Just a Rural Cinderella

Maybe Question 1 intrigued you enough to return for Question 2. Maybe you’re just jumping on board, and good for you, you’re still early. Maybe you’re wondering who the hell thinks she’s so important that she should share her life story with strangers? Me too, trust me. But I guess that’s the game, so here I am, playing . . .

Welcome back!

Question 2: WHEN & WHERE WAS I BORN?

I was born in ’74 in the very heart of South Dakota, State Fair land, now also popular to Wheel Jam, and forever nearby will be Laura Ingalls Wilder, and while I can remember more tidbits from my early childhood than most people can recall, most memories come from the 80’s.

I grew up in several rural small towns spotting central South Dakota, prairie land, near sod homes of the Wilder family, no relation to me, but I always felt connected to Laura. I was only one “r” away plus my paternal grandparents lived in DeSmet, SD when I was a child, visiting them one week each summer led to many Ingalls excursions and passion plays.

While Grandma Wilde read her diary for one hour each day, my sister Heather and I read the LIW books. I loved to get lost in them. And I was especially swept away one particular day, when much to my surprise, my grandmother in her required silent reading time closed her big Bible, set it down next to her, stood from her wooden rocking chair, grabbed one large flat butt cheek in each hand, spread them apart as if normal behavior, then ripped a huge fart, sat back down, grabbed her book, found her page, then slapped our stunned, flushed faces with a playful wink. Wtf, Grandma?! She was a character!

While Grandma Wilde read her diary for one hour each day, my sister Heather and I read the LIW books. I loved to get lost in them. And I was especially swept away one particular day, when much to my surprise, my grandmother in her required silent reading time closed her big Bible, set it down next to her, stood from her wooden rocking chair, grabbed one large flat butt cheek in each hand, spread them apart as if normal behavior, then ripped a huge fart, sat back down, grabbed her book, found her page, then slapped our stunned, flushed faces with a playful wink. Wtf, Grandma?! She was a character!

Several years ago, I felt compelled to write my grandma’s story, my mother’s mother, the 97-year-old who brought smiles, love and joy to anyone around her until she couldn’t. I learned how the physical world progressed and affected ways of living, but I also learned that true human nature churns with similar tones from one decade to the next, generations of parallels.

Small-town Living

I grew up poor, not to the point of starving, but thank goodness for food stamps. We lived in old box-sized small-town homes often infested with mice. When I was one, firefighters rescued my parents, siblings and me from an eave of our burning home, set to flame by mice chewing on the stove’s electrical wires, I suppose the same friends who joined me in my playpen and left reminders my mother brushed away each morning.

One home lost to a fire, another to the bank, years later when the structure my grandpa erected could no longer be supported by my father’s truck driving paychecks. Shortly after, my dad was no longer home on the weekends but rather finding himself in the sleeper of his truck and eventually in another box home, in “town” though, 13 miles away, where I escaped as often as I could.

What does Town mean?

Town meant different things to different people. To the farm kids, “town” meant the 100+ population hub alongside railroad tracks that served their needs for grain and feed, church on Sunday’s, and candy from the local tavern if they were lucky.

To the small town kids, “town” meant the <em>metropolis</em> of 10,000 people 13 miles away known as Huron. My grandma remembered how the road that led there felt like corduroy back in her day, when she would accompany her grandparents on those special trips to town in their horse-drawn wagon, shared eventually with Model T’s. Her grandfather called it “God’s road.”

We left our small town triangle hop to join my mom’s boyfriend on his sheep farm with a welding business, still attending the same school system. You see, school-aged kids from half a dozen small towns plus all the rural areas in between showed up in the same classrooms, each grade equaled one class with the number of students equaling usually in the teens, at least double digits. 60 students comprised Iroquois High School when I graduated in 1993 in a class of 16 people including myself and a foreign exchange student. I was a Snow Queen, Homecoming Queen and Valedictorian, not for bragging purposes, but to prove the numbers weren't there.

I shot hoops for girls’ basketball but jumped on stage in my uniform to play the Star Spangled Banner with the other saxophone player. I practiced basketball then changed into my football cheerleading uniform on Friday nights. I played volleyball tournaments but raced to the state cheerleading competition between games. I ran track, both short and long distance, long jump and shot put, hurdles hell yeah. I was in Pep Club, German Club, Drama Club. I played the leading male role in my senior spring play. I pasted together a pathetic yearbook. I soaked my aching hip in the girls’ locker room in a metal trough with an attached motor. I jumped in my classmate’s trucks after school and shot pop bottles with shotguns out by the lake before whatever evening game.

Up to this point, I had been a “town” girl with a hundred neighbors, suddenly I was a country girl, but not without a license to drive and a will to escape, and so I did, mostly to the big town of Huron, mostly to find my <em>buyer</em> and start drinking.

>Before I was titillated with alcohol and chew and cigarettes, my youth seemed fairly simple, and happy enough. I was happy enough, playing with my Barbies, building elaborate houses out of record covers and wash cloths. Heather and I played endless hours of House with our matching homemade knock-off Cabbage Patch dolls.

I watched the Dating Show, Lawrence Welk, Solid Gold and Saturday Night Live, not to mention all the sitcoms, writing my own scripts for Three’s Company.

Haybales in our backyard served as horses we straddled and rode into the sunset.

I pedaled my bike in the rain and swam in full ditches, careful not to cut my foot on the culvert. I built tunnels through snow, and played football in the front yard. I caught grasshoppers and worms on the mound of dirt and grass piled next to our rickety swing set with a cheap plastic pool tucked under the cracked slide. I made mud pies and rode dirt bikes and mini bikes. I had a full-time summer babysitting job by the time I was 8 or 9. I walked into the pool hall any day, any time to turn in glass bottles for money, with which I would play pool and buy Hubba Bubba, always leaving with a can of wintergreen long-cut Skoal for my dad. The butcher shop next door sold half gallons of milk in case we couldn’t make it to town, but their cost was double and ol’ Mark didn’t take food stamps. I climbed to the roof of the pool hall from the back and leaned over the edge and spit water on drunks exiting the premise. I broke into an old shed and played strip poker with the redhead neighbor boy and made a fort in an abandoned milk truck smuggling boxes of issues of Playboy and Hustler.

I dressed up as a hooker for Halloween one time because I didn’t know what they were. My interpretation from the movies and VCR we rented on special occasion combined with my simple mentality didn’t see the Father’s surprise coming when he asked what I was and I proudly declared, “a hooker.” My mom made me apologize the next day to the Father and to the other town folk who may have asked the same question hearing the same answer but returning it with a laugh or a question, “Do your parents know?!” They didn’t because Dad was on the road and Mom was putting in extra hours at Haley’s Grocery in Huron to keep the electricity on.

It’s funny how we remember things from our childhood, or any time. Are memories true or only perceptions? I seem to remember more than my siblings, but maybe I’m just making it up?

Question 2, done.

Question 3 MY MAMA BEAR, WHO IS SHE?

When &amp; where were you born? Please share!