Pepsi Clock
The 2nd of the short stories from my book I hope to publish "Drawing near to Death". Stories from my raucous youth and my working it out with my mother in her last days.
Pepsi Clock
My parents were both teachers so they had a lot of time off work for holidays and summer vacation. My father was an only child and his parents had both passed before my sisters and I were born. My mother had four siblings, a brother, two younger sisters and an identical twin sister. All of which live in Nashville TN, other than my uncle Glenn, who lived in Massachusetts. Each of Mom’s siblings had a boy within a year or so of one another. So there were five boy cousins growing up. Many of our holidays were spent with our Tennessee family, staying overnight at the different cousins’ houses in between the time spent at my grandparents. We often went at Christmas, spring break and every summer.
We had a ritual of how we would travel the 500 miles between Northbrook, our hometown and a northern suburb of Chicago to Nashville. I am the oldest and have two younger sisters that are 15 months apart, so there were three of us roughly three years apart. The trip worked like this: we would go to bed, fall asleep, and be placed in the car to drive through the night and arrive as the sun was coming up in the morning. Us kids would remain settled and peaceful as my parents sipped coffee and drove. We had an AMC Rambler station wagon that my dad piled all the family belongings, including Christmas presents on the top of, covered with tarps. Ramblers were very small, with front and back seats and then the way back. They were so small a driver could reach you with their belt all the way back while hardly taking their eyes off the road. The way back was a small area and some had a fold up seat facing out the back window. These cars were all steel, vinyl, and a bit of carpet on the floors. The loopy carpet you could get a rug burn on. Our Cruiser was turquoise with lots of turquoise metal inside and out. We would always have the seats folded down and a sleeping area set up in the way back. I was the oldest so I was crammed back there most of the time with blankets and pillows covering the metal flooring and wheel wells. On a few occasions I shared the space with our cat Tiger in his wire cage, cat litter and water bouncing around. Part of the reason for the lunar travel was not having to stop and eat, or use the bathroom, or buy fireworks, many of the distractions on the road. When we did leave during the day I remember stopping at the Hinsdale Oasis, which was a modern restaurant that spanned over the highway. It was so cool watching the cars and trucks drive underneath you. Very exciting for a kid, the only problem is it was about 30 miles from our house!
I also remember a lot of puking on these trips, day and night time. More so during the day as we’d eat then drive and one of the three of us would get sick. I don’t remember it as being me that often but I could be wrong because somewhere in those trips my parents began giving me Dramamine to administer to myself. I remember the foil packages that you would pop the tablets through. I remember the buzz and euphoria and then the drowsy snuggly slipping into sleep. Maybe I took a few more than the directions called for? My sisters and I would often bicker with one another. Back in the sixties, punching your sister was in the play book. So was pinching, and the girls bit back then. What sounds so inappropriate today was really how we rolled. Also, the gas station potty stops were not always pleasant on the road back then, they could be down right scary. The Kentucky toilets seemed the worst. The bowls were stained crazy shades of orange and brown and not knowing the science of water our imaginations got the best of us. They had old fashion rolling cloth towels that were meant to regenerate a fresh clean section when tugged on, that would get stuck and refuse to spin and would be dirt black from dozens trying to pull a new towel and finding it jammed. Most would relent and dry their hands on the only portion available that legions had used. We had no DVD players or Ipads to divert our attention. You could say we put the GRIZ in Grizwald family vacations. I can see why my parents opted to drive through the night. A great memory was waking from my drugged sleep, drooling on the pillow and seeing the sun peaking over what I believe were the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains.
The last fragment of our night time pilgrimage to our grandparent’s farm was along a snaking sloping portion of Edmondson Pike in Brentwood. We would often reach there as the dawn was breaking. At a point a few miles away our ruddy little Rambler wagon would crest a hill and in the distance one could glimpse if they knew what they were looking for, a shining guide post signaling. The swoosh of blue, white, and red of grandpa’s Pepsi clock beckoning our weary circus. Mom was usually the reporter, starting with a whisper “Hey kids there is the Pepsi clock.” As the three of us kids began to stir and grasp the words, we would in turn wake each other, saying “ Pepsi clock!” “Hey look, it’s the Pepsi Clock!” and within a twinkling we would be fully awake. Saying “Awwww look at the Pepsi Clock.” Expectancy for the love, joy and nurturing magic to come. As we entered their driveway we would lose sight of our beacon, going up the long gravel hill to the house. We would be squeezed and kissed, already in our PJs, and tucked into a waiting bed to complete our dreams and slumber. Those moments of stirring consciousness witnessing the Pepsi clock trumpeting our return was a peace that is beyond understanding.
That beacon is a lone signal of heart and home of the gathering of generations. Tennessee was so mysterious coming from the flat lands of Illinois. It was a different world to me as a child. I have often thought about the 500 Miles between the northern suburbs of Chicago and Nashville as being a vast span of cultural diversion. Weather, language, customs, wildlife, soil and geography all vary extremely. My grandparents had what we referred to as “The Farm”. It was actually 20 acres in Brentwood, TN on Edmondson Pike, an enchanting winding country road now inhabited by country music’s finest.My mom grew up on dairy farms with all types of livestock. Stories from her youth always included my Grandma Baba wringing two chicken’s necks at the same time for dinner preparation. To us this was a farm! Equipped with the rust red terra cotta Tennessee soil plowed in rows, albeit only a couple of acres. There was corn, potatoes, squash, green beans, eggplant and rhubarb with leaves as big as elephant’s ears. I have an early memory of digging the red earth with my Donald Duck orange juice can, I had to have been in diapers. There was a raspberry patch with red and black berries, and a spring that Papoo ( Grandpa) and I fetched the water from on those blistering summer days. It was home of the giant bullfrog and the mysterious salamanders. The big red barn housed the green John Deere tractor upon which I rode in the lap of my dear grandaddy through what was imagined to be Christopher Robin’s 100 acre woods. Lizards and the blue tailed skinks (yes, they are a real thing) basked in the sun taunting my cousins and I from the barn’s sides. Seemingly so easy to be captured for extreme bragging rights but always alluding my pudgy grips.
The fishing! Since we stayed with Papoo and he loved fishing I got to go with him regularly, usually to some other farm’s bluegill pond at the crack of dawn or that’s what we called it anyway. We would have an early breakfast of Total Cereal, we were Total Men! That was my Papoo’s favorite cereal so I had to eat it of course. I discovered that if you dump four or five tablespoons of sugar on it it really comes close to resembling Frosted Flakes. Then we were off to the fishing holes! One time Papoo felt bad about only catching bluegills and he took me to a trout farm, Yahoo! I think I caught a whole stringer in less than an hour. “Slow down!” he would say. I have pictures of that string of fish I can barely lift, dragging on the ground, nearly as tall as me. The freshly caught ones would be flapping madly and the earlier ones with just their gills pumping. These treasured memories from a lifetime ago built substance in me that I would need as an adult in our world today.
Guns! Papoo had lots of guns. He started taking me out to shoot when I was four or five years old. Carbines, six shooters, 22’s, lever action rifles and my favorite, the flame thrower! Well in reality it was a Luger. I believe that the luger has a large charge in its rounds and that is why a flame shot out of the barrel 18 inches. At five years old that was good enough to be deemed the Flame Thrower. We’d shoot up cans or my grandpa would freeze half gallons of water and set them on a stump, watching the ice crystals blast into the sunlight as the bullets struck. Papoo would hold his large hands around mine, still allowing me to pull the trigger. Feeling the reverberation in my hands as well as his powerful body, fully supporting me, was empowering. Thinking back if you’re going to learn to shoot a gun in grandpa’s arms is the place to do it. Leeching the masculine energy into my being from the air, touch, energy, insights and rites of a grandfather. He was teaching, caring, sanctioning, bringing his kin into the rituals of man. To say the least this was a place of exploration. We had maps in our minds and souls of this vast country of the family plot. A giant world where all things are possible and joyous fun is behind every tree and under the creek stones, gushing from the pipe at the springhouse. A world both dangerous and safe as heaven in the same breath. Time stood still during these trips, times you could never recreate. Simple times, no assembly required!
There was really only one place that was off limits of sorts and that was grandpa’s woodworking shop. It was a dark, sawdust laden part of the house but also separate onto itself. The only entrance from the house was up a dusty, unused staircase that came up from the basement. Basements were not finished like many today. It did have one cedar lined bedroom that nobody really wanted to stay in, a jeep, a boat, and large crocks of home canned goods, mostly pickled cucumbers and onions. The other entrance was from the outside, on the far end of the house. My grandfather and Uncle Stan had built the house so I imagine they had worked the woodshop into the plans as they built the place on the weekends. My Papoo was also one of the head accountants for the Nashville Gas Company, which today adds to my appreciation for his eclectic persona and full life. The shop had large lathes, drill presses, planers and saws. It was probably a really good idea to keep the five exuberant wild boy cousins out of this place. Hence one loses an eye, ear, finger or head. Grandpa loved his wood shop. We never discussed it but I bet it was very meditative for him. He crafted wooden salad bowl sets for each of his children with a large bowl and eight to ten small bowls. He made them out of exotic woods, Zebra wood, Black walnut, Rosewood “Brazil” with a little label adhered to the bottom telling you the wood type. Some of these bowls still have the labels more than 50 years later. The family all had lamps fashioned on the lathe and candle sticks, some with brass fittings to hold the candle. All the woods are polished and oiled to a meticulous feel.
On occasion sneaking into the wood shop was the plan of the time. Smells of the sawdust and shavings piled on the floor from the lathes and planers, and rags with rubbing oils lending to the ethereal scent of Grandpa’s place. All the metal and tools of a forbidden land. Our normal gleeful ruckus and indoor, outdoor anywhere voices would come to a lull. Whispers and wide eyed wonder in boyish mystery replaced them. Fingers tracing through the sawdust on cold steel surfaces were our only signatures of our time in Narnia. Exploring and speculating about the wonders of the place, I would look up high on the wall above all the machines and tools and there it was. The Pepsi clock. Shining so bright, keeping time unannounced and serving as an unplanned beacon to travelers to this place. A signal that in that instant all is good and right and ok in my world.