Rambling On

A few weeks ago I heard myself say “I remember when this was all farmland,” as I drove my wife and daughter through a stretch of highway full of fast food restaurants, massage parlors and at least two Home Depots.

My father used to say the same sorts of things when I was a kid. He’d be driving us to visit the largest ball of twine in Iowa or a local correctional facility and provide a running commentary on the state of the weather, the crops or really anything else as long as it possessed few if, any, interesting qualities.

“The soybeans sure look dry this year,” I can hear him say as we plowed through miles of the Midwest on our way to vacation in Malaria Lake, Nebraska. My six brothers and sisters, all of us packed into a 1987 Dodge Minivan with minimal air conditioning, would give an audible sigh as he began a one-sided discussion on the level of water in the creeks and rivers we crossed.

I loved him dearly but the man was indefatigable when it came to commentary regarding geography or roads or any aspect of rural existence that was remarkably dull. Some of it was even true, at least in the broadest sense of the word.

“Did you know that President Eisenhower is the reason we have our current highway system?” I remember him asking as we tooled across Nebraska at 55 miles an hour to see the region’s largest tire fire. We did not. Nor did we care.

“The current road we’re on was built by Ike,” my father would continue, “that’s President Eisenhower. Up until the 1950’s most roads like this were maintained and built by the state, county or a municipality. They were usually one or two lane dealies (“dealies” was one of my father’s favorite terms seconded only by the word “whatchamacallit”) that couldn’t support the weight of an 18 wheeler or a tank given the quality of the cement or asphalt and the underlying structure of the road. Now this was after WWII and Ike wanted to provide the military with a fast and easy way to move troops and supplies from coast to coast…”

My brothers and sister and I pretty much dozed off after the first thirty or forty minutes of my father’s History of the American Highway System only to wake up a few states later to hear him droning on about another equally interesting and unrelated topic “…and that’s how the foot came to be the unit of measure we use today.”

Now that I’m in my late forties I’ve found myself providing a running commentary on anything and everything that manages to hop, skip and jump across the frazzled neurons of my brain.

“I used to…uhhhh date a girl that lived down that street,” I found myself saying as I drove my daughter home from preschool during a brief lapse in judgment. Fortunately my daughter is about as present during these “conversations” as I was 35 years ago.

“A girl found a quarter at school,” my daughter said a few days ago after, apparently, completely ignoring the past fifteen minutes of my lecture on the rise and fall of the railroad in the 20th-century United States.

“Did you know that a quarter was once commonly referred to as two bits?” I heard myself drone on, noting the glassy look in my daughter’s eyes as she gazed out the window.

“Back in the 1920’s when the phrase was coined,” I said, looked back for a laugh and continued to babble on even though I could tell that my daughter was a few minutes away from falling asleep, “two bits was a decent amount of money but as inflation rose and the value of the dollar declined the term took on a new meaning, that being one of frugality or of low quality.”

“Frugality was commonly referred to as ‘a ten dollar word’ at the time,” I rambled on “ten dollars being the amount of money it would take to buy a metric ton of butter back in the day, which was really Oleo or margarine due to rationing during the Great Depression. Oleo or ‘The Patient Man’s Butter’ was used for cooking and sun tan lotion all of which were in short supply due to the war. The shortage was exacerbated by a viral rash that affected the udders or nipples of cows.”

I rambled on, just like my father did so many years ago, and just as unable to stop. My daughter had conked out in the back of the car and remained oblivious to the knowledge that I was trying to impart but you, dear reader, may be unaware that the word “udder” has a strange history. It is one of five words in the English language still in use today that has its roots in Phoenician. I’m speaking of course of the ancient island of Phoenicia that was coming into its heyday some five thousand years ago. Now ‘heyday” is an interesting phrase. Originally spelled “hay day” it marked the onset of seasonal allergies during the fall of the Holy Roman Empire…

About the Author

derekbremer Prior to his life as a stay at home father Derek spent more than a decade performing public relations and marketing functions for financial consulting firms and found the job to be precisely as exciting as it sounds. When not tending to his wife or daughter Derek enjoys subjecting the public to his unique take on fatherhood, travel and animal husbandry. He has been published in Scary Mommy, Sammiches and Psych Meds, The Good Men Project, HowToBeADad, Red Tricycle, RAZED, HPP and the Anthology "It's Really Ten Months Special Delivery: A Collection of Stories from Girth to Birth.