The Barn always told me we had a lot of long livers in our family tree. I didn’t understand the how the measurement of a vital organ would bring him such pride, but by the monkeyshine in his eyes, I figured there must be some riddle in the remark. Once he had me hooked, he’d say, “Grandma Snorteland lived until she was ninety-two, Uncle Oscar was ninety-six, Uncle Christ was eighty-nine, and Aunt Laurensa was seventy-eight. We have a lot of long livers.”
It’s a homegrown version of a Barney Joke, those quips that have given him legendary status among his offspring and our peers. The definition of a Barney joke is one that, when the punchline is revealed, draws a deep groan from the listener, but which the listener will retell many times as the daffy cleverness of it cures and mellows in our humor centers. His own inventions are often the best.
Being grandparents and retired in their sixties, it was always fun to have The Barn and The Peg pop up from Southeast Iowa to visit our two contributions to their rogues gallery. One morning I emerged from our bedroom to find The Barn making breakfast for The Dot. Grandpa Barney told me he was making her breakfast, because she had “beat him up” that morning.
“What?!” Then I noticed the familiar monkeyshine eyes.
“Morgan was up at 6:00, and I didn’t get up until 6:15. She beat me up.”
If you hear yourself repeating this to others, you’ll have entered the land of Barney Jokes.
Barney Games are another trip to Huh?-ville. A music educator and father of five, and possessing a mind that doesn’t quit, his entertainment was way past musical chairs and into composing songs and thinking up word games. Our long summer family vacations bred all sorts of diversions. To this day I can’t look at a license plate without coming up with a slogan to match the scramble of numbers and letters inscribed there. To her horror, The Dot does it, too, but she’s learning like the rest of us to expect the bemused look on the faces of her friends.
One fabled game has spread out beyond the family and into the lives of casual acquaintances. While visiting The Barn a few years ago, he showed me a letter from the adult child of one of his friends. “I’ll never forget playing ‘Tree’. I taught it to my kids, and they’re teaching it to theirs.”
Get out. Tree?
Tree was the brainchild of The Barn on our long summer tours throughout the Upper 48, Canada, and Mexico. When getting from Point A to Point B, The Barn didn’t mess around. We’d easily cover 500 miles a day, back before Interstate highways were plentiful. Besides, getting off the main roads made the trip more interesting.
He made a “car kitchen” for the back seat, rendering the back door behind the driver’s seat useless for getting in and out of the station wagon. With this invention, he foreshadowed the minivan by nearly thirty years. The Peg sat next to the “car kitchen”, and dispensed water from the buttoned spout of the big Thermos jug that sat in its custom slot on the top shelf. There were shelves that held Tupperware containers full of things that were needed throughout the day, including Keen, a fruit-flavored powder that we could mix for our afternoon snack, and the cookies The Peg would pack each day.
Each day we would get a big bag of Scotsman’s® ice, and dump it into the ice chest that sat on the shelf across the seat of the “car kitchen”. Instead of buying soda pop or sugary/salty snacks, we’d get a cup of ice. It was fun, too! We’d have contests to see who could hold an ice cube in his or her mouth the longest. If a sibling ticked you off, you could always sit behind them and loudly crunch on ice cubes. That really burned ‘em, but they knew if they complained, the ice cruncher won, so a battle of the wills ensued.
It’s hard to mention the “car kitchen” and not be reminded of “the sleeve”. Each year, while on these long trips with hours on the road, The Barn would rest his arm out the driver’s side window. To prevent sunburn, The Peg fashioned a temporary full-length sleeve from one of his old shirts, retaining the collar and button closure.
“Where’s my sleeve? Oh, here it is. Has everyone gone to the restroom? We aren’t stopping again, you know. Peggy, do you have the coffee can?” We had that along “just in case”. “Once we get on the road, I’ll have a cup of Scotsman’s® ice, please.”
Keeping five growing kids cooped up in a station wagon all day, with one stop at noon for a picnic lunch and maybe an afternoon stretch, meant that those limbs needed some serious movement in the little amount of time we could afford. 500 miles was a haul in those days, but it didn’t get you as far when the roads were twisting and slowing for every little town. We couldn’t always find a park with playground equipment, either, so we had to work with what we had.
“All right, now everyone pay attention. When I say, ‘Tree,’ I want you all to run and find a tree. One tree apiece, and when you get there, just wait for my command. When I say, ‘Tree,’ again, each of you run for another tree. Remember, one tree apiece.”
So, like five little cramped-up zombies, we waited motionless until he exploded, “Tree!” We ran like the dickens to the first tree of our choice. I always ran for the least obvious tree, little sister Lora for the tree that needed the most comfort, Neil to the farthest tree (and he’d get there first, too, because he was the fastest runner), Paul, the oldest, would command the largest tree in the middle, and Jeanie would make a determined stride to the tree she deemed the most logical choice.
“Tree!”
Another scramble, and we’d choose Tree Number Two with less care, but with more energy than Tree Number One.
“Tree!”
The game continued, and we relished the relief of having some much-needed activity.
“Tree!”
Soon enough we’d start to giggle at how silly the whole thing was. There were no rules, no winners, no competition, and no skill required. We were all equals, blowing off steam in a crisscrossed, catawampus pattern of running and release.
Hubba and I are making the trek south from our nest in the bluffs of Northeast Iowa, through the stretches of soil-rich acres and the villages that bring commerce to farm families, and into the former coal mining center of Southeast Iowa. It’s a happy trip, one that ends in our celebrating The Barn’s 89th birthday. I’ll check to see how long his liver is getting, and groan when he tells me the joke I’ll hear myself repeating for the next week. Not everyone gets a father like The Barn, and we have another year of blessings to count with him.
Happy 89th Birthday, The Barn!
Copyright © March 2006 Kari E.O. Burns
No comments:
Post a Comment