by Pamela Morsi
"I'm not denying that," Sam told him. "It's a good deal and if we could afford it, I'd jump at the chance in a New York minute."
"Can't you get some kind of home improvement loan?" Nate asked.
"Maybe," Sam answered. "We've still got the bankruptcy on our record. I don't know how keen they'd be about it. But even if we could, we can't. I don't think we should go into debt right now. Our first priority has to be you kids. You'll both be heading off to college in the next couple of years. Just paying for that is going to be the biggest financial challenge your mom and I have ever faced."
Nate shrugged away the idea. "Lauren will get some kind of scholarship," he said. "And me, I'm not going to any college."
His response was so adamant, I was startled.
"Of course you are," I told him, too quickly.
"I'm not," he confirmed flatly. "I'm not wasting four more years. I'm getting a job and getting on with my life."
"Maybe you'll feel differently when the time comes," Sam said, giving me a warning glance. We both knew that if I started insisting on something, Nate would dig his feet in even more deeply. "Or there might be a vocational course you'd want to take. If you're thinking to work in construction, maybe you could get certified in one of the trades."
Nate shrugged. "What will teach me more than any class is actually doing this work on the house myself," he said. "Let's take the money you're willing to waste on me at some state university and put it into something that will actually help me and provide payback for you, too. It will give me something to do this summer." He hesitated a moment. "Otherwise, I'll have to come up with some other plan for my free time."
It was a threat, plain and simple. We'd known Nate long enough to know that rarely was a warning from him solely idle chatter.
Ultimately, Sam came up with a solution. He always does.
24
Sam
1995
Nate's idea of expanding the house was terrific. I really wanted to do it. But I'd already learned my lesson about debt. Maybe I was gun-shy, but I didn't want to take a second mortgage on Gram's house. I'd become too attached to the place to be willing to lose it.
At the same time, the house was an investment. Adding on to it would not only make it more livable, it would make it more valuable. And there would never be a better opportunity for getting it done inexpensively than having Nate devote his entire summer to it. Having something purposeful for Nate to do was a big consideration, as well. A kid like Nate with time on his hands and disappointment too—there was no telling what he might come up with as an alternative activity. I just couldn't bring myself to borrow money.
I thought about getting a second job. Of course, it wouldn't be a second job, it would be a third. Although Doc was back to work, I was still putting in a lot of time at the drugstore. There was no way I could work sixteen to eighteen hours a day and still help with the remodel.
I could ask Lauren to get a job. She'd agree if I suggested it. She was a good worker at the drugstore. I'm sure she would have been able to find a full-time summer position that would pay enough to help us out. But I also knew that she'd made other plans for her summer. She was going to work in an educational enrichment program for the children of migrant workers. She was going to travel with the pickers, ostensibly to do daycare and summer learning programs. But the organization's main goal was really to help insure that the little ones didn't work in the fields.
Corrie wasn't teaching this summer. She'd signed up for a couple of classes. However, I knew that she'd be willing to work somewhere instead. I didn't want to ask her. She had pulled the full load for our family for so many years, I wanted her to take the time off. I wanted this not to be her problem. I guess I just wanted to figure it out myself.
The truth is, I didn't come up with the solution myself. Cherry Dale actually did. She was in the drugstore, picking up a prescription, looking good and young, as always these days. Things were going well for her. She was opening up a big new gym closer to the city. The new place would have a lap pool, racket ball courts, sauna, whirlpool—the works.
"I guess with you working in the city, we won't see you as much," I said.
"Oh, no," she said. "I'm staying right here in Lumkee. Harlan is managing the new place."
Harlan was Cherry Dale's oldest, now in his early twenties. He was a troubled young man. Both her boys seemed to have their share of problems. I couldn't imagine that she was trusting either of them with her biggest, riskiest venture. But as the father of a troubled kid myself, I admired her courage.
"Do you have any tamales?" she asked me.
I shook my head apologetically. “Sorry, I got rid of the last dozen before ten o'clock," I told her.
She sighed with disappointment. "You do know that you could sell three times as many of these as you do," she said.
“I know, but they require a lot of time and work. Why would we want to do more?"
“Well, a businessperson like me would tell you you should be reimbursed for your time and work," she said. “Raise your prices to compensate yourself with a little profit. That will be just the incentive you need to pump up your production."
I thought about it and realized that she was right.
I called a special family meeting to bring it up for discussion.
“If we raised the price to a profit margin," I explained, "we could use the money we make toward the addition on the house."
Nate's interest was immediately piqued.
"It would involve more planning for you," I told him. "You'd have to do the work as money came in. You'd never have a big chunk of cash to work with. You'll have to divide the whole addition into a connecting series of smaller projects with their total cost requirements. You'll be working on one while we're trying to make enough money to afford the next."
Interrelating projects was a lot more difficult than just meshing them together. That was as tough as any professional building contractor's job. Most of us would have found it intimidating. Nate was young enough and cocky enough to rise to the challenge fearlessly.
"I can do that, Dad," he assured me. "It'll take me some time, but what else will I have to do while we're raising the money?"
"Finishing your classes would be a good idea," Corrie suggested. "And studying for finals."
Nate rolled his eyes.
"Your mother is right about that," I told him. "You can't just blow off the rest of the semester. It would really put a crimp in the plan if you have to take summer school."
That he at least took seriously.
"I'll talk to Doc," I said. "I think we can sell our food on his premises utilizing his business license, but he'll have to agree to that. And it would be completely reasonable and proper if he asked us to pay a monthly fee or a share of our profit."
"Grandpa won't ask for that," Lauren said, with complete certainty. "It would be like asking Grandma to fork over half of the rent."
The kids laughed aloud at that. I shared a wink with Corrie.
"We're going to have to price our tamales exactly right," I said. "I think we should start at three dollars. That gives us a dollar profit per dozen."
Corrie shook her head. "That's not enough, Sam," she told me. "If we only make a dollar per dozen we'll have to sell nearly 100,000 tamales. Our arms will fall off. I think we should charge five dollars a dozen. That makes a lot more sense."
I shook my head, unsure. "That's more than twice what they cost to make."
"Labor is always the most expensive cost," she said.
"And people think stuff is more valuable when you charge more for it," Lauren added. "I'd bet we'll get more people buying at five dollars a dozen than we ever did at two."
She was right. A week later Lauren and Corrie made a very bright, eye-catching sign that read Okie Tamales $5 Per Dozen. I set it atop the cooler. Within an hour they were all gone.
The next Friday night, when I got home from work, I could smell tamales cooking. Corrie, Lauren and Nate were
in the kitchen.
"We decided not to limit ourselves to Thursday for tamales," Corrie told me. "There is an entirely different crowd on Main Street on the weekends. We want them to start buying as well."
The next day the Okie Tamales sign was in the front window. We sold out before noon.
By the time summer was in full swing the tamale business was booming. They were cooking on the stove almost constantly. Also ongoing was the house addition. Nate was up at dawn and worked until bedtime.
He ran into plenty of snags in the process. There had been other add-ons over the years and some had better construction than others. All had to be supported in such a way that they could naturally hang together.
The pier and beam of the original house would not converge easily with the cheaper, easier slab foundation that Nate had hoped to use. The wiring was far too old to be added on to and we had to hire an electrician to do complete rewiring. And the plumbing with its original lead pipes and gravity flow would have been a challenge for an experienced engineer.
Nate, who had never impressed me with having virtues like patience or tenacity, didn't get mad, throw stuff around and curse when things went wrong. Or at least, I never saw him doing any of that. He'd take a break, stand back for a few minutes and try to work it out in his head.
The experience of dividing the addition into financially manageable projects had given him a component vision of the entire remodel. On days when it was raining and he couldn't work outside, he'd pick up the next task that could be worked on indoors. When he ran out of materials or if something didn't show up on time, he easily made use of his time in another way.
The addition wasn't finished by the end of summer. But the new bathroom was usable, if not yet painted and cabineted. And Corrie and I moved into our new bedroom.
The sunporch was a sunporch again, for about a week, before it was turned into the business office for Okie Tamales. Making money meant paying taxes, filing reports, completing forms. We were buying our ingredients in bulk, including importing new easier handling Mexican enconchada (conch shaped) corn husks for our hojas. We gave up our three pressure cookers, with every burner on the stove going at once, to embrace a new steam oven that was as big as our old refrigerator. The new commercial refrigerator now sat in Gram's dining room, where we were able to get more space for production.
Cooking in bigger batches added some problems. We began squeezing lime into the masa flour to make it pliable for longer periods. We ground our own meat. We laid out washed cornshucks to dry on every flat space in the house.
I wanted to somehow mechanize the process. I got an old sausage maker at a salvage yard and, using the mechanic's skills I'd learned in oil well service, I refurbished and jury-rigged it to squeeze out the paste, lay a line of tamale filling and cover it over.
That was actually fairly easy. But I had no luck with coming up with a way to automatically wrap the tamale. Cornshucks, being a natural, organic product were all unique. They varied in size, shape and the grooves on them were as distinctive as snowflakes.
I called several commercial tamale producers to ask questions. The response was that to wrap them mechanically, I would have to use paper. We tried that. But cooking in paper just didn't create the flavor we got with the cornshuck wrap. We couldn't compromise taste over ease of production.
We used our revamped sausage maker to produce an endless line of tamales, but every one had to be folded by hand.
Customers started sitting at the drugstore's soda fountain and ordering a drink with their tamales. There was so much "consuming on the premises" as they say in restaurant lingo, that we brought in some more tables to expand the seating. And if people were going to eat in the drugstore they didn't want a brown paper bag with a dozen inside. They wanted a plate with a tamale or two, a choice of salsas and a bag of tortilla chips. This meant new pricing, napkins, dishes and flatware.
We were serving four days a week. And lunch times had become so busy that Hye Won was running back and forth between the pharmacy and helping me wait tables. Finally, she started bringing her sixteen-year-old sister to help. With her bright smile, cute figure and waist-length black hair, Jin had half the love-starved guys from Lumkee High crowding one another for seats.
Things were going so well that for Nate's birthday we got him a new, professional-grade table saw. I knew that most boys at his age, including myself, would have much preferred a car, even the worst old junker. Nate was so happy, I was sure I detected moisture gathering in his eyes. He blinked it back, but he was still too choked up to even speak.
That night alone in our bed, Corrie and I talked about it.
"There were times when I thought by sixteen Nate might be dead, on drugs or in prison," I admitted.
Corrie snuggled up close to me. "I've been scared for him since he was five," she said.
"I'm not saying our worries are over," I told her. "There are a lot of stupid mistakes a guy can make between here and the rest of his life. But at least now we know he has a fighting chance."
"I'm so proud of him," she said. "I'm so proud of you."
"Me? What did I do?"
"You understood him and you found a way to help him."
I shrugged off the compliment and she gave me a little kiss.
"Are you tired?"
"Completely exhausted," I answered.
"Me, too," she said. "I guess that means we can't have sex, huh?"
"I'll try if you'll try," I said.
"I'll try, but you've got to try harder,” she shot back.
We laughed together at her little naughty joke. And then we made love.
In September, Lauren returned home, happy and tanned. Her Spanish was much improved and her outlook on the world brighter and more filled with hope.
She started her senior year by stepping down as cheerleader. It was the kind of action that shocked the neighborhood as deeply as some terrible scandal. Apparently cheerleaders only gave up their positions when their pom-poms were pried from their cold, dead hands.
Lauren claimed she simply was no longer interested. And she never showed even the slightest indication of missing it. She continued to put in hours after school at the drugstore and tamale duty in the evenings. But other than that, she was totally immersed in her church work, her studies and her plans for the future.
One surprising development that came from Lauren's summer with the Mexican migrant workers helped our business—she brought home a half-dozen new recipes for tamale filling.
"When the moms of my kids heard that I liked to make tamales," she told us, "they all wanted to share their recipes with me."
She had recipes for beef tamales, chicken tamales and brown-bean tamales.
We tried them all and we liked them. We were all getting creative with the cooking and added and improved on what we made.
"If we want new recipes," Corrie said, "I'm sure there are millions on the Internet."
Nate checked it out for us and came back with ideas we'd never expected. Catfish tamales, chiles-and-cheese tamales, shrimp tamales, bacon tamales, spinach tamales, pineapple-corn tamales.
It was almost more than a family, in danger of serious tamale fatigue, could even take in.
We decided that along with our original pork filling, we'd try one new recipe per week for eat-in customers only.
It was a smashing success. The people of Lumkee had an insatiable appetite for tamales. We'd paid for our new rooms on the house. We were banking money in savings for the kids' education. We gave the tired old Volvo to Lauren and bought a brand-new car.
In early November the Food Section of the Tulsa World wrote one little paragraph about Okie Tamales in Lumkee. After that, I quit my job and purchased the empty five-and-dime building next to the drugstore. Our new sign was created from three-foot-high neon instead of felt pen.
25
Corrie
1996
The phenomenal success of Okie Tamales came as a big surprise to me. I guess it came as
a surprise to everyone. One minute we were sitting around our kitchen making tamales for family therapy, and the next our product was being sold in grocery stores all over the state.
Well, maybe it wasn't that fast, but almost.
Sam quit his job and devoted himself full-time to the business. But he couldn't do it all himself.
Although I was proud and pleased, and Sam spoke of our streak of good fortune as a "true family venture" where everybody's efforts had counted, it was Sam who got patted on the back from people around town. It was Sam who was nominated for businessperson of the year by the Chamber of Commerce. It was Sam who was a guest speaker at the Oklahoma Grocers Association.
I found this vague feeling of jealousy haunting me. For so long now I had been the star player in our family. All the years that Sam was out of work, I was the person to keep things going. I was the one who'd pursued my education. I was the one who'd tried to better myself. I was the one who worked to get ahead. After years of sacrifice and struggle, my master's degree was only a thesis away from completion. Yet the added income that it would mean was no longer critical to sending the kids to college. For ten years I had been the one to bring home the biggest paycheck. I liked that. I'd grown so accustomed to it. I was buoyed by it. Sam's sudden, seemingly undeserved, falling-into-a-pot-of-jam success was, for me, somehow deflating.
I found myself denigrating his achievement, minimizing his accomplishment. There was no one better to aid me in this unkind pursuit than my own mother.
"It's not like he's found a cure for cancer," I complained to her. "He's making tamales, for heaven's sake. Any illiterate Mexican grandma across the border can do it."
Mom nodded in complete agreement. "I just hope and pray every day that the children are not lured away from their potential intellectual achievements by the fast, easy money of their father's get-rich-quick scheme."
I nodded in agreement. Although, the terms "fast, easy money" and "get rich quick" didn't quite jive with the reality of my husband tiptoeing around the house in the morning before leaving for work at 5:00 a.m.
