter carrier.  I can easily picture him in his rocker next to the piano, the lamplight shining over his shoulder as he peered through his bifocals down his long straight Renken nose at a Time magazine.  Granny always had a record playing on the stereo. She wrote poetry and spoke of the mockingbird outside her window as a personal friend.  Granny worked at the Conservation Commission but then, after age 50, took her daughter’s encouragement to heart and began writing.  She published a series of children’s books featuring a big family as well as two hardcover books for young adults.  Even though I wasn’t quite old enough for the young adult books at the time, I was thrilled when I got to read some of her typewritten chapters.  

Granny always had surprises for the kids around, something she continued to do for her great grandchildren...puzzle books or story books gleaned from book fairs, homemade musical instruments for a parade...

Granny and Grandpa lived on Greenberry Road too, a few blocks up the road from the Froerers.  My mom’s younger brother was best friends with my father’s younger brother.  But Granny and Grandpa moved across the river to a small acreage past Holts Summit when we were still young and that’s the place I remember the Christmas and Easter and Fourth of July celebrations.

 The house was brick with aluminum windows and certainly not a bit of insulation between the interior and the great out of doors.  It was without a doubt the hottest and coldest house I’ve ever been in.  Cold was never a problem when all the families were there at Christmas; steam condensed into a river on the windows and even the unheated sun porch where we cousins ate meals was cozy when the stove was on and ten people were doing dishes.  But in the summertime when the house became a brick oven, we were more than happy to escape to the cool basement where Granny set up her ironing board after lunch while she watched her “stories” as she called the soap operas she dutifully followed. (Side note: my dad got hooked on a soap opera or two during the years he repaired televisions...this tiny vice always made me smile.)

All summer Grandpa would work among his trees or wrangle his beastly tiller through the rows of his garden or push mow the vast yard and come in with his face red and his pith helmet and retired mailman shirts black with sweat.  The windows were open all summer and oscillating fans provided relief until the evening cooled down.

Fourth of July and Easter at their farm were the best a kid could hope for. At Eastertime, Granny would boil dozens of eggs for all us cousins to dye.  How come the colors back then seemed so much brighter?  There was nothing fancy about the decorating, no shrink wrap, or glitter or tie dye: just Paz tablets, the smell of vinegar in hot water, and the little white crayon with which to write names or draw crosses.  The “Easter bunny” would hide the eggs throughout their big yard and we would run like crazy to search them out before the dogs found them.

  On the 4th, Grandpa would grill hot dogs and hamburgers, the men would play ball or have a green apple fight, and we’d all play croquet until it got dark enough to shoot more than bottle rockets.  Fireworks were illegal in Illinois, so even sparklers and Roman candles were a thrill.  Some 4ths, the humidity was so high, we couldn’t set anything down or it wouldn’t light.  Most nights, heat lightning would add to the show, flickering silently and futilely on the horizon.

I didn’t grow up with my grandparents just down the road, but the memories are so vivid that it sometimes feels that way.  The four of them were so different in experience and personality, even from my vantage as a child. Grandma Froerer’s Mormon upbringing means there are still papers and stories to read and pass down. Granny wrote of her own childhood experiences and my aunts Liz and Anne bound them for all of us to keep. As I gather up shreds of my memories and attempt to record them, I’m just following a tradition and hoping my grands and greats will treasure them too.

Toyland

I can only guess what my mom or dad thought when they ventured out of the hallway past the threshold of our room, but I can tell you what the kid's eye view was from flat on the blue hooked rug.  On one wall were our bunk beds and the toy box and opposite were our two dressers and a bookcase. Our desks stood against the far wall while the wall nearest the doorway consisted primarily of murderous bifold metal closet doors..  The general effect, from ground level, was that of a box canyon, cliffs overhanging the chasm and detritus piled high against the canyon walls.

Hole in the Wall, Wyoming

It made for a narrow twisty path from door to the plateau of my top bunk. Once up the ladder I was like a character in a Western, safe behind my ramparts of stuffed animal friends, with a birds’ eye view of the goings on down below.  Winnie the Pooh, sewn by my mom in honey hued velveteen, Raggedy Ann with her black button eyes and replacement knees of hand-colored felt, Silver the tall gray poodle dog, and Charlie Brown, the understuffed floppy eared puppy, were just a few of the critters that I lined up every night so they could all watch me sleep.  

The narrow confines of our room became a fantasy land for the Breyer model horses we collected, or the menagerie of pipe cleaner and yarn animals Laura and I made.  We created camels and lions, deer and even a Pushmi-Pullyu...the herd we constructed included the equine protagonist of every horse story by Walter Farley and Marguerite Henry as well as Smoky the cow horse and Black Beauty. The artificial flowers my mom had yet to “antique” and her out-of-fashion head scarves were fair game for making our room the garden of Eden in our eyes.

Laura and I benefited from the talents and hobbies of our family: our Barbie doll dresses were trimmed in rick rack with darts, collars, even tulle and pleats.  My grandmother’s imagination led her to sew lovely glass buttons on tops as brooches or to hem a matching satiny scrap of fabric into a scarf for the swing back coat and dress ensemble.  I would say our Barbies were better dressed than any other little girls’....if not for the fact we instantly lost the shoes and earrings so our dolls were always barefooted.

The wagon load of homemade blocks my grandfather made more than sixty years ago show but little wear from the three generations of children who have built roads and castles and walls and fences from them. We drove our Matchbox cars over them and even made sixties style furniture...Scandinavian, I guess, for the Barbies to lounge on.

I remember our dollhouse.  It was a two story Colonial...metal….with plastic furniture that was all the same color.  We played with it lots….until the day my mom decided we were old enough...and careful enough...to be trusted with her dollhouse furniture. What an upgrade! Instead of molded monochromatic plastic, her childhood couch and chairs were padded and upholstered; the dressing table had a mirror and a skirted stool.  The radio had cathedral windows.  The single door refrigerator looked just like the one in our kitchen, but there was also an icebox.  The china family with their rosebud lips and their “nurse” were quaintly old fashioned, but also fragile, so we rarely used them in our play, spending most of our time rearranging the furniture as was our prerogative as females.

When we traveled, our ditty bags of prized possessions came along.  “Super balls and “creepy crawlers” , baseball cards and Matchbox cars: looking back, I now realize how much of what we prized cost less than a dollar bill.

The Matchbox display was right on front of the cashier at the local dime store, but we bought our baseball cards at the Walgreens next door. A quarter bought a toy, but a big gumball from the machine was still just a dime. As kids whose earning power was measured in pennies(for dandelions) or dimes per hour, our desires were constrained by our pocket change.

But not all our toys were “Made in Japan”. (In case you don’t remember, in the ‘60s that was code for “cheap”!)  Every Christmas our stockings would yield treasures like the wooden apple with a tiny tea set inside, or a bag of polished stones, a two toned ball with faceted sides that bounced in crazy directions or a sliding puzzle with a smiling frog and tiles numbered 1 through 31.  Looking back, I’m betting my mom found prizes like these in the Miles Kimball catalog, which ranked with the Christmas catalogs distributed by Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck as the subject matter for wishful thinking.

This New Year’s Day, the parades are over and football rules the big screen.  It’s way too cold to play outside.  How many kids are spending this afternoon playing with Barbies...or blocks...or puzzles?