Elaine Ambrose

Bestselling Author, Ventriloquist, & Humorist

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Hometown Reality Show

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I grew up in a village of Wendell, Idaho when the population was 1,000. The town’s claim to fame was that Larry LaPrise, the creator of the song “Do The Hokey Pokey,” may have lived in Wendell. The joke is that after he died in nearby Gooding, the undertaker tried to put his left foot in the coffin, and then the right foot in, and mayhem ensued.

My father was born in Wendell in 1928, and both my parents, several aunts, uncles, cousins, my two brothers and I graduated from Wendell High School. We all shared some of the same teachers, desks, and mystery lunch food from the cafeteria. I was eager to leave town and escape to the University of Idaho when I was 17 but returned every now and then for a glimpse at the provocative reality show from my past.

Last week I drove to the main intersection of town and needed my sunglasses to shield my eyes from the electric-blue, neon-bright building on the corner. Apparently painted by an itinerate colony of crazy clowns with leftover circus paint, the unidentified store also sported a matching trailer with a window that may have served road food or offered a nefarious peepshow. The only lights on the outside of the day-glow structure came from the town’s one stoplight. We never had a stoplight when I lived there, but my widowed mother was cajoled by the city leaders into providing financial aid for the light when the town’s population exploded to 2,000 inhabitants.


In the urban jungle of my current town near Boise, parking is such a premium that people will wait 30 minutes in the street if they suspect another driver is leaving a parking spot. They will turn on their blinkers and hazard lights and gleefully maneuver their vehicle in place, often before the other driver has completely exited. The meters now accept credit cards but only for two hours, so it’s common to see people abandon kids, shopping bags, and dignity to hustle back to their cars to refill the meter. However, along the streets in Wendell you could park several 18-wheel tractor/trailer rigs, a few cattle trucks, some tractors hauling trailers piled with hay, a Greyhound bus, and an old Ford pickup on Main Street. Most still have the keys in the ignition.

 

Downtown – or is it DownVillage? – still holds the discarded, empty buildings from my past. The Ace Theatre hasn’t been occupied for more than 20 years, but once it was the most popular attraction on Friday and Saturday nights, except for hometown sports events. I remember sitting in a movie with other students from junior high when a goofy guy held my hand. The thrill was worth the 75 cents I paid for admission.

 

The best store in Wendell, then and now, is Simerly’s. Family-owned for three generations, the business offers groceries, a pharmacy, sporting goods, live bait, fresh flowers, cold beer, clothes, friendly staff, and ammunition. When shoppers became more sophisticated, Simerly’s punched a hole in the wall, lined it with fake bricks, and cleverly called it a wine cellar. You don’t need to shop anywhere else.


The other main businesses include two banks, a few restaurants, a realty, and several churches that change denominations every few decades. The best watering holes are the Stockman’s Club, still sporting a wobbly Christmas tree on the roof so it won’t need to decorate for the next holiday season, and the Silver Spur. Once I walked into the Silver Spur after a 10-year absence and the bartender looked up and said, “Hi, Elaine. Welcome back.”


The Wendell Cemetery is conveniently located next to the mini-storage facility. Both entities hold the last remains from the cowboys, farmers, and strong women who passed on to their final reward and left behind eclectic possessions and memories. Many of my relatives are buried there, and I often meander through the grounds, having conversations with the familiar names etching into the headstones. I leave books, ornaments, and flags on my parents’ graves. That doesn’t seem to bother them.

 

Before I leave town, I drive past my childhood home out in the country. My father built this mysterious rock fortress in 1963 and the architect claimed to be a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. I have no proof, but the style includes Wright’s familiar designs of polished cement floors, clerestory windows, built-in furniture, glass bricks embedded into the walls, and a flat roof. My dad decorated the interior with an eclectic assortment of purple toilets, a massive shield with swords, ashtrays on decorative pedestals, and wooden busts of Aborigines. I thought that was normal.

When people ask me where I’m from, I always say, “Wendell. It’s a small town in southern Idaho near Twin Falls.” Some know the location and others don’t care. The older I get, the better I appreciate being from Wendell. Most of the citizens are good, hard-working people who always say, “Hi. Welcome back.” Life is simple, neighbors help each other, and someone always leaves the light on for visitors. In the immortal words of Larry LaPrise, “That’s what it’s all about.”

Singing My Rendition of the Birthday Blues

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funny-older-lady-drinking

 

Today is my birthday, so I’ll take a pitiful look at the past and remember why I’m so grateful for the present. My childhood was far from fun because I was designated as a Problem Child Who Lacked the Ability to Conform. The following is an excerpt from my new book, Midlife Happy Hour.

 

I suspected at a young age that my parents didn’t like me. When I was five-years-old, they gave me scissors and told me to go outside and run around. Mom allowed me to ride in the front seat of her car, usually standing up without restraint. My dad introduced the family by saying, “I have two outstanding children. And Elaine.” My suspicions were confirmed when they dropped me off at college and sped away. I was on to them.

I was born as a total disappointment and retained that dubious distinction throughout my childhood. I survived next to my dead sister in my mother’s womb and should have been hailed as one tough little fighter, but no. After I emerged all ready to be adored and cuddled, my father shook his head and left the hospital as his exhausted wife meekly apologized for the transgression of having a girl. Even as a newborn baby, I must have sensed that it wasn’t cozy in my bright, new world because I wailed for an hour until some exasperated nurse shoved a bottle in my mouth. That powerful incident probably accounts for my future weight problems, and in all honesty, contributed significantly to my need as an adult to have some kind of bottle nearby.

When I was old enough to ask about my twin sister, my mother only commented that the baby had died sometime before birth. Two bassinets were waiting in the delivery room, but the first baby, named Arlene, was born dead. I could only imagine the utter dismay my father would have felt if he had wasted his time and energy on siring and supporting two female children. He probably would have hung black curtains over the door and lamented his misfortune over another glass of Crown Royal at the Silver Spur, the local saloon in the village of Wendell, Idaho. The grizzled men sitting around the bar would have nodded in solemn agreement through the smoke-filled room, mumbling with pity about his great calamity. In a small farming community, more sons meant more workers in the field.

“Too bad about them females,” ol’ Titus would mutter, a toothpick bobbing between his chapped lips as he spoke. “Can’t get much work out of a girl.”

“I suppose one would be tolerable,” I imagined my father answering. “The wife needs help during the canning season and she’s always behind with mending my socks. A girl could help with the household chores.”

“Remember what happened to Burt,” the bartender would mention as he wiped the sticky bar with a dirty cloth. “Had six headstrong girls and they all got themselves into trouble. I heard some of them moved to an apartment in Boise and got jobs. Can you imagine?” Heads would collectively shake in dismay and another round of shots would be ordered. Woe to the man who raised a herd of rebellious girls. Burt, an empty shell of a man, and his submissive wife eventually moved away and never returned.

A few years later, the same men at the bar cheered and passed cigars when my father proudly announced the grand and glorious birth of another son. Again, he was king of the county. The Crown Royal, the Deluxe Extra-Rare Edition, was passed around and backs were slapped in a manly manner.

circus clown

 

 

Over the years, much to my father’s irritation, I refused to accept my assigned status as a less desirable human. My rebellion began as a toddler when I refused to wear the dresses my mother sewed for me. Instead, I pulled on my brother’s clothes and preferred playing in mud to playing with dolls. By age five, I loved running outside and on more than one occasion I threw off my shirt so I could play Cowboys and Indians with my brothers and their friends. My mother would come yelling out the door, drag me inside, and punish me for showing off my flat chest. At the time, I couldn’t understand why only boys got to do fun things like remove their shirts and pee standing up.

At school, I never received any awards for good behavior. When my teachers said I acted like a clown, I said, “Thank you. Next show is at noon.”

Time didn’t temper my awkward nonconformity, but at least I had my creative brains to carry me through the judgmental hell of junior high school. Nerds didn’t need to worry about fashion or popularity contests because we were busy playing in the band, leading school organizations, and writing for the school newspaper. Actually, adult life didn’t turn out all that bad. At the last school reunion, the former popular kids were working for the nerds. Life can be sweet for a nonconformist.

 

Midlife Happy Hour is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. Order now, laugh soon.

In Defense of Grocery Store Cashiers

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grocery cashier

I chat with cashiers, visit with bank tellers, and linger at the Farmer’s Market to talk with the friendly folks who barter their goods for my cash. For me, the exchange of serious business is better with real human interaction.

Growing up in a small town, I knew every checker and cashier at the local businesses. We would greet each other as long-time friends, discuss the pending potato crops, shake our heads and mutter about the civic elections, wonder about Widow Gibb’s bursitis, and compliment babies, hair-dos, and outfits. We knew each other’s families, the good and the bad, and liked each other anyway.

Then I moved to the city. The stores were bigger, the lines were longer, and no one cared that my baby was the cutest one ever to sit in a grocery cart. I still attempted to visit, but with mixed results. In big business, time is money, so there was limited conversation as customers moved through the lines. The bananas were fresher, the selection of meats was more abundant, but the experience was sterile.

Several years ago, my neighborhood grocery store installed two rows of self-service check-out registers. This technology eliminated the need to wait in line and was convenient for customers buying a few items. I fumbled several times to find the bar code, scan the item, and place it in the appropriate bag before somehow causing the machine to break and stop working. A dutiful employee would saunter over, insert her magic code, and the machine would work again. There was no verbal communication.

Yesterday I returned to the store and discovered all the self-service registers had been removed. I talked with the cashier as she rang up my groceries and explained the situation. She said there were several reasons for the return to cashiers.

“We added three jobs for cashiers,” she said. “And the store reduced theft. The cameras revealed that too many people were taking items they didn’t pay for and slipping them into the bags. Also, our customers missed talking with cashiers.”

We chatted as she rang up my groceries and a delightful young woman with special needs placed the bags into my cart. The checker noted my selection of chicken, fresh mozzarella, green peppers, onions, and garlic.

“Looks like you’re making a special meal,” she said.

I explained I was creating my favorite chicken parmesan dinner for some guests. She nodded with approval, handed me the receipt, and said to have a nice day. The automated machines never cared about the groceries I bought or the meals I would prepare. I exchanged smiles with the cashier and bag girl, and in less than a minute we all felt better.

I’ll return to that store to purchase most of my groceries. I have friends there.

 

 

 

Finding Joy in the World – My Christmas Story

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emily adam christmas 1980

© Elaine Ambrose

From A Miracle Under the Christmas Tree – Harlequin Books, 2012

Compiled and edited by Jennifer Basye Sander

December 1980 somberly arrived in a gray cloud of disappointment as I became the involuntary star in my own soap opera, a hapless heroine who faced the camera at the end of each day and asked, “Why?” as the scene faded to black. Short of being tied to a railroad track within the sound of an oncoming train, I found myself in a dire situation, wondering how my life turned into such a calamity of sorry events. I was unemployed and had a two-year-old daughter, a six-week-old son, an unemployed husband who left the state looking for work, and a broken furnace with no money to fix it. To compound the issues, I lived in the same small Idaho town as my wealthy parents, and they refused to help. This scenario was more like The Grapes of Wrath than The Sound of Music.

After getting the children to bed, I would sit alone in my rocking chair and wonder what went wrong. I thought I had followed the correct path by having a college degree before marriage and then working four years before having children. My plan was to stay home with two children for five years and then return to a satisfying, lucrative career. But no, suddenly I was poor and didn’t have money to feed the kids or buy them presents. I didn’t even have enough money for a cheap bottle of wine. At least I was breast-feeding the baby, so that cut down on grocery bills. And, my daughter thought macaroni and cheese was what everyone had every night for dinner. Sometimes I would add a wiggly gelatin concoction, and she would squeal with delight. Toddlers don’t know or care if mommy earned Phi Beta Kappa scholastic honors in college. They just want to squish Jell-o through their teeth.

The course of events that lead to that December unfolded like a fateful temptation. I was 26 years old in 1978 and energetically working as an assistant director for the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. My husband had a professional job in an advertising agency, and we owned a modest but new home. After our daughter was born, we decided to move to my hometown of Wendell, Idaho, population 1,200, to help my father with his businesses. He owned about 30,000 acres of land, 1,000 head of cattle, and more than 50 18-wheel diesel trucks. He had earned his vast fortune on his own, and his philosophy of life was to work hard and die, a goal he achieved at the young age of 60.

In hindsight, by moving back home I probably was trying to establish the warm relationship with my father that I had always wanted. I should have known better. My father was not into relationships, and even though he was incredibly successful in business, life at home was painfully cold. His home, inspired by the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright, was his castle. The semi-circle structure was designed of rock and cement and perched on a hill overlooking rolling acres of crops. He controlled the furnishings and artwork. Just inside the front door hung a huge metal shield adorned with sharp swords. An Indian buckskin shield and arrows were on another wall. In the corner, a fierce wooden warrior held a long spear, ever ready to strike. A metal breast plate hung over the fireplace, and four wooden, naked Aborigine busts perched on the stereo cabinet. The floors were polished cement, and the bathrooms had purple toilets. I grew up thinking this décor was normal.

I remember the first time I entered my friend’s home and gasped out loud at the sight of matching furniture, floral wallpaper, delicate vases full of fresh flowers, and walls plastered with family photographs, pastoral scenes, and framed Normal Rockwell prints. On the rare occasions that I was allowed to sleep over at a friend’s house, I couldn’t believe that the family woke up calmly and gathered together to have a pleasant breakfast. At my childhood home, my father would put on John Philip Sousa march records at 6:00 a.m., turn up the volume, and go up and down the hallway knocking on our bedroom doors calling, “Hustle. Hustle. Get up! Time is money!” Then my brothers and I would hurry out of bed, pull on work clothes, and get outside to do our assigned farm chores. As I moved sprinkler pipe or hoed beets or pulled weeds in the potato fields, I often reflected on my friends who were gathered at their breakfast tables, smiling over plates of pancakes and bacon. I knew at a young age that my home life was not normal.

After moving back to the village of Wendell, life went from an adventure to tolerable and then tumbled into a scene out of On the Waterfront. As I watched my career hopes fade away under the stressful burden of survival, I often thought of my single, childless friends who were blazing trails and breaking glass ceilings as women earned better professional jobs. Adopting my favorite Marlon Brando accent, I would raise my fists and declare, “I coulda been a contender! I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.”

There were momentary lapses in sanity when I wondered if I should have been more like my mother. I grew up watching her dutifully scurry around as she desperately tried to serve and obey. My father demanded a hot dinner on the table every night, even though the time could vary as much as three hours. My mother would add milk to the gravy, cover the meat with tin foil (which she later washed and reused), and admonish her children to be patient. “Your father works so hard,” she would say. “We will wait for him.” I opted not to emulate most of her habits. She fit the role of her time, and I still admire her goodness.

My husband worked for my father, and we lived out in the country in one of my father’s houses. One afternoon in August of 1980, they got into a verbal fight and my dad fired my husband. I was pregnant with our second child. We were instructed to move, and so we found a tiny house in town and then my husband left to look for work because jobs weren’t all that plentiful in Wendell. Our son was born in October, weighing in at a healthy 11 pounds. The next month, we scraped together enough money to buy a turkey breast for Thanksgiving. By December, our meager savings were gone, and we had no income.

I was determined to celebrate Christmas. We found a scraggly tree and decorated it with handmade ornaments. My daughter and I made cookies and sang songs. I copied photographs of the kids in their pajamas and made calendars as gifts. This was before personal computers, so I drew the calendar pages, stapled them to cardboard covered with fabric, and glued red rickrack around the edges. It was all I have to give to my family and friends.

Just as my personal soap opera was about to be renewed for another season, my life started to change. One afternoon, about a week before Christmas, I received a call from one of my father’s employees. He was “in the neighborhood” and heard that my furnace was broken. He fixed it for free and wished me a Merry Christmas. I handed him a calendar and he pretended to be overjoyed. The next day the mother of a childhood friend arrived at my door with two of her chickens, plucked and packaged. She said they had extras to give away. Again, I humbly handed her a calendar. More little miracles occurred. A friend brought a box of baby clothes that her boy had outgrown and teased me about my infant son wearing his sister’s hand-me-down, pink pajamas. Then another friend of my mother’s arrived with wrapped toys to put under the tree. The doorbell continued to ring, and I received casseroles, offers to babysit, more presents, and a bouquet of fresh flowers. I ran out of calendars to give in return.

To this day, I weep every time I think of these simple but loving gestures. Christmas of 1980 was a pivotal time in my life, and I am grateful that I received the true gifts of the season. My precious daughter, so eager to be happy, was amazed at the wonderful sights around our tree. My infant son, a blessing of hope, smiled at me every morning and gave me the determination to switch off the melodrama in my mind. The day before Christmas my husband was offered a professional job at an advertising agency in Boise, and we leaped from despair to profound joy. On Christmas Eve, I rocked both babies in my lap and sang them to sleep in heavenly peace. They never noticed my tears falling upon their sweet cheeks.