3. The Stage ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

Just then, Robert heard his father whistling as he opened the screen door to the east porch. Robert ran to help Joe put the round white filter in the special galvanized funnel that perfectly fit the opening in the top of the tall milk can. “Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s home from work we go,” Joe whistled, while he lifted the white enameled milk bucket with its red rim and poured the morning’s fragrant milk into the funnel. Robert heard the merry pinging of the filtered liquid dripping and splashing within the can.

Rubbing his sleepy eyes, Charles stood in the kitchen doorway and yawned.

“Let’s sit down to breakfast,” Ida said.

Tumblers of fresh milk with a layer of yellow cream having risen to the top were arranged around the table. Halves of pink grapefruits rested in bowls at each place around the table. Mounds of sugar on top of the grapefruits were slowly turning a pale gray as the juice mingled with the granules. While Joe, Robert, and Charles spooned out the pink segments, Ida fried eggs until the edges of the whites were crispy brown. As the toaster popped with a pleasant “ker-ching” sound, she quickly slathered homemade butter on the slices and distributed the hot toast to each person.

“Joe, I’m worried about the cows,” Ida said. “If they get out, they’ll fall in that hole.”

A deep hole ….

“There’s nothing to worry about,” said Joe. “They’re not going to get out. If they were going to break through the pasture fence, it wouldn’t be there. It’d be where that old panel is by the hog lot.”

By this time, Robert was walking well wherever and whenever he wanted. He was talking much more often and fluently. He had practically forgotten the fact that, only two years earlier, his parents had to carry him everywhere while his feet ached. He had indeed forgotten his preliminary reluctance to speak.

As Charles had begun to attend first grade at the school across the road from home, Robert wanted to go to school, but his mother said he couldn’t.

“You’re only four. You have to wait another year,” she said, repeatedly.

Every afternoon, Robert stood in the window in his parents’ bedroom and watched for his brother to come home from school. The window in that room commanded the best view of the long sidewalk that ran to the southwest door of the school from a point across the highway from the driveway where Joe’s 1950 Chevrolet was parked, and it permitted Robert to see Charles striding past the automobile in the driveway to the gate through their white-board fence into the yard, thence along a narrow sidewalk to the porch east of the kitchen. Robert could hear the new Zenith television airing a telecast from its position atop a green Formica table with silvery tubular legs in the kitchen corner.

The television had not yet entirely replaced the dark brown 1949 Philco Bakelite radio standing amid the strands of white pop beads on Ida’s dresser, but the newfangled “TV” had certainly captured the family’s attention.

While Robert pulled back the white gauzy curtains to wait for Charles to appear, he wondered what Charles was learning that day and why he, Robert, was not allowed to learn the lessons at the same time. He felt miffed that he had to stay home through the long mornings and the boring afternoons while Charles got to participate in what must surely be the pleasures of schooling.

Then Robert would see Charles walking down the driveway, and envious thoughts were shoved aside by eager anticipation of playing until suppertime. Robert would run around the foot of the bed, through the kitchen, to the porch to greet Charles as he came through the screen door.

On this day, Robert scurried to welcome Charles home from school.

“What do you want to do until it’s time for chores?” Robert asked.

“What did you learn at school today?” Ida asked.

Charles smiled while he unzipped his gray jacket and hung it up. “We learned to subtract, but then, I already knew how to do that,” he replied to his mother.

Ida, who had taught elementary school, cast a worried glance at Robert. “Maybe I’m teaching you too much at home,” she said.

Robert tried to get his brother’s attention. “But what do you want to do?” he prompted.

“We’ll make a stage out of Tinkertoys,” Charles finally answered.

While Charles changed from his school clothes to his everyday clothes, Robert poured the Tinkertoys from their cans onto the rug in the living room.

“We’ll need a way to hang curtains on both sides of the stage,” Charles said, as he began to place green sticks in plain wooden disks. Robert handed the stage-maker whatever parts he needed as he called for them.

In a short time, a representative proscenium arch and stage stood before them, although they did not yet know the term “proscenium arch.” It was rather unstable but functional.

Robert and Charles were familiar with stages because their parents had taken them for lessons at Allen’s Dance Studio across from the Journal and Courier newspaper office in Lafayette.

Charles brought two plastic toy cows from the shelves where the toys were piled, and he held one in each hand on the stage. To Robert’s delight, he made them dance.

“Now we need curtains,” Charles said. “Mom,” he called, as he strode into the kitchen, “we need curtains for our stage.”

Ida was up to her elbows in suds while doing dishes. She turned and smiled at her son while wiping her hands on a towel. She returned to the living room and admired the stage before going to her room to pull material from a basket. She cut the curtains from leftover lightweight cotton and showed Charles how to pleat it while Robert looked on. Next, she used a knitting needle to pull a string through the pleats of both curtains. When she held up the curtains by the string, both boys were enchanted.

Charles carefully tied the string to both sides of the proscenium arch. He and Robert gently pulled the curtains closed and applauded their work. Obeying Charles’ instructions, Robert pulled the curtains open while Charles held the dancing cows on the stage. The effect was dramatic! They could hardly wait to show their father when he came in to get them for the evening chores.

Joe was generous in his praise of the stage. He kindly sat through a matinee performance of the dancing bovines. Then he announced that it was time to feed the real cows. Robert thought that maybe, when all human beings were out of sight, the real cows danced.

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.

Vacation Bible School 2

After the Korean War (1950–1953), the country settled into a pattern of peace. To kids growing up in Pine Village, Indiana, life appeared sunny and secure. Attending Vacation Bible School at the Methodist Church was simply what kids did in the spring at about the time that farmers had finished planting.

Freshly Baked Cookies

A Highlight of Vacation Bible School

(The New Fun with Dick and Jane, 1956)

The morning temperatures were not too hot but just right for walking to the church, a brick building that stood near Pine Creek. The staff of volunteers included a few junior high or high school girls who assisted the young mothers that led us kids in lessons and songs. The time flew by. Soon, we caught glimpses of older women who were carrying trays as they entered the basement.

We could hardly wait for the invitation to form a line to receive our cookies! Women in my grandmother’s generation baked homemade treats for us kids to enjoy. Each of us had two cookies. They were not modest offerings; instead, they were big, as if each baker were trying to outdo the others.

The kitchen area in the church basement was painted white, and the small windows near the ceiling diffused a pale sunlight reminiscent of a dairy barn. The natural scent of the cool lower level resembled the fragrance of old libraries. When the baked goods were displayed for us, the aromas of peanut butter and chocolate arose and wafted up the stairs. We greedily consumed raisin cookies prepared to perfection, brown sugar creations packed with rich chunks of melted chocolate, and sugar cookies as large as saucers with lemony sugar sparkling on top. I can close my eyes and see again the smiling faces of the cooks whose delight in life, apparently, was to serve us. They had our same last names because they were our grandmothers and our great aunts. They beamed as they noted how greatly we appreciated their handiwork.

We could not foresee the turbulent decade that followed. Time seemed to move more slowly back then. To us kids, the way of life that included cookies in the church basement during Vacation Bible School was the best way that had been devised and not likely to change. Everything seemed to have found its proper place within a tranquil world. Looking upon that past makes me wonder if I had enough appreciation for it at the time.