My Schitt's Creek-Inspired Story I'm Calling "Transplants"

It was May and my dad was in a rocking chair on a porch, looking out at acres of green, green grass, sipping coffee, beer, and tea. It had been years since he’d seen so much grass, actually, having spent most of his life in New York City. At 41 years old, he’d been living in the city for over a decade, getting his PhD in philosophy, getting engaged, married, having kids (hi!) and moving into a modest loft on the Upper West Side. 

The grass was different where he was, lush and powerful since that month had delivered a good amount of rain and the blades were now shooting up from the ground proudly. He was called to Fulton, Missouri by the faculty of Westminster College looking to fill a sabbatical opening. They wanted him, badly. Refilling his glass and saying how much they’d love for him to join their department. After years of rejection while looking for permanent work, the adoration was welcomed. 

He called my mom who was back home with me, four years old at the time, and my brother, just about to turn one. My mom, raised in New York City, couldn’t grasp the open spaces my dad was describing. The double stroller could barely fit through the stairwell leading up to the five flights to our apartment.

“It’s so green,” he told her.

And she thought, “This might not be so bad.”

***

In 1991, we packed up our lives and moved to Fulton, a sparse town — about 12 square miles — with only one store: A Mega Walmart. And one restaurant: A pancake house where the men in town would go to relax without their wives or children. There were no more shops because once the Walmart opened everyone was employed by the store. The streets were filled with boarded up storefronts. There were churches and no Jewish people. We would be the only ones.

The Brand Family

The mayor of the town showed my dad the house our family would live in. It was on a street with other houses, but no other families living in those houses. The walls were smothered with gold wallpaper and blue shaggy rugs with a strong odor of wet dog covering the floors. There was no shower. There was a bathtub, but no shower. 

“We could put a shower in the basement,” the mayor told my dad, “if you guys really need it.”

Confused but nevertheless polite, my dad told the mayor, “There’s no way my wife would take a shower in the basement.” And so the mayor arranged for a shower to be installed in our bathroom. 

My mom later found out that every new family who moved to Fulton was brought to that house. Everyone she would meet would tell her about the time they moved to the town and the mayor brought them to that home. The one without the shower, which no one thought was odd. 

Coming from New York, where my pre-school was actually a synagogue, it was quite the change when a woman in town on the phone with my mom earnestly asked where our family hid our horns. My mom’s friends, Viv and Roxy, well they’d never met a Jewish person before. Really, most people in town hadn’t. Viv just assumed Jewish people wore crosses around their necks like the rest of the town. There was a guy across the street who would always show off his gun and my parents were worried he might be threatening them. Sometimes they would find a dead bird on our porch, but probably, they thought, it was just a stray cat.

I didn’t feel the cultural differences, though, like my parents did when we first moved. People were always trying to get them to convert, pushing fliers under the door to church invitations and inviting them to prayer groups. But being in first grade, religion was never really a factor. I had friends and playdates and we rode ponies in a farm. 

I took a bus to a friend’s house all the time. Her name was Christina. She never asked me why I was Jewish. We played with toys and colored and made forts out of blankets. While my mom was being recruited into town sororities, I was just being a kid not realizing any of those differences. We were all the same. 

My parents grew to love (parts) of the town. The no fuss, our yard. My mom was shocked to find little pieces of ice on the grass early one morning. She woke my dad up to come look at this weird formation growing outside. It was dew. 

There were tornadoes constantly. Mini ones in the open fields. Fields that had rolls of hay and cows. When my brother and I were older, she would tell us about the times my dad would take my brother in the stroller and go for a walk by the tornadoes, in awe of its power. 

“He was always running directly toward trouble,” she would say.

My brother, Aaron and dad, Walter.

The sabbatical didn’t extend beyond that year and we were going to leave Fulton sometime after the New Year. I didn’t really know what was going on, but I sure was excited for the holiday concert that December. I remember all the kids in first and second grade practiced the songs we were going to sing for our parents. We held hands during some of them and got excited about the sparkles we would be allowed to wear on our faces. 

My parents and brother were in the audience. I could see them from the second row on stage where I was standing. We sang “Jingle Bells” and “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.” We sang “Silent Night” and “Let It Snow.” And then at the very end, the last song of the night was the “Dreidel Song.” Everyone sang it and it was fun and exciting, just like the other concerts back home in New York. We bowed for our parents and teachers and laughed backstage and hugged.

It wasn’t until later that spring, as my parents were packing up the house to move, that they realized what had happened that night. The school had added the “Dreidel Song” for me, for our family. The people in town were saying goodbye, and they were also saying hello, for maybe the first time.