[The Insignia Pin is an original allegorical fable intended for our times that I’m offering to you in weekly-serial form.
The Insignia Pin is an epistolary novel - composed as though the characters themselves are writing it.
This is Part Three. Please read Part One and Part Two to follow this weekly serial post… and thank you for sharing with others.
Please note: The Insignia Pin is rated PG-13 for coarse language, drugs, war violence, and teen sexuality.]
Frank, 1969
One afternoon in early September 1915, the thunderheads grew huge above Iola, and the hail fell sudden and sideways. It was hard as marbles and as big. The wind gathered so fast we thought a twister was coming.
Pastor Michaels was sitting at his desk when every pane of stained glass at First Christian Church sanctuary blew in. That’s how he became blinded, and folks all over called it an Act of God as genuine as any. Nobody really could figure if he’d done something wrong or right, and suffering’s always so hard to make sense of anyway. I do know Pastor Michaels was on fire for the Lord from then on.
The rain fell so hard, and Neosho River rose so fast, Iola streets went seven feet underwater. Dead cows, pigs, chickens, even family dogs and cats floated by while many folks stood drenched, watching from the rooftops.
Nobody died, at least nobody we knew, but lots of people needed rescuing that could only be done with rowboats or canoes. There weren't too many who owned them except along the river, so this all took a very long while. From the little gable over the porch of our rooming house, Mother and I got pulled into a canoe and eventually onto higher ground where a bunch of tents had been erected near a stand of cottonwoods.
Everywhere we peered out at utter destruction. Levies were swept away, and most farmers were wiped out before it stopped. Those with surviving livestock lost much of their pasture and didn’t have funds to buy winter feed, so they had to sell at rock bottom.
This storm brought us lots of trouble. My job at Iola Electric Park was “shorted out,” so to say, and nobody was interested any longer in paying for tailoring or having dresses made.
There was no work to pick up at the farms either. The flood happened during fall harvest for sorghum. When sorghum gets too much moisture, the grain cracks, so it’s no good. Sweet sorghum can be somewhat heartier, but folks don’t plant as much, and every farmer’s brother was already flocking toward the little bit of that work or whatever corn survived. The only other work for miles around might have been over at United Zinc, but they weren’t hiring anybody.
I took up catfishing again for a time - and they bite like crazy in a flooded river - but that’s no way to make a living when anybody can sink a line and pull one up for themselves in a couple of minutes.
A few days after we came to the camp, the rooming house Mother and I rented at was condemned by the county health inspector, and that’s how we found out we weren’t ever going back home again. Other families were starting to find places, but Mother and I became among the last folks remaining in the camp.
Mother told me in hopeful tones, “Remember, Caff, Jesus Himself could find no place to lay his head.”
But her despair broke through when Pearl was finally able to find us. My sister always had a heart of gold, and without Henry’s say-so, she offered us better shelter. Mother could use their extra mattress, and I'd sleep on sacks of flour. Mother insisted we’d be a burden, but Pearl wouldn’t hear it, and seeing all these tears and being all together tired of living in a rain-soaked tent, I spoke up in favor too.
“We’ll make do,” Pearl told us, and she tossed Grandma Mary and me a lifesaver when you think about it.
What I learned was you never know what’s going to happen in life, so don’t turn your back on family. And to that point, even though you and I haven't spoken in so long, Sam, my heart remains open.
I never did appreciate any ill words spoken about Pearl. Your mother got jealous after she remarried and came into money, and I always thought it was because she wanted Pearl to pitch us a loan and get us out of hock. I refused to even ask her because Pearl and I were square. She deserved every good fortune and didn’t owe me or anybody else a red cent.
It was her husband, your Uncle Henry, a man I much admired, who couldn’t muster enthusiasm about us coming in to live with them. A man of his sort wouldn’t have dreamed of commenting directly on the difficulties of taking in family, but I could tell the idea rubbed him wrong. I don’t blame him either - he couldn’t have been more than twenty-six years old, and Pearl and he were about to become parents. I suspect they were only a tad less desperate than we were.
The tiny space they got us into was at the top of a creaky staircase behind the dry goods section of a narrow storefront they rented from Iola Bank. We all shared a little kitchenette with a wood-fired stove, a small nook, and then there was the bedroom for Henry and Pearl, and another small room with an extra mattress for Mother. I stretched out on sacks of flour nearby the kitchen stove, which wasn’t too bad. There was no other source of heat for the upstairs, so everybody liked to be as close to that old stove as they could get.
Upstairs had become jammed with grocery items - bags of sugar, flour, and corn meal, canned goods, a barrel of crackers, kegs of pickles or meal, and other items. Henry and Pearl must have sweat like dogs to get it all up there when the water first came in. After having lost so much to the flood, he made it clear he did not want any overstock kept down at ground level. There was also bottled beer, which Henry made, consumed, and sold.
He was an amazingly even-tempered man, and I never once saw him drunk. At some point, I tripped over a twenty-five pound bag of sugar that burst open across the dusty plank floor, ruining it for sale. Henry heard the commotion and charged upstairs, and my heart leapt. Understand, refined sugar was hard to come by then. He only peered around the corner, shook his head at the mess and said, “Sweep it up, please” before going on back down. I’d cost him fifty cents, which seemed like a whole lot of money to me.
He was a real contrast to Bill McCaffrey and the scoundrels he brought around. I’d never seen such self-control in a man. Although I was young, I realized all we owed him and Pearl, and given the crisis around us, I took to sweeping, stocking, and running errands without being asked, which would have shamed me. Henry never paid me - and I’m sure he couldn’t afford to do so. I knew this labor was expected of me.
As the floods subsided, we struggled to get back to business. Once a week on Thursdays at five a.m., I’d hitch a buckboard to an old white mare named Gisela, and he and I would head over to LaHarpe depot, where we’d load a few crates of canned goods, fresh produce, and maybe a quarter of beef or pork if he had the credit. Credit was about all he had to work with then, and so those were the only occasions I ever saw him lose his composure. But this was on purpose. I’d marvel at him bartering harder than our meanest customers.
We’d head back to the store to start setting stock by six-thirty a.m. Mother and Pearl might get rhubarb pies going in the little stove using stalks gathered from along the backs of the deserted buildings. They had the consideration to leave these stalks alone near buildings still occupied. People don’t think in such a ways anymore, you know, considering the needs of other folks. If they could make enough of them, we’d sell four or five pies a day to people still in the chips like the doctor’s wife, or the Sheriff, or the city attorney. Mother and Pearl sometimes added canned peaches to make the rhubarb go further.
But most all of Henry’s customers could no longer afford to pay in real cash. Store business got to be a strange mix of barter and exchange - a case of hominy, three bags of flour, and two rhubarb pies to Alvin Setzer and sons for drying out and repainting the interior walls and fixing the sign; sixteen turnips, salt, vinegar, and eight Ball jars with rubberized caps to Azele Friedmont, the midwife who agreed to keep an eye on Pearl.
Had all this dickering been discovered by Iola Bank, which hadn’t gotten their rent in months, Henry and Pearl might have been arrested. But the Bank was still underwater, literally so, which got to be such a common subject of local jokes, most people would roll their eyes. What actually made things easier on us was their temporary offices remained completely disorganized due to the effects of the storm.
***
Living with a grocer shows off a great variety of foods, but the goods are to sell, not to eat. When our days were finished, we’d have our own supper on the inverted door and sawhorses Henry set up. I got tired of lentils and rice. We might have meat on Sundays if he said it was okay.
Pearl raised such questions, and it would always make me feel burdensome. Like many a young man in such straits I only wanted to get out of Iola altogether and find my way in the world. That's likely how we began talking about world events at suppertime.
You see, my mother, your Grandma Mary, knew her own mind better after all she’d gone through with Bill McCaffrey. She started reading books and had been going to talks at the library before the flood. By then, she’d even linked arms with Annie Diggs, the suffragette newspaperwoman who’d come to Iola Grange on behalf of helping Kansas women win the vote.
Grandma Mary was the last of the Pentecostal pacifists and a big fan of William Jennings Bryan. She told us a tale one night of how Bitter Bill got on the wagon and allowed her to go to a women’s conference in Chicago with some Chillicothe townswomen. Listening to her tell it, I remembered how she was gone three days and noticed aloud how she’d come back home a changed person. She seemed less careworn. Maybe that was about when she started going around with the church ladies to look in on the sick.
She said she didn’t feel safe talking to me about any of these changes when Bill was around, but she agreed she'd picked up a fighting spirit. The experience gave her the strength to take a stand with my father and also to quit her morphine syrup habit.
"Being an angry and stupid man," she said, "he got resentful of me and hatched his plan and purposely gambled away our deed out of shear spite."
I'd never known the full story until that moment.
Well, while she’d been off to Chicago, she said, she felt drawn toward a group called the Political Equality League. A famous Negro woman named Ida Wells was at one of their meetings. Mother said she was a female genius who educated all those white women about the black lynchings in the South.
Right after Miss Wells finished her talk with them, all the white women, my mother among them, tried to take her over to the Hotel LaSalle to get something to eat, but the manager wouldn’t allow her inside because she was a Negress.
Mother said about a thousand white ladies caused a scene for the Chicago Police on behalf of Ida, and she’d been proud to be one of them. I only mention all this to demonstrate to you how Mother grew so much as a person during our travail and was no longer as submissive as she had been around my father. No, not at all like that anymore.
This is about when a difficult conversation began between her and Henry and me, which I’ll come to in a minute. . .
Caff, 1970
Anyways, we went out by Springer Park and put pennies on the tracks, but only one train came, and it just shot them off without flattening them. Whole Earth Catalog says if trains stopped moving for only forty-eight hours, people in the cities would starve. Weird!!
Jarv and I trucked around, smoked two bowls, and then he said I owed him five bucks for all the pot we were smoking. I said that's totally bogue, and he shared it all free and clear. His choice, right? I got pissed and was going to just split. But why should I take off when he’s the one being a dick?
We found some golf balls next to Springer pond with no nicks or mars, so we sold them to some honkies for a buck a piece.
And Jarv wouldn’t stop talking about me owing him five bucks.
“You know what Jarvis? Fuck off!” I finally told him.
We found even more balls to sell by the park fence, but when I picked one up, some honky started tearing across the golf course yelling “Hey, that’s mine!”
We boogied fast up the viaduct by Dover Road and cut back through Dr. Spode’s bushes. Those junipers got lots of spiders, so I was trying not to freak out. We hid for maybe three minutes before walking back to the park like we just got there.
We ended up going over to Springer Park Concession Stand. It has this big flat roof with picnic tables, pop, burgers, conies, subs, fries, chips, candy, Drumsticks and Creamsicles. Also, Vernors Boston Coolers, yum.
Elmer Breckinridge is short order cook, and Freda’s this blonde fox from eleventh grade who runs the register and helps at the grill. If Elmer and Freda aren’t there, the place is closed!
Freda was rolling balls of burger, and me and Jarv were watching her like a couple of dorks. Elmer was smushing balls on the griddle with his spatula and then smushing in chopped onions. He just smiled at us and shook his head because he knows both of us dig Freda. But she won't pay attention to either of us because we're freshman.
We're out of her league, believe me.
Elmer smushed a second ball on top of the first to make a double cheeseburger. When it’s busy, Elmer’s flipping twenty burgers and slapping on cheese slices. He slides them onto Wonder Bread buns with pickles and grilled onions and squirts on ketchup and mustard before folding them up into greasy paper.
Ummm. I couldn't resist any longer. I bought a whole bag of cheeseburgers for five bucks so Jarv would get off my back about smoking all his pot. Yes, I shared them with him, so he’d shut up.
That was all the money I had and that's why I asked my egghead brother to spot me three bucks until next Saturday and he’d get it back. He said "no" even though he’s got one hundred fifty bucks in the bank. Now I’m grounded because of his greediness.
I’m going to watch Mannix.
I’m not sleepy! Dad took over the TV and he won’t let me stay up. I got my flashlight and I’m under the sheets.
What I'm supposed to be writing about is peer pressure and how I started tripping on acid.
So Jarv and I were eating our bag of burgers at Springer Park.
“Y’all wanchatrysumsid?”
(This is where I’m coming to my point.)
“Huh?”
“Y’all wanchadosumsid?”
“Huh?”
This kind of talk can go on forever. I have to ask him to sound it out.
“Ya all want ya ta try sum acid?” he asks.
“Nah, Jarvis, acid makes you have roosters and hens for babies.”
“Horse pucky,” he says, being all smart-ass. “What’dyall hearthasheet?”
“Your very own youth minister.”
Jarv and I go to Northminster Prespertarian even though the rest of his family goes to Four Corners Church. I went there with him one time, but they speak in tongues and whatnot, and we both think that’s so crazy, so we go to the youth group at my church instead.
Davis Golden is our youth minister. Everybody knows religious people don’t lie because they’re always sure they’ll get struck by lightening or something. Davis said if you start to get peer pressure from somebody to take acid, remember what can happen to your babies.
“LSD screws up your sperm,” I told Jarv who doesn’t pay any attention to whatever he doesn’t want to hear. “Davis said you’ll get chickens for babies. You were sitting right there when he said it, Jarv.”
Jarv’s looking at me like a pimple-faced madman.
“Ballsheet tagitchallshaky.” That’s how he talks. That’s just what he sounds like. “Ahcanstillgita bullzeyefroma sixafootahtoldya. Nothinawrongwitmasperm.”
“Huh?”
“Aw, nevermind, hellwidya, Caff.” He sipped his Coke, all frustrated.
Holy crap! Dad peered in my room just willy-nilly. I shut my flashlight off just in time!
Anyways, Jarv is trying to say he already dropped acid himself, and nothing went wrong. I said that’s besides the point because he hasn’t fathered any babies. So then he starts trying to explain to me about hitting a bullseye with his sperm, but he knows full well this whole story’s a big sore point.
This is all about what happened last year in Mrs. Doker’s science class when she was showing a sex education movie.
She’d warned everybody about how we weren’t allowed to make any noises whatsoever, laugh, or ask any questions at all about anything.
She said, "Just watch the movie and be quiet."
Everybody is sitting on the floor of the gym watching the movie, and it’s about to actually show a woman’s uterus.
I’d never heard of one of these, let alone seen one, and I wanted to know exactly what a guy’s supposed to do with a girl's uterus if you're having sex.
Right when the film starts explaining, Jarv leans over and whispers super loud.
“Y’all ever jerk off?”
I whispered back at him super harsh, “Shut up!!”
The movie was showing a sideways view of a cartoon lady cut in half with some guy’s bodiless penis in her. I mean, I was wondering, is his dick touching on her uterus? It was hard to tell what those bodies were doing.
“Y’all ever jerk off?” Jarv sounds off again at me like an alarm clock.
Right then, this flashing arrow started pointing at "Uterus" and whatever it was started blinking off and on but the film got blurry and the announcer’s voice was making echoes across the gym I couldn't understand.
“Ever jerk off?”
“Shut up!!!” I said real loud.
He was like a skipping record - and of course the kids all around started giggling.
Then Mrs. Doker yelled out, “Hush!”
Then Jarv starts whispering more and saying stuff clearer than he ever talks about how he sometimes gets hold of his dad’s Playboy magazine, makes a target on his bathroom mirror with toothpaste, and then tries to shoot his sperm into the bulls-eye.
And I’m telling you Jarv Vallant doesn’t give a shit what anybody thinks about saying private stuff like that out loud so everybody can hear!
I keep on saying real harsh to him, “Shut the hell up!!” but Jarv keeps going on and on, and he won’t stop.
This is exactly why he doesn’t have very many friends is what I'm saying.
And I'm thinking he’s so loud Robin McGee might hear him. And then Katie Cartwright goes and whispers word for word to her what Jarv said .
Then Robin McGee yells out “Gross!”
And that’s how it all happened in eighth grade - the lights came up, and Jarv got us both sent down to the office.
I didn’t even do anything!! I got a progress report sent home from Mrs. Doker and didn’t know it was coming so couldn’t catch it in the mail.
Because of him, I actually had to sit down and talk with both my parents about sex.
Not only that but he embarrassed Robin McGee and good luck for me ever getting to first base with her.
He's lucky I stayed friends with him after all that happened. And I still forgot to write down about how I started trippin’ out!