Choosing the Wrong Stinks

While I heard myself say, "Yep. I'm still planning on it - sounds fun," I immediately knew it was wrong. But instead of heading home after school, I left with my friend in the opposite direction. As I exited the school yard, I passed my mom's friend in her burnt orange station wagon. She was parked as usual, waiting to pick up her two daughters from school. I saw her look at me inquisitively as I turned right instead of left outside the chain link fence. But I pretended not to notice.

By the time we got uptown, I could see the brick exterior of our destination on the far end of town square. It was next to the only hardware store in the area. I had been to the hardware store with its bell donning, single door entrance many times. Often, I had gone with my grandpa to gather supplies for a home improvement project. He always completed something special each summer he visited. Thanks to him we had a great swing that hung from the tallest pine tree in our back yard and monkey bars by the garden.

One time I even went to the hardware store by myself. I remembered that day clearly, even though it was several years prior. Probably because it was the first errand I had ever run for my mom all alone. I felt so grown up getting on my bike with the money carefully tucked deep in my pocket so that it would not accidentally fall out. A direct result of mom's phone call, the small package of miscellaneous supplies was gathered in a brown bag with dull red stripes sitting by the register when I arrived. To my amazement the store clerk immediately recognized me, even though I was certain I had never seen him before. Or maybe Mom had explained, probably in more detail than the clerk cared to hear, that an eight-year old girl in a red and white polyester top with red shorts and two long, brunette pig tails would be arriving soon on her bike. There couldn't have been many that fit that description. So maybe it shouldn't have been so amazing after all.

However, this trip was not an errand for my mother. And I was not headed to the hardware store. For the first time in several minutes, guilt suddenly crept back into my thoughts as I recalled what I was about to do. I started to feel strangely nervous. But that was ridiculous. Everyone did this. Everyone but me anyway. Until now.

Each step I took toward the building made it more difficult to turn and walk the other way. Like walking through thickly wet cement, with each stride my decision was more distinct and more impossible to change.

My friend seemed oblivious to my pounding chest and clammy hands. Of course she had been here before. Many times, in fact. She walked along like it was no big deal. And that is what I kept telling myself it was: no big deal. But it was a big deal. And I knew it. At least for me. But for some reason I kept walking toward the wrong, instead of turning back.

It would be so simple too -to do the right thing. I could even make up a white lie. Except lying was wrong too. But some things were more right or wrong than others. I imagined that all I would have to do is stop short and gasp,

"Oh no! I forgot. My mom needs me to babysit after school. Sorry, I gotta go, maybe another time."

And then I could quickly turn around, and run down the wide, mostly empty, small town sidewalk. When I got to the corner lot with only a shell of a building, covered in white peeling paint and framed with a couple lone gas pumps covered in rust and missing their hoses, I could head west. From there I would be home in only a few minutes. I could walk inside the familiar craftsman that probably smelled faintly of dinner already in some stage of preparation. And since I would only be less than five minutes later than usual, Mom would probably not even notice.

But I couldn't bring my mouth to utter the words.

Suddenly, we were at the front door of the circa 1950's brick building. It was too late. However, uncertain I was about the decision before, it was made now. I saw a couple bikes on the outside of the entrance, dropped there no doubt by a couple kids from my school. This meant my friend and I would not be the only ones. It should have made me feel better, but it didn't.

As I followed my friend's soft blond curls inside the smoky room, it took a minute for my pupils to adjust from the bright afternoon sunlight to the dingy darkness of the establishment. The neon signs on the wall cast a soft glow in the haze. I suddenly thought about Mrs. Greedy's 3rd-grade class. She asked us each to promise not to smoke. And we all raised our hands together to make the commitment. I wondered how much breathing that air felt like smoking. If it were similar, it made no sense to me why anyone would ever smoke anything.

A couple rough looking guys with bellies as round as pumpkins sat on barstools in front of us. They slowly turned to look at the newcomers. And then, just as dully, wheeled back around on their swivel seats.

I was genuinely surprised not one of them tried to tell us to leave. I knew we didn't belong here and I was only twelve. Didn't grown-ups know what's right and wrong? And wasn't it their job to keep kids from doing wrong things? But since there was no one to stop us, we proceeded through the room over to the far corner.

And there it stood. It was flashy and beautiful. I felt my stomach do a little leap for joy. My goal. The one thing that had caused me to break so many of my parent's rules.

In only a few minutes I had used numerous quarters, saved from small jobs like babysitting the karate teacher's kids. After awhile, I reached deep into the pocket of my Lee jeans, and only felt string and fuzz. I bent down and then handed my friend a damp, rolled up dollar from inside my sock. I had brought it for an emergency like this. She was plenty brave enough to ask the bartender for change. I was not.

The arcade game that started out so new and unfamiliar soon became more rhythmic and easy to maneuver. However, it wasn't long before I was completely out of money. I was hugely disappointed. The time had gone by far too quickly. I impatiently watched my friend finish her last game on a neighboring machine. Then we grabbed our school books, and walked out the door and headed home.

The sun was low in the late afternoon sky. I had no idea what time it was, but I knew it was late enough that I needed to work on a very good excuse for Mom and, by this time, probably Dad too. I considered all the trouble I'd be in and wondered if a few minutes on the brand new Ms Pac Man game would be worth the punishment I'd be given when I got home.

In the fresh, early autumn air, I thought I caught the smell of something terribly rank. Cautiously, I sniffed at my shoulder. Hmmmm...this excuse was going to have to be really good.

Boyfriends Can Be Handy to Have Around

I was only eleven years old and in the sixth grade when my two next younger sisters caught wind of my flirty ways at recess and excitedly announced the news to Mom that day after school.
“Debbie has a boyfriend!” they tattled, “She’s going with Steve!”

Mom was shocked at the news and questioned the nature of my relationship with the supposed suitor Steve.

I assured her it was no big deal, while my sisters stood behind me shaking their heads in disagreement. I explained that I did not ask him to go with me, but that one of my friends suggested it to one of his friends. Then they got him to agree to go with me and then confronted me with the proposal. Naturally, I agreed. It was cool to go with someone.

Mom was still more than cautious about the announcement.

“Does this mean you’re going to kiss him?” Jackie asked loudly.

Mom gasped.

“Gross!” I shouted in reply, trying to assure them all, especially Mom, that was not part of the plan.

After a few weeks of nothing between Steve and me, as in no phone calls, no notes, no hanging out together at recess, he broke up with me. While my friends were ready to launch a hate campaign against him, before assisting me in finding my next beau, I was not too upset. And so the going together with some random classmate continued off and on throughout my sixth grade year.

The summer before seventh grade, I was going with Doug. And the relationship was upped a notch. Mostly we played around at the community pool where he and his friends would throw my friends and me into the pool. He was a little taller and definitely stronger than the other boys in our grade, and I had noticed. When an injury kept me homebound for a time, he brought me a gold necklace with a heart pendant and we spent hours sitting on my front porch as my sisters and baby brother ran around us. Mom’s concern undoubtedly increased with this advancement in the "going together" definition.

As usual, summer loves rarely last past September, and Doug and I were no different. But he was quickly replaced when Jeff wrote a note to Becky ,to give to me, to ask me to go with him. And so once again, I was no longer single.

By this point my Mom and Dad were still trying to chart a course in the new territory of boyfriends they had been thrown into several years earlier than they had ever anticipated. Always leery and worrying about me, they asked incessant questions.

However, as far as I could tell, going together meant Jeff and I would say, “Hi” to each other when we passed in the hallways at school. He never called my home, but before his family left for Christmas Break and their ensuing trip to Colorado, we did exchange Christmas gifts. He gave me another necklace - my collection was growing - and I gave him a plastic skiing Smurf.

One spring day I was walking around town with my Dad when I saw Jeff approaching from the opposite direction on the sidewalk with his Dad. My heart started to pound. We always acknowledged each other in the school hallway, but in public in front of our fathers? I did not know what to do, so I let him take the lead. As we got closer he started to look at the store fronts so, I looked out at the street. And so we passed without even looking at each other, let alone speaking.

“Hey, wasn’t that that Jeff kid,” my dad wondered after they passed by.

“Shhhhh, Dad. He’ll hear you,” I cautioned.

After that Dad in jest told Mom I could go with any boy I wanted to because it clearly meant we spoke to each other less than we would a typical classmate. Jeff and I continued to go together for the entire school year and into the summer. However, unlike Doug the summer before, Jeff never visited my house and I rarely saw him at the pool.

That July, as a 4-H member I entered the Cherry Pie Baking Contest, one of the traditional festivities for the Fremont County Fair. On my appointed time I walked into the assigned fair building with tables lined in white paper, manure smells wafting the air. With my flour, shortening, rolling pin and other equipment lined up on the table, I prepared by masterpiece. I did well. While I did not win Grand Champion or 1st place, I did place a respectable second.

The next day, after the judging was complete, we went to the grandstands and stood in the dirt where sheep had been parading only hours earlier and holding our pies, we waited for them to be auctioned off. All proceeds were destined to our 4-H group.

Most pies were bid on by family members - in-laws fighting it out to be the top bidder. Many pies went for well over $100, especially if the participants had placed in the contest. As a transplant to Iowa, we did not have any family nearby, and I knew my parents would be unable to afford a competitive bid on my pie. And Dad reasoned if he wanted one of my pies he could ask me to bake one anytime - in a clean kitchen - with no sheep or pigs nearby.

Needless to say, I was more than concerned that my pie might not even sell at all. My fears were initially confirmed when I stepped forward, and the auctioneer announced the bidding. Since mine was a second place pie, he started at fifty dollars. With no takers, he dropped to forty-five, forty, thirty-five, and then thirty. Finally at $25 a local women’s group offered a bid on my pie. Going once, going twice, and then suddenly a man in the shadows of the back raised his hand and placed a bid for $115! Going once, twice and then thrice, my pie sold for a very respectable price.
Although I did not understand the lack of incremental bidding at the time, I didn’t care either. My father, however, was more then curious and after doing a bit of research found an answer to the mystery bidder.

“Linda,” he warned my mom, “This going together might be more of a concern than we originally thought. Jeff’s dad is the one the bought Debbie’s pie.”

Hmmmm…that was news. I guessed that next time I saw them in town I had at least better say, “Hello.”

Sometimes the Child Must Protect the Parent

Gardening was a family chore from which no one was ever excused. It began with bringing home milk cartons from school in January and February so we could cut off their tops and use them as small individual planters for indoor seedling starts. We were more than embarrassed to collect the empty cartons after milk break each morning and afternoon. Each Monday during the first two months of the year we took a black garbage bag to school. Mom arranged with the teachers for us to collect empty milk cartons all week. The pile of cartons would grow until we hauled it home on Friday, the oversized yet lightweight bag knocking our ankles the entire way home.

When spring arrived we spent hours in the still cold air hoeing rows marked by two sticks with twine strung in between, creating a fertile bed for our small plants. Once nestled in the black soil, we tended the garden rows daily all summer long, weeding meticulously so no nutrients would be stolen from our quickly growing plants.

When it came time to harvest, our personal preference played much too large a role for mom and dad’s liking. We purposefully left as many green beans hanging on the plants as we felt we could get away with. But we made certain to grab every strawberry and ear of corn, often too eagerly plucking them before they were fully ripe. Another crop we never left behind in the dirt was our pumpkins.

Over time, we gradually became better at growing the large orange holiday staple. We found the best variety that grew into perfect big round beautifully shaped Halloween decorations. One year, our planting time corresponded perfectly with the rain and the sunshine in the crisp fall air ripened our large orange fruit on the vines.

With an extra bounteous crop, we excitedly picked out the six largest gourds for each of my sisters, my brother and me. Proudly displayed on the front porch, we put the rest of the produce in the back of the station wagon and hauled it to an abandoned gas station on the corner of town square. After several trips we had the inventory ready to sell. With Mom's handpainted banner across the station wagon, our advertising was complete as well.

Once open for business, we assisted our friends and neighbors in the small town as they selected their purchase and after carefully weighing each pumpkin, we’d announce the bill. Our big eyes glistened with each sale, which added more and more money to our metal cash box. When a poor family came by, Mom’s soft heart would encourage us to give away a couple pumpkins for free, and we didn’t mind too much, because we knew we were still making plenty of cash.

After two consecutive long Saturdays of sales, we came home, happy that we had sold virtually every pumpkin and eager to split up the profits. Since Mom’s station wagon was used for free, as were the pumpkin seeds, land space, water, garden tools, and fertilizer, our overhead was next to zero, making for an assuredly profitable activity.

The following Sunday morning, as we made our way out to the car in the early, still dark morning hours, Dad was the first to spot the night-time destruction. Our individually selected, cream of the crop, huge, orange, prized pumpkins had been smashed all along the street in front of our house. Our house was not the only one hit along the street by the produce pounding thugs. But it was the only one where five girls had spent the previous eight months growing the potential jack-o-lanterns. In our Sunday dresses, our little bums got cold and then numb as we sat on the concrete porch and cried, Dad’s face reddening with every tear drop.

“You older girls go to school Monday and find out who did this,” he instructed.

The orders momentarily silenced our sobs.

“Ask around,” Dad continued, “And you can find out what boys were involved. Then I’ll pay a visit to their father about this whole incident.”

Jackie and I looked at each other frightened. Our looks told each other what we already knew. We knew who did this. But we would never reveal that to Dad.

Most certainly the culprits were some fellows that lived down the street. They were hard and rough. Their dad and all the boys were boxers that spent every weekend in small-time fighting rings. We would never want our father walking up the vacant hill to their poorly maintained house to knock on the door. Dad would be greeted with a punch square in the jaw if he even hinted at those boys’ involvement in the prank.

But we nodded our heads in approval at Dad's suggested detective work.

When Dad came home from work Monday he quickly found us watching Brady Bunch on the black and white television in the family room and asked what we found out at school.

Jackie looked at me signaling she’d take the lead.

“We asked everyone and no one has any ideas.”

“I don’t think anyone we know did it, Dad,” I added shrugging my shoulders.

“It was probably someone from out of town,” Jackie suggested.

I nodded, agreeing wholeheartedly with the brilliant decoy, “Yeah, probably someone we won’t ever know. So there is no way you can go talk to them.”

“Sorry, Dad,” Jackie offered.

“Yeah, sorry,” I added.

Then we started to sniffle in the remembrance of our pumpkin loss and the future of no jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. That ended the conversation before our unskilled lying gave us away.

Dad encouraged us to not give up and to keep “asking around”. We promised him we would.

After a few more days of no names and no news, Dad suggested, “Maybe I should do some talking to the neighbors.”

“Oh no, Dad! Don’t do that!” we begged. We told him we could do a much better undercover job ourselves at school.

“You don’t think it was that family of boys on the hill down the street do you?” Dad suggested referring to the boxers, the most likely offenders.

“Them? Heck no!” Jackie shouted. “They look mean, but they would never smash our pumpkins.”

“Maybe I should just go talk to their dad anyway,” Dad reasoned.

“No, no, no!” we begged. “It wasn’t them, we’re sure of it!”

And so our dialogue continued off and on for weeks as Dad was adamant to find the boys that broke his daughters’ pumpkins and hearts. And we were just as adamant to keep him out of boxing fist harm, by preventing him from ever learning the true identity of the offenders.

Sometimes Boys Look and Notice

One of the better money making opportunities for young kids in rural Iowa was walking beans. Beaning, as it was called, was actually weeding (of the beans). For a few weeks in the summer the opportunity to make much more than minimum wage was one which my younger sisters and I embraced, even though the work was dirty and difficult.

One year, by a stroke of luck, we managed to get hired on with a very tough, but well paying crew near Randolph, Iowa. We labored with a couple dozen or more young people, but at 12, 13 and 15, we were the babies of the group. Most days we divided up into two groups with the farmer’s wife taking one group and his son, who was about 19, taking another. My sisters and I were assigned to the younger group with the farmer’s wife. And the son would take the stronger, older kids. But we’d usually meet up with them around mid morning for our break and again at the end of the day. In beaning country, the end of the day, thankfully, was always 12 noon.

After meeting at the farm house promptly at 5:45 AM, we would climb in the back of an assigned pick-up truck. Then we were taken on what my dad would consider a scenic drive through farm fields and dirt roads before we eventually ended up at that day’s designated bean field.

During the drive, my sisters and I missed all the scenery as we would curl up together bracing ourselves against the wind. Even with our heads buried under our arms, our arms buried in our t-shirts, and our bodies pressed up against our legs, our teeth chattered the entire way. Our once combed hair in a neat ponytail would soon be a mangled mess as well. Hitting ruts in the dirt roads was inevitable so the ride did nothing for our tailbone comfort either.

Some mornings I marveled at how the dreaded windy ride felt so icy and miserable in the morning and yet was a cool welcome relief a few short hours later. I fruitlessly wished I could store up the cold air and dispense it throughout the morning as the sun would start to bake the farmland.

Once at the field, we grabbed our bean hooks and in a very organized fashion briskly walked the endless bean rows. We kept a keen eye for sunflowers, ragweeds, milkweeds, or the hard-to-spot button weed. When we came upon an unwelcome brier, we would quickly and expertly use the 5 foot long bean hook to slice the weed at the base, without slowing our forward moving pace. And so the weeds quickly fell leaving only beautiful round bean plants with small white blossoms standing in perfect rows.

The summer job had more hazards than the uncomfortable truck ride. At our parents' insistence, we wore long jeans to do the work, and the early morning dew from the maturing bean plants would soak into our jeans. Our pants would hang and stretch long, cold and heavy on our legs, making walking difficult. Inevitably mud would cake not only on our shoes, but the bottoms of our jeans as well. And since we were speed walking, the brisk pace in the wet, mud-caked jeans was even more of chore.

Our cold, wet, heavy legs were only temporary. As the morning heated up we quickly dried out and warmed up. We always warmed up much more than anyone would hope for.

Usually we wore gloves to mitigate the heavy calluses that developed on our otherwise tender palms. But the gloves became unbearably hot after a few hours, so sometimes (against Dad’s strict orders before we left home) we’d take them off and stick them in our back pockets. But as we sped through the thigh-high beans, the plant leaves would slice up our bean hook toting hands if we did not hold them high enough above our waist.

Once in a while we would come across a larger than normal weed and after a few tugs with the bean hook, we’d finally take it down. However the additional exertion sometimes caused us to continue slicing through the weed, through our jeans and into our leg. A little blood was part of the gig, so we kept walking; trying to make sure we were never the last one in our group to reach the end of a row.

While the work was anything but easy, by far our biggest obstacle was the sun and the heat. Most crews we had worked with in years past stopped for a water and graham cracker break once an hour. This crew stopped once every three hours.

The only thing that made it all worth while was getting a big paycheck. It was always handwritten by the farmer’s wife, while we waited in the shade of an old tree in the front yard of the farm house. After our Saturday shift waiting for our checks we'd often get our fill of lemonade and oatmeal cookies too.

But the job had other perks. Speed walking six hours a day, six days a week, made my thighs as lean as pretzel sticks. Since I spent many of my afternoons at the community pool, in the early eighties when dark coconut oil trumped sunscreen, I was quite tanned as well.

I maximized the look by wearing short shorts every summer afternoon. One day toward the end of beaning season I came home from another day of drudgery, and as usual showered and curled my hair. I put on a bit of lip gloss for a finishing touch. With all signs of dirty farm work erased, I dressed in tan cotton short shorts and a teal green knit polo top.

At my mom’s request, I then rode my bike up town to run an errand. After setting the used Schwinn against the white washed store front, I walked in. The old wooden door had a Christmas bell, holly included, hanging on it which jingled with each opening and closing. In the nearly empty, dimly lit mom and pop store I grabbed what I needed and got in line to pay for my purchase. Somewhere from the back room appeared the farmer’s son in a John Deere yellow and green baseball cap.

He took one look at me and then took a longer drink.

“Debbie,” he asked, as if he was not sure he recognized me, “Is that you?”

I was immediately offended. “How could he see me virtually everyday for a month and still not recognize me?” I wondered. But I was also terrified to have been spoken to directly by a nineteen year-old boy.

So I nodded in the affirmative.

“Boy, you look a shade different than you do in the bean field,” he commented still eyeing me from glossed lips to tanned ankle.

I was so embarrassed and confused I did not know what to say. All I could think of was that I hoped I looked different than I did as a the mangled hair, muddy mess that I was in the bean field. After a few moments of my dumb-stricken silence, he shrugged his muscular shoulders slightly, smiled, met up with his girlfriend, and walked out of the store.

The next Monday morning in the bean field I was suddenly bumped up to the older crew. This promotion meant I received a 50 cents an hour raise for the rest of the season. My younger sisters, on the other hand, remained with the farmer’s wife for the next couple weeks.

While my dad was proud, assuming his daughter’s hard work had caught the farmer’s eye, I realized it probably had a lot more to do with the eye of farmer’s son and my short shorts.