GOING TO TOWN

On winter Saturday afternoons when the roads were clear, the five of us rode to town in the Plymouth so Ma could go grocery shopping and Pa could swap stories with the local farmers who gathered around the big wood-burning stove in the back room of Hotz’s hardware store.

Wild Rose, population around 550, was about four and half miles east of our farm. In winter the trip to town was often an adventure, as by January the snowplows had piled snow banks as high as six or eight feet on both sides of the now very narrow country road. If two cars met, one driver had to back up into a neighbor’s driveway to let the other pass. The road’s surface was snow packed and smooth, and if the wind was blowing from the west or northwest, fresh snow sifted across the tops of the big snow banks and dropped onto the road, making it difficult to see drifts the car had to plow through. When the Plymouth hit one of these drifts, the snow flew up over the hood and onto the windshield, making visibility nearly impossible as the windshield wipers struggled to clear the glass.

The car’s heater, barely adequate on moderate days, failed miserably if the temperature slid below zero. My brothers and I snuggled under thick car blankets to keep warm as we motored along, usually no faster than twenty-five miles an hour. When we reached County Highway A, about a mile south of our farm, Pa turned east and picked up a little speed, as the county road was plowed wider than the back roads. The Plymouth struggled up to thirty miles an hour (in summer its top speed was fifty); any faster than that and it shook and shimmied like it might fly into pieces.

On the way to town Pa advised us, as he always did, that saving money was more important than spending it. He reminded us that Ma made much better ice cream at home than the hard-as-a-rock ice cream available at Chet Jenks’s Ice Cream Parlor. He saw absolutely no need for anyone to buy brick ice cream, as he referred to the store-bought kind.

When we pulled into Wild Rose, Pa stopped at the Merc, as everyone called Arol Roberts’s Mercantile, and Ma and my brothers went in to take care of the grocery shopping. Pa and I went on to the hardware store for a couple of hours of better-than-average storytelling.

Despite my father’s advice, my brother Darrel always wanted to buy something on our trips to town. This particular afternoon was no exception; six-year-old Darrel had managed to convince our mother that he had to have a penny to buy gum from the machine at the Mercantile. After saying no several times, she had given in and handed him one copper penny, which would buy one stick of gum.

The gum machine was several feet tall, with four rows of single sticks of paper-wrapped gum, each one on a little tray and visible from the window at the front of the machine. With Donald watching closely, Darrel put his penny in the slot. He heard it slide into the machine—and then nothing. No gum. No penny returned. Darrel’s bottom lip began quivering, but he didn’t cry as he ran to our mother with the report of what had happened—or, more accurately, what hadn’t happened.

Our mother, well aware of the value of a penny in the mid-1940s, stopped her shopping and returned to the uncooperative machine. What happened next would be forever imprinted in the minds of my twin brothers.

Meanwhile, Pa and I headed to the back room at Hotz’s, eager to see which six or eight farmers had gathered this afternoon. As a ten-year-old I felt lucky to be the only kid among the farmers collected around the stove that day, to be joined by Dick Hotz when he wasn’t waiting on a customer (which wasn’t too frequent in the dead of winter). Early discussion usually centered on the war and how it was progressing, and what word anyone had gotten about Wild Rose boys who were fighting. The talk often turned to rationing and how it was affecting everyone, and who might have heard of someone selling black-market meat to relatives in the cities who never had enough ration stamps to purchase a good beef roast or some pork chops.

Before long the palaver turned to less serious topics. “Say, did you hear the one about the fellow up on the prairie?” began Walter Bowen.

“What about him?” Pa asked, knowing full well that he had become the storyteller’s foil.

“Well, you remember that big snowstorm we had last week?”

“Hard to forget that storm,” replied Arlin Handrich. “Still got some shoveling to do. Most of us do, I suspect.”

“This fellow—some kind of traveling salesman—slid in the ditch up there on Highway 73, somewhere between Wautoma and Plainfield, one of those places where the road tends to drift a lot.”

“Yeah, you don’t want to be drivin’ up there on 73 during a snowstorm, especially around where the Oasis Town Hall is located,” said Pa.

“So what happened to the guy? He freeze to death?” asked Arlin.

“No, he didn’t freeze to death.”

“So what happened to him?” a farmer from east of town asked, somebody whose name I didn’t know.

“Well, if you’d give me a chance, I’d tell you,” said Walter, becoming exasperated at all the interruptions.

There was a moment of quiet, the only sound that of a stick of green oak wood sizzling and sputtering in the old woodstove. I sat there quietly all the while—Pa had told me that I best not say anything unless someone asked me a question—but I desperately wanted to ask, “Are you gonna tell us what happened to this guy, or not?” Still I sat, and waited, listening to the fire sputtering and smelling the half dozen different kinds of pipe tobacco the farmers were smoking. Years later I realized that it was at these gatherings that I learned how to use silence to add suspense to a story.

Walter took his corncob pipe out of his mouth and blew out a cloud of gray smoke that curled around the stovepipe, settling under the ceiling. At last he continued. “The fellow sees the light in the window of a farmhouse a quarter mile or so down the road, and he heads off in that direction, looking for a place to spend the night. The snow is deep and the walking is difficult.” Walter paused once more to suck on his pipe.

“He arrives at the house, half-frozen and covered with snow. He knocks on the door, and the farmer opens it. ‘Have you got a spare bed for a stranded traveler?’ the fellow asks.”

I was wondering if the fellow really talked that way—who says “stranded traveler,” except maybe some writer in an old-timey novel?—but I followed Pa’s admonition to keep my mouth closed. I was thinking that the guy’s teeth were probably chattering so much that about all he could spit out was, “You got a place for me to sleep?”

“The farmer says, ‘No, you aren’t the only stranded traveler. All my beds are taken.’

“The traveler stands by the kitchen stove, warming his hands and wondering what to do next. Then the farmer says, ‘If you don’t mind, you could share a bed with a red-haired schoolteacher.’

“That comment stirs up the traveler considerably. He huffs, ‘Sir, I am an upstanding Christian man!’

“The farmer says, ‘So is the red-haired schoolteacher.’”

Everyone burst out laughing. They laughed so hard that Dick Hotz’s lone customer looked past the sales counter to see what was going on in the back room.

Back at the Mercantile, our mother was determinedly confronting the penny-stealing gum dispenser. She gave the machine the once over, looked around to see if anyone was watching, and then wound up and whacked it. The machine sat motionless for a moment, shuddered, and then began spilling out its contents. Hundreds of pieces of gum flew out of the machine. Ma held up the bottom of her coat and began capturing the sticks of gum before they bounced onto the floor. Donald was certain that we would have enough gum to last at least a year, maybe more, and all for one penny. Darrel stood aghast, unable to comprehend his good fortune and the result of Ma’s magic touch.

Once the machine had completely spent itself, the twins looked to see if it was empty. They spotted not one piece of gum on the machine’s many little shelves. Ma said, “Follow me,” and the three of them marched to the sales counter, Ma holding the bottom corners of her coat to keep from dropping what appeared to be a half-bushel of gum. At the counter, Ma announced, “Mr. Roberts, your gum machine appears to have a problem. Darrel put in a penny, and this is what he got.”

“Oh, my gosh,” said Arol Roberts. “Thank you for being so honest. Thank you!”

“Darrel invested one penny. He wants one piece of gum.”

Mr. Roberts handed Darrel a piece of gum from the little mound of gum that now sat on his counter. There was no additional compensation for honesty.

“How come we didn’t keep all the gum?” Darrel asked Ma later.

“Because it wouldn’t be right,” Ma said. And that was all she said. The case was closed.