Tag: childhood

The Tale of Asparagus

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When I was younger I hated asparagus. I hated it so much, I couldn’t even use its full name. I called it, Hairy Beans. The problem was, my family really liked it. My parents would make it often enough and inevitably offer it to me. ‘Here try some,’ they’d say. ‘Maybe you’ll like them better this time.’ No. I never did. I didn’t like this annoyance, this intrusion into my dinner of a strange looking/tasting vegetable, but I learned to handle it.

One day, things got a little more real. We had a garden. A large one. There was a plot of land next to our house that my parents turned into a garden. Half of it was grass and fruit trees, and the other half was the garden. I hated helping in the garden because it was boring. Mainly I had to weed, and in a dry place like Utah, that is not always so easy. Next to the garden, my dad had a compost pile. It was his pride and joy. Pre-internet, it was a little harder to accumulate knowledge on things like getting the perfect compost pile. He tried though. He checked out books from the library. He talked to others he knew that had mastered the art of compost. But his problem was he couldn’t get the inside of the pile warm. I don’t know why it is supposed to be warm, but I learned that it’s very important. My dads worries came to an obsessive head one night when he dreamt that his compost pile was on fire. He woke up recharged, full of life, and determined.

One day, my dad came home with a strange root. He set it on the table in the garage. ‘What is that?’ I asked. I thought maybe he had pulled it from the garden. Possibly a sacrifice for the beloved compost pile? The answer came garbled in slow motion at me. ‘It’s asparagus. We’re planting it in the garden’

Things had gone too far. I could tolerate Hairy Beans once in awhile in the kitchen, but growing in the garden? Nope. He walked into the house, and I looked around for a place to hide it. We had an old trash compactor that my Dad had taken out of our 70’s era kitchen when he remodeled it. I opened it up and put it in. Problem solved.

Two years later, My parents were going through things in the garage. At this time, my dad finally opened up the trash compactor where my foe had been well hid. He pulled out the asparagus root astonished. ‘How did this get in here?’ He turned to my mom, ‘Did you know this was in here?’ ‘Of course I did’, she answered.

My dad was rightfully confused. After talking, it turns out, my mom thought it was some kind of gardening technique he was using to keep the asparagus fresh. He was always trying new things to keep our garden going. I was found out to be the mastermind behind it all.

They planted it. It didn’t grow very well, given Utah’s arid climate. The next year something new was planted in its place but the legend of the Hairy Beans lives on.

Bars of Soap

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Growing up, my family didn’t have a lot of money. Sometimes we refer to it as self induced poverty because the reason for it was my dad getting a PhD. He went to Ohio State, excuse me, The Ohio State University. You know they trademarked the, THE right? Anyway, he did his undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, and he did his masters and PhD at THE Ohio State University.

School is expensive in itself. Student loans, books, but also in the loss of wages. No job. We made do and as a small child I was none the wiser. Because of our self induced poverty, SIP, small things that I take for granted now, and my kids definitely take for granted, I thought were the most amazing things in the world. One example, getting a Happy Meal. This was back in the day when McDonalds Happy Meal Toys were legit. The toys were well made and you could play with them for a forever. Happy Meals in daily life were extremely rare. It could be a reward after getting your shots for school. Maybe for your birthday. The only time we could get them in excess was a road trip. On road trips, we were able to stop at McDonalds several times. Collecting variations in the current toy collection they were featuring. Our favorite toy series was the Barbie dolls. My uncle called them pin head Barbie’s because their heads were so small. There were a few variations. There were also cabbage patch dolls that were fun. Same size as the barbies and had yarn hair.

If we ever got a duplicate on one of these road trips, my mom would go up to the counter and trade it out for a different one. This was also the era when McDonalds had cookie boxes. That is a story for another time though.

Candy bars were also something special. My mom did 2 week grocery shopping. We stocked up and when we were out of something we waited until the next shopping trip. She had the meal planning and snack planning down to an art. If I went with my Mom on the 2 week shopping trip and helped her, which I usually did because as the 2nd out of 4 kid I wanted the alone time, I usually could convince her to get me a candy bar. This was the only time I really got candy. I remember that they were .25 cents. 4 for a dollar. When they went up to .33 3 for a dollar a few years later, we were outraged. Who do they think they are, charging 3 for a dollar for a Hersheys Bar? Oh if only I had known what lay ahead.

The ultimate luxury was a hotel. When I was younger and we were moving cross country, we had to break our trip down into several days. We stayed at Motel 6 at night time and it was the very definition of luxury to me. Whenever I would see those signs, I would get so excited for what was in store for me. At this point it was just three kids. My older sister, myself, and then our third sister who was just a year old. My older sister and I would go into the hotel room and marvel at the beauty. The tightly made beds. The clean vacuumed floors. The TV’s with cable which included the coveted Disney channel. Cable was expensive back then and at home we were limited to just a few basic channels. Best of all out of all the luxuries were the soaps. Not soap operas. Like literal bars of soap. The soaps with the waxy paper wrapping. The soaps that were so fancy that they had the Motel 6 logo actually imprinted into the soap. My older sister and I ended up with a few soaps each at then end of the trip. We would save them and smell them ultimately, while being so careful with them as not to break them. We never used them and I’m sure they’re sitting somewhere in a box of our childhood things in storage.

Life can be good, whether you have a lot or not. There is always something to look forward to, whether it’s the latest McDonald’s Barbie toy, a bar of soap, or maybe if you had more money, a new bike.

I don’t think I have stayed in a Motel 6 in over 30 years, but when I pass them, I can almost smell the soap in the air as I drive by. The memory forever in tact in my mind.

The Legend of Estes Park

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There was a story that my uncle used to tell my cousins and I growing up. It was a horror story. Excuse me, it was THE horror story. This story included everything that nightmares are made of.

This story was usually told in Estes Park. You see Estes Park was also the location of this story.

We stayed at a cabin there in the summer sometimes. At night when we were about to go to bed, the story would start.

It was often told when we kids were cuddled up in bed, brave, obviously because we were together. The story included a flashlight on my uncles face with the lights out and usually ended in one of our legs being snatched or grabbed at. Or the flashlight battery “running” out. There were a few times that this story was told closer to the actual location of the story. An old abandoned cabin. The scene of the crime. Or part of it. The last act anyway.

This story starts like all stories do, on a dark cold stormy night. There was an engineer working on some machinery after hours at a factory. The company that he worked for was all about safety and the first rule was, never be alone while working on the equipment. The story is fuzzy after all these years, but I believe the equipment may have required two people. One to press the emergency shut off if needed. This man was of course above the rules, and was working alone that night. The machine that he was working on was a special kind of press that compressed things into cubes. Unfortunately for this man, he got stuck into the machine. Being dragged in and his head being pressed into a cube.

When they found him the next morning, he was alive, but unfortunately had a cube for a head. He was terrifying to look at- they screamed as they saw what was left of his features. One big gaping hole where his mouth used to be. The company knew that this could not get out. And this man was too terrifying to look at, so they devised a plan. They found an old abandoned cabin and chained him to the top floor. If you enter the cabin and listen very carefully, you can hear the chain dragging on the floor upstairs. This was how Cubie came to be.

This story was best told on the drive where we had to pass by his cabin. My uncle would start the story a mile or two away from the cabin and we knew what was coming. We were terrified but also exhilarated with the fear of it all. He would start slowly and calmly, like any old story, but as the story progressed, so did his voice. His timing was impecccable really because we would end up right in front of Cubies Cabin right at the part where he would tell us how he was chained up on the top floor. At this time, the car would all of a sudden stop working. The headlights off. The engine killed. Screams filled the car as my aunt protested telling him to stop scaring us. In the light of the day, we would see the cabin and sometimes even go inside of it. We couldn’t see Cubie though becuase the stairs to the top floor were boarded off.

This story was the ultimate thrill. My Goosebumps books had nothing on Cubie.

When my two oldest cousins and I were early teens, we were on a camping trip for our church. We three shared the tent with three other girls. When it was late and we were telling ghost stories to freak each other out, my cousins and I pulled out our Cubie story. Telling it as masterfully as we could, we were shocked to not see them trembling in fear. They were not horrified, they were not afraid. They just started at us blankly. Maybe they went into a catatonic state based on the pure terror of it? ‘So,’ one of said ‘what did you think?’ One of the girls answered, ‘Wait… so I don’t get it it. Is his head just a cube then?’

It was in that disappointing moment that we realized not everybody is sophisticated enough to understand the true horror of Cubie. That day I learned that the world is divided into two types of people. People that understand the complexity and horror of Cubie, (my cousins and I) and the rest of the world.

A Story About Clay and Skepticism

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When I was 6 years old, my older sister took a pottery class. We lived in Columbus Ohio at the time. While we did not have a lot of money, there were some community free one-time classes that we were sometimes able to attend. Because we did not have a lot of money, this kind of thing was more of a special experience.

My sister brought a home a bowl from the class. What interested me about this bowl was that it air dried. I had seen videos on PBS about making things out of clay and putting them into the kiln. This was something I had never heard of! I made things out of play-doh but those never dried into anything tangible like a bowl. She told me about her class and explained the clay to me and how it was already dry but what would harden up even more.

Everything that my older sister did was interesting to me. I envied most activities got to do and toys that she got as gifts. This was no exception.

I was in awe. It became an obsession. I watched it in continuous astonishment throughout the day. Most of my brain believed her, but there was a small piece that thought maybe she was mistaken. Or perhaps the teacher was mistaken.

How could something like play-doh turn into a usable object.

I couldn’t get the thoughts out of my head. I would play a little bit and then come back to this bowl. I’d touch it softly when no one was looking to see how far along we were on the process.

When you are a child, time goes on forever. This story may have spanned a few days, but because I was younger, I don’t remember exactly the timeline.

What’s important is that I just didn’t think it was hardening and I was beginning to think that one of us had been duped in this situation. I even felt a little bad for my sister. Poor, naive, going into this pottery class so excited to make her masterpiece. The teacher was an art major, but of course as a child, we always know better than anyone else. It was definitely a possibility that she was wrong.

After being warned off of touching it a dozen or so times, over the span of a few days maybe, I lay in bed at night thinking about the bowl. I wanted to believe in this magic, but my belief was fading.

My sister and I had bunk beds. I was on the bottom. She was on the top. I was pretty sure I could sneak out after she was done reading to check on the bowl. I needed to do it on my own without people telling me to stop touching it or to get away from it.

Our bedroom was upstairs right by the staircase. The bowl was downstairs on the dining room table just off of the staircase a bit. I checked on the top bunk to see if my sister was asleep. She was. In the hallway, I listened carefully for my parents. Were they still awake? Not hearing anything, I made my way downstairs. I checked on the bowl again. Finally in peace assessing the masterpiece. Again I was disappointed.

Since no one was around, I decided to test its strength. Pretty sure they would thank me for this later. I picked the bowl up off of the table and raised it high above my head. With force I threw it down on the ground. It made a huge breaking sound because turns out it was dry.

My parents and my sister came down to see what was going on. They looked at me standing guilty by the table and the bowl broken in pieces all over the floor. My sister was devastated. She already saw me as the obnoxious little sister and let me tell you, this did not help things at all.

My parents were so confused. What in the world? Why did you wake up in the middle of the night to come and break your sisters bowl? I didn’t know really how to explain it except with the truth. I wanted to see if it was dry. I don’t remember the rest of what happened. I am sure I was duly punished, but there was no replacing my sisters bowl.

Whenever I complain about my sister being mean to me as a child, this story inevitably comes up along with a few others. But, I can’t blame her. It was pretty weird of me.

POST NOTE:

Later in life, I was diagnosed with OCD and incidents like this made a lot more sense.