THIS STORY WAS WRITTEN FOR MEDIUM’S THE CHALLENGED.

A boy becomes a man, turtle step by turtle step, with the help of supervising adults, including the first, my mother, a task master if there ever was one.

*

I worked paid jobs every summer from boyhood until I became a college professor at the age of 35, which included: delivering papers, scooping ice cream, managing a snack bar, frying burgers on a flat top grill, painting houses, sewing tents, gophering for forklift Frankie, laying cement, and selling encyclopedias.

And yard work, lots and lots of yard work, every adolescent summer on Thursdays. It was how my two brothers and I earned our allowance.

As I recall, in the fifties, in our middle-class neighborhood, every mother but one stayed at home. Women ran the neighborhood. Mrs. Weinswag complained to my mother over the phone about her wet newspaper, loud children, and Sam, our beagle, pooping in her yard. Mrs. Tate watched for daytime burglars from her front porch. Mrs. McMillan exposed the treehouse gang activities of Mark, Vinnie, and me. Unmarried Miss Browner puttered in her garden and never said a word. Mrs. Barten let us ride our bikes down the little hill in her backyard.

Next door neighbors Timmy and Jimmy’s mom worked somewhere, which meant that after Wiffle ball games we played on a makeshift diamond in the driveway we shared, we’d go into their kitchen and grab candy bars from a drawer.

Can you imagine a treasure trove of Snickers, Three Musketeers, and Milky Way bars, available anytime you want? One day, I brought one home and showed it to Mom. She took it and said, “I don’t want it to ruin your lunch. Besides, it’s Thursday and time to mow right field.”

*

This was my childhood home. The people who bought the property when Mom, at 95, went into a memory care unit, replaced the grass lawn with this monstrosity, I assume, because they didn’t want to mow.

Around the back, there’s a two-level yard divided by a stone wall. The top part of the property included a garage, flower beds, and a line of bushes that served as the outfield fence. The bottom sported a patio made of flat concrete slabs, which my dad rebuilt many times, surrounded by additional garden plots. My little brothers Peter and Pat weeded the beds. I cut the grass.

It was my Dad who showed me the rope technique he used for the front lawn. He tied a lengthy cord to the green Lawnboy handle so that he could pull the mower up and down the terrace. The first time I tried it, I shredded the cord on the first downward pass. It was a Thursday, so he was at work.

Mom was overseeing Peter’s and Pat’s weeding in the backyard. Impatiently, she said

It’s your job, Paul. Figure it out.

If I discarded the cord and mowed crossways, would I and the mower tumble into the street and be run over by the milkman?

We didn’t, so when I finished, I pushed the mower to the backyard where Mom was patrolling the fence line, hands on hips, looking over their shoulders, and barking weed commands.

My first boss.

A few years later, my second chief, Wendall Ginsberg, owner of a Baskin-Robbins ice cream outlet, said on my official first day, after a week of scoop training

Paul, wherever you are in the store, I will see you.

I knew exactly what he meant.

Please Come Along for the ride

THIS STORY WAS WRITTEN FOR MEDIUM’S CROWS FEET.

From the photo, you can guess how this tale ends. Buying a car is like making sausage. The product looks good, but you don’t want to see the rest of the story.

However, this is a fun ride. Come on along. By the way, I played the silent chorus in this four-act drama.

Act I: Homework

“You need to take a man with you. Those car dealers in Omaha are slick and they will take advantage of you,” said a well-meaning septuagenarian banker to Rebecca 15 years ago when she told him about her quest to purchase a new red Mazda3 sedan.

Of course, she didn’t take a man. Instead, she did her homework and went into the dealership prepared to negotiate. When she drove into the lot in a muffler-challenged Ford Pinto, another older guy offered, in a friendly, patronizing voice, “Oh, I see you brought us a hot rod.”

Three hours later, the younger male salesperson commended her, saying, “You did your homework, so I have no problem with this deal that works out for both of us. Too many people come in unprepared. You didn’t.”

Yesterday, she traded in her beloved Mazda3 with 116,000 miles for the Mazda CX-50 Hybrid you see in the photo. Two weeks of preparation had led her to a bottom line of $28,000, including the trade-in.

Act II: The Car

On the hour drive to the dealership, Rebecca summarized her thinking: “I want a Hybrid and I’m ready to give up the stick shift. I’m 73 and want one less thing to think about while driving. The CX is larger and safer, and the reviews are generally positive. Let’s see how this goes.”

The day before, Rebecca had called and set up a 9:00 a.m. appointment. Mason met us as we walked through the door. He led us to his cubicle and asked if we wanted to take the car around the block. To our left was a service counter, and right, two display cars, a ping pong table, cornhole board and bean bags, waiting area with coffee machines and a bowl of apples, and four or five desks, all with customers. It was a busy Saturday morning.

It looked like all the salespeople were young men, with the lone exception of an older man who was missing his left hand and deftly used it to balance his phone. In a glassed-in corner office, a young woman sat across from a couple, with paperwork strewn across her desk. I assumed she was the business manager.

Mason handed Rebecca the key and walked us outside to introduce the car. These days, auto dashboards resemble the Star Trek Enterprise. Our Scotty gave us just enough information to feel comfortable.

Behind the wheel, Rebecca took us for a fifteen-minute ride. She was particularly interested in noise level and the feel of the steering. Was it tight or loose?

Act III: The Negotiation

As the late sportscaster Keith Jackson used to say after witnessing a great play, “Oh, Nellie.”

Ninety minutes later, I realized I had witnessed a master at work.

After the test drive, Rebecca and I sat in the car for twenty minutes. Mason, wise beyond his years, left us to our own devices, which we used to Google various questions and discuss what we had experienced.

The two main criteria, noise and steering feel, clearly got passing grades. I asked Rebecca what she thought about the car’s visibility, my number one criterion when I purchased my Subaru Forester. “Not quite as good as your car, but much better than the Mazda3.”

As we settled across from our newest, young friend, Rebecca had decided on three things: she liked the car, $28,000 was her bottom line, and she wanted the weekend to think it over.

She and Mason talked over the purchase details, interspersed with personal anecdotes. He seemed comfortable with a couple who could be his grandparents. Not all young people are. This was his second year selling cars, and Tom, his supervisor, “used to sit at this desk.”

When Rebecca and Mason hit that $28,000 wall, he said Let me run this by Tom. I thought about William Macy as Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo, chatting with his manager. We know how that turned out. But movies aren’t real life.

Tom introduced himself and put a piece of paper in front of Rebecca. He was an older, more forceful character than Mason. At first, I didn’t like him. It turns out Rebecca didn’t either. Both of us would change our minds.

The last line on the sheet was $30,000, with a $5,000 trade-in. Rebecca studied the offer and said, “I need $8000 for my 3.” Tom replied, “I can’t give you $8000, the software tells me it won’t work, we won’t be able to get more than $7200 on the lot.”

He continued, “Let me ask you this. Could I persuade you to buy the car today? If I can, maybe we can move the numbers closer to where you want them.”

If the bottom line is $28,000, I’ll pay cash today.

Rebecca had been saving for a new car for many years—she knows cash opens doors.

“Let me run some different numbers,” said Tom, and continued, “I love your little stick-shift car. We want that car on our lot.”

He came back with $28,500. “Good enough,” said Rebecca, as she extended her hand.

Act IV: The Denouement

When she finalized the purchase in the business manager’s office, Rebecca declined all the extended warranties offered by Sam, who now sat in the chair.

Mason, Tom, Sam, and Rebecca. While each acknowledged me, their eyes always focused on her. There was no outward sign of what was typical one generation ago, that it was the man who was in charge.

I’m guessing Rebecca’s granddaughters will find this circumstance the norm in their future big-ticket purchases.

As for their partners, they might enjoy simply being along for the ride while watching a master at work.

THIS STORY WAS WRITTEN FOR MEDIUM’S THE CHALLENGED.

*

It’s early June 1973, and Paul Simon’s Kodachrome is playing, and playing, and playing on the car radio as I’m driving on America’s East-West Interstate 80.

The bastards were going to pour sand down my gas tank. Greg and Steve were the worst of the most notorious class in the history of St. John’s Elementary School in Burlington, Iowa.

No wonder Mrs. Smith retired early, replaced by this lamb fed to the lions, who quit every night for seven months.

44 6th graders! I tried to be their friend. That failed miserably. I’ll need a new strategy for the fall. No more Mr. Nice Guy.

Was it worth $5,432?

My first new car, monthly payments, and two weeks before the summer cement factory job begins.

It’s early morning at the Brady Street exchange: Will I go west to the Rockies or east to DC?

The mountains and all that space, or Abe, the Mall, and Nixon?

East it is. Sorry, John Denver.

*

I first heard it around Chicago.

When I think back to all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all

Oh man, I’m such a schmuck—the irreverence of it all. That’s got to be part of the secret. To succeeding in this fuckin’ adult world. Someone’s got to be the grown-up and he’s got to have his shit together. How do I do that?

By Pittsburgh, I’ve heard it ten times. Thank God there’s a Motel 6.

Abe looks so serene, Jefferson is arrogant, and the White House hides a crook.

I love the sense of being in the center of it all.

I should call my parents and tell them I went east, not west.

Maybe tomorrow.

I like this freedom and feel like I’m on the cusp of something.

The greens of summer make you think all the world’s a sunny day

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Note: I slowly figured out the teaching gig and would come to love my middle schoolers. I remained a nice guy, with a dash of firmness and a dollop of consistency. I taught 6th grade for five years before transitioning to college teaching, which presented its own set of challenges. Fortunately, I caught Greg and Steve in the school parking lot before they ruined my new car engine. In those days, the fuel tank cover did not lock. I checked a few years ago. Neither has served prison time.

My Toyota Corolla started rusting three years later, and I traded it in. This was before Toyota figured out how to make better cars.

To this day, “Kodachrome” the song warms my heart and picks me up. And the Netflix film by the same name, starring Jason Sudeikis (Ted Lasso) and Ed Harris, is a poignant father-son film, alas, sans the song.

One type helps me become a better person

THIS STORY WAS WRITTEN FOR THE MEDIUM PUBLICATION, THE CHALLENGED.

*

Paul’s a decent guy. I’ve grown to like him. But sometimes, he can be a tyrant. The Putin of his little world. A nasty piece of work. Self-involved.

Oh, he hides it well behind that self-satisfied smile.

Take yesterday, for example. He perfectly timed the six-minute drive down Water Street in his Subaru Forester, arriving at the bakery at 6:31 a.m. The pecan rolls should be ready; Paul will be first in line.

It’s his second Forester, by the way. The first was a lemon. This one, five years old today, has a brand new air conditioner. Paul wrote about that fiasco here. He wrote about why he finds self-promotion difficult here, here, and here.

He writes a lot about himself. Who’s he trying to kid? He’s more like that narcissist in the White House than he cares to admit.

About that second flawed Forester — he thought about a Buick Encore. It gets better gas mileage and is more environmentally friendly in other ways. Its air conditioner probably would have lasted longer than five years. Most of the Republicans he knows drive Buicks. So did his father.

Paul’s a liberal boomer; a Buick doesn’t fit the image. He likes thinking he’s counter-culture.

A Subaru Outback had taken his spot in front of the bakery, so he maneuvered around the parking space reserved for bikes in front of the Sugar Bowl ice cream parlor to a place in front of the Montessori School set up years ago in a building that used to house a photographer’s studio.

This delay puts him fourth in line behind a men’s book group trio but close to the table where the day’s Des Moines Register sits. Except today, there’s no sports section.

He feels his left pants pocket and discovers no phone to distract him. And thinks, why is the barista taking so long to prepare the book guys’ specialty coffee orders?

Then, the owner comes up the aisle from the kitchen and announces the Pecan Rolls will be out in about 10 minutes.

Paul smiles sweetly and says, “Well, at least they will be fresh”— ka-ching, one more dollop of passive-aggressive into the world.

*

His air-conditioned Forester arrived home around 7 a.m., just before Rebecca woke. Coffee would be ready for her. That’s his coffee cup on the left and hers on the right, with fresh Carmel Pecan Rolls.

Notice that the Pecan roll on the left was bigger. Paul did. Which one do you think he took?

I’m so damn self-interested. Even today, when I volunteer at Decorah’s Food Pantry, I feel good about myself doing good. The late Indian Catholic Priest Anthony De Mello, in Awareness, writes that there are two types of selfishness,

I give myself the pleasure of pleasing myself; that’s self-centeredness.

I give myself the pleasure of pleasing others, which is more refined.

De Mello says humans are naturally self-centered because they focus on self-preservation.

How does one become aware of how self-oriented one is? DeMello’s technique involves self-observation, examining myself as I would examine someone else.

Self-observation differs from self-absorption, which is characterized by self-preoccupation.

I wrote the Pecan Roll part of this story in 3rd person. That technique puts me at a psychological distance from this guy, Paul. It is a humbling experience because I see just how self-involved I am. I’m no more counter-culture in this Subaru capital of Iowa than my Republican friends are with their hoity-toity Buicks.

But before I wrote the story, I observed Paul this early morning.

That’s why I didn’t beat myself up for wanting the larger Pecan roll. Forewarned is forearmed.

Following DeMello’s 3rd-person self-reflection approach, I am more in control of how I decide to act on my self-preservation feelings.

So I took the smaller pastry, preferring to feel good about my generosity rather than guilty about my self-centeredness.

And even better when Rebecca said, ‘Why don’t you have the bigger one?’

Virtue is so rewarding!

THIS STORY WAS WRITTEN FOR MEDIUM’S DAILY CUPPA WITH A WORD LIMIT OF 150.

*

Yesterday, it almost happened. And, this morning, it drove me from my bed. I’m always up early. It’s when I write. But today’s matin was at 3:00 am instead of 4.

My mother lived to 95 and died in a demented state. A clinical word, and I don’t know any other way to put it. She had forgotten who she was, even that she had loved coffee for ten decades. I think her decline began eight years earlier with repetitive stories.

“I’d like to show you this photo…,” I said to my friend Rick, in the middle of a spirited political discussion, and then realized I’d shown him the same photo when I’d come through his front door two hours earlier.

Rick, 80, knowingly replied, “Welcome to the club.”

If this incident had happened when I was 55 instead of 75, I would have brushed it off.

Not this dawn!

NatalieSugabelle asks, “What is the quintessential sign of spring?”

To answer this query, I took a walk in a park. And met a few mentors.

*

Rebecca and I live in northeast Iowa, in the United States. Believe it or not, in this flat state known for corn fields, there are valleys. Palisade Park and the Upper Iowa River protect our community’s eastern flank.

Looking west from the park’s summit, you can see the location of our home.

We live on Water Street, which got its name because the river used to overflow the middle of town. In 1948, Decorah utilized federal government funds to construct a land dike that runs west to east through the city.

In the past two decades, Decorah has experienced two 100-year floods, with minimal damage. In 2008, the river reached the top of the dike, and we briefly evacuated our homes.

Yesterday, prompted by Natalie, I decided to take a walk through Palisade to experience this most wonderful time of the year.

New green growth everywhere. The vitality is hard to miss. Nature is so much better at repair than human construction. The same may be true for our bodies. Sometimes, renewal happens naturally. I’ll take the Tylenol off the top of my bedside table and put it in the drawer.

However, I did wonder whether, amidst the buzzing and humming, the queen was present.

What is the hive’s version of the Roman Catholic Church’s puff of white smoke? Gender exclusions aside, did they have a leader?

Regardless, imagine a community working toward a common goal. Oh, America, if only…

Two years ago, we moved a young birch tree from one part of our yard to another when we put in a new sidewalk. We’d both grown up with Joni Mitchell’s admonition in the Big Yellow Taxi to NOT “pave paradise and put up a parking lot,” so we very carefully dug around the root ball in the fervent hope our transplanted tree would survive.

The park offered the obvious — trees usually find a way — the power of resilience.

Not surprisingly, our little birch, which is now co-existing with concrete, is doing fine.

Even dead plant life continues to give back as a habitat for insects, bacteria, and fungi—a kind of eternal life.

The quintessential mentor for this 75-year-old author.

RW Double Drabble 2.0.102: Sidekick

This is a Double Drabble, a 200-word story. It was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.

The first line will be, “That’s where it all went wrong.”

*

“That’s where it all went wrong. Or it could have if we hadn’t found out before they went up. Pedro doesn’t know Spanish. He’s from Brazil, so he speaks only Portuguese and English. John hired him late Friday. His papers said he was from Brazil, but John assumed he spoke Spanish.”

“He looks comfortable on the edge and in the air. Who’s his sidekickhandling the rope communication?”

“Adriana, his wife. I’ve been watching them for 30 minutes. She keeps him loose.They have three children in school. I think he’ll work out. We’ve got the Catholic and Methodist churches this summer, high and steeply angled.”

“Isn’t Pedro our first Brazilian?”

“Yeah. This morning, we had three Mexicans, four from Guatemala and Carlos from Panama. He was your first south of the border hire, right, Dad?

“A born leader and the hardest worker I’ve ever known.”

“He reminds me of you.”

“On Fridays, I volunteer with Gabriela, his wife, at the Food Pantry. She helps with our Spanish-speaking clients. Do you worry about losing any of these guys?”

“Carlos is a citizen, and the rest have green cards. The local guys can’t keep up. Of course, I’m very worried.”

________________________________________________________________________________________

Note: The title “Americas ” refers to North and South America.

This story was published in Medium’s The Challenged.

Meet my mother and father, Dody and Paul Gardner, in 1951, two years after I was born. They’re sitting in the living room of the only house they ever owned. My mom, who died at 95 in 2017, would live in the house for 64 years. Dad died of sinus cancer in 1993.

He thought this unusual and hard-to-diagnose disease might have been linked to his work as an engineer in the fifties on the development of water-based paint. A few months before his death, he built a railing for the stairway into the basement to protect my mom as she aged from her Monday washing sorties: “You’ll live another 25 years, and this will protect you.” He was off by one year, and she never stumbled on those steep stairs.

“They kept her young,” she said about her equivalently aged, widowed, and laundering mother, marching up and down her basement steps.

Resilience!

It’s in my genes.

By the way, they’re sitting on a Hide-a-Bed in what would double as a bedroom for a decade until a two-story addition was added to our modest 1200-square-foot house. I remember watching Romper Room and Captain Midnight from that springy perch.

If you’re an early Baby Boomer like me, you might remember the transparent plastic screens you could lay over the TV screen in the Magic Mirror segment of Romper. Or, after the throwing-up part of the flu passed, sipping Seven-up and eating soda crackers as you watched I Love Lucy reruns.

I always felt loved and taken care of. Even though neither of my parents ever said the words.

My parents were not perfect. That’s no surprise to you, I’m sure. The norms of mid-20th century America bound them. My Catholic mother was apoplectic about Sharon, my first girlfriend, who happened to be Jewish.

My rural Iowa-raised father once referred to Nat King Cole as a “good Negro.” This might have occurred after one of our family dinners at his parents’ farm, where his siblings routinely used the pejorative N-word. I never heard him use that epithet. Perhaps, ‘good Negro,’ was pushing the edge for him and a lesson for his three sons.

And my devout Pope-loving mother never disparaged Jews or Judaism. She knew the difficulty of what was then called mixed marriage, having married an agnostic, Protestant man, as did her mother.

Our parents come from a different time. They pass along their wisdom. And, if we’re lucky, they provide us with enough love and safety to live in what will always be a new world.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

RW Drabble 2.0.090: Hawkish

This story was published in Fiction Shorts. The word is hawkish, and the prompt includes an animal wearing glasses.

*****

“Do I look hawkish?

Someone whose bite might be worse than his bark!

Maybe it’s the sunglasses.

What if I wore a hoody? Or a ballcap turned around? Please be honest. Is it the testicles?

If I was a cat, would you cross the tracks?

We tell ourselves stories about the animals we meet based on images in our heads, pictures that might have nothing to do with the creatures we encounter. We heard these tales from our parents, cousins, friends, and neighbors. They’re hard to dislodge.

But I’m not an effigy. And my eyes are sensitive to the light.”

____________________________________________________________________________________

RW Drabble 2.0.085: Creation

This 100-word story was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.

For this drabble, write a letter of complaint to your editors.

---

Dear Short Fiction:

I’ll be brief.

Because it’s become an addiction.

Two years ago, I’d never heard of a drabble. Now, I can’t remember the last time I used an adjective. Or started a story at the beginning.

My grandchildren love my short-winded tales, “You get to the point, grandad.” They won’t leave me alone!

For fifty years, I taught the facts — just the facts. Now, it’s all creation. It’s as if I was a teenager again.

Yesterday, I discovered the fiction section of the library.

Liars all.

You snuck up and bit me.

Ruined my life.

Thanks, Paul

---

Note to the attentive reader: The no adjective claim was hyperbole: last time, short-winded tales, fiction section, & attentive reader.