My younger son Liam has confidently projected that I will make $100,000 on my book.  That’s led to some interesting discussions regarding gross sales and net profit—and probability.  Do I include a decade of expenses in the creation of Cornfields to Codfish? Or was writing a hobby up to the point of when I started polishing essays that would be in the book?  Do flights to Iowa that brought back memories that inspired many of the essays go against the bottom line?  What about beach entrance fees and swordfish dinners over the years?

My family celebrated Christmas in Iowa at Thanksgiving time last year.  The Thursday after Thanksgiving, I had a book signing at Laree’s, a gift shop in Independence.  Bill and my sons flew home after the Thanksgiving weekend, but I stayed in Iowa.  It’s cut and dried that the car rental expense became a writing expense after I dropped them off at the Cedar Rapids airport.  My intent was to visit book stores and gift shops in northeast Iowa to hawk my wares, er, my book.  A bad cold slowed me down, so after a quick trip to the Luther College Bookstore, I spent the rest of the week leading up to the book signing on Mom and Dad’s couch fighting the season’s first yuck.

The rental car sat motionless.  An expensive expense.  The long driveway off the road at Mom and Dad’s is gravel, and it leads to a large open area bordered by the house to the south; Mom’s green house, a small open garage, and a hay shed to the west; the barn to the north; and a corn crib/storage building to the east.  I had parked out of the way, next to the garbage barrel that sits off to the west of the drive. 

Actually, now that I think about it, I’ve criss-crossed definitions: In Massachusetts, we have garbage cans that we haul to the curb every week.  In Iowa, we have two burn barrels where Dad burns the trash from the house every morning.  The two burn barrels are 55-gallon steel drums, the kind used to transport oil.  When they get full of ash, Dad hauls them out back and buries the ash.  

When I was growing up, everything but food waste and glass went into the trash and ended up in these incinerators.  Now, Mom and Dad recycle all cans, plastic, and glass.  They gather those pieces in huge recycle bags in the basement then take them to town to turn in at a recycling center.  They get five cents each for pop cans, or soda cans, depending on where you live and what you call them.  All food waste goes in a “cat pan” that Dad takes out back to dump.  I remember when I left the farm and started cooking my own meals how confusing it was to either throw food waste in the garbage or down the garbage disposal.  A cat pan still seems more organic than either of those disposal methods.

Dad asked me to move my car one morning so he could burn trash.  I backed the car out and parked it at a safe distance away in front of the barn.  Looking around the car, I gathered up the strewn garbage, putting water bottles for recycling in my left hand and garbage in my right.  I met Dad at the back door as he was taking the garbage out.  “Wait,” I said, “I have some trash from the car.”

“Push it down in there or the wind will blow it away,” Dad replied.  So I stuffed the Goldfish packages and candy bar wrappers into the kitchen garbage can.  Then I threw the bottles in the bin next to the stove where recyclables were collected. 

Later that day, I was going to visit my nieces who live a couple miles away from Mom and Dad’s.  My heart dropped to my toes when I reached for my keys.  Whenever I walk into my parents’ house, I kick off my shoes and immediately go to the kitchen to hang up the car keys on the big key holder that hangs above the calendar.  The key holder is a flat piece of wood with ten or so hooks; I hang my key ring in the bottom row on the first or second hook from the right.  This habit is as ingrained in me as closing the door when I leave the house.

The key wasn’t on either hook.  I didn’t need to look for it.  I knew where it was.  Melting in the burn barrel.  I had my finger through the key chain when I was bringing the trash in; I had double-checked it was there as I walked across the gravel drive with my hands full.  I would need to drive an hour and a half back to the airport to get another key.

Wait, did I say “key”?  Ah, I should’ve said “fob.”  And this was the kind of fob that had a computer chip to enable the car to start with the push of a button.  And with the advent of said fob, I soon discovered that the car rental company no longer keeps a spare on hand.  Rather, the renter needs to call a locksmith to come out and make a new “key” on site.  Unfortunate events continued to unfold:  The farm is 30 miles from the nearest locksmith.  The fob costs $300 to reprogram.  The service call costs $200.  That annual fee we pay for AAA insurance doesn’t cover loss of rental car keys. 

I’ve always thought the phrase “nausea swept over me” was a bit of overwriting and melodramatic.  The unfolding of the above scene proved me wrong. 

The gross on my book sales didn’t change, but the net took a serious hit that day.  A sickening hit.  With this event, the trip became not a sales event but a promotional event.

Before this, I wasn’t a fan of key-less vehicles.  If there had been a real key, I would’ve heard it jingle as a pushed it into the trash can.  Surely, I would’ve.  As I write the word “fob,” I think what a strange word it is.  Sometimes it helps to learn more about your enemy.  I turn to Merriam Webster where fob is defined as a “small trinket . . . attached to a key ring.”  Fob originated from the Middle English word fobben.  To trick or cheat.

As I write this, yet another wave of nausea sweeps over me.