More summer life

[most of this stuff probably fits after first grade or after second grade, but I wanted to get it down.]

Mom used to lock us out of the house. Now, I don't blame her at all. I think she should have locked us out more.

Ryan has a great routine about this, when he goes to the door and asks for a drink of water and Mom says 'Use the hose!'.

We used the hose a lot. We got our drinks outside.

We relieved ourselves outside a lot - an advantage of being a boy growing up on the farm. Once, when we were living at Gramma Meade's my kindergarten year, Mom smelled something bad coming from the basement. She asked her dad to check it out. He came back up and said 'You boys been pissin' in the drain?' and Kyle said 'Uh huh.'

Mom locked us out of the house, and we played outside a lot. A lot of it was OK. But I still wanted to be inside. I wanted to be in the air conditioning - we had a window unit. I wanted to watch soap operas with my mom. I got hooked on soap operas. When I was a kid I watched a lot of 'All My Children', 'One Life to Live', and, everyone's favorite, 'General Hospital'. We were ABC soap watchers. Strange, I know. I hope most of it was just wanting to be inside.

For a lot of years I felt guilty about my desire to be inside. I felt lazy because I didn't want to work on the farm. And don't get me wrong, I'm considerably lazy. But a big part of it was other interests. I would rather lay inside and read Hardy Boys then do farm work. Part of my aversion to outside farmwork was probably owing to my serious sinus problems and allergies.

I also feel that I'm not good at handyman and farm stuff. Sure, I can do some 'handy' things. I'm not at a total loss. But I'm not very adept, certainly not above average. Furthermore, since I'm not interested and not good at it, I don't remember how to do it the next time. Even if you tell me once, chances are I'll have to ask you again. I still can't remember if the oil in a car should be checked hot or cold. Same for the tires. It took me a long time to learn how to make coffee - how much coffee to put in for what amount of water. Most of the time, when I need to tackle something moderately handy, I call Dad or Ryan to talk me through it.

Church

We went back to church after we moved to the farm. My parents had left the Catholic Church in disgust. Dad would put a bumper sticker that said 'I survived Catholic School' on his van. When Dad asked his priest to marry him and Mom in their church, the priest complained that Dad hadn't been to church in a long time. Dad said 'Then treat it like a mixed marriage. She's Catholic.' Dad didn't tell the father that Mom hadn't been to church in a long time either.

As I mentioned before, Mom had started back to church some. We started back in earnest after we moved to the farm. I don't know how we ended up at Grace United Methodist Church in Tiffin. Maybe it's because my folks were friends with the Colonys, Chad's family, who went there. Of course, Dad probably knew most everyone who attended there, anyway.

Mom and Dad quickly fell under the spell of the pastor, Hal Green. They loved him. Of course, with the Methodist itinerant system, it wasn't too many years before he left. Mom cried when she found out.

I loved church. I don't know why I was so drawn to it. I was interested in everything. I was interested in the children's message. I was interested in the music. I was interested in Sunday School. When we got around to the summer, I was interested in Vacation Bible School.

I was interested in the prayers. Suzy Swenka was a girl in our class who attended that church. And she could recite the Lord's Prayer along with the rest of the congregation! I thought that was so amazing. I wanted to be able to recite the Lord's Prayer, too. (Ironically, Suzy and her husband are now the youth leaders at GUMC in Tiffin.)

The Methodist church there in Tiffin (I don't remember ever calling it Grace) was your totally typical small, rural church. We had Sunday School in the basement, which was made of cinder blocks and painted green. The art on the walls was the pictures that came in the Sunday School curriculum. I don't precisely remember whether flannel-graphs were part of the pedagogy, but they certainly would have fit in.

Still, I always found it hard to sit still in church. I think I left the service at least once to go to the bathroom every time I ever attended. And it wasn't just me, it was my brothers and sisters, too. I can't believe my parents, the other members, and the pastor didn't go stark, raving mad. I can't believe someone didn't tell us to stay put. As we got older we were allowed to be the acolytes who lit the candles, sat at the back of the church, took up the offering, and put the candles out. This was great because we weren't quite so scrutinized. We could move around a little. We could whisper. We could write notes on our bulletin. Sometimes I lit candles with Kyle, but other times with Chad, Suzy, Mary, Kathryn, or someone else. It felt very free.

I especially had trouble keeping my eyes closed during prayer. Any amount of time praying seemed like an eternity to keep my six year old eyes closed. I was especially impressed with one member, Nona Walker, who sat in the back pew on the right side (we always sat toward the front on the left side). Nona could keep her eyes closed through the whole sermon! That was absolutely amazing to me. Now that I'm a little older, I find it easier to keep my eyes closed through the sermon.

My first love

There were two great unrealized loves of my childhood. The first was Kellie Grace. I fell in love with Kellie right away in the first grade. I think everyone thought she was cute or wished they could 'go' with her. But I know I loved her more deeply than anyone else did. It's not possible that any other boy outstripped my love for her.

I was already sensitive to girls by first grade. In Kindergarten I had been attracted to a cute little girl named Heather and a girl who rode my bus named Tracey (we three were later reunited, to no appreciable affect, in junior high and high school).

I never 'went' with Kellie. I never had a chance. I don't think it was ever an option. By fifth and sixth grade she was 'going' with seventh and eighth graders. I knew if I was going to have a chance of 'going' with anyone, of having a girlfriend, I would have to set my sights 'lower' (meaning no disrespect to anyone I ever 'went' with. Those were the social realities of elementary school.).

Chad, of course, 'went' with Kellie multiple times, probably at least once a year. He also 'went' with all of the other pretty and popular girls - Chrissy Schwarting, Camille Wagner, and, later, Danette Pegump. Chad played in a different league than me.

To add to my ardor, our bus picked Kellie up everyday on the way to school. There she was, in front of me all the time, but always unattainable. I wonder where she is today and what she's doing.

My friends

Chad Colony was the boy who I wanted to be my best friend. I think sometimes I even got close to being his best friend. Chad was the most popular boy in our class. Normally, I don’t think I could have rated so highly. However, I had some things working for me: 1. We lived less than a mile away from each other and, consequently, 2. We rode the same bus. (I mention these as two separate factors because it was possible to live that close and not ride the same bus. For example, we were the westernmost stop on our route, but there were kids less than a mile west of us who rode a different bus.) 3. We went to the same church. Our other friends were Catholics, but we went to the Methodist church in Tiffin. These factors worked in my favor. The single biggest additional factor was classroom. That year Chad and I were in the same class. But we weren’t in second and fourth grade, and I definitely felt that impact.

Why did we all want to be Chad’s friend? He was the most popular. He was a good athlete. He was smart enough. The girls liked him. Those are all good reasons in first grade, right?

(Note on 05-13-08: Chad still owns all of the solo tackle records at Iowa City West High School.)

Kevin Klein was probably my second closest friend at Clear Creek Elementary. It was a lot easier to be friends with Kevin because he wasn’t as popular as Chad. Indeed, we picked on Kevin more. He was a little smaller than us. He had red hair and freckles. With our childish humor we called him ‘Pinecone’ (because ‘pine’ rhymes with ‘Klein’) or just ‘Pine’. Kevin was also on my bus route.

Jason Rowe was another boy that I clicked with. However, he moved away pretty early on in grade school. Jason was a Minnesota Vikings fan. That made him different. Everyone was a Cowboys fan in those days, except Kevin, who liked the Bears. But when it came time for me to pick a favorite team, I wanted to be different, so I picked the Vikings, like Jason. What a fateful choice that has been. Jason and Kevin were also both big Star Wars fans.

Cory Downs was the other boy who ran closest in our circle. I think I competed most with Cory for Chad’s affection, and I usually felt like I was being inched out. Cory and Kevin went to church together at St Patrick’s Catholic Church in Cosgrove, where I was baptized and where my folks were married. Some of the other boys in our circle were Shannon Smith (who pushed Chad most for best athlete), Denny Eckrich, Todd Drake, Damon Shelton, Nathan Pacha, and Chad Osborne.

The number one way in which these friendships panned out was being invited to spend the night. These invitations thrilled us. The very prospect charged our six year old lives. Staying overnight often wasn’t that great. Looking back objectively, it doesn’t seem like that big a deal. If there were multiple attendees, sides usually got drawn up. I was often picked on. It was considered great fun to pick on boys who fell asleep, especially with toothpaste or mustard. In retrospect those are pretty silly things, and no harm done. At the time it never failed to hurt my feelings. I was sensitive then, overly so. I still am today. And I wince when I think of how my children will soon be hurt by these petty insults and slights. Their dad will hurt, too.

More country songs

I liked Crystal Gayle's 'Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue', and 'Talking In Your Sleep'.

We were huge Statler Brothers and Oak Ridge Boys fans. I think we went to see the Statler Brothers at the Waterloo Cattle Congress one year.

Dolly Parton: I can remember many of these songs back to age 4 or 5 in the Tiffin house: 'Coat of Many Colors', 'Jolene', 'I Will Always Love You', 'Love is Like a Butterfly', and 'The Bargain Store'. Other songs I knew and liked: 'Here You Come Again', 'Two Doors Down', '9 to 5', and 'Islands in the Stream'.

Though Barbara Mandrell was big during this time, and I know a lot of her songs, I never liked them that much. Heck, she was so big we even watched the show on tv.

I likes Sylvia's 'Nobody', 'Snapshot' and Juice Newton's 'Playin' with the Queen of Hearts'.

We loved 'Sneaky Snake' by Tom T Hall when we were 4 and 5.

Riding the bus and country music

I spent a lot of my childhood riding the bus. It had to have been at least an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon every day.

One thing I got on the bus was a lot of exposure to country music. That's what my my bus drivers in rural Iowa always listened to. My folks listened to it too: KHAK (K-Hawk) from Cedar Rapids. To this day I can sing almost any country song released between 1978 and 1984.

Just what country songs were they? you ask. Kenny Rogers was huge in those years: 'The Gambler', 'Coward of the County', 'Lady' 'Don't Fall in Love with a Dreamer', 'We've Got Tonight', 'Islands in the Stream', and 'Real Love'. Takes you back, doesn't it?

How about Ronnie Milsap? I still have a big ol' soft spot in my heart for Ronnie Milsap. I like his voice and I like his melodies: 'Pure Love', ' It Was Almost Like A Song', ' What A Difference You've Made In My Life', 'There's No Gettin' Over Me', 'I Wouldn't Have Missed It For The World', 'Any Day Now', 'She Keeps The Home Fires Burning', and 'Happy, Happy Birthday Baby'. Man, I like those songs. It was a sad day when I was at a Charlotte Hornets game where Ronnie Milsap happened to be playing at halftime. Seemed kind of low for Ronnie to have sunk.

Did you know Eddie Rabbit wrote 'Pure Love'? Neither did I. That's like Willie Nelson writing 'Crazy'.

Let me break in here, for the sake of reputation and good taste, to share with you my friend Robbi's rationalization of musical taste: Songs that slip in before you develop good taste don't count as bad taste. You can like as many of these songs as you want to. You don't even have to go back and evaluate them. Robbi is the biggest music lover I know, with the highest value on nostalgia of anyone I know. Shazam: you see where the rationalization comes from.

Check out the Grammy Awards for 1978:

Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, "You Needed Me", Anne Murray
Best Country Vocal Performance, Male, "Georgia on My Mind", Willie Nelson
Best Country Vocal Performance, Female, "Here You Come Again", Dolly Parton
Best Country Vocal Performance By a Duo or Group, "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys", Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson

Yep, those were my songs.

I also really like Anne Murray. I think she has a beautiful voice. When I look at the singles she sang that I knew (like the Greatest Hits album on this page, plus a few other songs, like 'Another Sleepless Night', I remember being uncomfortable. What was all of this 'making love' stuff about? To this day I still can't use that phrase. I feel like I'd turn into cheese if I uttered it. To even think of the phrase makes me think of Alabama's 'When We Make Love', and that makes me want to break out in hives.

I'm generally the kind of guy who gets really embarassed about things that are far away from me. I don't know if I ever made it through a whole episode of 'Three's Company' without leaving the room because I was so embarassed for Jack.

One song that really embarrassed me (later on) was 'Centerfold' by the J Geils Band (released in 1981 when I was 9). I vividly remember hearing it over the sound system in Target across from Lindale Mall in Cedar Rapids and wanting to sink throuh the floor.

I learned a lot of things on the bus that were not, strictly speaking, educational. Of course, I learned them other places, too, like on the playground.

My bus route was a pretty good one because two of my closest friends, Chad Colony and Kevin Klein (those were their real names, alliteration notwithstanding), were on it. None of the rest of our circle had such a 'rich' route in terms of friends.

When I get on a school bus nowadays, I can't believe how uncomfortable they are and how much of my childhood I spent riding one.

My first day of first grade

The thing I most remember about my first day of first grade is losing my seat. I found a classroom with a list with my name on it and sat down in a desk. Then panic set in. What if that wasn't my name? I got up and looked at the list again. There were two 'Sean's on it (the other Sean in my class was Sean Cahill). I don't remember how much I knew about last names, but I must have been pretty hazy on the concept.

I finally determined that I was indeed in the right class. I went to sit back down in 'my' seat, but it had been occupied by someone else. That felt like a personal affront (though, of course, it wasn't). It turned out that the boy who took my desk was Chad Colony, who would play a huge role in my childhood years.

We attended Clear Creek Elementary School. I look at the faculty listing today and see names from my past: The librarian is the same. Kyle's Kindergarten teacher is still there. My first grade reading teacher is still there. I see the names of mothers of kids that I knew.

Clear Creek Elementary is in Oxford, Iowa (the 'population' figure on this page is impossibly wrong). Oxford is a truly podunk town (meaning no disrespect). There's basically one main street that has a bank, a Ford dealership, two taverns, and a fire station. There are at least two churches, Catholic and Methodist. The presence of these places makes me think Oxford was bigger once.

Times I actually got hurt

I neglected to mention, chronicling the ways we almost killed ourselves, the times I actually got hurt. It was never anything serious and, to this day, I've never broken a bone (that I know of).

Once I fell out of a tree in the west grove. I was less than ten feet off the ground. The kicker this time was I fell into the barbed wire of the fence, threading my leg between the three strands of barbed wire. That produced a scar that I still have, though I don't think we got stitches that time.

Another time I was running against the wall of one of the sheds at our friends', the Swenkas'. A nail was sticking out and simply caught my leg as I ran by. I think we did go get stitches in it that time. I remember the anesthetic hurting quite a lot, applied multiple times with a syringe under the skin of the open wound.

I've never spent the night in the hospital (for myself). I can't believe I lived through my childhood in Iowa, and the kind of stunts we pulled, with so few injuries.

My family

Ryan was still a baby when we moved to the farm, less than a year old. Erin, the only girl, was three. Kyle was five and I was six. There were four of us in under six years. During my Kindergarten year Dad drove trucks over the road sometimes, gone some nights. I still don't know how Mom did it.

We were very close to Mom's family, Grandma and Grandpa Suchomel and Mom's sisters, Deann and Barb. We went to Grandma's house every Sunday for dinner. Grandma is a fantastic cook. I remember her fried chicken most vivdly. Her mashed potatoes are still my favorite in the world. She was also famous for dumplings, and sauerkraut, but these were not dishes I enjoyed.

Grandma made some of the best desserts I have ever eaten. There were so many good ones, I am sure I can't name them all. Her apple bars, slathered in cream cheese frosting, were amazing. I know she made great sweet rolls (more sugary that cinnamon rolls) and angel food cake (if that was your thing).

Sunday afternoons were spent hanging out in the basement, watching whatever might be on TV, playing games sometimes (when we weren't shopping at Kmart or at Target in Cedar Rapids). Grandpa was a lifelong Cubs fan, but I don't remember watching Cubs games with him, or football or basketball, until later in my life.

We saw my Grandma Meade less frequently, even though we lived on her property for my Kindergarten year. I went to Pentecostal church with her some Sundays that year, someplace south for what seemed like a really long ways, maybe Mount Pleasant or Riverside. Mom took me to Catholic church a few times that year, too, in to Iowa City to St Thomas Moore.

Grandma and Grandpa Meade were divorced around the time I was born. They had had ten children, eight of whom lived to adulthood. The surviving children were improbably ordered four boys and then four girls. We didn't see my Grandpa Meade much until we moved back to the farm. Then we saw him almost every day. Or, rather, it wasn't uncommon to see him everyday. We didn't interact much with him, though. This was different for the Little Boys (I still call them that today, even though they're big bruisers). Ryan, and Cory after he came along, bonded much more with Grandpa Meade than Kyle and I ever did. Erin did, too, I suppose because she was the only girl.

Playing 'Star Wars'

Our first outside play that I can remember was 'Star Wars'. Mom and Dad took us to see it at the Coralville Drive-In when it came out in 1977. I was five.

As I remember it, I was usually Luke and Kyle was usually Han (at an age when Luke still seemed the more desirable role). The Millenium Falcon was the bed of Dad's truck, when it was there. We'd tuck down against the sides of the truck, semi-reclined against the wheel-wells. There were plenty of places to climb and run to reenact scenes from the interior of the Death Star.

Getting bikes added a lot to our 'Star Wars' play. We didn't have many places to ride them to, down around the corn crib and back, but that didn't seem to bother us. It worked for the illusion of distance - Tatooine to Alderaan, the Death Star to Yavin 4 and back (of course, we didn't remember all of the names).

We got really into 'Star Wars guys' in this period, the action figures and the vehicles and locales that went with them. They were usually our primary destination in the toy aisle at KMart of Target: 'Let's go see the Star Wars guys.' We got the tri-level Death Star playset, an X-Wing fighter, and a TIE fighter. We always wanted more: the Millenium Falcon, a snow speeder, an AT-AT Walker.

It's hard to even remember how much was left to imagination, comparatively, in 1977. 'Star Wars' wasn't released on video tape for years. There weren't the same number of tie-ins. We waited years for the sequels (I read the book before I saw the movie for 'The Empire Strikes Back', "Return of the Jedi', and 'The Phantom Menace'. I just couldn't stand the suspense). We did a lot of playing, a lot of imagining, a lot of making up the subsequent stories. I later latched on to semi-apocryphal intervening stories like 'Splinter of the Mind's Eye' and some of the Han Solo and Lando Calrissian novels.

I was unequivocally in love with Princess Leia and, by extension, Carrie Fisher. It pains me to this day that she has grown old. The subsequent revelation that Leia was Luke's sister still sends pangs of concern through me, even incest-guilt: do you have any idea how many times I played out that romance (albeit chastely)?

As I have become fond of saying: the five year old me will love Carrie Fisher from 1977 until the day that I die :-)

In the beginning

We moved to the farm when I was six, after kindergarten. My dad had been moving around from one job to another my whole life, trying to find something he wanted to do. He finally settled on moving back to the family farm and farming with his dad. He kept at it for the rest of my growing up years, and we lived there on the farm.

The farm was an amazing place to grow up. It's equally amazing that we didn't kill ourselves. One of Mom's most commonly told stories: she goes outside to look for Ryan when he was four (I would have been nine). She found him sitting at the top of the corn elevator, feet swinging. He had probably followed us up there and we'd ditched him. Or he'd simply seen us do it. We climbed the elevator a lot because it hung over one of the shed roofs, making for easy access. Ryan was probably only 10 or 15 feet off of the ground, but I guess that's too far for a four year old.

We climbed incessantly. Those were the only two roofs we climbed on. But we climbed up fences and through rafters in the scale shed, the oat shed, one of those sheds up on the hog floor, the barn, and the corn crib. We longed for a tree house, but we didn't have any suitable trees. I struck on the idea of building one in the scales shed, over one of the chutes for loading cattle, but Dad said the cattle wouldn't want to walk under it. Eventually we fixed on building ourselves in the rafters of that shed up by the hog floor. We hauled up scrap plywood and built ourselves a floor. There was a door in the west wall up at rafter level. I never knew why - maybe for ventilation. We nailed some wood chunk steps to the outer wall and found a rope for another means of access. We called it 'Daylight' and played there a fair bit. I remember reading some Anne McCaffrey up there and running away there some time after I was nine (it may have been the same event), but I still longed for a cooler fort.

I'm amazed we didn't kill ourselves. My children are four now, and when I think of them at the top of the corn elevator it terrifies me. But I don't want to be an over-protective parent. It's going to take resolution to give them some freedom. The world seems so much more dangerous now. When I was a child, not much older than them, Kyle and I could go to the toy aisle at KMart by ourselves while Mom and Gramma and Erin shopped. I would never allow my children to do such a thing. But I don't want to be too protective. I don't want to try to shield them from all harm. There is no such thing as fail safe. Some risks have to be run if we're going to live at all.

One game we played some was 'Corn Cob Fights'. We would stand in the barn on opposite sides of the hay mow on the second floors and whip corn cobs at each other. This only really seemed to be fun when I had a friend over to be on my side, me and him against Kyle. The corn cobs could sting when they hit, but mostly we missed, through bad aim or evasion, or maybe mostly poor aerodynamics, and we never really played it that much.

Our number one method of almost killing ourselves was riding the three-wheeler Dad bought us. It had one of the smallest motors you could buy, only 90ccs, and, in retrospect, that was a very good thing. One of the first days we owned it I drove too near a high line pole and broke off the foot-rest, which Dad had to weld back on. I ran over at least one friend, Steve Swenka, chasing him on the three-wheeler. Three-wheelers are notoriously unstable, both laterally and front-to-back. We loved turning sharply and driving on two wheels. We popped inadvertant wheelies all the time, usually throwing the driver and any passenger off of the back. I was driving my sister one time in the front yard, trying to go around a tree, and I drove the front wheel right up a guide-line-wire for a high line pole. The three-wheeler rolled to our left twice, down the hill by the road, in front of the whole family, who were all in the front yard. For a while I liked to dangle my feet when I was a riding, dragging them on the ground - until they caught on a hose one day and whipped me off and under the three-wheeler quick as fast you can say 'boo'. Kyle had a friend driving it one time who didn't make the turn and drove through a barbed-wire fence and was subsequently driven to the hospital for stitches.

My purpose

I listened to 'An American Childhood' by Annie Dillard on tape recently and adored it. I'll admit I couldn't get through 'A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek' (too filled with naturalistic data for a theorist like me). But I loved 'Holy the Firm'.

Now I'm inspired to write my own autobiography. And I've decided to do the first (only?) draft in installments in this separate weblog. It doesn't matter if few people read it. This public announcement is intended not only to inform but also to keep me a little bit accountable. My basic goal is to write 'some lines' every day. You should feel free to prod me when necessary.

I'm further making a commitment to not play Civilization until I've done my lines each day. I was going to give up Civ altogether, but that seemed a little rash :-).