The Ride of a Lifetime

Linda Carter

I came close to being “felt up” on a Greyhound bus as I traveled home for Christmas break in 1978. Before you think I would treat this topic lightly, please understand the circumstances.

I was a sophomore in college. You could tell how sophisticated I was because I made a big show of reading Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe and smoking Old Gold Lights.

The bus trip was an arduous trek across the great state of South Dakota, featuring miles upon miles of emptiness, broken only by huge billboards touting free water at the infamous Wall Drug.

As darkness fell, the only signs of life came from yard lights marking the occasional farmhouse in a black, black night.

We stopped often at tiny town cafes to pick up more people. And more people. It soon became apparent to those of us lucky enough to have a seat that the bus was oversold, way oversold.

Weary passengers stood in the aisle, clutching aluminum poles and nodding off every now and then. Once in awhile one of them would jerk awake and glance around sheepishly to see if anyone noticed.

The smell, oh my God the smell.  People sweated profusely in heavy winter coats they had nowhere to hang. Crying babies pooped their diapers and threw up on their harried parents.

This had to be illegal, right? But no one wanted to be the one left behind, unable to catch a ride to that magical Christmas destination.

Just in front of me, an elderly woman massaged Vicks Vap O Rub onto her neck and chest, filling the air with a minty aroma. Next to her a man in a threadbare coat gave off a stench of Christian Brothers Brandy and Brylcreem.

I was fighting the urge to puke when I felt a tug at my sleeve. I looked up into the doe eyes of a teenage boy, about 14, with sandy brown hair. Man his feet hurt, he told me, could he just rest on the edge of my seat for awhile?

I graciously agreed, proud of the magnanimous gesture I was making. He swaggered a bit as he sat down, balancing himself on the armrest of my seat.

We talked briefly and he told me he was on his way to visit his Grandmother for the holidays. As the lights from our last stop vanished into the distance, the blackness of the night prairie descended once again on the crowded bus.

At first I thought I was dreaming, but then I realized a hand truly was moving slowly up my thigh, searching for gold at the end of the rainbow.

When I realized what and who it was I quickly removed his hand, hissing NO as quietly and forcefully as I could. He shrugged, then began a daring attempt to climb Mt. Fiddle and Faddle. I barely pulled my coat closed in time to save the girls.

With another angry hiss, I removed his hand and thus, the battle began. As soon as I would get one hand cornered, another appeared.

I swear to God he was like an octopus on steroids. I fought him off for half an hour, tempted to lodge a complaint, but afraid of the embarrassment this action would cause. If this happened today, I would simply squeeze a nut sack until screaming commenced or threaten the driver with a heavy duty lawsuit.

This night was just another cog in my wheel of life, but it taught me something incredibly profound.

I learned true maturity does not come in showing people what you read or smoke. It comes in how you handle yourself, face the unexpected and lay down limits. This boy wanted nothing more than to regale his pals with tales of lust on a Greyhound Bus.

He never got to finish his journey that night, but I did.

Story by Linda Carter 2014

The Country Club

                 by Linda Carter

Eastern South Dakota is extremely flat. In the summer the horizon is filled with miles upon miles of green and yellow corn rows and fields of golden sunflowers bursting upward toward the bright sky. Clouds of dust from long gravel roads dot the landscape, cars and trucks kicking up small stones that litter vehicles with tiny specks of damage.

At the edge of my small town, near the sun drenched lake called Kampeska, sat the gathering place for the city’s elite. The Country Club dominated the top of a slight hill, giving its inhabitants a feeling of superiority that did not fit the reality of the overall situation. I was working class, just turned 15 and eager to work hard.

Dishwasher, $1.60 an hour. And I was good at this, my first job.

I can still picture bright red lipstick marring the edges of dainty white cups. I sprayed them with steaming hot water and watched the dregs of dinner disappear into the drain just below my waist.

I knew just how to create a motion that allowed plates to glide smoothly into their designated trays. Tubs of silverware soaked for only a moment, tumbling into the waiting bins where spoons found their brethren and forks tangled for control. Knives floated effortlessly from my soapy fingers into their upright positions. The water was warm, cleansing.

For the first time in my life, I was in control.

Parents, siblings, friends, glided into my subconscious and I was one with this simple task. Clean it, wash it, slide it into the steel cubicle and let the hot steam make a new beginning. On the other side, heat hurt my hands as I deftly plucked the clean plates and silverware out of their bins, sorting quickly, expertly. The heat felt good. It was almost as if I was cleansing something inside me, the burning signaling a new beginning. For a few hours, I was the master of all around me and I was good at this, my first job.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to those days, plunging my hands into hot water, grabbing the spray nozzle with a sure grip that wasted no movement.

As I worked, my mind filled with dreams of the future, an education, a career and great success. And yet this was all I needed at this very moment, the water, the steam, the heat and the grace of a job well done.

Story by Linda Carter @2014

Oren Hindman

May 2, 1985

The phone is ringing, too many beers the night before.  I struggle to comprehend.

An officer is dead, I have to dress quickly and catch up with the story. A young photographer with soft brown hair meets me at the TV station where we both work. A rusted and dusty Chevy Cavalier will take us down the road, winding through Black Hills in the early morning, cups of coffee clutched in our laps.

In the days before cell phones, I ask for details over the two way radio, the lone morning anchor doing her best to fill me in. I hear the name, pause, “what?”

“Oren Hindman” the voice replies and I realize I know the young Highway Patrol officer who is lying in a morgue just miles away.

I don’t really know him, in the sense that we are friends, but I grew up in a small South Dakota town with his brother Mark in my class. Oren was popular, musically gifted and handsome.

This is not just a nameless, faceless man doing his job. He is real, his brother is real, his family is getting the news right now and I feel sick. I know that feeling.

In the middle of the night a Highway Patrol Officer came to my family’s door, delivering the news that my oldest brother was dead, killed in a horrible car crash just outside my little hometown. I flash on the memory of my mother’s face as she tried to absorb the news and I wish I could say something comforting to Oren’s family.

Just about a month from now I will marry my soul mate. He’s the only one I ever considered marrying and our days are filled with plans, love and laughter.

Later, I hear stories of Oren’s family, how his wife and daughter were absolutely devoted to him, his daughter waving goodbye from the window as her Daddy went off to work.

A stupid kid with a knife ended this young man’s life. My God, it was a simple DUI, couldn’t you do the time? One flash, one moment and an entire community is stunned by grief.

I never grasped this concept, as many times as I sat in a courtroom and watched the wretched walk by, sentenced to life instead of a few measly months.

Oren and his brother Mark were known as good guys in my small town high school. I wasn’t in the crowd either of them hung out with, but when our paths crossed they were nice, polite and never uttered a harsh word in my direction.

I will never forget that funeral. The lines of Highway Patrol Officers with gloves pulled tight over their wrists, standing at attention as the casket passed.

Then I spot Mark, the boy in so many of my yearly class photos.

His head hangs in sadness as he follows the coffin out of the church. I flip open my reporter notebook and watch as a small, wet stain appears about mid page.

Linda Carter

My Uncle Dale

 By Linda Carter

I don’t know how to explain it. I doubt my cousins or siblings would be able to describe the feeling either. But there was something special about our Uncle Dale.

In my littlest years, he was one of the biggest figures. A tall, strong furry man with a bald head and enough hair on his chest and back to cover many men. He didn’t shy from taking his shirt off, so we have a racy picture of him resting his head in the lap of Aunt Bernice.

She was a family legend. The brightest red hair on top of a fair, freckled face. She was hopelessly devoted to her tiny Chihuahua named Missy Chico. Missy Chico was fed baby food and coddled beyond description. But I would fight anyone who tried to take away my Aunt Bernice stories.

I look at it this way; my Uncle Dale loved her, he slept with her and she didn’t kill me when I threw up on her leg in the car on the way home from my brother Gary’s funeral.

Just a few years ago, I learned the story of how Uncle Dale almost died. He was in a bar in St. Paul Minnesota and as my mother describes it, my uncle could be, well, an asshole when he was drinking. He got into a fight and was knifed. Knifed badly, his guts hanging out of the cut made by another bar patron, probably an asshole too.

Aunt Bernice held his insides as they rode to the hospital in an ambulance.

My mother left her five children in the care of her mother and oldest kids and drove to the Twin Cities with my Aunt Fern from Sioux Falls. Uncle Dale survived.

It wasn’t the first time. My Uncle Dale served in the Army during World War II and my mother said he was deeply disturbed by some of the things he had witnessed.

To us, he was a bright star in our lives who always brought laughter and light to our childhoods.

My sister Kathy tells the most wonderful story. She and cousin Janell got to stay overnight with Grandma Coy. During the visit, my Uncle Dale arrived. He brought with him brand new mittens for Kathy and Janell.  They were thrilled, not just with the mittens, but with the fact that a favorite uncle remembered them at Christmas.

This reminds me of a story my Mother once told me. As a little girl during the Depression, she received a plastic doll for Christmas. It was just a little doll, but she could hold it, she could make up stories about it, she could make clothes for it.  And she knew that her parents had to scrape and scratch to give their seven kids any kind of a Christmas morning.

The special gifts we are given in life vary in size and in meaning. I am so glad I have the memories of a big bear of a man who always smiled at me and made me laugh.

Linda Carter

© 2014

The Snow Shovel

by Linda Carter

I took a part time job last winter. I worked the evening shift at a local liquor store and used my daring news reporter skills to catch the license number for a “smash & grab” bandit who scurried out with about 250 dollars worth of Tequila.

But for the most part, I avoided the limelight and found little corners of the store to claim as my own. What I truly enjoyed was my time with customers, interacting with strangers, hearing their stories and reading their behaviors.

I studied the recovering alcoholic from the halfway house across the street who came in and bought cigarettes, wondering why he tortured himself by staring at rows of bottles.

I found a chair for the drunk woman who was buying vodka and waiting for a cab on one of the coldest nights in our Minnesota winter.

That bone chilling cold hit me hard at 56, as I pushed shopping carts filled with cardboard toward the recycling bin just outside the back door. I carried a box cutter for protection.

One Friday night Sandy grabs the snow shovel at the front of the store and heads outside to deal with the latest inches of white.

She comes back a little later, shaking flakes from her hair. I was there. We laughed about how stupid we were to live in this climate.

I loved working with the guys who supervised on weekend nights. That’s when work hours really sailed by, customers cracking wise as they headed to a party or just home to hang.

When closing, we split up the duties evenly and got out of there as soon as we could.

On this night, the closer noticed the snow shovel leaning against the store beside the front door and not wanting to deal with the alarm system again, he simply put it in the back of his truck and left.

I only know the aftermath from stories, but I have a feeling I can be accurate in my description. 

Sandy comes to work Saturday morning, a rough turnaround from a busy Friday night.

She is questioned about the snow shovel and swears she brought it back inside. Boss cues up a security videotape showing she did go outside with the shovel and return without it.

Sandy turns and heads to the back of the store. Everyone assumes she is clocking in.

            Minutes tick by and no sign of Sandy.

Legend has it she walked out the back door and strolled around the large building to the front lot where her car was parked.

This is the part of the story where I smile and picture her making that glorious trek.

This woman got pregnant at 14. She raised her kids for years as a single Mom. She had worked more jobs than I could count to make something of her family. And a pipsqueak from a wealthy family who had never known a hungry day in his life was questioning her honesty about a 12-dollar snow shovel.

Later that day, the guy who put the shovel in the back of his truck shows up for work and is shocked to hear of his innocent complicity.

We all have a line that no one is allowed to cross. Self respect, pride, it’s so important.

The Boss spent time and effort cuing up this tape and exposing a simple mistake. She was a good worker and she deserved better.

Story by Linda Carter

@2014

Four Minutes

We all wonder what we would do in that moment when action is called for.

Later, I would marvel at the incredible speed of the whole episode, images flashing in front of me like a news promo.

I wrote those promos for years, but never truly comprehended the gut wrenching, heart pounding feeling of trying to save a life until a little boy fell over his mother’s lap in front of me, struggling for every tiny breath.

I had just walked off an elevator after a routine visit to the dentist. I headed for the exit, slightly annoyed at the young boy who suddenly wandered into my path. His face was strange, almost contorted and I paused to look back.

His mother jumped into action first, realizing the child was choking on a piece of candy. She cried out for the boy’s father and together they began pounding the child’s back, frantically fighting to save his life.

I rushed back inside, blurting out, “Do you need help?”

The mother looked up from where she knelt on the floor, her eyes terrified, her head nodding a frantic yes as the boys’ father continued to pound his young son’s back.

Without a word, I turned and bolted for the first door I saw, stepping into an office and announcing loudly, “A child is choking, can anyone help?”

I took no prisoners, defying anyone to stop me from my mission as I moved further into the office. I didn’t know the Heimlich Maneuver, but I knew how to get attention.

A young girl stepped from behind a reception desk and threw open a conference room door. Within moments, a woman bolted from the room, rushing past me and outside, where parents fought to save their young son as someone else dialed 911.

Maybe she was a former nurse, a mother who prepped for every disaster or just someone who took a class when it was offered.  I’ll never know.

She pulled the boy from his father’s arms and grasped him tightly around the middle. Within moments, the candy lie on the sunny sidewalk, the boy gasped in deep, fruitful breaths and the parents wept as they thanked the Good Samaritan.

When I left the building the woman who saved the little boy was holding him, gently comforting the youngster as he cried.

Nobody said a word as I slipped by. I knew it wasn’t my moment in the sun, although I was proud of what I had done.

Just months before I had quit my career of 25 years, hoping to find a place where I could make a difference.

Wasn’t it great I found this place.  This day.  This time. This moment.

Story by Linda Carter

My first real job was at 15, washing dishes at the Watertown, South Dakota Country Club for $1.60 an hour. I was never unemployed after that, at least not for long. I am sharing the link for this blog because I think it is time to acknowledge what is happening to people my age. I am too young to retire and too old to be hired. And I am not alone, as you can see from the stories on this blog. No one is asking for sympathy, we just want to rejoin the society we thought we helped to build.

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