Hard Times

The following is a story I posted on my blog on April 27, 2013, and is also in my blog book "My Kingdom for a Blue Butterfly."

Prince Charming (my stepdad) had rescued us and Happily-Ever-After was in its last trimester in our new home in the suburbs of Lawrence when Mother announced she was with child.  She liked to say, "I have a little Indian in me," and everyone would laugh.  But the laughter ended the day my new dad was laid off from his job at a local factory.

After we moved on up to the north side, Mother was happy again.  Judy, who had blossomed into a beautiful woman, had met her future husband (in church, of course) and I, at fourteen, had accumulated enough friends (enough friends for me was two at arm's length) at school and from our neighborhood that boredom and monotony were no longer the bane of me.

The new head of our household grew up in the backwoods of West Virginia and was familiar with the hardships of making do with what little his family had. If they were going to eat it, they would have to catch it or grow it.  Their house was a small shack that was little more than shelter from the outside.  It was unbearably cold in the winter and stifling hot in the summer, but he and his family did what they had to do to survive, and that is exactly what he would do now--now that he was committed to a mortgage for a new home, a wife and children.  There would be hard times, but his family would survive. He would find a way.

*  *  *

It was a beautiful, white two-story farmhouse that sat beside a stately barn on a hundred acres that at one time was bordered by farmland. With the city moving north at a fast pace, it was now surrounded by motels, restaurants, strip malls, and gas stations.  The man who owned it was a gentleman farmer, who wore a suit everyday and owned several companies, in addition to the farm.  He was a wealthy, prominent businessman in the community and was known to be a no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners, tough negotiator.

My new dad was a quiet, shy man.  The little nuances in conversation that can promote your cause or derail it were unknown to him.  His words were simple and direct.  His intentions were sincere and honest.  And on the day that he stood on the front porch of the beautiful white house and nervously rang the doorbell, he knew the odds were against him.  When the man in the suit opened the front door to his beautiful estate and saw an unsmiling, dark-skinned stranger standing before him, he was not impressed, at first.

We survived.  My dad shoveled manure, baled hay, painted fences, repaired tractors, and so much more, until the day the factory called him back to work, but something very special and unlikely happened during that time on the farm.  The quiet, shy factory worker became close friends with the take-no-prisoners businessman, and that friendship remained strong until the last day in the life of our Prince Charming.