Getting an adult to buy you treats isn't an easy task unless your blessed with grandparents that aren't poor. I can almost end this tale right now. That sentence should be enough for everyone else in the world that isn't blessed with a modicum of wealth, which should be about 99% of the global population. However, since you are reading my online story the assumption can be made that you didn't grow up destitute and maybe you didn't even grow up without "online"...so I shall progress.
The neighborhood I lived in was somewhat of an island in the farmland of Arkansas. A highway to nowhere was being built a stone's throw away and we children lived in the purgatory between rural and urban life. A school bus would pick us up and deliver our souls to an elementary in the city only to return us to the semi-wilds of our homes in the afternoon.
Our parents were some of the last "dad works, mom stays at home" Americans and that meant we were not guaranteed anything. Your meals were dependent on whether you were home when they were served. No cookie jars sat waiting on the counter. Convenience stores were something of an oxymoron as they were neither convenient nor stores that accepted the currency we children carried, namely attractive stones and dead insects.
I didn't bother myself with the problem of obtaining candy early on. I wasn't really aware that I needed anything outside of the things I already had until 1st grade. Most of the school year had already passed and the summer loomed large for me and the kids in my grade. We had survived learning math and grammar but had succumbed to the onslaught of 4th and 5th grade bullies. Not having the crutch of alcohol to heal our daily wounds something else had to fill the void. Candy.
I can't say that candy was something we were all ignorant of at the time it was just we didn't realize how deep and wide that river flowed until 1st grade. And I can't say it was because we were 1st grade either. It was the timing. The Empire Strikes Back was just released and after going to the theater, which ever American kid did to see that film, it was woefully apparent that there was more candy out there than we had ever been exposed to.
Our parents should have never bought us those boxes of candy to take with us in to the most epic movie of our young lives.
The crux of the situation came when me and my friends realized that no one was going to pay us to do our chores. They were done gratis for food and board.
How can we supplement our non-existent salaries with real money to purchase gum and chocolate?
There were no lawns waiting to be mowed. The kids living in the associated homes were already tasked with taking care of it. Collecting aluminum cans was still a few years away. Simply put, there was nothing for a kid to do in my neighborhood to earn money.
That is until a middle-aged woman moved in to a large house at the mouth of our neighborhood.
She didn't make her presence known. No fan fare. She just started mowing the fields behind her house and clearing out the old junk from the farm that used to exist there. It wasn't until she had a bunch of guys come pour gravel next to the big house that I even took notice. The sound of heavy equipment and loads of rocks (stones being one of the trade-able commodities for us kids) was unmistakeable and irresistible. I stood at the barbed wire fence that used to hold back cattle and looked longingly south towards her big house and the trucks unloading stone by the ton.
The whole day passed as men and equipment came and went. I watched her walk in and out of the house with the men giving them drinks and carrying boxes of different sizes. Her long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail barely noticeable behind the jeans and baggy button-up. She looked almost not a woman from my young child perspective compared to the women I saw everyday. Reflecting back now I would say she looked every bit the frontier woman without the long dress, maybe a cowgirl even.
Almost a week passed with my ever curious eyes watching her from the fence at the edge of her lawn before I walked up to the side door. Let me rephrase that. Before I walked up in the daytime while she was outside and watching for someone to approach, as I had already made several reconnaissance missions to the house to see what she was up to.
The day I finally walked up the slope of her yard to the large back porch where she was busy at work assembling picnic tables there was nothing else in my mind but to finally understand what this activity was all about.
She must have seen me every time I stood at the edge of her yard and maybe when I ventured up to the house as well since she greeted me with "I was wondering when you were going to finally introduce yourself.".
Not being shy I told her my name and asked her what she was doing here (here being my neighborhood and woods). She replied that she bought this old house and was going to open a restaurant. I asked her about a thousand questions about the place, her porch, the furniture, the trucks, her hair, what kind of food, and so on. While she answered my questions she would ask for, and point to, a certain tool over one the rail and I would fetch it. She would ask me to hold this one thing up while she did this or that, and I would.
Eventually, I was just talking and working with this woman in order to get all my questions answered.
When she finally began the retreat inside for the evening I followed her in. Inside there were pool tables and nice wood dining sets. A bar with bottles. Male and female bathrooms. It was something I had only experienced in movies. I'd been to a few restaurants with my family but never something like this. A bar. A saloon.
My amazement must have been palpable because she came up to my side and put her hand on my back to gentle guide me out. She thanked me for stopping by and extended the offer that I could come by again, when she wasn't too busy.
I went home and played with my friends until the street lights came on. I spoke nothing of my experience. I went home and ate what was left of dinner. Went to bed. Dreamed of her saloon and the gun fights that would take place there and woke up ready for school to end before I even took my shower.
I remember nothing of that next day until I ran off the bus passed my sister and straight down the street towards the new neighbor.
She was in the front lawn pouring mulch around some flowers when I ran up with a hello. She smiled and said my name. I began asking her a thousand more questions and she must have known it was not going to end quickly so she walked up the steps to the wrap-around porch, and in to the double dutch doors. She started to fiddle around with chairs and I asked if she needed any help. She didn't show any signs of irritation but said that there were many things to do and a little boy couldn't help. I asked her what she needed done and she said "dishes".
What an ingenious move! How that word could instill fear in most children.
She didn't understand me very well it seemed. A million other boys would have run away at the sound of "dishes" but not me. Nothing could turn me away from an adventure.
I replied that I would help her out with the dishes and she led me over behind a counter where two huge sinks held glasses of all kinds, tin-ware, and utensils all piled up. She showed me which knobs to turn and where the soap was held and left me to it. I cleaned everything with gusto all the while watching her move through the immense room, picking up tables and placing them here and there. She'd pause and reflect on the choice and then rearrange them with chairs and vases until whatever idea she had in her mind's eye was pleased. I scrubbed each cup and ladle with a smile on my face watching her go about her business.
Looking back I didn't have one memory of a plan. I just wanted to be inside this new place and meet this new person.
It wasn't until an hour or so later that she came back behind the bar where I was still drying off glasses and asked me if I wanted to work for her that it even came to mind that I could earn money.
Once she said she could use help I realized that I was sitting on a gold mine.
She explained that I would need to come here every day and dust off the pool tables, clean the bathrooms, wash the dishes, and mop the floors. Once I had completed these tasks she would pay me one dollar and fifty cents.
One dollar and fifty cents.
That was six candy bars!
Holy crap-a-toly. I was going to rule my own destiny. Every kid in the neighborhood would get a piece of candy from me and be my friend. They all were my friend already but this would make me ruler of the kid kingdom.
I took the job.
I scrubbed toilets, poured hot water in to buckets and mopped the hardwood floor, picked up pieces of broken glass out on the big wrap-around porch.
And every day she would pay me. Cash.
I don't remember how long I worked there but it only ended when my dad took a job in Tulsa, OK and we had to move that the dream ended.
I had become a candy mogul at school. With my surplus candy I would sell other kids things like Fireballs, sixlets, Hubba Bubba, and so on during the school day at a small mark up. Since, schools didn't have vending machines and crap like that a kid like me could make a killing.
Working at the Vintage House was my first job.
It was my favorite job. The moment I realized that I controlled my destiny and no one, not even my parents, could stop me from taking what I wanted from life.
Thank you blonde, pony-tailed, lady. You helped me become a man.
No comments:
Post a Comment