A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media: First Person

A Little Feedbag
By Gail Jeidy
Email: gjeidy at soclever dot com
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February 07, 2008

The chicken barbecue at Chickeries was the feed-store's way of saying thank you to farmers like Dad. And it was my chance to get the biggest piece of chicken I'd ever had in eight years as a sister to hungry boys. Yet it wasn't the fat quarter of chicken all to myself (nor the potato salad or baked beans) I remember as much as the aroma of charcoal-broiled bird mixed up with dusty bags of chicken feed pushed aside for the occasion. That and the spectacle of polka dot and gingham feedbags introduced that spring as a way of saying thanks to farm wives.

Dad loaded two 50-pound designer-bags of feed in the wide-wale bed of the old blue pick-up, and they became my beanbag cushions on the short ride home. For Mom, the bright decorative bags represented something different, a bit of fun like the free towels at the grocery store or the colored glassware we got in laundry detergent. Mom was so enthused by this escape from the ordinary that in the coming weeks, she had Dad dump the feed into a metal storage drum and quickly made two skirts from the colorful cotton material.

Those two skirts were for me.

This was an exceptional act. First, because I was a trouser-wearing Tomboy. And second because aside from the pink heart she had painted on the door of the pick-up and the paint-by-number canvases she resurrected after the boys painted all four seasons in fourteen minutes, she wasn't what you'd call a crafter. In the sewing arena she was strictly a straight seam seamstress, reserving her talent for curtains and drapes. Gathered skirts with wide waistbands may have had straight seams, but making anything a human could wear was a clear departure.

The first skirt Mom made me had lavender polka dots. I unveiled it on a square dance day at my one-room schoolhouse. There I was beside Larry, my head held high, my puffy gathers topped by a short-sleeve white blouse with a Peter Pan collar and smooth round buttons. My skirt didn't twirl out high and flat like the flared satin hand-me-down from my cousin, the skirt I wasn't allowed to wear to school, but it did twirl some. And as I sashayed round and round, my polka dots puffed and rustled in the air and made promenading so much fun I forgot my fear of Benny's scaly hands until I bowed to my corner and alamanded left. The only thing that could have made my outfit better would have been a pair of white tights and Mary Jane shoes like Wendy's instead of my anklets and tennies.

I wore my red and white checked skirt to the Skinner Creek Watershed meeting on Friday night. While my parents sat in the classroom and learned about crop rotation from the soil conservation guy who looked like President Kennedy, the boys and I retreated to the recreation room with Wendy and Debby and did the Twist to Chubby Checker 45s.

By the next watershed meeting, I had discarded my pedal pushers and Tomboy trousers altogether. Debby suggested maybe I should sit in on the adult meeting and learn how to do a wardrobe rotation. "No offense, but, don't you have any other clothes?" she said, her wrist limp and long nails hanging. I didn't care. I learned how to dance The Monkey, keeping my Beatle cards, especially George, safe in the secret pocket Mom had sewn inside my skirt.

Then one day, I stayed overnight at Wendy's. We were running wild playing tag around the farm buildings and I caught the edge of my polka dot skirt on a sharp branch and ripped a hole so big it couldn't be fixed. I lowered my head and hid the tears. The next week at school, I took a flying leap off the swing and landed on my knees in the gravel. The bloodstain on my red and white checked skirt filled three white squares. Mom told me the scabs would heal but the damage to the skirt was irreversible. I buried my head in my pillow. That's just the way things were. Mom tore up my skirts for rags and the last I saw of them was on my Dad's workbench, next to his vise, all covered in oil.

Those were the only skirts my Mom ever made me. We kept going to Chickeries for feed and she kept raising chickens until the day she died.

It's been awhile since I've thought of those skirts. But they came to mind a couple months ago, on Christmas morning after my tween daughter opened a present from me. My dear child's growing in lots of ways. She recently 'changed' her name, discarding her grandmother's name and reinvented herself with one of her own choosing. She's altered her taste in music too. Currently, she thinks ''Soulja Boy' is 'brilliant.' When she told me this, I was so happy to hear the Shirelle's hit had made a comeback, I started belting out a few chords. She set me straight before I got through the first chorus and walked me through some tricky hip hop dance moves. I've got a lot to learn.

And Christmas shopping this year, I should have known better. Should have listened to that little voice, which warned against choosing an article of clothing for my 2008 child, even if I think I know what 'sweet' is. Maybe it was the color, the style or me as the giver. Perhaps the shirt couldn't flex with the step dance steps. Whatever the problem, it didn't meet muster. Her 'ew' was inaudible, but her face spoke loud and clear. The reaction would have had me banished as a child, but today, it's what we call a teachable moment.

I couldn't stop myself from offering a little feed back.

"When I was your age dear, I wore skirts made of feedbags," I said, fudging a bit on my age, but hoping to break the chill in the air.

"Oh, Mom," she said. "Yeah, right." Then she laughed and laughed and laughed at her mother, the comedienne.

I managed to make it so the mother/daughter damage wasn't irreversible, but this whole deal about being resourceful and appreciative isn't chickenfeed to me.

Meanwhile, I'm penning this post in my chilly West Coast basement office wearing a gray fleece vest from a sensible Midwest retailer, a holiday gift from family back home. I found it slung on the back of my husband's chair. It is way too big. So baggy that if some fashion maven were to walk by my door right now, she might say I look like I'm wearing a feedbag.

I'm not worried because I know just how to respond: Thank you.

About the author:
Gail Jeidy lives in Portland, Oregon, and has made her living as a professional writer for over 25 years, crafting ads, brochures and scripts to promote selfless corporations, amazing products and incredible services. Four years ago, her work became less about fulfilling client needs and more about fulfilling her own.

Gail started school in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Wisconsin. Her early work life taught her how to pick string beans, sling hash, frame a picture, build department store displays, teach kids’ art, produce TV promotions and write. Her personal life taught her how to survive three brothers, fall in love, marry, divorce, single parent, remarry her childhood sweetheart, redefine bliss, and parent once again.

Gail painted a mural on her dad’s barn when she was 21 and she’s cranky when she doesn’t get her coffee. Her son taught her to appreciate Hip Hop last year and her daughter is teaching her step dance moves now.

She has a lot to learn.

more of Gail's work is available at www.soclever.com