I Wish I Lived There Again

By Candace Hennekens

This is a collection of personal essays about a typical Midwestern family in the mid-twentieth century. The family of four daughters and a mother and father enjoyed life in a big house, but life was not without its drama, sorrow, or angst. The essays include: the Barnum and Bailey Sisters, Birth and Death, The Brook, Mother's Bread, Blackberry Picking and Other Leisure Arts, A Drunken Pyromaniac, Let's Go To the Movies, Apple Blossom Time, Pickle Vats and Bigamists, Hair, and concludes with Bright-eyed Small Town Girl. For readers of Hennekens' many books, this provides a look into how she grew up. Each essays weaves together many facets of her childhood into an interesting tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Candace Hennekens
• Release date: Mar 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301021475

Candace Hennekens

Candace Hennekens was born in Wisconsin, U.S.A. and always knew she wanted to be a writer. She earned her B.S. degree in Journalism from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, U.S.A., and went on to a career in employee communications, public relations, training and development and human resources management. She has continued her writing throughout her life, working with the personal essay, poetry, and fiction genres. She has authored three self-help books for women. Healing Your Life: Recovery from Domestic Abuse has been sold in every state of the United States, and internationally. Twenty-one years later the book continues to help women who have been abused heal and lead happy, satisfying lives. Her second book dealing with career planning is available in print only. Her third self-help book, There's a Rainbow in my Glass of Lemonade, is available in print or as a bonus book to Healing Your Life. Ms. Hennekens' current writing focus is poetry. In addition to writing, Ms. Hennekens is an accomplished painter.

Book preview

I Wish I Lived There Again

by

Candace A. Hennekens

Published by Candace A. Hennekens at Smashwords.

Copyright 2013 Candace A. Hennekens

Discover other titles by Candace A. Hennekens at Smashwords. com:

Healing Your Life with Companion Book There’s a Rainbow in My Glass of Lemonade, self-help

Healing Your Life: Recovery from Domestic Abuse, self-help

There’s a Rainbow in My Glass of Lemonade, self-help

Sweet Farm of Mine, a novel

Sweet Land of Mine, a novel

Warm Stanchions and Red Barns with Blue Roofs, poetry

Melpomene’s Hand, a novel

Women of the Farm, short stories

Cream from Butterflies, a memoir

Northwoods Love, a novel

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Acknowledgement

I Wish I Lived There Again consists of some of the essays that appear in the much longer memoir Cream from Butterflies. This was done to allow readers not interested in my five-year diary and/or autobiographical chapters to enjoy this romp back in time to mid-twentieth century life in the American midwest.

Table of Contents

The Barnum and Bailey Sisters

Birth and Death

The Brook

Mother’s Bread

Blackberry Picking and Other Leisure Arts

A Drunken Pryomaniac

Let’s Go to the Movies

Apple Blossom Time

Pickle Vats and Bigamists

Hair

Bright-eyed Small Town Girl

About the Author

The Barnum and Bailey Sisters

Every summer, as far back as I remember, a fair was held on the northern edge of town. The fairgrounds, enclosed by tall chain link fences, contained buildings necessary to conduct this event: a grandstand, 4-H building, barns for farm animals and horses, a wooden schoolhouse, a stone commerce building, a cement block building with big picture display windows, and a dirt fairway for amusement rides and games.

When I attended junior and senior high school, football games were held at the fairgrounds. By then, sights and sounds from the fair were faded from memory, anticipation over the next one not yet taking hold. I walked right into the grounds without needing to pay admission. Not trying to sneak through changed the mood of the evening right away. Next I crossed the walkway where, during the fair, food stands were located. On football night, it was brushed by winds hinting winter was just around the corner. There was no big trailer selling candied apples and cotton candy. No souvenir stands with cheap hats, dolls dangling from skinny sticks, and small U.S. flags. It seemed like a dismal empty place. I hurried even faster to reach the crowd in the grandstand.

In early August, for a full week, the Northern Wisconsin District Fair (as it was called then) transformed the quiet city of Chippewa Falls. It drew visitors from the entire county. Sounds from the fair carried on still nights to our house on the west hill. If I cocked my ears in the right direction, I could detect music from the merry-go-round. The sky over the fairway glowed with lights at night from rides and the grandstand show. When the musicians were loud and the beat steady, I could hear the finale for the night’s entertainment. It was easy to imagine the grandstand audience rising in thunderous applause, demanding an encore.

Everyone went to the fair. We went for sugary carnival treats like candied apples and cotton candy. For deep-fried midway food like corn dogs, hush puppies, and funnel cakes. For kitchen gadgets that julienne cut, sliced, diced, and chopped as if by magic. For free yardsticks and pencils in the Commerce Building. To walk around, be seen, and see who was here. In short, to escape the rum-dumb routine of life.

The annual fair dominated my sisters’ and my thoughts. It was the highlight of our summer, next to the family’s annual vacation. We counted the days until the fair would come. No matter how many times we attended, we wanted to go back, tasting once more the outside world coming to us; usually it was the other way around.

I didn’t care about walking through the 4-H displays to see pigs, cows, lambs, and horses. They weren’t anything different from what I could see everyday. I didn’t care about examining items in the school display except to see if I had won a prize (and therefore some money). I didn’t care whose cut flower were deemed best in show, or whose pie won a blue ribbon; those were adult vanities on display. Anyway in the summer heat, the gladiolus stalks would be withering, the beets shrinking, the green beans wrinkling.

Grama and Grampa owned a Wonder Bar Stand they set up at the fair. They traveled a small circuit of country fairs and festivals selling Wonder Bars and snow cones. The Wonder Bar Stand added another dimension to the fair. Every year there was the promise that this would be the year I would be important and grown-up and help sell Wonder Bars like my older sister and cousin.

Grama said snow cones were the real moneymakers. Sweet syrup poured over ground ice, mostly pure profit. They let me have has many snow cones as I wanted, except I didn’t like snow cones. I liked Wonder Bars. Vanilla ice cream brick hard in the center, covered in chocolate and chopped peanuts. A delicious frosty treat on a hot summer afternoon.

I loved to watch Grama make Wonder Bars. Grama opened the carton of ice cream and flattened it against the cutting board. She scored the ice cream with a big knife, first in half the long way, and then divided the short side into fourths, first in half, then each half divided. She warmed the knife in hot water, and cut through her marks. She stuck a round wooden stick into each bar, dipped the bar into the vat of melted chocolate and rolled it in chopped peanuts. She laid the bars on wax paper until the chocolate hardened. Then she whisked them into the freezer where they froze hard as rocks.

I figured out that Grama and Grampa would give me one free Wonder Bar, but if I wanted more, I had to pay, not that I didn’t try, standing there looking at my feet after I’d accepted the treat. When Grama put her hand out for my money, then I knew she wasn’t going to change her rule.

I yearned to be the one she picked to work in the stand. Grama promised I would, but I was often disappointed. I’d help for a few minutes then get sent away. She picked Judy, or my older cousin, better at waiting on people, figuring in their heads what customers owed, and making change.

My disappointment was forgotten as soon as I began walking through the fairway