Story City, my hometown, was overwhelming Norwegian.  My classmates were named Anderson, Carlson, Ericson, Jacobson, Johnson, Knutson, Larson, Madsen (that 'e' a sure giveaway that he was an outsider), Nelson, Olson, Paulson, Peterson, Samson, Thompson.  My two best friends growing up were Kathy Johnson and Bobby Knutson.  Now, there weren't many class differences in a town of 1600, but the Knutsons were definitely near the bottom.  The abandoned car and the chicken coop in the yard were two clear signs.  So, too, were the missing father and mother.  Bobby and his younger brother, Frankie, lived with Selma, their grandmother.  There was never a sign of a mother; the father worked in Des Moines, though no one knew doing what, and came home once or twice a month.

Mrs. Knutson's most distinguishing characteristic was that she had hair longer than she was tall.  Normally, she wore it in a large, intricately coiled bun, but a couple of times a month, she'd wash it, and we got to watch the spectacle.  She'd heat a large pot of water on their wood-burning stove, bend over the sink, and slowly pour the water over her hair, which she had carefully gathered up so that it didn't touch the floor.  The highlight for us kids was when, having wrung out most of the water, she'd stand on a chair, her hair almost touching the floor, and carefully comb it out.   We also liked the Sunday morning routine when she'd select one of the chickens from the coop, either swing it around and then snap its neck or more often lay it on a stump, take a hatchet and chop its head off, and wait till it was finished running around like, well, like a chicken with its head cut off.  Then she'd pluck it and dress it, and Sunday dinner was well on its way.

What the town most gossiped about was that until it was time for Frankie to go to school, she dressed him as a girl with long hair coiffed into ringlets and wouldn't let him play outside with the rest of us.  I can still picture him standing at the front door, looking longingly outside.  The last news I had of Frankie, he was in a penitentiary for bank robbery. 

Bobby and I spent a lot of time "raising" animals, none of which survived very long.  Since their garage was unused, it became the breeding ground for mice and rats, rabbits, garter snakes (as we called them), whatever we could capture.  We spent one summer capturing bees.  The telephone company had their building just east of the Knutsons' house, and between the two there was a huge lot, full of clover and an endless supply of honeybees.  We'd take jars, sneak up on the bees, trap them in the jar, and then--and here was what we thought was the genius of our scheme--take them to the abandoned car, quickly open the door, and release them inside.  We were convinced that we were creating a hive, though the fact that the car was rusted out and the bees could fly out didn't deter us.  Of course, we were stung many times.  Early in the summer, we'd run to the house for baking soda and water, but after a while, we just accepted the stings as occupational hazards.

The telephone company building had an old-fashioned exchange with an operator who actually connected calls by plugging them in.  The whole town was convinced that the operator listened in, a conviction probably reinforced by the fact that many people had "party lines," meaning that they could listen in on calls to the same number.  Our telephone number was 97; my aunt and uncle's was 229.  There was general consternation when we went to a REdwood 3 exchange, followed by four numbers.  How were we supposed to remember such long numbers?   The operator and her daughter, Rhoda, were the subject of more gossip than just the suspicion of listening in, for Rhoda was the town lesbian.  She had a ducktail haircut and wore nothing but jeans and white t-shirts, in the sleeve of which she rolled up a pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes or Chesterfields. 

One day while we were in high school, the Knutson family suddenly moved away.  No one had any inkling that they were going to leave or any idea where they went.  By that time, Bobby and I had drifted apart.  He didn't participate in any school activities and was generally considered a bad seed.  Many years later, though, the Reverend Robert Knutson paid a visit to my mother.  He'd gone from beekeeper to evangelical preacher.  One brother in the slammer, the other saving souls.  Who'd have thought it when Frankie was wearing dresses and Bobby and I were jumping off the roof  of their garage, the rabbits and mice scuttling around inside?