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.
