Angel and the Ivory Tower

Chapter 2

The Soiled Virgin

  Great Aunt Alice gave me the upstairs bedroom on the southeast corner of the farmhouse.  She did this for two reasons.  First, it was the nicest room she had available.  Second, the Indiana summer sun comes crashing through the southeast windows like a baseball no later than 4:55 AM between late May and early August. 

  It was within five minutes of that time, on the first morning after I had arrived that she first yelled, “BREAKFAST!”  I soon found out that “BREAKFAST!” was a Hoosier word that meant, “Why aren’t you down here, dressed, and ready for work?”  It didn’t matter if we worked all day or for five minutes and then quit -- Great Aunt Alice started most of her workdays at 5:00.

  By 5:30 I was in the kitchen in time to see her washing the dishes and wrapping the leftovers.  I hadn’t been hungry, but the sight of this made my stomach growl.  If I had disappointed her on my arrival time, at least I was dressed and ready to paint the house.  I wore my brown tweed suit with my white shirt, brown bow tie, brown socks, and brown wingtip shoes.  She took one look at me and asked, “Are those the only clothes you brought?”  I assured her that I had also packed my blue suit, my blue bow tie, two more pairs of brown socks, three pairs of blue socks, four more white shirts, two of them short sleeved, and my black wingtip shoes, and of course a sufficient supply of underwear, and my pajamas.

  “What was in the other suitcase?”

  “Books.”

  She asked me if I had ever held a paint brush.  I had to admit that when it came to manual labor I was a virgin. The fact that I was a virgin in everything else outside of books was not brought up.  Besides I didn’t like to get dirty, and as long as I stayed inside the house it didn’t matter what the outside looked like. 

  “Take off your shoes and socks!” she demanded.  “We’re going to the barn.” 

  I did as she commanded and left them neatly by the front door.  The farm lot felt funny to my feet and they were getting terribly dirty in the process.  The inside of the barn was still early morning cold.  In one third of the barn there was a neatly arranged and elaborate workshop with a clean concrete floor.  The other two thirds of the barn had a dirt floor, some of it covered with straw.  In the center there were two airplanes facing two large sliding doors that opened to a grass airstrip.  The far end of the barn held an old farm truck, and several livestock stalls with various farm tools hanging from the walls.  This part of the barn was familiar to me as I had once read McCormick’s “American Farm” 1869, Lerman House, Cincinnati, Ohio.

  Great Aunt Alice told me to go into the middle stall and close the gate.  She then turned her back to me and said, “Jacket.”

  I said, “Tweed.”

  “No, I mean hand me your jacket!”

  I did, and then she asked me for my tie, my shirt, and my pants.  I panicked, thinking this was how one dressed to paint  .  . .