Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl

by Carol Bodensteiner

  What I had acknowledged only briefly and just as quickly dismissed at the start of the project, was the requirement that I sell some of the produce and calculate how much my garden would return on the investment if I sold everything. I could not fathom the face-to-face transaction required to sell my vegetables. The very idea of approaching someone, anyone, and asking if they wanted to buy something caused my stomach to go weak.

  Each day as I walked the rows of my garden plot, watching the vegetables mature, I was alternately excited by the progress and faintly dreading the inevitable. There was little joy that morning as I washed the bright red radishes and rinsed the green tops. As clods of dirt clinging to the radishes turned to mud and trailed through my fingers and down the drain, I agonized.

  “Maybe I could do it this afternoon?” I threw out a brilliant delaying tactic.

  “No, you go this morning. I bet Edna would love to have fresh radishes for dinner.” Grabbing the dishrag, Mom wiped the flour off her hands, rummaged through the junk drawer next to the refrigerator and pulled out some rubber bands. “Here. Bunch them up with these,” she said.

  Last time we were in town, I’d looked at radishes in the grocery store and saw they tied 10 in a bunch and sold the bunch for 15 cents. I tied up 12 radishes in each bunch, planning to sell them for 5 cents. As I looked at the still-wet, bundled radishes heaped on the drain board by the sink, I admitted to myself they did look pretty. Better even than those in the store. Still, I couldn’t get excited about selling them.

  “But why would she want these radishes?” I persisted. “She has a garden. I bet she doesn’t even want any radishes.”

  “I don’t think hers are ready yet. You had your garden in early. Now get going. And hurry back. We have to get dinner on the table.”

  Scooping up the three bunches of radishes, I headed out the door. Mom had given me the choice of trying to sell the radishes to strangers in town or to our neighbors. I’d agonized over which would be worse, going to someone I didn’t know and being rejected or going to someone I did know and being rejected. Rejection was really the only possible outcome of trying to sell produce in a farm community like ours where gardens and fresh produce were as plentiful as the stars in the sky on a clear night. I decided being rejected close to home was maybe a little bit less horrible.

  The lane from the highway to our house was on the property line between our farm and Miller’s. The lane split by the mailboxes at the top of the hill with half the lane coming into our place and the other half going to Miller’s. Edna and Bill were our closest neighbors in terms of distance and we neighbored back and forth. On May Day we fixed little baskets out of construction paper and filled them with violets to sneak over and hang on Edna’s door. She surprised us one year with a banana cream pie made with a vanilla wafer crust and topped with whipped cream. When our lilac bush was in full bloom, we always took Edna a bouquet. Dad and Bill agreed on who would do what and when on the fences that divided our fields. But since Millers didn’t have kids my age, when I did go there, it was usually trailing Mom.

  With gray hair combed neatly in a roll that ringed her head and an apron protecting her ample waist, Edna reminded me of my Grandma Denter, a woman who always smiled and was not in the least scary. But she was still totally intimidating because she was an adult and I had to try to sell her something I was absolutely, positively certain she did not want.

  As I dragged my leaden feet toward my first sales call, I stopped by my garden plot and considered how many other bunches of radishes were yet to be picked. Scuffing my bare toes in the dust, I sighed. The 4-H requirement was to sell all of one crop. I sighed again and groaned. At this point, I could not work up the energy to be grateful I did not also have to sell the carrots and onions and lettuce and peas and beans.

  I trudged on, all the while rehearsing what I would say. Just past the mailboxes, I stopped. My legs and feet had begun to feel as heavy as blocks of cement. I looked back at our house and considered whether I could just go back and tell Mom Edna wasn’t home. My skin prickled with nerves. I looked toward Edna’s house and wished their dog Berle would race at me so I could run away. A white German Shepherd-sized dog, Berle wasn’t mean, but the way he and our dog Butch barked at each other, no one was ever completely sure. If Berle had run up to me, I could have turned back and Mom might have accepted that as a credible excuse. Looking around, I waited in momentary optimism for Berle to come around the barn. He didn’t.

  I sighed, swallowed and plodded the rest of the way to Edna’s door. The sun was beating against my back when I knocked. For a split second I thought I might be lucky and she wouldn’t be home. While this wasn’t likely since Edna didn’t drive and it was close to noon, a girl could hope. No luck. I heard Edna come through the kitchen. I stepped back off the cement step as she opened the door.

  “Why, Carol. Hello.” She glanced behind me, looking for Mom, and then turned a puzzled gaze to me.

  Locking my knees and swallowing my reluctance, I opened my mouth and spilled everything I’d thought to say in one breathless rush: “Hello, Mrs. Miller. I wondered if you wanted to buy some radishes. There are 12 in a bunch. They are five cents.”

  Edna looked at me for a moment, clearly puzzled. “Why don’t you come inside so I can get a look at what you have,” she said at last, opening the door wider. I stepped into the cool, dark of her kitchen and we sat at the table.

  “Now tell me again what you have. You were talking a little fast and I didn’t catch it all,” she said as she set a plate of sugar cookies on the table and sat down herself with a cup of coffee.

  “Thank you,” I said as I reached for a cookie. Between bites I explained about the radishes and my 4-H project. To my great astonishment, Edna bought all three bunches. She offered to buy more when I had them.

  In about 10 minutes, I left with three nickels tight in my hand. “Thank you,” I called over my shoulder. I’d already said “thank you,” at least three times, grateful beyond belief not to have to go to another neighbor, or even door-to-door in town as Mom threatened I’d have to do next. I skipped all the way home, arriving breathless at the house to share my success with Mom.

  “Good for you!” Mom exclaimed. “Now put the money in your bank so you don’t lose it and come set the table.”

  “I’ll be right back,” I bubbled, the distress of making the sale forgotten. In my bedroom, I grabbed my bank and my savings passbook, tucked right under the bank, and bounced onto the bed where I pulled out the plug and dumped the money out onto the chenille bedspread. Adding money to my bank always began with counting every penny that was already there. One by one the coins stacked up until I had Seven Pennies, Nine Nickels (including the three from selling my radishes), Eight Dimes and Four Quarters. Two Dollars and Thirty-Two Cents. It was a fortune.

  Flipping over on my back, I reverently opened the passbook and reviewed each entry, so tiny, so carefully scripted by the bank teller, entries recording each deposit, each addition of interest. I regarded the interest entries with total amazement. I did not deposit this interest money but there it was—a gift—swelling the balance.

  The first conscious memory I have of money as something to have and let go of was in church. I was three years old, sitting on Dad’s lap. The minister finished the sermon and the ushers made their way down the aisle, handing the dark brown, wooden collection plates to the people sitting on the aisles. Each person dropped in an offering envelope or dollar bills and passed the plate on down the row.

  As a plate came hand to hand toward us, Dad pressed a single penny into my palm, closing my fingers tightly around it. “Now, don’t drop it,” he cautioned in a whisper. “You put it in the plate when it gets to us,” he instructed, his breath carrying the lingering smell of the cigarette he stubbed out between the car and the church.

  I was excited to hold that penny. It was warm and shiny. When the collection plate reached us, I extended my arm, turned my hand over and dropped the penny on to the pile
of offering envelopes, bills and change accumulating in the plate.

  It was over so fast, the possessing of that penny and the relinquishing of it to the church. Money was not handed out freely in our family. We worked for every cent. We budgeted how it was spent. Along with my first weekly allowance of 10 cents came a lesson in budgeting. Mom sat all of us girls down at the kitchen table with a tablet and pencil. Each budget session emphasized the rules of 10 percent for savings and 10 percent for the church. What went into savings stayed there.

  The 15 cents I had just earned through my own labor, by selling what I had raised, created a sense of accomplishment unlike any I’d felt before. It did not cross my mind that I would spend any of this money. My cousins bought comic books every week and while I was antsy to get my hands on their Superman comics when we visited, I thought them unbelievably extravagant for spending their money that way. I would never part with my money for something so fleeting.

  I rolled over on my side, propped my chin on my fists and looked at the tidy stacks of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. Two dollars and thirty-two cents. With this much money, I would most definitely make a trip to the bank at the end of the month when Mom went to town for groceries. With this much money to deposit, my balance would be nearly $30. With this much money, who knows what I would be able to do someday?

  With my first successful sales call behind me, I pulled, washed and bound more radishes. The initial dread of selling the radishes was behind me; now I had my eye fixed on the money I could earn in selling my produce. Jane and Sue pulled radishes from their garden plots, too, and at one point we had too many for the kitchen sink and opted for the bathtub. The tub was half full. Of course, Edna could not take them all, though she never turned us away when we knocked on her door. So one day the three of us loaded our washed and bound bunches of radishes in the car and Mom dropped us off at the trailer court on the east edge of Maquoketa.

  While Mom drove on into town to get groceries, we went door to door at the trailer court. Using the same approach I used when I knocked on Edna’s door the first time, but making a real effort to overcome my nerves and speak more slowly, I walked to one trailer after another. I worked my way down one side of the street while Jane and Sue went to trailers along the other side. Nerves filled my stomach before I knocked on each door. Satisfaction replaced the nerves each time I secured coins in my pocket when I made a sale. Amazing to me, we sold every last bunch.

  In the next month, the dimes, nickels and quarters from my radish sales swelled my balance by another One Dollar and Twenty-Five Cents. When the end of the month arrived, I opened my piggy bank again and counted out the money yet another time, stacking it into neat piles. I left the pennies behind, and stowed coins adding up to Three Dollars and Thirty-Five Cents deep in my pocket for the trip to town. I kept my hand in a tight fist around this treasure to make sure it didn’t get lost. In my other hand, I clutched my savings passbook. During the ride to town, I imagined the new total after my latest deposit. The row of figures, each line containing a figure larger than the last, enchanted me. I dreamed about having enough to do something big. Like go to college.

  Pushing through the heavy glass doors, I entered the Maquoketa State Savings Bank. The official coolness of the marble floors, the polished dark woodwork of the tellers’ cages, and soaring high ceilings reduced my voice to a whisper more awe-inspired than one I used at the public library. One just did not talk loudly in a bank.

  “I am here to make a deposit,” I spoke with great solemnity as I reached up to slip the passbook and my money under the grill to the lady teller sitting on the other side.

  “Well, you have quite a balance here,” the teller said as she counted the money twice and made yet another exceedingly neat entry into my passbook.

  “I know,” I blushed with pride. “I sold my radishes.”

  One Christmas

  “I asked Santa for a Roy Rogers and Trigger,” I whispered in a conspiratorial tone to the kids crowded around the stove at the back of the schoolhouse. Just in from recess, we piled our snow-soaked mittens on the top of the stove to dry and held our chapped red fingers as close to the stove as we could. We could not tell at first whether our fingers were cold or hot; either way, they stung.

  “What are you talking about?” Larry scoffed. “There ain’t no Santa Claus.” Larry rubbed his palms together and then slapped them against the red circles of cold on his freckled cheeks.

  All talk stopped and I saw all the kids staring at Larry and me. Some of the kids laughed but their laughs hung hollow in the air like the steam that spiraled above the stove as bits of ice fell from the mittens and sizzled on the hot surface. The smell of scorching wool filled the room.

  “There is, too,” I sputtered. “You don’t know anything.” I looked around, searching the faces of the other kids for support.

  “Ain’t either. Is there, Dennis?” Larry asked, elbowing the boy next to him.

  A thin boy with white blond hair, Dennis and his sisters lived across the highway from us. He and Larry were in the same grade, two years behind me. Both of them spent more time acting up than they did studying, causing Miss Fowler no end of frustration.

  Dennis rubbed the spot on his arm where Larry elbowed him and hesitated, looking down at the floor and scuffing the toe of one worn brown shoe against the heel of the other. Anyone could see Dennis was reluctant to contradict Larry, but he couldn’t lie either. Not on something like this. “There is,” he mumbled at last, “Santa comes to our house.”

  “See, I told you so,” I puffed. Looking around again at the other kids, I saw my sister Jane smile at me. Taking her smile for confirmation, I nodded my head with an emphatic “Humph” of triumph.

  His black eyes blazing at his friend’s betrayal, Larry shouted, “Ain’t either. He never brings any presents to our house. My mom said he ain’t real.”

  “I’m going to ask Miss Fowler,” I said. Whirling around, my hands balled into fists, my chin thrust up with a determined tilt, I stomped to the front of the room where Miss Fowler sat at her desk grading papers from the morning classes.

  “What’s all this?” she asked, looking up as every single student in the school—all 15 of us—jostled for position around her desk.

  “Larry says there isn’t a Santa Claus,” I blurted, my feet planted squarely, fists jammed on hips, determined to prove my point by sheer force of will. “There is, too, isn’t there.” I demanded more than questioned.

  In a considered, slow sweep, Miss Fowler looked at each one of us crowding in around her. We ranged in age from 5 to 14 and Miss Fowler, though she had no children herself, stood as an authority, as the authority, we all respected in the absence of our parents.

  Taking off her wire-rimmed glasses, Miss Fowler rubbed her eyes for a second, tucked a strand of gray hair behind her ear, and settled the glasses back on her nose. “Well, of course there’s a Santa Claus,” she said in an even tone that could leave no doubt.

  Grinning, I looked at Larry in triumph as the tension drained out of my stance.

  Miss Fowler looked again at each of us individually. “It might be a good idea for each of you to talk with your parents about Santa if you have questions,” she suggested.

  Larry frowned. It was clear that he was mad. I didn’t rub it in, but I didn’t bother to hide my gloating, either.

  With the skill of someone who had diffused many playground tussles, Miss Fowler diverted our attention. “I am glad you all are gathered here, now. Let’s see who’s ready to recite their part in the Christmas program. Who wants to go first?”

  Hands shot into the air. “Let me. Let me. Let me!” I hopped from one foot to the other. I was oh-so-ready to recite my poem.

  I might talk with Mom about Santa, I thought, but then I didn’t really need to. Santa came to our house every year and he would come this year. Why would he not? The school Christmas play at the end of the week meant Christmas itself was only a few days away. All of our parents wo
uld come to the school for the program. We scrambled to be ready.

  How easy it was to distract us. How willing I was to be distracted.

  At the end of the day, we crowded into the unheated entryway of the school, pulled on our boots, tied flannel scarves around our heads, struggled into our heavy winter coats. As we spilled out into the schoolyard, we saw that the snow falling all day had almost erased the tracks of our recess Fox and Goose game. The snowmen we’d built a couple of days before and that had begun to melt in yesterday’s sun now wore two inches of snow balanced in steep ridges on their tree twig arms. The snow was so deep that we didn’t even need to use the stile to get across the fence. We could step right across the top wire on the crusted drifts.

  Traipsing through the field toward home, we skittered light as dry leaves across the top of some drifts, broke through from time to time into snow up to our knees, waded out, flopped down to make snow angels, felt the snow melt in our boots. Alternately, we tilted our faces toward the sky to catch snowflakes on our tongues and tucked our heads down against gusts of wind. Plowing ahead into the biting east wind, we were soon coated with snow and could have been mistaken for the snowmen we left back in the schoolyard.

  By the time we made it to the house, Larry’s challenge had slid further into the back of my mind. When we opened the back door, my concerns about Santa were erased by the aroma of fresh-baked bread. As we struggled back out of our coats and boots, Mom called, “Who wants a slice of fresh bread?”

  “I do, I do!” we shouted. We turned our boots upside down on newspapers that lined the back porch to let the melting snow trickle out and propped our wet mittens to dry against the kitchen heat registers.