The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank (3 page)

“Are you sure it was Washburn? Could it have been Washington?”

“Could be. Great-grandma Tucker was a little hard of hearing.”

Five minutes later, the desk would be in the back of someone's trunk and on its way to a place of prominence to be treated as a member of the family.

My husband and I begged her to let us come in one Saturday. “Only if you don't stay too long,” she agreed. Then my husband spotted it. One of the most enormous wooden bowls we had ever seen. “How much would you sell this bowl for, Miss Emma?” asked my husband.

She jumped between the bowl and my husband. “This bowl is not for sale. You may buy anything in this house, but not this bowl.”

At that moment I knew if I didn't have that bowl, I would not continue breathing. “Please, Miss Emma, we'd give it a good home and cherish it as you have cherished it.”

“It's been in our family for generations,” she said sadly. “I can remember my grandmother bathing the babies in it (my throat hurt and I wanted to cry). My mother used to bake bread in it—ten loaves at a time—and I just keep it around to store apples in it for the little children who visit.”

“I know,” I sobbed, “I know and I will do likewise.”

A few minutes and a substantial check later, we were headed home with the bowl. “Do you know what I'm going to do with that bowl?” asked my husband. “I'm going to sand it down and then varnish it with a clear varnish and keep it in a natural state. We can put it on our divider and keep bright, shiny apples in it all the lime.”

He must have put in 184 man hours on that bowl. Every night in the garage I heard him sanding away. Then one night he came into the bedroom from the garage and said, “1 don't believe it. I sanded all the way down through the stain and do you know what I found? (I shook my head.) made in japan. That can only mean one thing.”

“What?” I asked excitedly.

“That Great-grandmother Tucker was Japanese. We've Hot an oriental antique on our hands.”

We were elated, of course, and spared no time in telling our antique enthusiasts about our “find.”

“Is it a huge wooden bowl with a crack down the middle?” asked the Martins.

“Yes! You've heard of it!”

“Heard of it? We got one too,” said the Martins. “So have the Palmers and the Judsons.”

“You're kidding! Where did they get theirs?”

“Miss Emma's.”

During the next few years Miss Emma's family heirlooms became as standard in Suburbian Gems as doorknobs.

It's funny. In the five or six years everyone bought furniture out of Miss Emma's house, the house always was filled and always looked the same. You'd have thought someone would have noticed.

MAJOR BATTLES FOUGHT IN THE SUBURBS

Finding the Builder Who Built the House

(1945-1954)

Kdward C. Phlegg, the builder of Suburbian Gems, made 1 Howard Hughes look like an exhibitionist.

No one had ever seen him. His phone number was a candy store that took messages. The billboards bearing his picture showed only the back of his head.

“If it's an emergency,” said my husband, “I suppose I could track him down.”

“Well, every time I push down the toaster, the garage door goes up. The hot-water heater is hooked up to the garden hose and I am sauteeing the lawn. The sliding-glass doors don't slide. The wall heats up when I turn on the porch light. The hall toilet does not accept tissue. Half of our driveway is on our neighbor's property, the grapes on the kitchen wallpaper are growing upside down, and I have a sign on our front door reading, 'out of order! PLEASE USE HOUSE NEXT DOOR.' ”

“I think our best bet is to try and pin down the contractors,” said my husband. “I'll see what I can do.”

Two months later, we had tracked down our plumber. He had defected to a small country behind the iron curtain taking with him the last of the 1/15-inch pipe used in our bathrooms. Delivery was guaranteed in three years.

Our electrician was facing charges of involuntary arson of a large office building where political corruption was suspect. (He contended his bid was the lowest offered—a case of Coors.)

Our building foreman had returned to high school. He explained it had only been a temporary summer job to earn enough for a bicycle.

Our furnace man was living under an assumed name in Yuma, Arizona.

Our painter was drying out in a Sanitarium in upper New York State.

And our concrete man was studying contract law at the University of Cincinnati.

“I don't want to panic you,” said my husband, “but I think we're stuck with our own repairs.”

“Why should I panic? Just because when our water pipes sweat you prescribed an anti-perspirant?”

“Oh c'mon.”

“Just because you were too embarrassed to ask for a male or a female plug at the hardware store and I had to write you a note.”

“You made your point.”

“Just because we have the only toilet in the block reseated with Play Doh...”

“Look,” he said, “did you marry for love or did you marry to have your toilet fixed?”

When I didn't answer he said, “I'll get my toolbox and we can talk about what has to be done.”

He set down a small fishing tackle box that had been originally inscribed “first aid.” This had been crossed out and “tols” was misspelled across the top in pencil.

Inside was a cork, five feet of pink, plastic clothesline, a small hammer, a flashlight with no batteries, a curler, a poker chip, and a book of rain-soaked matches.

“This is it?”

“This is it. What do you need first?” he asked.

“Storm windows for the entire house.”

“Are vou cr.azy?” he gasped. “I'll need a miter box.”

I thought we sprayed for them."

Couldn't I start with something easy—like a revolving door?"

“As a matter of fact, you could make one of those little doors lor ihc dog that saves you from letting them in and onl nil the time. You know, the one with the little hinges lluil H.ip in and out?”

“Right,” he said. “No problem. You just saw a little hole in the door, attach the hinges, and you're in business.”

When I left him he was standing the dog against the wall with a tape measure and saying, “Let's see how much you've grown today.”

A f'ew hours later I felt a draft in the bedrooms and went to check. You could have slung a herd of buffalo through the little hole in the door.

“Don't worry,” he cautioned, “the door on it will eliminate the wind whistling through.”

“Now what are you doing?” I asked, as he dropped to his hands and knees.

“Showing the dog how to go through it. Dogs have to be taught, you know. But they're great little mimics.” He twisted and groaned until his body was halfway through the door.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“I'm stuck.”

“Which end do you want me to save?”

“Will you knock it off with the jokes? Here I am with half of my body on the front porch and the other half in the hallway and ...”

“Would you be terribly upset if I opened the door right now?”

“Why?”

“The dog has to go out.”

“Well, hurry up. When I'm finished here, I want to start on the storm windows.”

The search for Edward C. Phlcgg continued for nine years. Someone thought they spotted the back of his head at an Arthur Fiedler concert. Another neighbor heard he was involved in selling beachfront property in Fargo, North Dakota.

Whatever, we never saw the builder of Suburbian Gems face to face.

Then one day we opened our newspaper and saw where Edward C. Phlegg had died. His funeral was one of the biggest the city had ever known. Mourners from Suburbian Gems alone filled the church. (Contractors who hadn't been paid couldn't even get inside.)

There wasn't a dry eye in the church.

We were saying good-bye to the only man who knew where in Hong Kong our furnace was made. Who alone knew the secret ingredients of our patios that bubbled when the sun hit them. Who would take with him his reasons for slanting the roof toward the center of the house and burying the septic tank under the living room floor.

As we stood in the cemetery mourning our loss, there was a flash of lightning and a rumble of thunder as before our very eyes, the large stone bearing the name Edward C.

Phlegg sunk to one side and remained at a 40-degree angle.

There was no doubt in any of our minds. God was trying to tell us that Mr. Phlegg had gone to that big Escrow in the sky.

The Second-Car Ten-Day War

We had talked about the isolation of the suburbs and the expense of a second car before moving there and I thought I had made my position very clear.

I did not want a car. Did not need a car. And would not take a car if it were offered me.

1 lied.

“I've got to have wheels,” 1 said to my husband one night after dinner.

“We've talked about this before,” he said, “and we agreed that the reason we migrated was to explore all the adventures the suburbs has to offer.”

“I've explored both of them. Now I need a car. A car will put me in touch with the outside world. It will be my link with another culture, another civilization, another world of trade.”

“Aren't you being a little dramatic?” he suggested.

“Let me lay it on you, Cleavie, the high spot in my day is taking knots out of shoestrings—with my teeth—that a kid has wet on all day long. I'm beginning to have feelings for my shower-massage pik. Yesterday, I etched a dirty word on the leaf of my philodendron.”

“And you think a car is going to help you?”

“Of course it will help. I'll be able to go to the store, join a bowling league, have lunch downtown with the girls, volunteer, go to the dentist, take long drives in the country. I want to see the big, outside world from atop a lube rack. I want to whirl dizzily in a cloud of exhaust, rotate my tires with the rest of the girls. Don't you understand? I want to honk if I love Jesus!”

For a reason I was soon to understand, all of us went to the showroom to pick out my car. Within minutes, I saw it. It was a bright, yellow sports number—a one-seater that puts you three inches off the ground and sounds like a volcano when the motor turns over. Near to ecstasy, I closed my eyes and imagined myself at a traffic light, my large sunglasses on top of my head like Marlo Thomas, and as I quickly brushed lip gloss on my lips from a small pot, a dark stranger from the car next to me shouted, “Could we meet and talk?” And I laughed cruelly, “Don't be a fool! I'm a homeroom mother!” and sped off.

The rest of the family was gathered around a four-wheel-drive station wagon with a spare tire on top, space for extra gas cans along the back and fold-down scats giving you room to transport the Cleveland Symphony and all tlieir instruments.

“Hey, is this a car?” asked my husband, his eyes shining. “That was my next question,” I said. “Look, I don't want transportation to a war, I just want a car to take me to the store and back.”

“Of course you do,” he said, “and this is the no-nonsense car that can get the job done.”

Oh, I tried all right to hide my disappointment. I put glasses on top of my head, touched up my lip gloss at traffic lights, and even occasionally ran my tongue over my lips like Jennifer O'Neill, but I never climbed behind the wheel of that orthopedic vehicle without feeling like I was following General Patton into Belgium.

Besides, I was the only woman in the neighborhood with a big wagon. All the others tooled around in small, sleek, sports cars thathad previously belonged to their husbands.

By the end of the first week, the newness of owning my own car had begun to wear off. I had transported six kids a day to school, a power mower to the repair shop, a porch swing for a garage sale, and the neighbor's dog to the vet who would not fit into a Volkswagen, Nova, Pontiac, Plymouth, Oldsmobile, Tank, or Global Van Lines.

The second week things picked up. I transported thirty-five sleeping bags and supplies for a week at camp, paneling from a lumber yard which wouldn't make delivery until the following week, a missile launch for a science fair, eight baseball bats, four base bags and twelve Little-League players, eight bags of fertilizer for the lawn and six surly

homeroom mothers who arrived at a tea smelling like fertilizer.

It was of no comfort to me whatsoever knowing that I would make U-Haul Mother of the Year. I had to unload that car. Things came to a head one afternoon when I stopped for a traffic light and a huge transport truck pulled alongside me. The ones that travel all night to get your bread fresh to you in the morning. While waiting for the light to change, a burly driver looked over and shouted, “Hey, Mac, where's a good place to eat and get some sack time?”

I knew then I had to make my move and trade up—to my husband's car.

“You don't suppose we could switch cars?” I asked that night after dinner.

“Why would we want to do a thing like that?” he asked.

I hesitated dramatically, “I didn't want to tell you but the children get drowsy in the back seat. I think something is leaking in.”

“Then, by all means, take it to the garage and have it fixed.” (strike one.)

“I'm in the garage so often now. I have my own key to the rcstroom. What would you say if I told you I only get seven miles to the gallon and I'm costing you $1.50 every time I wait for a light to turn green?”

“We knew the car would be an added expense when we bought it.” (strike two.)

“It's really a shame for your new, small, compact, car to sit out all day in the harsh sun and the rain and the cold when it could sit in a nice, warm garage.”

“There's something to that, but how would you transport .ill those children every day?” (ball one.)

“I just read a survey that a smaller car is safer because the (:h ildren are packed together and do not have room to swing around and argue about who gets a window.”

“That makes sense (ball two) but what would I do with a big car that eats gas and attracts burly truck drivers?”

(BALL THREE.)

It was three and two and I wound up for the big one.

“In a way it's a shame you don't have the station wagon. That way you could pick up some paying riders who would love transportation to the city. The extra money would pay for your gas.”

home RUN!

“It's funny you should mention that,” he said. “The Osborn's daughter, Fluffy, asked me just the other day if I had room in my car for her to ride to the city.”

“You mean the girl in the next block who always looks like she's wearing a life preserver?”

“What a thing to say. She just has good posture.”

“That's inflatable—I mean debatable.”

“Then it's settled. We trade cars. You can drive mine and I'll take the wagon.”

I never knew victory could make you feel so rotten.

Getting Sex Out of the Schools and Back into the Gutter Where It Belongs

My son was five years old when his teacher sent home a note informing me he was sexually immature.

I confronted her the next day after school and said, “What is this supposed to mean, Mrs. Kravitz?”

“It means we had a little quiz the other day on reproductive organs and he defined every one of them as an Ask your-father. You are sending a child into the world, Mrs. Bombeck, who thinks Masters and Johnson is a golf tournament and fertilization is something you do in the fall to make the lawns green.”

“That's true,” I nodded.

“Have you ever discussed sex in your home?” she asked.

“No, but once he caught Barbie and Ken together in a cardboard car in their underwear.”

“Have you ever discussed with him the parts of his body?”

“Only those that showed dirt.”

“You have to do better than that. This is a new day, Mrs. Bombeck. We don't hide our heads in the sand any more. Suburban schools are taking the lead in informing our yomig people about sex at an early age. For example, I am expecting a baby and I told the class about it.”

“You told them you had something in the oven?” I asked incredulously.

“I told them I was pregnant!” she said.

I bit my finger. “Good Lord, Mrs. Kravitz. I didn't know why my husband gasped every time Lassie cleared the fence until I was twenty-six.”

“Then you had better get used to it,” she said. “Your son is about to be informed.”

The suburbs didn't invent sex—it only gave it a wider distribution. No one could have known the ramifications sex education could have had in the community. Little boys wrote dirty sayings on the sidewalks with chalk as they always did, but adults didn't protest. They didn't understand what they meant.

Parents who tried to deal directly with their children by saying, “Look, Brucie, there seems to be some confusion between sexual and asexual reproduction,” only to be interrupted with, “Look, Dad, you should have come to me sooner. What do you need to know?”