It’s “Hey Rene J” Today!

Hacking some weeds this weekend reminded me of another episode which occurred during my brief stint as that detassling foreman.

It was the last day of work, definitely a day everyone appreciated. A number of buses were sent to finish the last field and some of the workers (remember age 14 and up?) were walking the field with machetes, relieving the rows of weeds and rogue cornstalks. (Who gives a kid a machete? The same people who let me drive a bus, apparently.)

We’re at the end of the day when we see someone is being taken to the hospital. An apparent slip of the knife caused a foot injury for this young man who had made it through the entire summer without incident. Ah. It was my 14-year old brother!

I really don’t recall how bad it was or if he needed stitches. (We’ll discuss that on our next family phone call.) We continued doing our work and finished the field. I went on my merry way returning kids to their hometowns and washing the bus out for the last time, fully cognizant of the fact that weeding can be a dangerous activity.

Use caution.

It was time to clean the bathroom sinks – again. Without a doubt, I am the messiest face washer on the planet. I splash and create water spots everywhere. ‘Twas a bone of contention early on in the marriage, forcing us to change sides of the counter since most of the pond ended up on my left side. Now, whose fault is this overdosing on cleansing?

The Avon lady.

My mother and her friend scheduled an appointment with this beloved saleswoman of cosmetics for my bestie and I. We were probably in sixth grade? Something like that, because I remember getting clear mascara to wear since I wasn’t in high school yet, and I really wanted mascara! Anyway, this dear woman showed us how to properly wash our faces each morning and night so as not to have dirt clinging to us and miring our lily-white complexions. Apparently I took the gentle splashing to an extreme – and still do.

We could also lay blame on those sinks which are just too small to accommodate a good dousing, and as I recall, they were all too small those many years ago. However, our current sinks are much wider and really do handle the deluge better.

Our third culprit – just little ol’ me. Sigh. Thank you, Avon lady.

…the summer of driving a school bus in the cornfields. “Poor Irv,” is all I can think to say.

Irv was my superior – the guy in charge of all the drivers running detassling crews throughout the county for the NC+ company. Every morning after the corn had matured enough to be stricken of tassles, (sounds awful!) I would head out with my rig around 5 am, travel to two or three small towns, return to the city park with a load of teens ready to earn the best wages around for a kid, and then set out with a map and directions for the field we were going to deprive of some pollinating ability.

In the course of the two months I wrangled teens and stalks, I managed to run over irrigation pipe, back the bus into my neighbor’s car (I think he parked it there on purpose!) and blow out something with the engine in the town farthest from home. I always dreaded calling Irv, and yet he never yelled at me or chastised me. He just shook his head, obviously thinking he wasn’t paid enough for the job.

I never sent the crew into the wrong field in spite of my directional dyslexia, I didn’t miss a single day of work, and I lost weight dragging myself through those muddy, irrigated fields every day for two months. They even asked me to return the following summer? I would have, save my family moved that year and we no longer lived where someone would let me drive a bus.

Every fall when those yellow transports fill the roads I remember that summer and Irv, a model of patience. Be like Irv.

Oh, yes. At the crossroads of America truck stop, recognized as a hometown girl by a road warrior in a semi. Now, did I worry about that?

Back all those 40 years ago, counties in my fair state were numbered. My father knew where a car was from just by the first digit or two on the license plate. Because it’s a fairly small state in population, you also knew the county seat for the most part, and yes, Geneva was the county seat. So good deduction on the part of the truck driver, probably a “Good Life” native, also. That was my interpretation.

Our drive continued uninterrupted and we both were properly deposited to enjoy the rest of the summer. I had a lovely gift for my sister, whose high school graduation I missed in order to go on this adventure. My parents probably breathed a sigh of relief that the car made it back in one piece. I continued on to that lucrative summer job – foreman for the detassling crew.

And that brought an entirely new set of driving experiences, one which gave my boss a headache or three.

NYC always intrigued me so I had to make a detour there on my East coast foray. Luckily, the sisters had an aunt and uncle who lived somewhere there and we could spend a couple of nights on their graciousness. Why their parents trusted us in this adventure? Says a lot about parenting back then.

Thus, did we go to the Statue of Liberty? Take a bus tour? See a show? No. We went to a night club – a “real one” in a basement. In no way, shape or form would I have wanted my kids to be thrown into a big city den of uncertainty like that! Plus, I’m only 19 – remember? How did I even get in? No fake ids for me. You get the picture. I’m not sure when I realized we should probably get out of there, but we successfully did. This was out of my Midwestern comfort zone. We found my car parked wherever it was and managed to make our way back to the relatives’ house. I decided it was time to head back to “The Good Life.”

Leaving when we did brought us to a truck stop in the middle of the night – Indianapolis area on I-70. Some guy walks up and says, “You from Geneva, Nebraska?”

And there the story continues.

In 1978 I was a guest for a performance long forgotten in my memory. It was at the Kennedy Center.

Preceding that, I had topped my 1968 Mercury Cougar with a U-Haul device and slapped two college mates’s luggage atop. We were heading to Annapolis to deposit the sisters at their home. Neither drove a car, thus I toted an extra friend who did know how to drive as my back-up.

It’s an epic tale for sure, one that came to mind with this hullaballoo surrounding the demolition of the Center. The part most prevalent in my foggy bank is that I was 19, driving in D.C. with no sense of direction. (An issue still unresolved at this point in life.) While we made it to the performance in my little boat, we couldn’t figure out how to get out of the city. I pulled off Pennsylvania Avenue to read a map, and yes, flashing lights immediately flagged us. Even then you couldn’t just pull over to an empty spot for a respite.

The officer obviously noticed our youthfulness, Nebraska license plate, unfolded map of the area, and politely offered to escort us to our route. I was never scared, just too naive to even be worried about my fate other than finding the right road. We did escape, and eventually my other driver and I made it back to the Midwest. Of course, I had to drive in NYC before heading home. Another wacky adventure.

The biggest marvel? My parents thought I was quite capable of navigating that entire two week mission in the era sans credit card or cell phone. And apparently I was.

But what is wasting time? Contemplation, prayer, doodling, writing, or meditation are not wasting time – yet they don’t “accomplish” tasks that need to be done. (Which is why people avoid those lovely diversions, methinks.) Today, tasks must be done in between this fine art form. It’s Labor Day weekend, a weekend typically reserved for us doing labor.

In years past we have cut down trees, raked pine needles, finished summer jobs which we put on a back burner, had a baby before the big day, oh – and got married. This weekend? Revolving door time with family and friends. Thus, Rene needs to attend to some housekeeping and yard maintenance.

The coffee is done, the day begun. Now is the time for us to have fun!

Today I was forced to do laps in the lap pool rather than walking against the current in the activity pool. It would have been better if I’d had my floral bathing cap, but I managed to keep my head above water and preserve my messily thrown updo. (Notice the terms related to swimming which apply to life?)

What I discovered in that pivotal exercise is that I really do like swimming laps. I used to go for an hour just mindlessly letting the water do the work while I participated. Today I noticed the sign which read, “No long breath holding.” What? That was my entire goal each and every summer when the city pool opened!

Probably in my teens I mastered the length of the pool in one breath. The width of the pool was highly achievable at some point, so I went for length. I can still feel that pressure from thinking you’ll explode before you reach the wall. But when I did it, I knew I could survive anything an ocean could throw at me! I’d never been in an ocean, so I had no clue what that was like, but it did build my confidence. Perhaps that’s why I feel so very comfortable under the sea?

Summer thoughts for an end-of-summer month. Just keeping my head above water.

A dear friend reminded me that I had suggested the name, “Curtain Rods” for our little four-girl clubhouse moniker. Apparently eccentricity may begin at an early age? Either that or I was wishing I had curtain rods in the bedroom my sister and I shared in that first home we rented!

The cool thing about that un-draped bedroom was that we each had our own twin bed, and we could run a string with a bucket on it from one end to the other, five feet away. We passed messages and dumb stuff back and forth to avoid sleep. I can only imagine what will happen soon enough with the twin granddaughters who have already managed to understand the meaning of, “delay bed time.”

The little gifts of an idyllic childhood.

For some reason, probably because of the therapy session yesterday, I was thinking about how we weren’t financially rich as a family when I was growing up. Then this pops up in my daily reading!

My siblings and I spent hours entertaining ourselves with non-toys and our make-believe stories. Since my father had a playhouse built for my sister and I when we were just three and four years of age, that mini-domicile moved with us to two different towns and became our go-to haven for fun. It was a library, restaurant, school, hospital, and one evening, an attempted sleep-over unit. (That didn’t work. My mom was too worried about us in the yard at night so in we went!)

We did make our own fun and were truly rich in the ways that mattered.