Sunday afternoon. August in Missouri is what it usually is -- hot, dry, quiet, and worst of all, only three weeks left before school starts again. I am bored. My nine-year old drama queen decides that the best way to channel the boredom is to feign a moody despondence at the mere thought of being locked into the prison of homework and chores for the next eight months, so I stalk into the kitchen and flounce myself loudly on one of the metal dining chairs. Wrapping my feet around its cool, steel legs, I finger a crack in the plastic and trace the outline of the large, metal tacks. Casey Casom's Top Forty was drowned out by the sound of the cicadas. I thought about an episode from "The Twilight Zone."
"What?" says my mother. It is clear by her tone that she knows my drama queen is in the room. "Why don't find something to do?" she asks, candidly.
I looked up at her and said nothing. It was early in the afternoon. The windows were open above the sink and the little drum-shaped floor fan hummed. My mother was ironing. The smell of scorched spray starch filled the room.
Entirely put upon, I slid off the chair, dragged myself over to iron and fold the last three or four hand-embroidered cotton pillowcases.
"Hey, it's after one! My music is on!" My mother stepped quickly to the old white radio on top of the refrigerator and turned the dial. The sound of polka music flooded my ears. The cicadas stopped. I smiled.
"Why do you listen to that music every Sunday?" I asked. "It's the music from the neighborhoods where I grew up." she replied. "They play an hour of Polish music, then an hour of Croatian, then Irish, then bluegrass. All these neighborhoods still exist in St. Louis, so on Sunday I guess they play their music because the people enjoy it."
She unplugged the iron and sat it on the counter, then pulled at the metal lever on the ironing board and folded it for storage. It was almost as tall as she was. I had to be the one to take it to the back room.
"Do you know how to dance?" she asked. I said, "Yeah, what kind?" "Can you polka?"
Suddenly, she sprang into position, her back straight, like a soldier. She put her arms out in a circle, her left hand above her head, like a ballerina. "Come here. I'll show you." Delighted, I stepped up and grabbed her hands.
"Now, stand up straight. Grab my left hand and put your hand on my waist. I'm going to lead, so you just follow my steps." I was eagerly but impatiently trying to mimic her steps.
"Don't look down," she admonished, "Look at me."
One, two three, one two three, kind of like a waltz, but faster and faster, until we were twirling and skipping around the room. Accordion music lifted us off the ground. We dipped and giggled, bumping into the table and the chairs, and the stove, and the refrigerator. Beads of sweat poured down our faces and our arms.
We stopped, breathless, giddy and laughing. Magically, my mother had become twenty years younger. In that instant, she became my buddy. She still is. And we still dance.
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Phone Booth
Time seems to move much faster here in the city than it does
in my home town – one thousand or so souls, most of who hail from families who have
lived in Crawford County for at least five or six generations.
Most of those patriarchs were immigrants who created an
economy built on the “three M’s,” mining, manufacturing and manure (raising
livestock). Nowadays the mines are shut
down, the railroad is covered over with grass and gravel, and there are only one
or two good-sized factories. But some
things never seem to change.
You can still buy a bottled Coca-cola at the general store (coffee
at the round-table, canned goods and catfish dinners on Fridays). You can still
go to a barber shop. The Spare Rib Inn still serves the best biscuits and gravy
in town (after 85 years in business).
And you can still see a telephone booth gleaming in the sun,
aging gracefully on the corner in front of the County Court House.
As manager of the local telephone company, my father had put
that booth there. I remember being a kid, seeing it for the first time when we
went to the little ceremony they had to “officially” welcome this icon of 20th
century progress to our 19th century town.
To my father, it was a lovely technological convenience and
a status symbol of the growth of our valley’s communications system.
To me, it was a victory...because, in that moment, in front
of everybody, my daddy and his boss invited me
to be the first to set foot in that phone booth.
I looked up at that lovely, tall, square, shiny, red and
silver box with its slick black rotary phone, and stepped inside it like it was
a spaceship. I fingered the silver cord that held the whole fifty pages of
telephone directory, and smiled out through the glass. Then, the local papers began
to take pictures.
I was seeing my own future in the chromed dial of that
telephone...and I was a movie star. I was getting a college degree from Brigham
Young University and marrying Donny Osmond. In between kids, I would become
Barbra Streisand.
Who cared, now, if they made fun of me for wearing bright
pink lipstick at the age of twelve? Who would chide me for checking Shakespeare
out of the library, today? On this day,
in this glittering box, in this small town, with two cameras snapping away, I
was in my element. I would be prom queen. I would be Harvest Festival queen. I would become a cultural icon.... Davy Jones would check me out! Nobody, but nobody, was gonna rain on my
parade.
Just a couple of days ago I stood in front of that phone
booth and I could not help but smile. I remembered how I used that phone booth
as a sort of touchstone as I had gone on through high school, getting in it and
standing, day dreaming all the promises I had made to myself as a child. Now,
looking into the empty, ragged interior of this stately antique, it was time to
take stock of how close I had come to living my dreams.
Like most of us, I did a few things just right and most
things just wrong. I went to college,
but not Brigham Young. I married a wonderful man, who was not Donny Osmond. I
worked in films, but behind, not in front of the cameras. I have met many
cultural icons, but never became one.
Grinning up at that phone booth, I realized that, by the
grace of God, from one antique to another, life had not been everything I
thought I wanted, but it has still been pretty darned good.
And, although I was
43 and he was 52, Davy Jones DID check me out.
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