Barracuda Summer

The calf only weighed a thousand pounds. It was all muscle, though. That’s what they said in town the next day. Black Angus. Hard to see at night.

My mother picked out the pattern and the material. An 80 piece Vogue camel hair full-length coat. The picture on the front of the pattern was classic—a thin-wasted brunette bobbed 60’s woman smiling. The heap of material took up a lot of space on the kitchen counter. It was soft with a light buttery golden-brown color.

In all of my 10 years in 4-H I had not been encouraged to sew. I never thought about it much, other than appreciating the fact that it hadn’t come up for discussion. Susanne had been the fashionista, designing and making clothes for her dolls and then everyone else in the family as long as I could remember. My big sister won purple ribbons at the State Fair year after year. To me, it paled in comparison to my entomology collection filled with black and green beetles, creepy spiders, and butterflies and moths—wings beautifully spread with silver pins stuck through crispy bodies. My “bugs”, as she called them, and my “carrots”, as she referred to all my award-winning vegetables were nothing compared to the fine sewing she did.

When I saw the pattern and material sitting on the counter it caught my eye briefly because of the yummy color on the bolt. I continued on my way through the kitchen without a second thought when my mother, who was standing at the stove called me back. “Do you like the material?” she inquired. “Would you wear a coat like that?”

Then she told me about her arrangement. She had hired Vivian Venneberg to work with me to sew the coat. I had heard of Mrs. Venneberg but had never seen or met her. All I knew was that she was known as the best seamstress in Pottawatomie County and that she lived way out in the sticks.

I felt as if the air had been sucked out of me. For the first time in 17 years I didn’t know what to say. And certainly since I had become a mouthy, surely teenager who didn’t get along with her mother it was unheard of for me to stay silent. I didn’t want to believe what she was saying. I couldn’t comprehend the magnitude of the task and felt completely overwhelmed by it. I couldn’t believe that my entire summer was about to be spent with some old lady out in the sticks. I hated my mother for setting up these impossible situations for me with the expectation of perfection and the fantasy that I would feel “good about myself” for having completed something that someone else had done for me. The thought of it made me miserable and I sulked off to my room to ruminate about my predicament.

Out in the sticks took on an entirely new meaning the first time we went out to the Venneberg farm. It took us a good 40 minutes until we turned off the asphalt highway onto a gravel road that had tall grass and sunflowers growing down the middle. After a while the gravel road turned into a rutted, one-car dirt path that ended in an 800 foot driveway. The outer buildings had suffered years of neglect and many of them were falling down. The house was a typical old wood-frame 2-story farmhouse that needed paint so badly it was impossible to tell if it had ever been painted. I slumped down in my seat and folded the foil of a piece of Juicy Fruit gum as small as I could make it. I was furious.

Vivian didn’t look like any farmwoman I had ever seen. She was skinny and the wrinkles in her face looked like you could fall in and never find your way out. Her dark almond complexion was different from all the people I’d known in my life. It wasn’t until years later it occurred to me she was Native American. To me, at that moment she was the enemy. Someone who was going to try to share what she loved with a tomboy who had no need to learn sewing. I decided right then and there that I would explore my limits of being mean. I would pretend to be nice but in reality I would pour my wrath into every word, every look, every smile.

My father drove the new car unexpectantly in the driveway one evening after work. At first, I didn’t know who it was. I had no idea the car was ours. A 1967 Plymouth Barracuda coupe---red with black vinyl interior. The large moon roof spanned the entire back of the car and gave way to thoughts of stargazing while drinking beer with friends. Never had my parents bought a car this sporty, this wild. Then the reality set in. This was the car I would be driving every day to go to sew with Mrs. Venneberg. Alone. Within seconds all my hatred melted away and I took the car for a spin. It was divine.

Everyday I would try to shorten the amount of time it took to get to her house. I had it down to 30 minutes. I would pass cars with ease and the confidence of a mature driver. I had been driving since I was 14, after all.

Cutting out 80 pieces of fabric took days. She would pin the pattern pieces on the material, all too aware of my indifference to learning to sew. I would cut around the little pieces with pinking shears. I covered up my anxiety about not knowing what I was doing by pretending to be bored out of my mind. It never occurred to me that she had feelings, too, until years later when I realized it must have been awful for her to have to spend her summer with a bratty, obnoxious teenager. She would carefully pin the pieces together and I would sew whatever she told me. We would stop in the late afternoon. Then it was just me and the Barracuda and the open road.

The coat took shape and I have to admit it was a thing of beauty. I took no credit for it, fully recognizing that fact that I still had no idea how to sew anything. She thought we would be done on Friday night. We worked hard all that day and by our usual stopping time still had a few more final touches left. We stopped and I played with some kittens while she made her husband and son and me some dinner. Fried chicken. Cole slaw. Sweet pickles she had put up the summer before, the size of fingers. Potato salad--the kind with the mustard. After eating and cleaning up we got back to work on the coat. We finally finished it just after it had gotten really dark. I draped the coat carefully over the passenger’s seat and drove slowly down the driveway without a second thought to the fact that I would never see or hear about her again. I took in everything my bright lights illuminated all the way to the highway. I wasn’t as comfortable cruising along at my usual daytime pace at first, but once I opened the windows and cranked up the radio the Barracuda hummed and seemed to take flight.

I could see a car way up ahead. The rolling hills made the lights disappear and then appear again. As I came up behind the car I could tell they had been drinking. Drunk. Their driving speed varied from fast to very slow. They were weaving all over the road. Each time we would climb a hill their car would slow down to a snail’s pace. I knew there was a long flat piece of highway coming up so I backed off and followed them, keeping my distance. When I saw the road open up I gunned the accelerator with all the power the Barracuda had to pass the other car. Just as I was even with it the headlights highlighted the black cow up ahead standing sideways in my lane. In that split second its enormous brown eyes locked with mine. There was nowhere to go. I hit that steer full force at 80 miles an hour. It slid up onto the hood and ended up precariously riding against the windshield. The impact of its weight turned the car sideways and we careened down the ditch at a fast speed perpendicular to the road. Inside the car each moment stretched out timelessly, saturated with fear. I was disoriented having lost my point of reference to the car, to the road, to my body, to space. But mostly, I had lost the point of reference to my life. I wasn’t able to see that the car I’d tried to pass had continued on its way because of all the shit that covered the windows. I slid seamlessly from Riley County into Pottawatomie on the only stretch of highway in the state of Kansas that had no signs or posts for that quarter of a mile. After what seemed to be an eternity the car came to a complete stop, upright. In the total darkness I could not breathe. Could not move. I was too frightened.

Suddenly a man was opening the car door. I recognized him as the brother of the man who rented the house across the street from my parents. He shone a flashlight in my face and made sure I was okay. Then he disappeared quickly and it wasn’t until I heard the show and the loud silence that followed that I knew the calf was dead. He proudly placed his gun in the back window of his pickup truck and we the rode into town without talking.

It wasn’t surprising that my parents didn’t believe me when I told them what had happened. The man, whose name I never knew, assured them I was telling the truth. I stood there in the living room, as I had all my life, this time in shock—the same but different now, clinging desperately to that camel hair coat.

To The Curb

The thing I found when I opened the first tub is the only dress I ever liked in my entire life. Pink with a Peter Pan collar—just like my mother always dressed me in. Size 4T. Embroidered on the front are 4 small chefs – the two on the top are spilling food on the two below. I remember liking the faces on the lower ones, clearly expressing their surprise (and dismay).

I carefully take the dress out of the gigantic zippered plastic bag I had used for safe storage. The bag is filled with tatted doilies, crocheted table runners, quilts – hours and hours of women’s handiwork. The women of my family. The Grandmothers of my tribe.

As I take the dress out my nose is hit with the cool dank smell of mildew. I turn the dress this way and that – letting memories wash over me. I am flooded with little girl memories of long ago.

Before I put the dress back in the bag I take my phone out of my pocket and snap a quick picture. Then I reinsert the dress, re-zip and lift the entire bag, carefully dropping it into a heavy black plastic garbage bag. I pull it to the out into the weak sunlight to the curb. Gone...

The garage is poorly lit. Natural light from a cloudy day is filtering through the open double door. The structure is more like a cave than a garage. The back end is dirt and dirt covers the top in a low mound. It is filthy here as well as damp. Cobwebs are delicately woven between the old stonewalls and random objects that have been left here through the years: a rusty old exercise bike, a green fertilizer spreader, and parts of an almost unrecognizable electric foot bath.

Seven portable air conditioners are resting all around the floor on 2 by 4s, looking like tombstones in the faded light. When I first entered the garage I thought the floor was made of dirt but now as my eyes have adjusted I see it is concrete. My memory of the concrete floor comes back to me. I vaguely remember it on another damp and cloudy day when I left my eight rubber tubs here ten years ago.

The tubs are packed with sentimental items that belonged to my mother and her family dating back to the 1800s when my grandfather and grandmother’s families arrived in Kansas from Switzerland. I never heard any stories about how they ended up in Neuchatel, Kansas or why they left their homes? Those stories of my history, of my life, are lost forever. My mother ended up with all these objects – things I do not know about, filled with memories that are not mine.

In the second tub are lots of books. I had put some of them in zip lock bags while others had been haphazardly left in the tub. All are ruined. Without emotions I fill another black plastic bag and drag it to the curb.

I open the 3rd tub and begin sorting through glassware. I recognize some of the hand painted flowers on plates my mother had hanging in our kitchen when I was growing up. I know nothing about the pink or purple candy dishes, the cut glass vase, or the crystal dessert or sherbet dishes. I state at them blankly with only the memory that my mother had loved them.

I still feel the pain of my mother dying too young. She was only 62 and the cancer spread quickly through her body. I was 27 and not ready to be orphaned, lacking both life skills and the maturity to be in the world without her.

From my birth until her death I was convinced I had ruined her life. Then after she died I began to realize that she had chosen her life. She had chosen her time to die – to die when we were all out of the hospital room, alone – a way out of her disappointing and guilt-ridden life. I realized it had nothing to do with me.

When she was dying I was angry, scared and lost. The life choices I made after her death reflected my confusion for decades. When my father hastily re-married he did not want my brother, sister or me to have anything of our mother’s. We insisted with an urgency we didn’t understand and took whatever he would allow of my mother’s family heirlooms.

I moved the many treasures around for years, from house to house, through relationship after relationship – yearning for her. If I had them out in view she would not be as gone. The items weighed me down, grounding me in the past but they did not make me happy.

Out of all the tubs I pick a milk glass swan as my memento. I remember it being around when I was growing up. I do not know how it made it into my parent’s house, or if it came from Switzerland. I do not care. I like it.

Now, at 66, I let it all go. I unburden myself of my mother’s “things” that fill these tubs with forgotten memories and untold stories. I tote garbage bags to the curb, shut the door and do not look back.

Dreaming “America”

Being in the world was what my grandfather valued most. He was born in Switzerland in 1885 and came to America when he was three, living in a Swiss farming settlement in Kansas call Neuchatel. Being a first generation immigrant at that time in America’s history required courage, ambition and the spirit of making something of yourself. My grandfather excelled at all. He became an astute businessman and entrepreneur, acquiring a number of retail and wholesale lumberyards in Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri by the time he was twenty-five. In 1909 he settled in Onaga where, managing the lumberyard, he added a grain elevator, got married, had my mother and 2 other daughters, bought some enormous farms nearby and buckled down to live life. 

Onaga was a town of first generation Europeans who were keenly aware of fitting in. Grandpa’s life was largely defined by his deep pride at being an American citizen. Notebooks with stories and things in it talking about how to be more “American” were read and reread. To this end, he became very immersed in the community taking an active part in civic affairs. He served many years on the City Council, and was Mayor of Onaga from 1929 to 1933. During these years, the sewer system was installed, natural gas mains were laid, and some streets were paved. Joining the Masonic Lodge, the Congregational Church and becoming a Shriner allowed other ways of being active and influential. Serving on the Pottawatomie County Fair Board for many years, he was one of the original stockholders. Having a keen interest in sports of all kinds, he was one of the organizers and staunch supporters of the Onaga Baseball team as well as financing and overseeing the installment a golf course. Perhaps the thing that brought the most pride was putting his three daughters through college, which he did during the Great Depression. He became extremely loved, trusted and respected in the community.

People are complex though, and the Philip Cosandier the world saw was in many ways incongruous to my Grandpa. To me, my grandpa was a constant source of anxiety whose presence was always there, whether he was or not. I find myself standing off to the side when I talk about him now. For, you see, in my family we were not allowed to talk about ourselves to anyone. But the truth is he was the Patriarch of our family who loomed over us, larger than life itself. I often wondered how he wielded so much influence and power. I surmised early on this was probably a remnant of “the old country” and how families were set up there.

The fear of him seemed strongest in his three daughters. They passed this down to us children by demanding lots of rules and do’s and don’ts about what we could and could not do to meet Grandpa’s standards with such great seriousness and intensity it was like someone would die if we didn’t follow all the rules without question. It was a lot of pressure on me, but paled in comparison to what I felt my mother and aunts suffered through the years. The family’s fear of Grandpa hung over us all like thick fog and distorted my childhood perceptions of him.

The unspoken family stories about him were passed down by osmosis at birth, I concluded when I was twelve. No one would argue that the stories truly had mythic proportions and created in our hearts and minds images that were a blend of Zeus, Rumpelstilsken, and God. Regardless of the energies he personified, the overpowering distinguishing characteristic was that he was not “just” a man—but something greater.

He dominated our family silently, never expressing his feelings. It seemed to me his control over his daughters, that stressed them out at the most basic level, came in the form of money that was given yearly or not at his discretion, in his “own sweet time” my mother would say. None of this was revealed directly to me but over the years pieces were woven into my life like a patchwork quilt—one perfect small hand stitch at a time. I was completely convinced that the perfect behavior required of me was crucial to smooth the way for our survival.

There was another situation relating to money that paralleled my mother’s. My father worked diligently and selflessly for Grandpa at the lumberyard for over 30 years being paid very little, with the promise that when my grandfather retired he would give the lumberyard to my parents. Instead, when he retired, Grandpa offered to sell the lumberyard to my father for the current appraised market value. I was old enough to understand that this was a tragic betrayal and it really saddened, angered and confused me. The dysfunctional ebb and flow of my grandfather’s control with money set up a family dynamic that reached far beyond my ability to read minds when no words were spoken.

I was scared of him. Once when I was around four or five I went with my father to the lumberyard on a weekend to get something for a customer. It was cold and wintery so my father left me inside while he went out to get what was needed. The front door of the lumberyard opened into an area with hardware displays where the public came in, got helped and paid for their purchases. Back behind this retail space was my grandfather's office. This was his private world and was entered by invitation only. I had never been invited or allowed in his office and that very fact drew me to it like a bee to honey.

The lights were off and it was getting toward evening so it was kind of hard to see. I stepped into the shadows and crept across the room timidly—terrified but excited to be in this forbidden place. Grandpa’s gigantic wooden desk practically filled up the entire room and left very little space for the roll-top secretary desk in the corner with the typewriter on it. I rolled a little bit when I scooted myself up into his large burgundy leather office chair. A calendar with big squares was in the middle of his leather-covered desk.  Even though I had never been there, I was certain everything was in its proper place. The two pens that stuck up from a metal base fascinated me. A large stapler and pads of paper with Onaga Lumber and Grain Company were within my reach. I did not touch anything, though. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I began to look around. My gaze had just landed upon the posting machine—a skinny, large black calculator-looking thing on a stand—when I felt grandpa’s presence.

Standing in the shadow of the doorway and I could see the anger in his face through the sunbeams coming through a back window that magnified the dust particles floating in the air. I was paralyzed. I knew I would surely die. When I had leaned back in his chair and put my small feet on his desk—wondering what it felt like to be him—I hadn’t anticipated getting caught. 

My breathing stopped when he stepped into the room. Slowly and purposefully I could hear the steps coming toward me, one carefully placed foot at a time. Then he put his hands on the desk and leaned forward. His breathing was irregular and hard. “Have you ever been bad before?” was all he said, and without giving me time to answer, slowly turned around and left. I knew I had done something unspeakable. So, I never told anyone about it, until now. And neither did Grandpa, I believe.

Another time when I was nine I remember being scared. I was mowing Grandma’s yard. I was pushing the mower up a substantial incline, smelling the green of the newly mowed grass, humming something about a hound dog by someone named Elvis Presley and thinking about what I would do after I finished mowing, when I looked up and saw Grandpa standing directly in my path. I quickly swerved the mower to one side to avoid a collision.  I was startled and a bit rattled. I turned the mower off and stood there in silence. Surveying the entire front yard critically, he looked me in the eye and asked, “what did you do, shave it?” I swallowed hard, and panicked as no words came into my mind to respond. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out two quarters, which he slipped into my trembling hand. “Don’t tell Grandma”, was all he said turning toward the house and disappearing.

As I got older I began to have experiences where I could tell from his actions there was genuine caring for me. This frightened me, as I didn’t know if I could trust my feelings or him. There was no doubt he delighted in taking his grandchildren to swim, to fish, for picnics, to amusement parks, to Kansas City for A’s baseball games. It was at these times, when our mothers weren’t there, that he relaxed. That’s when it seemed he loved being with us. Of course, he loved the boys the most. That was just the way it was, but that didn’t take away from the hotdogs, the rides, the happiness of spending afternoons at swimming pools in nearby towns.

Especially fun was the enormous box that would arrive filled with fireworks on Fourth of Julys. He generously and joyously let us, as well as children in the neighborhood, pop as many firecrackers, write our names with swirling sparklers, make musty-smelling black snake ashes on the sidewalk and shoot off as many roman candles as we possibly could. The fireworks coming out of the box seemed endless! At the end of the day when it got dark our fathers would light up the sky with exploding colorful fountains. Then we’d have homemade vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberries in it that our grandmother had made, waiting for us in a metal cylinder, ice and salt melting around it in a wooden tub under an old rag rug.

Another sweet memory I’ve never talked about before was when I was in high school, my first year running track. I was on the new cinder track that circled the football field. There was a rather large hill overlooking it. The first day at practice I just happened to look up and saw his baby blue finned Chrysler sitting all alone. When we were finished with practice, I broke away from my pack of friends and ran up to his car. The electric window opened slowly and without a word he reached out and handed me a pair of white leather cleats. I had never felt such a direct show of love from him. They were my size, too. How had he known? Every day for practice and at every meet he was in his car watching. It made me run faster to have someone interested and genuinely supportive of me.

Sometimes all the grandchildren would pile in his car and he’d drive fast and recklessly on the dirt roads home from fishing on one of his farms. One special way he enjoyed taking us home had a small hill that went up to a crest and then dropped down quickly onto a wooden one-car bridge. His foot would push hard on the accelerator pedal going up the hill and then he’d let the car fly until we’d bounce on that bridge hard enough for me to almost hit my head on the ceiling. When the car took flight he would scream out at the top of his lungs “whop-tee-do”. You cannot imagine my shock still to this day, that my stoic, proper grandfather would be screaming “whop-tee-do”, let alone driving like that!

I wonder if my grandfather, at the end of his life, felt like he had reached the level of Americanization he had so desired? Did he have any understanding of how his choices and those his family made gave him immense power, which created a world of fear for his family? I believe he would have recognized some things in his life as great successes and also admit to disappointments and regrets. From the outside, everyone viewed him as a huge success. From inside the family, our feelings were discombobulated, battered and bewildered.

It’s not surprising that Grandpa remains a mystery to me. I’ve never been able to merge the world’s relationship with him, my own experiences (both scary and wonderful) and the intense overlay my mother and my aunts projected onto our lives through him. It feels odd to be around someone for eighteen years and still not know or understand him. I have come to believe when humans think about what they want to call “God”; they translate that into a form they understand. But this Energy, this Source that we give the label of “God”, is not something we can ever understand. When we attempt to, the distortions are enormous. Was my grandfather human or was he God? Honestly, I don’t know...