Because I was growing up with an unusual mother who rejected most domestic activities mothers were supposed to be good at and enjoy, and because I wanted to find out if all mothers were the same, I was left to wander our neighborhood to educate myself by visiting other mothers. This exploration lead me down the hill to discover the Kennel family.
The Kennel family, Howard and Inez, and their five children, Howard Jr., Sherman, Janet, Sharon, and baby Dennis lived down the hill from our house on Sunset Lane. Howard Sr. was a game warden with the Department of Fish and Game, and Inez ran the house in a resourceful way that enabled her family to have all they needed even though the concept of luxury was absent from their lives. She kept a large vegetable garden, raised chickens, and earned money by selling night crawlers (large earthworms) to fishermen and picking peaches in the late summer.
Their house was a simple two-story structure: living room, dining room, and kitchen downstairs, two bedrooms and bath upstairs, and a bedroom in the basement. The house had a sort of outdoor dusty feeling to it, with minimal furniture and unfinished wood floors.
Walking down the hill to visit the Kennels I would see Inez tending her garden while baby Dennis played in the dirt. She wore a traditional housedress and apron that looked out of character on her tall strong body, especially when she wielded her hoe with authority or we headed into the cool dark shed to count the night crawlers and put them into pint-sized containers to sell.
If she needed to kill a chicken for dinner I would have to wait while she raced around the chicken yard with her long arms grabbing a noisy bird by the neck and swinging it through the air with the rapid arc of her arm, ending in an accomplished jerk. In a moment the squawking, sprinting chicken had been transformed into a pile of rumpled feathers, lying on the ground with its claws outstretched and its head lolling off to one side at a strange angle. Then I would help with the plucking of feathers, after it had been dunked into a bucket of scalding water, before it was taken into the kitchen sink for dismembering.
I was most interested in the craw, where I discovered that because chickens do not have teeth they have to rely on their craw, a membrane sack filled with sand and tiny pebbles, to digest their food. As I rummaged through the contents of the craw I speculated on how resourceful nature was, and felt grateful because I had been given teeth.
The best part of a visit to the Kennels was an invitation to stay for lunch. Their dining room table was almost as big as the Dining Room, and we would crowd in to sit down and enjoy Inez's good food: fried chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy and delicious homemade dessert. Howard Sr. sat at the end of the table in his tee shirt, showing off his salt-and-pepper hairy chest. I could tell by the energetic way he related to his family that he liked his kids, even though he would sometimes be a little scary to me in responding to one of them in a sudden outburst of anger. But all things seemed to be okay in the Kennel family, and the moment of anger passed without causing any permanent damage to anyone.
There was a distinct difference between the way my family sat around the dinner table and what I experienced with the Kennel family around their table. The Kennels had an in-the-moment, out-in-the-open approach in responding to what life brought them. In my family, it was just the opposite. Complex emotions lived below the surface. Whatever my sisters and I had to contribute to the conversation might receive from father the critical crinkle of his eyes or from mother an angry silence, both of them being preoccupied with their mutual dislike for each other.
The Grand Valley was famous for its peaches, and in the late summer, Inez became a fruit picker. Piling into the car with Inez and the younger children, we drove into the country to our destination: a large packing house full of people picking over peaches. From there, women, wearing gloves and long-sleeved shirts to avoid the peach fuzz, headed out into the orchards carrying bushel baskets.
With everyone busy, I was free to stand in the orchard and watch the women in the trees as I assessed their speed, agility, and dexterity climbing up and down, moving their ladders that were wider at the bottom for stability and narrow at the top so they could rest between the branches. Housewives like Inez took for granted their skills and endurance in the orchards as they looked forward to spending their money on something special on their wish list, like a new washing machine or a refrigerator.
All of the kids on the hill – myself, my sisters, June, Anne, and Gil – played together all the time. Our relationship with the four Kennel kids (excluding baby Dennis as too young) varied from annoyance with tattle-tale Janet to slight crushes on Sherman and Howard by myself and Karen. The attempts at romance by Karen and Howard involved my little sister Gretchen, who wanted to be a boy. She had given herself a short haircut and would only answer to the name "Bill."
Being born a girl in the 1940s was guaranteed to be second best for the majority of families waiting for their newborn to arrive. In my family, this was especially true, mostly because Gommie wanted a son to carry on the Vorbeck name and family business. When Gretchen arrived as the third daughter the message came through loud and clear: you were supposed to be a boy! Thus, her insistence that she was a boy and her name was Bill.
Little boys were free to run around wearing just their jeans. Gretchen, being a boy, was free to do the same. Refusing to wear a blouse, her bare top and round little belly became the ideal place for Karen and Howard to write notes to each other. Taking on her new responsibility with serious importance, Gretchen ran back and forth between the two of them carrying a pen, until all their messages and responses covered her belly. Being a good communicator she stood proudly and patiently before us as we turned her little tummy to read the "secret" love notes. Later our dad would have to have an important conversation with Gretchen to tell her that she was very special and that he was happy she was a girl!
In the summertime, the warm Colorado nights were the perfect time to run around in the dark playing "Hide and Seek," especially if it was possible to hide away with Sherman. Before beginning a game the boundaries were decided upon: as far as the pear trees, over to the ditch, up to Kuhnhausen's fence but not down the hill. We'd find the first person to be "it" with a round of "Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe." The home base was our front steps and the count to hide was
one hundred. As soon as "it" hid his eyes in the crook of his arm and started yelling out "one, two, three...." the race was on to find a good hiding place. All we had to light our way were the lights coming from our house. Then darkness swallowed us up and our inner radar took over as we searched for the perfect place to hide. Perhaps it was just crouched behind a Cottonwood tree, but as soon as we were in place absolute quiet was necessary.
Hiding with Sherman behind the tree after our dash into the darkness required the silencing of heavy breathing, along with the tittering of excitement preparing ourselves for the possible approach of "it." When we saw that we were about to be discovered, timing became the critical element. We waited until the last second and then jumped out of the dark with a ferocious noise, scaring the poor person into momentary disorientation to gain the time needed for our dash back to home base. Then the call of "Ollie, Ollie Oxen Free" would bring everyone in to begin again.
Playing in the dark was also a good time to look for toads. Baby toads are among the cutest little creatures I have ever encountered. They came out in the night and hopped around looking for bugs. They were easy to catch as they plopped their fat bodies along, going about their business. When first picking them up we held them at arm's length because they would pee on us, a not-too-effective defense mechanism. We were fond of the toads and would look into their toad faces and admire their many bumps and warts, reminding ourselves that we really didn't get warts from toads. They were slow, kind creatures with soft, squishy bodies. When we were younger we tried making pets of them by putting them in a jar with holes punched in the lid, along with some grass and an occasional insect.
When the hour was getting late we would hear a loud voice from a parent calling "Karen, Susan, Gretchen, time for bed." Or they would announce "You have until nine o'clock." In that case, we snuck Gretchen into the kitchen to turn the clock back. The adults would always be in the Living Room drinking cocktails, smoking, and talking. I don't think our stealth made much difference since they all wore watches, but it was part of the constant game of triumph over authority.
Being Colorado country hicks we considered Hollywood to be the most glamorous place on Earth. One of our favorite past times was reading about and looking at photographs of beautiful movie stars in the movie magazines. I liked to send fan mail to my favorite stars requesting a 5 x 7 photo that would sometimes be signed. If a photo arrived in the mail unsigned Karen would autograph it for me: "To Susan, Best Wishes, from Jane Russell."
One of my scrapbooks was dedicated to movie stars and I remember studying a photo of Jane Russel standing in her bathing suit showing off her beautiful long legs. I reflected on the fact that Jane's legs were perfect, whereas my legs were always covered with scrapes and bruises from playing outside in the rough countryside. I even speculated on how she managed to keep her legs in such good shape when she went out to play.
One time June, Karen, and I came up with a clever hoax to fool the Kennel kids. I would play like I was my cousin from Hollywood coming for a short visit. My few impressions of my little cousin Linda took second place to a much more interesting character to impersonate--a movie star.
Karen and June were in charge of my makeover, which consisted of a new hairdo, makeup, and some abandoned clothes from the back of my closet. They also arranged for the "cousin from California" to be introduced to the Kennel kids. As I stood there being examined with curiosity and skepticism I found myself unfazed by their doubts but eager to launch myself into character, trying out my California accent and my portrait of the fascinating glamour of Hollywood. We didn't really fool the Kennel kids but it was good entertainment for all of us for at least a day and a half.
Sometimes June and my sisters and I camped out in our pasture. Taking our sleeping bags and food, we set up our campsite in the middle of Tony the Pony's field. Building a little fire of scavenged wood from the pasture we settled in to roast marshmallows on the end of the green Willow switches we had harvested from a tree. Then came time for the telling of scary stories, like "the hand that was walking around looking for its body."
Somehow Sherman and Howard knew we were there and did their best to make scary noises or torment us with some other unseemly behavior. At some point we all drifted off to sleep, hoping the mosquitoes were not hungry. In the morning the heat of the sun on our faces woke us, and we dug out whatever we had brought for breakfast, trying our cooking skills over the campfire, believing we were just like the cowboys who rode the range and slept on the trail with their cattle.