Bombeck - The Grass Is Always Greener over the Septic Tank

ERMA

OMBECK

THe GRass is ALWaYs GReeNer Oven

THe SePTic TaNK

Also by Erma Bombeck

AT WIT'S END

IUST WAIT TILL YOU HAVE CHILDREN OF YOUR OWN!

I LOST EVERYTHING IN THE POST-NATAL DEPRESSION

ERMa BoMBecK

The Grass

Is

ALWaYs GReeNeR

OVeR THe SePTic TaNK

_McGruw-Hill Book Company

New York Sl. l.ouis. San Francisco. DusseIdorf. London Mexico Sydney . Toronto Book design by Judith Michael.

Copyright 1972, 1973, 1975, 1976 by Erma Bombeck. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Bombeck, Erma. The grass is always greener over the septic tank.

I. Title.

PS3552.059G7 813'.5'4 76-20645

ISBN 0-07-006450-4

Several of the chapters in this book are based on matcrial that has appeared elsewhere in another form

Contents

Foreword xiii

Chapter One Station Wagons... Ho! 1

Staking Out a Claim

Lot No. 15436... Where Are You?

The Original Settlers

The Telephone Representative

The Insurance Salesman

The Antique Dealer

Chapter Two Major Battles Fought in the Suburbs 23

Finding the Builder Who Built the House (1945-1954)

The Second-Car Ten-Day War

Getting Sex Out of the Schools and Back

into the Gutter Where It Belongs

Saving the Recession from a Depression

The Picture Window

The Suburban Lawn

Barbie and Ken

Cbapter Three Thr great Plastic Rush 45

You Will Como to My Home 1Party

Chapter Four Hazards of Suburban Living 51

The Car Pool Crouch

The Neighborhood Nomad

The Elusive Washer Repairman

Trick Or Treat... Sweetheart

The Identity Crisis

Chapter Five The Heartbreak of Psuburbaniasis 67

The Seven-Inch Plague

The Suburban Myth

Hosting a Famine

Chapter Six Ya Got Trouble 83

Chapter Seven It Comes with the Territory 89

Loneliness

The Pampered Dog

The Garage Sale

Chapter Eight Law and Order 111

The Ten Most Unwanted Women In the Shopping-Center Parking Lot

Who's Watching the Vacant House? Everyone.

Suburbian Gems Police Blotter

Chapter Nine Put Your Winnebagos into a Circle and Fight 121

Chapter Ten Super Mom! 133

Chapter Eleven The Volunteer Brigade 141

Crossword Puzzle

I Am Your Playground Supervisor

Wanda Wentworth, Schoolbus Driver

Ralph Corlis. The Coach Who Played to Lose

Confessions of an Officer in the Girl Scout Cookie Corps

Chapter Twelve "By God,

We're Going to Be a Close-Knit Family

if I Have to Chain You to the Bed!" 157

The Frozen Kiosk

Starving to Death at the Spiritual Family Feast

Chapter Thirteen Postscript to Suburbian Gems 169

Foreword

Soon after the West was settled, Americans became restless and began to look for new frontiers.

Bored with the conveniences of running water, electricity, central heating, rapid communication, and public transportation, they turned to a new challenge... the suburbs.

The suburbs were discovered quite by accident one day in the early 1940's by a Welcome-Wagon lady who was lost. As she stood in a mushy marshland, her sturdy Red Cross shoes sinking into the mire, she looked down, and exclaimed, It's a septic tank. I've discovered the suburbs!

News of the discovery of a septic tank spread and within weeks thirty million city dwellers readied their station wagons and began the long journey to the edge of town in search of a bath and a half and a tree.

It wasn't easy for the first settlers. They planted trees and crabgrass came up. They planted schools and taxes came up. Surveyors planted stakes and they disintegrated.

The first winter, more than half of the original settlers perished. Some lost thoir way in cul-de-sacs and winding streets with the same name trying to find their way home,

Other poor devils died of old age trying to merge onto the freeway to the city. One was attacked by a fast-growing evergreen that the builder planted near his front door. (They named a high school after him.)

There wasn't a day that went by that they weren't threatened by forces from the city: salesmen of storm doors, Tupperware and Avon ladies, traffic lights, encyclopedia salesmen, Girl Scout cookie pushers, and Golden Arches everywhere.

The survival by at least one family of PTA's, garage sales, car pools, horse privileges, Sunday drivers, Little Leagues, and lights from the shopping center is what this book is all about.

It traces the migration of the Bombeck family from their modestbut patheticapartment in the heart of the city to a plat house (one original and 216 carbons) just outside the city limits.

, They make the trip with a son who has spoken four words in five years (I get the window), their daughter who sleeps with a baton, and a toddler who has never known anything but apartment living and consequently does not own a pair of hard shoes.

It took a week to load their station wagon and after the good-byes they settled back to enjoy their new adventure.

Look, honey, sit down on the seat. Daddy cannot drive with scissors in his ear. No, I don't know how long it has been since I cut the hairs in my ears! Erma, for God's sake, find something for him to do.

Are we there yet?

It's my window and I say when it goes down and when it goes up. Mom! Isn't it my window?

You did not see a cow and if you mark it down I'm going to mark down a chariot on my list. A chariot gives me fifty points.

I'm hungry.

Start the motor. They'll be better when we get moving.

Erma, do you smell something? Check the dog.

The dog checks out.

Check the feet of the kids.

They all check.

Check your own.

You check yours first.

Mom! I'm gonna be sick.

You are not going to be sick and that's my final word!

Boys! Get your hands in this car or they'll blow off.

How many kids had their hands blown off last year?

Too many to count.

Did you ever see a hand that blew off on your windshield, Dad?

"Erma, for God's sake find something for the kids to

do."

"Mom! Andy took a bite out of a cookie and put it back.

I'm telling."

"You tell about the cookies and I'm telling about your

chicken bone collection."

Stop the car! That's what we smell. Dad, when you get mad the veins in your nose swell up.

"I thought you were going to give them a sedative. How

much farther?"

"We've got a hairpin, a thumbnail and a breathmint to

go, according to this map."

Can't you interpret a simple road map?

Don't shout at me. Bill, I can't handle shouting today.

"I'm not shouting, I'm just suggesting that you are a

high-school graduate and are capable of interpreting a

simple scale on a map."

Hey, Dad, I just saw a hand fly by. What day is it? I asked, I don't know how much longer I can stand the driving, the confinement, the loneliness. Not being able to talk to anyone. Bill, maybe we shouldn't have come.

It won't be long now! he said.

The Bombecks made it to the suburbs in their station wagon on June 9th. It was the longest fifty-five-minute drive any of them had ever endured.

PUT YOUR WINNEBAGOS INTO A CIRCLE AND FIGHT!

You couldn't help but envy the Merediths.

Every weekend, they left their all-electric, three-bedroom, two-bath, w/w carpeted home with the refrigeraition and enclosed patio and headed for Trailer City.