GROWING UP AMERICAN: A Collection of Childhood Tales Page 9

  Rainy

  Predictably the first heartache I had was caused by a horse. In 1972 it rained. It was the year of the big flood in Clearfield and through out a large section of the northeasternUnited States. I didn't totally understand this big event at the time but I do remember feeling sad that the wild flowers we planted in the old brick flower bead drowned before they could ever sprout and I remember taking the cut road through west side instead of going down river road under the train tracks and along the lowest stretch of road by the river, which must,in fact, have been under water. It was during one of these frequent downpours that my uncle’s horse Babe foaled and after much calling finally returned to the barn with a tiny and completely drenched little chestnut filly. The newborn squelched to the barn next to her bay mother, her coat nearly black in the torrential rain. Uncle John called her Rainy and for the next two years she was a part of the small herd at the farm. I remember the day clearly: I was in first grade and as was the case more often than not I was home sick from school. Mom bundled me up and we went to visit grandma. I must have been getting better because I remember feeling pretty good. I remember grandma taking us up stairs to show my mom something and my uncle John coming in. I remember the smell of his Camel cigarette as he lit up, that quick acrid smell, of the first singe of tobacco, then he went out side to finish it. A big white horse trailer showed up then and he and two men brought Rainy out of the barn. It was a gray over cast day but her red coat shone like a copper penny.

  I couldn't understand why she was leaving. It didn't make sense what my uncle said about her being too flighty and nervous to make a good trial horse. Never once in all of the times I'd ridden her in the wide expanse of the bottom pasture, had she bulked or shied. She'd never side stepped or tossed her head. Often I would put a piece of bailer twine around her silky nose and slip off of the barn wall onto her bare back and ride everywhere. Rainy never stepped away from me. Once, when she was just two, I walked up to her in the upper field. She was lying in a spot of sunlight on the crisp autumn grass. After stocking her mane and scratching the white star in her forehead, I just slipped a leg over her back and held onto her mane as she trussed her bulk off of the ground and wandered around. I didn't know it at the time but apparently my dad saw this from the office window and nearly had a heart attack at his five year old astride an unbroken horse with no tack or means of control. In my heart Rainy was always my horse and I cried that day. The day I stood on the porch as it started to rain and the taillights of the white horse trailer carried a chestnut horse away.

  Flame Fertilizer

  Marigolds are small gold and orange flowers that normally grow about six inches tall. Normally. It was summer and Cleo had come home to visit. I'd had the pony for probably two years by then and for whatever reason my big sister decided we needed a beautiful flower bed along the side walk next to thehouse. This tiny strip of land sat right infront of my bedroom window and was the perfect spot for the simple beautification project. First Cleo had Jonathan and I help her dig up the soil and remove any grass, then she sent us to the manure pile with buckets to collect what was dubbed "Flame Fertilizer". Cleo, who has always had a green thumb, then began planting rows and rows of Marigolds and Daisies. I remember helping to pop the tiny plants out of their little black boxes, and sticking the fragile one to two inch tall stalks into the prepared earth. The boxes all had brightly colored labels, which boldly declared that these plants grew to a height of six inches. This would be just perfect for growing under a low window. We planted and planted and then watered and watered. The little flowering plants settled into their new home and then took off.

  Cleo wasn’t home for the whole summer so she didn't see the final result of her handy work. The diminutive plants so lovingly bedded took off in with an explosion of raucous color. Not only did they bloom so fully that in the rain they nearly bent double with the weight of their golden heads, but they exceeded all expectations. filling the bed to a squished tight capacity and sprouting up until the cleared the window sill at well over one foot tall! Apparently a combination of growing knowledge and Flame Fertilizer was enough to overcome conservative modification of even marigolds. The few stalks of corn and wheat that also sprouted spontaneously in that bed were simply allowed to join in the festivities until they were too tall to ignore.

  Blues Harp Duo

  There is a bold confidence about a child who knows they are loved, if perhaps also an extra measure of naiveté. Growing up if I liked something, and enjoyed it, and it was not hurting anyone else despite what they thought about it - I didn't care I just did it. Be it apparel, reading material, or musical inclination. A prime example of this was during lunch times at Clearfield High. Generally I didn't eat much lunch. I usually had a few coins tucked away and would grab a snack or scrounge food from my best friend Missy so the eating part of lunch went by very quickly. My freshman year I sat with a variety of friends, cousins, and my brother and at different times that would rearrange itself to suit who ever didn't mind my own brand of lunchtime entertainment.

  Lunch lasted a full 45-minute period and was a cacophonous event, with students moving between the cafeteria and the auditorium at will under the generally watchful eyes of a teacher or two. Missy and I always managed to have lunch at the same time, which worked out well for our little duet. Not ones to waste free time we quickly decided lunch would be a great time to practice our harmonica playing. My mom got me a Marine Band Blues Harp in the key of D for Christmas the year I turned sixteen, and Missy soon had one of her very own, so we played. Some days we played well, other days we stuttered our way through a range of different songs and reels. We were young, we were bold, we were loved and surprisingly enough we were not abandoned. We still maintained a large group of friends who didn't seem to mind us playing our mouth harps at the lunch table among the noise of bustling teens and MTV. My brother sat with us, and for some reason several of the popular wrestling team would join us most days. It was sometimes soulful, sometimes playful, but always joyous. I still have my harp, although it is a new one and sometimes spends many months gathering dust. It is a shining symbol of innocence, independence, and acceptance: An opportunity provided by parents to be just who I am.

  Saddle Up

  English has, not surprisingly, been my favorite and best subject. Throughout school my best grades were always in English and Art and I never outgrew either of them. My toughest year of English was during tenth grade. For some reason many years ago a feud began with that particular classroom English teacher and my whole extended family. Across generations, family members each had their own run-in with this one particular teacher. My aunt, my oldest sister, my next sister, even my brother and my cousins, felt the sting of his acid whit. I was, if nothing else, always a very stubborn child. I once out-waited a mule; literally. No matter how many times I was told that I really didn't have the ability to make it in this advanced English class, I would not ask for a transfer to another class. Instead, I worked as hard as I could, hid inside my Louis L'Amour, and kept my mouth shut about my sub-par grades. Then everything changed. After the Christmas holidays we all returned to class to discover that the aged teacher had taken an early retirement and been replaced by a much younger and more enthusiastic teacher, named Ms. H.

  We had just started studying Shakespeare - a subject I loved - when after one particular class this new teacher asked me to stay behind after class. I gathered up my sketchbook, my classic western and my book bag then stood waiting infront of her desk. Behind me and just out of sight I noticed a classmate of mine packing up rather slowly. Ignoring the minor distraction, my new and fair-minded teacher asked me this simple question. "Paula, why is it that before Christmas you were barely scrapping by with a D average, and now you have straight A's?" Squeezing my books close I replied in what I thought was the most honest but inoffensive way possible. I simply said that if I told you,you wouldn't believe it anyway. "Tell me anyway," was the reply, so I did. As I stopped speaking, the young la
dy behind me, and all but forgotten, spoke up and loudly announced that the former teacher was unfair and treated me in an unprofessional way. She then surprised both of us by stating, "Until this year, I always thought I wanted to be an English teacher, but he changed my mind."

  Each year of school provides a few of those rights of passage moments. There's that first formal assessment, the prom, school sock hops, and of course the year you get your drivers license. In tenth grade it was the demonstration speech. Each student was instructed to write a speech on a topic of interest and then present it to the class while demonstrating how to perform the task written about. Tenth grade had been a strange one. It started with an English teacher with whom I had some personality issues, but ended with an exuberant new teacher with a tremendous sense of humor. It was this teacher who assigned the project. For some reason that year was one of the times when the football players got very full of themselves and could be somewhat insensitive toward those little book worms with their glasses pushed up and their nose in a book. So when it was time to do my little demonstration speech, I met privately with the teacher, discussed my ideas, and arranged to be the first student of the class to present. It was a typical spring day, the sun was shining, the air was cool, and the students were loud. On the way to school I stopped off at Ronda's house and picked up the gear which I would need then walked it all into school, dropped it in my English class and covered it with a blanket. Class started as it always did, students strolling in to class, the football players headed to the back of the room chatting quietly, preparing materials for class, and generally being kids.

  After attendance, Ms. Herrington explained the order of class events and then we got started. My name was called and I stepped up to the front of the class. As instructed I introduced myself and that I needed a strong young assistant to help me, where upon all of the strapping young football players eagerly volunteered. I took my time looking at the upraised hands, and then settled on the one student in the class who had most tormented me throughout the year. Dan: Dan, the starting quarterback for the Clearfield Bosons. He rose from his chair and boldly strutted his way to the front of the class. I smiled, then loudly announced, as I dragged the heavy wool blanket of the 60lb western saddle, "I will be demonstrating the correct way to saddle a horse, my assistant will be the horse." I then proceeded to have our fuming star athlete climb onto a desk on all fours and toss the largest, scratchiest saddle I had been able to find onto his unprotected back. At this point even the teacher was having trouble containing her mirth. I must admit now that although, I did demonstrate to the class the correct way of saddling a horse, I have never treated a horse quite so roughly in the process. The whispered oaths of revenge coming from the lips of the angry young man with said role did nothing to dissuade me from finishing the show with the loud announcement " And if you tend to make enemies you might want to get really fast at saddling up."

  Waiting Up

  At the tender age of nineteen I was engaged to an upright young man from a neighboring town, with who I was totallyincompatible. Being young, enthusiastic, and completely ignorant, this was not at first apparent. However in only a few short months even my optimisticspirit became concerned, so one drizzly afternoon I drove to visit him at his college, returning some hours later sans ring and engaged status. Somewhat bewildered, and yet relieved I do not remember how I got home through the slow, gray, wet night but what I do remember is my dad. Somewhere between the hours of eleven and midnight I returned home to a nearly dark house with only one light in the livingroom burning and Dad watching T.V. He sat there quietly as I curled up in an adjoining chair and stared at the busy screen. Dad, never turning his head or making any display of pity just asked, " Is it over?" "Yep,” I replied. " Well it's probably for the best." We watched T.V. together for a few hours then toddled off to bed. It didn't dawn on me for sometime, that although not uncommon for my father to stay up watching late-night T.V., he had in fact been waiting up to see that his baby daughter returned home intact, both physically and with an only slightly cracked heart.

  Dumb Teens

  Teenagers do dumb things but often the dumbest things they do, their best friends talk them into. I was in 9th grade, a freshman in highschool. For some reason, one of the senior boys liked me and despite the fact that I was still far more interested in horses the boys at the time, he persistently asked me out. He was a nice boy from East end and finally I and my motheragreed that I should go to a movie with him. The idea was that he would get tired of my prattling on about horses, and church youth group, and lose interest. This however did not work. I still do not understand what it was about me that appealed to him but for the next several weeks he ate lunch with me and generally was my 'boyfriend'. My friend Missy on the other hand had decided that boys were good, and with her petite figure, bright smile and dark chestnut hair she never lacked for attention from the opposite sex. Ray and Tommy were good friends and Missy and Tommy were just plain smitten.

  I must confess to some lack of attention in this area because by then I was busy training a flighty little buckskin mare named Fancy. On a bright weekend Missy came to visit as usual and for some inexplicable reason she somehow talked me into arranging for Ray to come visit and bring Tommy. We decided we would all meet at the school and then just take the guys home with me and explain to mom that Ray just dropped by and brought Tommy along. So we met the boys at the school and meandered around the school grounds bouncing an old ball around on the tarmac. I have no idea how it started but for some reason Ray and Tommy decided they would see how close Ray could drive his car up to Tommy without hitting him. He moved carefully, slowly, cautiously, and then his front bumper collided with Tommy's shins. Tommy wailed, Ray reversed and Missy and I stood there in shock. Fortunately for the dumb teenagers no real harm was done, but I'll never forget the impression the bumper of a 70's model Chevy leaves on lily-white legs.

  Bike Soccer

  We've never been a sporting family. We never watched football, baseball, basketball or any sport. My dad boxed briefly as a featherweight in the Army during WWII, Jonathan wrestled for a season, and we both did gymnastics but that was as close to a sport as we ever came. Soccer wasn't even part of my vocabulary but that didn't mean we didn't have our own version of the sport. Our concoction however had very different rules. Most summers would find the Croft kids busy riding their bikes eternally to nowhere. Back and forth the dusty track of road between our houses and when we were old enough up to the Goshen Elementary school to ride around and around the paved lots. At the back of the school was our playground. Black topped and marked out with hopscotch boards, and topped with a basketball hoop, which no matter how old I got I could never get a ball through. We would scrabble up on the flat roof of the school and toss down the balls that inevitably had landed there during some recess. We always left them neatly stacked on the back stoop for Mr. S. when we were done. Then, the game would begin.

  Every bike in the orchard would begin circling the ball in the middle of the field. Around and around we would go on banana seated, high handlebar bikes, ten speeds, with their low profile and bent bars, three speeds with wide saddle seats and red reflectors, but my favorite was the gigantic tri-cycle, which allowed for two players. One to pedal, which of course was impossible because all of us had out-grown it and would have been kissing our knees with every turn of the chain, and one 'pusher'. The object of the game was simple, to see who could kick the ball out of the circle of madly rotating bikes. The trike was always fun, not only because you got pushed by someone but because you could turn the big wheel and smack the ball with it, while being low enough to swerve away from oncoming traffic. The other thrill was that if you cut the wheel too sharply you were pretty much guaranteed to ride up on two wheels and watch your pusher go careening off flat footed to catch their balance again. I'm not sure how we managed but we seldom came home with skinned up knees or elbows, and only occasionally toppled over on our wheeled, steel mounts.

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sp; Late Bloomer

  I was always what is referred to as a late bloomer, well except for my height, for some reason I seemed determine to out-distance everyone in the family and except for my Dad, and eventually my brother, I did. Still I took a long, circuitous route to growing up. To begin with I was horse mad, not just horse crazy like those girls who grow out of horses at about the time they discover boys and make up, but completely obsessed with the four-footed beasts. My first articulations were apparently ‘De, de’ and to this day my sisters agree I was saying horse. I drew them from kindergarten, was constantly in the barn at my grandmother’s house, read only stories about horses, cried when a horse died in anything, including the songs my dad sang regularly, and I never played dolls, I played horse ranch with my Barbies in charge. It was my secret wish to marry Nick B. from the ‘Big Valley’ because he had the best horse. I couldn't see anything ever being more interesting or more important than horses. To this day a picture of a horse makes my heart smile. Somethings maybe be put away for a time but that doesn't mean they are forgotten. In fifth grade, life was good. This was probably one of my favorite school years ever. Missy got her ponies, we had good teachers that although they probably thought we were an odd bunch never interfered with our playing horses, and somehow understood what was going on when one of the boys would throw a jump rope around Missy or me and haul us off the grassy hill.