I'll trade you two puree's and a cat's eye for a boulder

Today was the perfect autumn day! The air was crisp, the clouds scudded across the sky in steely gray swirls, miniature wind devils caused fiery red and orange and yellow leaves to dance frenetically across the garden and the smell of wood smoke wafted in the air. For some reason autumn always invigorates me. Maybe it’s the crispness of the air or the fiery colors. Whatever it is, I just feel more…vivid in the fall.

I got my photo editing work done early in the day so that I could play hooky with Derek this afternoon. We had an exciting adventure planned with our granddaughter, Julia.

Derek picked Julia up on his way home from work and the three of us headed out to Valla’s Pumpkin Patch for an afternoon of adventure. Valla’s is a huge farm on the outskirts of town that, most appropriately, grows pumpkins of every imaginable shape, size and even color. For a few short weeks every fall the place is transformed into a magical autumn wonderland. Every nook and cranny is a picture perfect scene of autumnal bliss. A large red painted barn with white trim sits bursting at the seams with pumpkins and cornstalks, bales of hay and mum’s of every conceivable color. The paths are lined with wooden carts laden with more pumpkins and oddly grotesque looking gourds. Much to Julia’s delight, another barn was filled with every bit of Halloween paraphernalia imaginable. There were gruesome rubber masks and freakishly large spiders as well as princess tiara’s and The Sorting Hat from Harry Potter. She tried everything on.

The farm is located several miles from the outskirts of the city amidst perfect rolling hills. It couldn’t have looked better if it were a Hollywood designed set.

Interestingly enough, I would swear in court that I have never been there before today. Derek, on the other hand, swears that I have been there no less than three times. The sad truth is I have no idea which one of us is right. Senility in one so young is a terrible thing.
From the moment we pulled into the parking lot, Julia went into overdrive. Her tiny two year old body could barely contain her excitement. Watching her leaping from one foot to the other reminded me of the Mexican jumping beans we would pick up in Tijuana when I was a kid. If you haven’t seen them, they’re really pretty amazing. It’s a bean that has had a tiny worm burrow its way into the center. As the worm squirms around inside the bean, it makes it jump around, hence the name jumping beans. That was what Julia was like today. 200 psi of excitement crammed into a 25 lb body. There was a real possibility of a spontaneous implosion occurring.

Julia wanted to do everything…twice. First we looked through an area with dioramas of children’s stories and fairy tales. Ancient looking paper Mache’ figures looked as though they had seen better years, but still had a certain charm that was not missed by Julia’s keen eye.

We raced from one activity to another as though they would announce a winner at the end of the day for the person who saw the most in the shortest time. We made it through the maize maze in record time (that would be the record for the longest it has ever taken to find ones way out of the maze. It is NOT prudent to put a two year old in charge of direction selection in these delicate circumstances).

We stopped for a soft pretzel and Derek got a roasted turkey leg that looked like it came off a world class body builder. Next we meandered through a quaint looking sort of general store. Julia found at least five different items that caused her to exclaim “I want this”! Papa finally told her she had to pick just one. The undisputed winner was a bright orange, jack-o-lantern lollipop the size of her head. While they haggled over the purchase I discovered, to my intense delight, two huge bins filled with every size and color of marble imaginable. I was instantly transported back to the fifth grade. 

One of my darkest secrets, one even my closest friends aren’t aware of…until now…is that in my youth, I was a colossal marble junkie. I couldn’t get enough. I had a world class (at least to my 10 year old mind) marble collection. Every recess, every lunch hour, every bus stop wait, before AND after school was spent playing marbles. An addiction like this was a huge burden for a 10 year old girl to bear, especially in the dark days before 12 step programs. I knew all the lingo; Purees, cat’s eyes, boulders, devil’s eye, corkscrews, snakes, ribbons, Aggies. I even had a lucky shooter. It was a mesmerizing clear blue puree. I was a marble connoisseur. 

 Each day at lunch, my cronies and I would hunker down on our haunches around our favorite marble circle and the negotiations would begin. Sometimes marble trades were spoils of war. The winner picked a particular marble that he had long coveted as his prize for winning. Other times we would simply trade. I say simply, when in fact there was nothing simple about it. We would launch into negotiations so intense you would have thought we were holding international peace talks. I would eyeball each trade offering carefully, looking for signs of imperfections in the glass, or worse, cracks. I looked for color quality and uniqueness of swirl patterns. If I’d known what a jewelers loop was I’d have had one. We played our games with a fierce intensity. 

Now here I was, standing there, hypnotized by the swirls and colors in the huge bins. A large sign above the bins announced that the marbles were $3.00 a bag. A little wooden peg beneath the sign held a dozen or so off white cloth bags waiting to be filled. It may have been because autumn always makes me feel nostalgic, but before I knew what I was doing, I found myself rifling carefully through the bins of marbles accessing each marble with the immaculate attention to detail of a diamond merchant. I worked feverishly to fill my bag as Derek stood there, shaking his head, knowing better than to question why a grown woman was loading up on marbles.

After sufficiently quenching my marble lust, we moved on to more Julia-centric activities. We tried to hit everything that would be dear to a two year old. We took the train ride around the perimeter of the farm, passing mock towns peopled by dusty and aging paper Mache’ townsfolk. We even saw an entire wall of mounted singing fish flopping in time to a wormy looking mannequin whistling the theme song to the Andy Griffith Show. Julia was in heaven and was now covered from head to waist in bright orange goo from licking her lollipop.

 At one point on the train, she seemed to suddenly become aware of her sticky plight and poking her hands at me started wailing, “Nana, I’m sticky”! I marveled that this could be a sort of surprise to her considering the zeal with which she had been devouring her lolly. Between Derek’s water bottle and the packet of tissues in my purse, we were able to de-stickify her with some modicum of success and then we were off to the next adventure, which was a huge ‘sand’ box filled with kernels of corn! 

This was taking playing with your food to a colossal new level and Julia plunged in with glee. Derek followed suit and soon had her buried to her waist in corn kernels. You’ve just gotta love Nebraska. We explored too many activities to catalog here, but the highlights were a tricycle course that Lance Armstrong himself would have killed to ride, a pony ride and a lost gold mine. 

 Julia did us proud on the pony ride as she virtually leapt onto the ponies back and rode like a pro without even a flicker of nervousness. After the pony, Julia insisted that we go through the ‘Lost Gold Mine’. It was a fun walk through a ‘cave’ that was actually much larger on the inside than it looked from the outside. It too was populated by badly made, but amusing miners, some of which exhibited arthritic looking animatronics, while others didn’t move, but had voice tracks that professed “this map is no good” and other sage words of wisdom.

As we exited the cave Julia jumped up and down shouting “Again! Again!” I suggested that Papa might be an excellent choice for a second round, while I looked in the shops. Now, if Julia had come out the second time yelling “Again! Again!” I think Papa would have had the fortitude to resist her, but when she popped out, turned to Papa and said “Wanna go again Papa? Huh?” I knew she had him, so off they toddled for one last plunge into the mine shafts beneath Valla’s.

By the time they came out for the third time it was obvious that Julia was done. She kept insisting that she didn’t want to leave, but her tired eyes and fussy face betrayed her. I finally told her we had to leave because they were closing…a tiny lie for which I feel confident God will someday forgive me.

Against a darkening autumn sunset, we headed back to the car, Julia clutching a little painted pumpkin that she had chosen on our way out, and me clutching my treasured marbles. 

It was a perfect autumn day.