The Hand-Me-Down Morning

Not like him to be late. During Irene’s illness and after her death, his pattern became as predictable as the school bus. His light would come on at 6:30; he’d listen to the markets, then “Paul Harvey: News”, put the cat out, and come over for breakfast.

I often invited him to eat with the family, but no, he said. “I’d just as soon come later, if it’s all right. Morning’s a hubbub at your place and they all need y’ then.”

“You wouldn’t be in the way,” I told him.

“I ‘spose.” A familiar phrase our family knew as his real, final, or private decision.

And, the morning became a routine I enjoyed. For the house grew quiet and I would have my breakfast then too, getting better acquainted with the father-in-law I'd known for 15 years.

I snapped off the radio––an intrusion today––and watched his house for some sign. Its windows stared back cold and dark in the frosty light. On such a day, he’d come over and report: “I made me a little fire.” But the chimney stood stark and smokeless as a tombstone against the leaden sky.

I set the skillet off the burner and paced, finally into the front room where I could see the road and Rob perhaps coming back from the lower place. These are the times I wished for a two-way radio system. Then I could reach my husband in town or across the valley.

It became a family joke, Granddad’s war with the phone company: “Dad claims he’d drive ten miles t’ keep from callin’ someone,” said Rob. “I’ve seen him do it, too.”

As a kind of gag gift one Christmas, we kids gave him and Irene a cordless memory telephone. But it became her bedside friend right to the end. “It’s so light and I don’t have to fuss with dialing,” she said, happy for the companionship. After Irene was gone, he consigned it to the hall, and we all knew he regarded her little convenience as another reminder of his loss.

Fruitless to call but I did.

I rang eight . . . ten times and then hung up. Dad would turn the ringer down and made no secret of it.

Nothing to do but check, I decided. Plucking my “going-to-the-mail” sweater from its hook, I started down the walk toward his home, what we all called “The Little House.” Overhead, the sun was struggling to lift a woolly shawl mantling the land.            
      Sunshine, why not? Take the edge off this coolness.

His things were in the storm porch where he left them. He hadn’t gone out. The back door was unlocked as suited folks around here.

The cat froze on the counter when I went in. Then it flew off in terror knowing it had violated one of Irene’s sacred orders. That––“Domino”scurrying to safer quarters––alarmed me: he hadn’t been fed.  
     “Dad?” I asked.

The stillness of an empty kitchen enveloped me. Only the Seth Thomas clock recorded each moment’s passing, a metronome of dread. Maybe I’d meet him in the hall. He slept in the front bedroom and when I started to knock, the door fell open at my touch.

“Da––?”

His bed hadn’t been made. He’d been fussy about such. “Drill sergeant mentality,” he said of the habit.

I tiptoed into the room and edged across the carpet to where . . . I could . . . glance into the bath.

Relieved, I called to him again, loudly this time.

“Up here,” he coughed.

The narrow stairs led to what we all called “The Garret,” a little slant-roofed attic and emergency dormitory. Its sloping floors creaked with the weather and captured every step when the grandkids invaded the family “museum,” as Dad labeled it.

I climbed up and knelt beside him where he huddled over the photo albums Irene tended as faithfully as her geraniums.

“I woke like a shot,” he laughed. “An’ I came up here straight-a-way like these pictures were on fire.”

He turned the book for me to view a color print, faded just a little, showing my Rob and his brother with their roly-poly black steers, coats as glossy as bowling balls. He wagged a gnarly finger at the scene.

“That’s where we started, named them ‘Huff’ and ‘Puff’––remember? ‘Course you don’t, before your time.”

We leafed through the pages of county fair triumphs, the slimy new calves, winter feeding, the cattle drive they staged up on Highway 4. “That girl spent a potload on film. Wish now I hadn’t fussed about it.”

The morning light streamed in over our task. And as its amber glow bathed the dusky leather of his features, I studied him, dimly recording his recitation of the pedigrees and the purebred bulls he’d bought and admired. He was wearing the robe I’d made him years before. It shown threadbare here and there and his hair poked out in wispy spikes of auburn flecks and gunmetal gray. I had to smile when it settled down around me: I'm looking at my husband in 30 years.

“Well––” he slammed the album shut. “These need to go to your place. They’re for the kids to see, part of their past––jam sandwiches and fingerprints won’t hurt a bit.”

Now, it became his turn to study me. “You’ve been hopin’ I’d say that, haven’t y’?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you ask?”

“I knew you’d come to it . . . in your time.” I left him and cradling “Domino” in my arms, I started down the steps.

“Sorry I gave y’ a start,” he called to me. “We’ll be there as soon’s I shave.”

Stoking “Domino’s” silky coat, I looked at him over the boxes and suitcases, the ragged furniture and discards, beyond the remnants of memory and a marriage, across the years, trying to express what the moment meant to me. He waited.

“Looks like a golden morning out there,” I managed. “I’m glad you had your dreams, Dad. We all are.”

Response to Boys as Reluctant Readers

As I scan YA titles and plot blurbs, I find it striking the dominant themes are Alcoholism in the family, Abuse, Addiction, Abduction, and peer Approval, and those are just the "A's." Why would any boy spend time with some female protagonist agonizing over her miseries in such situations? Boys don't want to read about such. I know. I raised four.

Where are the books written today for boys? Who is writing for today's boys?

Comment by James Cotton, author of The Boys of Summers Run.

"The Girls with the Grandma Faces"

“The Girls with the Grandma Faces” were known to travel around and about in their “machines.” Only three drove, however.

My Aunt Bea’s 1939 Plymouth did not qualify as a suitable “machine.” It was but a three-passenger coupe and too old to stretch its tether from Pennsylvania to Montana in that autumn of 1966. Besides, it had no radio, a deficiency Aunt Bea considered correcting. 

“I talked to Mister Lamb about it and he’ll see if he can fit one in. Now that Erie might get an NPR station, I think I’ll try it.” Two other machines were enlisted for the trip west. 

Gladys Teasdale volunteered her pea-soup green Dodge. “The trunk’s big enough to fit eight two-suiters side-by-side.” Irene Waterhouse offered her new Olds, a Suitably Gray ’65 Eighty Eight with front seats that reclined.  

And so with transportation secured, “The Sisters of Sacajewea” set off for Yellowstone, Glacier, and Mount Rushmore on the return. United by the First Presbyterian Church, the Bird-and-Tree Club, the college, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and arthritis, they bundled into the “machines,” four apiece, silently acknowledging this might be their most ambitious and perhaps their last and grandest effort yet. Together.

They’d known each other for decades, some from girlhood. While most were amused by one honest young nephew’s label, the “girls” shared more than grandma faces. Bound by family ties, career and community, hope and disappointment, retirement, resignation, they decided a little folly might do them all “a world of good.” Fanylla Harper, Rebecca Cooper, and my Aunt Beatrice were cousins. Pearl and Gladys Teasdale, sisters. Irene Waterhouse and Virginia Carelton were fixtures at the college. Virginia Fendershot recently retired as the area’s Red Cross Administrator.

Yellowstone entertained them as predictably as Old Faithful. The Mission Range was mistaken for Glacier by one of the girls. They marveled and toured the birding sights as described by the guidebooks, rode the “Jammers,” luxuriated in the lodges, and pledged to paint the vistas of Russell Country when back home.

The arrivals and departures were captured largely by Irene Waterhouse and her “kodak.” Postcard memories were framed by “pleasant weather, though nippy . . . not an anxious moment . . . wonderful colors and wildlife . . . drove there and back, 4,000 miles and more, and not a hint of car trouble.” And, later, whenever my Aunt Bea shared her highlights, no account failed to mention what she called “the Missoula morning.”

“We’d left very early, wanting to reach our Glacier stop before nightfall,” she would say, “and the sunlight was just wonderful, with the sun following us along the river. The trees––we learned they were Cottonwoods––were turning nicely and led us right to Missoula where we tuned in and heard Mozart . . . Mozart in the morning on their national public station there! Oh my. It just set the tone. Both cars stopped for gas and then up the road for breakfast and we made sure everyone found the station.

“And we all agreed: if there’s an NPR station on the frontier of Montana, why can’t we have one back home?”

“The Sisters of Sacajewea” and the grandma-faced girls coasted back to old lives and some to new. Over the years that followed, a couple left the area to be closer to family. Another moved in with a daughter nearby. My Aunt Bea’s “machine”––the black 1939 Plymouth Road King Coupe––was sold to Mister Lamb who had maintained it faithfully all its years, and Aunt Bea settled in to what we call assisted living today. 

Erie did indeed acquire a National Public Radio station much to her pleasure back then. She became a faithful listener and supporter. “One of my treasures,” she’d say, then repeating Missoula’s magic morning from the grand tour. “We were escorted by Mozart one morning and drove to the sun, the next.”

From our recurring series published across our family of blogs and titled, "Aunt Bea's Plymouth." This vignette, an entry in Montana Public Radio's recent short story contest, was written to comply with the station's rule to celebrate its 50th anniversary. 

Late Frost in early April

Robert Frost, the poet, that is. From a biography by Jean Gould, she writes: "Spring flowers, always so slow to come to New England, seemed later than ever the next year.

"When there was still no sign of blossoms at the end of March, he 'made some out of paper and put them down the roads on April Fool's Day.' And if the neighbors saw him strewing the bits of colored paper along the path, he paid them no heed––or if he did, it was just to give a friendly wave, inviting whoever wished to ask just what he was about." ––Jean Gould, Robert Frost, The Aim Was Song.

From the Online Book Club: A review

"One gripe I had with this book is the meandering plot. I am normally a fast reader, but this book took me an unusually long time to finish. Some readers may not mind this, as some of the side stories and passages are absolute gems. 

"This isn’t a book you should race through, as you might with a thriller; you should savor every sentence. The writing is lovely and lyrical. I enjoyed reading the book as much for the author’s use of language as for the storyline itself. The story is quite engaging and Claude is a likeable main character. All of the characters are vividly written, particularly Claude’s friend Tim, who is deaf and an orphan.

"The dialogue is easy to understand, even with the heavy use of rural Pennsylvania dialect. I usually find the use of a dialect distracting, although it was natural and flowing in this case. I felt like I knew these people well and became used to their manner of speaking.

"I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. I wish I could have given the book 3.5 stars. The story will tug at your heartstrings. This book would appeal to anyone who likes to read wholesome stories about country life and boys growing up. Actually, I would recommend this book to anyone who appreciates good writing."

Thanks, Carolyn, for this insightful and accurate review. The Boys of Summers Run is now available through Amazon.com as an e-book or in a softcover edition.

Or, better yet, patronize your local bookstore on the corner. It should be able to order The Boys of Summers Run through its network of distributors including the Indie system. Also, the Kobo platform provides a variety of e-book formats for those of you with tablets and the like. 

Uncle Fritz and the Percheron

Here's my Uncle Fritz with one of my Grandfather Cotton's mighty Percherons. Alfred Banks Cotton became a noted breeder in the early 1920's and also maintained a "fine herd of Holsteins." Note the milk cans in the right of this photograph.

Quoting from the website The Percheron Horse Association in America, Fredericktown, Ohio: 

"This is how Alvin Sanders, author of A History of the Percheron Horse (©1917) describes the race of men who developed this race of horse: "Their horses are a part of their inheritance, particularly prized and accustomed to the affectionate attention of the entire household. Their docility, growing out of their intimate human relationship, is therefore an inborn trait".

More on this influential breed of draught, or draft, horse on another blog of our Along Country Roads family, My Corner of Pennsylvania. Just click the link on the right.

Aunt Bea's Plymouth

 "The Crumms"      


Mr. Crumm became an interest of mine, for he was a genuine farmer. At the eleven o’clock service, he often wore a medium blue, well-tailored wool suit with a matching vest and pocket watch linked by a golden chain. My mother always fell tongue-tied whenever they met in the aisle of the sanctuary or the vestibule during the organist’s Recessional. 

“I can’t picture him as a farmer. Can you?  He belongs to the Rotary!” she’d whisper. Any farmer holding membership in the local Rotary Club was stationed much higher than most farmers, in her mind and experience. My father would tease her.

“Oh, you’d fall for any fella in a blue suit. Bein’ Rotary is even better.” My father possessed neither the membership nor such a suit. He’d be met with her scowling rebuke. He seldom shared her notions but he did tell me once: “You’d do well, bud, to copy Squire Crumm. He's landed gentry but didn't fritter it away like some."  

On that Saturday, Aunt Bea announced we had a full afternoon of visitation rounds for the  church. And when I learned the Crumms were on the list, I hoped our stop there would consume most of our tour.  “Glad I am that you could make it today,” she told me as we left. “The Crumms are always a treat.”

When we pulled down the lane, we crossed the stone bridge and we were . . . treated . . . to a scene from Currier & Ives. A rock wall, rail fence, Colonial home rendered in Summer Butter and trimmed in Arctic White; it fit my expectations. “This home . . . goes back to the early 1800s,” said Aunt Bea. “Tops our Out Home by nearly seventy years.” 

As we parked in front of the house, Mr. Crumm climbed off his tractor and greeted us with a little finger-pointing wave. His carriage was a bit stooped but his step covered ground.

“There you are, Beatrice, driving your faithful steed. We always look forward to the black Plymouth pulling up the drive.”

I was re-introduced and Mr. Crumm shook my hand in both of his. “Ah, yes,” he said, “a Cotton to the core. Say hello to your folks––you'll be a credit. Well, let’s go in. Barbara June has set out her coffee cake, and I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon.” He ushered us toward the porch and asked, “And how go things at church?”

“Well, John, all programs are showing promise. Reverend Crawford is much improved. My, you have lots of enterprising projects around and about.”

“Yes, always something. The storm brought down some debris we must redd up.”

Mrs. Crumm––Barbara June––met us with a silver tray and the afternoon’s goodies, usually a feature of Aunt Bea’s visitations, kind of like the English taking time for tea. “Let’s visit on the porch, such a pleasant day, breeze and all.  J. R. took our storm windows down.”

Aunt Bea led off: “I understand you’ve heard from John Junior. He’s been out west,” she said to me. “He’s doing well, I hope?”

“Much the better,” said Mr. Crumm.

“At least his letters sound positive,” said Barbara June.

“I need him now that spring’s sprung, but we’re hopeful the exposure out there will give him some focus. He says he’s working pretty hard, learning the ropes on a ranch. They’re through calving. Might be too tame for him around here,” he laughed weakly.

Earlier, Aunt Bea had cued me in on the Crumm’s only son. He’d served in Korea as a conscientious objector and came home . . . “strange. He’s seen a lot of things, unpleasant and horrid things. I hope you never have to go to war.”

I’d met John Junior a few times. He cut our buckwheat crop Out Home and made a miserable mess of it. Though I was barely ten years old, even I could tell he was running the combine too fast. The reel became a blur throwing stalks of buckwheat into the air where they fell pell-mell, missing the conveyor belt. It was the only time I’d ever heard my family criticize a neighbor. “That boy’s got a screw loose,” said my uncle. “Always did, even before Korea.”

I helped myself to another slice of coffee cake at Mrs. Crumm’s insistence while she relayed her well-rehearsed explanation of her son.

“John could never accept the loss of our Catherine. Catherine,” she told me, “was an army nurse . . . in the world war.”

“Battle of the Bulge,” added Mr. Crumm. “Her ambulance ran off the road during some shelling and rolled over.” 

“Something happened then with John. He was but ten years old. So devoted to his sister. A beautiful thing––we were so pleased with the both of them and their love for each other. She was always ‘Cat’ to him.” 

“You’ve paid such a price,” said my aunt, and before an awkward silence followed, she rose and directed my attention to a large plaque on the wall, surrounded by photographs of the courthouse, the state’s governor, and local potentates. “John, can no one talk you into running again? You were such a good county commissioner. One of our best.” 

     He laughed.

“Beatrice, twelve years is enough. When John comes back home to us, I need to have things in place so he can take over here and hold things together. No time for local government. Why don’t you run? We need good men and women in our governments.”

“Oh, J. R., don’t wish such on Miss Cotton. All those meetings and the long-winded phone calls all times of the night.”

We said our good-byes and drove off, leaving the polished walnut, the white wickered porch furniture, the hooked rugs, the cobbler benches and shaker rockers, the wing chairs and camel-backed sofa behind until our next visit. Which I hoped would be soon. But, it was a big congregation and many folks to visit. The widows and widowers, the infirm, the young families, the spinsters, the kids off to college, the new members and the old guard. Nothing quite as interesting as a patriarchal gentleman farmer who I thought, as did my father, might be a worthy model for my future.

As we hit the county road, Aunt Bea let me shift the Plymouth’s gears, through the 1-2-and 3 from the floor-mounted lever. We were both thoughtful. She looked my way.

“The Crumms are community pillars for all of us. They hold up their end despite their personal tragedies.”

“Would you ever run for county commissioner?” I asked. “It would make us proud.”               

     There followed a long pause. “Some day, there will be women in public office. And, some day, maybe you’ll be our family’s county commissioner.”