"Prom" is a Four Letter Word

Dad (shoved through my bedroom doorway by Mom): You know about the birds and the bees, right?

Me: Dad, we live on a farm.

Dad: Right…ok, guess we’re done!

As a teenager, it was sometimes necessary to step away from the barn and re-enter civilization. This was not something I looked forward to. In fact, I avoided it at all costs.

Flashback to my 16th birthday. A huge gift box. I open it and out spills a puff of red and white lace and chiffon. "What is it?" I ask. I was hoping for a new saddle blanket. This was not a saddle blanket.

"It's a dress," my mother replies excitedly and slowly, as if she were a missionary explaining Christianity to the great unwashed. I wear jeans and flannel shirts. Nothing against dresses, but they tend to get caught in the double clutch on the tractor.

"A what?" I ask, searching desperately for the receipt.

"A PROM dress," she clarifies right before I pass out. I had never even gone on a date. I had been asked out a few times, but since I never knew what to say, I usually just stared back or walked away. That did not go over well, and pretty soon guys quit asking. Now I had a big, stupid, fluffy dress from of all places, that ultra-vogue icon of fashion – Sears, and a mother fully expecting me to grow breasts and social skills in three months. Cupid, shoot me now.

On an even playing field, I might have had a chance. But it was far from a fair battle. I was completely unprepared to match girly wits with the town princesses. For years they had been painting their nails, tweezing their eyebrows, sharpening their flirtation skills, studying Tiger Beat, and generally obsessing about the opposite sex. Meanwhile I was shoveling chicken poo and teaching my horse how to not kill me.

A new boy had just moved to our town. At a small school like ours, where each grade averaged about a hundred people, a new classmate was big news. The even bigger news was that Bernie O’Callaghan was adorable, probably the best looking guy in our class. All the townie girls were abuzz and atwitter, eyelashes fluttering wildly, twirling their hair, snapping their gum, filing their nails, and generally making fools of themselves. I was my usual oblivious bookworm self.

Part of what made Bernie so adorable was his tendency to ignore the rules. He was not concerned about the supreme high school directive of never asking anyone out who got better grades than you. He could care less about grades, including his own. He could care less about what others thought. He was an impish Irish scalawag of the highest, or perhaps lowest, order.

Many of the top social butterflies were waiting for Bernie to ask one of them to the prom. They were, in fact, already fighting over him. Then the strange part happened. A friend of mine found out that Bernie was interested in, of all people, me. Once she recovered from the shock, she cornered me and insisted on becoming my “social coach.” She was tired of watching guys wilt in my gaze, and my insistence on spinsterhood as a career choice. So she staged an intervention.

Some of the townie girls were quite upset by the way things eventually turned out, and my friend still fears retribution, so I’ve agreed to conceal her identity. We’ll just refer to her as “Deep Prom.”

Deep Prom: You know that new boy, Bernie?

Me: Yeah.

Deep Prom: He likes you.

Me: Huh. That’s weird.

Deep Prom: He wants to ask you out to the Prom.

Me: W-what?

Deep Prom: First, though, you gotta tweeze your eyebrows.

Me: W-what?

I was clueless, more concerned with our upcoming standardized tests. Usually I’d continue to be clueless, but this time I had my mother to answer to. My mother and that big, stupid, fluffy Sears dress. So "Deep Prom" set up a meeting. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Bernie: What are you doing Friday night?

Me: Nothing. Why?

Bernie: Would you like to go to the prom with me?

Me: Ok. But why don’t we go on Saturday night like everyone else?

Bernie: Sounds like a plan.

Bernie didn’t even blink. He wasn’t aware of my tendency to reduce guys to limpid puddles by staring at them. As it turned out, he stared right back. In a bizarre quirk of nature, I had a feisty, hunky date and a dress. I was terrified.

In the name of style, we women do hurtful things to ourselves. Hair removal is right up there on the owie chart with high heels and chronic insecurity. But Deep Prom was right –my eyebrows needed a mowing. Wow, did that hurt. Now I understood why the townie girls were a bit skitter-headed. Beauty was downright painful.

I made a serious effort to get rid of my farmer’s tan and do something with my wild Irish hair. The real difference came when I put on makeup. Suddenly I had eyelashes, cheekbones, and the potential to make some townie girls cry. We were truly making a silk purse out of a sow’s caretaker.

Prom night was wonderful, even if the butterflies in my stomach did most of the dancing. A few of the town princesses, in their battle for the supreme dress, had ended up in the fashion nightmare of wearing the exact same dress. I believe the style was from Neiman Marcus in New York City. By the time they were done tearing each other apart, though, the dresses were quite different from each other, bearing various rips, slashes, and scratches, a bizarre yet compelling process of customization. My Sears dress, with its red velvet roses on white chiffon, held up just fine. So did Bernie.

I then returned to my studies.

Country Cookin'

To many, the term country cookin’ conjures up visions of barbequed squirrel, home-baked pie, and deep-fried whatnot. This was certainly not in our case in our house. Dad had a full-time job, plus the farm, plus a side job land-surveying. Mom had us four kids, a herd of cows, several horses, four dogs, a cat or two, a few hundred chickens, the land-surveying business, a snoopy mother-in-law, a house the size of a small European country, and my dad. When in the world was there time to bake pie?

On The Andy Griffith Show, Aunt Bee was constantly scuttling about the kitchen baking, roasting, or frying something. She was always dressed just so, everything ironed and in its place, even her double chin. That needy voice of hers bothered me, and Andy’s awkward bachelor lifestyle seemed suspicious, but that’s another story. I love home-made pie just as much as the next person, but no pie, no matter how tasty, is worth that amount of dysfunctional whining. Hand them each a bottle of Jack Daniels and just let them rip at each other once and for all. I’d watch that episode twice.

I’m sure somewhere there’s a country matriarch bustling about the stove daily, fussing over seven-course meals, but she’s either got an Easybake Oven, plastic teacups, and a teddy bear, or she’s baking fluffy cloud cakes for her roommates in the local psychiatric hospital. On a realistic, working farm, they would’ve hauled her outside, slapped a baseball cap on her, and had her stack hay bales in the barn for three hours. If she felt like stirring and spicing after that, go for it. Bye-bye, double-chin. Bye-bye, whine.

While Aunt Bee didn’t live on a farm, television watchers (aka city dwellers) were given the impression that all country folk do is sit around and bake peach cobbler. On our farm, Aunt Bee would have serious biceps, wear coveralls, and tell Opie to “cowboy up.”

Because of shows like The Andy Griffith Show, Green Acres, and Petticoat Junction, the lifestyle of the rural gourmet has been grossly misconstrued. Let’s take a look at some of the key differences:

• There’s no one person dedicated to cooking. In fact, the person who made dinner was most likely just lifting bales next to you in the hayfield. In other words, do not expect homemade pie for dessert.
  
  
• You will be expected to help. Yes, you just stacked two hundred and fifty bales of hay. Wash your hands and set the table.



• No sparkling clean kitchen here, unless you’re eating outside and it just rained. Table scraps roll downhill, and the dogs keep the floor relatively clean. Good enough until winter comes and we have time for some deep cleaning. (The coziest work in the winter is near the wood stove in the kitchen.)



• The pet you scratched behind the ear last week might now be on your plate. And he might taste pretty good. Horrible thought, right? I had trouble with that one, too. Until I tasted the chicken. It was really good.
  

This marked my introduction to what some call feminism. It was more like country common sense equality. If you could do it, then do it. If you couldn’t, you’d learn. The tractor didn’t care whether you were packing a trouser snake. Get it in gear and get the hay in, please.

On the flip side, the boys were expected to clean up and help with food and laundry. They didn’t care for it too much. So that was fun to watch.

In high school, girls took Home Economics and boys took Shop. I questioned that logic, mentioning it in passing to the principal one day. Sure enough, the next year everyone took Home Economics and Shop. While I made a few enemies that year, it was quite by accident - I never expected the principal to actually listen. I couldn’t wait to get to the real world and make some real changes. Just lasso a few flying pigs and make the world a better place. Piece of cake. Or pie.

The pizza run –
One of my favorite splurges was every Sunday night when we’d order pizza. Since we were far beyond the delivery area, we had to go fetch it. I enjoyed bringing it home, trying to get back quickly so the pizza was still nice and hot. Since there was no direct route between our house and the pizza joint, I was, for the sake of hot pizza, compelled to barrel down twisting country roads. This was as close to running moonshine as I would ever get, so I took full advantage of it. There were no police cars watching for speeding pizza runners, however, deer liked to jump out of nowhere. Swerving to avoid a deer does very bad things to pizza cheese. I’d race home in record time, only to open the pizza box to discover that the lateral g forces had had a severe, negative impact on the mozzarella. In the middle of the box, there’d be a tomatoed circle of dough. A large, frightened pile of cheese would be plastered to one side of the box. Still hot, of course.

Daddy tried -
Beyond the basic hot dogs, hamburgers, and pizza we consumed, my dad did have some interesting culinary experiments. Most dads take pride in their barbeque skills. This was BBBQ – beyond barbeque. Every once in a while he’d find an irregular recipe for cooking up homemade oddities. They always started with tremendous potential and somehow took a wrong turn. For instance:

· One year we had an over abundance of tomatoes, so he decided to make tomato sauce. Or maybe it was ketchup. Not sure which one it was supposed to be. I only knew that it was inedible. Later we discovered that our ‘Big Boy’ tomatoes weren’t the right type for canning or pickling or torturing or whatever Dad was doing to them. All I remember is staring at row upon row of mason jars full of tomato seeds, skin, pulp, and vinegar, worrying about when I’d be forced to consume their contents. Or whether the tortured tomatoes would evolve, escape, and consume me.

· Apple sauce takes lots of cooking in a big pressure cooker. If the pressure isn’t monitored and goes too high, pressure cooker parts fly in all directions, and boiling hot apple sauce follows the parts. We learned that.

· Homemade root beer was his next attempt. Absolutely flat. Not much is sadder than getting a whiff of the sweet scent of real root beer, only to be repulsed by a lack of bubbles. I wanted to find out who was giving my dad such a nutty do-it-yourself idea and knock him flat.

· The home-brewed apple cider never went flat. It did, however, distill a bit too long, eventually turning into rather potent applejack. We had to carefully remove it from the crawlspace under the house, first venting the area to release the methanol that had built up down there. I was hoping we could at least feed it to the livestock and watch them stumble around. Not much is funnier than a drunken cow slurring her words. I would be reminded of this again much later when I attended my first sorority party.

Country C-c-c-cold

Eskimos have about 30 different words for snow. So do New Yorkers, but most of them can't be printed here. On January 20th, 1961 in Poughkeepsie, NY, it was 30 degrees below zero. That day, in Washington, D.C., in a blizzard, John F. Kennedy was sworn into the office of the Presidency. He did not wear a hat and got very sick. I know this because throughout my childhood my mother mentioned it repeatedly, like it was a storm strong enough to make a President ill, especially an Irish one not smart enough to wear a hat. Seemed a mixed metaphor to me. She had several points to make, all conflicting. Hurrah, we had an Irish President, but he was still a man with rocks for brains for not dressing warmly.

Mom: Put a hat on. It’s freezing out. Don’t catch a cold like Kennedy.

Me: That was stupid of him, huh.

Mom: Are you disrespecting the greatest President of the United States?

Me: Didn’t you just say he was dumb for not wearing a hat?

Mom: And now you’re putting words of disrespect in my mouth?

In upstate New York, three feet of snow was on the ground, with more coming down. Even the blanket of snow was shivering. I had been due to be born at Christmas. It’s common knowledge that children born at Christmas time get ripped off in the birthday department. Jesus owns it and nobody’s upstaging him. Plus, in honor of my untimely timing, my mother was going to name me "Holly." I figured I’d lay low and be born in time for the after Christmas sales. Only thing was, it was bitter cold outside, so I kept hitting the snooze alarm.

By late January, however, my mother had had enough. 10 months pregnant, she decided to induce labor by shoveling snow in the driveway. In hindsight, this would have worked better if she had shoveled the hospital driveway, and if Poughkeepsie had not been a solid chunk of ice. In hindsight, this would have worked better if it were August. But we were Irish, so we were determined to give birth a month late, in a snowstorm, uphill, and sideways.

Despite most roads being impassable, the car not starting, and John F. Kennedy’s nose running, we somehow made it to the hospital, up the elevator and almost to the delivery room. Almost. In fact, when the doctor told my dad he was now a father, he denied it. “That’s impossible,” he argued. “I just got here.” He was a bit peeved that he wasn't able to pace the waiting room like the dads in the movies.

I've been trying to warm up to him ever since.

In Brooklyn, much of the cold and wind is deflected by your neighbor’s home, built within inches either next to, under, or on top of, your home. Buildings are so close you can hear your neighbor’s sneeze, perhaps even feel his moist breeze. There are many drawbacks, but one bonus of living wall-to-wall with other people is that you are never really chilly. Plant a spacious, airy house on top of a ridge in the middle of nowhere, however, and you’ll freeze your agrarian tail off. A lovely view, yes, if you make it to spring.

Winter’s like the fierce beast at the zoo – it’s great, but only when you have some serious fortification between you and it. On our windowpanes, frost would create the most magical little ice sketches. Tiny, delicate white scrollwork wending its way around the edges of the glass, the engravings were daintier than those on the finest crystal. The only problem was that they were on the inside of our windows. I thought I might wake up one morning, tattooed all over in the loveliest ice etchings.

To conserve energy, lesser-used parts of the house, like the den, were closed off. But the rooms got so cold, pipes in the baseboard heating system burst because they had frozen, flooding part of the house. Sadly, this ruined some of the best window ice engravings.

For my birthday, I’d invite some friends over for a sledding party. We’d have some birthday cake then head outside. Only as parents in the northern realm are well aware, in winter little kids can’t simply head outside. They need boots and hats and snowpants and mittens and help putting all that stuff on. They need staff. By the time my mother had finished dressing the last of the party girls and sent her out, the first one was back in for dry mittens and cocoa. It was a revolving door – warm dry ones out, and cold wet ones in. For three straight hours, Mom was hunched over putting on and taking off mittens and boots and hats on little girls. A dog wandered by, and Mom inadvertently dressed it in a parka.

One of the toughest things was getting up in the morning. Heating oil was expensive, possibly even more expensive than the treatment for frostbite, so the heat was turned off at night, or down as low as possible without risking a burst pipe. First one up (that would be me) had to build a fire in the kitchen woodstove. And before we went to school, the cows and horses had to be fed. Some mornings were so cold I half expected some of the livestock to be waiting for me in the kitchen:

Midnight the Cow: About time you got up. Get the fire going!

Me: How did you get in here?

Midnight the Cow: Door was unlocked, once I busted all the ice off it. You take milk in your coffee?

Me: Gimme my robe back.

There is no better heat than that of a wood stove. It soaks into your skin like tropical sunlight, baking chilled bones and thawing attitudes. My usual stance was leaning against a wall reading a book, my back to the stove so the heat would melt the ice in my spine. I usually had to negotiate my way past several dogs and maneuver for the warmest spot. Lady, our Dalmatian/Beagle mix, was the biggest fan of the stove. If you happened to be in her favorite spot, she would often lean on you until you moved. We took extra care not to feed her potent leftovers, since the only thing worse than a dog fart is a dog fart on fire.

Brother Bob: What is that smell?

Me: I don’t sm-(gasp!) Oh, my! That’s horrible!

Bob: Did you put something weird in the stove again?

Me: No!

Bob: Smells like something died…or is dying…

Me: Lady!

Lady had been leaning against the woodstove. That was fine when the stove wasn’t fully loaded, but I had recently restocked it with wood, and I guess she slept through that key event, until the stove got going and the scent of her own pelt cooking woke her up. Now Lady was sporting a long, brown racing stripe the length of her body, looking like someone had made a feeble attempt to ‘connect the spots’ on her fur. It was the imprint of the stove – she had literally burned a line on her fur. Being half Dalmatian, the stereotypical firedog, she was quite embarrassed, and asked that we not make this event public, lest her mother find out. I assured her that dogs can’t read. At least not Dalmatians.

There were good sides to winter. We would ice skate on the pond in the back woods. It was a mile hike each way, and the pond usually had to be cleared of snow first, and fallen logs frozen in the ice made the skating interesting, but at least we got to skate. I likened it to climbing Everest - bust your butt to get there, take a picture, then go home.

Down the road, we’d gather a few friends and play pond hockey at a nearby farm. There was an added level of excitement because this particular pond had a spring at one end that never quite froze over completely. Sometimes we’d hear a monstrous craaaa-aack! and feel the ice drop beneath our feet. We’d leap for the nearest bank, feet flailing in the air like spastic, bubble-wrapped ballerinas, afraid to touch the ice again lest it give way completely beneath us.

One particularly spectacular experience was sledding down the driveway. Dad had his own snowplow, and instead of scraping all the snow off the driveway like a sane person, he packed it down like a bobsled run, even banking the turn nicely for the toboggans. We would all climb onto sleds and fly down the drive, dogs nipping at our mittens.

Dogs love mittens, especially when stolen off a sledding kid at 15 miles an hour. We’d zip down the hill, belly side down, hands on the sled handles to steer. The dogs would race next to us, growling, barking, teeth flashing, trying to swipe a glove or a hat. If you fought to keep your glove, you’d lose control of the sled and crash, often becoming a speed bump for the sledders behind you.

Brother Bob: Dog on your left!

Me: What? Car?

Bob: No – DOG!

Lady the Dog: Grrrrr…woof! (snap!)

Me: Mayday, mayday! I’m under attack!

Bob: Give her the glove! Give her the glove! Let it go!

Me: I’m going down! Aaaaagh!

I tuck my head as my body slams into a snowbank, missed by inches by oncoming sledders. My sled continues down the drive without me.

Sometimes it’s best to forsake the mitten to the beast, even if it means catching a cold like Kennedy.

Country Pumpkins

For a kid in the country, life can at times be lonely, especially at Halloween, when your lack of human contact translates directly into dismal candy poundage. Trick or treat all you want with the cows - they don't hand out tootsie rolls. Most of them don't, anyway.

The kids in town had it easy - they'd walk from door to door, scoring a Hershey bar or pixie stick every 8 seconds. They’d haul in enough sugar to last until Easter. But in the country, Halloween was, sadly, a non-profit industry. With the houses so few and far between, there was simply no way to accumulate a decent amount of candy, even with a parent driving you around. We still went through the routine, out of a ridiculous sense of ritual, although many traditions were altered a bit, for survival's sake.

The first tradition to tweak was the costume. Creativity was worthless- there was little reason to make or buy a fancy costume if you were just going to bury it under a parka anyway. We looked like lurching balls of yarn. If someone asked me what I was for Halloween, I'd reply, "I am cold!" That usually shut them up, and sometimes they'd even throw in some 'pity' candy.

Neighbor Lady: Oh, my – what are you dressed up as?

Me: I'm the tooth fairy, ok? Got any chocolate?

Neighbor Lady: Your pretty costume is all covered up by your jacket.

Me: Could we move this along, please? I’d love to stand here in the sleet and chat, but I can’t feel my toes.

The focus was instead on survival. Your costume would consist of as many layers as possible, for several reasons:

1. warmth – in upstate New York, sub-freezing temperatures in October were routine. We often had snow on the ground. Try wearing a Tinkerbell outfit and battling frostbite at the same time. My Aunt Marge did it once, but she had a huge jug of Gallo wine.

2. anonymity – with a ski cap pulled low across my brow, a scarf across my face, and a Sears polyester bubble-wrap parka pouffing out my torso like the Michelin Man, I was basically encased in an arctic burkha. No one would know it was me taking my little sister trick-or-treating, so no hassle at school for that. That wasn't me - that must've been her handler from the zoo. Humiliation could hurt as much as frostbite.

Plus, bundled up like that, I could murmur naughty invectives at people because they couldn’t tell what I was saying, my words muffled much like the linguistically challenged who burble at us via speakers at fast-food drive-throughs. Behind a Montgomery Wards ski mask and several layers of scarves, a cheery "F**k you!" was often mistaken for a "Thank you!"

3. protection - many dogs liked to play "Pull the mitten off the kid and make her drop her candy." Usually they'd settle for a glove or a hat, giving us a chance to escape. We kept extra, expendable clothes in the car to share with the next mutt we ran into.

However, nothing, nothing could deter Farmer Hornbeck’s guard goose. It was fast, loud, and frightening - honking, flapping and charging at us full throttle, wings akimbo and utterly outraged. It was quite adept at pulling off mitten after mitten, then going after your ankles. We kept candy corn in our hands to distract it, throwing the candy for it to eat in order to buy some time to reach the safety of our car. You knew if it attacked your ankles, you were going down. Then you were doomed, because no one would dare venture out of the car to save you. You had to lie still in the cold mud, hands about your face for protection, and wait for it to stop pecking at you and waddle away.

Neighbor Lady: Oh, my, look at you, all covered in mud – what are you dressed up as?

Me: The Creature from the Black Lagoon, ok? Got any chocolate?

Neighbor Lady: You should be more careful, dear. You got your pretty costume all dirty.

Me: Could we move this along, please? I’d love to stand here in the sleet and chat, but I can’t feel my freakin’ toes.

All this for a tootsie roll, or, heaven forbid, if the people were anti-sugar, a tiny bag of carrots or a toothbrush. At least Charlie Brown got rocks. You could do some damage with those.

While Mom drove us door to door, Dad stayed home and scared the living daylights out of any visitors. Actually, he did that every day, but Halloween was special.

Dad would put sheets over the small trees that lined the driveway, turning them into ghosts, but not really fooling anyone. The yard looked more like a redneck clothesline than a herd of spooky ghosts. I wanted to put a few cows in the front yard, paint them red and put duct tape on them – now that would be frightening, or at least be abstract art that could potentially win us government funding. But I guess that was tweaking tradition a bit too far, so we settled for Dad’s lame tree ghosts to spook any trick-or-treaters wandering our way.

What our Halloween visitors didn't realize was that one of the tree ghosts was actually not a tree at all, but rather my dad, under a sheet, pretending to be a tree ghost. They would drive slowly up our driveway, looking at our fierce horde of tree ghosts, exclaiming how they were soooo unscary, ha-ha, when suddenly one of the tree ghosts, usually Dad, would leap at their car. Everyone in the car would scream, wet their pants, and try not to drive off the cliff.

Did I mention the cliff? We lived on a ridge, and the driveway was shaped like a fishhook, angling across a huge front yard, the downhill side of it dropping off steeply. In daylight, the drive alone was enough to scare people away. Add darkness and a freaky dad-tree-ghost to the mix, and visitors simply never came back.

While Dad was busy 'greeting' people at home, we would trudge from farmhouse to farmhouse, braving fierce dogs, spooky cats, and creepy people, just to get a sticky, clumped popcorn ball that would immediately begin to suck lint from our clothing. My little sister often sat on hers, gluing herself to the car seat. At the next stop she'd realize she was stuck and squeal "Help meeeee!" I'd have to yank on her, hard, to release her from the firm grip of the sticky ball. Often the two of us would fly out the car door into the dirt, whatever goodies we had gathered spilling out into the darkness, our arctic padding saving us from injury. Mixed blessing actually, since I got to pull really hard on her arms, on the pretext of 'helping' her out of the car, and not get in trouble for it.

My sister once literally disappeared. She had been walking behind me, half a popcorn ball still stuck to her bottom, screeching just to keep warm, "Wait uuuuup! Wait uuuuup! Wait uuuuup!" when bloop! Gone. Nothing but serene, peaceful quiet.

Three miles down the road Mom noticed how quiet it was, realized Chatty Kathy was missing, and made me go back and find her. Turns out little sister had missed a step on a narrow walkway and had been swallowed up by a snowy ditch. The only thing that saved her from falling further into an icy crevasse was the sticky popcorn ball on her butt. It had caught in a crack and stuck, much like an ice axe would dig into the snow, saving its hiker from plummeting down Mount Everest. After sorting through her candy and discussing my fee, I pulled her out and we trudged on.

Because there were no streetlights, quite often it was incredibly dark. Pitch black, blanket-across-your-face dark. Sometimes we were lucky enough that the full moon was out, shining on the snow, so we could see our fingers shaking and be reminded how freaking cold we were.

By this time, if we could gather enough strength, we would start fighting in the car, and, if we were lucky, Mom would 'punish' us by turning the car around and going home. Then we'd eat all the candy left over from the people who didn’t visit our house anymore because my Dad had frightened them away. Why we ever left the farm is beyond me. Tree ghosts had much more fun.