14. The Disking and the Camp ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

Ever since Robert had celebrated his ninth birthday, Joe had let him steer the Minneapolis–Moline Z tractor while Joe stood carefully between the seat and the fender on the right side. Now that the summer of Robert’s thirteenth birthday was approaching, Joe began showing Robert how to run the International 560 by himself. When spring planting began, Robert spent weekends helping disk ground that Joe and Charles plowed.

Robert had already lifted some of the farming burden from his father’s shoulders by tending livestock and caring for chickens and ducks, but now Robert began assisting Joe in the fields during the spring months, when farmers were in a near frenzy to plant corn and soybeans while the good weather lasted.

One morning, Joe deployed Robert and the 560 in a recently plowed field close to State Route 55 and near the Old Barn. Before Robert’s father strode across the land to an adjoining field where he would be plowing, Joe reminded Robert, “Don’t turn too short at the edge of the field!” Robert was pulling an ancient harrow behind the relatively new disk. The harrow was in two heavy sections of rusty iron with a two-by-four running across the front to hold the two sections side by side. A fairly wide turning radius was required, so that the two-by-four did not catch on the plow.

Robert made many passes the length of the field. He enjoyed disking because he could go a little faster than was possible with plowing, and he enjoyed plowing less because leaning in the seat as one of the driver wheels ran in the furrow was less comfortable and turning to keep constant watch on the plow was more demanding. The soil that day was perfect for disking. The black loam lay smooth and fine. Robert had coined a word for well-disked ground: “chuffy,” a combination of “churned” and “fluffy.” The soil behind Robert’s disk and harrow was chuffy. Robert set his mind free to imagine stories.

He was in the midst of telling himself a story about a UFO like the ones that had been seen by so many people in Michigan in 1966, when suddenly he heard a snap.

Robert had been making a turn. He wisely stopped the tractor. Before he looked behind him, he knew what he would see: a broken two-by-four. Sure enough! he had turned too short, and the plow had snapped the board as it jammed up against it.

Robert shut off the tractor and walked across the fields to tell his father what he had done.

Joe backed off on the throttle but still could not hear Robert, so Joe switched off his tractor. He smiled and said, “Now, say that again.”

“I broke the two-by-four,” Robert confessed.

“You turned too short, didn’t you?” Joe commented, still smiling.

“Yes,” Robert said meekly.

“I was afraid that might happen,” Joe continued. “When you’re working a short field like that one, you have the tendency to try to work closer to the fence line than you would in a larger field, and, when you do that, you also have the tendency to try to make too short a turn. We’ll go to the elevator right now and have Let Crane saw a new two-by-four, so that you can keep on disking today.”

It was not the first time that Robert was amazed at his father’s patience and equanimity, nor would it be the last.    

Later that spring, Mr. Charlie Coffman loaded the school bus bound for 4-H Camp at Shakamak, a park southeast of Terre Haute. (Teachers and others in authority were addressed with a title, such as Mister.) Besides being 4-H advisor, FFA advisor, agriculture teacher, and principal, Mr. Coffman was a bus driver. He was ever and always in a cheerful mood, and the trip to Shakamak was no exception.

Charles and Robert threw their Army surplus duffel bags in the back of the bus, took their seats, and enjoyed the drive to Shakamak. Sitting in the sunny window of the bus and watching the small towns drift by, Robert felt as if he might be Charlie Brown or Linus. Compared to Tippecanoe River State Park, where the Adams Township 4-H Club occasionally repaired and where raccoons kept Robert awake all night, Shakamak seemed like a spa. On the first afternoon, Mr. McKee, the county extension agent, pitched the softball game. His windup was something to see! Squinting and biting his lower lip, he lifted a knee high in the air while he contorted his body like a pretzel, then he tossed the ball in a graceful arc. In the outfield, Mike would comment, “Oh, honestly!”  If anyone could keep from laughing long enough and could get a hit, Mr. McKee would exclaim, “Very fine! Very fine!”

Mr. Coffman was all for getting in the water as soon as possible. Robert and Charles lined up with the other 4-Hers, and Mr. Coffman led them on the trail to the lake. Even though Charles and Robert had gone barefoot around the farm, their bare feet were cut by the exposed shale that formed much of the path. The next day, every step was painful. For the time being, though, it was fun to watch Mr. Coffman disporting in Lake Shakamak. He was like a smiling duck, splashing and cavorting in utter glee.

Robert despised water and barely put up with the swimming. Back when he was in the third grade, Ida had enrolled him and Charles in swimming lessons at the indoor pool of the YMCA in Lafayette. At the first lesson, the children had turned right to gather around the instructor, who was standing at the shallow end. Shy, Robert had turned left, and the instructor had not seen him. The instructor had said, “Jump in,” and Robert had obeyed. Down he went in a pale green world. Breathing water instead of air had been a new experience; bubbles had gone up as he had gone down. Later, he had learned that parents, who were watching their children through a window, had pounded on the glass to get the instructor’s attention, and that the instructor had finally understood that a child had leapt into the deep end of the pool. The next thing that Robert knew was that the instructor had rescued him and was reviving him at the side of the pool. After that experience, Robert had feared the water so much that, every Friday after school, when the swimming lesson was approaching, he had felt sick to his stomach. After several weeks, Ida had given up and had canceled the lessons. Robert had gone cheerfully forward in life as a non-swimmer. So, at Shakamak, he was content to stand on the sharp shale in the shallow water and watch Mr. Coffman having fun.

At the end of a pier stood a tall structure supporting several diving boards with the uppermost one seemingly among the clouds. Mr. Coffman warned against using the diving boards—especially the top one. At dinner, Alan told Robert he looked at the diving boards and decided that discretion was definitely the better part of valor.

The soughing of the breezes in the oak leaves made Robert feel content, and, as a fiery sunset of scarlet, coral, and tangerine deepened into garnet and boysenberry, Robert felt that all was right with the world—except for his sore feet!      

 

13. The Celebration ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

The snow began early, with a deep accumulation just after Halloween of 1966. Inaugurating January of 1967 was Chicago’s largest blizzard on record. While the storm missed Pine Village, additional snow fell on the farm a week and a half later. Although Robert generally liked snow, he was having too much of a good thing. He wondered what it would be like to ride a bus after the move from the town to the country. He would have wondered what it would be like to eat lunch in the school cafeteria, but Ida had decided that Charles, now a student in high school, should have lunch with his classmates and had persuaded Joe to purchase lunch tickets for both of his sons. Even though Charles and Robert were only across the road from a home-cooked meal, they ate in the cafeteria. For Robert, lunch offered an opportunity to socialize with his classmates—and he loved socializing!

Mrs. Miles directed an effective cafeteria staff having four great cooks whose meals included fried chicken, chipped beef on biscuits, creamed turkey on biscuits, beef and noodles, chicken and noodles, beefaroni, ham and beans with cornbread, hot dogs with pickle relish, Coneys, hamburgers, meat loaf, tuna casserole, Salisbury steak, salmon, spaghetti Creole, chili, potato soup and crackers, vegetable beef soup, baked beans, mashed potatoes, green beans, buttered corn, buttered peas, buttered spinach, strawberry Jell-O, peach halves, seasonal fruit, beef sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches, ham salad sandwiches, pork sandwiches, pork fritter sandwiches, Sloppy Joes, submarine sandwiches, jellied vegetable salad, cream slaw, applesauce, bananas in red Jell-O, fruit salad, chocolate pudding, graham cracker pudding, cherry cobbler, pineapple crème, and sweet rolls. Most of the ingredients were grown nearby.

Leo Synesael gave himself permission to lean against a doorsill or a stairway railing for a few seconds each day; otherwise, he kept cleaning. Leo was the school custodian. He was skinny as a rail—most likely because he seldom stopped moving! In a jiffy, he mopped up spilled milk in the cafeteria. In the wink of an eye, he dusted the floor of the gymnasium. With time to spare, he spread his magic sand over an oil leak in the parking lot and swept it all up, leaving no trace that anything had been amiss.

Each year, Robert’s hometown—like hometowns across America—celebrated Lincoln’s Birthday on the 12th of February and Washington’s Birthday on the 22nd of the same month. (In 1971, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act established three-day weekends for all major holidays and annual commemorations. In many states, Presidents Day became associated with one of the weekends.) On Washington’s Birthday, grocery stores would offer sale prices on canned cherries, and items that usually cost a quarter would be reduced to twenty-two cents, in honor of the 22nd of February. The art teacher always invited the junior high and high school students to make portraits of Lincoln that were judged, with the announcement of the winner during the Republican Lincoln Day Dinner in the gymnasium. Several of the older students were blessed with artistic talent and skill, and their portraits of Lincoln were exceptional. The best of the best were displayed in the cafeteria, and Robert admired them.

Robert became determined to create a portrait that could compete with those of the high school students. Choosing pastel as his medium, Robert devoted hours and hours over the course of many evenings to the formation of Lincoln’s face. Robert compared several images of Lincoln in books that he had checked out from the school library. His portrait was not a direct copy of any one of them but a compilation of features he observed in several of them.

“You have captured him,” Ida said. “You can enter your picture in the competition without doubting whether your work is good enough.”

His mother’s compliment reassured Robert.

He was shocked through and through when the art teacher confided in him that his art had won the competition, although the fact had to be kept secret until Lincoln’s Birthday!

Robert wore a suit and tie to the dinner. Blushing, he stood before the applauding audience while his portrait was proclaimed the contest winner.

Back in grade school, Robert and his classmates had used crayons to color purple-dittoed American flags while listening to their teachers read to them about Washington and Lincoln. For Mrs. Winegardner, the students prepared scrapbooks commemorating Indiana history, and, for Mrs. Leighty, the class’ shoebox floats celebrated the fifty states; such activities further instilled patriotism. Robert’s heart was stirred when the red, white, and blue month of Lincoln and Washington rolled around. Now in his suit and tie, he stood talking with various townspeople who stepped up to congratulate him on winning the Lincoln Art Contest when he was only in the seventh grade.

On Washington’s Birthday, Spot the Fox Terrier (his formal name) decided upon a patriotic excursion of his own. While Robert was bringing home his portrait of Lincoln with the winning ribbon fluttering in the corner of the large frame, he miscalculated how far the front gate would swing, and, with no free hand to hold the gate open just enough to slip through, Robert saw the gate open all the way—and Spot dashing through and running lickety-split for town!

Robert set down his painting by the gate and shouted toward his father, who was taking his boots off by the back door, “Spot’s out!”

Joe and Robert jumped into the front seat of the Bel Air and took off after the dog. They soon detected him racing behind “Peanut” Neal’s house. Robert was surprised that Spot, panting excitedly, let him scoop him up so easily. Then Robert noticed the gash in his side.

“Spot’s hurt!” Robert said, when, holding the terrier, he slid onto the seat of the car.

“I wonder how that happened,” Joe said, as he drove straight to Doc Cullup’s house and veterinary clinic.

Spot’s cut required several stitches, but the dog wasn’t fazed. His eyes remained as bright as ever, and he indicated that he was ready for another sprint while Joe handed him to Robert for the drive back home.

“Hold onto him!” Joe exclaimed.

“I have him,” Robert said.

That evening, the family cuddled Spot even more closely than usual. He had to wear his harness to hold gauze padding against the stitched wound. Ida added a small swatch of red-white-and-blue fabric over the gauze.

“I can’t imagine how he was cut in that way,” Joe said. “We were right behind him. He wasn’t out of our sight more than a couple of minutes.”

Joe, Ida, Charles, and Robert considered Spot so much a part of their family that they expected the dog to speak up and tell them how it occurred, but Spot remained silent on the point.

Robert set his Lincoln portrait on the top edge of his bed’s headboard, put Spot on the foot of the bed, and took a flash photo to preserve the memory.

12. The Fly ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

Robert was The Fly.

Not the unfortunate fly in the 1958 movie with Vincent Price.

Robert was a hero such as Batman and Robin, who appeared in a series that had recently aired on television. Joe’s cousin Jay had given Joe his Navy Peacoat from World War II, which Jay had outgrown, and Joe passed it along to Robert. At the auction of Flora Farden’s belongings, Robert had acquired a pair of amber dark glasses that were big and round with ivory-colored Bakelite frames. Wearing the black coat and the round glasses with the deep amber lenses, Robert was The Fly.

When Robert helped his father with the evening chores, he flew over gates. Well, he had to scale the gates’ horizontal panels and hop down on the other side, but he did it really fast, as if he were flying! On the other side of the gates, Robert fought crime. Often, he did so by cracking ears of corn in two or by spreading hay in the mangers of the barn.

Even though he missed games on the playground, Robert was enjoying his time in the seventh grade. He enjoyed jumping up when the bell rang and scurrying to his next class in another room. He enjoyed the lessons and the teachers and his classmates. He enjoyed having a locker instead of a desk.

And he enjoyed becoming The Fly after school.

For many generations, students from Rainsville had transferred to Pine Village for their final years of schooling. When Robert entered the seventh grade, a reorganizing brought Rainsville students into his class. A few of the teachers who had devoted their careers to Rainsville’s classes permanently transferred to Pine Village. One of them was the beloved Mr. Charles Lloyd Cavanaugh.

He stepped from a story by Washington Irving. A thin gentleman, he parted his gray hair in the middle. His reading glasses slid down his long nose. To see him on a windy day striding between the school building and the gymnasium was to see a scholar of skin and bones barely able to keep his footing while his trousers and coat flapped as if they might lift him into the sky.

Mr. Cavanaugh was named the sponsor of Robert’s class, and Mr. Cavanaugh remained the class sponsor all the way through the class’ senior year.

He taught English and mathematics. While Mr. Cavanaugh was of the old school that memorized everything and seldom (if ever) erred about a fact, he occasionally lapsed into an extraordinary pronunciation.

Once, Robert’s class was learning a mathematical principle when Mr. Cavanaugh thought an example might prove helpful.

“Let us say you have four cassaws,” Mr. Cavanaugh said. He went on to describe a mathematical equation involving the four “cassaws.” Then he called on one of the sharpest students—probably because he wanted the class to hear the correct answer—but the student blushed and apologized, saying, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know.” Mr. Cavanaugh said, “That’s quite alright,” and he called on another student good at math. Fidgeting, the student said, “I don’t know, either.” Now Mr. Cavanaugh wondered what to do. He had hoped to demonstrate the mathematical principle so clearly that the class would see how very simple it was, but he had called on two students who should have known the answer and they had been unable to respond.

Meanwhile, Alan, with knitted brows, had been staring at his desktop. Suddenly, a smile flashed across his face, and he raised his hand.

“Yes, Alan,” Mr. Cavanaugh acknowledged.

“Mr. Cavanaugh,” Alan began, clearing his throat, “by your word ‘cassaws,’ might you mean cashews?”

“I mean those delightful nuts that can be found along with peanuts in a can of mixed nuts,” Mr. Cavanaugh replied innocently, not taking any offense at Alan’s question. The idea of taking offense at anything never could cross Mr. Cavanaugh’s wonderful mind.

At that moment, the student on whom Mr. Cavanaugh had first called, raised a hand, was acknowledged, and said, “Now that I know we are dealing with cashews, I can give the answer.” And the answer was correct! Mr. Cavanaugh beamed, and he went on to say how simple the principle was, after all.

From that day forward, Robert always thought of cashews as “cassaws.”

Robert liked every one of his classmates—and had since first grade. He was delighted that he liked all the new classmates that came from the Rainsville School, too. Among them was his cousin Pam. They were complementary in many ways. Pam’s hair was as dark as Robert’s was blond. Her complexion was olive, but Robert’s was pale. When Robert was serious, Pam would laugh, and, when Pam was serious, Robert would laugh. They initiated a mutually pleasant academic rivalry that, six years later, would bring Robert to be the Valedictorian and Pam to be the Salutatorian—with the two separated by hardly a difference.

In seventh grade, Robert relied upon Pam’s customary response to any of his ideas that she considered outrageous; “Now, Robert!” she would admonish him with her genuine smile. He continuously amused her, and, as she was so intellectual herself, she always kept him on his intellectual toes.

For Mr. Cavanaugh’s English class, Robert drafted a letter to Aunt Della in Georgia: "Several events have been happening on the farm. Pigs have been coming, chickens hatched, young calves have been born, and a zillion other creatures have entered into our life. I enjoy it all except for one thing—work! It takes energy to feed a mess of squealing pigs and squawking chickens. It’s work to get clean again; although I suppose it’s worth it."

To Robert, the year felt as if a long-awaited future had arrived to pay homage to the past. The fall was distinguished by a futuristic television series named Star Trek that acknowledged its roots in Old World myth and fable. The hallmark of the spring was the CBS telecast of Hal Holbrook’s stunning performance as Mark Twain. (In the distant future, Robert would meet Hal Holbrook and would tour the eastern half of the United States as Edgar A. Poe for over two hundred performances, and Robert would spend two days with—and sketch—Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek.)

Meanwhile, Joe called out, “Robert, it’s time to do the chores.”

“Robert?” Robert called back. “Who’s Robert? Don’t you mean The Fly?”

       

11. The Perm ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

As Robert had foreseen, Joe bought the Chevrolet Bel Air from the Dowdens. To Robert’s way of thinking, everything about the car was cheap. The aqua ceiling fabric felt like plastic, and it had a pattern of tiny circular holes. After experiencing the interior of the 57 Chevrolet, the 63 seemed cheap inside. The seat covers were not luxurious. Even the exterior lines of the vehicle made Robert feel that Chevrolet had lowered its standards. Robert felt that he was riding in a thin horizontal cardboard box. The lack of chrome and the plain round taillights proclaimed that everything about the car had been cheapened to the lowest denominator, yet the car was dependable. It did not languish for long periods of time in Glen Bisel’s shop; rather, it ran and ran in its bland, undistinguished way. Joe’s family rode in its cheapness from place to place for many years.

Ida drove the Bel Air to Bessie Eberly’s house when it was time for Bessie to give Ida a perm. While Bessie was transforming Ida’s straight hair into tight curls, Ida said, “I think we’re going to move.”

Bessie fumbled her comb, she was so surprised!

“Move! Where to?” Bessie managed to blurt out, fixing a concerned gaze on Ida in the mirror that both faced.

“Well, that’s just it,” Ida said. “We probably will move to Lizzie Williams’ house.”

“Here, in town?” Bessie questioned, her look becoming stern.

“No,” Ida laughed. “Her house out east of town.”

Bessie said, “You mean where the Davises lived.”

“That’s right,” Ida confirmed.

“I’m sure it’s a nice house, but why would you want to move there?” Bessie asked.

“Because we can’t move to Uncle Marshall’s house, which is falling in—” Ida began to explain.

Bessie interrupted, “—Anna and Marshall Rhode’s place?”

“That’s right,” Ida said again. “That’s a nice big house, but the roof has leaked so much that Joe thinks it would cost a fortune to fix everything. He says it should be bulldozed.”

“That’s a shame!” Bessie commented. “Such a big house! But why do you want to move at all?”

“Oh, I see what you were asking,” Ida remarked. “Well, the town has wanted additional revenue, and, at that meeting last week, somebody suggested annexing land around the town to increase the tax base.”

“Yes,” Bessie said encouragingly, once again busy with her comb.

“Joe said that he doesn’t want to pay the high taxes that would be assessed on his hundred and twenty-five acres. He thinks we should move right away.”

“But the town hasn’t annexed his farm, has it?”

“Oh, no!” Ida exclaimed. “That probably couldn’t happen for a year or two, even if the town managed to approve it, and there’s no proof that the town would want to annex good farm land anywhere around the perimeter.”

“But Joe is worried that the town might make that decision someday,” Bessie concluded.

“You know something?” Ida asked.

“What?” Bessie asked.

“I think it will be hard for Joe to move.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He has lived his whole life here. He grew up in the house where Cecil Gray lives, and he has raised his family in the house where we live now, which was part of his grandfather Tom Cobb’s land. I think Joe will feel homesick.”

Bessie laughed! “But Lizzie’s farm is only two miles east of here! It’s not like Joe would be moving to Canada!”

Ida laughed. “You’re right, but Joe is like his mother. They have to follow a routine, and they can’t endure change. I think when Joe is out there two miles away, he’ll feel as if he were in another country.”

Lizzie wanted Joe’s family to farm the old Williams place, so she sold the land to Joe.

When Joe, Ida, Charles, and Robert first pulled into the driveway of what would eventually become their new home, they hardly knew what to think. Charles appeared apathetic, Joe uneasy, Ida confident, Robert thrilled! Out there on the flat land that had once been marsh, the ancient trees around the house formed an oasis in the midst of a desert of black loam stretching toward the horizon in all directions. The maples were gnarled and bent from the constant wind that could roar from west to east during blizzards. A scraggly group of Osage orange trees huddled near a rusty wire fence. Outbuildings of gray, splintery wood leaned in crazy directions. While the others explored the house, Robert walked through the tall weeds to the west until he came to a slough, wet with cattails. The scent of tadpole water arose from the sedge grass. He could see so far away, and, everywhere he looked, the sky was filled with dark gray clouds reflecting the even darker earth, which was wild and lonely.

Robert pushed on through the tangled weeds catching at his feet. He came to a weathered shed where, in his father’s boyhood, Joe Williams had stored his Reeves steam engine, threshing machine, and water wagon. Robert’s great uncle Charley Cobb had worked as the Williamses’ engineer. Charley had died long before Robert was born. While Robert stood near the fallen doors of the shed, he thought how his grandmother’s brother had stood in the same place, oilcan in hand. Robert thought how closely the past pressed in upon him.

Robert joined the others at the house. A long enclosed porch with a sloping floor ran the length of the structure. It was homey. Ida was saying that she would move the kitchen into a large room that could double as a family room and wall off part of the old kitchen to make a bathroom. Robert and Charles would have bedrooms to the southeast of what would be the new kitchen, and Joe and Ida would have the room to the northeast. The empty house felt forlorn. Robert found a blue glass medicine bottle from the 1800s that someone had set on a windowsill.

“Could I have it?” he asked his mother.

“Yes, you may have it,” she said.

For Robert, the bottle came to symbolize the home east of Pine Village.  

Nearly two years would elapse before Joe’s family could move to Lizzie Williams’ farm. During that time, Robert would pass from classroom to classroom as a member of the seventh grade class and matriculate to the eighth grade. Every evening, he looked at the dark blue bottle and thought of the murky pools, the wild winds, the twisted tree trunks, the statuesque herons, the mysterious great horned owls, the scurrying quail, the gliding pheasants, and the cantering foxes that he felt were tugging him away from the security of the village into the unknown countryside, as if leprechauns were working an enchantment to lure him there. He pictured the move as an exciting adventure awaiting him just beyond a theatrical scrim through which, for the time being, he could see but which would not be lifted for him to see clearly for some time to come.