Thin and Rich
Our family had two aspirations, to be thin and rich. The quest to be thin has been a long journey for me. At the tender age of ten, I watched Dad smirk at a woman who was a little chubby. The message to me was don’t get fat; you can’t be beautiful unless you are thin. Mom’s sisters were all slim and expected me to be the same. That stigma would undermine my confidence even in my adult life.
The summer I was a nanny for my aunt Betty, the men working on the ranch needed three full meals a day they worked hard and ate hard, I ate right alongside the big meal guys. It was rich food, sour cream bacon and Rice a Roni. I drank Squirt soda and cookies galore meals guys I gained ten pounds, yes ten pounds. Our family didn’t eat rich food and with the exercise I got from working on our farm, I lost the extra weight when I got home.
Years later I was working at a Chevrolet dealership. I worked in the office and my friend Norm in the parts department and I had our lunch break at the same time. Right around the corner was Mom’s Café. Unfortunately on her menu was hash browns and gravy. It was a high carbohydrate meal, no protein except a small amount in the gravy. I'd have that for lunch and to compensate for it, my dinner was rye crisps and V8 tomato juice. Extreme I know. but I had to stay slim.
After I married Dave he told me I was gaining weight because I was on birth control pills. I quit them and used another method of birth control, but the scale still showed I had put on three pounds. I was sad, he was making sure I was going to stay slim. It wouldn’t be the last time he judged me because of the weight he thought I’d gain.
There was anxiety in Dad and mom’s family regarding money. At a very early age, we measured ourselves with the money we didn’t have. We were taught that rich people were powerful, that belief would prove disastrous for me when I was a teenager.
My sister Sophie and I had the same dream. We were at our pastor’s house and on their lawn were coins; if we were going to be rich we had to find them ourselves. The rich members in our family were my uncle Jim and his wife Jean. They lived in Texas, in a big house. A stone’s throw from a lake. I was told in their house was a central vacuum cleaner, that was hard to imagine.
We weren’t exactly poor because we worked hard. Mom and all five of us girls picked green beans, strawberries, and raspberries, and harvested walnuts and hazelnuts to earn money.
Mom drove a school bus so it was natural for her to drive Hughes’ family bus to the bean patch picking up kids as she drove along. Flannel shirts were the uniform of the day. At seven in the morning, the beans were wet with dew and the field watering so the leaves stuck on our shirts. As the day warmed the shirts would be discarded, or tied around our waists and later put at the end of the row.
We picked in three-gallon buckets. When they got full they were emptied into gunny sacks. The three-gallon buckets doubled as seats, we sat on them to pick the lower vines and in some cases to take a rest for someone not too keen on picking. My sister Elsie was little, she sat on her bucket most of the time. Kids threw beans pitching them to another row. Back then we didn’t know who did it, but Hughes did. Those kids were told they couldn’t come to the patch anymore; the point was picking not playing.
The Hughes paid the pickers three cents a pound, not much I know, but I was fast and picked the most pounds in a day of all the pickers. Someone said about me, “Margee does everything fast.” I think I've have been a hamster on a wheel most of my life, running and running and getting nowhere fast.
The foremen at the sawmill where Dad worked invited our whole family to his house. His daughter’s bedroom was pretty, pink and fluffy. She had a small basket with stuffed bunny rabbits in it, they were so soft I hated to think they might have been made of real bunny’s fur. Sometimes Dad brought a bag home from the foreman of his daughter’s clothes. She was three years older than me and since I was skinny they fit. In the bag, she would send pantyhose which often had runs in one leg. I put fingernail polish on them and stopped the run getting any longer. To me, the pantyhose were a blessing because they were expensive.
There were two, favorite pieces of clothes I loved. A wool pleated shirt that really looked nice when I ironed the pleats and a lightweight coat, white with black stitching. Sometimes the coat got washed with something red and I used bleach to wash the pink away, then my coat was white again.
Dad was having trouble with his hearing, people didn’t wear ear protection and the mill noise was deafening. He had to quit to have a surgery, it was only time he was out of work.
Before he got another job we qualified for food stamps, much different than today. We got corn meal, lard, peanut butter, sugar, flour, and powdered milk. We didn’t need the milk but we used it for baking like when Mom didn’t have money to buy bread, she'd baked it. One time she formed the dough into hamburger buns. At school lunch, I was embarrassed even though the buns with tuna fish were so good. Often as a child, I felt ashamed rather than seeing the blessing in overcoming adversity.
My friend Annette's mother was divorced and living on a single income until she remarried to a well-to-do man. Annette wore skirts and matching sweaters from the most exclusive women’s store in town. She commented one day that I was dressing better. It was a blessing and a curse, I liked her compliment but she didn’t know I was wearing hand-me-downs.
When I was old enough I started babysitting. The Durand’s lived just down the hill. There were seven children including one boy who thought he was too old to need a babysitter. She kept store-bought cookies in a cabinet too tall for her kids to reach. We didn’t buy store-bought cookies so it was a real temptation, one that I didn’t resist. I know she noticed but she never mentioned it, maybe she considered it part of my pay. When I was done, I had to walk home often without a flashlight. The grass in the field was tall so I couldn’t see where I was walking except for the general direction. What might be in the grass? At one point I had to walk across a wetland, to me it was “scary lands. When I crossed that boggy place my footing was as unsure as my heart. It wasn’t worth eating stolen cookies.
I also babysat for a family of Native Americans. Their house décor was indicative of native lands. Deer and wild goat antlers, animal hides and Mexican blankets draped on their couch and matching chairs. Their two girls, Rachael and Tonya were really sweet and fun. It was pleasant to be in their home and I got rides home from them. There was a third family that lived several miles away. I had to ride with the father, both coming and going, I was uncomfortable that’s all I remember. Just down from our driveway I babysat for another family. One night one of their little boys sleep-walked he lost his way to the bathroom and peed on the radiator. There was no way to clean up after him.
I had a summer-long babysitting job for three boys, one a toddler and two who were grade school ages. Their Mom worked at a kitchen or cafeteria and in her pantry were gallon-sized canned foods. That was a lot of food for Dad and Mom and three little boys to eat at one meal. The parents had their bedroom in a basement it was dank, dark and gave me a creepy feeling. They didn’t necessarily want me to make the bed, yet I wanted things to be neat and tidy.
It was the first time I was exposed to pornography. Their mom had been writing a story and her boys were really proud of her, but either they didn’t understand or hadn’t read it. It’s sad that she had normalized porn to them especially when they were so young. When I started reading her story I didn’t totally understand what she’d written but I thought it was pretty gross. She wrote about a girl with breasts the size of cantaloupes, it was the first time I realized that girls can be measured by the size of their breasts.
One day the boys were playing outside and I wasn’t far away but I didn’t know they were playing with matches and it started a grass fire. It was my job to get a garden hose as fast as I could to stop the fire from spreading up the hillside. That was the last time I babysat for anyone, I was really glad I was done with that career. After that, I got a real job that had regular hours and a real paycheck.
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