by There were a lot of bad things that could happen to a child growing up on a farm in Iowa in the 1970s and 80s. You could get lost in a field of 8-foot corn when you’re only 4-feet high and not be found for days. You could be attacked by an angry sow if you got between her and her piglets. If you didn’t stay on the grass exactly as you were told, you could get run over by a tractor.
Or worse. Your mom could host Card Club and ruin your entire Saturday.
Card Club was fancy at a time when there wasn’t a lot of fancy to go around in rural Iowa. My parents didn’t often get dressed up and go out. We dressed up for church, weddings and funerals. Mostly, there was work and drought and more work, raising hogs, cattle, corn and soybeans that were sold to chip away at the double-digit interest the bank charged on farm loans.
Card Club was the fanciest gathering I knew. One night each month, farmers shed their coveralls, 5-buckles and work gloves for new jeans, cowboy boots and collared shirts, layering after-shave over the faint smell of hog house that never completely went away. My mother and her friends wore their best cowl-necked sweaters, polyester pants and jangly jewelry. On Card Club night, my parents and three other couples became shellacked, polished up, heavily perfumed symbols of what it meant to be a real grown up.
But when it was my mother’s turn to host Card Club, there was a full week of stressful and chaotic prep before you got to the fancy part.
The Card Club Hostess wore a heavy crown. She was to provide a pristinely clean home where there would be two tables of cards, a countertop full of appetizers and a well-stocked bar. The Card Club Hostess was to serve dessert and coffee after cards. The Card Club Hostess was to accomplish this while the relentless Farm Machine roared on, churning out dust, manure, and a steady stream of muddy, weary men who needed breakfast, lunch, mid-afternoon coffee and sandwiches, runs to town for tractor parts, and rides from one field to another, even on Card Club Day.
And yet, the Card Club Hostess was to be the ever-glowing picture of grace under pressure. So my Mom enlisted the help of her staff, small in both number and stature: my brother Guy, my sister Josie and me, ages five, eight and eleven.
We were roused from bed early on Saturday and in high gear by eight o’clock, Josie dusted. I vacuumed our home’s three floors, only one of which would see any guests that night. Mom used Pinesol to wipe up linoleum floors on her hands and knees, scrubbing away mud, stray corn kernels, all traces of our day-to-day reality. My hopes soared each time I crossed a job off the list on the kitchen table, and then were dashed. Mom had added more tasks to the list.
Guy’s jobs were to pick up toys, not make messes and not break anything, which he sometimes couldn’t help on account of being five years old. One particular Card Club Saturday, a giggly game of tag went too far. Guy slammed the dining room door, sending one of my mother’s Blue Willow china plates flying from its place high on the plate rail to the hardwood floor where it broke into a thousand pieces and broke my mother’s heart. We froze. My mother turned red and burst out crying. My father was called to take Guy outside with him, mostly to spare his life. As she swept up the china shards, my mother cried, “I’ll never have nice things!” before muttering, “It’s just a plate. It’s just a plate. It’s just a plate.” over and over, trying hard to believe her own words. The plate had been one of a few small treasures left to Mom by her Grandma Annie, now long gone.
By noon, our bedrooms were to be spotless, though no one would be in them but us. Mom checked to make sure we were doing it right. If we didn’t, she yelled. The Card Club Hostess wouldn’t let a glorious evening be ruined by something as appalling as evidence that people actually live here.
Neither of my parents smoked, but some of their friends did. My sister and I dug through the buffet drawers for glass, amber-colored ashtrays, Windexed them and placed one in each room and at the two tables where they’d be playing 500 that night. The Card Club Hostess always makes sure ashtrays are handy for guests to use without having to ask.
After cleaning, we cooked. This was the fun part. Helping Mom make fancy party food wasn’t something I got to do every day. Plus, I knew there would be leftovers for us on Sunday. There was nothing quite like the delectable remains of Card Club Night.
Earlier in the week, Mom would already have selected and stocked groceries for nearly a dozen recipes from her olive-green Tupperware recipe file and Betty Crocker cookbooks. We got right to work. There were plates of cream cheese spread thin on a plate, slathered in cocktail sauce and littered with itty bitty shrimp. There was curry dip and cut veggies. There was a whole tribe of crock pots filled with cocktail weenies in barbecue sauce, hot chipped beef dip, Swiss cheese fondue.
The crown jewel was Mom’s famous Card Club Cheese Ball. I figured every 8-ounce block of Philadelphia cream cheese hoped to be Card Club Cheese Ball when it grew up. Mom mixed cream cheese, minced onion, two other kinds of cheese, Worcestershire sauce and chopped pecans, and the miracle started to take place. Refrigerate, then roll the ball in fresh, finely chopped parsley, arrange it on a glass tray surrounded by Ritz crackers. Voila! Cream cheese’s hipper, richer, older cousin that gets all the attention. No wonder this dish got rave reviews at Card Club. I suppose we could have made Cheese Ball for other occasions, but who would dare? It was a centerpiece. It was cheese transformed. It was fancy.
By the time we nudged the Cheese Ball into its place in the fridge and plowed through mounds of dishes, it was nearly five o’clock. Guests would arrive at six.
Mom disappeared to get ready, a transformation all its own. When she emerged from the bathroom, she had shed her grubby Tshirt and sweatpants for party clothes. Her hair was done, her makeup and L’oreal Mulled Wine lipstick was flawless. She’d ditched traces of Pinesol and cream cheese for a dab of Chanel No 19 behind each ear. Always, but especially on Card Club nights, she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and I drank in the rare sight of her all done up as she shoved her feet into high heels, tossed dirty towels in the hamper and patted a tiny brand-new guest towel into its place by the bathroom sink.
With a fresh shave and his hair still wet from the shower, Dad ran up the basement steps two at a time to take his place by Mom at the door, as headlights beamed and bobbed up the gravel driveway.
Moments later. the guests were at the door and bursting through, a familiar cast of characters ready to play their part in the show. Tom’s booming laugh and easy smile. Linda’s demure giggle and the way she blinked a lot when she talked. Keith snorted a little when he laughed. Maggie sold Avon and Tupperware and Mary Kay, and wore her products with pride, often all at once. She didn’t know that Josie and I had a secret name for her: Cherry Pie Face. Larry put his hand on the top of my head and pressed down hard to “stop me from growin’ up so fast”. He wore a turquoise bolo tie and cowboy shirt.
Bright, blue-eyed Betty leaned down low to hand me her coat and ask how I was doing. As she did, I saw her pink lace bra, and jello-y mounds of cleavage sloshing around inside her blouse.
It was my job to gather coats and pile them on my parents’ bed. This was a great job because with every puff of cool air as coats landed on the bed, there was an aroma of Cachet or Chanel, English Leather or Afta, mixed sometimes with smoke and sometimes with the scent of farms a few miles away. These were the smells of other grown-up lives, other homes where someone else’s children were hanging out, glad it wasn’t their turn to host Card Club tonight.
After gathering coats and being permitted to make up a small plate of appetizers, we kids were not to be seen for the rest of the evening unless someone was bleeding. It wasn’t easy to hide children back in the pre-rec-room days of the 1980s, so we squirreled away upstairs in our for-the-moment-spotless bedrooms.
I tried to take in as much as I could of the grown-up party from my perch at the top of the stairs, bare-footed in my nightgown, face pressed against the spindles to catch bits and pieces of stories told between hands of 500. Betty’s parents had just returned from some who-knows border town in Texas, and this might be the last year they went south. Larry’s herd was suffering from such and such illness. Tom, the vet, said to try this and that. So and so was finally moving off the farm and into blah-dee-blah nursing home. That meant they’d schedule the auction soon, Dort figured. Auction. That was a word I knew, and it landed clumsily and flat amidst the murmurs below. Somber. Sad. Heavy.
Between card games ending and dessert and coffee being served, Mom would leave the party briefly to come tuck us in. She was smiling now, polished smooth and shiny in lipstick and hospitality, aglow with relief at a Card Club going swimmingly and nearly over, and a glass or two of wine. After tucking us into bed, she’d lean down close and brush my hair, kiss my cheek, and I’d ask to smell her breath. She’d giggle, but then oblige me so I could smell the wine wafts, an unfamiliar smell since my parents weren’t big drinkers. Her cowl-necked sweater would brush my neck as she hugged me, and her large, costume earrings were cool against my face. Then she would turn out the light and return to her guests, and I would drift off to the sound of conversation and laughter below, made more boisterous by booze and the momentum of a wonderful evening with friends.
The next morning, the spell was over, and life was once again sober, pragmatic, farmy. Dad rose early, donned coveralls, five-buckles and a stocking cap to go do chores while Mom made breakfast and readied us for church.
Still on the counter were last night’s score sheets. I liked to look at the long list of numbers and the names across the top: Keith and Dort, Larry and Betty, Tom and Linda, Steve and Lois.
In the fridge, those glorious leftovers waited for me to enjoy Sunday afternoon after church, including half a Cheese Ball, proof that the glamourous evening had really happened.
Here is Lois’ Famous Card Club Cheese Ball recipe.
Enjoy your own bit of fancy sometime, with or without the rest of the club.
From the Kitchen of Lois Smith
Card Club Cheese Ball
1 jar Rocha Blue Cheese or ½ of 4-ounce square blue cheese
1 jar Old English Cheese Spread (look for Kraft brand in salad dressing aisle)
2 large (8-oz) cream cheese blocks
Cream, and mix in:
1 medium onion, grated + juice
1 T. Worcestershire sauce
½-cup chopped pecans
Roll into 4 small balls. Roll each in either fresh, finely chopped parsley or finely chopped pecans. Wrap in Saran Wrap and keep in refrigerator until ready to serve.
Serve with Ritz or Clubhouse crackers.