Lessons from my Father: Life Savers
Summer is vacation time for many families. Today’s excerpt from Lessons from my Father describes summer travel trips, which our family took, due in large part to the kindness of my mother’s sister, Donna, and her husband Jim.
Lifesavers
This is true and undefiled religion
in the sight of our God and Father,
to visit widows and orphans in their distress…
James 1: 27a
The blue station wagon was full to bursting as it sped south down Highway 75. Jim, my high school social studies teacher-uncle, was at the wheel. He was so dark-haired and tanned that Mom’s crazy Uncle Bob swore Jim was Japanese. “He’s dark, he’s short, last name like Hoey…gotta be a Jap,” Bob growled every time he saw my handsome uncle.
My father, urinal at his feet, arm resting out the open window, provided a steady stream of small talk, guaranteed to keep Uncle Jim alert and entertained. Cousin Julie, age three, sat between them, her eyes on the road ahead of her in a valiant effort to keep her car sickness under control.
Mom sat in the back seat with her younger sister and Uncle Jim’s wife, my aunt Donna. Donna’s hair was black to Mom’s brown, her eyes brown to Mom’s blue, and she was a good four inches taller than her vertically challenged sister. For all that, you could tell they were sisters and elementary teachers to boot as they masterfully kept in line the crowd of children in the cargo bay behind them.
Crowded in the bay, along with luggage for ten people and the paper grocery sacks and cooler full of food for our traveling meals, were any combination of the four other children: Jill (11), Jolene (8), John (5), Danelle (5), and Gail (4). One of the children, whichever one had most recently been caught misbehaving, sat, bored and restless, between the two terrible sisters, while the other offspring cavorted noisily.
Jill, conscious of the elevated rank her advanced age provided, held court among us. She explained to us the mysteries of childhood, including why Aunt Donna insisted we line the toilet seats in the filling station bathrooms with toilet paper before sitting. “You can get diseases otherwise.” Too frightened to ask what those diseases might be or how toilet paper might fend them off, we kept Mr. Whipple in business for years. When Jill’s wisdom ran dry, Danelle, oldest of the Hoey brood, showed us how we could rearrange the luggage on the return trip so there would be room for the dog, the two cats, three lizards, and the live clam collection she knew her parents would allow her to take home.
We entertained one another for hours, telling Gail of the three-horned-cows we saw out our side of the car. She would scramble over to look, and we would hide her coloring book. Once she found it and settled down, we commented on the grasshoppers so big and fast they were passing the station wagon. She’d take a look and discover her coloring book gone missing again. We babied little Julie, dragging her back with us when her car sickness subsided and dumping her into the front seat when she looked green around the gills.
“I’m hungry,” I intoned as I struck my most dramatic starvation pose. “When do we eat?”
“Anybody else hungry?” Mom asked.
“I am.”
“I’m starving.”
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Jim, the kids are hungry. Isn’t there a roadside park coming up soon?” Donna added, “I think it has a bathroom, too.”
“I see a McDonald’s.” Danelle, the eternal optimist, made a gallant attempt at picnic insurrection. “We could eat there.”
“Too expensive,” Donna and Dorothy chimed in unison, another facet of their family resemblance surfacing.
“We’ll stop at the park and eat.” Jim squashed the insurrection with the turn of the steering wheel. “What kind of sandwiches, Donna?”
“Bologna on white bread with mayonnaise and butter. Plus, we have bananas, potato chips, water, and cookies.”
“My favorites,” Dad licked his lips.
We arrived at the park and checked out the playground equipment while the grownups set out the picnic. We swarmed around the food like bees to honey. “Wait a second,” Jim commanded as our hands reached for the white bread and bologna. “Harlan, would you say grace?”
“Certainly,” Dad assented.
We hunkered down for a long wait.
“Would you all please bow your heads and fold your hands?” Dad waited until we were properly positioned. “Our gracious Lord and blessed heavenly Father, we thank you today for the food set before us by the loving hands that prepared it. We thank you, too, for this opportunity for fellowship together.”
I opened an eye to see if Dad was winding down. When I saw him take another deep breath, I bowed my head, sighed, and squeezed my eyes shut.
He was just getting warmed up. “Thank you, also, for the bountiful precipitation you provided in northwest Iowa in the form of one point five inches of gentle, soaking rain last night. We pray that you extend such a blessing to all the farmers, that they can enjoy a bumper crop in the upcoming harvest season.”
I yawned loudly.
Dad ignored the hint. “We ask, too, that you continue the weather pattern of hot daytime temperatures, warm evenings, and high humidity so conducive to proper crop development at this crucial time in the lives of those who work the soil.”
I peeked again in time to see Gail faint from hunger as Mom elbowed Dad’s arm. This time, he got the hint and hastily concluded, “In the name of Jesus Christ, Your Son. Amen.”
We dove for the Wonderbread. In less time than it took to bless the food, we inhaled our meal and headed off to the swings, leaving the adults in our wake to enjoy a more leisurely repast. Twenty minutes later, our parents squeezed us back into the vehicle, shut the doors, and we headed down the open road.
“I gotta go to the bathroom,” Gail announced two miles later.
“We were just at the park. Why didn’t you use the bathroom there?” an exasperated Donna asked.
“It wasn’t a bathroom. It was an outhouse…gross. And it didn’t have any toilet paper.”
Gail summed it up pretty neatly, I thought.
“Jim, Gail has to go to the bathroom.”
“So do I.”
“So do I.”
“Me, too.”
“Just a few more miles to the next town,” Mom assured us. Five towns later, after innumerable pleas and dire warnings of imminent bodily function catastrophes, Jim put on the brakes and headed for the blessed Texaco star.
Filling station attendants from Iowa to Kansas stared open mouthed, too amazed to complete the back flips their TV commercials promised, whenever Jim pulled up to the pump. He parked the car, and the doors opened to pour out upon the pavement an endless stream of youngsters.
“Stop, hold on!” Dad bellowed in a voice sure to be heard all the way to Kansas and over the rainbow. “One of you kids come back and get this.” He held up the black leather bag which held his urinal. “Take what’s inside and rinse it out good,” he said with a wink, the very soul of discretion. While the rest of the family visited the facilities, he turned his attention to the attendant, who was staring in a state of shock at the trail of children heading to the bathrooms, and continued with him the conversation Jim’s call of nature had interrupted.
As the tank filled, the attendant proceeded to wash every window in the low riding station wagon. As he worked his way to the back of the vehicle, he came face to face with another nasty shock. Tied to the top of the car was Dad’s wheelchair, wheels spinning in the wind.
“That’s mine,” Dad explained.
“Don’t say,” muttered the attendant.
“Couldn’t fit it in the back,” Dad went on. “Too many kids.”
“I’ll say,” the attendant agreed. “Looks pretty crowded in there. Where ya headed?”
“Dearing, Kansas. That’s where my brother-in-law is from. Going to visit his folks, see the country.”
“Don’t say,” marveled the attendant. “Have a good trip.” At that point, the sparkling conversation ended and a horde of children ran back to the car.
“Mom, I wanna sit in front!” John hollered, his volume nearly matching his father’s. “I’m tired of all them girls.”
“‘Sright, John. Get up front here with the men,” Uncle Jim agreed, his Kansas twang growing stronger as we neared his home state. “Julie can sit in the back seat as long as there’s a bread sack handy.”
John grinned, glowing with pleasure as he joined the men.
The girl children piled into the back seat and scrambled into the cargo bay. Donna, Mom, and Julie took up residence in the back seat, and we took off, the wheels of the chair on top of the car gaining speed as Jim’s foot pressed the accelerator. The man with the Texaco star stared at us, mouth slightly ajar, as we aimed for the highway. He looked like he didn’t know what had hit him. The Stratton/Hoey gang had that effect on people, all the way to Kansas.
The Stratton/Hoey gang had that effect whenever they traveled together, and they traveled together plenty, as long as Dad was able to go along….Ponca, Nebraska; Springfield, Illinois; Pipestone, Minnesota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Grand Rapids, Minnesota….why travel alone when it was cheaper by the dozen? Our numbers approached that dozen marker, when eight years after Julie, the Hoeys produced their youngest, a son named Dan, and eased John’s burden of being the token male cousin.
Jim must have known that his presence allowed Dad to visit places beyond his limited horizons. He listened to Dad’s innumerable stories. He hoisted Dad’s wheelchair to the top of the station wagon, tied it in place, and reversed the process as needed without complaint. He gently lifted Dad from car to wheelchair to toilet seat to wheelchair to car. He pushed the wheelchair up paths that even Mom could not negotiate, holding open a few years longer the doors that were closing around my father’s life.
Donna must have wished to spend that time with her own family instead of surrounded by three extra children who bossed her young brood mercilessly. She must have wanted an evening alone with her husband, an event that wasn’t going to happen with her nieces and nephew hanging upon the man they hero-worshiped. I never heard such a sentiment pass her lips.
Our last adventure together occurred in the mid-seventies. My sister had married and she and her husband had moved north of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, where they were managing Camp Layal, a Baptist church camp. If we could make the six-hour trip early in June before the camping season started, Jill told us, we could stay in the lodge, hike the woods, take evening rides on the pontoon boat, and canoe on the lake…all for free. It was an offer our penny-pinching gang could not pass up.
The blue station wagon was but a memory by this Time. Uncle Jim now sported a pickup truck with a topper. A mattress lined the floor of the truck, the end closest to the cab propped up with luggage and pillows. Into that makeshift bed we hoisted Dad, now much too weak to make a six hour trip sitting upright in a car. Three people sat in the cab, and we all took shifts sitting with Dad in the back of the truck. The balance of the gang followed the Hoey vehicle in the Stratton car. Our traveling methods had changed somewhat. Bathroom breaks weren’t as frequent or as urgent as during our younger traveling days. The 1974 oil embargo ushered in the age of self-serve gas, so filling station attendants were spared the vision of Dad’s prone body in the pickup. The one thing that hadn’t changed was the cooler full of cheap food. We devoured the sandwiches, fruit, and cookies at a roadside park along the way.
After a six-hour trip, we arrived at my sister and her husband’s trailer without incident. Mom and Dad stayed with them, but the rest of us slept in the camp lodge, invading the little trailer only at meal time. We had a wonderful time and so did the mosquitoes who feasted on a fresh infusion of sweet Iowa blood. Most of us, who had traveled before as children, were adults now or well into adolescence. Dan, the youngest among us, was about five, and having the time of his life running through the woods and paddling the canoes.
We were eating our meal together with the older generation seated around the table in the tiny kitchen, the rest of us spilling into the living room. Suddenly, from the kitchen, we heard Mom say, “Harlan, are you all right? Harlan, what is it?”
We all stood up and watched over the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room.
“Harlan, are you choking?” Mom asked.
Face red, nose running, he nodded. Mom and Jim pounded on his back to no avail. He began to turn blue. Jill tried to position herself behind the wheelchair to do the Heimlich maneuver, but the chair handles were in the way.
“Let’s get him out of the chair and on the floor,” Jim ordered. Mom and Jim reached around Dad and eased him to the floor, laying him on his side. Jill lay down behind him, her stomach to Dad’s back. Mom and Jim lifted Dad’s torso, and Jill slipped an arm beneath him.
The rest of us were frozen there, watching the scene on the floor. We were weak in our fear, praying that Jill could open the door closing on Dad’s life. Wrapping him in a bear hug, Jill squeezed Dad’s abdomen once, then twice, again and again, again, again, again. Jim and Mom held up the dead weight of his torso between them, allowing Jill room to maneuver.
Finally, we heard Dad begin to cough, and he sucked in a great wheezy lungful of air.Jill and Mom sat limply on the linoleum. The rest of us began breathing again, so mesmerized by the scene before us, we didn’t notice Dan’s big eyes taking in the frightening scene.
“You okay now, Harlan?” Jim asked in a hearty voice.
Dad nodded.
“You just rest on the floor a minute. Then we’ll put you in your chair.”
Dad nodded again.
Jim noticed Dan’s white face and went to him. “Uncle Harlan’s gonna be okay. That was kinda scary, wuddin’ it? Why doncha’ come over here and sit with me for awhile?” Dan and his dad went to rest with Harlan on the floor.
That day my Uncle Jim helped save my father’s life. To this day, long after my father’s death, the Stratton/Hoey gang crams into one house for a yearly weekend of good, cheap fun. I love to see my cousins and their children pull up and spill out of their cars, but I can hardly wait until Jim and Donna arrive. Donna wraps me in a big hug and kisses me on the cheek. Uncle Jim nods and in his Kansas twang says, “How are you, Jo?”
I go to him and let his arms hold me up as they once held my father.
