Porches or, Coolers I have known

Story of Childhood Summers in Northern Idaho Panhandle

By

 

Judy Getty

 

 

 

 

 

     The cabin had two porches.  A front and back.  Which was which, was always a topic of strong debate with Mother.  She called the porch facing the lake, The Front Porch.  Everyone else, city dwellers mostly, called the porch that faced the drive, The Front Porch.  But since Mom’s word always won out, we succumbed to her naming of the porches and aptly referred to them as such, unless of course, she wasn’t around and then we simply called them by what made more sense to us.  We always knew what we were talking about, if no one else did.  I’ll use Mom’s terminology in this reflection of the past, to show some respect and to keep things simple.  So remember, back porch is front and front porch is back.  There, you’ve got it. Now we can get on with the story.

      The back porch was made of cement with a cinder block wall all around, painted in a peeling weathered white. There was a built in barbecue that we never used except maybe a handful of times to roast hot dogs.  Dad preferred the gas grill that he kept in the opposite corner.  The wall reached into the ground, as the property was somewhat hilly and the porch had been dug out to make it level.  This was done to make room for, along the exterior wall of the porch, the infamous cooler.

       One year, dad got a bargain on cans of turquoise paint, long before turquoise was popular.  In fact, I think it was my first exposure to turquoise, and I’m sure we called it light blue, not knowing the word turquoise yet.  That was the Summer of Painting for me and my siblings.  It coincided with the more popularly known Summer of Love, just to give you an idea of the era. To this day there are still quite a few turquoise items of furniture that live on in the cabin.  Good enamel in those days.

     Back to the cooler: the cooler had a wooden door that we had painted turquoise, hence my earlier reminiscent ramblings on painting. Truth be told, I was afraid of the cooler, thoroughly, irrevocably terrified of it.  The door was short and wide and in order to open it, you had to pull hard on the old fashioned handle.  The fear would start in my toes and spread through my body as I stood on the cement, facing it. As soon as I opened it a crack, a whiff of scent would escape.  It smelled of musty dirt as the walls and floor was made of — well — dirt.   The radical shift from sunlight to darkness made it hard to see.  Time was needed for my eyes to adjust. 

     For those of you who are too young to know what coolers were for, they were useful to store the one case of Shasta soda that we were allowed per month along with an occasional watermelon.  That’s it.  I’m sure other people used coolers for all kinds of useful things, but that was what we used it for.  And when you are a child in the sixties, Shasta soda was really important.  We were allowed one soda per day.  When I stop to think about it, there were three of us kids living at home at the time and 3 times 30 days equals 90 sodas.  That would be more equal to 4 cases of soda per month.  Hey!  We were ripped off!  It took me to age forty five to realize this nugget of information.  That’s it!  I’m changing the names of the porches!  Oh okay, I guess out of respect for you readers and listeners, I’ll let it go for now.  Come to think of it, there were a couple of summers where we had The Pop Shop soda.  Still just one case though. 

     If my oldest brother and sister read this, they’ll be ticked off because they were children of the fifties, grown and gone at the time of this story, and they didn’t get any soda, ever, period — the end.  I am sure that they never even tasted it until after they left home, finished college and got good respectable jobs so they could buy their own.  Just ask them.  They’ll tell you. 

     Back to the cooler, again.  Inside that cooler lived a species of incredibly large Daddy Long Legs.  To this day, I don’t know what the attraction was, but, Daddy Long Legs Spiders had a thing for me.  Maybe they just liked little six-year-old girls with pixie haircuts.  I don’t know, but whatever the attraction was, they sure had it bad for me. Daily, some creepy long legged spider would appear on my arm or my shoulder or run across my foot and send me into an internal and external eternal psychotic episode.  I couldn’t even sleep at night because I couldn’t see them with the lights off.  I had caught them before, crawling over my blankets, going for their nighttime cruise while I read my Dennis the Menace, Peanuts and Archie comic books in my bed.    

      I always made sure I got the T.V. bedroom.  We called it that because you could see the 12- inch black and white television set that was placed on a lovely turquoise table in the living room fifty feet away from the doorway of the bedroom.   I know it’s stupid but we had some bloody fights over who got that room each summer.  I mean, man!  We’re talking My 3 Son’s re-runs and I Dream of Jeannie.  The Mary Tyler Moore Show and MASH for God’s sake.  And let’s not forget Hogan’s Heroes.  No wonder I had issues with the cooler. Colonel Clink was constantly throwing Colonel Hogan and his men in the cooler.  Makes sense to me.  

     The T.V. room had always been an excellent choice except for one bad summer. That was the summer of Watergate.  That event ruined my summer as it did for all Americans.  My brother and I just had a different reason for our sadness.  A bunch of important people in suits talking on the television making no sense to us at all. Boring!  Our parent’s aptly watching and listening to their every word and telling us to shush every five seconds. All of our favorite shows pre-empted and canceled night after night.  It was a tough time for American children that summer. No Brady Bunch, no Partridge Family.  It was severe.  Times were hard.    

     Space launches were always cool, though.   We used to watch the space rockets take off and the astronauts orbiting, landing and walking on the moon.

       My favorite part was when they landed back on earth smack into the ocean, off the coast of Florida.  They would be bobbing along in their cone shaped capsule and the super cool military helicopter would appear on the screen hovering and chopping up big waves in the ocean. The door of the capsule would fly open and land backward against the side of the rocket shuttle.  We would wait for an astronaut to appear and it would seem to take forever while Walter Cronkite commentated quietly —such drama.  

     I always held my breath wondering if the astronauts would emerge with some weird moon or space disease, green cheese skin was what I pictured.  This thrill would continue on for the next thirty days while they were in quarantine.    

      Ahem, back to the cooler.  To this day, I don’t know why my parents weren’t more sympathetic to my cooler condition.  In those days, a parent’s main goal was to make kids tough.  They knew I was afraid of going in there but do you think they could get off their butts and get me a soda? No.  They had some sick idea that I had to learn to face my fears and build myself some character, but I know they just didn’t want to miss a minute of Watergate.  

      Even my brother wouldn’t take pity on me. He would run in to that cooler fearlessly and get himself a “lukewarm one” while I stood by, a little ways from the door, literally dying of thirst, pining for that sickening sweet and sugary can of soda, hoping he would snag one for me too, but he never did.

      “Get your own, you big baby, Judy P U-Dee,” he’d shout as he ran past, ripping his pop top off of his can, slurping up that delicious grape sugared soda or orange or strawberry or our much fought over favorite —  black cherry. He’d wipe his mouth with the back of his arm as he flew past, letting go of a resounding belch.

     Speaking of black cherry, reminds me of one summer we were at the rodeo.  It was 102 degrees in the shade, and we sat there frying on the bleachers, clasping our foil wrapped sodas in our hands.  The idea was that the foil would keep it cold. Yeah, right, cool.  After starting out in a 60-degree cooler, then traveling 20 miles in a non-air-conditioned Volkswagen bus to a bloody-hot afternoon rodeo.  

     As soon as I was situated in the bleachers, I ripped the top off of mine and a pluming spray of black cherry soda arched through the summer sky, a black purple rainbow landing directly on the lady in front of me and covering her white pants with purple spray.  My mother was mortified, and I was given a scolding.  Hey, like I did it on purpose.  I needed that soda to ward off dehydration.

     A few years ago, while visiting my parents at the cabin, they made the decision to cave in the cooler.  Dad had it in mind that it might fall in on somebody.  My brother climbed up on top of the dirt roof and began to pound on it with a sledge hammer.  It turns out the cooler roof wasn’t going anywhere.  Our ancestors had buried an old steel box spring to reinforce the roof.  I smirked to myself watching him try to work that steel frame out of the ground.  Come to think of it, he probably could have used a soda.