I grew up in the Midwest, in small towns, especially in Minnesota, then North Dakota and mostly Nebraska. Small town America is a haven of all that is good. You can walk from one end of town to another, barefoot which I did from April 1st till Halloween always proudly wearing my older brothers cast off jeans. My older brothers were my heroes. They walked me to school on my first day, in Beulah, North Dakota. Once we moved to Nebraska and settled down in a small community in Boone County they took me hunting for prairie dogs in the summer and rabbits in the winter. Dad taught us how to clean our guns, newspaper laying on the floor, the wonderful odor of Hoppe’s #9gun cleaning fluid filling the room. To this day I still prefer its fragrance to Channel #5.
Going to the Roxy Theater every Saturday night, my 25 cents allowance clutched in my hand still reverberates as the happiest of memories. First the Movietone news was shown. I didn’t always understand all of it but it didn’t matter. Just to be able to see the giant images move across the screen was magic. Then came the John Deere Tractor commercial. Before the main feature was the cartoon, Tom and Jerry, The Roadrunner, or Elmer Fudd. My quarter was enough for my admission and a bag of popcorn. All of my senses were alive, watching the film, eating the popcorn, smelling the melted butter, listening to the words the characters said and feeling the comfort of my feet as they rested on top of the seat in front of me.
Then another favorite, a trip downtown to pick up groceries at Andre’s General Store. I walked proudly into the store with my list in my hand. Bernie Ruther who owned the store along with Clare Andre always greeted me with, “And how’s one of the likeable Leicks today?” Since our last name was pronounced “Like” Bernie had managed to find the most flattering bit of teasing he could. I smiled through it all knowing that we were a part of this wonderful small town. I’d watch Tony, the butcher as he cut the meat I’d asked for. His slim bladed knife cut cleanly through the heavy borders of fat till there was hardly any at all. Then he wrapped it in white butcher paper before reaching for a cut of beef that he put in the meat grinder that magically produced our ground beef. Afterwards I’d say, put it on our bill. I knew that once a month the bill from Andre’s arrived in the mail. I don’t remember any money actually changing hands.
I always had a hard time deciding which of the seasons I liked the best. Winter was a time for ice skating on the river, rabbit hunting in the snow, having snowball fights, building snowmen and snow forts. I loved the biting cold, the way my breath fogged up when I blew it out of my mouth, Jack Frost’s paintings on our windows, hot chocolate with marshmallows and especially the Christmas season were a few more. But spring was glorious, like a magical pageant waiting to make an appearance with new buds popping out on the cottonwoods, a vegetable garden that we all worked in, mom’s flower garden with yellow roses growing on the trellis, bachelor buttons, tulips, iris, and a multitude of grown cover. I loved hiding in the willow tree, its long branches wrapped around me as I read a Nancy Drew Mystery and munched on butter popcorn, with chilled lemonade nearby. Summer mean swimming in the Beaver River, climbing trees out at Rae Creek where I sat in the crook of an oak tree while I wrote poetry. Autumn was watching the leaves fall and raking them up with marshmallow and hot dog roasts afterwards, Halloween, harvesting our vegetables and helping mom with the canning. I thank God that I was able to grow up in small towns, especially the most beautiful of them all, Petersburg, NE. It was my great love, gave me my greatest joy, filled all the parts of my mind with memories to be drawn on for the rest of my life.
Once, out at Rae Creek I wrote a long poem describing my wooded sanctuary, with one stanza that I wore out repeating over and over during the next several decades. It said:
“Wherever I go in the years to come,
Whenever my heart is tired and sad,
I’ll think of life in this hidden world,
And long for the moments that once I had.”
My life went on. My parents dragged me kicking and screaming out to Los Angeles, CA, away from my cottonwoods, my willow, my small town friends and especially away from Rae Creek. I was homesick for the rest of my life. But many years later, when I started going through recovery for incest, an agonizing five years of it, these words returned over and over, crawling through my memory like a strong tonic bringing to mind all that I loved about that small town in Boone Country, Nebraska. It cushioned the blows, gave me strength, held my hand when I needed to travel back to the dark side of our “happy Catholic family life”.
(I will be on holiday next week and unable to write a blog. Thank you to all my readers for paying attention to my “scribblings.”
