Assignment for November 30, 2007: Definition.
Define a place with a single word. Write a story that shows that word manifesting. (Pick one category that has a strong word attached to it [house/impressive] then another [father/wall] and a third [country life/pig] and braid them together via coinciding words.)

COUNTRY LIFE HITS A WALL (Revised and Edited April 18, 2008)

My parents had the house designed and built for them when they returned to Germany after fourteen years in the United States. My father was able to acquire a lot at the edge of town with a glorious view of distant hills and, up close, of fertile fields. An architect was chosen and plans were drawn with large windows and tiled kitchen for my mother, and an entry way and spacious rooms appropriate for my father’s impressive new position.

The floors were parquet, natural stone and tile, the living room floor covered with red oriental carpets. The brass railing winding with the staircase from entry hall to upstairs living quarters was kept at a high polish. The walls were hung with paintings and mementos collected over the years. The furniture, bought when they married 35 years earlier had traveled with my parents and had survived bombings and even spent fourteen years in Naperville, Illinois. There it barely squeezed into the modest Midwest frame house but now the walls were designed to accommodate the furniture and really made the pieces look great. Behind the house was their large landscaped garden with a fountain pool that ended at planted fields. I loved watching the sowing, cultivating and harvesting of three different crops a year. I could observe it at breakfast from the enclosed garden room in winter or the open balcony in the summer. Except for one small detail, my parents were happy in this impressive home designed to last them their lifetimes.

That little detail was the narrowness of the master bathroom. Had the wall been one foot further out into the large hall space, my parents could have passed by each other more easily between bathtub and sinks. Typical of my father, the annoyance of that wall became a lawsuit. My father himself was reminiscent of a wall. It was not so much physically that he resembled a wall but that he stood tall and strong behind his convictions. We who lived with him knew when not contradict him. My parents had been raised in a patriarchal society and so my mother knew how do deal with him. Our family life ran smoothly. Luckily my father had not only absolute confidence in his abilities but also good ideas and drive. He was a very successful engineer.

Occasionally his stubbornness put him in the position of defending the ridiculous. I remember his commenting to friends that we had seen pigs that were as large as small cows while on a trip to Ohio. One humorless woman who was partial to absolute fact contradicted him and he would not back down. She brought the topic up whenever they met which assured his maintaining his position. My mother would have gotten him to laugh about it and dissolve the barrier. Then he could have pronounced horses in the Midwest as big as elephants, and everyone would have laughed. That’s how you get around walls. As for the bathroom wall, my father won the case. It was impossible to move the wall so he enjoyed frequently cursing the squeeze.

I was reminded of the pig story when friends moved to an Oregon farm during the Back to Nature movement in the 1970’s. They had read the Whole Earth Catalogue for instructions on how to be farmers, planted a garden and bought chicks, ducklings and a piglet to raise. When the pig was full grown, Earl marched the 300+ pound pig on a plank into the back of his Dodge van to take it to market. After a few miles the pig decided it wanted to be up front with Earl. Grunting enthusiastically it started to climb over the low engine compartment between the two front seats. While whacking the pig on the snout with a map and gunning the engine to cover the 10 miles of gravel road to town as fast as possible, they almost landed in the ditch three times. Earl said the pig was virtually on his lap by the time they got to town. That pig was as big as a small cow, it sounded like. I can hear my father and Earl laughing straight through that story.

In his youth my father had been a pentathlon athlete and in his seventies was still proud of his physique. He would challenge me to hit him in the abdomen as hard as I could with my fists, to feel its steely hardness. He stood firm in the conviction that he was as healthy as when he was young and paid no attention to high blood pressure warnings. The stroke hit him like a jackhammer. It was tragic when that wall crumbled.

LIFE OF THE PARTY
“That Jack, what a character. He’s such a card, how does Eleanor put up with him?” commented one of my Mother’s ten siblings.
The family outings were never complete without the presence of my father. At six feet tall, handsome as Clark Gable, and an ever-ready joke on the tip of his tongue, he was always the favorite at these get togethers. His flirtatious nature, forever sporting a Camel cigarette in one hand and a bourbon and water in the other, infected the reunions with a spark of life and anxious appreciation.
When the Metevias, my Mother’s family gathered, there was always a certain tension among them. Whether it was grievances from year’s prior or the fact that one would have to remind the others of an unsettled childhood feud, they would try to work through it with a game of cards. Poker was their favorite but, euchre would do and, if all else failed, a couple would pair off for a game of gin rummy. They could never sit and play cards without giving an argument a chance to foment.
“For God’s sake Liz, just bet or fold. It ain’t that Goddamn complicated,” shouted Uncle Danny. Worse yet, all five of the men would begin yelling.
“Just calm down,” replied Liz. “It’s my money and I gotta think about how I’m gonna spend it.”
That was my Dad’s cue. “Oh Danny, she’s just sorting out her cards. Helen, get your Uncle another beer so Aunt Liz has a chance to figure out her cards.”
Helen, my older sister, and ever-present best and only daughter to her Father and idol would oblige readily and the disagreeable uncle would be replete with beer in a matter of seconds. Aunt Liz, by that point, had figured out which cards to discard or how much to bet and the game continued until the next bump in the road.
Ma was always busy with the twins and me. She never drank or smoked and spent most of the time with her oldest sister, Stella. Her and Stella talked with their Ma and Pa, who were in their late eighties, about growing up in Carlton, Michigan. They talk a lot about how hard it was growing up so poor. Ma was fast to make her Pa a cup of tea that he always poured into the saucer. He did this to cool it but also to keep his large moustache from getting tea soaked. Pa was over six feet tall with a white beard and moustache that would have won a prize had a contest arose for best, brightest, and whitest facial hair been announced. Grandma, at under five feet, let her husband do the talking and sat smiling with some kind of sewing, tatting, or needlework occupying her small arthritic hands.
“T.J., I told you to leave those twins alone,” chastised Ma. She then went about her familial history with her sister and parents.
“Ike, are you gonna play or drop out,” yelled Aunt Liz, happy to poke back at her older brother for slow play.
“Just shut up, Liz,” Uncle Ike shouted. “Who died and made you Queen?”
“Now come on, Ike, It’s just a game,” cajoled my Dad. “Who’s bid? Bid big cause I got the winner right here in my paws.”
“She plays like a dumb Pollack,” finished Uncle Ike.
Pollack was our families one fits all slander. It’s connotation was that if you were Polish, you were as dumb as a post. Most of my mother’s brothers had married Polish woman as the area of Michigan we were from was full of French Canadians (my mother’s family) and Poles.
“Skip, ain’t your wife, Marie, Polish?” asked Dad.
“Sure is,” answered Skip. “And if she couldn’t cook so damn well I’d send her right back to Pollack town on the first bus.”
And on and on the game and the friendly and hateful chatter proceeded with Dad brokering the sibling rivalries while they drank, smoked, argued, and played cards. The only winner, for sure, would be the alcohol. It was a given, at day’s end, the spouses of the drunk card players would be in charge of the chauffeuring and child conveyance duties.
“Come on, Dad,” Ma said. “Time to get the kids home. Tomorrow's a school day from them and a work day for us.”
“I’ll drive, Ma. You drive slower than molasses,” informed Dad.
“Oh no, Jack,” warned Ma. “You’ve had about five too many. I’ll do the driving for this bunch and there’s no sense of even arguing about it Jack Rexall, I’ve got the keys so I’ll be driving. No fights or questions asked,” Ma informed with her final, no questions or arguments allowed, warning voice she pulled out for such occasions.
It never failed when arriving at home an argument between Ma and Dad would ensue over Dad taking the car out for one more. “I’m fine, Ma, just give me the goddamn keys so I can go down to Heiny’s bar for another drink.”
“You’ve had enough, Jack. Now quit acting this way in front of the kids and just go to bed,” She demanded.
With only minor complaints, my father, the life of the party, drunkenly made way to bed but not before a final joke or story for his kids. We knew he liked his bourbon too much as Ma had told us, but he was our hero and the funniest man at home and at every party.

Uncle Herman

Uncle Herman was a farmer. He stayed on the farm where he was born and lived to see it renamed A Century Farm. Two years younger than my mother, they played together as kids, riding their ponies Roman style. The tomboy sister and little brother team were risk-takers and dare-devils growing up on an Iowa farm, where they learned that hard work was never something to be feared.

Somewhere along the way, Uncle Herman learned to laugh. He would throw his head back and let out one of those accordion laughs that just kept rolling out of his mouth and bounced around in the air for a long time. He loved to laugh. It became his most endearing quality.

As a child he was known to walk and talk in his sleep. One summer night he rolled out of bed, through an open second story window, picked himself up, walked back in the front door and up the stairs where he tossed his body into his bed—all without waking up. He learned of his night-time adventure the next morning from his older brother. Uncle Herman just laughed and kept right on laughing.

After Uncle Herman married my Aunt Doris, they built a new house on the farm. Aunt Doris announced that she would have dinner ready at noon, not a minute before or after. Uncle Herman reacted to this command with, “I’ll be jiggered if I’m gonna let that woman tell me how to run my farm.”

Uncle Herman brought his family to town every Saturday night. Dressed like most of the country folk, he sported a striped or plaid cowboy shirt that fit snugly around his expanding middle that hung over an oversized belt buckle. Cowboy boots and slim jeans made the lower half of his body appear a size smaller than the top half. The boots made his body tilt slightly forward when he walked the walk of a farmer—never in a hurry. His blue eyes and broad forehead went unnoticed because of his Dagwood-style shocks of hair that stood straight up at the temples.

Friendly with everyone, he might start a conversation with, “Howdy, Harve,
how ‘r your beans gettin’ along? Gonna have a good corn crop this year?”

Uncle Herman liked his meat cooked to a well done state and even beyond. On one occasion in a restaurant his steak came to the table with a small amount of blood oozing from the steak. In sending it back to the kitchen to finish cooking, he summed up the condition of the steak with this line, “I’ve seen cows hurt worse than that, get better.”

One summer afternoon Uncle Herman was driving his Chevy back to his farm with his son and daughter, ages five and seven. The roller coaster hills throughout the Iowa countryside can cause a tummy tickle at the moment the car tops the hill and begins the descent. “Give us a tummy tickle, Daddy.” the kids said. Topping the hill into the glaring sunset, Uncle Herman’s car was hit head on by another car. His car rolled backwards several times coming to a stop at the bottom of the hill. The two children were thrown from the car. Uncle Herman crawled from the flattened vehicle. Seeing his daughter lying in the ditch, he reassured her and began looking for his son. The little boy’s body was visible, but his head was beneath the overturned car. Uncle Herman immediately lifted the car off of his son’s head and managed to walk to the nearest farmhouse for help. He did this with a broken back. The children had broken bones and concussions. Several months and a lot of miracles later, they all made complete recoveries.

Uncle Herman was very protective of his kids. One night, his advice to his teen-age son was, “Now son, you high-tail it home by midnight, ya’ hear? Almost nothin’ good happens after midnight.”

Uncle Herman loved to ride horses, owned several, and entered every horse race in the area. One year he built a chariot with the bottom half of a 55 gallon barrel. He attached a set of old car wheels at each end of an axle beneath the barrel, hitched it up to a team of horses and set out for adventure. He won the chariot races at the fair, laughing all the way across the finish line. His laugh could be heard above the cheering spectators. Uncle Herman knew how to have fun. “By golly, I reckon that dad-gummed chariot had ought ‘ta win another race or two. I’m a keepin’ it.”

Uncle Herman and Aunt Doris made the long car journey from Iowa to Southern California several times to see their daughter and grandchildren. To say that they disliked California freeways is the biggest understatement of the year. Uncle Herman’s summary of freeways was, “That’s just a big racetrack out there. Blast it all, I like to see a finish.”

Uncle Herman’s health began to fail in his mid-seventies. His respiratory illness caused alarm for the whole family, especially my mother, his closest sibling and life-long friend. When their oldest granddaughter invited them to her wedding in California, Uncle Herman and Aunt Doris promised they would be there. During their flight to the west coast, Uncle Herman told Aunt Doris that he had an important phone number in his suit pocket. It was the number of the undertaker back home. “Just in case this trip does me in,” he said.

They arrived at their daughter’s home two days before the wedding. Relatives in California were not prepared to see his frail body. He was no longer strong enough to give us one of his endearing laughs. He spent the first night in the hospital emergency room. His coughing could not be controlled. He died early the next morning, the day before his granddaughter’s wedding.

It was time to use the telephone number in his suit pocket.

My oldest brother was named Orville at birth, but by the time he was eighteen, he was Ringo. He was big, six foot three and over two-hundred pounds, with dusty blue eyes and ‘ash-brown’ hair. His features were even, but his face scared by acne. And he had that ‘something’ that women went wild over. He was the best of brothers and my hero.

The summer of 1955, he was home on a thirty day leave from the Paratroopers, and, when he wasn’t home, he was drinking and fighting his way through all the small towns within a fifty-mile radius. That summer was the first time I got to go into an ‘honest-to-god’ bar. And, who better to take me there than my big brother

One afternoon, he was working on my mom’s car and had to go pick up a starter at the local junkyard, and I begged to go along. To my surprise, he agreed. It was a blue-sky day and in the field below our house a meadowlark had been warbling his heart out, while I watched Ringo work; one of those golden times that stand out in your memory. As we walked to the pickup, I grabbed his hand and felt so important and, so grateful to have him home, if only for a little while. He looked down at me and gave me one of his sideways grins. Everything was perfect.

We went to the junkyard, located just outside Fort Collin, the nearest town of any size, and, when he got out of the pickup, I settled down to wait until he got the starter and paid for it. When he closed his door, he looked in the window and said, “Aren’t you comin’?”

I was so excited I thought my heart was going to pound its way right out of my chest. Whenever we were with my Dad, he would always say, “You wait in the car,” to whomever was with him. Now, Ringo was asking me to come into the mysterious world of the junkyard. This was a ‘do-it-yourself’ source for used car parts. You looked around until you found a wreck that was the right make and model, then took the part out yourself. Ringo not only let me go along, he let me hand him tools, and, once, even asked me to hold some wires out of his way while he undid some bolts. Life didn’t get much better than this.

After he paid for the starter, we got loaded back up and he said, “Want to go get a cold drink?”
Did I want to keep breathing?

I said, “Yes”, and, instead of turning west, when we left the junkyard, he turned east and drove a couple of miles into town. I suppose I had thought we would go to Walgreens or a café, but, he turned at the first traffic light and drove into the “bad” area of town. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know why. It covered about four or five square blocks, located on the west end of town, just before you got to the “other side of the tracks”.
We passed the Linden Hotel that had a sign on the side door that said Whites Only. We drove past a couple of pawn shops and Ringo laughed and said, “I think I still have a pawn ticket from Pat’s loans, but, since it’s four years old, I guess I can figure it’s forfeit.

He pulled up in front of a building with a dark green neon sign across the front that proclaimed this was “Buck’s Place”. My eyes must have been open so wide they looked like headlights. Ringo was taking me into a bar with him.

It wasn’t like I’d never been in a place that served beer. In the summer, I worked in a café that served beer and had a bar with eight bar stools in front of it. But, when Mom and us kids went to the Log Cabin (a restaurant with a bar attached), we never got to go into the bar, even though there was just an open archway between the two.

When Ringo and I walked into the bar, it was everything I wanted it to be. It was dingy. In fact, until your eyes adjusted to the light, it was downright dark. It had a pungent, never-to-be-forgotten odor about it: beer and whiskey, and all the smells that accompany men who work, the smell of oil and gasoline from the mechanics, and the sharp smell of resin and pine from the men who worked in the timber. And, there was the unmistakable, but not unpleasant smell from men who worked on ranches and farms (the smell of horses and cattle, manure and sweat). To the right of the door, when we walked in, were two men playing the pinball machines; using body language and slapping at the sides of the machines to make those balls go where they wanted them to. They were, also, using the other kind of language until Ringo said, “I brought my little sis’ in for a Coke.” He didn’t have to say anything else; after all, this was the 50s.

We walked over to the bar and he waited until I had hoisted myself up onto a barstool, which I immediately spun around on, then he sat down and ordered a draft for him and a Coke for me. When my drink arrived, it had not one, but two maraschino cherries in it. I’d never had a drink with fruit in it.

I was suffering from sensory overload, so I missed most of the conversation Ringo was carrying on with the bartender until he got my attention and asked if I was hungry. It had been a long time since breakfast, but, even if I’d eaten five minutes before I left home, I’d have said, “Yes”. What amazing foods might be served in this male bastion? I wasn’t disappointed. When I asked what they had, Ringo pointed to the shelf in back of the bar where I could see the ‘menu’ for myself. They had pickled pigs feet, pickled eggs, beef jerky, hot sausages, potato chips, and pork rinds. After I had looked for a couple of minutes, he said they also served hamburgers and he was going to have his special. I said, “I’ll have that, too.”

He had a devilish grin, “Are you sure?”

He was a great brother, but he could tease, so I asked him what his special was. He told me it was a raw hamburger with a thick slice of onion, salt, and a lot of pepper. He didn’t even look surprised when I said, “That’s alright with me.”

He ordered another beer and a Coke for me and the hamburgers were there in a couple of minutes, after all, they didn’t have to be cooked. They were delicious. We sat there for an hour or so, eating and talking. He had a couple more beers, I had another Coke, then he said, “Mom might get worried if we’re gone much longer.” So we headed home. As a kid, this was one of the all-time great days of my life.

To the day he died, Ringo remained a puzzle to most people who knew him. He didn’t let many get close. He was legendary as a hard-working, bike-riding, hard-drinking street brawler who feared absolutely nothing. But there wasn’t a woman in his life, and there were many, who didn’t know and love the tender, loving man, who did most of the cooking and his share of housework. He was absolutely original.

He never lost his sense of humor, especially about himself. About four months before he died, I spoke to him, on the phone, and asked him what he was doing.
He laughed and said, “Well, last night I stopped at a local bar and spent a couple of hours listening to some big, old, dirty biker tell me stories about myself.”

I asked why he didn’t tell the guy who he was, and he said, “Hell, he might have stopped talking and he was telling me stories I’ve never heard before.”

CONFESSIONS OF A NAIL-BITER

I am a nail-biter --been one as far back as I can remember. I have tried every possible treatment, magic potion, and cure; I have painted awful tasting coating on them, worn gloves while driving, and have even sat on my hands (however, not at the same time I'm driving).

As I sit here writing this, I am well aware that, for the moment, I have nine decent length fingernails; nine because I "lost" my right thumbnail today. It was only partially damaged yesterday, but, while I was driving, the poor thing...well, suffice it to say, it's now gone.

So, alas, I am still a nail-biter. I no longer bite them daily as I did in my youth. In fact, I haven't done that for decades. Now it's more like a bad habit that sneaks up on me during times of stress or angst or uncertainty about the human condition --most notably mine.

I tell myself that biting nails, though very unattractive, really isn't all that bad. After all, I don't drink or smoke at all nor do I gamble (at least not excessively), and I really don't have any other really bad habits (if you don't count the fact that I don't make my bed in the morning; after all, what's the point, I'm just going to get back in it again in the evening).

So, maybe biting nails is not so bad; After all, some people pick their noses!