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.