Enduv Road - Gwen Banta

Enduv Road by Gwen Banta

Book excerpt

How I Remember It

Buffalo, New York, 1960

I was barely thirteen years old when crazy Aunt Beaners, in her usual tizzy, announced that we had to pack up immediately and move to Utah because the Ouija board had revealed that another holocaust was about to happen. It was 1960, and we were fair-haired, middle-class Protestants with sky-color eyes living in peaceful Buffalo, New York, where the worst threat was frostbite. I looked at my aunt in wonder because this seemed excessive, even for her.

“We practically live in Canada, Beaners—and nothing bad ever happens in Canada.” (I spoke with exaggerated calm, as though reasoning with a blind, knife-wielding butcher.)

I was accustomed to impulsive decisions and baffling observations from Aunt Bea, whom we had long ago dubbed “Beaners” because Dad said in confidence that “her beans weren't fully baked.” She always had great faith in the Ouija board and swore it would talk to anyone who would listen. I could never get my own Monopoly board to tell me a darn thing, so I suspected that Beaners either had magical transmitters or faulty wiring.

After her last revelation from the Ouija board, we hadn't been able to eat mushrooms for a month. Beaners always said that eating mushrooms was like chewing on an old man's ear, so the notion that her Ouija psychic advisor had similar tastes seemed suspiciously coincidental to me. Even so, banning mushrooms and moving to Utah were two extremes.

“Beaners, I know this is your house and we live with you, but maybe we should think this one through. You once told me you have never traveled west of Indiana. Well, I'm pretty sure that Utah is farther west than that. I think maybe we should go to the library tomorrow and do some research, don't you? Utah has snakes. Big ones—so big that by the time you see them, you're already dead. It seems to me that it might be best if we all just sleep on this one.”

“Simmy love, you needn’t parent me. I know this is last-minute, but this is going to be fun. Remember, life is not a recipe that needs to be followed precisely. A good chef always adds his own spice. Impromptu decisions can make for an exciting adventure. I want you and your brother to see the world. What does it matter if we haven't planned everything out in detail? Spontaneity is a wonderful attribute,” she insisted. “We must squeeze the day!” (That's exactly how she said it.)

My perpetually confused little brother, Lefty, looked at me as though waiting for his next cue. We both rolled our eyes in exasperation, which happened so frequently in our house that it was a medical miracle our eyeballs weren't lodged somewhere in our sinuses.

Beaners was undeterred. “I am as serious as leprosy, kiddos. Simmy, you and your goofball brother get your treasures together. This is going to be great fun! We're gettin' out of Dodge.”

“But we have a Ford, not a Dodge,” Lefty whined in protest. My six-year-old brother, whose real name was Brian, was always missing his right shoe—an unexplainable phenomenon known only to him and thereby resulting in his appropriate moniker. “I can't go,” he argued, “Dad said I should never leave the house wearing only one shoe or my toes will turn blue.”

“That sounds like perfectly good advice to me,” I commented, hoping common sense would put an end to the discussion.

Lefty and I were about to return to our game of “Chutes and Ladders” when we noticed Beaners packing her bundles of dried sage into a travel bag. “Whoa, Nellie!” I thought. Suddenly she had my attention. Her sage packets were sacred. I slowly realized this wacky plan of hers was not a mushroom phase—this was serious business. All my faculties were on alert as I sensed my life was about to change again dramatically.

I wasn't ready to yield to the voices in my aunt's crowded head. “Beaners, if the Ouija board is right and a Holocaust is coming, then the Buffalo Nazis won't be the least bit interested in us,” I reasoned. “We're not Jewish or a member of a minority group, and we're not even rabble-rousing artists. None of us can draw a lick. Lefty's last drawing of a dog looked like a hemorrhoid. This family is less threatening to Nazi invaders than Cream of Wheat.”

“You are wrong, sugar pie. I know you're so smart you skipped a grade in school, but there have been some obvious gaps in your education. There are despots out there who are after anyone who is different, and we are different.”

That was a point I certainly couldn't argue with. Not only did Beaners collect pots of smelly herbs and alien-like fungi that lined our front porch, but she also played Christmas carols all year long. I think it was all a distraction from the lingering sadness she had been carrying since my mom died, and her sorrow was finding weirder ways to express itself every day.

To make matters worse, Uncle Arty collected so many fake owls that our porch was a cross between a voodoo shop and a taxidermy museum. The owls failed to drive away the woodpeckers as Uncle Arty intended, but they were wildly successful as an egg target for neighborhood pranksters.

Beaners had always been a bit eccentric, but according to neighborhood gossip, we were all off-kilter—the whole lot of us. Bea’s fungi and Arty’s creepy porch décor weren’t the only family peculiarities. Until the age of ten, I had been a bed wetter of epic proportions, and one-shoe Lefty was, well, one-shoe Lefty. Dad appeared to be pretty normal except that his right hand was missing four fingers, so it resembled a baseball mitt.

My father just accepted the craziness because he knew that Arty and Beaners, who was my mom's older sister, had huge hearts, even though he would often wink and refer to them as the “Hoover Twins “due to the “big vacuum on their top floors.”

“They are so good to take us in so I can work,” he told me shortly after we moved in. “It must be a big change for them to live with young children when they've never had children of their own. Sometimes we just have to look the other way when they do puzzling things. Just act like they’re normal and stay off the front porch,” he winked.

I did what my dad said and always tried to look the other way, even when Beaners developed harebrained ideas based on messages she received from the oddest places, such as tea leaves, Uncle Arty's stuffed owls, frost on the windows, and my personal favorite – Mrs. Menetski's cross-eyed poodle.

Beaners seldom followed through if she received a message that would result in family disruption, but sometimes she received warnings she couldn't ignore. She once told me that because everything has molecules, which are Life itself, if a person doesn't listen to Life's messages, he will be doomed to wander the earth without direction and could even end up in some place called Outer Mongolia.

Outer and Inner Mongolia were both starting to sound good to me because Beaners seemed as determined as I had ever seen her. “Okay,” she beamed, “hold onto your knickers. Life is about to begin!” When she tossed the Ouija board into the bag, it was evident Beaners was truly going for a clean and swift exit out of Dodge … even if it did have to be in a Ford.

I groaned in resignation. “Really, Beaners? That fool in your dang Ouija board couldn't suggest Florida or California, or even Hawaii? I don't want to live in a house clinging to the side of a mountain and wear lederhosen like Heidi. (The fact that the Alps are not in Utah was not my point.)

“But, darling, think of the views!”(The woman was unflappable.)

“Beaners, think of the escape routes! Utah is landlocked. What if the Buffalo Nazis follow us there – have you thought about that? Huh? We would be trapped like rats in a lab!”

“Darlin' Simmy, for a shy girl, you certainly are as persistent as that deranged woodpecker that keeps pecking at your Uncle Arty’s owls. Such a wonderful attribute will come in handy in Utah.”

“Geez Louise! But why the-middle-of-nowhere Utah?”

“Because it's calling to us.”