“As my daddy said, soil is the basis of everything.”  Michael Lee West, She Flew the Coop

There must be a company that produces brochures for bed and breakfasts, providing an employment opportunity for wannabe writers armed with adjectives and talent for improving upon the truth.   We have been duped countless times by glossy brochures promising “antiques” (old furniture and lumpy beds); “near nature” (downwind of the rodeo); and “home cooking” (last night’s leftover pot roast). The Skogland Farm Bed and Breakfast humbly promised “cattle, fowl, peacocks, horses, evening meal” and implored us to “enjoy an overnight on the South Dakota Prairie.”  It delivered.

Nowhere did the advertisement promise a Hollywood version of farm life.  If the tourist was expecting the Real McCoys, he’d be disappointed.  A Luke-alike would be lean with strong arms and slightly bowed legs ending in manured cowboy boots.  His woman, vigorous yet feminine, would have long hair neatly pinned into a bun, and her gingham house dress would be iced with a crisp sashed apron.  The house would have floors of scrubbed pine and two books—the Bible and a tattered Farmer’s Almanac—would be the only evidence of literacy in this uncomplicated world.

What we got instead were Eldon and Dolores, two stout “my life is an open book” owners of Skogland  Farm.  Eldon wore navy cotton work pants, and his ample chest was covered by a checkered sport shirt straining against its buttons.  Dolores waved with sturdy freckled arms.  A t-shirt emblazoned with  “I  Love  NY.” strained against her ample chest and topped off polyester stretch pants.

The farm was a “Bed and Breakfast” by their definition.  In reality, this was a family home, a slice of Americana, where, if you chose, you could fit in.  There weren’t too many concessions to you as “guest.”  There was a “Here’s our life and welcome to it” tone to the Skoglands’ invitation.

We unloaded our van, and I swear I heard Eldon and Dolores giggle about our cautious urban ways when we locked the doors.  We were invited to, “Come on in and wash up and make yourselves to home.”  As I entered the house, I didn’t feel like I was taking a respite from the real world; rather, I sensed that I was experiencing it for the first time.

Each of our kids had scooped up armloads of flea-bitten kittens before we hit the door.  These orphaned barn cats climbed down their shirts and nuzzled their ears.  Stacey nabbed pheasant feathers tangled in brush and tucked them jauntily in her pigtails.  Allison performed elegant fan dances with yard-long peacock plumes.  Soon, the Skoglands’ granddaughter, Ann, a pleasant girl about Stacey’s age, appeared on her horse, Black Beauty.  She explained that she lived in the next house down, about a mile away, and was stopping by to say howdy on her way to the rodeo.  Seriously.

The house, a residential garage sale, was clutter, clutter everywhere.  A hutch was a crowded house for mismatched cups, glasses, and serving pieces.  Too cute salt and pepper shakers, designed in pairs, like salt hen and pepper egg, dominated a shelf.  Perfume bottles, samplers, pottery, magazines, plastic flowers, and dolls crowded any flat dust-attracting surface.  A rusty tub on claw feet, dozens of half-filled lotion and potion bottles, and a stack of rough fraying faded towels (the kind you send with your kid to camp) were in the bathroom.  Dolores decorated with the conviction that more was better and sparse was dreary.

While waiting for dinner, we surveyed the farm.  First we looked at the cows, dozens and dozens of them.  Somehow these didn’t look quite as passive as the ones in the petting zoo.  The kids clambered up the fence and waved to them, delighted when their racket incited mini-stampedes.  In front of the silo was an assortment of deceased cars.  A Volkswagen bug leaned crazily on three wheels, and an old saddle brown Dodge perched hopefully on blocks.  The barn housed tractors, and formidable tools I didn’t recognize hung threateningly from pegboard.  Peacocks and chickens strutted freely around the grounds among wild flowers, stony paths, and broad blade grass.  A round enclosure built from chicken wire and planks was the pheasant shed.  In a concession to tourism and a realistic appreciation for easy profit, the Skoglands captured pheasants and sold them to unlucky winter hunters who could save face by carrying home their purchased game.

Dinner was an abundant spread of foods that were like pieces from different jigsaw puzzles:  pheasant (“overdone,” apologized Dolores), baked potatoes, stacks of bread, homemade jam, tossed salad, toasted bagels, fruit salad, cheddar cheese, corn relish, pickled herring in sour cream, sponge cake ice cream, raspberries.  The meat and potatoes breathing heavily in crockery bowls was, I figured, prepared for the sturdy farm folk.  The herring, pickles, and bagels were Dolores’s only apparent effort to fancy up for cosmopolitan guests’ taste buds. I drank water from a Holly Hobby Christmas glass, and my coffee cup had no saucer.  The kids picked politely at this strange assortment of food, but Rick and I didn’t have to feign enthusiasm for the hearty country fare.

The guests were a strange array, too.  Margaret, a Harvard grad who had majored in psychology but taught third grade, was writing a novel in a trailer that leaned precariously against a shade tree by the driveway.  Friends of the Skoglands who used to live in Sioux Falls visited from their new home in Texas.  It seemed as if the table had a magical ability to grow as big as was necessary.  The conversation was comfortable, as if we were cousins who stopped by now and again to sit a spell.

After dinner, the Skoglands suggested that Rick and I walk “the section”—their plot of land that was one mile by one mile.  We worried about leaving our kids who had indeed made themselves at home, but the Skoglands laughed and reassured us they’d raised five kids there without a problem.  (“I hope these youngsters can just wind down and relax,” I imagined them saying as we polished off the first mile.)

Margaret joined Rick and me as we outlined the section.  Absolutely flat, you could see for miles and miles, with nothing interrupting the horizon.  The clouds hung like batting in the azure sky.  Suddenly night blackened the landscape.

When we got back, the Skoglands told us we could select any of the four bedrooms upstairs.  We explored.  Though the five Skogland kids were all grown and raised, it appeared that they had just dashed off to football practice or a 4H meeting. The first room encountered was clearly for the boys.  Baseball hats were parked on lampshades and doorknobs; trophies marched proudly down bookshelves.  Grocery store encyclopedias were stacked on a desk. Another room had bunk beds with worn, petticoat-type nylon bedspreads.  On the door hung a pocketbook, its mouth gaping wide.  Hanging on hooks on the front of a bureau was a lace prom dress, now not really pink, but faded to udder pink.   Was this a garment lovingly fashioned by Dolores for a daughter, or was it one Dolores wore forty years before while in the arms of dashing Eldon.  This was the room that Stacey and Allison picked.

They fought for the top bunk. Dolores seemed to want Rick and me to take the red room, the one I sense she deemed her finest.  The walls were pink, as were the drapes.  The carpet was ‘70s red shag, and the bedspreads coordinated in crushed velvet.  Embellishing the top of the French Provincial chest of drawers was a collection of every sample-sized lotion and lipstick the “lady of the house” had received from Avon’s calling. By 9:00, it appeared that Dolores had settled in for the night.  Her door was ajar, and I saw her hulking body in a pink nightgown rising and falling with rhythmic snores.

Downstairs, Eldon leaned back in a recliner, hands laced over his big belly, as solar-dished television made the room glow.  We cautioned the children to whisper and we tiptoed around, trying hard not to unfasten luggage latches noisily.  We weren’t sure what was expected of us as guests.  Eldon and Dolores seemed unconcerned about their roles.  This was their home, and they let us in.  Period.

At 10:00, we peeled back the bedspreads and tucked ourselves into a world that was alien to us.  We sensed that all other living creatures were asleep as we listened to the oscillating fan at the too-early hour.

Can you imagine opening your home as a bed and breakfast to strangers?  I’d probably spend four months roaming from store to store with fabric swatches to match wallpaper.  The tub would have to be reglazed.  Hand-tatted doilies would dot worn spots on chairs, and bread baking would commence months before opening to assure that the aroma had thoroughly permeated the furnishings.  I’d have to go to the library and research the do’s and don’ts of opening your own inn.  The kids would be edging the lawn with nail clippers. By the time we landed at the Skoglands’ farm, we were veteran Bed and Breakfast guests.  I vaguely remember one inn that had an unusual embossed tin ceiling that was scavenged from the nearby county jail.  Once our French toast was served on a bed of edible flowers.  We slept in a 19th century four poster bed in Colorado, and there were autographed poetry books on a nightstand in New Hampshire.  What I remember is décor, the bric a brac that distinguishes one inn from another.   I can’t conjure up a single face of people we met, nor can I say I learned anything about them or me on our visits.  I left every one of those restored mansions unchanged.

The Scoglands were genuine Americans.  They tilled the soil and loved their kids and played Parcheesi on cold South Dakotan nights.  The children weren’t spoiled with video games and Guess jeans and guitar lessons.  They expected life to be an endeavor for people who sweat and grew calluses and shoveled things that smelled.  They were quietly proud of their life and comfortable exposing it.  It was our good fortune to happen by and learn how one family lived their lives, free of pretense, unburdened by our expectations.  Yes, indeed, they were the real McCoys.

Copyright © 2014 Sandy Lingo, All Rights Reserved