STRAYS

Tuesday is the big deal. I will have a book for sale on Amazon. Still amazes me. I wrote a book that is almost 800 pages long. It has moments of humor, sadness, horror, and struggle. I show the reader the reality of generational trauma and how it haunts. Your parents are your teachers; their words and their actions teach you how to react, how to cope, and infiltrate every relationship. In turn, they learned from their parents, and so on. We carry with us the trauma of centuries, not realizing that it is in our consciousness. Studies show that trauma changes a person's DNA, which is then passed on to that person's children. Maybe the term "the sins of the father" is a warning about generational trauma.

The one coping skill that I am most grateful for this Thanksgiving Day is humor. As Mom often told me, "Laughing sure beats the hell out of feeling sorry for yourself and crying." Our parents gave my siblings and me the gift of laughter, the ability to see humor in every crisis.

Another short story that sadly had to be edited out for space. Left on the editing room floor, and out of the book, I present: Strays.

When the neighbors talked about us, living on the Wanderi place, the words, “Don’t have a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out of” were probably used.  I beg to differ.  We had a pot until Donna used it to boil an entire dead crow, making it useless.  And we had windows; it was just taking the plastic off to throw something out would be too much work.

The poverty line may have been miles above us in income, but Dad never seemed to realize that fact.  He had a propensity for strays.  True, whenever they took me to town as a small child, Mom said I would run down the sidewalk if I saw an unleashed dog. Screaming “Puppy,” I would drag them to the car.  I inherited that naturally from my father. 

Dad’s “tender heart” meant he wanted to provide a home to all of God’s creatures. Orphaned and tossed-away animals were brought home to be nursed back to health and coddled.  The people who were tossed away were brought home, too.  This started long before I was walking around, so I only heard the stories over the years of some of the more interesting characters.

There were the two Freds. They were unemployed and uneducated bachelors, homeless in a state where winter lasts for months, and without family.  Recognizing their situation, my father offered them room and board for “helping” around the farm.  From what Donna and Tubby told me over the years, the reasons that they were homeless were that neither one had the intelligence nor the ambition to work.

Now the story is from my memories, given to me in bits and pieces about a time when I was small enough to sit in a highchair.

First came Fred. He was benign and made himself somewhat worthwhile on the farm. Then another stray came.  He didn’t talk much, and Dad didn’t know his name. 

Being Minnesota polite, no one wanted to admit they didn’t know the name of this stranger now living in their house, so no one asked his name.  Tubby, being about nine years old at the time, decided the second man’s name was also Fred.  So, he was called Fred. 

Later, somehow, they found out his name was George, but it was too late, and he already answered to the name Fred.  Neither of the men is to be confused with Fred the nightgown, which was named after Fred Flintstone.

Fred the Second was a man who lived on in infamy.  He hadn’t bathed in years or changed his clothing. Donna said he had a crust of dirt covering every visible part of his body. Mom’s favorite story would make her giggle as she told it, even years later. 

“He was eating a piece of bread, and he had put jelly on it.  That batch of jelly was kinda runny, and it dripped off the bread and ran down his arm to the inside of his elbow. He didn’t skip a beat.  He stuck his tongue out and licked that jelly off the inside of his elbow, followed the trail all the way back up his arm to the bread.  I never saw such a thing.  Who the hell can do that?  It left a white line on the inside of his arm from his elbow to his hand.”   

The stench emitting from Fred was so rank that Donna and Tubby would fight at each meal to avoid sitting next to Fred.  Dad refused to sit next to the man he had moved into his home, and no one even suggested to Mom that she sit next to Fred’s pungent aroma. 

The baby (me) was in a highchair, sitting next to Mom, so she could feed me while everyone sat at the table and ate. We all ate at the table at the same time for every meal.  Leaving the table without eating your meal was not allowed.  Donna and Tubby's fights meant the loser had to sit next to Fred.

Dad announced to Donna and Tubby as they screamed and punched each other, “Youse two quit your goddamn fighting every time we sit down to eat.”

Donna and Tubby came up with a solution to avoid Dad’s anger. Not sitting at the table for a meal was not an option.  But fighting over who had to sit next to Fred got them into trouble.

“You couldn’t sit next to him because the smell was so strong your eyes would water, and you couldn’t taste the food.” Donna told me.

The baby didn’t seem to mind Fred. I was a cheerful and smiling baby, babbling and cooing to anyone.  The solution was simple: Fred and the baby would sit at one end of the table, and the rest of the family would crowd together upwind and as far away as possible. 

When I heard the story years later, I was aghast. 

“You put me next to a filthy, stinking stranger?  Just because I couldn’t talk, I didn’t get a vote?”

Mom would shut me up, “Oh, you loved Fred, you two had a great time.”

Perhaps it was because I wasn’t toilet-trained yet, so I was used to odors following me around, but everyone agreed that the baby loved Fred. 

Mom said I would sit in my highchair next to Fred as we all ate, and that Fred would feed me with one hand. With his free hand, he would shovel food into his mouth, unaware of his own body odor. 

I would cheerfully babble and bounce in the highchair, joyfully sharing my meals with Fred.  After I was done, Fred would take me out of the chair, put me on his knee while he had coffee, and teach me the alphabet and how to count.

“This old man, he played one, he played knick knack on my thumb, with a knick knack, paddy whack, give the dog a bone, this old man went rolling home.” 

Curled up against his filth-coated overalls, held by his equally filthy arms, and snuggled into his ragged and dirty beard, I was content.  Mom could eat without having to stop and feed the baby every few seconds, and could clean up afterwards without me fussing to be let out of the highchair.  Donna and Tubby could sit upwind.  Dad had no fighting children to disrupt the harmony of his home. 

Even years later, when the stories were told, I was upset. 

“You let a baby sit in filth, be fed by a man who was covered in germs, and sit on the knee and be bounced by a man, who, may I remind you, nobody even knew his name!”

“Oh, you loved Fred.”

T he Freds were just a long line of our guests. Some were more dangerous than others. One led Mom to claim that Tubby was destined to hang.

True, when trying to get calves out of a swamp in the middle of uncharted “state land”, Donna accidentally roped Tubby with a twine string and almost hung him.  That was the first time Tubby hung, but it wasn’t the last.

Whenever a cousin on Mom’s side got into trouble during their teenage years, the punishment was to be sent to our farm to "help”. I’m sure the labor was unpaid, and the food was meager and unappealing. The working hours were relentless. It was always amusing to have those "city relatives" come and stay on the farm.

With their own vision of how a cattle farm should operate, our wayward cousins were often "cowboys." One cousin in particular, Arnie, had a rope with a lasso on the end, and he was determined to rope and wrangle our wild Holstein youngstock at every opportunity.

Cousin Arnie, a city juvenile delinquent sent to us instead of a reform school, seized the opportunity on the farm to be a real cowboy. When he had gotten off the Greyhound bus a few weeks earlier, he had hair past his shoulders and was wearing bell-bottoms and love beads.  Dad took one look at him, marched him into the barber shop, and now he looked like the rest of us.  Forced to forsake his hippie lifestyle for plain country living, Arnie embraced the cattleman’s life.

One afternoon, the entire family gathered in the barn.  This job was predicted to be difficult, requiring even our neighboring cousins and their father, Uncle Lester, to help. This meant Dad and his brother were both swearing and yelling at their children, creating drama as the cattle were even more unsettled by the noise. I was small enough to be assigned to stand in the manger, to “head off the strays.”  

The cousins were trying to gather the yearling cattle into a group to be separated and sent to auction. Arnie stood off to the side, swinging his rope dramatically above his head. I watched him twirl his lasso exactly like he had seen in the Western movies on TV.

Arnie’s first throw accidentally caught Uncle Lester's cap and flung it into a pile of fresh cow shit. Lester was known for his temper; even I knew this was going to be trouble. Lester literally bounced when his hat flew, flapping his arms and shouting profanities. He picked up his farmer's cap and, wiping it on his overalls, flung a stream of insults and profane words at Arnie.  Arnie was unaware of Uncle Lester; he had gathered up his lasso and was twirling again.

My siblings and our cousins, in the meantime, didn’t stop working.  Someone else was catching hell, and if they didn’t look busy, they could be next.  Their only goal was to separate the steers and heifers and load the steers into the cattle trailer waiting at the end of the barn.

Tubby managed to tackle an errant steer, holding on for dear life as he yelled at the calf to stop. The poor calf, with a weight around its neck and a voice screaming in its ear, picked up speed, running faster in circles. Tubby didn’t dare let go, or the angry insults would be headed in his direction.  Holding on for dear life, he wrapped his legs around the steer, unable to keep up with the galloping Holstein.

Arnie swung his lasso again and roped the calf that was carrying Tubby. For the first time, Arnie’s rope hit his target. The rope slid neatly around both the calf's neck and Tubby's neck as well. Arnie pulled tight on the rope, binding Tubby’s neck to the calf’s neck, both gripped in the lasso.  

"I got him! I got him!" Arnie screamed in excitement.

"Help!" Tubby managed to yell.

He was unable to pull at the rope around his neck that tethered him to the now even more terrified steer. Tubby didn’t dare to let go of the steer now; he would be dragged by the noose around both their necks and hanged if he did. All he could do was wrap both of his legs and arms around the steer and go along with the ride as he screamed.   

Arnie pulled hard on the rope in traditional cowboy fashion, while the rest of us yelled at him.

"Let go! You’ve got Tubby!"

“Stop, you’re gonna kill him!”

“Let go of the fucking rope, you idiot.”

Meanwhile, Arnie's cowboy boots dug in, and he leaned back to pull tightly against the rope.

After Tubby and the steer ran in circles for what must have felt like an eternity, the steer was finally cornered and stood still.  Arnie realized what he had done and dropped his precious lasso, and the noose was pulled off Tubby’s neck.

Tubby survived with rope burns around his neck like an old Western television character that had survived a hanging.  Mom, in Tubby’s defense, told Arnie to “shove that rope up your ass”.

This was followed by a barrage of insults by Dad and Uncle Lester, with the cousins joining in at every opportunity. 

Arnie lost his bravado and cowboy enthusiasm after that incident. He had expected accolades for his western roping and wrangling and probably felt unappreciated. The dressing down by his aunt’s husband and his brother must have made an impression.  Arnie never touched his rope again during his time of punishment with us. 

Unfortunately, his mother’s hope that he would be scared straight by a summer at our farm was in vain. I wonder if, while in prison, he regaled his cellmates with stories from his childhood as a cowboy.

Tubby was never fond of farm animals, and this incident probably contributed greatly.  In one of life’s little jokes, it was always Tubby who got the worst of every situation while working with cattle. If anyone was going to be kicked, stomped, or trampled, it was always Tubby.  Inevitably, it would be made worse by one of Dad’s stray guests.