7. The Winter ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

When snow deep enough to build snowmen finally arrived, Ida chose a Saturday afternoon to take the boys outside to help her roll the snow and sculpt a snowwoman with arms akimbo and head tilted. She added an apron. She tied a scarf over the head and under the chin. She stuck walnuts for blouse buttons from the waist to the neck. More walnuts made eyes and a mouth. From across the street, Beulah Jones called, “Is that you, Ida?”

“No,” the boys’ mother said. “I’d have a dust rag in one hand and a mop in the other.” Beulah laughed.

“A woman’s work is never done,” Beulah commented.

Having returned to the kitchen to get warm, Ida and her sons laid their brown gloves in a row along the top of the heating stove to dry. While dollops of snow slid sizzling from the gloves, their fingers tingled.

Later that same day, Robert and Charles went back outside and shuffled along, making trails in the snow so that they could play Fox and Goose. One trail ended in a circular area that they tramped down and that they called the goose’s nest. Robert was the goose. He waited in the nest until Charles was at the point farthest away. Robert then came out of the nest and ran along one of the trails. As the fox, Charles chose interconnecting trails to try to catch Robert, who tried to outsmart him and get back to the nest before he could be tagged. Eventually, though, Robert was tagged, and became the fox for the next round.

On January days with the thermometer dipping below zero, Joe used a butter knife to work raggedy strips of torn flannel cloth into the cracks around the doors so as to try to conserve heat from the stoves.

There were two Norge dark-brown stoves that burned heating oil. One was in the living room, and the other was in the kitchen. Both stood on squares of metal with rolled edges that were made for the purpose. The stove in the living room had a mica window on the side. Whenever Robert had a nightmare and wanted to be with his parents, he had to go from the boys’ bedroom through the corner of the living room to get to his parents’ bedroom, but Robert was afraid to pass by the stove window. In the dark, the wicked flames scared him. Sometimes, he knelt shivering for what seemed an hour before he could summon the courage to run past the window. He would shake his father’s elbow until Joe would awaken enough to reach over, pick Robert up, and put him between him and Robert’s mother. Sandwiched between his parents, Robert felt safe.

On wintry weekends, if the sun were shining on powdery snow, Jim Eberle would harness his horses to a sleigh and go riding around the school playground. Robert watched in fascination from across State Route 26. With bells jingling, the pair of light brown horses appeared to enjoy the exercise, and the riders in the sleigh obviously had a great time. Their laughter drifted across the road on the breezes that made the dust of snow twinkle in the sunshine. It was quite a picture: the red sleigh sliding along, the tan horses with a lively step, the feathery patches of snow sailing down from the pine boughs, and the bluest of blue shadows here and there.

Among Joe’s winter chores was keeping what he called the “horse tank” free of ice long enough for the cows to drink water. From the middle of the large galvanized metal tank protruded a rusty iron stove. With a poker, Joe would slide the lid open, toss lumps of coal inside, and stir up the fire before shoving the lid back in place. During the coldest stretches, even the water nearest the stove would glaze over. Joe used a hatchet to chop through the thinnest ice. The cows would nudge him out of their way so they could slurp the water with frozen chunks bobbing on the surface. The Holsteins had to stretch their necks to reach the watery circle surrounding the stove; the thick ice of the tank’s perimeter jutted up in places like a miniature version of Pine Creek.

Sometimes, to Robert’s delight, Charles would consent to pull the sled that their father had been given as a Christmas gift in 1926. Robert would ride while Charles tugged on the clothes line tied to the handle bar. Going on thirty-three years of age, the sled still pulled fairly easily when the snow was sufficiently slick. The other sled, which had been given to the boys’ grandmother in 1890 and had been built by her uncle, the blacksmith Tommy Eleazer Fenton, resisted being pulled. While there were hills for sledding near Pine Creek, Ida prohibited the boys from participating in such activity that she felt was too dangerous. When he was a boy, Joe hit his chin on the sled while dashing down a slope named “Loop the Loop.” Snow kept the cut from bleeding, but, when Joe returned home, his mother had to put gauze and a bandage on it. The boys’ father had a scar from that cut, and that was enough for the boys’ mother to warn them away from leaving the fenced yard to visit the hills along the creek.

Once, on a drive toward Rainsville, Ida pointed and yelled, “Stop the car!” Joe brought the Chevrolet to a halt. “It’s a deer!” she whispered in tones of awe. Robert and Charles looked in the direction of their mother’s hand. Standing on a bank of snow at the edge of a wood was a doe. If her ears had not twitched, she could have been described as a statue. There were no laws protecting deer. For many years, they had been hunted. Seeing one was a rare event! The family waited as long as the deer waited. The scene resembled a magnificent stage. The backdrop was the purple and tan and blue forest with snow lining the branches. In front, there arose the drift sparkling with millions of multicolored spangles. With grace and dignity, the deer watched with her soft, alert eyes. Eventually, she turned and slipped silently among the trees. “Wow!” Charles muttered.

On another occasion that winter, the boys were riding with their father in his GMC pickup. It was rated a half-ton model, but it had a ¾-ton bed. It was painted a pale silvery blue. It boasted a 1940s underdash heater that was an aftermarket installation by Glen Bisel, who had found it in a wrecked Oldsmobile car. The heater was shaped like a shield and had two doors with round metal doorknobs. When a door was opened—or even when the doors were closed—the heat poured out. Robert always sat between Joe and Charles on the bench seat. The heater was close to Robert’s knees. He compulsively drew his legs back into the seat as far from the heater as he could get.

Joe had driven north onto the true prairie that was even flatter than the land in the vicinity of Pine Village. He crossed a rail line that stretched perfectly straight in both directions and pulled onto the gravel in front of the tall elevator at Templeton.

“I thought you should see the steam engine while you still can,” Joe said to his sons, as they tumbled from the pickup.

In a building attached to one side of the towering elevator was a whispering steam engine with quietly revolving flywheel. Robert watched as the connecting rod transformed linear motion into circular motion. What seemed to Robert a massive mound of corncobs awaited use as fuel, along with coal as iridescent as ravens’ wings. Now and then a drip sizzled somewhere.

“It won’t be long before we switch over to a gasoline motor,” the engineer said to Joe.

“It won’t be half as much fun,” Joe said, smiling.

The engineer grinned and shook his head.

Joe had ensured that Charles and Robert would remember steam power. When Robert was only two, Joe had booked his family on one of the last trips of the steam locomotive named James Whitcomb Riley (after the famous Hoosier poet) from Lafayette to Indianapolis, where everyone had lunch with Joe’s father, Seymour, whom the boys always called “Grandpa Rhode.” Further, Joe was always pleased when the family car had to stop at the railroad tracks on the west side of West Lafayette to let a steam locomotive pull its train through the intersection. The occurrence happened often enough for Robert to remember the shiny black boilers and the distinctive sounds as the last of the steam locomotives chuffed through the crossing. Soon, diesels replaced the steam engines. Now Joe had gone the proverbial extra mile to have Robert and Charles witness a steam-powered elevator.

As the days grew gradually longer, Old Man Winter loosened his grip on the countryside. Icicles crashed to the ground, spots of black earth showed through melting snow, and everywhere were sounds of trickling water. Joe began to talk of plowing and disking. Robert thought how he would soon turn the ripe old age of five!

1. The Discovery ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

This novel is dedicated to my dear friend Eleanor Yeager Stewart, who helped me realize that the worlds of our childhood were never somewhere else but always right within us. Here is part of my childhood world—almost exactly the way it was!

The tall foxtail of July waved like ornamental grasses above him. Across the road to the northeast stood the school with the grades and the high school all in one building made mostly of metal. Two long, angling sidewalks approached the two sets of doors spaced along the south front of the red-roofed one-story school. The white paint on the exterior walls made dusty spots on the fingertips when it was touched, and the scrubby evergreens along the foundation gave off a pleasant mid-summer scent. Straight to the north, dappled shadows played across the porch of Beulah Jones’ house surrounded by old maples. The drive to the parking lot between the school and the gymnasium curved past sawed-off poles spaced to deter traffic from entering the playground. Behind the gym was a fringe of trees bordering Pine Creek. Had he been taller, he might have seen Beulah in the vegetable garden tucked behind her home. She wore a straw hat and pretty gloves made for gardening. Her white hair curled stylishly beneath the hat’s broad brim. She seemed perfectly at ease bending over her tomatoes and hunkering down to pull the weeds among her onions.

The sky was the pale blue shade of a hazy summer. Rows of cumulus clouds floated slowly toward the east—so slowly that their motion was almost undetectable. Now and then, the rasping crescendo of a cicada in the nearby catalpa tree caught his attention before the sound trailed away. His mother, Ida, was hoeing industriously in her large garden. Plenty of hoeing was needed in July, for the ground had hardened under the baking sunshine and firmly gripped the roots of the weeds that were shooting upward and outward at an alarming rate each day. Unlike Beulah, his mother wore no hat. The tight curls of her “perm” glistened black while she threw her sun-reddened shoulders into the work of hacking away at the pigweed and the lamb’s quarters.

He couldn’t see his mother, either, even though she was only thirty feet away. He couldn’t see the houses of Pine Village in an arc from the north to the west. His mother’s garden on the south side of State Route 26 and the playground on the north side defined the east edge of the town. The cozy homes nestled securely among the shade trees. Robins sailed down from the low branches to pull worms from the lawns, and katydids droned pleasantly in the foliage. Occasionally, pickups with curving fenders and livestock panels around the beds ambled along the highway. Horses in the narrow meadow behind Jim Eberle’s house whinnied happily.

He saw only the nodding brushes of the foxtail all around him and a spot of blue sky and white cloud above. Ida had stamped her sandaled feet in the thick growth of foxtail until she had hollowed out a “playpen” for little Robert, who had just turned two. The weeds were impenetrable there in shade of the lone catalpa on the south edge of the garden, and she knew that Robert could go nowhere. He sat with his feet almost together and his dimpled knees to either side. He indolently played with the long stems that his mother had trod.

Suddenly, the weeds parted and eyes stared at Robert. His blue eyes must have registered just as much surprise as he saw in the blue eyes that looked back at him. To get his mother’s attention, Robert shouted. She dropped her hoe and came running as fast as she could between the rows of potatoes. Soon, her face with the glasses almost slipping off her nose peered down from the circle of sky above Robert.

“It’s a kitty!” she exclaimed, reaching downward and scooping up the ivory-colored kitten, which mewed, much to Robert’s delight. The fur was scarcely any lighter than Robert’s hair, for he was a towhead. Ida set down the kitten only long enough to lift Robert in one arm while she reached for the kitten again with her free hand. Taking long strides so that Robert wouldn’t get too heavy, Ida rushed toward the house. When she reached the gate that leaned from the corner of the old smokehouse, her steps were easier in the mowed grass on the other side. She swung open the screened door of the breezeway between the smokehouse, now a storage room, and the kitchen. She was glad to set Robert down while she kept a firm hold on the kitten.

“We’ll feed him some cream,” she said, disappearing into the kitchen and soon reappearing with a saucer in hand. There in the breezeway, she placed the saucer before the wobbly kitten and poured a little cream that she had drawn from the separator just that morning. It was a Marvel Gravity Dilution Cream Separator made by Superior Sheet Metal Works Company of Indianapolis, as a silvery plate on the dark blue three-legged can proclaimed. Even though Robert’s feet hurt, as they did whenever he stood, he hardly noticed the ache because he was so entranced with the kitten, which overcame its fear and flicked its little pink tongue into the fresh cream. “After he has drunk all he wants, you can pet him a little,” said Ida.

Silently, she and little Robert watched the kitten contentedly lapping the surface of the liquid. It drank almost every drop. Then Ida showed Robert how to pet the creature lightly so as not to hurt it.

“What shall we call him?” Ida asked Robert. Because the kitten was so soft, Robert said, “Fuzz.” Ida laughed. “That’s a good name for him!” she agreed.

At that moment, Robert’s father came to the porch on the opposite side of the kitchen from the breezeway. “Joe, come here,” Ida called to her husband. “Look what Robert found!”

In his dark blue overalls and short-sleeved shirt, bleached almost white, Joe hurried through the kitchen and out to the breezeway. He took off his seed corn cap and ran his hand over his balding head. His eyes twinkled and his face broke into a smile. “Well, where did you find a kitten?” he asked his wife.

“Robert found him,” Ida explained. “I heard Robert yell, and here was the kitten standing by Robert in the weeds. His name is Fuzz. Robert named him.”

“We’re going to keep him, are we?” Joe wanted to know.

“He’s Robert’s kitten,” Ida answered.

Robert looked up at his father’s merry eyes and his mother’s big smile. He could hardly believe his luck in getting to have such a miraculous thing as a soft, warm kitten, which had begun to purr under his careful touch. Robert would remember that day for the rest of his life.