Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl (15 page)

While Mom drove on into town to get groceries, we went door to door at the trailer court. Using the same approach I used when I knocked on Edna’s door the first time, but making a real effort to overcome my nerves and speak more slowly, I walked to one trailer after another. I worked my way down one side of the street while Jane and Sue went to trailers along the other side. Nerves filled my stomach before I knocked on each door. Satisfaction replaced the nerves each time I secured coins in my pocket when I made a sale. Amazing to me, we sold every last bunch.

In the next month, the dimes, nickels and quarters from my radish sales swelled my balance by another One Dollar and Twenty-Five Cents. When the end of the month arrived, I opened my piggy bank again and counted out the money yet another time, stacking it into neat piles. I left the pennies behind, and stowed coins adding up to Three Dollars and Thirty-Five Cents deep in my pocket for the trip to town. I kept my hand in a tight fist around this treasure to make sure it didn’t get lost. In my other hand, I clutched my savings passbook. During the ride to town, I imagined the new total after my latest deposit. The row of figures, each line containing a figure larger than the last, enchanted me. I dreamed about having enough to do something big. Like go to college.

Pushing through the heavy glass doors, I entered the Maquoketa State Savings Bank. The official coolness of the marble floors, the polished dark woodwork of the tellers’ cages, and soaring high ceilings reduced my voice to a whisper more awe-inspired than one I used at the public library. One just did not talk loudly in a bank.

“I am here to make a deposit,” I spoke with great solemnity as I reached up to slip the passbook and my money under the grill to the lady teller sitting on the other side.

“Well, you have quite a balance here,” the teller said as she counted the money twice and made yet another exceedingly neat entry into my passbook.

“I know,” I blushed with pride. “I sold my radishes.”

One Christmas

“I asked Santa for a Roy Rogers and Trigger,” I whispered in a conspiratorial tone to the kids crowded around the stove at the back of the schoolhouse. Just in from recess, we piled our snow-soaked mittens on the top of the stove to dry and held our chapped red fingers as close to the stove as we could. We could not tell at first whether our fingers were cold or hot; either way, they stung.

“What are you talking about?” Larry scoffed. “There ain’t no Santa Claus.” Larry rubbed his palms together and then slapped them against the red circles of cold on his freckled cheeks.

All talk stopped and I saw all the kids staring at Larry and me. Some of the kids laughed but their laughs hung hollow in the air like the steam that spiraled above the stove as bits of ice fell from the mittens and sizzled on the hot surface. The smell of scorching wool filled the room.

“There is, too,” I sputtered. “You don’t know anything.” I looked around, searching the faces of the other kids for support.

“Ain’t either. Is there, Dennis?” Larry asked, elbowing the boy next to him.

A thin boy with white blond hair, Dennis and his sisters lived across the highway from us. He and Larry were in the same grade, two years behind me. Both of them spent more time acting up than they did studying, causing Miss Fowler no end of frustration.

Dennis rubbed the spot on his arm where Larry elbowed him and hesitated, looking down at the floor and scuffing the toe of one worn brown shoe against the heel of the other. Anyone could see Dennis was reluctant to contradict Larry, but he couldn’t lie either. Not on something like this. “There is,” he mumbled at last, “Santa comes to our house.”

“See, I told you so,” I puffed. Looking around again at the other kids, I saw my sister Jane smile at me. Taking her smile for confirmation, I nodded my head with an emphatic “Humph” of triumph.

His black eyes blazing at his friend’s betrayal, Larry shouted, “Ain’t either. He never brings any presents to our house. My mom said he ain’t real.”

“I’m going to ask Miss Fowler,” I said. Whirling around, my hands balled into fists, my chin thrust up with a determined tilt, I stomped to the front of the room where Miss Fowler sat at her desk grading papers from the morning classes.

“What’s all this?” she asked, looking up as every single student in the school—all 15 of us—jostled for position around her desk.

“Larry says there isn’t a Santa Claus,” I blurted, my feet planted squarely, fists jammed on hips, determined to prove my point by sheer force of will. “There is, too, isn’t there.” I demanded more than questioned.

In a considered, slow sweep, Miss Fowler looked at each one of us crowding in around her. We ranged in age from 5 to 14 and Miss Fowler, though she had no children herself, stood as an authority, as the authority, we all respected in the absence of our parents.

Taking off her wire-rimmed glasses, Miss Fowler rubbed her eyes for a second, tucked a strand of gray hair behind her ear, and settled the glasses back on her nose. “Well, of course there’s a Santa Claus,” she said in an even tone that could leave no doubt.

Grinning, I looked at Larry in triumph as the tension drained out of my stance.

Miss Fowler looked again at each of us individually. “It might be a good idea for each of you to talk with your parents about Santa if you have questions,” she suggested.

Larry frowned. It was clear that he was mad. I didn’t rub it in, but I didn’t bother to hide my gloating, either.

With the skill of someone who had diffused many playground tussles, Miss Fowler diverted our attention. “I am glad you all are gathered here, now. Let’s see who’s ready to recite their part in the Christmas program. Who wants to go first?”

Hands shot into the air. “Let me. Let me. Let me!” I hopped from one foot to the other. I was oh-so-ready to recite my poem.

I might talk with Mom about Santa, I thought, but then I didn’t really need to. Santa came to our house every year and he would come this year. Why would he not? The school Christmas play at the end of the week meant Christmas itself was only a few days away. All of our parents would come to the school for the program. We scrambled to be ready.

How easy it was to distract us. How willing I was to be distracted.

At the end of the day, we crowded into the unheated entryway of the school, pulled on our boots, tied flannel scarves around our heads, struggled into our heavy winter coats. As we spilled out into the schoolyard, we saw that the snow falling all day had almost erased the tracks of our recess Fox and Goose game. The snowmen we’d built a couple of days before and that had begun to melt in yesterday’s sun now wore two inches of snow balanced in steep ridges on their tree twig arms. The snow was so deep that we didn’t even need to use the stile to get across the fence. We could step right across the top wire on the crusted drifts.

Traipsing through the field toward home, we skittered light as dry leaves across the top of some drifts, broke through from time to time into snow up to our knees, waded out, flopped down to make snow angels, felt the snow melt in our boots. Alternately, we tilted our faces toward the sky to catch snowflakes on our tongues and tucked our heads down against gusts of wind. Plowing ahead into the biting east wind, we were soon coated with snow and could have been mistaken for the snowmen we left back in the schoolyard.

By the time we made it to the house, Larry’s challenge had slid further into the back of my mind. When we opened the back door, my concerns about Santa were erased by the aroma of fresh-baked bread. As we struggled back out of our coats and boots, Mom called, “Who wants a slice of fresh bread?”

“I do, I do!” we shouted. We turned our boots upside down on newspapers that lined the back porch to let the melting snow trickle out and propped our wet mittens to dry against the kitchen heat registers.

The six big loaves of bread Mom baked that afternoon were lined up on the counter and the aroma of fresh bread filled the house. We crowded around the cutting board as Mom sliced off both hot heels from a loaf. Just like always, I claimed one heel and Sue grabbed the other. Settled around the table, we spread on thick layers of butter and bit into the warm, crusty bread.

Mom poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down with us. “Now tell me what went on at school today,” she asked. “Did you have a chance to recite the poem Grandma Denter taught you?”

“Yes, we did,” we chirped. “We said it all the way through, and everybody laughed. Want to hear it again?” I asked. “C’mon,” I said, signaling to Jane and Sue. Without waiting, we slipped off our chairs, stood straight as toy soldiers, hands by our sides, and began in unison:

“One day Mr. Santa Claus said to his wife,

I’m tired of reindeer, I am on my life.

You see we are living in an up-to-date age

Where airships and motors are now quite the rage.

And I’m really beginning to feel

That I must buy me an automobile …”

Grandma Denter had brought the poem with her when she came to visit us that fall, arriving as she usually did, a few weeks after Grandma Jensen went back to live with Aunt Joyce’s family. One time—only once—both grandmas came to visit at the same time. When I asked Mom why they didn’t visit together again, all Mom said was, “Too many cooks.”

My grandmas were about as opposite as night and day. Grandma Jensen was tall and thin and as practical as a heavy sweatshirt in a chilly winter house, more prone to frown than smile. Grandma Denter was about as big around as she was tall and a smile never left her face. She loved to dress up in fancy hats and jewelry. And she loved to tell jokes.

When she arrived, we trailed her into the bedroom and crawled up on the bed while she unpacked her suitcase. Winking at me, she’d said, “Did I ever tell you girls about …”

“Tell us, tell us,” we’d urged at once.

“All right then,” she’d say as she settled into a chair and smoothed her apron over her lap. And she’d launch into a story.

When she finished telling the story, Grandma would clasp her hands across her stomach and lean back in the chair, a satisfied grin on her face. We clapped our hands and laughed, encouraging her to tell us story after story. Grandma entertained us with jokes and stories every day that she visited. When she wasn’t telling us stories, she was having us memorize things, like the Lord’s Prayer in German.

So it was no surprise to us when she pulled the “Santa Claus” poem out of her suitcase. She wanted us to memorize it and shortly she decided we should recite the poem in the school Christmas program.

“Oh, Mother Denter,” Mom said. “I’m sure Harriet has plans for what the girls should be doing.”

Grandma Denter was not intimidated by anything, certainly not our teacher, and she was used to getting things she wanted so when Mom questioned taking the idea of the poem to Miss Fowler, she just folded her arms across her ample stomach, nodded and said, “Don’t you worry. It will be fine.” And it was.

From the moment Miss Fowler agreed, teaching us the poem became the focus of Grandma’s time with us.

“Let’s get in the spirit,” she said each afternoon after we got home from school. She set the stage for practice by preparing a big batch of egg nog, cracking a half dozen fresh eggs in a bowl and whipping them until the bubbly yellow foam was thick around the edges. We watched as she beat in milk, sugar and vanilla, and poured the thick, creamy egg nog into tall glasses. Topping the foam with a rich sprinkle of nutmeg, she handed a glass to each of us. Between sips, she coached us verse after verse until we all three had the poem memorized.

When Grandma finally went back to Wisconsin at the end of her visit, we were sorry to see her go. That was good egg nog. And the poem was planted so deep in our brains that Jane could recite it 50 years later.

“That was perfect, girls,” Mom applauded when we finished reciting the poem and bowed low. “Grandma would be so proud of you.”

The crumbs of our after-school snack brushed away, we checked out the growing piles of gifts under the silver Christmas tree in the living room. Every day we came home to find more packages, each one neatly labeled with one of our names.

Between new snow and fresh bread and barn chores and checking out my presents, the challenge to Santa’s existence never returned to my mind.

This is how Christmas went at our house. On Christmas Eve, all the normal tasks were tinged with urgency and anticipation. We hurried to milk cows, hurried through supper, hurried to get dressed and to church. And all the while, my stomach was doing little flip-flops as I thought about presents and Santa. I loved everything about Christmas Eve.

In the dark, in a cold so crisp our boots crunched loud in the snow and our breath hung in crystal clouds on the air, we trooped into the warmth of the church. Inside, all the white light bulbs lining the sanctuary were replaced with blue bulbs, bulbs that created a cool aura of magic that befit a magic night. A huge evergreen tree cut from a farm field and draped with the construction paper chains we made in Sunday School class filled so much of the front of the church that the organ had to be moved to one side to make room.

The pews of our little country church were filled to capacity. Sitting hip by hip with my family for warmth and so there was enough room for everyone, we sang carols and listened as the minister read the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke. As he read, my lips moved as I whispered the words; I could repeat the story from memory.

After the service was over, after they turned out the blue lights and we lit candles and sang Silent Night, one of the men passed out boxes of rock candy to each child. Then we piled back into our car for a ride home that was so short the car barely got warm. The rest of the evening we opened presents and prepared for Santa.

We all got presents for each other; gifts that accumulated under the Christmas tree for days before Christmas. Sometimes we made these presents. We could count on a bowl of cookies for each of us from Mom, for instance. One year I made place mats for Mom, using white Huck toweling and pink thread to make Christmas tree designs. For weeks I hunkered down behind the sofa, out of sight, to make these place mats and keep them a surprise.

Dad was the tough one to find a gift for. One year I asked him what he wanted for Christmas. He thought for a minute and said, “A bull chain or a heat houser.” I didn’t know what a heat houser was so I looked into getting a bull chain, which is a very heavy, very strong chain Dad hooked to the ring in the bull’s nose to lead him around when he took him out of the stall. The chain cost more money than I had to spend so I wound up getting him a bag of chocolate-covered peanuts. He said he liked that just as well.

That Christmas Eve, when we were barely back in the door from church, the phone rang and I leapt to answer it.

“Santa Claus is HERE! He’s passing out presents right NOW!!!” Jeannie screamed through the receiver. “Look out your window; I bet you can see the reindeer and sleigh.”

I slammed down the phone, not even taking time to say good bye. “Santa Claus is across the road,” I shouted and Jane and Sue and I ran to the bedrooms on the north side of our house. All the north windows faced the highway with a clear view to Scheckels’ house. We crowded against the window in our bedroom, scanning the clear night sky.