The Butter Files: Back to School Shopping

My youngest starts school next week.  We have not bought one single practical thing.  We have bought a very exclusive set of Pokemon cards and a Pokeman Ball.  You can't start school without some winning Pokemon cards, according to littleb.

When I was a kid we went back-to-school shopping every August. One year, my step mom gave my grandmother some money and asked her to take me shopping.  I loved my grandmother to pieces and we were both quite happy with this arrangement.  We hopped in the car and headed for the K-mart.  We bought the obligatory under garments and socks, gotta have those, and then we started perusing the aisles for clothing in my size.  Everything was boring.  There wasn't anything special enough for the third grade.  Not until, that is, my eyes lit on something that stood out.  Something in the purple family.  I separated it from its dull pedestrian neighbors and held it up against my body.

It was purple pant suit perfection.  The entire garment was constructed of the finest machine knit fabric that Taiwan could produce.  Even then I could spot a quality garment.  The tunic-styled top was purple with a gold belt knitted into the waistline.  How practical!  The pants were, you guessed it, purple.  I couldn't believe my luck.  How could this fashion-forward treasure still be hanging on the rack at the end of August?  It was fate, obviously.

We bought it immediately.  It took all of the rest of our money and my grandmother paused, but I wheedled and pushed.  I needed that pant suit like a chimney sweep needs a chimney. That pant suit was my ticket into the elite world of Mrs. Yates' third grade classroom.  This much comfort and style would propel me to dizzying intellectual heights, and the stretchy knit fabric would allow me to run faster than a fifth grader on the playground.   I was finally ready for third grade.  "Bring it", my 8-year-old inner twerp proclaimed.

I was perplexed when my step-mom didn't seem to consider our shopping expedition a resounding success.  I proudly emptied my one small shopping bag on the couch and held up my first-day-of-school ensemble.  She seemed confused.  She looked at the bag. Then she looked at my grandmother. Then she looked at the bag.  Then her face kind of fell as I stood there, beaming, with the purple pantsuit clutched against my skinny frame.

I was intuitive enough to know something was wrong.  I was smart enough to keep it to myself. No need to stir up a nest of hornets which might, possibly, result in the return of my outfit, so I just stood there, resolutely, beaming and petting my tunic. I pointed out how the belt was built into the garment, how the color was so grand, and how warm the knit fabric would be in the crisp fall weather.  I willed her to see how this outfit would make me a better third-grader.

On picture day that year-in fact, on most days that year-I was a pig-tailed, fleet-footed, speed-reading, rock-stealing, purple-wearing beauty.

I think this must be the way littleb feels about his Pokemon cards.

Chicken out

P.S.  Sorry.  Those records are sealed.

Butter Files: Uncle Don

We were returning home from a family trip, seven of us packed like sardines into the Chrysler station wagon.  As our home came into view, my Stepmom was the first to make the connection.

"Oh no!", she groaned.

"What?" we all thought, looking at each other.  Did we forget something?  Did we hit a cat?  Did this have anything to do with us at all?

And then we, too, looked towards our house and we also saw it:  The mile long Winnebago parked  in the middle of our lawn.

"Uncle Don!" we all yelled.  We kids adored Uncle Don.  For one thing, he drove around IN his house, like an eccentric, geriatric hermit crab on permanent vacation.  The freedom of the open road was Uncle Don's.  He went where he liked, he slept where he liked.  I still was having a little trouble working out the mathematics of how a vehicle that big could turn corners but I hoped that one day I could learn to do it and join Uncle Don in his adventurous lifestyle.  The budding opportunist in me recognized that Uncle Don was approaching the age where license renewals were not a given.  At some point the man was going to need a driver.  And a nurse, probably, but that wasn't my problem.  I wasn't very nurse-like.  I did suspect, however, that I would be a very good driver.

What also occurred to me, though, as we pulled into the driveway, was that my gentle, sweet Stepmom who was nice to everybody, didn't seem happy at the prospect of a visit from Uncle Don.  Why?  Wasn't he her uncle, after all?  Didn't he always show up unexpectedly, creating a sense of excitement and possibility?  Didn't he take all of his meals with us, being careful to make us aware of his restrictions so that we didn't accidentally send him into diabetic shock?  Didn't he open his Winnebago  doors to us kids to explore and climb over and didn't we all get the opportunity to sit in the driver's seat, before he suggested we all go back into the house and have a nice long visit and maybe a snack as he was feeling a bit peckish?  And didn't he always, always tell great stories while we waited for his laundry to finish washing?  Sure, they were the same stories he'd told on his last visit and the one before that, but they were mostly good stories, if a bit long winded.  I didn't understand her visceral reaction to his unexpected presence.

Uncle Don had come calling.  How could this be bad news?  Who could understand the mysterious ways of grown ups?  Not me.  I shrugged my skinny shoulders, hopped out of the wagon and raced  across the lawn, calling first turn at the wheel.

On The Increasingly Complex Algorithm of Parenthood

When I was 15 or so I asked my dad to help me with some algebra homework.  I was not good at algebra way back then (she notes, as though she might be much better at algebra now) but my father was purported to be quite handy at math so who better to ask?

My father gave the text book a cursory glance and began telling me about the stock market.   I  hate to out my father but I really do not think that he knew a lot about the stock market. Clearly, however, he felt more secure opining about the stock market than he did about my algebra homework.  Algebra is a less nebulous subject, to be fair.  I mean,  we can talk all day about why our net worth has declined or blossomed, blaming all sorts of things-the price of twink lots in Judina, the prevalence of snark wood in Delusia-but in the end, algebra has one right answer per problem.  It's rather exact, isn't it?  And my father had no bloody idea how to solve that problem.

Why would he? Chicken Theory #134 states that 98.2% of the population has no practical use for algebra. The 1.6% who do have a use for algebra are algebra teachers.  And the other .2% (good for you for picking up on that; you are obviously very good at decimals) are advocates in Washington for algebra education. Or maybe they work for NASA.  Maybe NASA knows practical uses for algebra. But I digress.

What I'm leading up to is that I asked my father ONE time for help on my homework.  I don't recall ever asking anyone else.  I never asked for help on book reports, didn't require assistance building a catapult, and wasn't quizzed on my math facts.

Now that I'm a parent, things are different.

My first grader's homework assignments go something like this:  Regular homework-10 minutes per grade level,  math facts-15 minutes per night, reading-15-30 minutes per night, writing-4 sentences per night and don't forget to practice your spelling words and build a rocket and study for the SAT! Add in dinner, bath-time and bed-time routines and that is a pretty tight schedule which, and I can't emphasize this enough,  must be supervised.

Not only did my parents not help with homework, half the time they weren't even sure where the hell we were.  We had free reign, from a tender age, over not only our three acres, but the entire neighborhood.  My parents came home, made dinner, and we kids showed up around five, as we had been trained from an early age, to wash our hands and eat.   Then we cleared the table and watched the news. Then maybe we watched a sitcom like  Happy Days or Laverne and Shirley.  We ate ice cream, all lined up along the imaginary divide between the kitchen, where we were allowed to consume food, and the living room, where we were not.  Maybe Dad fell asleep in his LaZ-Boy. Maybe us kids did our homework after school, maybe we didn't.  My parents weren't concerned.  Homework was our problem until the principal called or report cards came out.

Because when I was a kid things were different.

You weren't allowed homework until you went to Junior High.  It was something you looked forward to because it meant you were older and more mature; a big shot.  Only  big kids got to do homework. You didn't need help doing it because you were 11 or 12 years old by that time. You knew what to do and you were motivated to do it because, my God, you waited all these years to get homework and now you finally had some.  You were one important SOB, toting home your books and five subject notebooks (back packs? planners? Please).

Back when I was a kid my parents delighted in telling us how much easier we had it than when they were kids.  They had to walk a mile to school.  Up hill in the snow. Both ways. Barefoot.  They had one outfit and by the end of the year, it stood up by itself in the corner of the bedroom they shared with their four siblings and two sets of grandparents.  They got a new pair of shoes every September whether they needed them or not.  I could go on, but you know these things about my parents, I'm sure.

It's true, I had a peaceful middle class American childhood.  The only thing I really had to worry about were those starving children I was depriving in Africa if I didn't eat all my mashed potatoes.

But back to modern day parenting...

I've spent years of my life driving my kids around because it's not safe to let them loose in our suburban neighborhood. I've memorized "Where  the Wild Things Are" and "Goodnight Moon".  I am regularly subjected to the unconventional wisdom of Captain Underpants.  I work 45-50 hours a week, bring work home, and have supervised mountains of homework. I'm literally afraid of food; does it have sugar, is it a GMO, is it organic? OMG the price is astronomical....In addition, our mortgage is 99 million and although I live several miles from the nearest water source, I wonder if we should buy flood insurance.  I'm paying into a social security fund that won't be there to collect from by the time I can retire at 75, if I live that long what with all the air pollution, resistant flu strains and nuclear weapon threats.

All that, and  I'm supposed to age like Christie Brinkley, execute a bloody bucket list, and keep up with social media.

And do yoga instead of lunch.

Mom and Dad, you had it so much easier as a parent than I do.

I'm exhausted.

At times like this I wonder about dropping off the grid.  Retreating into a simpler existence.

But it seems like so much work, you know?  Selling the house, moving to the woods, building a yurt, homeschooling, gardening, actually building shit that gets stuff done without electricity, selling that extra power we generate to buy goats and chickens, bartering eggs and goat cheese to buy raw wool to spin into yarn to make into socks, killing the chickens and goats, cooking them...

I mean, really, I might as well stay right here, stop procrastinating and do my bloody kid's homework for him so that I can watch "Friends" reruns in peace, like any decent 21st-century parent would do.

I don't have it so bad.  I could use a new pair of shoes, though.

Chicken out

This is a photo of a really nice Yurt I snatched from "The Guardian".  Suffice it to say my yurt would not turn out like this.

1006

If I Hadn't Been So Focused on Becoming the First Taylor Swift, I Might Have Invented the Internet

When I was 13 and firmly in the clutches of that ultimate mean girl, puberty, I discovered poetry. Months were spent producing emo ballads exploring my obsessive crushes on various high school seniors, pop stars, and, bewilderingly, MacGyver.  It eventually occurred to me, probably during a lucid dream also involving a Maxfield Parrish painting and a unicorn, that these poems should be set to music and shared with the world.  That's how good they were.

But how to do that? How does one reach out to the Titans of the Music Industry when one does not know who those Titans might be, nor their mailing addresses?

If only I had focused on that problem and invented the internet, this tale might be very different.  For one thing, I would be writing it from a much warmer locale while my good friend, Richard Branson, orders another round of tropical rum beverages with a mere twitch of one blond hairy eyebrow.

I decided to shelve the accessibility issue for the time being and set myself immediately to writing a hit song,  The  lyrics roughly matched the rhythm and word structure of, "Leaving on a Jet Plane".  This  song was, to me, the ultimate in romantic sophistication.  In my imagination I was at times the leaver and at times the left, depending on my erratic emotional state.  Mostly I was the leaver because I had never flown in an airplane and badly wanted to, plus I liked the idea of someone keening over me, for a change; someone handsome, resourceful and mature who always had an extra stick of gum to share.

After a few late nights, fueled by root beer and Hershey bars, I finished my masterpiece. My song focused on a lover reminiscing over trips to the zoo and holding hands on the train.  How could that once colorful love-filled world have become this barren, lonely landscape with only one sad-eyed gorilla and some screeching monkeys to bear witness to his brokenness, asked my MacGyver, as he walked along singing softly to himself while a solitary tear rolled down his stubbly cheek and into his popcorn.

And here we have yet another shining example of how the right focus-connecting music to video-could have landed me in an exclusive gated community saying things into my phone like, "Get me Bono!", instead of the more pedestrian, "Yes, half cheese, half pepperoni, please.  Yes.  I'll hold."

Now that my  hit song was ready for delivery, I began my search for Titans.   I remembered that in the back of my mother's True Confessions magazines there were ads inviting people to get rich submitting their stories for publication.  I pilfered an old copy and found what I was looking for; a company looking for people who wrote lyrics, music or both.  I submitted my song and waited.

Now, you might be thinking, "Oh God, how good could it have been?  The kid was thirteen!", and I wouldn't blame you, although I might remind you that Taylor Swift got her start at around the same age.  A few weeks after I sent out my inquiry I received a response from Nashville.  They wanted to publish my song!  Truth be told, I was a little surprised. I didn't know things worked that fast in Nashville. You can't blame me for assuming that they must really be in a hurry to sign me on.  There was just one teeny problem-Nashville needed a hundred dollars in up front money.  There were logistics, you see.  They needed to find someone to write the music, find a top notch vocalist to record it, and circulate copies to all the radio stations to get the word out.  If I would just send them $100, they would take care of all this for me and then forward a copy of my record for personal use.  Once the radio stations started playing my record, the dough would  start rolling in and we would have to move to Nashville, probably, so that I could be closer to my people.

I'm not sure exactly how this happened-I believe there may have been a lot of back room negotiations to which I was not privy-but my step mom and father actually pulled together $100 dollars and sent it to Nashville on my behalf.

Thankfully, my parents were not taken advantage of and just one month later my record arrived in the mail. We put it on the record player in the living room and listened.  I was disappointed in the music.  It wasn't what I would have chosen. The clarity seemed a little off, too. Maybe they actually recorded it at the zoo for authenticity?

Once I heard my song, or Nashville's version of it, rather, my ever objective inner voice said, "No one is going to pay for this record except your mother", so I gave Vi my copy to save her the expense and decided to become an artist.  I began creating complicated wall-size murals, copying the style of Maxfield Parrish but adding unicorns.

It wasn't the first time my parents supported one of my dreams nor would it be the last.  I may not have become the first Taylor Swift or the inventor of the internet but I have been lucky in love.

MacGyver aside.

Chicken out

A real hit song:  Little Feat singing Dixie Chicken

Paper or Shoes

In the town where I was raised there were two main industries, paper and shoes.  In most families one or both parents worked in either the paper mills or the shoe factories.  Kids grew up and often followed in their parents footsteps; paper or shoes.

Our family was a shoe family.  My father was an engineer for Bass shoe, founded by George Bass in 1876.  He started out on the factory floor and worked his way up. His job was to analyze the labor required to make a shoe, and then determine how much, per piece, a worker should be paid for their particular contribution. This kind of work was called "piece work", and allowed better, more experienced workers to earn more because they had harder jobs and/or were more productive. It was a non-unionized system that paid workers according to their productivity and skill.

Bass Shoe was sold to Chesebrough-Ponds in 1978.  They were famous for Vaseline, Ponds Cold Creams and other beauty products.  Why they wanted a shoe factory I couldn't say, but things continued to roll along fairly smoothly.  In 1981, President Reagan lifted the quotas on imported shoes and cheaper shoes from overseas became available.  American shoe companies, in order to compete, began moving their production overseas.  The companies that maintained factories in the US cut jobs and payroll.  My father lost his job in 1987 after Philips-Van Heusen purchased the company and again slashed jobs and payroll.  Bass closed their last Maine factory in 1998, letting go of its final 350 workers.  Over the course of 18 years, about 1,200 people employed by this one company lost their jobs. You can still buy Bass shoes, but they are not made in the US.

The paper mills have fared better but there have been union strikes, cuts and closings.  In short, my old hometown is not the insulated community it used to be.  We are not special.  The same thing has happened all across the country.

I bring these things up because it is a big shopping weekend and today is Shop Local Saturday. While it might not be practical to purchase only American-made products, it is possible to shop locally for one day and benefit your local community. Go on.  Get out there. Buy something already.

Chicken out

Butter Files: The Christians and The Pagans of Macomber Hill

M was the Catholic kid next door.  Our families have been neighbors for as long as I can remember.  M was raised in a structured, consistent environment, the kind Dr. Spock would have prescribed, with a Dad who worked shifts at the paper mill and a Mom who stayed home with the kids, managing their time and driving them to various activities.  They went to the Catholic Church in Jay on weekends and, when the time came, to CCD during the week.

I had no such restrictions on my time.  As long as I was at the dinner table by 5, I was good.

All of this extra instruction  going on next door, however, tipped the scales, giving M a worldly edge.  She became my main resource for information related to things going on outside of my own imagination.

On school mornings the kids in the neighborhood walked to the bus stop at the end of Fuller Road.  I learned a lot  waiting for the bus.  I learned about the birds and the bees, for one, complete with a visual aid drawn on a frosty wind shield by Timmy G.

One morning at the bus stop, compliments of M, I learned that I was doomed. M. had recently heard, through her various affiliations, that the Devil would be taking over the earth in the year 2000.  Luckily for her, she was Catholic, and God would be sending his kid to pick up all the Catholics before the destruction began.  Or maybe they would just ascend on their own. She wasn't sure how that part was going to go down.  But she did know for sure that I was screwed.

This information rocked my world.  What the bloody hell did I ever do to deserve eternal damnation? If I had had this information when I was a newly fertilized baby egg, I would have picked different parents, now, wouldn't I have?  I was upset that apocalypse knowledge was not built into my DNA, allowing me to make better parental choices.  Now, the end was near and I was stuck with my pagan family, destined to a fiery eternity. I had visions of a big, beautiful white bus emerging from the clouds, with Jesus at the wheel, picking up all the Catholics in the neighborhood, while I cried in vain, the devil blowing his searing hot breath down my neck, yelling at me to get back to work digging the coal to feed his inferno.

After a couple nights of not sleeping well, and staring up at the sky, worrying that the apocalypse might show up early, my Step Mom's radar went off, and she asked what was wrong.  I explained the bus stop religious instruction.

And she said it wasn't true.

She explained that M. must have gotten mixed up a little, but it wouldn't be polite to tell her, so I should just keep it to myself but I shouldn't worry.  This explanation allowed me to get back to sleep.

A couple days later at the bus stop  I learned that M had indeed been mistaken about the year 2000.  Jesus wasn't coming to pick up anyone and we were all screwed.

Because.  Aliens.

Chicken out

All Aboard the Jesus Bus.  Next Stop Pearly Gates.  

Butter Files: Drug Lords

Note:  My father was born into a large farming family in central Maine. He grew up, married twice (consecutively, not at the same time), and had five kids.  Everyone called him "Butter".  Butter Files stories are about his side of the family (as opposed to the Vi Chronicles, starring my mom, Violet.)

I had two great uncles.  Uncle "Bob" is an uncle by marriage to my Dad's aunt, "Min".  Uncle Phil was a brother to Min.

Uncle Bob lived in Norridgewalk, and Uncle Phil lived down the road a ways from the family farm where Dad grew up.

One very hot summer day when I was 17, I found myself out Uncle Phil's way.  I had been picking blueberries with my friend, TS.  When the heat became intolerable, we drove to Uncle Phil's farm to take a breather.  Uncle Phil had been married to Josephine (Aunt Jo), who had passed away a couple years prior, and he now lived by himself in the big, old house.

After we had slaked our thirst and made some small talk, Uncle Phil said, "Do you like the marijuana?"

We looked at one another, TS and I, and I said, "Ummm. Why do you ask?"

"Because I have some.", he said.  Then he led us to the guest bedroom where, stacked under the bed, were multiple shoe boxes.  He pulled one out, removed the cover, and showed us his booty.

It was, indeed, stuffed with homegrown.  I said, "Uncle Phil!  What are you up to?"

He grinned and said, "Nothing.  Just wondered if I could grow it.  You can keep that box."

A couple of years after Uncle Phil died, I was at a family reunion, and Uncle Bob had my ear.  He asked about my job, my life and whatnot, and it occurred to me that  I didn't really  know what he had done for a living, so I said, "What about you, Uncle Bob?  Do you still work?"

"Yeah", he said.  "I work-part time for the government.  I'm part of that war against drugs thing."

"Oh really?", I asked, "What does that entail?"

"I'm a scout.  I look for pot farms, mostly.  I go up in planes and fly over different areas of Maine, or just drive around.  Sometimes, I'm just walking through the woods. If I find something, I report it."

"HOLY SHIT", I said to myself.

To Uncle Bob  I say, "Wow, that's so cool!  How long have you been doing that?"

"Oh, about 7 or 8 years."

Uncle Bob's scouting career definitely overlapped Uncle Phil's pot farming years.  Was Uncle Bob purposely not reporting Uncle Phil?  Were they in cahoots to become the home grown drug lords of Maine?  Sort of like Duck Dynasty with fewer ducks?  And less facial hair?  Or was Uncle Bob just not very good at his job? Was Uncle Phil growing pot to see if Uncle Bob could catch him?  Or did he suspect that Uncle Bob was making shit up again?  Or did he really just like growing pot?  And finally, how well do you ever really know your relatives?

Since that day, I've carried a mental image of Aunt Jo and Uncle Phil smoking a fatty out on the back porch of the farm, while Uncle Bob flies overhead, binoculars in hand, reporting, "Nope, nothing to see here.  Let's head back."

What were those two old coots up to? Are there any older relatives in your family you wish you had known better?

Chicken out

These aren't my uncles.  This is from "Bucket List".  The sentiment is sort of the same, however.