Cinnamon Roses

Cinnamon Roses photo from Cornhill Nurseries

In summer the back door of Grampa Mac's farmhouse stood open all day.  The narrow porch faced north and ran the length of the kitchen ell. It was a cool and sheltered spot on a hot day, flanked by the bulk of the house wall to the west and with the flat expanse of hay meadow lying below to the east. A clothesline took up much of the grassy space, and in my earliest memory a sour cherry tree leaned from the house wall toward the morning sun.  Rounding the corner of the main house a grassy strip was bordered by a bed of common orange daylilies--which had to occasionally be ruthlessly scythed back lest they take over the yard.

There were currant bushes at the bottom of the vegetable garden and the remnants of a fruit orchard shaded the chicken coops beyond.

A footpath began at the old pear tree, meandered past the plum trees which were already succumbing to black knot fungus, and emerged on the dirt road halfway to my parent's small house a few hundred yards away.

A huge maple dominated the bit of  yard below the westward looking front door. From one of its sturdy branches Grampa Mac had hung a rope swing. Between that green lawn with its stone well curbing and the path was a dense tangle of Cinnamon Roses.

Though the blossoms were prolific and had a pleasing spicy scent, they didn't often find their way into bouquets. The canes sprawled untidily and were viciously thorny. Any foray amongst them meant being raked bloody as the branches seemed to reach out and snatch at my scalp, my bare legs and arms, even ripping the fabric of my shorts or pinafore.

My Uncle Bill attacked the Cinnamon Roses from time to time, armoured in his patched Carhartt pants and wielding well-honed pruners.

At some time during the 1970's they were cut down and the area was bush-hogged, removing the last trace of the invasive canes.

A neighbor of my parent's generation, Sally Phelps, whose family farm was a mile or two from Grampa Mac's, to the east, mentioned Cinnamon Roses.  She remembered how prevalent they were in her childhood, growing in wiry sprawls along the roadsides. Her nostalgic words conjured a picture in my mind of Cinnamon Roses mingling with orange daylilies on the roadside near the old Cheney place. The grey ghosts of old buildings there were razed, the lot graded and a new house built on the site in the 1960's.

I was surprised to find a nursery offering Cinnamon Roses for sale as their invasive ways and rather clumsy form don't favor a neat perennial garden.

In sorting gardening books last week I found I had marked the following paragraph in my

copy of 'The Fragrant Garden" by Louise Beebe Wilder.

The book was first published in 1932 and in this excerpt it appears that

Mrs. Wilder was quoting an earlier source.

"R. cinnamomea, Cinnamon Rose.  Candace Wheeler speaks of the Cinnamon Rose, 'braiding its odors with those of the sweet white Syringa blossoms, quite undisturbed by a new generation of rose-lovers.' 

It is a small, flat, tumble-headed pink rose of fine, if faint spicy scent, often found flourishing by the dusty highway, or pressing its quaint blossoms through the broken palings of old and deserted gardens.  Not now found in Rose lists but it was popular with our grandmothers who cherished many sweet and simple things."

My Google search for Cinnamon Roses turned up the short story linked below.

The author's name, Mary Wilkins Freeman, set off a clang of memory in my rag-bag mind.

A bit of pawing in a box of books and I had my hands on the above pictured paperback.

"Cinnamon Roses" isn't included in that collection.

Mary Wilkins Freeman's 'characters' speak in the verncular of New England, a speech with which I am familiar in several of its variants. She was complimented by later reviewers for a less cumbersome use of regional dialect than many of her contemporaries, still the dialogue must have been awkward to transcribe.

If you enjoy old stories, take a moment to read 'Cinnamon Roses.'

http://home.comcast.net/~MEWF_Short_Stories/CinnamonRosesE.htm

Flowers For A Mid-Summers Day

June 22, 1963

Wedding Reception

Jimmy and Sharon

The morning of our wedding day dawned with a gentle shimmer of sunshine.

I walked along the dirt road from my parent's home, a road that bi-sects my grandfather's farm.

Turning in at the west-pasture gate, I passed the small pond where my uncle's ducks and geese swam.  Blue metalic dragonflies darted in the rushes at the pond's edge; swallows swooped, criss-crossing, snatching at the midges which swarmed above the water.

The air smelled of clover and cows, of wild strawberries and green grass.

I left the squabbling geese, padded along the dusty cow path beneath the sentinel elms, stepped lightly over the plank bridge which crossed the narrow brook rimmed with purple-blue iris and clumps of wild mint.

My destination was the strip of low marsh which lies between  gentle humps of higher ground

 to the east and west.

Strawberries grew in a cluster at the base of a favorite perching rock--the delicate pointy kind with a sharp sweet flavor. I picked them and ate them slowly, dreamily, pondering how the pattern of 19 years would be forever changed by the evening wedding.

Already there were differences: most of my clothing hung with Jimmy's on a rod he had contrived in the back of his car.  My bedroom looked strange, stripped of my small personal belongings. Neighbors had been dropping by during the week, bringing gifts to be unwrapped, admired, then carefully packed for the move to the other end of the state.

I walked the path at the edge of the marsh gathering wildflowers; buttercups, delicate geum, white clover, stems of blue-eyed grass.

Butterflies flitted up, disturbed by my footfalls; spangled fritillaries, and the tiny blue ones.

In the north, rain clouds clumped as the strengthening breeze stirred the meadow grass.

I stood, absorbing the sounds, the scents and the sights of this familiar and beloved place, wondering how subtly it might change--how I might change, before I walked here again.

There were three deep pink rosebuds in my bridal bouquet, yet I look at the photo and wonder now--were the creamy white flowers mums? small carnations?

I remember J.'s last minute annoyance with his hair: he was growing out a crewcut and his dad insisted as he dressed for church that he try to comb it flat with hair tonic!

I fretted that the afternoon's light rain would undo my careful curls.

Ours was a simple evening ceremony, the front of the lovely old church glowing in the light of tall white candles.

The ladies of the congregation created the flower arrangements, gathering mock orange, iris, bridal wreath and roses from their own gardens.  It was they who made tiny sandwiches and gallons of fruit punch. The three-tiered cake was baked and decorated in the kitchen of a woman who was neighbor to my dad's sister.

There was no professional photographer, no hairdresser, no huge outlay of funds.

The mother of the bride had no time to weep, if, in fact she had felt like doing so.

My mother, the church organist was at her post in the choir loft, viewing my progress down the aisle through the mirror above the pipe organ.

I remember my father's hug, his quick kiss and a gallant grin.  [Neither he nor I were of the type to really enjoy this stately walk with so many eyes upon us!]

Jimmy and his twin brother waited with the minister at the front of the church, tall in their black suits.

They had crashed their motorcycle on the way to work three days before the wedding.

J.'s right hand was bandaged, both men had scraped knees and elbows from their contact with the asphalt paving when the front tire of the Harley blew.

The wedding vows were traditional and we repeated them with the fervor and starry-eyed innocence of youth, enfolded by the love and good wishes of family and friends.

There were those who had cautioned us that marriage is a serious business,

reminded us that we were young [I was three months past my 19th birthday, Jimmy was 18--and a half!]

We knew--we Just Knew[!] that love conquers all!

We had a year and a half together before our son's birth, followed by the birth of our daughter only a year and three weeks later.

J. worked in seasonal construction for a number of years until we took over the farm from his parents.

There were lean times--a lot of them.

There were moves, misunderstandings, resolutions.

There was hard work, family outings, church, times of worry and many times of song.

And here we are--48 years together and counting.

I could never have imagined the 12 years in Wyoming, so distant and different from New England.

Who could have guessed that we would choose Kentucky as a place to retire?

We have come full circle to gardens and life spent on this little farm

in the company of many cats and an old horse,

and now with family again just down the road.

We go out each morning to see what grows in the garden.

I take the camera and record the days and the seasons, the flowers of the dooryard, those which welcomed us when we came here, those which I have planted.

Christmas with Grampa Mac

Grampa Mac watering the "young cattle"

circa 1957

Young Road after snow.

The short walk to Grampa Mac's farm.

Photo by Larry [my father] 1999

My grandfather's farm house

mid-1950's

My Grampa Mac's holiday observances were homespun, simple.

Perhaps they were echos of rituals from happier years before my grandmother's too-early death

or invented simply to please me and my younger sisters.

Schools of the 1950's let out for Christmas vacation a good week or more before Christmas Eve, a sensible practice in a time when mothers stayed home and "kept house."

In winter there was a precious hour or two between noon dinner and the beginning of afternoon "chores, " time enough for Grampa, with me at his heels, to make a slow and deliberate way across the road, through the wooden gate and down the hill past the ice-clad pond. 

Beyond the plank bridge which crossed the  frozen brook we traversed an expanse of rough pasture.  It was low ground, bordered to the north with a bit of marsh and trodden into permanent hummocks by the feet of cattle.  The hummocks bristled with remnants of browned grass, crackled ice lay in the shallow depressions.

Grampa picked up the small wooden sled I had been towing and carried it dangling from a mittened paw until we reached the rounded hill below the "woods" of beech and maple.

Halfway up the hill path we stopped to take note of the spring in its fenced enclosure and to look back at the house and barns crouched quietly in the snowy landscape.

Our destination was the edge of the woods where ground pine trailed, shallow rooted, and easily harvested, coming free with shreds of darkly frozen maple leaves caught in its green whorls.

We needed enough greenery to create two wreaths, one for the white storm door on Grampa's front porch and one for my parents' small new house just along the road.

Grampa lifted lengths of the pine, cutting some of the stems to make sure that no patch was picked bare.  I handed him the shorter vines which I could pull  from the cold-stiffened earth.

We stumped along unhurried, noting the tracks of rabbit or fox, the little sled jouncing behind. 

The lengths of pine wound around Grampa's arm grew to a tidy bundle .

Our woods had none of the hemlock which grew thickly a few miles away, and there were only two pine trees.  Scattered here and there along the hillside and in the pasture were small irregular red cedar trees, prickly and aromatic.  Grampa cut two of these, one destined to be set up in the parlour and the second designated as "the cat's tree."

The small trees were lashed to the sled with lengths of baling twine and we began a slow descent around the face of the hill, following the "cowpath" down to the brook that narrowed as it reached the hollow below the sugar house.   My feet in their clumsy overshoes felt heavy and cold and I floundered in the deep snow that had drifted over the rutted track.

Grampa stopped, untied the cedar trees and motioned me to sit on the sled. When I had settled myself, legs stretched stiffly forward, he bundled the trees into my arms--fragrant, scratchy against my cold cheeks.

By the time he had hauled me as far as the stand of shagbark hickories I was restored and ready to tramp  at his side, through the thickets of prickly ash, along the rail fence, across the bend of the brook and up the hill where the farmhouse waited with its promise of warmth.

The dooryard and the barns were already swathed in blue shadows.  The shape of the round hill was blurring in the dusk as the sun slid behind the dark trees of the woods

photo from a web search for "trailing ground pine"

A day or two might pass before Grampa Mac announced that we would set up the trees and make the wreaths after evening chores.

On his way in from the barn he gathered up the lengths of trailing pine which had been heaped on the front porch and dumped them down on the livingroom floor near the wood burning stove.

Through out our leisurely supper the vines warmed and thawed, letting loose of the debris of frozen twigs and leaves, melted ice forming small puddles on the floor.

Grampa pushed aside the vines and did a cursory mop-up, reached down the Prince Albert tobacco canister which held lengths of saved string, neatly wound on cardboard tags.  Two coat hangers were bent to almost perfect circles and we began the slow process of winding and tieing the greenery. We had no styrofoam or straw wreath "forms", no glue gun. We had little in the way of skills suited to the task, but at the end of an hour we had two rounds of greenery, each topped with a lop-sided red plastic bow.

The two prickly cedars came in from the snowbank by the shed, each nailed to a wooden  stand.

My uncle Bill had produced the box of Christmas decorations which lived for most of the year in the spare room closet, contained in a large black box held together with twine.

The label on the box pictured a violently orange sun setting behind a field of snow and the firm black lettering proclaimed that it had once held "union suits" worthy to be worn in the frozen reaches of the far north.

The ornaments were old.  The strings of tinsel were fragile lengths of soft downy white, there were "icicles" fashioned of the same plush material.

There was a string of lights for the parlour tree and baubles whose bright colors were chipped.

The cat's tree, set up in front of the Larkin desk in the living room, was draped with paper chains and some small plastic bells.  The idea was that the cats who came and went should confine their curiosity to their own tree.

The Christmases of my childhood have melded into a  collage of school programs, of cookie baking, choir practice.

My grandfather's Christmas preparations took him no farther than a brief shopping trip to the local department store where he bought warm socks and gloves for everyone on his list.

My Christmas grew and expanded as the years added more activities and responsibilities, music to be learned and performed, gifts to make, meals to plan and prepare.

No memory is more cherished than those December afternoons when I trudged behind Grampa Mac to bring home a sled full of greenery for our home made Christmas.

Wreath

Sinews of green in the stark December landscape,

Tangled threads unraveled from a dropped skein;

Tendrils which have wreathed the rough hillside

Beneath July sun, weathered autumn rains,

Now crisped with sugar-sparkle of snow.

Plucked up, wound like hanks of rope over my

grandfather's blue barn-frocked arm,

Piled in springy coils on a wooden sled.

Sinews of green twined about a bent coat hanger,

Red plastic bow perched like a captive cardinal.

sdw

The Lights of Christmas Past

web photo

I was perhaps only three years old on that December evening when my father brought home the bubble lights.

[My parents, younger sister and I lived in several rooms at the north side of my grandfather's farm house until the little house was built just along the road in 1949.]

My father entered, stamping snow from his feet, lunchbox in one hand, a flat paper-wrapped parcel clutched under his arm. Fending off my mother's anxious questions as to his lateness for supper, he dispensed with the lunch box and opened his package with a flourish.

We stood there in my grandfather's kitchen watching as the lid of the shallow box was flipped back like the cover of a book, disclosing a dozen fragile candle-shaped objects, each nestled in a cardboard pocket.

Daddy blew on his chilled fingers, then uncoiled the electrical cord tucked into the back of the box.

"Bubble lights," he explained, "For the Christmas tree.  They're something new."

He poked the plug into the nearest socket, tweaked the box so that it sat up straighter against the front of the Hoosier cabinet.

As we waited, unbelieving, the tiny candles began to glow and then, one at a time, there was a liquid bubbling movement in the delicate glass cylinders.

My father, smelling still of cold and snow, lifted me high so that I could see and marvel.

My father enjoyed the ritual of bringing home and decorating a Christmas tree. It was he who selected the inexpensive ornaments, coming home each season with a string of new lights, a different sparkly length of tinsel.  He grew testy over the arrangement of these baubles, standing back to scowl at the tree and declare that it didn't "look right."

My mother usually managed to find some pressing task in the kitchen while we three girls hovered with Daddy around the tree. 

"Look," he'd fuss, "There's a green light there--and another one right there--that's too close; we need to move a different color bulb into that spot."

The fact of the matter was that my father was partially color-blind [a trait he managed to hand along to two of his grandsons.]

Mother attempted to explain this handicap to us at some point with the strict injunction that we weren't to comment when our father couldn't see the difference, say, between a blue Christmas light and a green one.

"If the bulb doesn't look "blue" to Daddy, what color does he see", we asked, naughtily.

There was, of course no reliable answer.

The bubble lights were in use for nearly a decade, problematic treasures though they proved to be.  Each miniature candle needed to be clipped to its branch so that it stood straight as a soldier. Allowed to droop one way or the other the "bubbling" ceased.

They were replaced eventually with more conventional tree lights--the kind where if one bulb "blew" the rest kept bravely glowing.

Over the years as he drove to and from work or on errands Daddy noted when the Christmas decorations were put up in the nearby town of Brandon and in the city of Rutland.

It became a ritual to set aside an evening during those weeks before Christmas to ride slowly past the showy displays in the town centers and then to drive through the residential streets, admiring [or criticizing] the ingenuity which juxtaposed a reverent manger scene bathed in blue and white lights with a gaudy Santa's sleigh outlined in glaring red and green bulbs.

My father bought strings of lights meant for outdoor use to bedeck the front doorway.  He fretted over what time to turn the lights on, and whether to turn them off at bedtime.  As the days counted down toward Christmas Eve the lights shone out through the long nights.

There was the memorable Christmas when, with the tree already trimmed to [near] satisfaction, Daddy appeared at lunch time with two cans of areosal "snow."

"Smith's Store have their windows sprayed with it," he announced.

He gave the first can a tentative shake, stood back and aimed it at the center of the tree.  There was a wet dribble of something which didn't resemble snow.

Swearing, Daddy gave the can a violent shaking, stepped closer and blasted the top of the tree, "snowing" on the gilded  angel and covering a patch of the ceiling with a sticky goo which immediately and permanently dried to a cement-like crust.

My sisters and I looked on in fascination. Mother, lured from the kitchen by the sounds of crisis, "humphed" in tardy disapproval of the experiment.

The second can of snow [perhaps because it had now come to room temperature] behaved better and Daddy achieved a nice woodland effect of snow-tipped branches, although some of the snow landed on the tips of the colored bulbs.

The Christmases of childhood blur together when reviewed in later decades. My two younger sisters may read this and wonder if I have imagined these events.

As Dylan Thomas so aptly put it,

"I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six."

There were many holidays white with the weight of drifted snow, picure-perfect; there was the Christmas when I was given a new sled and the early December accumulation of snow had been rained upon and stood in dirty runnels edging frost-browned grass and rigid expanses of mud.

There were generous Christmases and the leaner ones when we were too young to know at what sacrifice the gifts still appeared beneath the tree.

There was the joy as we grew older of giving gifts, rather than merely waiting to receive.

There was music--always music: from the Silvertone radio; from the phonograph; carols played on the piano.

There was tension, ritual, sweets, anticipation.

Sometimes there were those still  snatched moments when the joy of the season crept close enough to embrace--late night moments to sit beside my father's decorated Christmas tree, dreaming in the soft shine of lights-- red, blue, green and star-white.

"The Clear Thing To Do"

It has been raining in our corner of Adair County.  T-storms have rumbled uneasily through the hills and hollers, bringing sudden gusts of wind-blown rain to pummel the ground and spatter from the leaves of trees and bushes.  I picked green beans yesterday afternoon, driven inside twice by showers, then deciding to get on with it, staying outside to snap the beans from the damp plants while rain drizzled down my back.

It rained softly in the night, and a gentle mizzle was still falling when the cats and I trouped down the hall from bedroom to kitchen about 7 a.m. this morning.

I served the felines their breakfast treat, slid back the dining area door and sniffed. The damp, warm scent of grass and garden--with a faint tinge of horse--mingled with the aroma of brewing coffee.  

A few moments later I sat comfortably, cherishing the coffee and the silence. A light fog swirled and hovered  above the creek bed across the road. Beyond, at the edge of the woods, two deer grazed, softly blurred shapes in a misty green landscape.

Rain slanted down fitfully, wrung from a heavy sky, and I recalled a day, perhaps 15 years ago, spent with J. exploring the old Fortress of Louisbourg perched above the sea on the east coast of Cape Breton.

Giant clumps of angelica leaned against stone walls, rubbed against fences.

Showers of rain puddled the gravel lanes of the restored village and rain dripped coldly down our up-turned collars as we ducked in and out of the restored buildings.

The gardens drew me.  Tucked behind high paling fences, vegetables and herbs such as might have been favored in the 1750's grew in tidy rectangles, separated by paths of packed earth.  Here and there a few flowers bloomed, softening the grim stone buildings. The little gardens weren't a favored attraction for the families shepherding youngsters around the village, so I had their quiet enclosed spaces nearly to myself.

When we left an hour or so later, our feet squelched in our shoes, our jackets were unpleasantly damp.

It was past lunch time and we drove through the rain to the nearest sizeable town--Sydney perhaps--and bolstered ourselves with a good hot meal  in an expansive hotel dinning room, where we watched rain stream down the windows as we ate.

The afternoon passed in following winding roads measured in kilometers. Accustomed to thinking in terms of miles, we would find ourselves suddenly entering a little town in less time than seemed possible upon reading the posted distances.

Late in the afternoon we began looking for a place to spend the night and came upon several housekeeping cottages perched above the river in a hamlet whose name I have forgotten.

J. went into the small store that served as office for the cottage owners, paid the fee and was handed a key.

It was a delightful log cottage, comprised of a living area furnished with a deep sofa and squashy chairs, a tiny kitchenette, bedroom and bath.

We brought in our bags, rummaged out dry socks and shirts, toweled our hair.

Inspecting the kitchen, I found a shiny aluminum kettle, mugs, spoons.

A cup of tea suddenly became a longed for necessity.

Trudging across the road, I entered the store and trolled up and down the aisles.

I picked up a box of tea bags, another of sugar packets, some molasses cookies.

When I put my selections on the polished wooden counter, the sandy haired woman asked if we were suited with the cottage.

I replied that we were delighted with the tiny house, but a day of touring Fort Louisbourg in the rain had left me with icey feet and I was feeling the need of hot tea.

The woman pushed her spectacles up her nose and regarded me for a moment with her head cocked to one side.

Then she smiled and said appreciatively, "Hot tea!  Isn't that just the clear thing to do!"

Briskly whisking my selection of tea and sugar aside, she ducked and pawed under the counter.

In the softly burred speech of the Maritimes, she assured me there was no need for me to buy tea.

Swifty she tucked teabags and sugar packets into a small paper sack and handed them over, with the promise that if these weren't enough to see me through our stay, she had plenty more stashed under the counter.

For all the charm of the log cottage, the bed was a small one, the sort that used to be known as a 3/4 size. We spent much of the night trying to arrange our legs and arms and pillows in such a way as to give each other room to relax.  At about daylight J. gave up the battle, dressed and went out to the living area.  I heard the cabin door close and his footsteps thudding across the wooden porch.

Thinking I might have a few moments to catch up on sleep, I rolled happily into the middle of the bed.

Almost immediately, J returned and flung open the bedroom door.

"Get up, " he ordered.  "There are otters playing on the river bank and we can watch them from the bridge."

I blundered from bed, hauled on jeans and a sweater, thrust my feet into shoes and followed him, unwashed and uncombed out into the cool grey morning.

The otters obliged us for a few moments by frolicking in and out of the water, then they left to do whatever otters do. It was only 6 a.m.

"What do we do now?" I queried a bit crossly. [Early mornings are not my forte.]

"Lets walk up that dirt road and see where it goes."

J. strode briskly up the hill, while I scuffed along behind. 

A small white building loomed out of the mist, a structure that at one time had clearly been a rural crossroads school.  As we approached, the windows suddenly shown with warm yellow light.

A sign on the wooden door announced that this was the "Old Schoolhouse Cafe."

It wasn't quite opening time, but our hungry wistful appearance gained us entrance.

We were settled at a table and presented with a steaming pot of tea and the cheerful assurance that porridge  was in the works and a great pan of "bannocks" had just gone into the oven.

We sat there, a bit bleary from a restless night, hair wild from the damp, hands tucked around the warmth of mugs. Within moments the bannocks appeared, with butter and honey, bowls of oatmeal were set before us to be garnished with brown sugar and cream.  On the wall an old clock ticked.

Clearly, we were in the right place at the right time and "the clear thing to do" was to cherish these hours.

The link below is the best that I could find for information and a few photos of Fort Louisbourg.

Wikipedia provides an article as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_of_Louisbourg

louisbourg

Esther Jane

The front of the Lewis home in Shoreham, VT. A trumpet vine climbs heavy wires on the side porch.  In the tiny garden between the side steps and the front porch is a white Scotch rose, Oriental poppy, a peony.  Barn swallows build their mud-daubed nests under the side porch rafters.  Esther Jane merely placed cardboard boxes under the nests to catch the mess when the birds were raising their young, and moved the porch chairs out of the way.  Sitting there with her in the evening we watched the swallows swoop and dive about the yard, catching insects to cram into the endlessly open maws of the nestlings.

The attached shed at the side of the old house. Esther Jane tended bees as had her father.  The shed smelled of coal, of honey, of old timbers.

Esther Jane Lewis was born March 1, 1909.  Her parents had been married for a decade and by then expected that they would likely remain childless.  Esther Jane chuckled as she recalled being told that they had been sure this child, coming well past their "first youth" would be a boy--to be called Peter.  Esther Jane's mother, daughter of an old area family, had been a school teacher until her hearing failed after a succession of bad ear infections.  Rose Lewis was a seamstress of rare ability and turned her talents to custom dressmaking. Esther Jane learned to sew, by hand and on her mother's treadle machine.  After her death I acquired a tattered hand peiced quilt from her old home.  I picked apart the blocks, separating them from the disintegrating batting, saved the best of them and found a blue calico print which had a vintage look to use as alternate setting squares.  One of the blocks was signed. "Esther Jane Lewis, made in her 9th year."

Esther Jane trained at the New England Sanitarium in Melrose, Massachusetts, taking several years due to financial constraints to attain her degree as a registered nurse. She did hospital nursing and private duty home care. She also helped her father in the bee-keeping business.

Although she never married she loved children, especially little girls. The casing of her sitting room door was scored with years of pencil marks where visiting children had been measured for height and their names and the dates inscribed.

I met Esther Jane when our 4-H club went to her home for a lecture on bee-keeping. At the close of the lecture we trouped into the house for a feast of home made biscuits with butter and honey.

We became friends many years later when Esther Jane was in her 70's and I in my late 30's, as by then we were attending the same church.  Several friends from the same congregation had young daughters and we were all frequent Saturday evening guests at the old house.  I played the wheezing parlour organ and we sang.  Esther Jane read to us--stories clipped from old magazines or bits from whatever delightful non-fiction book was currently on the table by her chair.  She popped corn for us, using an old wire popper, opening the door of the coal stove and shaking the kernals over the red embers.  

In the summer we went blueberrying, in her vintage car [an adventure!] or in my truck.

I wrote the following essay at a writer's retreat in Wentworth, New Hampshire.  It was printed on the program for her memorial service.

Blueberries

for Esther Jane

Dew clings to a dusty cobweb stretched over stubble, a tiny net of gems in the ditch.  Esther Jane paws with her palsied right hand for her old straw bonnet and the peanut butter pail, retrieves her cane from the back seat of her faded red Subaru.

I grab the flask of chamomile tea, my buckets, the bug spray, and we pick our way, a procession of two, toward the place of blueberries.  The first bushes are only a lure; small blue beads strung on twiggy stems which grasp at our ankles as we pass. Esther Jane's cane thumps the cadence of our progress like a muffled metronome, as we wind our slow way up the slope. The hilltop is already warming into the heat of an August day.  Insects dart, shimmering, on whirring metalic wings.

Esther Jane fills her peanut butter bucket, the berries with their dusky bloom rattling down through her old fingers.  I prowl farther seeking the clumps of huckleberries which glow inky black among all the blue, and return with my plunder to Esther Jane.

We sip our tea and rest in the ripeness of noonday warmth.  The white-throated sparrows sing their descant over the faraway throb of a farm tractor, their melody a chain of liquid silver notes dropping lightly over the familiar earth-bound sounds. Somewhere a dog barks.  A car drops into low gear to climb the dusty mountain road.  A dragonfly hovers.  Esther Jane sings in her strong cracked contralto, "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow."

I sprawl on my side in the springy cushion of the hillside, content. "I'll watch you," says Esther Jane, "if you'd like to sleep." 

One of the bedrooms in Esther Jane's house.

She lived in the most careful economy, especially during her last years at home, hoarding coal, confiding her fear of poverty only to her diary.  Having no younger kin, she left her estate to the church she had loved life-long.  When the contents of the house were auctioned, many thousands of dollars were realized.  The sale of even a few vintage pieces during her lifetime would have kept her comfortably.

Having lived with these belongings all her life, I wonder if it occured to her that they had such a monetary value. Perhaps she knew, and simply enjoyed keeping her familiar things about her.

Uncle Bill

William Edward Lewis as a toddler, circa 1916.

He was named for both his grandfathers: William Lewis who died shortly before his birth and for his maternal grandfather Edward [Eddie] Ross.

A handsome little boy, dressed for a visit to relatives in Hague, NY.

He was very ill as a child, probably spinal meningitis.  His mother, herself unwell by that time, fretted over his frailty.  My mother said of him later that he had inherited the "Davis strain" of reclusive tendancies.

Uncle Bill, July, 1954, standing with the farmhouse in the background.

UNCLE

We always knew my uncle was a little odd.  After all, he talked to himself, a sure enough sign, muttering on, arguing with some unseen companion as he shook out dusters, swabbed the kitchen floor, carried out ashes. On occasion he would suddenly, perhaps thinking himself alone, sing at the top of his tenor voice [the Ross tenor] his versions of arias from Strauss and or Handel.

The door to his room was usually closed upon his treasures: books and curios, stacks of National Geographics.  We didn't go in there unless, rarely, we were invited.  Then we touched with care, stroking the bearskin laprug with tentative fingers, tracing the convolutions of the shells on the dresser.

As he aged his eccentricities deepened. His hoard finally overflowed his bedroom.  How he came to have some of these things we didn't know.  Perhaps he went through the home he tended salvaging an overlooked tidbit here, rescuing some endangered object there. His dark colored jerseys frayed at neck and wrists, the faded Carhatt work pants sported tipsy patches anchored with white yarn. Still yearly in the spring, he aired his good clothes.  Handsome tweed jackets, worsted trousers, jiggled briefly on the lines in the drying yard before, pockets plumped with mothballs, they were rushed back to hang in dark closets redolent of cedar and camphor.  He owned a raccoon coat, full length.  It had obviously been fashioned for a far bigger man, one with both height and breadth.  Where he acquired this impressive garment he never said.

Once we actually saw him wear it on a cold winter evening, undertaking a short outing with a friend.  He appeared in the front hallway, already enveloped in fur nearly to his heels, his meager neck swathed in a heavy silk muffler, smoothing leather gloves over his lean, small hands.  Even then I sensed that though he should have seemed at least faintly ridiculous in his finery, something about his dignity was immense and unbreachable.

He had once learned to drive, but never got a license, and would sometimes regally commandeer the services of my mother or the hired man or a neighbor to convey him to the dentist or the optometrist or even to the barbershop.  He carried cash or a check signed by my grandfather.  When he made a purchase he offered no explanation, but asked the shop clerk to make out the check [a foible which immensely irritated my mother!]

He never married, though sometimes in a mellow mood he would speak of a woman he once admired.  His social contacts were limited to the visits from relatives, at which times he brought out white table cloths stiffly pressed, aired fine wool blankets for the guest beds.

Once a year, on Palm Sunday, magnificently arrayed in tweeds and starched white shirt he rode to church with us to stand at the choir loft rail and sing the solo verses of "The Palms."

Over the decades he took on various household duties, presiding over the old Maytag wringer washer every Monday, filling the kitchen with the sharply clean odor of bleach and Oxydol soap powder, followed on Tuesday by the scent of crisply pressed linens which he ironed with a "mangle."  He picked currants from the ancient bushes at the bottom of the garden, put up jars of jelly sealed with paraffin caps. He beat up gallons of sourdough for endless morning pancakes, perked strong coffee in a shining dented pot.  He made light yeast rolls and abominable macaroni and cheese.

He tended his flock of hens, his grey and white Toulouse geese.  He fussed over the peonies and his dahlias.  In summer he cut the grass with the old reel mower, muttering and singing as he clattered back and forth across the lawn.  He scoured the milk dishes, clanging about with brushes and disinfectants, his songs echoing eerily in the small dim space of the milk house.  He met the bread truck in the dooryard twice a week, choosing bread, cupcakes for us children, donuts for the breakfast table.  He ate by choice alone at the pulled out shelf of the Hoosier cabinet, bowls of cereal mushy with milk, crackers, endless cups of coffee, canned soup.

When we children were small and always under foot, he bandaged bruised knees, extracted splinters, applied iodine vigorously to our wounds.  If we quarreled or "talked back" he threatened our bottoms with a wooden clothes brush or suggested that we might have to go home [next door] until we could behave.  When we came in cold from winter sledding he bundled us onto kitchen chairs, draped us in wool blankets and propped our nearly lifeless feet on the open oven door of the black range.  He taught us to play Rummey.

When I had learned to play the piano reasonably well he appeared with a stack of old sheet music and several well worn hymnbooks which had belonged to his mother, my grandmother who had died when her children were young. Sometimes as I labored at some piece popular years ago he would come to stand at my elbow and sing a verse in that ringing tenor which was now sharpening with age.

He survived my grandfather's death by only two or three years, reveling in his lonesome occupation of the big old house he had tended for so much of his life.  He phoned us at odd hours demanding brusquely that we turn off our radios; he phoned the local banker asking for the balance on accounts which didn't exist.  He was fine, he insisted, needing nothing from any of us except a ride into town for groceries.  Asserting himself at last he ordered partitions torn down in the farmhouse, doorways boarded shut.

My sister found him on the floor one summer morning when she made her daily visit.  The autopsy confirmed Alzheimers disease and suggested that he had at some time in his twenties or thirties suffered a stroke.  We buried him in the family plot in final white-shirted dignity.

When we opened his bedroom door a few days after his passing, we found that part of the floor had sunk with the weight of his assorted treasures.  We delved through trunks and boxes, bringing to light bedding--woolen blankets preserved in moth balls, a pristine crazy quilt of silk and velvet, china, old pictures in ornate frames.  Tucked in the corner of one trunk were the long-missing letters sent home from the first World War by my great uncle.  We turned the crisp, yellowed pages with reverent fingers reading this long ago chronicle of a life cut off by the Second Battle of the Marne.

We sorted and listed for days; an antique dealer arrived.  We parceled, bundled, saved and discarded, sometimes marveling, sometimes fuming.  The house was sold, remodeled.  Then one windy March day it burned to the ground.

Memories survive like the red peonies on the front lawn.  Memories of a small man who clattered and cleaned with mops and buckets, bleach and Oxydol; who killed snakes by the stone wall, who came back from his rambles into the pasture with blackberries in a pail. The memories linger of a man who once a year donned  his best to sing at church, who cherished his mother's music and his uncle's wartime letters.

He was, my mother said, a "blighted being."

He was a man who cleaned up after cats and children, kept a supply of cupcakes in the pantry; a man who read his books late at night in the stillness of my grandfather's house.

Sharon D. Whitehurst

Wentworth, New Hampshire

Writer's Retreat

Meanwhile: 1918, The Folks at Home

Florence, Lawrence's 16 year old cousin, wrote regularly. One of the family's talented musicians, she played and sang the patriotic songs of the day.

From the back of the sheet music:
"War isn't all battle, mud and devastation--there are rays of sunshine, smiles and good fellowship, too. If you could visit the trench, the dugout, and the billet Over There, you'd hear the boys singing--singing from reveille to taps."
Lawrence's letters refer to singing--impromptu music at the YMCA where he spend most of his off-duty hours while at Camp Devens.
Somehow I doubt that "the boys" did much singing in the trenchs and the dugout, but the patriotic fervor of the times meant encouraging the public at home that war was bearable.

When I was "home" in August for my Dad's funeral, I started sorting through my Mother's vast collection of music. Some of it, yellowed and crumbling, belonged to my grandmother, Helene. This copy of the well known, sentimental tribute to the Red Cross nurses of WWI, has cousin Florence's signature in the top right corner.

The Rose of No Man's Land

I've seen some beautiful flowers,

Grow in life's garden fair,

I've spent some wonderful hours,

Lost in their fragrance rare;

But I have found another,

Wondrous beyond compare.

There's a rose that grows on "No Man's Land"

And it's wonderful to see,

Tho' its spray'd with tears, it will live for years,

In my garden of memory.

It's the one red rose the soldier knows,

It's the work of the Master's hand;

Mid the War's great curse, Stands the Red Cross Nurse,

She's the rose of "No Man's Land".

Out of the heavenly splendour,

Down to the trail of woe,God in his mercy has sent her,

Cheering the world below;

We call her "Rose of Heaven",We've learned to love her so.

There's a rose that grows on "No Man's Land"

And it's wonderful to see,

Tho' its spray'd with tears, it will live for years,

In my garden of memory.

It's the one red rose the soldier knows,

It's the work of the Master's hand;

Mid the War's great curse, Stands the Red Cross Nurse,

She's the rose of "No Man's Land".

Lawrence's half-brother, Harold, had dreadful asthma, probably the reason he was not drafted. Harold found work, as did many others, in the "Gear Shapers" plants of Springfield and Bellows Falls, Vermont, which were running full bore with wartime orders. This appears to be a group of the men who boarded there. Harold is on the right in the back row. His photos from this era depict a young man with something of a swagger--a slouching, "James Dean" sulkiness. Harold had a girlfriend in his hometown, sometimes got home on the weekends. He also may have taken the train to Ayers to visit Lawrence at Camp Devens.

While Lawrence waited impatiently for his "shipping out" orders, his younger sister, Minnie, gave birth to her 4th child. Her husband, Les, had taken over his late father's farm.


At home on the farm, seasonal work continued very much as usual. While Lawrence was packing his kit and then traveling by train to Camp Merritt, the maple sugar season would have been in full swing. Mac, Lawrence's brother-in-law and partner in the farm, probably had started tomato seeds, bringing in a bucket of garden earth which he had stored in the woodshed over the winter, setting it near the kitchen wood range overnight before he layered it in wooden flats which would rest on the sunniest windowsill. Mac plowed, harrowed and hauled wood using his beloved team of horses. Eddie "took the milk" several times a week to the nearby milk plant, kept the farm books in his beautiful script, drove the noisy Fordson tractor; both men milked, cleaned the barn, doctored the cattle.
In the long narrow kitchen, Eliza and Helene prepared three meals a day: the hearty breakfasts of pancakes and syrup, oatmeal, ham or bacon with eggs. On Saturdays the house filled with the aroma of beans baking slowly in the brown pot and the delicate yeasty scent of rolls set to rise under a white cloth.
In spite of war time shortages, farmers ate better than most. Sugar might be rationed, but maple syrup provided a cash crop and boiled down to maple sugar, could be used for all but the most delicate baked goods, spooned onto hot cereal, molded in special tiny tins for maple candy. It was pancakes and maple syrup that Lawrence most often yearned for when he wrote of home-cooked food. Like most farm families the Ross and Lewis men butchered a beef and a hog each autumn; Mac tended a huge potato patch; the women canned vegetables from the garden and made jams and jellies from the fruit produced in the back yard. It is no wonder that Lawrence's homesick thoughts often focused on the food his mother and older sister spread on the table!


On a snowy winter day Eddie took time to pose with Mac and Helene's son, Billy and "Old Shep."

Back across the lake in Hague, New York, home to the Rosses and their kin for generations, Lawrence's cousin, Wilford took over more and more of the farm management from his father, "Uncle Amos." Amos had worked for years in the Graphite mines and suffered from "black lung." Wilford and his wife , Julia, had two little girls by now. Lawrence wondered wryly in one of his letters how Wilford would have managed army life.