Tender Childhood Memories of an Olde Farte

This series is a collection of memories from my childhood growing up on a farm in Iowa. I hope they bring a smile as we reminisce together those days gone but not forgotten. Except for those with Amnesia.

Now why am I sitting in front of my computer?

Episode 3. Christmas Downtown, Schramm’s Dept. Store, and Where’s the Bathroom?

When last we met, I was a child living with my parents on a reasonably idyllic farm just outside of the tiny, charming town of Mediapolis, Iowa. Trips “intatown” in the Buick were special, and I was recovering from getting my knee stitched up without anesthetic. But this is our Special Christmas in January Episode, so no trauma this week. Probably.

I always looked forward to Christmas as, of course, all children do. We had a Christmas tree that sat in the front corner of the living room of the century-old farmhouse we lived in. Mom always decorated it with these really cool lights that were handed down from … well, someone’s mom, I’m sure. I would sit in the living room, mesmerized by the lights as it swayed in the breeze.

On Friday nights when we would go “intatown” to do Christmas shopping, one of my favorite things was going downtown. The streets would be alive with people and cars, and the streets and storefront windows would be decorated with lights and fake presents and fake snow. While outside it was real snow and cold enough to freeze a polar bear. But the lights were amazing and made suffering through the cold worthwhile. The Christmas lights strung along the sidewalks seemed to be enhanced by the traffic lights and the taillights on the cars. Everything seemed to be red and green. It was magical.

One of the stores my mom always went to was Schramm’s Department Store. It was the largest, and likely the oldest, store downtown. It had three floors plus a basement. Schramm’s was an amazing store for a couple of reasons.

One, they had an elevator. An elevator with an old woman running people up and down the three + one floors. It had one of those gates that was extendable and folded neatly to the side when opened. And a large lever on a half-moon dial that the operator moved to go to the requested floor. This was the first elevator I ever saw, and at that time, as far as I know, it was the only one in town. Of course, the town has grown and modernized. I’m pretty sure there are three now.

I loved riding the elevator and exploring the store. Once, I guess I was about four, I walked away from Mom to check something else out while she was waiting at the counter to pay. When I had finished exploring, I walked back and grabbed her hand. Only it wasn’t her. She had already checked out and walked away to find me. I looked up at a stranger’s face, and she said, “Well, hello there.” I panicked. Mom was lost!

I started crying and running around calling “Mom! Mom, Mom!” About 28 moms answered. And although, like baby chicks in a flock of seagulls that know their children’s calls, she found me, I learned her name the very next day.

In addition to the elevator, Schramm’s had the most amazing way of paying that I have ever seen. They used a vacuum tube delivery system, utilizing enclosed cylinders with felt ends that shot through brass tubes at light speed, making a very satisfying ‘thump’ when they landed in the quilt-lined woven basket at the end of the tube.

All transactions were handled at the various counters, but the money was handled at a central office on the second floor. The associate would figure up the total, Mom would hand her the money, and the associate would stuff the invoice and money into the sleeve, which rotated to open and close. She would then shove the brass canister into the vacuum tube and away it would go. A minute or two later, as if by magic, the tube would reappear with a receipt and exact change. To me that was actual magic. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen! Kinda still is.

One of the things I remember most about Schramm’s was the bathrooms. I know. But stay with me here.

As a small child, Mom (as all moms do with their small boy-childs) would take me to the women’s bathroom. Located conveniently on the main floor, this bathroom was like a palace. After entering the first set of swinging doors, you arrived in the sitting room, complete with overstuffed velour couches and chairs, murals on the walls and flowers in tall, graceful vases. A true refuge for the frazzled women of the day. Then, beyond the second swinging door lay the actual bathroom. Here were to be found a line of immaculate stalls and toilets, adorned with locking doors and hooks for purses, jackets or whatever needed to be kept off the floor. Then, there was the long, gleaming marble counter with a dozen sinks, each with its very own soap dispenser, gold faucets and stack of soft, cotton hand towels. All lit with modern lighting of the day. A paradise.

Of course, I got older, and Mom began to sense that it was inappropriate for her to take me to the women’s bathroom. As a curious boy of about six, I was greatly disappointed, but she asked a clerk to direct me to the men’s room. I was taken to a set of wooden stairs and given a list of instructions to follow.

The stairs led to the basement. Not the basement with a sales floor. THE basement. I walked along on a scarred and tired cement floor that had had every piece of merchandise ever sold in that store dragged across it. Then I saw a barely legible old rusty sign that said ‘Restroom’ with an arrow pointing to the right. Luckily, I had learned to read pretty well in the first semester of first grade. I followed the arrow and squeezed through a small opening between the two 17^th century boilers that heated the entire building, and then past stacks of ancient boxes of you-don’t-wanna-know-what’s-in-there teetering precariously on either side.

In the dim and fading light of the single 20-watt bulb that served to light the entire basement, which I had passed a fer distance back, I could make out the vague outline of a doorway in the distance. But before I got to it, I had to duck under a huge furnace duct that crossed the path at about 3 and half feet off the floor, being careful not to step in the recessed drain with old smelly water that resided just off-center of the path. Finally, after some distance, I reached a doorway with another even more rusty sign that said, ‘Men’s Room.’ I knew I was in the right place.

The door to this room was a, what used to be painted white, slat-type garden-style gate, its six tiny slats spaced far apart. It was about 20 inches wide, which matched perfectly the width of the doorway, and it was approximately two feet tall and two feet off the floor, held shut by the rustiest old screen-door spring on the planet. My breathing was heavy, and I had the feeling I was being watched from the shadows in the corners. I considered turning back, but I knew this was my only chance to relieve my bladder. So, I tenderly pulled open the rickety ‘privacy door’ as flakes of rust from the spring floated delicately to the floor, to find a room the size of a phone booth. Only shorter. And smaller. Complete with an ancient toilet and sink positioned directly across from one another.

Fortunately, the light from the 20-watt bulb, now only a distant memory, was so weak I could see only vague forms and shapes. The fixtures, which were surely rejects from the communicable disease ward of a medieval castle, were facing each other a mere 12 inches apart, which was quite convenient actually as you could stand to pee, flush the toilet with the filthy, cracked ceramic handle, and then simply turn around grab the single rusty, filthy faucet handle, and wash your hands. A quick shot and rattling-pipe handwash later, and I was out.

I begged Mom not to send me back there, but I don’t really think she ever believed my tale. “It can’t be that bad,” she’d say, fresh back from her visit to Shangri La.

If she only knew.

Next time on Tender Childhood Memories of an Olde Farte.

Episode 4. Abbey, Charlie and The Hay Mow, and The BB Gun