Prairie Spy

by Linda, Alan

  Right there in the driveway where the limo lurked.

  The next memory is of The Young Girls, older still, and it is snowing, a warm snow, wet and sticky and great for making snow sculptures. The Young Girls at that age brought to snow art a new attention to detail that was amazing. The figures that they created, with hats and gloves and arms, stood for weeks, and reminded me each day when I left for work that children gain new skills, and grow older, even though the snow people seemed to stand there unchanged. I say “seemed.” After a few days, the snowmen began to show how time, for them too, was passing quickly. It does that for snowmen, and for children. They both grow old.

  Right there in the driveway where the limo lurked.

  Suddenly, a door in the black limo opened and Young Men appeared, all dressed up, holding their offering of flowers. They wore grown-up tuxes, with sharp pleats in their pants, and patent leather shoes that caught the late day sun, and brilliant smiles..

  I looked, and my hands had abandoned the shovel for a camera, with which I somewhat automatically begin taking pictures of young excitement, and anticipation, and shy looks, and jerky moves, as The Young Men posed self consciously with The Young Girls. Then they were clumsily pinning corsages on, and the results are crooked, and everyone is smiling at everyone else, even though the smiles look frozen, and somewhat manufactured. Is this fun, the smiles seemed to ask? They all seemed a little bit confused about what fun is, and is this exactly what each of them is supposed to be doing, in this ritual in front of the magic pumpkin in which they arrived moments ago.

  They probably think that we, The Old Girl and I, being adults, know what they should be doing, and they likely wish they could do it. At least then, someone would be happy. We are, by our presence, the unwitting source of a great deal of their awkwardness. Getting the hell out of there will solve that dilemma, though, so they bundle their sharp pleats and shiny dresses and patent leather pumps into the pumpkin and speed out of there, all black windows and motion and leaving, taking both the proof of our existence—and our measure of time passing—away with them.

  We stand there, and watch them go, and think about children playing in the mud, and a black dog tied to a wagon, and snow men, and our own fading mortality.

  In the Lamaze method book, I don’t remember any of this being covered.

  §

  Spilled Chickens

  (This column goes back to when the oldest Young Girl was 17. It’s one of my favorites.)

  It was an otherwise ordinary day. Me? I was just home from work, sitting at my ordinary kitchen table, enjoying the ordinary end of what was an ordinary—hallelujah!—day.

  Plainly, everything was ordinary. It was in that condition that we often lament as boring. Boring is nothing but boring up to that point when ordinariness is violently ripped asunder by the Extraordinary. The calm surface of everything is suddenly all splooshed up like someone just threw in a boulder. The splash soaks you to the bone.

  At that point, you find yourself sitting there, dripping, thinking about how plain and boring life was just a moment ago, and about how you kind of thought it was maybe too boring. Now? Now, you’re looking for a towel, and the kind you need hasn’t ever been sold at retail.

  Seventeen (The Young Girls are identified, if you remember, by their respective ages. There’s 13—going on 24—15—going on 24—and 17—also going on 24. Seventeen just walked in the front door. She had just returned in the much-fancied Little Red Car that, she claims, calls her name at night and begs her to drive hither and yon about the countryside, a tank and a half a night.

  Seventeen came in and said: “Dad, don’t be mad. I have to tell you something…”

  I looked up from the plain and ordinary book which I had been reading, assumed the most ordinary look I could muster, and shouted: “YOU’RE NOT PREGNANT, ARE YOU?”

  “Dad! I’m only 17. Quit that.”

  I guess, then that everything else you’re going to tell me is, by comparison, pretty, ummm, ordinary, huh?

  “I didn’t hurt The Red Car, and it really wasn’t my fault,” continued 17. Different expressions were trading places on her face. Truth seemed to be wrestling accountability there, and her face was showing the strain of serving as the mat for the match.

  “Difficult as this is to explain, dad, well, you know…well, The Car just ran into 47 frozen chickens and a turkey,” said 17, quite, I thought, straight faced. Plainly, I thought to myself, this will not be an ordinary story. Yippee.

  Where did this close encounter between you and the world’s proven reserve of cold poultry take place?

  “There was ice and I was just starting The Little Red Car and it wasn’t my fault and it was in neutral cause it won’t start in gear and it kinda did it by itself.” The Great Wrestling Match was now using her hands, which seemed to believe that large amounts of waving were directly correlatable to large amounts of innocence in this affair.

  You…..you hit 47 frozen chickens?

  “And a turkey,” she added. (I didn’t want this to ever end. Even now, I was thinking column. Great column.) These chickens, I asked, were they crossing the street and got caught in a sudden temperature drop? Has the warming of the planet reversed and gone a-fowl, suddenly? (Wait, I thought to myself, until Al Gore hears this.)

  “It didn’t hardly dent it,” she said in a whisper.

  Dent what, I asked, suspecting the hard part was coming.

  “Dent mom’s new freezer.” She added, “in the garage.”

  Ah, the freezer in the garage. (The ice thickens.) I better go look, huh?

  Out in the plain ordinary garage, I switched on the lights, and winced. Mr. Gibson the Freezer looked like he’d just been whopped in the stomach by Mohammed Ali, and had not yet had the sense to fall down. He was standing there crouched over his belly, held up by the back wall of the garage, against which he had been crushed into a vee. The chicken packages strung out in front of him looked like he had vomited them out pretty hard.

  I went over to him, touched him. I couldn’t believe it: he was still running. Does it hurt, I asked him?

  “Real bad,” he gasped, as frozen chicken giblets oozed out of him.

  “Tell…” he had to catch his breath. “Tell Lady Kenmore the Dryer goodbye for me.”

  OK, I told him, hang on. I’ll help you.

  Then he said: “Get these chickens off my back, they…” and with that Mr. Gibson the Freezer expired.

  My friend the freezer was gone. And I, survivor guilt written all over me, was left to break the news to The Old Girl, who was going to be unhappy. She was going to be upset.

  And when she’s upset, …..

  This used to be such a plain ordinary day.

  §

  Little Red Car

  There’s a lonely little red car sitting in our driveway this early fall morning. The dew that condenses and runs down the front of its headlights leaves a trail behind it, much the same as tears might.

  It’s crying this morning because we took 18 off to college yesterday, where cars aren’t really wanted, and because 16, the heir apparent, doesn’t love anything with a stick shift.

  I never thought I’d see the day when I’d mourn a car sitting idle on a driveway where the dust hadn’t completely settled in two years, but I was. After 18 got her license, home became a pit stop, and we kind of became her pit crew.

  Leaving 18 at school provided me with some images that linger. One was seeing three sisters locked together in a group hug for the first time. The last time they were that close, they were fighting over a blouse that each of them desperately wanted.

  Or, they fought over the telephone. Or someone’s favorite socks. They actually got close to one another many times, now that I think back on it. These moments of closeness were accompanied by appropriate language, such as:

 
“You give that back to me, you twerp!”

  “No way, Hozay!”

  “Way! Way! Way!”

  “Who died and made you queen for a day, huh?”

  And so forth. I had suspected all along that they actually liked each other, but the real image of them walking back from the dorm, arms around one another—well, that helped.

  14 and 16 are taking their sister’s absence remarkably well. Let’s listen in on them:

  “16: “You sneak! What were you doing in 18’s room, huh?”

  14: “Nothing! What were you doing outside her door?”

  16: “Checking to make sure you didn’t take...YOU DID! YOU DID! I GET THAT! SHE SAID I COULD HAVE THAT!”

  14: “PROVE IT. TRY!”

  Ah yes, it’s been said before, but I’ll say it again. Today’s teenagers adjust to change quickly.

  I went outside to see Red Beretta, the abandoned auto.

  Well, I said to Red: Red, you look as lonely as I feel, with 18 gone.

  Red didn’t move, just said: “Trade me. I can still play the game.”

  What do you mean, trade you?

  “This team sure doesn’t need me. Look, this is a simple game. She clutches, she shifts, you put gas in me, I get her back home safely.” I could swear I heard a muffled sob when he said “home.”

  16 will learn to love you, you’ll see.

  “No she won’t. She hates me. She thinks my clutch pedal is the brake half the time. The other half of the time, she slips the clutch and makes my insides hurt. This is a sport, with precise skills. 18 could synchronize a shift with the best of them. You should know. You taught her. You could drive me, but all you do is work…”

  OK, OK, I get the point, but she’ll be back in a few weeks, and she…

  Red sputtered out a couple half-hearted ticks and said, “Uh, uh. You bench me and I’ll rust up so fast I swear you’ll hear fenders falling off me in the middle of the night.”

  So where do you want to go?

  Red snorted and said, “That’s easy. I’ve never been to college before. 18 and me are a team.” He shifted gears kind of, and said, in a sadder, quieter voice, “I know you miss her too. Those tears you thought you saw earlier, they weren’t mine. Cars can’t cry.” He coughed, went on: “How about we do the best we can for a little while, and see what happens. I guess we’re all a team, kind of.”

  That sounds pretty sensible.

  “One other thing,” Red said, “I feel empty.”

  Hey, I’ll get some gasoline…

  “Not that kind of empty, you know?”

  Yeah. I know.

  §

  GaGa

  Boobs are in the news lately.

  It’s about time. For two reasons, at least.

  One of the rather noteworthy aspects of boobs is really only noteworthy because our society has made it noteworthy, namely, that they shouldn’t be acknowledged as in existence at all. Cleavage then becomes noteworthy as well, when and if it should be demonstrated.

  The existence of cleavage? Gasp! She’s showing cleavage? OMG! Gasp! That must mean she has breasts! Which must mean she’s loose. Now, I don’t mean loose as in the loose that caused Howard Hughes to design and build the first uplifting apparatus so that Jane Russell in the movie “The Outlaw,” had her rather generous assets pushed right into the face of a society that itself frowned on such demonstrations of human anatomy. Because of that push, MGM at first refused to print the picture. Howard Hughes hired a slew of telephone dialers to call every minister in the country protesting this possible lewd behavior by Hollywood. The ensuing uproar guaranteed “The Outlaw” immediate success.

  Not that kind of loose. No. I mean loose as in morally loose. Women are somewhat both fortunate and unfortunate in their having these things. Fortunate in that society’s dictates regarding admitting that they have them means they can attract extra attention by wearing clothing that hints at their existence. As in “GASP!”

  They are unfortunate when it comes to size, which brings to existence the continual unspoken competition that large versus small seems to initiate amongst them. At a time when breast implants are still the best part of $5000.00, some women still consider this a small price to pay for large boobs.

  Let’s see how one woman has taken advantage of the first of these “unfortunate” scenarios: the “extra attention” scenario. To do this, we’re going to focus on a young woman named Lady GaGa, who is becoming well known in the electronica pop field of rock and roll, both for her music, which I read is quite danceable, and for her, well, for her two other reasons.

  A recent picture of her in last week’s issue of Newsweek showed her in one of her more creative costumes. I don’t know a lot about her, but I do know that her selection of the name “GaGa” didn’t come because of her music. Her music is ok, but it’s still created with typical instrumentation and vocals.

  It’s her costumes that are attracting her the extra attention that performing artists seem to need to break free of their peer group and achieve stardom. Her music is fairly creative; her voice is ok; her costumes, though, they truly are something.

  First, a couple of definitions are in order. “Gaga,” according to various dictionaries, is derived from the French language, and means foolish, or crazy. In modern usage, it has come to mean dazzling, as in “marked by wild enthusiasm.” Without a doubt, Lady GaGa’s costumes are all of those definitions, and more.

  Now let’s define the word “nipple,” and for those of you who already kind of see where this is going, congratulations. Sometimes I don’t even know that. According to various dictionaries again, the word “nipple” derives from Old English usage, from the word “neb,” which back a thousand years meant birds beak, or various other things that protruded outward. It has been used to describe mountain peaks, also.

  A letter written to Newsweek the next week after the Lady GaGa article, said, more or less: “As a mother of a 14-year-old boy, I cannot believe you published a picture of Lady GaGa that showed her nipple.” She went on to huff and puff about how pictures like this are going to ruin her son, and other sons, and huff, huff, huff, puff, puff, puff, etc.

  I, immediately upon reading that letter, went off and found last week’s Newsweek and a magnifying lens, and Eureka! There indeed, after intense scrutiny, I found that I myself have unfortunately too been placed on the road to moral ruin.

  I tell you. I had no idea that breasts had nipples. Small protuberances, whatever. I am shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

  To the mother: I’ve got bad news for you: If by the age of 14, your son doesn’t know that breasts exist, you’ve got other, larger issues that you’re going to have to deal with. Either you’ve had him locked up in a closet for the past few years, or he himself is in there voluntarily. Maybe you’re in there. It could be time for one of you to come out.

  So, there she was, Lady “Dazzle,” a mature young woman, demonstrating to all the shocked world that she has breasts. Not only that, that those breasts have nipples.

  The fact that something so common can get her national newsworthiness would seem to demonstrate that it’s not Lady GaGa that’s gaga.

  It’s us.

  §

  Grandkids, Eleven’s Lesson

  It has been my greatest duty and pleasure this summer, since my daughter, her husband, and their now-11-month-old infant have tarried here on their way to bigger and better things, to teach Eleven as many necessary skills as possible.

  Like climbing the stairs.

  “That’s it,” I encouraged Eleven, after checking to see that her mother was safely out of sight and sound, “just scoooooooch your knee up on that next step, thaaaaaat’s it, now briiiiiingggg that other fat little leg up to the step—DON’T LOOK DOWN!!!—oookaay, now focus, Eleven, briiiing that other knee up to the next s
tep—NO DON’T EAT THAT PIECE OF GARBAGE YOU JUST PICKED UP OFF THE STEP!!!—let’s get back to the neeeeexxxt step, you’ve got it oh you’re soooooo talented I’ll bet you’ll be in the Olympic gymnastic tryouts any day now put your knee up on that next step thaaaaaaat’s it—OOOPS YES THE KITTY THINKS YOU SHOULD STAND UP ON THE STEP AND WAVE AT HER DON’T DO THAT!!!—much better.”

  And so forth. It’s a long way up the stairs when you’re eleven months old.

  I know. You’re saying what kind of a grandpa would teach a kid that young to climb the stairs but my logic here is sound as a rock. Anyone who thinks some kid isn’t going to make for the stairs as soon as your back is turned lives in a dream world.

  Besides, climbing them isn’t the real problem, just like taking off in an airplane isn’t the real problem either, it’s getting your butt back on the ground in some reasonable facsimile of what it left in that’s at issue.

  “OKAY NOW PAY ATTENTION and we’re going to work on our descent next, Eleven. Scooch your butt on over to the edge of that top step like this, no, not exactly like that, more like this,” and I kind of went first for an example but I’d forgotten how small those steps were in this old country house built back when stairs more closely resembled Jacob’s ladder to heaven and I slid five or six before I got everything under control.

  Eleven sat on the top step clapping and laughing and generally not paying attention to that old saying: “There are old pilots and bold pilots but there are no old bold pilots.” This was going to be more of a challenge than I had first thought, and now my butt hurt.