Perhaps the spelling in the title should be ‘the eggman’ as in ‘the mailman’. However, because it is a word one no longer hears frequently, if at all in some quarters, I am making it clear: this is about the Egg Man, a figure from my childhood.

It has taken me a long time to realize that I grew up in a Grant Wood and small town Norman Rockwell bubble. Being born in the rural Midwest a few years after the end of WWII, I grew up as part of a continuation of over 200 years of pre-United States colonists who just moved slowly a little bit west and stayed pastoral.

One tiny part of that experience is The Egg Man. When I was little, just at the point of forming memories, going out to the chicken house with my grandma to gather eggs was a treat. We would walk up the path to the barn, past the rhubarb, which looked like an ugly plant to me, and go through a fence and then open a primitive door and smell hay and chickens. Grandma had a basket and the activity was to pick up eggs from the nests, and sometimes even stick your hand under a warm chicken and get warm eggs. This was a privilege to me; it was routine to Grandma.

Now, in that time period, Grandma had a lot of eggs and she would load them into partitioned crates for the Egg Man to pick up. I vaguely remember helping to do this and the crates seemed big, but I suppose my size had something to do with that perception.

I know the Egg Man had a truck that looked like a delivery van, one he could just step out of. The money my grandmother received for selling her extra eggs was her “egg money” and was saved up for use at special times.

I also remember people saying that the Egg Man often said how much he appreciated Grandma not putting the big eggs on top and sneaking littler ones on the lower tiers. I gleaned from overheard conversations that this was a great compliment.

Another activity I took pride in was being allowed to prime the pump. We had one right in the kitchen along with a sink with running water. That’s another story for another day.

This might seem like an abrupt ending to this post, and I suppose it is, but it is only the beginning of all those things that make me seem like a hick to those who grew up in cities.