Friends and Neighbors Day, part 2

(continued from here)



We pulled into Grand Forks and found the hotel on Gateway Drive. Dad left the car running as he walked up to check in. My dad’s legs are strong and stocky but bowl-legged. Mom says he walks like an old cowboy. “Full,” he told us when he got back to the car. “Full,” he says again. Apparently there was some event in town where all the Canadians come down to shop and the base opens up the flight lines to let civilians and their families tour all the hangars and the big B-52s.

“It’s called ‘Friends and Neighbors Day.’ They told me the whole town is full up and they’d be surprised if we found a room anywhere,” Dad explained. By now my brother was saying he had to go to the bathroom and I felt sick to my stomach because it was late and I was hungry and I always got that way on an empty stomach.

“I can’t believe we’ve come all the way up here and there’s no place for us to stay. I won’t drive around anymore getting rejected by another hotel. You call the base and tell them we’re here and tell them they need to find a place to put us up for the night,” my mother demanded.

Dave and I exchanged looks in the back seat. Mom always has to lay down the law with Dad after he goes too far with something. I remember when we were stationed in Texas and we’d go to all these family barbecues and Dad would drink too much with the squadron guys and Mom would just slide over to him and whisper something firmly in his ear and then she’d start packing us up. He’d start pussy-footing around her saying, “What? What’s the matter? Oh c’mon hon, what’s the matter?” And within minutes we’d be home.

So Dad gets out again, this time at a gas station, and he calls over to the base on the pay phone. When he comes back the car was really quiet and we were all kind of holding our breath hoping that we hadn’t been shut out again.

“Well, we’re in luck. I talked with a guy who’s in charge of hospitality and he’s going to put us up at his house for the night. And, his house is right next to the one we’re assigned so we’ll be neighbors. Christ, honey, I’m sorry. You kids okay?”
My dad always seems to come through in the end, even in a crunch. He is big and tall and loud and good-looking and has always tried to please everyone and do the right thing. His dad had left the family when my dad and uncles were little and although his mom remarried a wonderful man, she died when Dad was only eleven or twelve. He said he watched her lay in bed for a year, the cancer moving in on her until she died.

We stopped for a burger and a soda and Dave and I played around with the jukebox, Mom and Dad smoking and talking after their meal. Driving the half hour to the base, we were talking and laughing again, Dave telling knock-knock jokes and Mom petting our dog in the front seat. We pulled up to the base entrance and, like all military bases, you had to get out and show your pass to security until you could get a sticker for your car, and then all you had to do was slow down and salute and drive through.

We wound our way slowly through the streets and found the one we needed, full of side-by-side duplexes—”relocatables” they called them, one-story, gray, prefab houses for enlisted families. Dad matches the numbers on a house with the ones he’s written down back in town and pulled into the drive.

It’s late and so the host family is already dressed for bed. The man is thin and over-charged, shaking Dad’s hand and saying to us all, “Come in, come in.” He wore thick glasses and had a kind of sarcastic smile, like he’s thinking of an alibi for some accusation, or a put-down if you didn’t say the right thing. His wife stood behind him, with bleached blonde hair, and she’s built like an inverted triangle: big head, fat torso, short legs, feet that look too little to hold her all up. Their little girl was already asleep and their son stood in the hallway. He looked about my age. Mom was weary, her blue eyes pale and reddened, dry in their sockets. I learn later that she’s disappointed, hugely disappointed, but that night I think she’s just worn out from not finding a hotel. She agreed to make this last move—Dad promised, this would be our last move and then he’s retiring from the service, twenty years is more than she bargained for—because she thought it would be like home. Home is Wisconsin and the pine trees and the Rock River and the rolling hills near the Dells. The picture he showed her of the Grand Forks Air Force Base had pine trees, and brick houses, and soft, sparkling snow. Snow! It had been years since she saw a good northern snowfall.

But she could tell on the way up from Fargo that this was not the Dells. This was not home. The land was as flat as Texas; the only trees she saw were shelterbelts around lonely farms, the only hills were dikes built to hold back the spring floods of the Red River. And now she’s looking at another two years in a metal trailer with white walls and green carpeting and neighbors who were just like a lot of other military families, messed-up people who lived day to day without a plan, without the right priorities, waiting for the government to tell them what to do.

After short introductions, Dave and I set up bedrolls in the boy’s room and we three lay down on his floor. Our pets had to stay out in their garage. The boy hadn’t stopped talking since we got there. He was telling us about his dad and how they always have the welcome party for newcomers in the basement of the NCO Club, and that he had lots of toys and in the morning we could play with them if we asked first but we had to make sure we put them away neat or his mom would be mad, and did we like his pajamas, his mom got them on sale, and on and on. Dave and I moved round toward each other in the dark and made funny fake yawns and rolled our eyes, then pretended to fall asleep. I thought about the things my mom would be whispering to my dad in the dark, the two of them laying in another strange house, trying to figure out how they’d set up our lives once more.