The Golden Geese

My first real recollections of life emerge at the time that my family lived in Flint, Michigan and my father was the owner of a masonry business that was booming as a result of the growing Buick plant. As a young boy of five or so, I noticed that whenever my father's brothers and sisters would drop in from Arkansas, they would get around to asking if my father had found any more golden geese yet and everyone would laugh.

I had no idea what this meant, but I would act like I did and laugh right along. I didn't want to appear stupid so, I never asked what it meant. I thought it was such great fun that I tried it on other friends and people I ran into. When I asked other people if they had found any golden geese and laugh, I would be met with blank stares or be told to go play my jokes on someone else. When I tried it on my kindergarten teacher, she slapped me on the back of the head and told me to sit down and shut up which immediately quelled my hopes of growing up to be a comic.

My father was the baby in the family and, as the years passed, my father's brothers and sisters stopped showing up, and this all faded from my memory. Then one evening about five years ago, I was playing pool online with a guy who I could tell was old because after every game, he would write something like, "That's 2 for you, and 2 for me". When we got around to asking where each other was from, we found out that we were both born in Truman, Arkansas. He was 75 and I was 55 and we had moved to Flint when I was 2, so I asked him if he recalled my father or my grandfather. He remembered both of them and then he asked the question, "Has your dad found any golden geese lately?" I typed in "LOL" and he asked me what the hell LOL meant. I told him and he said he had to go to bed soon afterwards, typed in "OAO" and disappeared.

I immediately left to visit my dad, who was now bedridden with asbestos poisoning that he picked up during WWII, and put the mystery to rest. When I walked into his room, he asked me what my problem was and I told him that I wanted to know about the golden geese. He started laughing and said, "You used to laugh about it all the time and I thought that your mother had told you". When I told him why I never asked about it, he started laughing harder and yelling for my mother. I told him that if he didn't shut up and just tell me, I was going to turn off his oxygen and he told me that if I did that, I was going to find myself suddenly breathing through my ass. He then began to tell me the story.

My grandfather was a doctor and around 1930, as the depression was wreaking havoc and my dad was about 5, he started taking things like chickens, home grown vegetables, jewelry, dogs, and just about anything else as payment. The family would either eat what was given to them or try to at least cover the cost of the medicine and supplies he issued from his bag and home where he ran his practice by selling them around town. Sometimes, he would just give the food to local hungry families.

One day, after setting a child's broken arm, the parents gave him three geese. Full-grown geese could be sold for $2 to $3 dollars or would make for good holiday dinners so, my grandfather was pleased. His home was towards the edge of town and about a half-mile father out, he had purchased a small farm with a barn and a pond behind it from some people who had given up and headed west. He tied strings around the necks of the geese and handed them to my father telling him to take them down to the pond and take care of them. He also told him to take his wagon to the feed store and charge a bag of feed to his account.

The geese were out of sight and out of mind and my grandfather stopped thinking about them until, one day, about three months later, when he was paying bills, he opened the bill from the feed store. It was a little over $100. One hundred dollars, depending on whom you talk to, was the equivalent of one to two thousand dollars in 1930 so my grandfather hit the roof. You could, depending on how frugal you were, rent a home and feed your family for two to three months with a $100. He yelled for my father and grabbed him by the ear and marched him down to the feed store where he learned that my father had, in fact, made several trips to the store and carted off bags of feed.

My grandfather asked my father what he was doing with so much feed and three geese and my father shrugged his shoulders and said, "There's more of them now". "Where'd they come from", my grandfather asked. My father replied that, "They just kept comin", and off they went to the barn with my grandfather stomping and dragging my father behind him.

When my grandfather rounded the barn towards the pond, his draw dropped. Before him, it seemed that there were geese as far as the eye could see. He ran out waving his arms, yelling, and tried to scare them off, but the geese would just make hissing sounds and scatter out of his way. My grandfather suddenly remembered a guy in Jonesboro about 25 miles away who bought and sold livestock for a living and went to see him.

The guy arrived at my grandfather's farm and began pointing his finger and counting for a while. "Well, Dr. Smith", he said, "it looks like you got 1,200 geese there and I'll give you $1.25 a piece for them". My grandfather said, "You can have them for a dollar if you get them out of here today". The man left and brought back a couple of trucks, some men, and some nets, rounded up the geese, and gave my grandfather $1,200.

My father's oldest brother, Robert, was in dental school at the time, my grandfather was running out of money, and was going to have to make him drop out. The $1,100, after the feed bill was paid, allowed him to finish school and set up practice in town.

Now I understood why, when my father and his brother argued, my father would often end the argument by saying, "I was paying your way through dental school when I was five years old". My uncle would often volunteer to pull my dad's teeth for free.

"One other thing", I asked my dad, "you have any idea what OAO means?"

"Over and out."