“Did your mother ever work?” Miss Planter asked. Women seemed interested in what other women did; I supposed that was normal.
“Yes,” I said. She worked before she met and married Dad, and then for a few years before the babies started arriving. This gave Mom and Dad a little breathing room, I think, to lay a financial foundation, so as to buy a home. That seemed to be what people did back then.”
“What do you mean?” Miss Planter asked. Maybe I had talked too much, and now was being asked to clarify my opinion.
“Back when I was a kid, parents got married and, for the most part, stayed married, and worked and saved so as to prepare a little nest, so the kids would have a place to stay. At least that’s how it was in our home. I know it didn’t happen everywhere, but that seemed to be the norm among the neighbors when I was growing up.”
Maybe I talked too much. Perhaps I’d better wait until she asked me questions before I freely gave any views. I hoped she didn’t think that I was sounding arrogant. I knew I could sound inappropriate to others at times with my opinions; on the other hand, I was paying for this.
“How many brothers and sisters did you have while growing up?” Miss Planter asked.
“I had two brothers and one sister. We had a big family but not a huge one. We weren’t rich, even though Dad worked continuously. We had all we needed, but not everything we wanted, which was probably a good thing. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t perfect; we were far from perfect. We had our miscommunications and misunderstandings, but overall, Mom and Dad did a good job raising us; they tried. Any time one of us screwed up it was because we deviated from the path that our folks had set or hoped for us. What was most important, I think, was the fact that they loved each other.”
I looked up in time to catch Miss Planter peering directly into my eyes as I finished speaking. She averted her gaze and went back to her writing. It was as though she had this “I don’t believe what I’m hearing” look on her face. She wrote a little on her clipboard, and said, “I see. Sounds to me like you had a stable home life. Did you know your place in the home?”
This question puzzled me. “My place? What do you mean?”
She said, “I mean, did you feel welcome at home; were you comfortable where you were; did you fare well as a child?”
I paused again here. “I guess you could say I fared well. I’m not really sure at times. I knew what my role was, which was to keep out of trouble and to find something productive to do, or else Mom would tell Dad that I wasn’t living up to my potential. If I didn’t do my chores, that would be a sure sign to Mom that I was a child in need of correction.”
Miss Planter wrote some more, and then asked, “What type of chores did you have in your family, Mr. Owen?”
“Let’s see,” I began, “there were different chores at different stages in growing up. For example, as a small child, I was expected to help Mom in the kitchen. This was really a means of Mom keeping an eye on me; I really wasn’t much of a help at all. I’d sometimes get a wash cloth and clean the dining room table and chairs, sweep the kitchen floor, and, if Mom handled the water, mop the floor, but that was only if she let me. At other times, I’d help to wash the dishes, but I think I only got in the way; Mom was the real worker when I was a toddler. Later I’d be following Daddy around on Saturdays, whenever he didn’t work. We all did that; I learned how to mow the yard by age 10, and soon found this was a trap, because after that it was an expected chore from then on. But it was something I could accomplish rather well, so I didn’t mind doing it, not too much, anyhow.”
“You didn’t mind helping out the family, as a child, then?” asked Miss Planter.
“No, not at all,” I replied. “Keeping the home running didn’t all fall on our young shoulders. Most of it went to our parents. The older we got, the more work we took on, but we were never overwhelmed.”
“What did you do for fun?” asked Miss Planter.
“I was always looking for something for fun, but mostly I read comic books and watched TV”
Miss Planter looked at me, as if she were trying to figure out a puzzle.
“Not very typical, I know,” I said. “Guess I was kind of a pre-nerd growing up. Sports wasn’t my thing; television and entertainment was. And our television was black and white, with an antenna on top of the set to catch the two major stations in the area. Lovely wasn’t a very big town then, and this was before UHF came along.” Miss Planter looked puzzled again, so I explained, “UHF stood for Ultra-High Frequency, a cheaper brand of television station. We didn’t even know the UHF stations existed until one day we got to playing around with dials on the TV and found them, but the reception wasn’t very good, although at night they did okay. They offered more entertainment, or more cartoons.”
Miss Planter was becoming easier to read, because she looked at me as though I had a hole in my head. So I gave her more information to ponder: “But my real interest was westerns.”
“Why westerns, Mr. Owen?” she asked.
“Westerns were morality plays with quick solutions. There were heroes and bad guys, with nothing in-between. You knew who the good guys were and who the bad fellers were. You had an idea who was going to get killed and who was going to get winged in a shoot-out. The good guy always won, because it was his series and he had to live to have another show the next week.” Miss Planter was tuned in, so I included more to interest her. “Oh yeah, there were girls on the shows, too. The good girl always got the good guy.”
That remark made Miss Planter smile. “What happened to the bad girl, Mr. Owen?” I suppose she said that to tease me a bit.
“Well, since shooting girls was against the code of the west, they usually boarded a stagecoach at the end of the show and rode off into the sunset, or back east where all the bad people came from.”
“Did you have a favorite Western?” she quizzed, probably trying to find out what type of hero I favored.
“Yes, I had several, but the one I liked best was “The Rifleman.”
“Why was that, Mr. Owen?” she said, not looking up from her scribbling.
“Because the Rifleman was a show about a father and a son who moved to a small town to start a ranch; it was them against the world. Every now and then the father would have to ride into town to help the sheriff shoot bad guys with his rifle, but that was about 10 minutes into the show, so you got to see plenty of family interaction. Lucas was the good father and Mark was the good son. And the music, oh, the music! Are you familiar with the music, Miss Planter?”
“No, I’m afraid I’m not.” She paused and looked up, re-grouping for her next set of questions. I thought she was reading from a list on the clipboard. “Did you get along well with your siblings?” she asked, getting back to the family. I had to think about that for a short while, this being a never-considered-before issue. “Yes, we got along. We were different. We didn’t all develop the same in the same areas, but overall we cared about each other. We had our fights and disagreements, but hopefully by now we’ve grown out of that.” I chuckled when I said that. Miss Planter did not.
“How did you perform in school?” she asked.
“I was interested in learning as long as a subject held my attention, but later when I figured out that the teacher or teachers had ‘favorites,’ I kind of lost interest. I did okay in some early school classes, and not okay in others. It depended on how well the teacher and I got along; if I liked her, I did great; if I didn’t, I didn’t. I shouldn’t have let any teachers’ feelings toward me interfere with my learning, but I was a child.”
“Did you have a favorite teacher, Mr. Owen?” she asked, looking up to see my reaction.
“Yes, I did. My third-grade teacher was a young lady named Miss Plummer, and she never spanked me. That’s how I knew she liked me. I once made straight A’s in her class, which for me was almost miraculous. She was looking right at me when I opened that report card, and I could see her smiling when I discovered my fortune for that six weeks
. She was so nice to me.”
“Did things stay good for you in early education?” Miss Planter continued.
“No, the next year I got stuck with some lady who didn’t want to be teaching but had to in order to get her husband through medical school; I made my first ‘D’ that year.”
“Do you blame her for that ‘D’?” she asked.
“I blame her for not liking me; I don’t think she went out of her way to help me learn anything, plus, if you were a teacher and you didn’t like a kid, would you grade him higher?” Miss Planter looked stumped for a moment, then said, “I’m not so sure I’d like being a teacher, either, if I didn’t have to be.”
I replied, “Well, you don’t have to! But she thought she did, and felt trapped. I think she took some of it out on us kids. I had to take that ‘D’ home to show my parents.”
“Are your parents still living?” she asked. This question stung, but I tried not to show it.
“No,” I replied. Dad died about 20 years ago, Mom departed about 15 years later. I’m the only one left at home.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Your parents sounded like good people; I’d like to have met them,” she said.
“Thanks. Yes, they were good people. They were good parents.”
Miss Planter took time writing her answers down, then asked, “Do you have any special memories about growing up? Anything that stands out of the ordinary?”
I didn’t have to think about this. “Yes, what I remember and cherish best are the vacations we took. Actually, we didn’t take a regular vacation or holiday; the meaning of a vacation is to get away, but on ours, we had a purpose, which was to visit our relatives, our grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins. Twice a year we’d pack up the car and drive north to visit our grandparents, and in actuality, this was also a trip into the past.”
“What do you mean?” said Miss Planter, writing quickly now.
“Our grandparents were all born in the late 1800s, and they had a way and manner about them that was different from the modern 1960-type of person I was used to. They had been born before the turn of the 20th century, and were married before World War I. They were too old for World War II, and my Dad and uncles all joined the military during that time. Realize that they lived in the country away from the big cities; they had grown up without electricity, no indoor plumbing, no radio, television, phones, appliances, and no Social Security. I got to see and visit with people who were used to ‘making do’ with what they had, and never seemed to be in a rush.”
“That is like stepping into another world,” said Miss Planter. She was getting involved in my story; now I knew she was really listening. She shook her head. “Excuse me for interrupting, please continue.”
“You didn’t interrupt me, Miss Planter,” I said. “Jump in anytime you feel like; I like feedback.”
“That seems to be quite a special memory,” remarked Miss Planter, returning to her professional mode.
“The grandparents were quite old when I knew them; they all passed away when I was a teenager. Even now, thirty-plus years later, I still miss them. I feel I know them better now than I did when I was a kid, because I got Mom and Dad to tell me stories about them.”
“At least you got to know your grandparents,” said Miss Planter, giving me a glimpse into her life. That almost seemed to be a wistful remark.
After a few moments, Miss Planter said, “Well, you seem to have had a good relationship with your folks and relatives. No major issues here, hopefully. Why don’t we move to the people in your immediate neighborhood. I assume you had friends, didn’t you? Why don’t you tell me about them?”
This question was like turning on a spigot of water. “Yes, I had friends growing up. They were almost like extra brothers and sisters. In fact, during the early sixties, we lived in a neighborhood where there were at least 40 children in the immediate vicinity. If we ever got bored, all we had to do was to step outside into the front yard, and there was always something going on with the children. It was a great neighborhood. And this was before the pill took hold, so there were lots of kids around to play with. Family was still the main means of raising and taking care of children. They weren’t all perfect; we weren’t all perfect, but they still existed.”
Miss Planter’s eyes flashed here. “Tell me about your neighborhood. I’d like to hear some stories concerning the children you grew up with.”
“Miss Planter, you’ve just struck oil; I can tell you stories that I’ve carried with me for years.”
“Good, I’d like to hear some of them.”
Miss Planter looked at the clock on the wall, and said, “You’ll have to save that for next time, Mr. Owen. I’ve got another patient to see in five minutes.”
On Lovely Hill
“Live, from Lovely Hill, it’s Darla Bell with a KDBC news special, and with us today is Hal Ostrander, chairman of the board of directors of the Lovely Chocolate Company.”
This one sentence opened a special local television KDBC News Show, which most of the people of Lovely watched, at least half of them being affected by the financial well-being of the city’s largest and most influential business. And half of those viewers tuned in to watch the ever-perky Darla Bell, local newslady who would obviously leave Lovely one day at the summons of one of the national news networks, or, if she chose, could work for any media company in the southern hemisphere, since she was fluent in Spanish.
“Mr. Ostrander, how close were you to Cornelius Lovely?” she asked, hoping to unearth a little emotional drama for ratings’ sake.
“I can’t say I was close to Mr. Lovely, per se, but of all the members of the board and Lovely staff and employees, I think I could safely say I knew him best.”
“What kind of man was Mr. Lovely?” Darla asked, since the first answer fizzled on the emotional level.
“Mr. Lovely was a very principled, very disciplined man, who loved the surrounding community almost as much as he loved making chocolate for all the world to enjoy. Chocolate was his life, his reason for getting up in the morning, the cause of his very being, his raison d’etre.”
Miss Bell, sensing a product plug for the Lovely Company, changed the subject quickly. She asked, “Now that Mr. Cornelius has passed away, do you know who will carry the mantle of the Lovely Chocolate Company? And will there be any dramatic changes, and modernization, any mergers in the near future?”
Mr. Ostrander, a bit disappointed he couldn’t continue to inform the viewers about the health benefits of chocolate as he had planned, went back into his chairman role and said, “Let me assure the general public that there will be no immediate changes to the Lovely Chocolate Company. We are and always have been a family-run, family-oriented business, a business that cares about the children, the community, and of course, our country.” This sounded a bit odd to Miss Bell, who knew that there were other countries, albeit civilized, western countries, who enjoyed the product of the Lovely Chocolates. Mr. Ostrander continued, “As chairman of the Board, I will probably be in charge of the company until a suitable leader, or, should I say, a fitting and competent successor is chosen to lead the company for the foreseeable future.” Darla Bell smiled and nodded at the whole answer, and looking to the camera, said, “It’s common knowledge that Mr. Lovely was a widower with no children who are interested in the role; do you think his granddaughter, Susan Lovely, celebrity model, might consider taking up the challenge?”
This question completely caught Mr. Ostrander off-guard; he knew that Susan Lovely was probably the beneficiary of Cornelius Lovely’s will, and that she would also inherit the bulk of his estate, which would probably include the majority stock holdings of the chocolate company. He hated the idea of a young to middle-aged irresponsible, untried, and uneducated in business, someone, who had never shown an inkling of interest in the company’s business, being over this chocolate empire. She would also become his new boss, and he didn’t want to have to prove his worth to an upstart, after having served
his whole adult life one man, Cornelius Lovely.
He cleared his throat, then said, “Well, of course, I can’t really say anything about this since the will, of course, hasn’t been read, or probated just yet. I’m sure we will know the answer to this sometime in the near future; I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
Darla Bell wasn’t through with the subject, though, and threw another curve when she said, “We have Susan Lovely with us in our studio…” and at that, Hal Ostrander looked shocked that an outsider, perhaps soon to be an insider, would meddle in the affairs of the business.
The picture on the city’s television screens immediately showed Susan Lovely, well dressed in a tight outfit, seated in the KDBC studio in downtown Lovely, along with another newsperson, the charming and dapper Gregory Jouglard. Greg was the man-about-town reporter, a newer reporter from just across the border, who was thought to appeal to viewers from Louisiana. He smiled to the camera, and said “Good morning. With us today is Susan Lovely, model and granddaughter of Cornelius Lovely, our founding father and benefactor to the city of Lovely. Miss Lovely, first let me express my condolences for the passing of your grandfather, Cornelius.”
The camera showed Susan Lovely, who was checking a mirror, but quickly put it away, saying, “Thank you, Greg. Yes, it was hard on the whole family losing my beloved grandfather.”
The Lovely Chocolate Mob Page 2