19. The Fossil Hunt ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

A favorite family activity was fossil hunting. Joe, Ida, Charles, and Robert once visited the historic railroad cut in Madison, Indiana, and brought back enough horn coral and brachiopods to weight the car down on its springs. From Pine Village to Madison and back in a day meant a long time on the road. Joe never could stay overnight because he had to feed his livestock and would not ask a neighbor to help.

One morning, Ida said, “Let’s go to southeast Indiana to find fossils,” and Joe agreed. A few days later, the family piled into the Pontiac Bonneville and drove and drove. Joe took State Route 52 through Rushville to Brookville, where they ate their picnic lunch before searching for fossils along the Whitewater River to the west of town. Finding little to keep them interested, Joe drove farther south and took State Route 1 along a creek that looked promising. Joe pulled onto a short stretch of country road, then onto what was little more than an abandoned farm lane that crossed a tiny bridge.

“Let’s hurry before it rains,” Ida said. The sky had become cloudy. Gradually, the daylight dimmed beneath the heavy cloud cover. Joe, Ida, Charles, and Robert fanned out along the creek. The trilobites that they had hoped to find remained elusive.

Suddenly, raindrops began pelting the creek.

“I guess we’re going to be rained out,” Ida said, as everyone headed for the car. Robert had to sit in the rear seat—with Ida’s promise that he could switch to the front seat in Brookville.

The mischievous storm quickly developed into a steady downpour.

“Joe, we need to get back to the highway as soon as we can,” Ida said. “When I was growing up along the Ohio River, there were people that got caught in flash floods along creeks like this.”

“I don’t think there’s any need to worry,” Joe said. He put the car in gear and steered it toward the low bridge he had crossed to reach a level place to park along the creek. In just that short a time, a raging channel of yellow clay and water was surging under the bridge and, at both ends of the bridge, had already crossed the driveway.

Joe took his foot off the throttle.

“Oh, Joe! Don’t stop now,” Ida warned, with a note of fear in her voice.

“I don’t think we should drive through water that deep and fast,” Joe said.

“But don’t you see that the water is going to cover everything where we are? We have to get to the other side of that bridge!” Ida said, her panic escalating.

Reluctantly, Joe inched the Pontiac forward into the current at the near end of the little bridge. Robert and Charles peered through the windows at the seething stream surrounding the car.

“Hurry, Joe!” Ida said, tensely. She put her hand on the dashboard as if she were encouraging a horse to remain calm while attempting a dangerous feat.

The car gained the bridge, but as much water was crossing the other end as the Pontiac had already cleared. Leaving the bridge behind, the car nosed back into the turbulent yellow stream.

Ida began patting the dashboard nervously.

Eventually, the Pontiac climbed out of the rushing water and turned onto the country road.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

“I told you there was nothing to worry about,” Joe said.

“Oh, you know you were scared back there!” Ida exclaimed.

“With a car this heavy, we weren’t going to be swept away,” Joe continued.

“Why, I could feel the car rocking from the water!” Ida said, staring at Joe. “We nearly became one of those families that you read about in the newspapers: the ones carried off by a flood.”

“We weren’t close to being ‘carried off by a flood,’” Joe persisted.

“You grew up where everything is flat,” Ida retorted. “Maybe I know a thing or two about hilly country that you don’t know.”

Joe reached over and patted Ida’s wrist. “I’m just teasing,” he said. “I think we were in some danger there. Had we waited a few more minutes, we might not have been able to drive out.”

“That’s right,” Ida said, barely placated.

At Brookville, Joe pulled over, so that Robert could trade places with Ida. Robert was already experiencing motion sickness, but it slowly abated on the way to Rushville.

Throughout the return trip, the rain fell in torrents. The drive to the Whitewater River was the family’s last fossil hunt.

18. The Art Class ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

It was an exciting day! Ida had just bought a new pocketbook at Sears. It had plenty of room! There was even a place to stick her crossword puzzle books! Best of all, it was bright red!

Ida had purchased the masterpiece of consumer art while she was waiting for Charles and Robert to take their block printing class at the Art Museum in Lafayette. Ida had enrolled the boys in the six-week course that had begun just after school was out.

The boys’ instructor was an expert at woodcuts and was slowly making a cut the size of a small table top that depicted a European cathedral. He taught the class of youngsters to make linoleum cuts. Ida had obtained the necessary supplies at the bookstore near the Purdue campus. There were slender boxes that contained wooden handles into which various knives could be inserted. Some of the knives were straight; others were curved. There were tubes of special ink in black, red, and green. There were brayers to spread the ink on a surface such as a glass pane until the ink became tacky enough to roll onto the linoleum block. Then there was the linoleum.

It had presented a problem initially. The instructor had called for the students to acquire battleship linoleum—so named because it was used on battleships. While many homes had flooring of battleship linoleum, Ida had a difficult time finding any. Ultimately, she purchased a big roll from a flooring store in Lafayette. It was dark green.

The boys looked forward to art class each week. The instructor gave just enough explanation and then let the students work at their own pace without much intervention. Robert was making a horizontal rectangular piece measuring about eight inches by six inches that he called “Four Faces.” He had designed four profiles overlapping in a row, each different from the others. The faces were modern—not all the way to Picasso but getting there. For surfaces of the cheeks, chins, noses, foreheads, and necks, Robert used various knives to form lines, dashes, dots, and circles. The knives removed material from the linoleum, which was backed with a coarse burlap weave. Even though the linoleum was thick, the knives were so sharp that they could cut all the way through to the backing. The trick was to cut away enough linoleum that the ink would become applied to the “hills” and not the “valleys”—without cutting past the linoleum and into the burlap. Sometimes a “valley” was shallow, and the ink would touch ridges in the valley. The resultant print would have lines showing the tops of the ridges.

Making the prints was fun! When a student was ready to print from a finished block, he or she rolled the ink on a large glass surface with a brayer until the ink became so tacky that the brayer would hiss each time it was rolled along. Next, the brayer was rolled onto the linoleum surface to apply ink in a thin but substantial layer. The student then carefully placed a sheet of fine quality paper, cut to a size somewhat larger than the linoleum block, onto the block. The paper could not be moved, once it had touched the ink. The student then rubbed the bowl of a teaspoon around and around on the paper with just enough pressure to transfer the ink from the linoleum to the paper without damaging the paper. Ultimately, the paper was peeled off the linoleum, thereby revealing the art.

Robert was always intrigued at how different the art looked from what he had carved. The picture was backwards from the one he had been cutting with the knives! On the day that he made his first print of “Four Faces,” he laughed to see them looking in the opposite direction.

The instructor came by and said, “Your faces are very good. What do they represent?”

“They are facets of one person,” Robert said. “The first face is the one everyone sees. The next is the one only loved ones see. The third is the one that only the person sees, and the fourth is the one that God sees.”

“Well!” the instructor said, nodding, with the thumb and forefinger of his hand on his chin. “I like your explanation! Good!” The instructor walked on.

Several prints could be made from one application of the ink, but, eventually, the ink would become patchy. More ink had to be applied to continue the print making.

The instructor taught the students to number their prints in pencil with a first number indicating the application of the ink, a slash mark, and a second number representing the print made from that application. So 2/4 would mean the fourth print taken from the second ink application.

Working in the presence of other artists gave Charles and Robert the opportunity to witness the expressions of creative minds. The works of art ranged from masterly to spontaneous.

The boys waited for their mother outside the Art Museum’s new addition that held the classrooms and studios. When Ida drove into the parking lot, Charles and Robert dove into the seats for the ride home. They showed their mother that day’s prints, for which she had only praise.

Once they were home, Robert took a seat at the kitchen table while Ida set her old pocketbook beside her new one and began piling the contents of the old one in a heap in the middle of the table.

“What will you do next week?” Ida asked Robert.

“I need to cut out a few of the areas a little more so the ridges don’t show in the print,” he replied. “Then I get to print again!”

Absent-mindedly, he was looking over the items that were rolling downhill from the mound of materials that could never have fit inside the old pocketbook! A Revlon red lipstick in a brassy gold cylinder almost cleared the edge of the table. Several Bic pens and at least one Sheaffer cartridge pen spun this way and that. There were pencils galore, most of them with no eraser left! A brown and yellow tin of “Genuine” Bayer Aspirin slid down. Three hankies, somewhat crumpled but none the worse for wear, clung to the slope of the heap. A Stratton powder compact with mirror and a rose motif slipped out. A plastic bottle of Jergens hand cream and a jar of Noxzema cold cream came out (both headfirst). A baby blue wallet with a snap clasp fell heavily forward. Two pairs of sunglasses—one hopelessly tangled with a clear plastic rain cap with pink trim—lent their bulk to the pile. A small creamy white bottle with a dark coral cap cascaded to the back of the pile: To a Wild Rose by Avon. A stack of dog-eared crossword puzzle booklets fell topsy-turvy. Creased notes in Ida’s dashed-off handwriting stuck out at crazy angles from the booklets. Shopping lists and checklists caught Robert’s eye. Stacks of folded Kleenex tissues, with sheets of stamps adhering to them, tumbled out. A square squeeze-type coin purse advertising a crane service in Muncie did cartwheels. It by no means held all the coins in the pocketbook because pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and half dollars rolled every which way. Most of the silver coins were silver all the way through, but some were the new “sandwich” variety with the tell-tale copper edge. There were hairpins by the handful. An opened and somewhat sticky roll of Life Savers joined the accumulation. Somehow, a silver flashlight and a pair of nail clippers were in the mix. A tin of Band-Aid bandages appeared from deep down within the old pocketbook. A spare red vinyl belt uncoiled like a snake. Robert wondered why there should be a belt. Maybe you just never knew when you might need one?

A Valentine’s Day card depicting a rabbit holding a carrot fell forward. “If you carrot all for me, be my Valentine,” the card proclaimed. Before Ida saw what Robert was doing, he turned the card over. In handwriting on the back were these words: “From Mr. Bunny to Mrs. Bunny, Love, Joe.”

Robert stared at the words. He knew that his parents loved one another, but seeing the fact in handwriting was arresting.

Ida glanced over. “Oh,” she said. “I forgot that was in there. I meant to put that in my drawer.”

“Dad gave you a Valentine?” Robert asked.

“Yes, as he does every year,” Ida said in a tone that was not without passion but was not overly expressive either.

Robert smiled slightly. “Mr. and Mrs. Bunny?” he said.

“Our names for each other when we aren’t talking to you,” Ida said, gently taking the card from Robert and setting it to one side.

“Mr. and Mrs. Bunny!” Robert thought, trying to fit the concept within his comprehension of his parents.

“We’ve always thought bunnies are cute,” Ida said. “When he was a boy, your father raised rabbits.”

Seeing that Robert was still musing on the topic, Ida said, “If you ever had the least doubt that your father and mother love each other, you now know better: you know that they do and always will! And we love you and Charles, too. Just don’t let me catch you calling me ‘Mrs. Bunny’ or your father ‘Mr. Bunny.’” Ida burst out laughing. “I would love to see the look on your father’s face if you were to call him ‘Mr. Bunny’—but don’t you ever do that! Those are our names for each other, not your names for us.”

Robert already adored his parents, but, with the revelation of the Valentine’s Day card, he now felt a reverence for them.

Ida began stuffing the new shiny red pocketbook with all her necessities mounded so high on the table—including the card!

17. The Spray ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

Across the gravel road from the new house were open fields, but a small group of trees broke the level line of the horizon. Robert yearned to investigate them yet felt constrained by the sense that he might be trespassing on neighbor Agnes Moore’s farm. He thought, “If I were to ask her permission to walk among the trees, she would wonder why I asked.” Accordingly, Robert kept denying himself the opportunity to visit the copse, until a day arrived when he could no longer resist indulging his curiosity.

Sneaking across the road, down through the shallow ditch, and over the freshly plowed surface of the field, Robert glanced from side to side. Neighbors could be seeing him, it seemed—when, in all likelihood, no one saw him. The nearest neighbors occupied farmhouses spread far apart along the road. Out of breath from the exertion of scurrying through plowed ground, Robert dashed through the verge of last year’s weedy growth and plunged into the darkness of the wooded area.

It was as circular as if measured by a surveyor. It sloped ever so gently toward the middle and may have been a ten-acre sinkhole or, at least, a damp saucer-shaped depression formed by an underground spring. The trees were a mixture of willows and cottonwoods. A few of the latter variety boasted enormous trunks. The limbs formed only a partial shade, as they were just leafing out. The tiny wildflowers called “spring beauties” carpeted the ground among the roots.

Then Robert chanced upon a circle of cardinal feathers. The red tufts fairly glowed among the willows. They may have been left by a farm cat, but they formed an exact circle with every feather perfectly placed! Robert felt a sense of awe. It was as if he were seeing a symbol intended for his eyes alone. What was its meaning?

Robert quietly withdrew. Long after his moment in the woods across the road, he regarded the spot from afar and considered it an example of the Creator’s attention to detail.  

When disking the earth, Robert occasionally glimpsed a red fox skipping home, its fluffy tail, almost as big as its body, flying behind and its dark legs flashing like a gentleman’s tall boots during Great Britain’s Regency Era. The white of its cheeks and chin only emphasized the fox’s slight grin, amused at its own cleverness, probably. In moments, the fox vanished amid the tangle of weeds wrapped around the trunks of the venerable hedge apple trees.

Once on an ominous night in the spring, Robert shook Spot’s leash, and he came running to go for a walk beyond the fenced yard.

Spot and Robert set out toward the north past the security of the house, barn, and outbuildings. They took the well-beaten path that the tractors took beside the fields. The wind came in long exhalations that could be heard far off before it could be felt. The air was chilled but not frozen. As Robert’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw small gray clouds scudding overhead. They appeared to be so low that he could touch them.

Now and then, Spot tugged on the leash, and Robert quickened his pace to keep up with him. Spot was having the time of his life, turning his head from side to side, sampling the smorgasbord of smells low to the ground. After a time, they reached the back of the farm. Spot wanted to explore the hedgerow, so Robert followed him as Spot trotted toward the gnarled trees.

Suddenly, they heard a growl. “Fox,” Robert thought. Instinctively, he grabbed Spot around his belly and lifted him to his chest. As the moon broke from behind clouds, Robert saw the ghostly white of the fox’s face staring from the underbrush. Robert backed slowly away. The fox began taking slow steps toward Robert and Spot. Just then, they heard a yipping and yelping that could only be from kits. Sure enough, four pups came tumbling out of the weeds to prance around the legs of their mother!

Robert kept backing up until he was in the center of the freshly plowed field. Keeping his balance was tricky, as the clods were tilted wherever the plowshares had left them. Growling continually, the mother fox followed Robert and Spot to a distance of perhaps thirty feet from her den. Abruptly, she whipped around and ran back among the trees, her cubs leaping and tumbling about her in what they perhaps perceived as a game.

Robert breathed a sigh of relief. Walking back to the house, he traversed a considerable distance before he thought it was safe to put Spot back on the ground.

Soon after Robert and Spot’s encounter with the foxes, Ida got up from the easy chair in front of the television, opened the door to the enclosed porch, and walked to the outside door to let Spot back in from his time in the yard. The terrier came running into the house. So did Ida.

“Joe, bring me the ketchup bottles from the box on the stairway while I grab the dog.”

“The new bottles?” Joe asked.

“Yes, the new ones!” Ida replied, lifting Spot from the sofa where he was rubbing himself on a blanket. She carried him into the bathroom.

Joe went to the door that stood above two stair steps at the far end of the kitchen. Behind the door were triangular stairs that turned sharply to the left to meet regular stairs leading to the second floor, half of which had been finished as a spare bedroom but which was used as an unheated storage area. Whenever Joe and Ida went grocery shopping, they stashed extra purchases on the triangular stairs behind the door. Joe reached into a cardboard box and lifted out two ketchup bottles. Having no idea why Ida wanted them but trusting her judgment when she called for them, Joe carried them toward the bathroom. He knocked on the door.

“You can come on in,” Ida said. “I’m giving Spot a bath.”

No sooner had Joe opened the bathroom door than he knew what had happened.

A skunk had sprayed Spot.

“I guess he cornered the skunk and didn’t know how skunks retaliate,” Joe said, trying to catch his breath. “What does the ketchup do?”

“I’ve always heard that, if you wash a dog in ketchup, it takes away the skunk odor,” Ida said, rinsing lather from Spot’s neck. “Either the skunk missed his eyes or Spot closed them in time.”

“I don’t think the skunk missed anything,” Joe said.

Ida twisted off the cap and, with the flat of her free hand, began smacking the neck of the first bottle held sideways with her other hand. After only a few smacks, ketchup rolled out onto Spot’s back.

“Pound and pound the ketchup bottle. First a little, then a lot’ll,” Joe said.

“When you strike the bottle on the side,” Ida explained, “the ketchup comes out faster than if you hold the bottle upside down and shake it.”

She massaged an entire bottle of ketchup into Spot’s short hair. She rinsed him off, ran the water down the drain, stopped the drain, brought up the water level again, and opened the second bottle, dispensing it and rubbing it into his fur for many minutes.

After she rinsed him, she shampooed him, rinsed again, and dried him with towels.

Joe had returned to the kitchen. Here came Spot on the run! He rubbed his head along the bottom of the sofa, jumped up, and rolled and rolled on the blanket.

“Pee-you!” Ida said, after she disposed of the towels in the galvanized washtub on the side porch.

She looked at Spot; then she looked at Joe.

“I don’t think the ketchup worked well enough,” she said.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Joe said.

Ida thought for a minute. “Joe, go down to the cellar and bring up a gallon of stewed tomatoes.”

Joe was happy to do as he was told because, as bad as the air outdoors smelled, the skunk odor was not as strong outside as it was inside the house.

Joe lifted the cellar door, which was on an angle near the fern bed that surrounded the tank holding the oil that heated the furnace. He disappeared into the dank cellar and soon emerged again with a big glass jar cradled in his left arm.

Meanwhile, Ida was washing Spot in the bathtub. As soon as she received the open bottle of stewed tomatoes that Joe handed her, she began sloshing them over the terrier. GLUG GLUG GLUG! The tomatoes rolled out.

“I hope you won’t mind my asking,” Joe said, “but how will the tomatoes go down the drain afterward?”

“Not easily, Joe,” Ida said. “Not easily! I’d already thought of that. I’ll scoop them out with a sieve and throw them outside.”

“I knew you’d have it all thought out,” Joe said.

Robert had been doing his homework in his room. He had heard the initial commotion, including his mother’s request for ketchup, and had paid no attention to it. Soon enough, though, he had begun to sense the sickening odor of skunk. He had hoped it was coming from outside. His hopes had sunk. He had heard enough of the ongoing conversation between his parents to know that Spot had been the target of a skunk.

The tomatoes were not totally effective, either.

Ida tried dish soap.

Eventually, she released Spot from the bathroom again. Ida was carrying an armload of towels destined for the washtub.

“Any luck?” Joe asked.

“No,” Ida sighed. “He still stinks. He’s better than he was, but he still stinks. I can’t wash him again without hurting his skin.”

She was right about the stink.

For the next few weeks, Spot exuded a skunk odor that was just about intolerable, and, for a year, whenever Robert pet the dog, a little more of the skunk stench was released somehow.         

About a month after the spraying incident, Mrs. Bowen came to visit Ida. Mrs. Bowen’s name was Irene—a name Ida never used, preferring to call her “Mrs. Bowen” at all times.

Mrs. Bowen sat on the sofa.

“When did a skunk spray your dog?” Mrs. Bowen asked.

Ida blushed. “Why?” Ida asked. “Can you smell it?”

Mrs. Bowen smiled. “How could I miss it?” she laughed. “It smells like you’ve been raising a skunk in here.”

Ida blushed a deeper shade of red.

“Let me guess,” Mrs. Bowen said. “You tried to take out the smell with tomatoes.”

“How did you know?” Ida asked, sinking limply into her easy chair.

“It’s what everybody says to do,” Mrs. Bowen answered. “It’s too bad you didn’t call me,” Mrs. Bowen said. “I could’ve set you straight. Judging by the smell, I’d say your dog was sprayed about a month ago. Well, it’s too late now. You should’ve used cider that’s turned to vinegar. That’s what takes out the smell of your skunk! ‘Tomatoes,’ everybody says. ‘Tomatoes, tomatoes!’ Phooey on your ol’ tomatoes! They don’t do any good, unless they’re pickled in vinegar. And cider that’s turned to vinegar works better than regular vinegar.”

“I wish I’d known,” Ida said.

“I wish you had, too,” Mrs. Bowen said, “‘cause that skunk has sure managed to stink up your house by spraying your dog.”

“May I get you a glass of iced tea?” Ida offered.

“Yes, you may, and I’ll take a clothespin for my nose, too.”

“Oh, my!” Ida lamented. “Is it really that bad?”

“No,” Mrs. Bowen said, shaking her head and chuckling. “It’s worse. Maybe we could bottle skunk spray and sell it to people who don’t like the smell of hogs. Our advertising could say, ‘Take a whiff of this, and the hogs won’t smell so bad.’”

“Joe says hogs smell like money,” Ida said.

“Beauty’s in the nose of the beholder,” Mrs. Bowen quipped.

“There’s more truth in that than meets the eye,” Ida retorted. “Let me get you that iced tea.”

“And the clothespin!” Mrs. Bowen called after Ida, who had gone to the refrigerator.

A few days later, Mary Akers stopped by for a chat. When Ida saw Mary’s car pull into the driveway, Ida grabbed the Glade aerosol spray and practically hosed down the sofa before stashing the spray can behind the letters on top of the dish cabinet.

“Hi!” Mary said. “I can’t stay long, but I wanted to stop by to tell you about the hotdogs at Kmart.”

Mary sniffed the air, while Ida tried hard not to look guilty.

“If I didn’t know better,” Mary said, “I’d say you just sprayed Glade to cover up—” Mary sniffed again. “To cover up skunk!”

“Mary, a skunk sprayed Spot, and I don’t know what to do,” Ida confessed.

Mary laughed so hard her sides hurt.

“I don’t think there’s enough Glade in your can to hide the skunk smell,” Mary finally said. “Did you try tomatoes?”

“Yes,” Ida said. “I wasted a perfectly good gallon of my stewed tomatoes.”

“How long ago did this happen?” Mary asked.

“A month ago,” Ida said.

“There may be nothing you can do but wait it out,” Mary suggested.

“That’s what I’ve been doing, but the smell lasts and lasts. It’s still coming out of Spot’s hide,” Ida said forlornly.

“Maybe the trick is to rub our noses with tomatoes!” Mary suddenly exclaimed brightly.

Ida laughed.

Spot was never sprayed by a skunk again. Joe wondered if Spot had encountered more skunks but had given them a wide berth.