Not many people know about selective amnesia. It is the capability of the human brain to selectively wipe out memories of individual occurrences without affecting other memories. This capability is quite useful because it allows us to wipe out the memory of occurrences that cause us discomfort: Occurrences such as acts of cowardice, embarrassments, cases of gross stupidity, bad decisions, moral lapses, traumatic events, etc. In practice it is used to help prevent and cure PTSD, save marriages, get Supreme Court nominees confirmed and among other things, get presidents elected. Less useful, at least to most of us, is that criminals can use it to pass lie detector tests.
Arriving home from their weekly Saturday afternoon shopping trip to Johnson City, Elroy and Marie Klingenmeyer turned off State Route 17 into the quarter mile long gravel lane that led to their farmstead. It was a sight both loved and took great pride in and for good reason. It was after all, a sight they had created with lots and lots of elbow grease, backaches, and last but not least headaches: Well maintained barns and sheds, Hereford cattle in neatly fenced lots, winter wheat greening the fields, red foliage on the maples that they had planted over 20 years earlier -- before they had purchased the farm from their landlord. Indeed, they had every right to be proud and pleased.
When there was pressing farm work like harvest, planting, haying and such, Marie did the weekly shopping alone. But today it was late fall, the corn and beans were in and haying was long over, so Elroy went along. While Marie did the shopping, he would head over to Lizzie's Sunshine Café, order a coffee and gossip with other farmers. The 'gossip' was actually more than useless idle talk - if you heard that Ron Kuhman over by Elk Creek was thinking about going out of the beef business, well maybe you could pick up a couple nice Hereford heifers at a buyer's price.
"Marie, we're home early today. You think Wayne's still home?" When Marie didn't reply he went on, "isn't that just the hell of it? Kid goes off to college, never calls or writes and when he's home, he's off to some damn blowout at his old high school."
Wayne, now 18 and a freshman at SIU, was their only child. For the first 5 years of their marriage, they had been childless in spite of frequent and varied sex, diets and attention to Marie's monthly cycle. Then it happened. After essentially giving up and accepting that they were not going to provide any progeny for the Klingenmeyer family, Marie missed a period. They had hoped that the infertile spell was over but that turned out to not be the case. Wayne ended up being an only child.
"Elroy, it's not a blowout, it's a pep rally. Look, Wayne just likes to meet with old friends. It's not like he's ignoring us."
"Okay, it's a pep rally, not a blowout. Wasn't it supposed to start at two this afternoon?"
"I think so. Yeah, then he must be gone by now. Carol was gonna pick him up at one already, so yeah he's gone. Why?" Actually she knew why he was asking. Alone on a Saturday afternoon, no farm work outside of chores, Elroy might want to do it. Even though their bed saw lively action a couple nights a week, Elroy occasionally liked doing it on leisurely afternoons when there wasn't work pressing.
"Oh just wondering, that's all," Elroy lied. Then changing the subject, "He got anything going with that Carol?"
"I doubt it. Look they went to Cherry Hill Grade School together. The two of them are like brother and sister."
"Well you never know Marie. Kids grow up, bodies change, then they put the kid stuff behind 'em."
"I still think they're like brother and sister, just the way they act when they're together."
Then as he pulled up near their front sidewalk, "Say, Elroy honey, could you start bringing the stuff in? I really have to run and go pee right now."
Without waiting for his reply, for none was expected, she ran into the house and up the stairs to where the bathroom was -- and where all the bedrooms were. Throwing open the bathroom door, she saw things were pretty steamy. Obviously Wayne had showered and left without leaving the door open or wiping anything dry. But she had to pee, steamy bathroom or not. Inside, she backed up to the toilet bent over and had her hands up under her dress to pull down her panties when she noticed that she was not alone. There was Wayne, just out of the shower and reaching for a towel. Both mother and son got such a shock that they both took some seconds to recover from and react to. Wayne grabbed the towel and put it around his hips, his mother let go of the waistband of her panties and allowed her dress to drop.
Wayne was the first to speak. In a voice tainted with admonishment, "Mom!"
"I thought you'd already left with Carol. Isn't the rally at ......"
"She's not coming till three, plenty time to get to the rally. It's only at three thirty."
Marie, now more recovered, "Wayne, I'm so sorry to embarrass you. I really had to go to the bathroom."
Wayne wasn't one to stay upset. "Mom, go ahead and use the bathroom. No big deal. I was gonna dress in my room anyway."
Sitting on the toilet and letting her bladder empty, she let her mind process what she had just seen - her teenage son stark naked. Well, so what? She, after over 20 years of marriage, had become rather familiar with male genitals. But somehow something was different, or rather special, but still faintly familiar. What was different? Special? Familiar? Then the answer came: The end of Wayne's penis had been hanging down well below the bottom of his scrotum sack. That wasn't like what she was accustomed to with her husband, Elroy.
Thoughts of events that began nearly two decades back began floating around in her mind. After a few minutes, she uttered: "Oh my God!" A memory she had suppressed for almost 20 years had surfaced.
TWENTY PLUS YEARS EARLIER
Before Elroy and Marie got married, he was living with his parents on their farm and she was living with her parents in Johnson City where her dad worked in the county clerk's office. Elroy's parent's farm was too small to support any more than one family so after high school, he had taken a job at the John Deere dealership in Johnson City. Having helped maintain and repair machinery on his parents farm, Elroy was a good candidate for training as a farm equipment mechanic. And indeed, he learned fast and within a few years became a fully qualified mechanic.
Sometime before their marriage, another farm, about 3 miles from his parents' farm, was put up for rent. Strictly speaking, not for rent, but rather for share-cropping. In that part of the Midwest at that time, the customary share-cropping arrangement was that the landlord was due a third of all the grain crops and, logically enough, paid for a third of the seed and fertilizer and, of course, 100% of the property taxes. There was no fixed rule on who paid for improvements like the house, barns and machinery sheds. Some generous landlords paid all, some nothing and some split the cost with the renters. For very expensive stuff like for a dairy operation, a renter might pay 100% but protect his investment by making a less-depreciation refund agreement with the landlord.
It was neither a big farm nor a really good farm in the context of classic corn belt agriculture. Of the 152 acres total, 30 acres were too hilly for regular tillage and hence could only be used as permanent pasture. Of the remaining 122 acres, roughly half were first class cropland and the other half were rolling land that had been so intensely cropped for so long that there had been massive losses of topsoil from erosion. This eroded land was basically just clay hills and not very productive. Elroy knew that a big part of the crop rotation needed to be hay. The farm buildings weren't run down, they were, however, so outdated as to make efficient operation nearly impossible. In other words, Elroy and Marie were in for some challenging times.
However, Elroy was a hard worker and had prepared himself well by learning all he could about modern agriculture -- care of the land, crop rotation, green cover, use of fertiliser, seed selection and animal husbandry. His skills as a mechanic would not only help save on repairs, it would also make it practical for him to buy used machines and renovate them himself.
The 30 acres of pasture and the large acreage of hay dictated operating a farm with cattle, either dairy of beef. Dairy operation would bring in bigger profits but a heavy investment in facilities would be necessary. Being strapped for cash, Elroy decided to forego dairy and use beef cattle to utilise the pasture and capitalise on the hay. To diversify and to add value to the corn produced, he and Marie decided to raise hogs as well.
It was not only the farm buildings that were outdated. Entering the house was like stepping back into the 1920's. There was pressurized water from a well but hot water for washing dishes and cleaning had to be heated in pots on the kitchen stove. The weekly bath was taken in a round steel tub in the washhouse where there was a two-burner propane stove. The toilet was an outhouse 60 feet from the house. Initially, Elroy and Marie augmented the outhouse with a piss pot that they kept in a hallway outside their bedroom. This made winter nights a lot more bearable, however, the downside was that emptying a piss pot is not a nice way to begin a day. The house in Johnson City where Marie had grown up had hot and cold running water and a bathroom. She grudgingly put up with the relatively primitive conditions but straightaway let Elroy know that a bathroom and hot running water had to be somewhere on the horizon. After a few years of improving the farm buildings, no droughts, reasonable prices and hard work, they managed to afford having a bathroom installed upstairs where the bedrooms were located.
Their closest neighbour was Leonard Hodenbauer, a bachelor in his fifties. Elroy and Leonard got along well right from the beginning and agreed to trade labor for work like baling hay, sawing firewood, butchering hogs -- work that was more conveniently done by more than one person.
Elkhorn Creek, an almost intermittent waterway, meandered through both farms. In between the stretches that went completely dry in the summer, there were spring-fed waterholes that had enough water for fish to survive and for cattle to drink. The land near the creek was hilly with small bottoms mixed in. The hills were steep and easily eroded and the bottoms flooded during heavy rains - not an ideal situation for row cropping so both farms utilised the land adjoining the creek for permanent pasture.
Leonard was one of those rare bachelor farmers who successfully combined farming with keeping house. He canned fruits and vegetables, made jam, cooked proper meals and kept his house in order. The clothes he wore were generally up to date and clean -- Marie once observed that he was better dressed than lots of married farmers.
People, especially women, always speculate why a person, especially a man, never marries. Marie was no exception. No sooner were they moved in on the farm, she started speculating. "Elroy, I wonder why Leonard never married. Could it be that, well you know, that he is ...?"
