The summer of 1964 was one of those shirt-stuck-to-your-chest summers. It was before everyone, especially my family, had air conditioning. Living near the water in a bungalow with an unfinished basement guaranteed us constant humidity and mosquitoes. My sister Nancy and I wistfully watched the TV families pack their station wagons for summer trips. My homemaker mom, who never left home except to run errands and go to Mass, was eager to get away. My dad was too. With a restless family around him and a tight budget in mind, he came up with an idea: the farm.

The farm was a forty-acre patch of land that belonged to my grandmother, Granny, as we called her. A Ukrainian immigrant, she was a typical babushka: an elderly woman who wore her never-cut hair in braids around her head covered with a colorful printed scarf. If she had more than one pair of shoes, every pair was an identical one of black Oxfords with a slight heal to elevate her five-foot height. Granny had lived in cities for most of her American life, which began at sixteen, but she wanted land of her own. She must have been tired of working as a cleaning woman or a super’s wife. Given her history of childhood poverty and the Great Depression, she likely saw growing her own food as a safety net. After World War II, her husband’s death, and her sons’ return from the war, she and the brother we called Woyko (Ukrainian for uncle on the mother’s side) purchased land in upstate New York, in Prattsburgh, (Pr-r-rats-burgh” my father emphasized, “Not Pl-l-latts-burgh”). With the help of my father and his brother, our Uncle John, Granny and Woyko began a farm life, growing vegetables and raising pigs.

Maybe the growing season was too short, or the soil too rocky, or the family too inexperienced in farming. For whatever reason, the farm failed, but Granny and Woyko kept the property. Woyko often retreated there when the grind of a job or looking for a job or just sharing a small two-bedroom apartment with my grandmother grew too burdensome. From time-to-time Granny also stayed on the farm, especially since now, in her late sixties, it was harder to find work cleaning office buildings, so there was less reason for her to stay in the city.

My parents decided that Dad, a toll collector, would take a week of his vacation in mid-August. We’d bring our dog, Sparky, as well as Granny and Woyko. My mother, Nancy and I had never seen the farm. But Granny loved it so much, and Dad spoke fondly of his farming days. For me and Nancy, the farm took on mythic proportions. Images from the popular television show Lassie with that beautiful dog running through the fields filled our heads. We saw those amber waves of grain, the enormous spaces where we and our little terrier could run around without fences and pesky neighbors. We envisioned rising to hearty breakfasts of pancakes and bacon before darting outside to enjoy the sunshine and mosquito-free fresh air. We were thrilled. The fact that the farm hadn’t been a working farm in years didn’t even occur to us.

Our New York City house was in a suburban-like area of Queens consisting of small private homes, ours, a “fixer upper,” being one of the smallest. Soon after we moved here from the Bronx, where we’d lived in an apartment one floor below Granny’s, my father grudgingly bought a car to commute to work. He was not a confident driver. Pulling out of a parking spot on our street—where there was never any traffic—was a family effort. He’d look in the mirrors, then ask,

“I’m getting ready to pull out. Am I clear?’

“Yeah, Dad.”

Signal on. “Okay. I’m pulling out now. Am I still clear?”

“Yeah, Dad.”

To minimize the stress on him, we left early: at 4 AM. At approximately 3:15 AM my parents woke up me and Nancy. In a stupor we swallowed toast and hot chocolate and woke our bewildered dog. Our suitcases and supplies for the week were loaded into the trunk, and items that didn’t fit there were placed in front of the rear windshield. Because wavy hair was in style and none of the women in my family has ever needed hair-straightening, Nancy, Mom, and I had been sleeping in foam curlers. In the car our curler bag, along with snacks and blankets, sat between Nancy and me. Once Dad had safely pulled onto the road, my excitement waned enough for me to fall asleep again. I woke briefly when we parked in Granny’s neighborhood. (Woyko would not be coming with us. Having recently lost another dishwashing job, he was already on the property.)

After scanning the streets for possibly dangerous people and checking the locks on the car doors, Dad went to meet Granny at her apartment. She came to the car carrying a small travel satchel and a large picnic basket and looking very enthusiastic. The back seat was quickly becoming crowded. But we were on our way.

With an elderly woman, two children, and a dog in the car, we made a lot of stops; especially since Sparky, we were sorry to learn, got carsick and required frequent clean ups. My father closely observed speed limits. We drove slowly; we took frequent breaks. My Uncle John, Granny told us, had made the trip in seven hours. We were approaching the farm at about 4 PM, approximately twelve hours after we’d left Queens. Nancy and I were cramped from sitting in our 1960 Rambler, which of course had no air conditioning, and itching to get outside and finally see the farm.

Finally, we pulled left onto a gravel road and saw dull green and tan grasses waving in the very slight breeze. Weeds. Weeds almost as tall as Nancy, Mom, and I, who were all less than five-feet tall. For some reason, Dad parked a few yards from the farmhouse, and we had to walk to it with our belongings. The grass was filled with bugs, which Nancy and I hated. We each grabbed a bag and did a sort of jog, screaming about the insects and kicking our legs around in the hopes of avoiding them. The adults carried most of the luggage in a less dramatic fashion. Sparky and my grandmother led the way, and my parents followed with visibly diminishing enthusiasm.

When we all reached the sanctuary of the house, Granny took us inside. Nancy and I were shown the small bedroom that would be ours. The furniture consisted of two cots made up with sheets and blankets and one small dresser. No fans. No lamps. The walls, once painted a flat white, now had faded to dingy grey. Nothing hung on them. A small curtain-less window provided little sunshine in this backroom sheltered by trees. I looked around for a light switch, then realized there was no electricity.

Soon we were called to help our parents put food in the cold storage area beneath the house. I wanted no part of scavenging under the building to find a niche for American cheese and bread, and I could tell Dad wasn’t going to press the issue. But there were worse surprises. In my eleven urban twentieth-century years, I’d never heard of or seen an outhouse. Until now. A fair distance from the house, surrounded by trees, weeds, and most likely, horrible bugs and wild animals, was a wooden structure with a wooden seat inside it where we were supposed to go to “do our business.”

No TV family ever vacationed in such a place. I was miserable. I couldn’t imagine why Dad thought his family would like staying here. Nancy just stood outside the house with her head bowed down. Mom began muttering something about going back to work so we could have a real vacation. But Nancy and I said nothing. We weren’t saintly children, though we were aware of our family’s financial challenges and tread carefully around money issues. We were pragmatic. I was too old to burst into tears and Nancy, age eight, wouldn’t descend to little-girl behavior. Our family wasn’t going to make that half-day trip back to New York City any earlier than my parents had planned, especially since Granny and Woyko had to be transported. So I would just find a way to space out—without television—and wait for the week to end. Fortunately, without lights our days ended early. Soon, we discovered, this makeshift house was remarkably free of mosquitos and pleasantly cool. When we went to bed, we slept through the night without waking to throw off sweaty sheets or try to swat the mosquitos on the wall.

The accommodations didn’t bother Dad. He had once lived and worked in these conditions, waking up exceedingly early to cultivate crops and raise pigs the way he now woke up at all hours to collect tolls on the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge. When I recall him doing chores at our Queens house, I see him as happiest working outdoors— mowing the lawn, raking leaves, trimming hedges. Granny also craved the outdoors. When my family lived in the Bronx, she often took Nancy and me to the Bronx River Park where we’d sit on the grass looking at the waterfall. Granny slipped off her shoes and her face got that far-away, contented look. I saw that look on her face at the farm.

During the next few days, we settled into a routine of eating meals, driving around to look at real farms, and sitting outside. We all wanted Sparky to enjoy the fresh air, as she did at home in our yard. But Mom and Dad were afraid that she’d hear the “call of the wild,” run off, and we’d never find her. So, on an extended leash that usually ended up wrapped around a tree, she mostly slept. Woyko usually kept to himself, sometimes hitching into town to look for work and returning with the smell of alcohol on his breath.

One day a family who were among my grandmother’s oldest friends dropped by. The Burkes were a middle-aged couple who brought their eighteen-year-old daughter Debbie with them. With her straight shoulder-length blond hair and fair skin reddened by the sun, Debbie looked more like a friend’s older sister than a friend of my grandmother. And she actually talked to me like I was another person, not like I was a child similar to a pet. Debbie told me she had gotten married two months earlier and now lived in a trailer not too far from her parents. My parents had married in their thirties, so to me eighteen seemed very young to be a wife. As Debbie and I walked around, she saw Sparky and walked over to pet her, rubbing her belly when the dog enthusiastically rolled over. Debbie told me she loved animals—dogs, cats, rabbits, all of them.

“Do you have any animals?” I asked,

“Oh, no. My husband hates them.”

I couldn’t imagine why someone eighteen years old would marry a man who hated what she loved. Then I remembered that the population of Prattsburgh was 650. Long before online dating sites, there weren’t many possible choices. Nothing would be gained by waiting several years.

*

Most of my time was spent sprawled out on my cot reading How to Improve Your Bowling. The text was an odd choice for the setting, and an odd choice for me since my children’s league allowed me to use both hands to roll the ball, making many of the book’s tips inapplicable.

Occasionally, an adult told me I should go outside. I responded that I was engrossed in my book and really wanted to become a better bowler. But when Nancy, less of a reader than I, went outdoors, the pressure was on. Grudgingly, I joined the family sitting on wooden chairs and was given a bottle of Coke for my efforts. While the adults were in the midst of conversation, I heard a rustling on the ground a few feet behind me. Terrified of whatever might be there, I jumped out of my chair, swung around, and threw my Coke bottle. As it shattered against a tree, every family member stared at me.

“Why’d you do that?” my father asked.

“I heard an animal.”

“We’re in the country. There are animals all over. You can’t keep throwing bottles.”

Now I like seeing animals (at least small ones) outdoors, and I know that healthy animals won’t attack unless provoked. But I didn’t know any of this at the time; to me wild animals were uncontrollable and completely alien.

A couple of days later, my sister became pouty and slept most of the time, even refusing a ride for ice cream. That evening, my mother felt Nancy’s forehead and took out the thermometer she’d packed. The temperature was 104. Nancy had to see a doctor, but apparently there weren’t any doctors in town. To get medical care, we’d have to drive to the hospital emergency room in a neighboring town, Bath.

Mom bundled my sister in a blanket, carried her to the back seat, and sat beside her, cradling Nancy’s head in her lap, stroking her hair and looking worried. I had the rare privilege of sitting in the front seat. As Dad pulled out, I was struck by the complete darkness of roads without streetlights and the driver’s total dependence on high beams. Dad, who probably hadn’t driven in the country at night in over fifteen years, said “Watch the road!” But there was nothing around us. “What am I watching for?” I wondered.

After what seemed like an endless time watching darkness, we came to a street with a handful of storefronts and homes, none of which looked like a hospital. Dad parked the car and went to investigate. Five minutes later, he was back. The hospital had moved. To my way of thinking, hospitals didn’t move. They were supposed to stay put so sick people could find them. Nothing was working the way it should. We quickly left to find the hospital, and I once again watched the road. Soon we came to a building that had a parking lot; my father carried Nancy inside. Because there weren’t many, if any, other patients there, we didn’t have to wait long. A totally different experience from city hospitals. After confirming Nancy’s high fever, the doctor instructed Mom to give her children’s aspirin, as she had been doing, and to pat down Nancy’s face and chest with rubbing alcohol, which he gave her. Within twelve hours, Nancy was fine.

*

Granny heard about weekly dances in town that were open to everyone—no charge, no age requirement, you just showed up. We all thought this would be fun. Although Nancy and I had never been to a dance and my parents hadn’t since before I was born, we thought going to one as similar to going to church. You got dressed up. I donned a pale-yellow shift, white patent leather shoes, and panty hose I was very proud to wear. My sister put on her white eyelet dress with the blue bow, white patent leather shoes, and blue socks that matched her bow. Even I had to admit she looked adorable. My parents and Granny wore good clothes. So happy to dress up and have someplace to go, I walked to the car with a bounce unseen since I had arrived in Prattsburgh.

The four of us got to the center of town and entered the dance building. We walked up one flight, following the music—rock music. I smiled. We started to enter a packed dance room organized, as I would later learn, the way all dances are organized. Lots of space on the floor and plenty of chairs along the side of the room for the large population of non-dancers. But my grandmother stopped short; her head jerked back as she tried to understand what the people on the floor were doing—rock ‘n’roll dancing.

“See, Dollies,” she turned to me and Nancy, “people up here dance different. In the city, we do the polka.”

“They dance like this in New York too, Mom,” Dad told her, probably using American Bandstand as his reference.

The dancers were teens, middle-aged men, children—none of whom looked anything like us. They wore sleeveless shirts, sandals, jeans, or cotton pants. No eyelet or patent leather on the floor. The adults made their way to the chairs on the other side of the room; Nancy and I scurried along with our heads down.

“Why don’t you two get up and dance?” Mom urged. “Nancy, they’re playing ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’ your favorite.” A pop song about a lascivious wolf wasn’t going to sooth Nancy’s discomfort. Dad asked me to dance, so I got on the floor. I wanted to make the adults feel better and maybe make myself feel better too. Trying to copy the dancers around me, I told myself that I probably didn’t look as weird as I felt. At least while I was with my father no one else would ask me to dance. What really bothered me was that I knew this dance could have been fun. My parents never thought to see how people dressed for this in Prattsburgh. They were as out of touch as my grandmother expecting the polka.

When we left the night was cool against my slightly damp skin; I wished I’d brought a sweater. I looked up at a sky filled with more stars than I had ever seen and flashed back to the constellations in a science book. I couldn’t make out any distinct figures and I certainly couldn’t remember any names. But I marveled at the stars lighting the sky.

*

On our final couple of days, I came out of my cocoon of disdain to ask questions. One of the sights that fascinated me on our rides was the ribbon of colors on farms, especially on hillsides. There’d be a row of muted green, one of goldenrod, one of light brown, and some of the colors would repeat. Dad explained crop rotation. Different kinds of crops took different nutrients out of the soil. Farmers, careful to maintain the soil’s quality, varied what they planted both during a given year and from year to year.

Because of Dad’s tales of peasants in Eastern Europe and TV shows about struggling farmers, I saw farming as laboriously planting crops while hoping that locusts or droughts didn’t destroy everything. I’d never realized that the vegetables I ate everyday had such complex and varied needs or that farmers had figured out how to nourish different crops. Or that the act of preserving soil could produce such colorful hillsides. It would be years before I learned about monoculture on factory farms, but the care and skill of these small farmers made an impression.

During our time here, I’d seen a number of farmhouses with fresh coats of paint on them and, I guessed, plumbing and electricity. But I also saw large cabins that looked as though they hadn’t been painted since before I was born, with spaces between the slats that I could almost—from the road—see through. They sat precariously on the land, and I was betting they also had outhouses. Men in dirt-caked overalls and women in faded housedresses slumped out front. Children were often barefoot.

“Who are those people?” I asked Dad.

“Migrant workers.”

“They live there?”

“For now. They follow the crops. When the harvest here is done, they’ll go somewhere else.”

I thought Granny’s farmhouse was miserable. And though I tried to forget it, I knew that people laughed at our Queens house, sunken below the street level, looking like a Hobbit home. My mother worried that neighbors saw us as “white trash.” But migrant families continually moved to work hard and live in decrepit buildings. In the South Bronx that we’d left three years earlier and where Granny still lived, I’d seen buildings where families once lived hollowing out. I’d smelled the summer garbage fester. I hadn’t seen Harvest of Shame, but looking at the workers’ faded clothing, I knew their lives were harsher.

*

Our seven days were up. Convinced that there was no traffic in Prattsburgh or its environs, Dad decided we could sleep until 7 AM. That morning my parents were taking the food out of the cold storage unit under the cabin, planning to reduce what we would bring home by making breakfast sandwiches. Mom gasped as she pulled the cellophane-wrapped cheese out, and the rest of us gathered around to see a large bite taken out of the package. We decided to stop at the first diner we saw. Granny was packed, but Woyko had gotten into a bar fight on the previous night; his eye was blackened, his jaw red and swollen. He was moving slowly, but finally he got ready and crowded into the back seat with me, Nancy, Granny, and Sparky. Fortunately, he had only one small suitcase that we placed under Granny’s now-empty picnic basket.

The trip back was just as long as the trip there. Sparky got just as sick: we stopped just as often. But I was too preoccupied to focus on the journey. I so wanted to return to sidewalks, plumbing, mowed lawns, and places where people lived in the same houses all year long. Yet I was pondering what I had seen that week. Dad was upset that Nancy, Mom and I were unhappy, but he himself was at ease. Granny, always happy to enjoy the comforts of American life, repeatedly returned to her undeveloped land. When my friends asked me about my vacation, and I wouldn’t know how to explain it. I felt shamed as I thought about the outhouse, the hospital that moved, the lack of plumbing and electricity. But I was also stunned by the beauty of a sky filled with stars and carefully planted crops that make beautiful ribbons on the landscape. I had thought, though not always appreciated, that my family made do with minimal resources. My time on the farm showed me that people scrape by with much less.

We never went to the farm again. When Granny entered a nursing home some twelve years later, we lost our claim to this land in a terrible family feud. Dad was devastated. Whenever the farm was mentioned, his face turned crimson. He’d murmur, “I worked that land.” For me, the loss of this property was a dull ache that I still feel. The farm was a concrete piece of my father’s family’s heritage and dreams. If we’d inherited a piece of this land, maybe I’d have returned to it. As I’ve gotten older I’ve developed a fondness for the outdoors. Maybe I’d have hiked there. But I don’t have a right to be on this land and don’t even know the address. There’s no way to go back.

Twenty-six years after this vacation my husband and I traveled to Poland to visit someone he had met in graduate school. Granny came from a Polish village close to the Ukrainian border, so our friend Bohdan added this place to our road trip. As we went further east in southern Poland, the language of the signs switched from Polish to Ukrainian. The roads got rockier; the land became wilder, filled with tall grasses. Suddenly I knew why the upstate New York land had appealed to my grandmother and why she hung on to it after the farm had failed: The landscape of Prattsburgh reminded her of childhood home. In 1991, one year after this trip, Ukraine became an independent nation. I hoped that someday I would visit Ukraine and get a greater understanding of my heritage. But I didn’t go there, and now, I doubt I ever will.

My grandmother’s village was no longer there; a dam stands in its place. Bohdan told me it is customary to take soil from the home of your ancestors. He gave me a spice jar, and I scooped up some from the approximate location of the village. It remains on a shelf in my apartment.