24. The Exhibits ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

Every year, the freshman class made a bus trip to Chicago. When Robert’s class went, the group first toured the Chicago Natural History Museum, or Field Museum. Each new diorama in the Hall of Prehistoric Man captivated Robert all the more—especially the Neanderthals. He tried to imagine what it could have been like to have lived in the time of the cavemen.

The exhibits of stuffed animals were so extensive as to stretch seemingly forever down halls and around corners. The white-tailed deer appeared to be living. From the tiny antelope to the zebra of southern and eastern Africa, the animal displays kept Robert in a state of amazement. The elephants and the jungle cats were favorites. There were many animals he had never heard of and that he could scarcely imagine, even though the displays were so lifelike! There were wild donkeys, hippopotami, gorillas, and hyenas: all examples of the taxidermists’ finest hour and art.   

Yet his eyes really opened all the way when he encountered the Egyptian artifacts. The ushabti figures, the canopic jars, the sarcophagi, and the statues intrigued him. As a freshman, he could hardly fail to be mesmerized by the mummies! He felt a deep sense of astonishment that such rich cultures had thrived in the Nile River Valley for thousands of years. He vowed he would check out books on Egyptian history when he returned home, and he kept his promise.

The class also visited the Museum of Science and Industry. Built in 1893 as part of the World’s Columbian Exposition (which failed to be finished in time for 1892, the four hundredth anniversary of 1492, the year made famous by Christopher Columbus), the vast edifice, which had been refaced in limestone, housed more displays than could be seen in weeks, let alone in a few hours! Many of the exhibits were to be operated by pushing buttons or working levers. It was great fun to discover scientific facts and mechanical principles by observation of displays that moved in response to the viewer’s hand. There were airplanes, boats, cars, a stage coach, steam engines including locomotives, and streetcars. There were a gigantic Foucault pendulum and electromagnets and lightning from a surge generator. There were all manner of machines from newspaper presses to milking machines. A spectacular monument to the periodic table of the elements boasted a massive globe of the Planet Earth. Amid the museum’s modernity was a nod to the Middle Ages in a medieval scriptorium, where European monks copied and illuminated holy manuscripts in brilliantly colored inks.  

But the trip into the coal mine was even more exciting! It began with a safety demonstration that simulated an explosion of methane gas from a lighted Davy lamp. The drop down the mine shaft in a black cage gave the illusion of a descent of hundreds of feet. The tram ride through the cool gloom of the mine was worthy of Disney! 

Robert’s favorite activity was walking through the U-505 submarine, which was docked outside the museum. The narrow passages within the German ship made Robert feel almost claustrophobic, but he was so fascinated with everything that he successfully fought against the dread of enclosure in a tight space. Even though the halls were barely wide enough for one person, the submarine was huge. “How could it have remained hidden?” Robert wondered. Of course, as a person from a landlocked farming community, he had almost no concept of the size of the ocean. After the tour, Robert knew that he could never have lived on board a submarine without going stark raving mad! It was quite a learning experience, to say the least! 

The trip to the Windy City was one of the best that Robert would ever take, and he was grateful to his school for having given his class the opportunity to see such a splendid panoply at both institutions and to the museums for making available to the public such an incredible array of the best that the world has to offer.  

Ever since the threat of a tornado had interrupted the performance at Columbian Park when Robert was a youngster, he had wanted to spot a funnel cloud. With the help of her father, his classmate Susan had once built a large glass box that demonstrated a tornado by using dry ice and a fan to form a vortex that was well lighted from above. Robert never grew tired of watching the ghostly rope undulating from the bottom to the top of the tall box.   

On a sunny April Saturday in between his freshman and sophomore years, Robert had been disking for his father. The International 560 tractor had needed gasoline, so Robert had driven from the fields back to the house.

He pulled alongside the elevated gas barrel, switched off the engine, spun off the gas cap, and began filling the tank from the heavy nozzle. The day was hot and still. The day seemed to be waiting for something to happen. It was as if it alone knew what was approaching. The birds had abandoned their hectic springtime schedule as if in anticipation. Only the occasional shrieks of the guineas disturbed the silence. With the tank full, Robert hung the hose on the horseshoe that served as a cradle nailed to one of the barrel’s support posts. Robert thought about returning to his disking right away, but the idea of a quick nap intervened.

Joe and Charles were working with tractors in adjacent fields about as far from the house as they could be. Would they miss Robert for fifteen minutes? Robert decided they would not, so he strode to the house and stretched out on the sofa to catch a few winks. Such an action was extremely rare for Robert—so rare, in fact, that he could almost be described as never having taken a sleepy moment away from work. For years thereafter, he would wonder why he chose that time to sneak a brief nap.

Naturally, Robert lost track of the time. Suddenly, Joe and Charles burst into the room! They were talking excitedly. In Robert’s half-asleep state, he worried that they might be angry with him for briefly shirking his responsibility. Robert’s sense of guilt helped him awaken fully. Then he realized they were not conversing about his indolence; rather, they were discussing the funnel cloud that had just crossed near the north end of the farm.

“That’s as close as I ever want to get to a tornado,” Joe said.

“That was impressive!” Charles agreed.

Robert sat up and listened to their description of the funnel, which had begun to touch down but had lifted immediately. Robert glanced at the clock. He had slept for less than an hour. In just that length of time, an oddly greenish wall cloud had formed in the southwest. On its path from southwest to northeast, the cloud mass had passed on an angle a little over a mile north of the house. Acknowledging the dangers of lightning, Joe had signaled Charles to bring his tractor and plow up to the house while Joe drove his tractor and corn planter up to the barn. When they had entered the barnyard, they had witnessed the funnel’s descent.

Robert had slept through the excitement and was disappointed. He would never have a better opportunity to watch a tornado. Years later, a tornado that would prove quite destructive in Rainsville would pass along much the same diagonal line over the north end of the Williams place. Winds to the side of the twister would blow Joe and Ida’s pink and blue 1950s metal armchairs off the front porch and deliver them to Agnes Moore a quarter of a mile down the gravel road. Worse, the tornado would level all but one wall and the bathroom of Robert’s cousin Pam’s house. Pam’s mother would ride out the storm in that bathroom and live to tell the tale. Pam, her father, and her siblings would not be at home, although her father and her sister would be in a car approaching the house down the mile-long driveway to the north and would witness the calamity. Viewing the wreckage afterward, Robert would change his mind about wanting to see a twister. He would decide that he never wanted to observe—with scientific detachment—a tornado in progress. He would rather learn about such violent storms in the context of a museum or laboratory.

23. The Watchdogs ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

Ida was exasperated. The foxes kept taking her chickens, even though she closed the chickens in the hog farrowing house that Robert had built in Mr. Coffman’s class.

“Joe, I think I’ll give the last three chickens to Mrs. Bowen,” Ida said over her bowl of oatmeal one morning.

Joe, who had raised chickens for a good portion of his income during much of his early adult life, said, “It would be strange not to have any chickens. We’d have to buy all our eggs.”

“We’re doing that now,” Ida said, adding raisins and brown sugar to her oatmeal. “I’d like to try guinea hens, instead.”

“I would suppose the foxes would consider guinea hens as succulent as chickens,” Joe suggested, pouring milk on his cornflakes.

Robert, who had miraculously escaped having to eat oatmeal, was having cornflakes with the boys’ father while Charles had oatmeal with their mother. Robert could hardly wait to discover where the conversation would lead.

“People who always have to be right can’t learn anything new,” Ida, the former teacher, responded, smiling.

“What are guinea hens?” Robert asked.

“Guinea fowl are birds about the size of chickens,” Joe replied.

“Mrs. Bowen has some keets that she wants to give me,” Ida said. “Her guinea hens hid their nests so well that she didn’t find them in time, and now she has too many keets.”

“I guess we should try guineas,” Joe said.

“They’re better than watchdogs,” Ida added, encouragingly. “They’ll let us know if we have prowlers.”

“I doubt if we would ever have a prowler out here in the country,” Joe said.

“‘People who always have to be right—’” Charles began.

“Hush!” Ida interrupted. “I can talk to your father that way, but you can’t.” She turned toward Joe. “‘—can’t learn anything new, ’” she finished. After a second, everyone laughed heartily.

So the Rhode family had no more chickens, but Ida, Joe, Charles, and Robert had guineas aplenty.

As the keets grew into full guineas, they were slate-colored with white dots in swirls and lines all over their feathered plumpness. Their heads were mostly white. The dark lines over their eyes could have been eyebrows, imparting to their glance an air of being perpetually indignant. Perhaps they were vexed most of the time! Their pale yellow and pink beaks were rather thick. Red wattles curved out to the sides like ribbon bows. Pink and yellow helmets stuck up like folded newspaper hats. The skinny legs and long toes were the same yellowish pink.

Rather than screaming whenever they saw a fox, the guineas screeched at anything that moved.

On an early spring day when impossibly dark clouds surrounded small apertures of transparently blue sky and beams of sunshine like those of spotlights made bright yellow patches along the fern-green fencerows, the guineas shrieked at each change of light and shade in the heavens and on the earth. Really, they needed no provocation to scream bloody murder. Whenever the spirit moved them, they screeched!

The guineas defined the word flock, epitomizing what was meant when “flock” was coined. Where one went, all went. Schools of fish on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom could not have changed direction in synchronized movements any more uniformly than guineas. First, they would scurry toward a hedge apple tree, but, for no apparent reason, they would veer right or left in unison, squawking the while.

Even though they had been kept for long periods inside the farrowing house to teach the guineas where home was located, they ignored the house as soon as they were permitted to roam freely. If the Williams place had not been an oasis of trees and slough in the midst of broad fields with neighbors not nearby, the guineas might well have gone vacationing down the road, sampling what each farmstead had to offer. Joe reasoned that the only factor pressuring them to stay put was the general emptiness in all directions.

The guineas preferred to roost in the hedge apple trees at night.

“How they avoid the foxes is beyond me!” Joe exclaimed to Ida, whose face broke into a big smile of satisfaction every time she gave consideration to her guinea hens.

Robert had been surprised to hear guineas in the uppermost branches of the hedge apple trees at dusk. That they made their way up that high and back down again was remarkable for such large birds.

While guinea is said to taste like pheasant, Charles and Robert never found out, as Ida would not have put one of her pet guineas in a roasting pan for love or money.

The small tan guinea eggs with their brown speckles, though, were broken and their contents fried or scrambled for breakfast.

“See?” Ida happily said to Joe. “We don’t have to buy so many eggs at the grocery store now.”

“People who always have to be right,” Joe said, not completing the sentence but winking at Ida.

Like turkeys, the guineas formed circles around anything foreign, such as a frog. “Chi-chi-chi-chi-chi!” they cried in a huff, their heads ogling for a better view, their feet lifting and redeploying continually. At feeding time, they could form circles around the farmer with the feed bucket. “Chi-chi-chi-chi-chi!”

Robert became accustomed to the guineas’ shrill outcries. To him, they sounded like an old disk—not equipped with wheels—being pulled along a gravel road. Their noise became part of the environment. It became more noticeable when they quit screaming for an extended period of time than when they screeched.

Ida could not have been happier with her decision to acquire the guineas.  

   

22. The Snow and the Neighbor ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

A winter came with snow that would not quit. Relentlessly, layer was added to layer with no single storm that would qualify for the record books but with freezing temperatures that permitted the snow to deepen inexorably.

Joe, Charles, and Robert trudged through narrow pathways to the barn to feed the cows. Although there was still plenty of water in the tank for the cattle to drink, Joe hoped there would be a break in the weather soon, so that he could start the Minneapolis–Moline Z and haul water from the well by the house to the tank beside the barn.

School was cancelled …

… and snow kept falling. Now no pathway existed. Only a shallow depression in the snow …

A day dawned bright and cold. Joe had just entered the house from the enclosed porch, where he had removed his boots and the first of two denim coats. He was still wearing one denim coat and his cap with the earflaps down. His nose and cheeks were rosy.

“Here’s something you won’t see every year,” Joe said to Robert while turning on the burner beneath the tea kettle and meticulously measuring Maxim instant coffee into a cup.

“What’s that?” Robert asked, looking up from reading Macbeth.

“Just come outside with me and take a look—after I warm up with a cup of coffee.”

While Joe sipped his coffee from a teaspoon, Robert wondered what was so extraordinary that his father wanted him to see it.

When Joe was ready to venture back outside, Robert donned his heaviest winter coat and his stocking cap. He put on his boots before stepping from the enclosed porch into the wintry landscape beyond the door. With an effort, Joe and Robert plodded in front of the shop building, their boots descending through only the top layers of snow and coming to rest precariously on lower layers.

“Well, what do you see?” Joe asked.

Robert squinted against the light reflected from the whitest of snows extending to an indistinct horizon of blowing glitter.

“Nothing,” Robert replied. “Just snow.”

Robert glanced at the maple tree and at the openings into the old garage appearing to be two small caves in a mound of snow.

“Nothing,” he repeated.

“That’s right!” Joe said. “Where are the fence posts?”

Robert turned toward where the road and the posts along it should have been. Nothing indicated that a road lay beneath the snow, and the posts had vanished. For a split second, Robert thought of asking where the posts had gone, but then he realized that they were under a blanket of snow. He could walk on snow above the fences!

“Wow!” was the full complement of his response.

If Robert half closed his eyes, he could detect slight waves and ridges formed by wind in the snow’s surface.

“Seldom does the snow get so deep that the tops of the fence posts are hidden,” Joe commented.

Several days passed. One morning, Robert looked through the picture window and saw a line of raisins through the snow. Suddenly, he realized they were not raisins but the tops of the posts along the road. The snow was melting!

Later—precisely when all that snow melted—the spring rains poured down as if the heavens were giant water bags that had burst.

School was cancelled …

… for mud! Rain kept falling, transforming the gravel roads into impassable corridors of mud. Vehicles mired and were abandoned.

During a deluge, Robert stared through the picture window. The widely spaced creeks and ditches in the flat land could not carry away the water fast enough, and the house, shop, and old garage appeared to be on an island in the middle of a lake.

The Rhode family’s nearest neighbor was Agnes Moore. She was in her eighties, but she enjoyed complete mobility and was so active that she seemed much younger than her years. Every sunup, except on the coldest days of the winter, she walked briskly down the gravel road with her black Spaniel, Lady, by her side. In the stillness of daybreak, Robert heard Agnes’ footsteps crunching the gravel road. “Agnes is up,” thought Robert.

Along with playing piano for the Methodist Church, Robert worked with the Vacation Bible School. Agnes served as an instructor. Each morning, Robert picked her up and drove her to the church.

Agnes taught the youngsters to make churches by gluing Popsicle sticks to milk cartons. Meanwhile, she and Robert designed a more elaborate structure of their own. After a few days of diligent gluing, their Popsicle church was a veritable cathedral!

At about the same time, Agnes called Joe to ask him to use her gun to drop raccoons that Lady had treed in Agnes’ apple orchard. Robert thought, “A lot of good that will do! Dad doesn’t know anything about guns.” Ida did not permit guns on the farm, as she was afraid of accidents involving children. Joe walked up the road to Agnes’ farm. Soon, Robert heard two light reports of a gun, so he thought he might as well go to see if Dad had had any luck. Robert met Agnes and Joe at her door. She was putting her gun away.

“I heard only two shots,” Robert commented.

“That’s all it took,” Joe said.

Seeing Robert’s look of amazement, Agnes asked, “Don’t you know that your father has always been a crack shot?”

Robert felt like Scout learning about Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Back when Joe was a lad, he trained himself to be an excellent marksman. Given Ida’s proscription against guns, Robert had had no cause to discover Joe’s skill.

Agnes provided another link to Joe’s past, for she had remembered his ability with firearms. Agnes was also a link to the community’s future through the lessons she taught to the children in the Vacation Bible School. Little by little, Robert came to appreciate how remarkable Agnes was and how fascinating her life had been. Robert came to learn that she and her husband, who predeceased her by many years, had built the tidy house that Robert often visited. Overlooking the kitchen on the ground level was a higher living room accessible by a few steps and bordered by a neatly turned railing. Until Robert discovered that Agnes and her husband had planned and constructed their house, Robert thought that it might be another of the pre-packaged houses that Sears had sold in the early 1900s. The excellence of the craftsmanship and the high polish of the woodwork reminded him of Sears houses. On several winter mornings, Ida sent Robert to deliver fresh baked goods to Agnes’ door. Robert enjoyed the pleasant warmth of Agnes’ wood-burning stove and the coziness of the home that she had created with her own two hands.

Even during the most isolated periods when snow or mud kept Robert from driving anywhere, he had only to look to the east to feel that he and his family were not alone. There stood Agnes’ comfortable house, her perfectly maintained barn with its bright red paint, and her well-designed garage nestled beside rows of apple trees.

21. The Storm and the Show ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

Joe, Ida, Charles, and Robert were watching a singing act on The Ed Sullivan Show in the kitchen that was also a family room while listening to the sleet, now like tiny shards of glass pinging against the windows, now like the tiniest brass bells sounding, and again like handfuls of sand being flung across the panes. Abruptly, the TV went dark, as did the house.

Everyone sat silently for the moments necessary to come to the realization that the electric service had stopped.

Joe summarized the now obvious fact: “Well, I guess our lights are out.” He set his teaspoon beside his coffee cup, and, as he could see neither, he struck the cup a loud blow.

“Careful, Joe,” said Ida.

He carefully scooted his chair back from the kitchen table and stumbled toward the Hoosier, where he opened a drawer and removed a flashlight. He went to the enclosed porch and returned with his Van Camp kerosene lantern, which he soon had lit. Charles borrowed the flashlight, went to his room, and slowly brought his Aladdin lamp with its mantle of hanging ash. The lamp made its way to the kitchen table without disturbing the delicate mantle. Charles lit the lamp, and, soon enough, the mantle was a brilliant star that nobody could look at without wincing. Charles gingerly placed the frosted glass shade over the lamp, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

“No telling how long we’ll be without electricity,” Joe said.

Back when the family lived in town, occasional lapses in the electrical service had occurred. One time, an ice storm caused a long delay. The lights came back on in the night. The next morning, Joe discovered that the hot wire was lying on the ground and that Spot had been jumping over it again and again as the dog patrolled the corners of the yard. The instances of being without lights were more frequent and more sustained in the country.

Ida cut apples and sliced wedges of cheese for everyone; then she produced a card deck. Joe, Charles, and Robert gathered around the brightly lit kitchen table and played euchre. For a Methodist, Ida could sure play a mean hand of cards! Joe and Ida had belonged to the Euchre Club for many years. Quite often, Ida brought home the top prize while Joe earned the booby prize.

During the blackout, Charles was Joe’s partner; Robert, Ida’s.

“Pick them up, Robert. I’m going alone,” Ida said more than once.

From having played many times, Robert was well trained. He knew never to trump Ida’s ace, and he always led the next suit of the same color.

Ida and Robert won the first game. Joe and Charles wanted revenge. The euchre match continued in the light of the Aladdin lamp, until it was bedtime for the senior and the sophomore who had to board Glen J. Brutus’ bus the next morning.

“Well, Ida,” Joe said, smiling and touching Ida’s arm, “once again, you showed us how it’s done.”

The electricity came back on in the wee hours of the morning.

The next afternoon, Robert sat at the Yamaha piano and composed a short piece of music for the offertory. During his freshman year, Robert had become the principal pianist for the Methodist Church, and he liked scoring his own compositions for the time when the plates were passed down the pews. Ida walked into the living room. Drying her hands on a dish towel, she sat in the rocking chair that had once belonged to Grandma Rhode. “Have you decided whether to try out?” she asked Robert.

The Delta Theta Chapter of Kappa Kappa Kappa had contracted with Jerome H. Cargill Producing Company of New York City to perform a variety show on stage at the Attica High School Gymnasium on April 3rd and 4th—with proceeds donated for a new Coronary Care Unit at the Community Hospital in Williamsport. The revue would sport the name Hello Follies!, a rather unlikely echo of the title of the musical Hello, Dolly! The director, Vance Henry, moved about the United States, rapidly training local talent to present a full-length program in two acts with an intermission, each town or city coining its own title. Henry was looking for a pianist.

“I’m only a sophomore,” Robert said. “The show probably needs somebody more professional.”

“I think you should go,” Ida said. “It never hurts to try.”

“Alright,” Robert said.

Robert already had his driver’s license: a fact that annoyed Charles, whom Ida had made to wait until his seventeenth birthday. With her second son, Ida was relaxing her caution.

“You can take the Pontiac to your audition,” she said.

Joe had purchased a used 1967 tan-colored Pontiac Bonneville. On Saturday morning, Robert drove from Warren County into Fountain County over the Paul Dresser Bridge crossing the Wabash River, lying peacefully in its broad floodplain, and toward the Harrison Hills Country Club in Attica, where Henry was holding a dance rehearsal in the Tudor Revival clubhouse. When Henry took a five-minute break, Robert introduced himself.

“Oh, yes!” Henry said, holding his glasses in one hand and smoothing his dark hair back with the other. “I’m looking for a pianist who can play the scores effectively. Take a seat at the piano.” He opened a rehearsal binder to the chorus of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Shall We Dance?”

Robert began the song.

After only a few notes, Henry exclaimed, “No, no! The tempo is faster.” He cradled a clipboard against his argyle cardigan and smacked it with a pencil like a noisy metronome. He sang, “Shall … we … dance, bu—bump  bump, bump, on a bright cloud of music shall we fly, bu—bump  bump, bump.”

“That’s a little too fast,” Robert thought but said nothing. He began again, holding to Henry’s speed.

“Better!” Henry said, tossing the clipboard onto the piano. He commanded, “Now, jab it more! Bu—bump  bump, bump!”

Robert obeyed.

“Louder!” Henry ordered.

Robert did as he was told.

“That’s great!” Henry interrupted. “You’re my pianist. Kay will give you a rehearsal schedule.”

With that, Henry spun on his heel and walked briskly away. Robert caught up with him.

“Do you mean that I will accompany rehearsals but someone else will play the shows?” Robert asked.

“No!” Henry exclaimed in the tone of a director with a million things on his mind. “You’ll be the pianist for the shows.”

Robert walked back to the piano, closed the binder, and took it with him.

For rehearsals at Attica High School on school days, Robert drove to the drive-in on South Council Street to have a quick hamburger. He felt very grown up to be eating on his own. After gulping down dinner, Robert drove on to the school. Seating in the gymnasium stood taller than what he was accustomed to in the gym at Pine Village. To Robert, the gym in Attica felt cavernous. He wondered if he would be nervous when all those seats were filled.

The performers were devoted to doing their best. One fellow, though, worried Robert. The gentleman, who had chosen to sing a solo, had an uncertain sense of rhythmic exactness. Robert could not predict what might happen.

The pit orchestra sounded professional, and the sets and costumes were all they needed to be.

The audiences were huge. For both performances, the gym was packed. Robert felt a healthy nervousness—not the fatal kind—and, the moment he began playing “Shall We Dance?” with the Bu—bump  bump, bump, his confidence banished all anxieties.

On the evenings of the shows—to Robert’s great relief—the singer with ambivalence about where the beats should fall turned in creditable performances.

Talent in music ran deep in the class ahead of Robert’s. Becci, Jill, Darci, Dia, Debbie, Gail, and Betsy formed a singing sensation known as “The Farmers’ Daughters.” By their senior year, their rendition of the 1941 hit “Chattanooga Choo Choo” was equal to the best anywhere. The Farmers’ Daughters brought top-notch musical entertainment to audiences in many towns and cities of the region. Had the singers been discovered—and had they recorded an LP—they easily could have gained a national following.

Like Big Pine Creek, music flowed through Benton, Warren, and Fountain Counties. From the heartfelt singing in the churches on Sunday morning, through the school bands, to the garage ensembles, to the homegrown performers whose talents and abilities rivaled the best on television, Pine Village’s fields were alive with the sound of music.