February 24, 2006

• Still fifty years ago, still in Kansas

  It was summer, between seventh and eighth grades, when Mama went to
  work for Mrs. Bull and we moved into her big blocky brick house out in
  the middle of some wide weedy fields that were once part of an even
  bigger wheat farm.  Mr. Bull had been dead for a while, but not
  for more than five years or so.  The dove gray Cadillac sedan in
  the ramshackle old garage beside the house was only about five years
  old then.  He had bought it shortly before he died and it only had
  a few hundred miles on it. 

  On long, boring afternoon drives through the flat, boring Kansas
  countryside, Mrs. Bull and Mama in the front seat would talk about how
  the wheat fields were disappearing into subdivisions, and I would space
  out in the back seat and daydream.  I was very good at that back
  then.  It isn’t so easy to do at this stage of my life.  I
  can still space out just fine, but what comes out of it isn’t the sort
  of fantasy I used to concoct.  But that’s a whole ‘nother blog.

  When I think about Mrs. Bull and our situation there, it seems clear to
  me that Mama wouldn’t have been likely to stay in that job very long,
  even if she hadn’t had the new boyfriend in Texas to lure her
  away.  She was probably more than ready to take any opportunity to
  leave.  The way Granny Conners (my Aunt Alice) referred to Mrs.
  Bull was, “set in her ways.”  That phrase is innocuous on the face
  of it, but I’ve never heard it applied to anyone who was set in any
  pleasant or agreeable ways.  Mama would use the same phrase a bit
  later, to describe my new step-father Bill.

  Mrs. Bull had a soft-boiled egg and dry toast every day for
  breakfast.  Lunch was generally soup and a sandwich, but could
  include hot dogs occasionally.  Dinner for Mrs. Bull always had to
  include a boiled potato and one-quarter of a head of iceberg lettuce,
  with a dollop of Miracle Whip imitation mayonnaise.  Early on,
  Mama made a mixed green salad and that made Mrs. Bull angry.  She said she
  always wanted her wedge of lettuce and that’s what she meant.  The
  main course was varied; could be macaroni and cheese, pork chops, fried
  chicken, chicken fried steak, or meatloaf, but it always had to be
  accompanied by boiled potatoes (unless the main dish was potatoes au
  gratin) and lettuce wedges with Miracle Whip.

  She had a subtle way of expressing disapproval.  Within our first
  week there, she had pointedly shown Mama where the cookbooks were kept
  in the kitchen, and marked a few of her favorite recipes.  Mama
  told me to set the table, and I did it the way Mama always did, with
  napkins flat on the table to the right of the plates, and all three
  “tools”: the flatware, one knife, one fork, one spoon; on the
  napkin.  Mrs. Bull saw what I had done and sent me to the
  bookshelf for an etiquette book.

  After she showed me where the good silver was, I set about learning how
  to properly set a table with fancy-folded napkins, two forks at each
  place setting, and as many spoons and knives as necessary for whatever
  was being served.  She gave me “permission” to move Amy
  Vanderbilt’s and Emily Post’s etiquette books from the bookshelf in the
  living room into my bedroom to study at my leisure. 

  I hadn’t had a real room of my own with a door I could actually shut
  since we had left San Jose when I was eight years old.  That was
  one of the best things about Mrs. Bull’s house.   Those books
  were another good thing.   I was keenly aware of my mother’s
  low-class speech and her ignorance of history, math and many other
  things.  I had always enjoyed correcting her pronunciation and
  pointing out her other failings, and after being exposed to Vanderbilt
  and Post I applied myself conscientiously to excelling her in
  ettiquette.

  Mrs. Bull’s library wasn’t extensive but it was certainly
  specialized.  It was a lady’s library, focused on ettiquette and
  fashion, with lots of books about movies – not film, which I’d get into later,
  but Hollywood movies.  She subscribed to Modern Screen and Vogue,
  and when I showed interest in fashion she subscribed to Mademoiselle
  and Seventeen for me.  She ridiculed my mother’s taste for romance
  magazines such as True Story and True Confessions, so I stopped reading
  them.  Thank you, Mrs. Bull.

  I didn’t like Mrs. Bull.  She wasn’t very likable with all that
  snobbery and stubborn idiosyncracy.  But I did respect her because
  she exemplified the ladylike behavior my mother had always advocated
  but never practiced.  Mama’s motto was, “do as I say, not as I
  do.”  I always was in full agreement with not doing what she did,
  but I also took everything she said with more than a little grain of
  salt.  I started seriously cultivating a class act.  I found
  relief from my guilt and shame in snobbery and perfectionism.

  I
  was still in my first year of biological womanhood.  While we
  lived in Mrs. Bull’s house, I’d start getting severe menstrual cramps
  several days before my bleeding would begin.  Mrs. Bull had
  remedies for that.  As soon as the cramps would begin, I’d be sent
  off for hot epsom salt baths in the huge old claw-foot tub, to relax
  the muscles and start the flow.

  Several
  times a day every day, I’d be compelled to choke down a big
  tablespoonful of Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound and one of Beef,
  Iron and Wine Tonic.  I don’t know if the patent medicines did me
  any harm, or any good.  The hot baths did help get the flow
  started and gave me more than the usual number of opportunities for hot
  sudsy orgasms.

  The thing that finally did bring relief from the cramps was something I
  found in an article in a magazine.  It might have been in
  Seventeen.  For menstrual cramps, it recommended getting down on
  hands and knees and crawling, or just rocking back and forth on elbows
  and knees.  That always worked, and I used it for the full forty
  years between menarche and menopause.

  About half a mile or so to the west-southwest of Mrs. Bull’s house
  there was a subdivision of new houses surrounding the new school to
  which I’d be going when my eighth grade term started.  I wandered
  over there several times, watching the construction workers and
  wondering if they’d have it finished in time for the start of
  school.  A few times in the evenings, I’d take off after dinner
  and go explore the new school, ignoring the “keep out” signs.  One
  night I encountered a girl a year or two older than I and her two
  younger brothers there.

  Her name was Jeannie McGehee or McGeehe.  She was going to be in
  the eighth grade, too.  Her family had moved there just recently,
  from Arkansas, I think.  She was skinny and blonde, with freckles
  and a rebellious attitude and sharp ironic sense of humor.  By the
  time school started, we were best friends.

  Being in the first classes to attend a brand new school was
  interesting, especially because the building wasn’t finished. 
  Some of our classes were in temporary prefab buildings because about
  the only part of the school that was complete was the main section
  where the offices, auditorium and cafeteria were.  We didn’t have
  lockers the first week, because they were still being installed.

  I remember threading our way past drop cloths, ladders, scaffolds and a
  tangle of industrial strength extension cords to get to our first
  assembly in the auditorium.  One item on the schedule for that
  assembly was to have the student body select the school colors and name
  the sports teams.   If I remember correctly, the teams became
  the Truesdell Trojans.  Picking colors wasn’t that simple.  I
  think we may have been presented with a few options, but we more or
  less ignored those “suggestions” when we filled out our ballots. 
  That year, THE “in” colors were pink and charcoal.  Overwhelmingly, our student body voted for them as our school colors. 

  The next day, we were called back into assembly.  The
  long-suffering principal patiently explained to us that we had to
  choose from a restricted set of selections, basically the colors
  available from Josten’s catalog.  One of  our two colors had
  to be either white, light gray, or yellow “gold”.  Our colors
  could not be the same as any that were already in use in Wichita
  schools, so we didn’t have many choices left to us.  Again we were
  told our options and allowed to vote.

  The next day, we were back again.  We’d tied between a maroon and
  gray combination, and green and yellow.  We had to take a
  tie-breaking ballot.  There was some heated and acrimonious
  discussion, with many pronouncements about the nauseating qualities of
  the green and gold combo and the gloomy and dull appearance of maroon
  combined with gray (which had been as close as we could come to pink
  and charcoal).  Green and yellow won, or at least that’s what the
  principal told us later, although not very many students, when
  challenged, would admit to having voted for it.  Curse Jostens!
  

  • 11:41 pm
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