16. The Old House ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

The birthday gift that Joe presented to Ida in 1968 was a set of tickets for the family to laugh along with comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara in the Edward C. Elliott Hall of Music at Purdue University on May the 11th. To Robert, one of the funniest moments occurred when Anne walked down the steps into the audience, sat in the lap of a gentleman wearing a mustache, and said, “Do you know there’s a wooly worm crawling across your face?”

Before leaving the farm in Pine Village, Joe had sold the Holsteins—all but Buttercup, who had grown to quite an old age and had passed away shortly before the move. It took Joe, Charles, and Robert a long time to dig a hole that was large enough for her to receive a decent burial. Joe had decided not to spend the fortune required to build on the Williams place a dairy barn conforming to the federal regulations recently enacted to ensure cleanliness of milk: hence, the loss of his small Holstein herd. Robert still had his string tie topped by a Cloisonné Holstein to serve as a reminder of the family’s sweet-tempered dairy cows.

Robert felt sorry to leave the old house that had sheltered his ancestors for two generations before he was born and had watched over his immediate family. He took a last look at the front porch, scene of so many conversations and so much laughter. He looked along the line of the white board fence. He took the time to say silent goodbyes to all the trees, including the giant catalpa by the road. Then he turned to see the tennis court and basketball net that the school had added a few years earlier. There, Joe, Don, Charles, Robert, Matt, and Lon had played basketball together. Joe had made his last examination inside the house and had concluded that nothing was being left behind by accident. He and Robert then slid onto the front seat of the nondescript Bel Air and drove away for the last time.

Robert’s father was pensive. Joe had not slept well in the new home. He felt cut off from the town that had been his secure haven all his life. He feared he might be making unwise decisions.

Ida had been right: Joe felt homesick and scared.

Meanwhile, Robert turned the new leaf. He was eager to discover where the story led. During his free minutes, he roamed the Williams place, taking the keenest interest in every feature. He studied raccoon tracks in the mud around the pools that the spring rains had made in the driveway winding back to the fields. He explored the line of hedge apple trees between Joe’s farm and the McFatridge farm to the east. He walked the perimeter of his father’s 115-acre farm that took the shape of a narrow rectangle stretching almost a mile to the north, where one corner touched that of the Brutus home place. He found gelatinous masses of frog eggs and mudpuppy eggs in the deep ditches along the gravel road.

Behind the original garage—a small open-ended building made of corrugated metal—Robert inspected a set of wooden wheels rotting away in the undergrowth not far from the slough that the Pekin ducks were enjoying. Suddenly, he discovered a large cocoon of a silkworm moth. It was hanging from a ragweed stalk. He saw nothing to suggest that the pupa inside was not viable. He carefully broke the stem and carried the cocoon to his room.

Within a few days, one of the largest luna moths that Robert would ever see emerged from the cocoon and hung suspended until its pale green wings, measuring a full five inches across, had expanded and dried. It seemed to have captured moonlight in its coloring. 

The summer felt uneasy, culminating in rioting against the Vietnam War by protesters in the streets and parks of Chicago during the political convention there.

Cultural changes were occurring at a fearful rate, as could be heard in the music that young people liked, seen in the pages of glossy magazines, and witnessed in the news that the television proclaimed in dark tones each evening. Robert did not feel isolated from these events by living on a farm with the gentle breezes of sunny days and the gleaming stars of summer nights; on the contrary, he often felt that he was not isolated enough!

One of the rare bright spots was the television coverage of the moon landing. After that, Robert looked at the silvery disc in the night sky and wondered.

In the country, Robert could not spend a merry hour on his roller skates with the key dangling by a string around his neck nor squander a happy afternoon on his green Schwinn bicycle. He mused on these facts while he and Charles awaited the bus on a chilly fall morning. The only sounds were those made by Spot foraging among fallen leaves in the fenced yard behind them; otherwise, the world lay perfectly still. Robert thought back to the brief graduation ceremony acknowledging completion of eighth grade. He was now a freshman in high school, after all.

For Freshman Dress-Up Day, the senior who drew Robert’s name for the initiation, wrote, “ … I realized there was a need to let you know what you will be wearing. 1. Old coveralls with ‘69’ painted in red on the front and back part of the upper leg, 2. Workshoes, and 3. T-shirt with ‘Property of Seniors’ written on back. … Consider yourself lucky.” Robert did. Several of his classmates had to wear outrageous getups.

Robert helped his father farm, and he spent evenings doing homework and practicing piano and clarinet. He decided he didn’t mind becoming an adult—which was inevitable—but he missed his skates and his bike.

From far away to the east came the hum of the motor and the crunch of the tires on the gravel. Glen J. Brutus was driving the school bus. In anticipation, Charles and Robert edged nearer to the road.

Eventually, the bus approached but did not slow down. Just as Glen passed the boys, he put on the brakes. Charles and Robert hurried down the road to the west, where the bus had come to a halt. Glen’s smile was infectious. “I can’t get used to stopping back there,” he said to the boys, as they took seats near the front.

Frosty gray fields stretched to either side of the byway. Glen had to make only a few more stops before reaching the school. Robert looked forward to his English class, for he loved to read and fancied himself a writer. Band rehearsal likewise captured his attention every bit as much as English inspired his imagination. Mr. Davis had moved away, and Mr. Tony Boots had taken over the baton of the Marching Pine Knots, who marched in sock feet on the basketball floor during the halfway point of the home games. The school was too small to host a football team, even though the town was known for having had a famous community football team in the early years of the sport

That team of yesteryear made national news. The legendary Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe carried the ball for Pine Village. In 1914, Pine Village beat an Indianapolis team by a score of 111 to 0. As the manager of the team, Claire Rhode, one of Joe’s relatives, began hiring top athletes from Purdue University, Indiana University, Notre Dame, and the colleges of Wabash and DePauw to play a few games as members of the Pine Village team, which was undefeated from 1903 until 1916. The famous Pine Village team was an independent organization that would be called a pro team today.

On the 20th of December in 1971, Robert would publish a story in the Pine Village High School newspaper, which he would serve as editor. Entitled “Football Was Alive Here Then,” his article would feature his interviews with his great uncle Charles “Charlie” J. Rhode and Eli Fenters, who played for the team. The title of Robert’s article would be a quotation from Great Uncle Charlie. What must it have been like to play a game shoulder to shoulder with Jim Thorpe? Thorpe played one game for Pine Village, which defeated the Purdue All-Stars by a score of 29 to 0. An anecdote often repeated when Robert was growing up might have been based on fact. Supposedly, Thorpe complimented Eli Fenters as the best “natural quarterback” Thorpe had ever encountered.

In Robert’s time in junior high and high school, where would there have been enough boys to form a football team? So the band’s halftime shows occurred noisily indoors on the basketball court.

Music filled the life of the family. On the 4th of December in 1968 in the Edward C. Elliott Hall of Music at Purdue, Joe, Ida, Charles, and Robert heard the Man of La Mancha with David Atkinson, who replaced Richard Kiley on Broadway, performing along with the national touring company. The rousing themes inspired Robert. One of his defining characteristics, after all, was to entertain apparently impossible dreams.

On the weekend, the family drove to Lafayette for Charles and Robert’s piano lessons. Miss Beegle had abandoned her studio at Allen’s Dance Studio and had begun teaching from her home, where she had two grand pianos side by side. While Charles had his half-hour lesson, Robert crossed the street to the public library, an impressive building with a long flight of stairs. He passed the circulation desk and entered the open stacks in back. He walked straight to the shelf containing all the books that Hoosier author Gene Stratton–Porter had written, and he selected them one by one, until he had read most of them. He always took a seat in one of the deep window sills on the north wall of the stacks and eagerly opened his book. One of his favorites was Moths of the Limberlost, a nonfiction title boasting many photographic prints that Stratton–Porter had painted by hand in spectacular color. Gracing the pages were luna moths of the same moonbeam hue that Robert had witnessed. Many other large moths in dazzling tints were fully represented.

At the end of thirty minutes, Robert put the book back where it belonged, crossed the street again, and entered Miss Beegle’s lovely Victorian home for his music lesson.

“We’re going for Big Macs,” Joe announced when he and Ida picked up Charles and Robert on the sidewalk in front of Miss Beegle’s porch. Joe drove over the Brown Street Bridge and into the McDonald’s parking lot. The family took a booth while Joe ordered for everyone. Soon, he came carrying a tray filled with Styrofoam boxes. Even though the new, large sandwiches caught the eye, Robert could not be sure if he preferred a simple hamburger with plenty of mustard.

Next, the family bought groceries at Smitty’s. Into the cart went milk and butter because there were no more dairy cows at home. Then there came the eighteen-mile drive back to the farm. Robert liked lying down, so that he could see only the treetops. He would call out to Charles the landmarks that Robert thought the car was passing, and Charles would confirm or deny Robert’s guesses. Catching the Goose Creek Bridge was easy to infer from the sound of crossing, and naming Indian Hill was simple to do from the motion of the car slowly winding around the steep slopes, but the long stretches through the flat countryside were challenging.

“Are we near the road to Otterbein?” Robert would ask.

“Nowhere near it,” Charles would state matter-of-factly.

Robert would wonder where he was on the road that linked the city of pianos, libraries, Big Macs, and milk cartons to the country of moths, mudpuppies, frosty fields, and shimmering stars.