Orange Shag Carpet

When I talk about going home, I am usually referring to the ranch-style brick house in the country that my parents built when I was ten. But the “formative” years, according to developmental psychology, did not occur in this setting. They began in a little railroad town in Green Ridge, Missouri that, with the exception of a Casey’s gas station that went in after we moved and the structures that have fallen in, it hasn’t changed all that much in the last hundred years.

The little house where our family began isn’t there anymore. It was just a little four-room uninsulated house. Well... technically it was six rooms if you count the teeny bathroom between the bedrooms and the closed-in porch turned laundry room. It was pea green on the outside. Vibrant burnt orange and brown shag carpet was the base color for decorating. It probably camouflaged stains well, like black tire prints when my dad would ride his Harley right up the concrete steps and into the living room to keep it out of the weather. My mother would flail like a hen when he would do that, which only seemed to amuse him. He has always loved a good challenge, which is probably why he fell for this firey redhead.  It didn't hurt that she was stunningly adorable.

The linoleum floor in the kitchen was two shades of deep burgundy. That’s where the wood stove lived that, with the exception of some floor heaters, would heat our house in the winters. The linoleum was peeling up in the corner where it met the entrance to my brother’s and my bedroom. Our bedroom door was an old fuzzy blanket held up by a nail in each corner and tucked to the side by a brown vinyl kitchen chair. Although I cannot recall the color of my bedroom carpet, I remember the linoleum because I used to play with my Barbie dolls on the floor near that entrance. My mother forbade me to cut their hair, so I always tucked their freshly trimmed blond locks under that curled lip in the linoleum floor.

Sometimes we would walk two or three blocks to Warren’s. That was a small grocery store that surely sold important things, like cans of Campbell’s soup, gallons of milk, and loaves of bread. But the only thing of interest to me was the open cooler that held cold cans of Country Time lemonade, the candy shelf that housed the big three-packs of sour SweetTarts, and the rows of intriguing breakable figurines that lured little fingers like a magic flute. Oh, yes, and the Pepsi glass bottle machine that would always eat my coins because I was never strong enough to pull the bottle out by myself, and the boxes of Cracker Jacks that lured me not by my tastebuds, but by my greed for the surprise hiding at the bottom--every child’s first exposure to gambling. Oh, the dilemma of choices and risks.

I remember walking home from that store one day while pushing my bike and feeling very angry toward my mother who was trying to teach me a life lesson. She had told me to put my tennis shoes on before we left and I hadn’t listened. I think I settled with some slick wooden sandals with a stretched-out wide blue strap that uselessly came over the top of my foot. With all five toes hanging over the ends and touching the ground, they were almost impossible to walk in, let alone ride a bike. She let me figure it out the hard way. But on the way home I remember grumbling, “I cannot wait until I am a grown-up,” to which she replied that being a grown-up is really hard, and that someday I will be wishing I was a kid again.

I can’t imagine how hard life was for them back then, just starting out with a family at twenty and seventeen. When they had to think strategically about keeping their newborns warm in the winters and cool in the summers. When they rationed dinner portions and milk, and my dad would siphon gas out of one car to add to the other to keep one running until the end of the month. But our parents still found ways to lavish us with special things - like a walking trip with mom to Warren’s in the summer for Country Time and SweetTarts. And driving ten miles to “town” (the nearest small city) after church on the first Sunday of the month (after payday) so we could eat at Wendy’s. We didn’t usually go in, probably because my parents appreciated the car’s built-in restraining device called seat belts. So we would order at the window, park the car in the parking lot, and eat our food. My mother didn’t understand that dipping my french fries into my Frosty was the best part, nor did she understand that my miserable seatbelt squeezed me tighter every time I wiggled in my seat, which was a lot. So I would wait until my little brother, who could paint the windows with his french fries and Frosty, to unhook his seatbelt so that our mother would let me out of mine. Otherwise, I would simply dip my french fries when she wasn’t looking. Frosties and french fries. Those were some good ol’ days.

And while I never find myself wishing I could be a kid again, I will admit, I sure do miss those simple treats. Like a fresh pitcher of red or purple kool-aid. And Sunday night movies on ABC with my bowl of instant chocolate pudding. And trips to grandma’s house or the park for family reunions with all the cousins whose names I could never remember. And chasing rainbows in the lawn sprinkler. And birthdays and Christmas that don’t feel like they really come anymore.