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I looked down at
bottle again. “But I thought this was for cars. And trucks.”
Dad shrugged. “Well, yes, I guess it is.”
“Then why are you using it on tractor?”
My big brother, Ingman, waxed his car a couple of times a year, and my sister, Loretta, waxed her car as well. But I had never seen Dad wax anything.
“I wanted to get this done before I start field work,” he said, “to help protect paint.”
“Protect paint? From what?”
“The sun," he explained. "Sun' s hard on paint. Fades it."
I had to admit that tractor did look nice. The red parts were bright and shiny, like an apple that's been polished, and white parts looked as clean as puffy clouds drifting across a blue summer sky.
“The sun would fade paint?"I asked. "Like sun faded Mom’s curtains in living room?”
The curtains had been white with gold and brown patterns that reminded me of leaves drifting to ground on a warm fall day. Mom said she liked curtains because they were pretty and were made of heavy cotton and would be easy to wash. Except that after first summer, curtains didn't have gold and brown patterns anymore. They were mostly just white with pale brown streaks.
Mom said streaks made her curtains look like they were dirty, so curtains had been replaced with something Mom called "drapes" that were color of ripe corn. Yellow was my mother's favorite color. Mom said if sun faded her new drapes she was going to give up and leave living room windows bare.
By smile on Dad’s face, I could tell he clearly remembered episode with Mom’s curtains.
“Yes, kind of like that,” he replied.
He reached into his back pocket, pulled out another rag and held it up.
It was a piece of Mom’s curtains.
"Mom's letting you use her curtains to wax tractor?"
"Well, I don't know if she knows I'm using them to wax tractor. They're not much good for curtains anymore, but they make dandy wiping rags."
I watched as my father rubbed a few more spots on engine cowling. A breeze rustled maple branches arched high above our heads. The maples didn't have leaves yet, but they were covered with fuzzy red buds that would soon turn into leaves. From other side of barnyard fence, one of our cows bellowed. "Mooooooo!" she said.
I turned toward barn and saw a dozen of cows standing by fence, watching us. Most of our cows were black-and-white Holsteins.
Dad looked up and saw cows too. "I guess they know it's almost time for their supper, don't they." He climbed off stepladder and turned to me. "Since they all seem to be expecting it, I suppose I'd better put them in barn and feed them. And you should probably go in house and change out of your school clothes."
"What's Dad doing?" Mom asked when I walked into kitchen a few minutes later. She sat by kitchen table with a cup of coffee and an oatmeal cookie and newspaper spread out in front of her. We had lots of newspapers at our house. One that came once a week, and one that came every day. Mom was reading one that came every day.
"How did you know I was talking to Dad?" I asked as I set my books on table.
"When you didn't come in house right away, I poked my head out door to see where you were," she replied.
I might have known. My mother hardly ever missed anything that went on around place.
"Dad just got done waxing tractor," I said.
"Dad's waxing four-sixty?"
"With Turtle Wax. And he used your curtains."
Mom frowned. "My curtains? What in world is he doing using my curtains?"
She paused. "Oh—you mean curtains I put into rag bag. I knew he was doing something with tractor, but I didn't know he was waxing it."
The hollow feeling in pit of my stomach suddenly reminded me I still had not yet eaten a snack. "What's for supper?"
"Meatballs and gravy and mashed potatoes," Mom said. "I suppose you're hungry right now, though, aren't you."
"I'm starving."
She turned to look at clock. "I don't think you're starving in literal sense, but we won't eat for at least an hour, so I suppose a couple of cookies would be all right."
Last weekend Loretta had baked a batch of oatmeal cookies. I reached into canister on counter. Usually my sister made ordinary oatmeal cookies, but this time she had added coconut.
After I had finished my cookies, I went upstairs to change my clothes, and then a little while later, Dad came in house.
"I hear you've been doing y our spring cleaning," Mom said.
"My spring cleaning?" Dad replied. "Well, yes, I suppose you could say that. We paid good money for big tractor and it doesn't hurt to keep it looking nice."
"I also heard you used my curtains."
"They're not much good for curtains anymore," Dad said.
My mother sighed. "No, they're not."
Dad grinned. "Especially not since you ripped them up into rags."
Mom turned and made her way over to table, grasping back of one of kitchen chairs to keep her balance. It wasn't so much that Mom sat down. She collapsed. The polio hadn't left her legs with enough strength to allow her to sit down gracefully.
"Roy," she said to Dad after she had settled into her chair, "since when do you have time to wax tractor, of all things?"
My father shrugged. "What else am I going to do on a beautiful spring day when I can't get out in field yet? Those curtains were just what I needed to do job. If you don't mind, I'd like to keep them out in shed to use for polish rags."
"Well," Mom said, "I'm glad my curtains are good for something."
Although that was first time I saw Dad waxing tractor, it certainly wasn't last. In following years on first nice spring day, he would get four-sixty out to wax it before he started field work.
Every year, Mom and Loretta did their spring cleaning, too, washing walls and windows and curtains in kitchen, living room, bathroom and all three bedrooms.
From what I could see, Dad had more fun than Mom and Loretta.
Instead of cleaning curtains—he used curtains to do his cleaning.
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