Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl

by Carol Bodensteiner

  The six big loaves of bread Mom baked that afternoon were lined up on the counter and the aroma of fresh bread filled the house. We crowded around the cutting board as Mom sliced off both hot heels from a loaf. Just like always, I claimed one heel and Sue grabbed the other. Settled around the table, we spread on thick layers of butter and bit into the warm, crusty bread.

  Mom poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down with us. “Now tell me what went on at school today,” she asked. “Did you have a chance to recite the poem Grandma Denter taught you?”

  “Yes, we did,” we chirped. “We said it all the way through, and everybody laughed. Want to hear it again?” I asked. “C’mon,” I said, signaling to Jane and Sue. Without waiting, we slipped off our chairs, stood straight as toy soldiers, hands by our sides, and began in unison:

  “One day Mr. Santa Claus said to his wife,

  I’m tired of reindeer, I am on my life.

  You see we are living in an up-to-date age

  Where airships and motors are now quite the rage.

  And I’m really beginning to feel

  That I must buy me an automobile …”

  Grandma Denter had brought the poem with her when she came to visit us that fall, arriving as she usually did, a few weeks after Grandma Jensen went back to live with Aunt Joyce’s family. One time—only once—both grandmas came to visit at the same time. When I asked Mom why they didn’t visit together again, all Mom said was, “Too many cooks.”

  My grandmas were about as opposite as night and day. Grandma Jensen was tall and thin and as practical as a heavy sweatshirt in a chilly winter house, more prone to frown than smile. Grandma Denter was about as big around as she was tall and a smile never left her face. She loved to dress up in fancy hats and jewelry. And she loved to tell jokes.

  When she arrived, we trailed her into the bedroom and crawled up on the bed while she unpacked her suitcase. Winking at me, she’d said, “Did I ever tell you girls about …”

  “Tell us, tell us,” we’d urged at once.

  “All right then,” she’d say as she settled into a chair and smoothed her apron over her lap. And she’d launch into a story.

  When she finished telling the story, Grandma would clasp her hands across her stomach and lean back in the chair, a satisfied grin on her face. We clapped our hands and laughed, encouraging her to tell us story after story. Grandma entertained us with jokes and stories every day that she visited. When she wasn’t telling us stories, she was having us memorize things, like the Lord’s Prayer in German.

  So it was no surprise to us when she pulled the “Santa Claus” poem out of her suitcase. She wanted us to memorize it and shortly she decided we should recite the poem in the school Christmas program.

  “Oh, Mother Denter,” Mom said. “I’m sure Harriet has plans for what the girls should be doing.”

  Grandma Denter was not intimidated by anything, certainly not our teacher, and she was used to getting things she wanted so when Mom questioned taking the idea of the poem to Miss Fowler, she just folded her arms across her ample stomach, nodded and said, “Don’t you worry. It will be fine.” And it was.

  From the moment Miss Fowler agreed, teaching us the poem became the focus of Grandma’s time with us.

  “Let’s get in the spirit,” she said each afternoon after we got home from school. She set the stage for practice by preparing a big batch of egg nog, cracking a half dozen fresh eggs in a bowl and whipping them until the bubbly yellow foam was thick around the edges. We watched as she beat in milk, sugar and vanilla, and poured the thick, creamy egg nog into tall glasses. Topping the foam with a rich sprinkle of nutmeg, she handed a glass to each of us. Between sips, she coached us verse after verse until we all three had the poem memorized.

  When Grandma finally went back to Wisconsin at the end of her visit, we were sorry to see her go. That was good egg nog. And the poem was planted so deep in our brains that Jane could recite it 50 years later.

  “That was perfect, girls,” Mom applauded when we finished reciting the poem and bowed low. “Grandma would be so proud of you.”

  The crumbs of our after-school snack brushed away, we checked out the growing piles of gifts under the silver Christmas tree in the living room. Every day we came home to find more packages, each one neatly labeled with one of our names.

  Between new snow and fresh bread and barn chores and checking out my presents, the challenge to Santa’s existence never returned to my mind.

  This is how Christmas went at our house. On Christmas Eve, all the normal tasks were tinged with urgency and anticipation. We hurried to milk cows, hurried through supper, hurried to get dressed and to church. And all the while, my stomach was doing little flip-flops as I thought about presents and Santa. I loved everything about Christmas Eve.

  In the dark, in a cold so crisp our boots crunched loud in the snow and our breath hung in crystal clouds on the air, we trooped into the warmth of the church. Inside, all the white light bulbs lining the sanctuary were replaced with blue bulbs, bulbs that created a cool aura of magic that befit a magic night. A huge evergreen tree cut from a farm field and draped with the construction paper chains we made in Sunday School class filled so much of the front of the church that the organ had to be moved to one side to make room.

  The pews of our little country church were filled to capacity. Sitting hip by hip with my family for warmth and so there was enough room for everyone, we sang carols and listened as the minister read the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke. As he read, my lips moved as I whispered the words; I could repeat the story from memory.

  After the service was over, after they turned out the blue lights and we lit candles and sang Silent Night, one of the men passed out boxes of rock candy to each child. Then we piled back into our car for a ride home that was so short the car barely got warm. The rest of the evening we opened presents and prepared for Santa.

  We all got presents for each other; gifts that accumulated under the Christmas tree for days before Christmas. Sometimes we made these presents. We could count on a bowl of cookies for each of us from Mom, for instance. One year I made place mats for Mom, using white Huck toweling and pink thread to make Christmas tree designs. For weeks I hunkered down behind the sofa, out of sight, to make these place mats and keep them a surprise.

  Dad was the tough one to find a gift for. One year I asked him what he wanted for Christmas. He thought for a minute and said, “A bull chain or a heat houser.” I didn’t know what a heat houser was so I looked into getting a bull chain, which is a very heavy, very strong chain Dad hooked to the ring in the bull’s nose to lead him around when he took him out of the stall. The chain cost more money than I had to spend so I wound up getting him a bag of chocolate-covered peanuts. He said he liked that just as well.

  That Christmas Eve, when we were barely back in the door from church, the phone rang and I leapt to answer it.

  “Santa Claus is HERE! He’s passing out presents right NOW!!!” Jeannie screamed through the receiver. “Look out your window; I bet you can see the reindeer and sleigh.”

  I slammed down the phone, not even taking time to say good bye. “Santa Claus is across the road,” I shouted and Jane and Sue and I ran to the bedrooms on the north side of our house. All the north windows faced the highway with a clear view to Scheckels’ house. We crowded against the window in our bedroom, scanning the clear night sky.

  “Get out of the way, I want to see,” I said, elbowing Sue away.

  “Stop it or I’ll tell,” Sue elbowed back. “I want to see, too.”

  “I wonder if he’ll come here next?” Sue asked, breathless.

  “He has to,” I responded. “It only makes sense. Why would he go anywhere else before coming here?”

  We strained our necks and our eyes watching the dark sky. We did not even blink. When a half-hour had passed and we’d seen nary a reindeer, Jane called Jeannie back.

  “We’ve been watching ever since you called,” she s
aid. “We didn’t see anything.”

  And Santa was already gone.

  This was a puzzle. Santa never came to our house on Christmas Eve. Santa always came to our house early on Christmas morning, before we got up. It had never happened any other way. But there we were, with proof that Santa had been right across the highway, right at that very minute. We had to be able to see him. He had to come to our house next. And yet he didn’t come to our house. And we didn’t see him.

  We pulled ourselves away from the windows.

  “I’m sure you just looked away at the moment he flew away,” Mom said, herding us back into the living room.

  “I can’t believe we missed him. How could he get away so fast?” I slumped on the couch.

  “Santa can do just about anything he wants to,” Mom responded with irrefutable logic.

  “But why wouldn’t he come here next if he was right across the road?” I persisted.

  “I’m sure he has a system worked out. Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll get back here sometime tonight. Now let’s open our presents,” Mom turned to the tree. “And you have to get your stockings ready before it’s bed time.”

  I thought about Larry’s comments at school, but I did not bring it up. I just couldn’t.

  It didn’t take long to open presents even though we did it systematically. Only one person opened a gift at a time and everyone watched them do it, unless we were pretty sure we were all getting the same thing. Like a bowl of chocolate oatmeal cookies.

  Before we went to bed, we arranged everything to be ready for Santa to come. We each had a big red flannel stocking with our name written on it in black magic marker. We dragged the kitchen chairs into the living room and hung our stockings from knobs on the backs of these chairs. We made sure there was plenty of room around each chair and that our name on the stocking was in plain sight so Santa would not be confused.

  We fixed a plate of sugar cookies topped with red and green sugar crystals (Santa’s favorite, Mom assured us) and a glass of milk and left these beside a stack of carrots on the kitchen table. We also left a note: “Dear Santa: These cookies and the milk are for you. The carrots are for the reindeer. Thank you for all the presents. Love, Jane, Carol, Sue.”

  “You better get to bed now,” Mom urged. “Santa won’t come if you don’t.”

  We kissed Dad good night and Mom tucked us into bed. Jane had her own room. Sue and I slept together in another bedroom.

  “When do you think Santa will come?” I whispered to Sue.

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to stay awake.” We said this every year.

  “Do you think he’ll be able to get down the chimney?” I asked. We went to the basement every year to talk through the logistics of this feat. There was just no denying that we had a very skinny chimney with an even smaller clean-out door. We agreed that the chimney was too small for anyone to get down, let alone someone with Santa’s girth, and even if someone came down, they’d land in the wood-burning furnace and burn up. If he came down the chimney, it had to be magic.

  “He must come in the doors,” I reasoned.

  “How does he get down off the roof where the reindeer land?” Sue asked. We knew for a fact he landed the sleigh on the roof because one year it snowed on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day Dad showed us Santa’s footprints in the snow on the roof.

  We continued to talk through Santa logistics until Dad growled, “Quiet down in there,” from the living room where he and Mom were watching the news before they went to bed. We giggled.

  “Santa won’t come if you’re still awake.” Mom’s more gentle voice drifted in on the heels of Dad’s growl.

  Pulling the blankets up over our heads, we agreed to be quiet for two minutes. In two minutes it was morning. Almost morning. It was dark when Sue poked me in the shoulder.

  “I’m going to go see if Santa has been here,” she whispered and slipped out of bed. Within seconds of creeping down the hall to the living room she came tearing back and jumped on the bed. “He’s been here, he’s been here! Get up. Let’s open presents.”

  In a flash we were both up and we went to get Jane. We tore back down the hall, past Mom and Dad’s room. We didn’t know how early it must really have been. Dad was always up at 4 a.m. to start the milking chores yet he was still in bed.

  I crept in and tapped Dad’s shoulder, “Santa’s been here. We’re going to open presents,” I whispered.

  Dad groaned, rolled over, woke Mom and they followed us into the living room. Mom plugged in the lights on the tree and we opened presents in the glow of red, green, yellow and blue bubble-light candles. One white light glowed from the tin foil covered cardboard star at the very top.

  I headed straight for the chair where my big red stocking bulged with little toys, candy and an orange. I would also check way down in the toe of the stocking, something we all did ever since the year we almost missed finding rings in the very toe tips. This year, however, I bypassed all that and sank right to the floor in happy bliss.

  There was Trigger, just as I saw him in the Christmas catalog, just as he existed in my dreams. Roy Rogers was in the saddle holding the reins in one hand while he waved his other hand. Santa Claus came through again.

  On New Year’s Eve—the one night of the year we were allowed to stay up until midnight—Zidlickys came to our house to visit. Our parents played cards. Meanwhile, their kids—Jolynn and Paul—joined us roaming from basement to attic. In the course of the evening, we feasted on oyster stew and Norwegian foods like lutefisk and lefse. Sharing our new toys from Christmas was the highlight.

  “Look what Santa brought me,” I gloated as I showed Paul my Roy Rogers and Trigger.

  “There isn’t any Santa,” Paul stated, the sound of his voice blunt and hard on my ears.

  Staring back at Paul’s pale blue eyes, I wanted nothing more than to slap his fat face. “Is too,” I said, but tears sprang up in my eyes and I turned my back to Paul so he wouldn’t see.

  Something in the way he said it, something in my mind that couldn’t reconcile Santa at a neighbor’s on Christmas Eve but not at our house until Christmas morning, something in the mounting number of kids who kept saying Santa wasn’t real, sent me to Mom a few days later.

  “Mom, Paul says there’s no Santa,” I said, my lower lip quivering, as I looked up at her standing by the stove. “There is, isn’t there?”

  She looked at me and hesitated. “Let’s go in the bedroom,” she said at last, wiping her hands on her apron.

  Mom led me into her bedroom, closed the door, and came to sit beside me on the bed. The morning sun glared off the snow and through the window, illuminating dust particles that floated in the air and landed on the maple dresser. Mom was quiet, too quiet, I thought, when she said, “Honey, Santa is very important to all of us.”

  “But he is real, right?” I pushed. I looked up at her, maybe already knowing the answer, but I had to make her say it anyway.

  “Honey, Santa teaches us about getting presents and giving them.”

  I listened as Mom talked. She never answered my question. In that moment, I felt old and silly. I wanted Santa to be real and the tears streamed down my cheeks.

  “What about the Easter Bunny?” I asked. I did not hear what she said. I expect I didn’t need to. No one past the age of four could really believe rabbits deliver eggs. I enjoyed Easter morning with the basket and hunting for chocolate eggs, but this one I supposed I could shrug off.

  “The tooth fairy?” I asked at last, swallowing the hard reality even before she confirmed the suspicion. When she nodded again, I sat there, shoulders hunched, tears wet on my cheeks. Mom kept her arm tight around my shoulders and didn’t say anything else.

  I thought about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy. I thought about the last tooth Dad pulled for me. He and I were the only ones to know about that. No one else knew when I snuck that tooth under my pillow. It was a secret . . .

  Then I realized that Dad was in on
this, too, and I felt even sillier. Of course, Dad would talk to Mom. It was, however, the first time I realized Mom and Dad were in cahoots, that the secrets I thought I had just with Dad maybe weren’t.

  “Carol,” Mom broke into my painful reverie, “it’s important for children to believe in Santa. You enjoyed this for a long time. Now you are old enough to help little ones like Sue have dreams.”

  Just like that I jumped across a chasm from one world into another. It was all as brilliantly and painfully clear as the morning sun reflecting off the fresh January snow. I squinted against the sun and rocked back and forth in this new, unwelcome knowledge. At that moment, Larry pushed his way back into my mind. I could see plain as day all of us kids standing around our teacher’s desk. I remembered how I’d felt having Miss Fowler support me about Santa, and how angry and confused and maybe even hurt Larry had looked. And here he was right and I was wrong. I didn’t know what I’d say to him now.

  Mom gave me a hug, kissed me on the forehead, and left the bedroom, closing the door behind her. I sat on the edge of the bed and then tipped over, curling into a tight ball, giving myself over to crying for dreams I could never get back.

  In live theater, they call it “the willing suspension of disbelief,” the ability of the audience to accept that for the duration of the play, what happens up on the stage is real. Looking back, I am mildly embarrassed to admit that I willingly suspended disbelief for nearly 12 years, an unbelievably long time for a child to believe in the Triple Crown of childhood fantasies.

  It speaks to the times, though, and the place. The middle of the 20th century, a farm in rural Iowa. A time and a place where a child could just go on believing.

  Making Hay

  The sun was a glare, the July air dripping with humidity so heavy even the flies thought twice about moving off the window screens when Dad and the hired men came in from the field and retreated to the cool dark of the basement to wash up before dinner. I finished setting the table and followed the men downstairs. Sure enough, Dad had opened the basement fridge and pulled out cold bottles of Schlitz. The bottles sweated cold beads of moisture in the hands of the men who were still sweating themselves. As each one took turns washing up at the small sink, scrubbing sweat and hay dust off with the coarse bar of Lava, the others sat, welcoming the break from the blazing sun of the open fields.