Eddies Along the River: Reassembled, recovered, and realized tales of mid-century St. Paul

By Michael Sullivan

"Eddies Along the River" is a fanciful memoir of growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota during the turbulent 1950's, 60's and 70's. The mighty Mississippi is the river of the title, and its flow stands for the advance of time. Near its source, the river has many moods and faces. As it makes its way through St. Paul, its burdens are carried south to its destination. Similarly, the protagonists of the stories must bend and struggle in their many guises, but the collective thrust of the stories' narrative flow is clear: the young man variously portrayed is beset with growing pains. The stories are organized into groups: Early Trials, Surviving Education, Hitchhiking Stories, Aidan's Stories, and Afterlife.
In the stories, the protagonist has many names. Like the old saying, the more some things are changed, the more some things remain the same. The consistent subject of these explorations is a heterosexual male of mid-twentieth century America, born and raised in the Midwest. He is a socially inept loner. As he enters adolescence, his problems adapting to life multiply. He is an individual, to be sure, but also a case in point.
Some tales, such as "Sanctuary" are in first person, enabling the author to get the distance of a fictional person, while unlocking the emotions lying in his memory. As far as any factual history is concerned, the author has taken considerable fictional liberties. He paints a picture of his journey growing up as a young boy. The boy is not extraordinary, but his life is unique. This book offers portraits in specific times and settings and like any artist might do, each portrait is colored differently with different lighting and reveals different facets of the subject. The boy's time in grade school began in the 1950's and he finished high school in the 1960's. The later stories conclude sometime in the 1970's. Each generation, every era, has its challenges. There is often a male protagonist in each story that can be identified as the author's voice.
A fictional memoir does not tell the whole story of a life, rather it concentrates on specific moments in time. In the case of this mode of writing, it is an account of incidents in time but may include fictive elements.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350913385

Michael Sullivan

Enter the Author Bio(s) here.

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All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. If we don’t, our lives get made up for us by other people.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Eddies Along the River

Reassembled, Recovered, and Realized Tales of Mid-Century St. Paul

©2023 Michael Sullivan

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

print ISBN: 979-8-35091-337-8

ebook ISBN: 979-8-35091-338-5

Contents

INTRODUCTION

Early Trials

Do Tell

Farther Back

Dan Goes Down and Comes Up

Jack and Chase

The Sandlot

Surviving Education

ABCs at St. Johns

Puds Goes to the Prom

I Met Willy on the Playground in 4th Grade

Micky Tries Dying

On His Knees

Hitchhiking Stories

Howie Learns How, or After the Great 1971

Antiwar March in Washington, D. C.

Buddies on the Road

Aidan’s Stories

Aidan, Parts 1 and 2

Oggie and Aidan Come Home,

or Voluntary Death in its Various Forms

Afterlife

The Ten-Year Reunion Redux

The Sanctuary

INTRODUCTION

Mark Twain supposedly observed that the older he got the more vividly he remembered things that never happened.

. . . Twain suggests that the story of your life tends to take over its history.

The Soul’s Code, James Hillman, p 172

Random House 1996

During the third year of my retirement and while coping with the uncertainties and open times afforded by the sequestering necessary during the pandemic year of 2020, I found myself surrounded by absences. Friends, classes, travel, the spices of life were not easily available, or not at all. With vacant time and shadows all about me, I found myself looking back at memories that seemed to shape my early development, for me a kind of anamnesis or remembering of my previous existence. This looking back and bringing forward became a kind of storytelling weaving, a kind of resurrection of my past life, and a refilling of my tanks during a time of seeming emptiness. In a sense, I had been confabulating, defined by me as the replacing of a gap in memory by a false idea that the memoirist believes to be true.

I also discovered the value of doing this by being expansively fanciful. Akin to a memoir, but not quite. I take a memory and add and expand. I contradict any narrative continuity from story to story and keep changing the protagonist’s names. I take a piece here and a thread there and sew together a quilt, some of it is patchwork, some of it patterned. Characters come into my past that I never met, and I find they flourish. Many of the people I knew well never appear in these pages. Actual personages, such as parents, have been bastardized (all apologies, poetic license, you know). Maybe this collection is better thought of as fiction.

Like the old saying, but altered to suit me, the more some things are changed, some things still remain the same. The consistent subject of these explorations is of a male of mid-twentieth century America, born in the Midwest where he spent most of his life, heterosexual, of Irish-German heritage. He is a loner and socially inept. As he grows into and through adolescence, his problems adapting to life multiply. He is an individual, to be sure, but also a case in point.

As a writer, he is now in his seventh decade. Along the way he earned a PhD, became a licensed psychologist, and spent his career working with persons with serious mental illness. He has a family to whom he is devoted, a wife to whom he has been married for almost fifty years, and a daughter. But it is his earlier life that in his retirement he is drawn into, like through a glass darkly. He was formed and influenced by the 1950s generation as a child and by the Vietnam War, the assassinations, and the youth rebellion of the 1960s and early 1970s. As you can see, I am writing about me as him.

In the stories he has many names, Micky, Puds, and Howie, among others. About me as him. Many of these tales were originally written about a person like me but not me, or so I thought. Some tales, such as Sanctuary are in first person, but even there it was felt that this was the better way to present the story, not because I was indicating myself. I needed the distance of a fictional person, but I also needed to unlock the emotions lying in my memory. I hope a reader may keep that double vision in mind. I considered using a consistent protagonist but decided against it. Some of the character names just fit the character of the story. I have elected to make the stories each their own episode, although some are connectable. As far as any factual history is concerned, I have taken considerable fictional liberties.

So, then the stories themselves.

The first group I’m calling Early Trials. In Do Tell, a young boy experiences separation from within his nuclear family, that separation is carried to his extended family in Dan Goes Down and Comes Up. This theme is also presented as it reaches into his ethnic/religious background in Farther Back. Reasons, causes, explanations, or excuses for these separations are present in each of the stories. He is becoming his own person bit by bit by way of subtraction.

The second group is called Surviving Education. The stories give a picture of Catholic Education in mid-century. The times themselves were times of transition. The vestiges of older traditions were being assaulted by changes in the world and in our country. The stories show these changes through the eyes of a young person’s experience.

The Hitchhiking Stories are as factual as any of my stories. Cross-country hitchhiking was a kind of rite of passage in the 1960s and early 1970s. As an experiential journey, they were eye-opening and life-changing.

The next set I’m calling the Aidan Stories. Aidan has a crisis in his life while in Yellowstone Park that is a culmination of his failures and shortcomings and disappointments in earlier stories. Then in Aidan Part 2, he experiences what has been called an epiphany which may be defined as a sudden spiritual manifestation. This event folds the past into a shorthand that frees Aidan to project himself into a future of his own making. What results is an ongoing project that is portrayed in Oggie and Aidan Come Home, or Voluntary Death in Its Various Forms.

These four acts, as I have organized my stories, Early Trials, Surviving Education, Hitchhiking, Aidan’s Stories, and Afterlife, are intended to represent my interpretation of my stories as a coming-of-age longer story, where the arc of any coming of age can be defined simply as a young person’s transition from being a child to being an adult. The specific ages vary between societies as does the nature of the change. This universal experience may be marked by a simple legal convention or be celebrated as part of a ritual. The ritual part is of interest to me in my stories. Rites of passage are central to coming to maturity and can be characterized by including three phases: First: separation or leaving the familiar, second: transition or learning, growing, and facing trials, and third: reintegration or transformation. As you may note, I have used these notions and concepts, some of which have been gleaned from Wikipedia and not deep anthropological research. Nevertheless, I find them to be useful guideposts. As you read the stories, there are rituals and rites of passage sprinkled throughout, some mark social or personal milestones and others are purely religious.

The last set, The Afterlife, includes the stories, The Ten-Year Reunion Redux and The Sanctuary. In fact, they are the same story told differently as any life, especially one that is fictional, might turn out unexpectedly. The original place of the Sanctuary was an actual place as was the stargazing and the inspiration it afforded to a small group of friends, but the adventuring and post-Sanctuary nostalgia is fictional. These stories are perhaps the most fanciful of all.

A Confessional Afterthought

The ego develops via connecting one’s present experience to one’s ongoing story of oneself. Early messaging, feelings, inputs, and experiences begin to add up to a sense of competency and a notion of the self, and of the world. Ordinary, present experience only adds small increments; it takes time to change one’s notion of oneself. Mostly experience cements known prejudices. Some experiences are cataclysmic and upset the apple cart. Putting the apples back may resemble the original arrangement but may not.

All these stories are built around life events where there was an emotional jolt, or an important lesson learned, or a sudden change in perspective. I am generally building around the emotional impact of an experience. Often it is an upset apple cart. In any case, I am willing the story I am telling to convey a kind of truth that is real to me and my experience but not necessarily my experience. That is why they are autobiographical fantasies. Perhaps some of your experiences, or memories thereof, are like that?

For all the misdirection, name changes, and fanciful time frames, they are all my stories, crisscross my heart. I acknowledge that these tales do not always follow the usual conventions of short stories for content and length. I hope these stories find readers that may afford them the patience they need and are rewarded with stories they find entertaining, revealing, and for some perhaps, inspirational.

Spending long months looking back to capture the past can be a reliving, even a rebirthing of friends, passions, haunts, and regrets. And then it is over, the writing is done, the lives (including my own) have come again and been lost again. The time comes to bid the memories to rest, close the boxes, shovel over the dirt, and bid a sad farewell. The stories themselves now exist and have their own life apart from me. It’s also a chance to begin again. Maybe do some writing.

A person has two lives. The second life begins when they realize they have only one life.

Confucius

Early Trials

A drawing of a face Description automatically generated with medium confidence

Asks the question, why is childhood so hard,

and so hard to leave?

Do Tell

Farther Back

Dan Goes Down and Comes Up

Jack and Chase

The Sandlot

Do Tell

As a youngster of kindergarten age, Teddy, but called Tipper was very close to his mother. Naturally she took him everywhere and he was with her from waking to sleep. To Tipper, Mom was beautiful; she was a bit plump but soft and one could fold oneself into her warmth. One must never touch her face or hair. She spent so much time getting ready and she did not brook random intrusions into her face. But cuddling was okay and great. She’d hold Tipper’s face in her hands and say, A face only a mother could love. What did she mean by that? No matter, it was said with evident love.

Tipper was no longer attending kindergarten. He had gotten a very bad cold and became so tired. First, he missed a couple of weeks because of his illness and then he just refused to go. He cried and cried. Mom said he was too young to start school—he was in-between in age. Next year he would be on the older end of the class and more ready. Nevertheless, Dad was looking into Tipper’s, Dad called him Ted or Teddy, possible admission into a private Catholic school for first grade. There being no requirement that a first grader had to first attend kindergarten and he would pay the tuition fee. Dad said, That’ll open the door. Dad thought mom was babying Ted. Wait’ll the nuns get at ’em, he’ll pull his pants up straight, Dad chuckled, I’m speaking from some experience there. Mom and Dad would fight all the time. Dad was big and strong and scary to Tipper, but he never raised his voice to him or Mom. Mom was a verbal hellcat, that’s what Dad said (whatever a hellcat was) and she nearly always had the last word. Dad would even sometimes leave the room crying after one of their spats. But this disagreement about Tipper’s schooling (or maybe more correctly Ted’s schooling) was one argument he won, probably because Mom knew he was right. Tipper thought they mostly fought about him, later he would learn he was wrong about that.

That was all for another time. In the meantime, Mom went shopping almost every day and Tipper would ride along beside her. No seat belts in those days and the front seat of their Ford Wagon was a long bench. He could lie down on the bench and put his head in her lap if he wanted. He always enjoyed their going out together. Mom would do her makeup and get Tipper into the proper clothes for the weather. She loved dressing him in different outfits, one day he would be a cowboy, the next a sailor. Car outings with mom always seemed cheerful yet serious. They would be getting supplies for dinner, which Tipper would help carry into the house. Mom was a good cook and cooked from scratch.

One day they were at the market parking lot and were just sitting in the car. mom said she needed to find something in her purse. After a short while, a man came and tapped on her window. She opened the window and talked to the man, and it seemed she knew him. Tipper was asked to jump in the back seat and so he just slipped over the back of the car seat and the man came around and took his place. Mom and the guy did some adult talking and Tipper just sat and idled in the back till they were done. Then shopping proceeded as normal. Yet it had been a fateful day.

In the coming weeks, mom would park her car in different places. The man would be waiting, it seemed. Tipper would get relegated to the back, the man would jump in the car, and they would spin around for a while. Tipper would listen to the grown-up talk of which he was getting more curious but had no notion of what was up and he was feeling irritated and a bit sad. He asked Mom what the man doing was in the car with them all the time now. She just said he was Dad’s boss at work, his name was Avery, and by talking to him she was trying to help Dad out. And something about it was a secret. Tipper didn’t really talk to Dad anyway, nor he to him, so keeping a secret from him was not an issue.

In the days ahead the tone changed, the man would come around to the driver’s side, get in, and seemed to take charge. He talked more, he was louder, and Mom would seem to disagree. Then there was a time in early summer when Tipper needed to go to the bathroom and insisted to mom to take him home and the man was loud and said, Keep it down in the back! You don’t want to walk home, do you? Mom said, Tipper, be patient, we’ll be home soon. When the man was leaving the car, Tipper wasn’t really looking, but he thought he saw the man kiss Mom. He felt so confused and angry.

So, the next time Mom and Dad were fighting, Tipper saw them both differently. Mom was no longer his and Dad’s and Dad was now not the only male to boss Tipper around. Tipper’s emotions were running high. Mom was attacking Dad about all manner of things, including something about his having a girlfriend? Tipper was feeling he would burst, all the frustration riding in the back seat with that man and Mom getting kissed and Dad not knowing but being accused. Tipper started yelling at the top of his lungs nonsense words, sounds from deep in his belly, and finally finding his voice he turned toward Mom and yelled, You have been driving around with Dad’s boss instead of shopping and kissing and he won’t let me go to the bathroom! That stopped the fighting. Tipper felt strange, like he had won something. Dad left the room quietly; Tipper didn’t think he was crying. The room felt cold, yet somehow clean.

Mom looked at Tipper with a strange look, like she didn’t know him, perhaps as if she didn’t like him so much. You know what you’ve done, Ted (she said Ted it seemed for the first time), you have caused us to get a divorce. This rather went over Tipper’s (or Ted’s) head but he knew in his bones that everything was different now. For the first time he felt alone in his little family.

Farther Back

There was a time in Ireland when to practice one’s native religion was a crime and so much of the people’s religiosity went underground. In some ways, it merged with more ancient beliefs and practices. On a small island, isolated and insular, proud and rebellious, Irish Catholicism was characteristically snobbish. It brooked no dissent. Yet, even as it protected its own, there was a dark side to this much protection. Too much insularity can lead to heterodoxy from the Mother Church. And insularity and power can (and did) lead to corruption.

From early on, Rome was not entirely happy with the Irish Church and sent priests and bishops that towed the Vatican line. But especially parish priests learned to walk the line between Irish mysticism and Roman orthodoxy. Unfortunately, some of these clergy favored an orthodoxy wielded with a whipping branch. The common people were not privy to the machinations of the powerful, the whys and wherefores of how they were served and manipulated. That the Roman line and the British masters were mostly in agreement, that the Irish needed discipline and civilizing, was best hidden for everyone’s sake. Later, a new national identity, with an educated population, but still proud of its traditions, could make up its own mind about what to keep and what to shed.

Until then there were the refugees from Ireland in America. Many brought remnants of their ancient traditions with them, as many as they could carry in their hearts, their souls, their memories, though wrought with bitterness. Few such traditions could be adapted—fewer still retained—before the tide of mainstreaming. Perhaps some traditions, such as those in their hearts were authentic, whereas others were more superficial and appeared cartoonish. The hidden identity, the forgotten memories, the itch for something else, maybe something underground, is perhaps as far away as a lilt upon a fairy mound.

Kevin, a small boy for his age, is alone kneeling before mass starts. He is waiting for his parents and his aunts are behind him kneeling with their rosaries hanging over the back of Kevin’s bench. Kevin needs to keep kneeling to avoid his aunts’ beads and hands in prayer. He shifts from one knee to another to assuage his discomfort. Kevin’s mind is elsewhere. Kevin spends a great deal of his time in elaborate daydreams; if he isn’t reading or watching TV or otherwise entertained with a story, there is always a daydream he can return to. His third-grade teacher, Miss Strum, at St. Johns, had mentioned to Kevin’s parents that Kevin sometimes appears distracted or disinterested in class, He seems to daydream a lot. When asked about this, Kevin told his mother, It’s OK, Mom, I always know what’s going on; if it’s interesting I pay attention. Right now, in church he is having a different daydream, a new one. He is in a green woodsy area, and he is very thirsty, and he just knows there is a well nearby, but where? He was wandering this way and that, following the trails left by animals (he had a book on identifying animal tracks and scat). Following the tracks is also following where the daydream wants to go; he instinctively wants to avoid the rabbit tracks but feels the deer tracks are the ones to follow. The birds seem mostly intent on distracting him from his quest of the well.

Kevin, his aunts, and parents, are guests for the Mass at the Abbey where Kevin’s great uncle, the Reverend James Casey, S.J. is staying. Father Casey is on leave from his missionary post in Central America. Besides Kevin’s family, there are a few others, possibly also relatives of clergy, occupying the south transept. The north transept is for the cloistered nuns and monks. The section directly facing the altar, the nave, is occupied by homeless people invited to this service as requested by Father Casey. None of the three groups can see each other, each are facing only the altar. There will be a meal provided by the Abbey following the service, but the Casey retinue will be dining elsewhere.

Kevin’s aunts always wear veils in church. They are his great aunts, but he has been taught to call them his aunts. Mary and Ann Mary are each very thin and very upright. When they are standing close together, and when they kneel, they are shoulder to shoulder as if they need each other’s support. Kevin’s father, Harry, loves his aunts, but he has been known to have said, The shame and guilt that each one holds at bay with constant praying strikes out like a beam finding and creating shame and guilt in others. Only a strong person or a clever dodger can tolerate their insinuations and piety.

Kevin was thinking: Where are my parents? Am I to have lunch today alone with the aunts and Father Casey? Oh, shudder! Father’s not too bad, mostly lets others do their talking, but the sisters will pester Father for opinions and advice and coo over anything he says. Worse, they’re always after me to say I am interested in becoming a clergyman. What am I supposed to say with Father Casey sitting there? He’s been a missionary and taught at a university. He’s holier than anything. Heck, I’m just a kid, I don’t know what I want! I wonder why they never were cloistered and instead lived their lives as laity.

The aunts are whispering to him: Go to Father when he comes out, he is expecting you. Go to him, he does not have anyone to assist him at Mass. Go to him now, here he comes! He felt their voices as much as heard them, like a pestering knock. He felt them as birds circling his head vying for a way in. Go to Father, go to him. He is expecting you.

Kevin was swept up, he felt he couldn’t disobey the sisters in church. What if Father needed him? What should I do? I am not an altar boy, he whispered back.

It’s all right, he will tell you what to do.

Kevin got up and stiffly walked up the side aisle, hands clasped with fingers pointing up and legs trembling. Slowly he ascended the altar from the side and knelt behind Father Casey who was facing the altar in the traditional manner. From this new vantage point, he could see the cloistered priests on the other side. He was shocked to see an altar boy—probably an acolyte from the abbey—ascend the raised altar space. The young man nodded and looked toward Kevin. Father glanced back and saw this strange young boy in civilian clothes several steps below and to his right.

What can I do for you, my son? He did not recognize Kevin.

Your sisters! My aunts!

Oh, yes. Yes, Kevin. Harry’s boy, what is it?

They said I should help you.

Can you help me say Mass?

No, Father, I’ve never done so, they said you’d tell me.

That’s all right son, go on back and participate in the service, I will talk to Ann Mary, go on!

Kevin got off his knees. His face was never so red. He felt like choking with the abundance of emotion he was feeling, Shame, shame, shame, and anger. He walked out of the church head down, fists clenched at his sides, his eyes never more than two inches past the toes of his shoes. And he kept walking out the door, into the street, into the cold breeze, looking for his parents’ car. Kevin’s parents pulled up in their car. Kevin’s dad rolled his window down and looked at him with a question on his face. Finally, Kevin’s dad said, Well then, Mass hasn’t started yet? That’s good, we’ve been making arrangements for lunch.

Kevin just stood there and blurted out, You best hurry in, Mass has started. I left because I’m not feeling well, it’s just my stomach, I’m walking home, it’s fine, I’ll see everyone later. He walked his way home, shivering and upset but not in his stomach. Once home he encamped himself in his sick room, determined to remain there. The lunch party returned, and he was found to be in his room, though he was only feigning sleep.

Kevin is shivering and alone. He hears the chatter of his parents and guests in the next room, but not many of their words. Ann Mary’s voice is recognized and most present. She is the oldest in the family. Her sounds are naturally deferential to Father Casey’s office, but Kevin could also detect a teasing as Jim is her younger brother. Kevin hears his father’s laughter as loud and continuing. He is no doubt the bartender for this gathering. Mother and Auntie Mary are not heard at all. Attention turns to himself: I guess I may actually be getting sick, the long walk in the cold has gotten to me. No one has come to check on me. I think I belong apart, like my leaving today.

The shame Kevin felt eventually receded into his core self. He retained the memory of trembling. A moment of terror upon the altar as if he was the sacrifice. Had God’s eye fallen upon him? In the future he would avoid his aunts however he could.

In a later year, he noted his mother would also seem to avoid the sisters. Dad would mostly go to visit them alone. Finally, Kevin asked his mother, You’re not going to visit Ann and Ann Mary with Dad, any reason for it?

Not really. She demurred, he thought she wasn’t going to tell but then she said, They kind of come on strong with religion, they push it, maybe you’ve noticed. They’ve had a hard life, but it can be a bit much, what with the truth of it all.

What truth, something I’m missing?

Kevin would later learn, not from his mother but from another relative at a large funeral gathering where drinks were plentiful, that the sisters were not sisters at all. His aunts were his great aunt and her daughter. It was said there had been a marriage once and then a child, but no one had ever met the father. It was only said of him, He went out West.

Ah, Kevin realized, then Father Casey is in on the lie!

Dan Goes Down and Comes Up

Dan’s parents had left a small town in Iowa where they were just scratching to get by, and they had up and moved and been living in St Paul, Minnesota, for more than a decade before Dan was born. By then, the Great Depression was history, and World War II had been won. Communism and the atomic war were now worries, but post-war prosperity brought everyday optimism. They were young and felt in tune with a nation that was restless and in motion. Though the first years away from home and family were challenging, eventually they settled in, found a niche, and benefitted accordingly. They were not shy about letting the folks back home know they were making their way just fine in The Cities.

When Dan became portable in the early 1950s, a return to the Iowa homeland every summer was inevitable. As difficult as it was for Dan’s parents to leave Iowa, it was at least as difficult for their son Dan to return to Iowa as their baggage, which was how he would later feel about it. They would drive down from St Paul on a Friday after Dad’s work, Dan would get dropped off at one of the several relatives’ farms, and Dan wouldn’t see them again for perhaps a week as they made the rounds visiting the farms and towns in northern Iowa where relatives and friends resided before heading back to St Paul on a Sunday evening.

Down and up, south and north, the way became familiar to the young boy. The summer trip was a given. Funerals were additional visits, iffier were birthdays, anniversaries, and graduations, which were very dependent on to whom they were occurring and when. Dan endured them all but when he reached his teen years, he put his foot down. No way, no more, I’ll be okay, I’ll be good and I’m not going. His parents were not the overprotective sort and they had been independent themselves from a very young age. They had someone look in on Dan and Dan never badly misbehaved. Dan’s father had been pretty much raised by his brothers and sisters among a brood of ten siblings. He thought Dan could handle himself for a few days, or maybe he didn’t care to argue about it—he was that way. Dan’s strong feelings about no longer attending the caravan to the south is mostly what this story is about.

Typically, Dan would get dropped off once they arrived at what Dan thought of as the extended family territories—about fifty square miles where relations were scattered hither and yon across the Iowan landscape. Once dropped off, Dan may be sleeping at one of several places. Especially for a short stay, he would be given an upstairs bedroom in an old farmhouse to head up to. As he was young and bored and there being nothing else to do, he would be seeking an early sleep. Dan would not be surprised to wake up with an untold number of cousins or other strangers sleeping in the same bed along with him. If Dan was accompanying his parents in their seemingly random stops, as he sometimes was, he would be an extra piece of luggage. Mom and Dad went to one place, for instance, cousin Millie’s was an early stop, have a few drinks, and then drive the miles to another town or another farm and drive and visit and drink and drive, and Dan felt sometimes on display but otherwise forgotten.

But Dan’s usual respite, where he may have an extended stay, would be with Dad’s sister, Aunt May, and her husband, Uncle Jim—the McGuires. Their farm was extensive, prosperous, and well-tended. It was a family farm with crops and farm animals that could be managed by Jim, his older sons, and a few farmhands when needed. The McGuires owned a tractor and a few implements and could rent what they needed. The McGuire house was unique in Dan’s Iowa experience. The house was set close to the county road in front. It was newly built, replacing the old wooden two-story farmhouse. The old house had sat behind and to the side of the new house. Some of the scars of the old place remained. The broken concrete foundation and clapboard wearing flaking white paint had been removed just a few years ago. The new McGuire house could have been a home in any Twin City suburb. It was one story, stucco, and painted a light green. The rooms were not large except for the kitchen, an unexpected combination of modernized equipment and crowd-sized seating. As a bonus, the kitchen came fully equipped with all modern equipment and conveniences and had a handy washer and dryer right off the back door. The kitchen opened easily to the farm which lay behind and seemed segregated from the rest of the house by a small dining area for the exclusive use of the McGuire family.

Outside the back door, Jim put up a cowbell on a rope. He said, This way May can save her breath; instead of calling all you heifers in to feed and exhausting her breath, she can tire you boys out with her calling down judgement on your manners. The workers mostly knew when the mealtimes were, so she used the cowbell to call in the children if she hadn’t heard from them for a time.

Overall, the house was furnished in a modern style for the 1950s with shag carpets and lots of glass and chrome trim on the occasional tables. To sit in the living room, where the television sat prominently, meant that one had shed any remnants of farm activities and had cleaned up and changed clothes. The big picture window faced the highway and an old oak tree.

Everything within the house was under May’s purview and she ruled with a strong hand. If May wanted something for her house, she got it. Jim presided over the farm, and he would brook no questions from May regarding the whys or wherefores of his farming doings and decisions. When they argued, which was often and loud, they would argue eye to eye, and they would take no prisoners. Dan never knew what they argued about. The thunder of their fights could terrify him, especially late at night and if they had started drinking early. He asked Cam, Is it gonna be all right? But Cam just kept his pillow over his ears and offered Dan no comfort. At daylight everything always returned to normal. The needs and cycles of the farm would resume.

Dan remembers the farm breakfasts—fried bacon and sausage, toast, sometimes pancakes, and as many fried eggs as he wanted; he’d be kidded if he only asked for two. There might be fruit or potatoes or other extras that Dan mostly ignored. At the table would be workers coming in and out, getting their grub, some in for their second breakfast, Aunt May presiding. They would josh and kid with Dan who would be quiet and embarrassed. Are you gonna come and meet Bessy this morning and tickle her udders? He thought they said unders and, not knowing what was asked, would say, I don’t know and May would say, Let the boy alone. He’s just waking up, you can make him a farm boy after breakfast, and they would all laugh.

May and Jim’s two boys and daughter were all grown up and then along came little Cam. Cam and Dan, everyone thought they were kind of cute together, were the same age, and at the time we are talking about, they were nine years old. They spent their nights together in Cam’s room and