10. The Blacksmith and the Veterinarian ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

Sometimes, wires get crossed, and a person carries a memory that is really two or three memories that don’t belong together.

So it was with Robert, who always conflated a poem and two verses. The first was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Village Blacksmith,” which begins

Under a spreading chestnut tree

The village smithy stands;

The smith, a mighty man is he,

With large and sinewy hands …

The second was George Orwell’s twisted snippet of verse in Nineteen Eighty-Four, which Robert read in high school and which goes

Under the spreading chestnut tree

I sold you and you sold me:

There lie they, and here lie we

Under the spreading chestnut tree.

In grade school, Mrs. Thrush had taught Robert’s class a song based on a nursery rhyme that called upon the students to use rhythmic gestures with the verses. The song was repeated but, during each repetition, a line was no longer sung and was replaced with the gestures only, until, on the final repetition, there was no singing whatsoever and only the gesturing in place of the melody. The song went

Under the spreading chestnut tree

Where we sit both you and me,

Oh how happy we will be,

Under the spreading chestnut tree.

By putting the three together, Robert always remembered that one of the two people under the chestnut tree was a happy blacksmith. Whenever Robert thought of the happy blacksmith, he pictured Tony Arrigo, the blacksmith in Pine Village when Robert was growing up.

If Joe needed welding, he turned to Tony, whose good nature never failed to impress Robert. In his grimy welder’s cap and his heavy apron, Tony would greet Joe, Charles, and Robert with a smile that looked all the brighter for the smudgy dust that often necessarily accumulated on Tony’s face. The blacksmith shop had belonged to Joe’s relative Thomas “Tommy” Eleazer Fenton, who had passed away in 1929. When he was in the early grades, Robert played with the lengths of filler rod lying in the dust in front of Tony’s shop. Robert poked them in the ground to make palisades around imaginary forts.

Years earlier, Glen J. Brutus had driven to Rockville, Indiana, to see a 23–90 Baker steam traction engine that had been built in 1923. It was parked beside a jailhouse to act as an emergency heating plant. Glen had returned to Pine Village and had told T. S. “Windy” Stingle about the engine, which Windy had bought. The original flywheel had been replaced with a Reeves flywheel. Windy had stored the engine alongside Tony’s shop, where Windy had planned to put new tubes in the boiler. The engine had rested there for years, until Alvin Kline of Millersburg, Ohio, acquired it.

Tony didn’t seem to mind having the Baker become a permanent exhibit. He was always a happy blacksmith!

On a cold morning in the dead of winter, Joe drove to Doc Cullop’s home, and Doctor Richard H. Cullop, the veterinarian, followed Joe back to Joe’s barn. A cow was having trouble delivering her first calf. She was standing in the barnyard to the south of the barn. Doc was hurrying. The Holstein had been trying to deliver the calf for over two hours.

Doc lifted the calf jack from his pickup and handed it to Joe. Then Doc removed his winter coat and hat, placing them in the front seat of his truck. Robert wondered why Doc had taken off his coat. Next, Doc took off his flannel shirt. He was wearing only a T-shirt. He hauled out of his truck a bucket of sudsy water and washed his hands and arms repeatedly in the steaming liquid. He dipped a new sponge in a second bucket and swabbed the area where the calf should have appeared.

Robert could hardly believe his eyes as Doc then thrust his arm deep within the cow—all the way up to Doc’s shoulder. The way he struggled made Robert believe that Doc wished his arm were longer.

“Its hind legs are trying to come out first,” Doc said to Joe.

Doc struggled for several minutes. He had to push the hind legs back from the canal, find the front legs alongside the hind legs, and pull the front legs forward before spinning the calf into an upright position.

“Let’s see what she’ll do now,” Doc said, standing back.

To his experienced eye, the cow appeared to be unable to deliver the calf.

“Alright,” Doc said. “We’ll have to pull it.”

The hoop was lifted into place and suspended across the back end of the cow. Doc reached the small chains within the cow and attached them to the calf’s front legs.

“Joe, you start,” Doc said, watching carefully.

Robert’s father ratcheted the first chain.

“Wait,” Doc said, reaching in. “Alright. Another!”

Joe ratcheted the second chain.

“Wait,” Doc said, again reaching in. “Alright. Another!”

Robert’s father ratcheted the first chain.

“Keep going!” Doc said.

Joe ratcheted the second chain.

In this way, first one leg of the calf came into view, followed by the other leg. Joe later explained to Robert that the calf’s shoulders are the widest part and can become wedged in the mother’s pelvis, unless one shoulder comes through ahead of the other shoulder.

The nose of the calf was showing.

“Alright, I’ll take over,” Doc said, trading places with Joe.

Doc ratcheted the jack a little faster, a little faster, and a little faster. Here came the calf!

“Joe, get ready to break its fall,” Doc said.

Just then, the cow groaned and sank onto her front knees.

“It’s alright, Joe. They sometimes do that. It’ll just be a little harder for me. That’s all,” Doc said.

The cow’s back legs buckled, and the cow dropped the rest of the way to the ground.

Doc touched the frozen earth with his end of the calf jack rod and ratcheted again.

“I wish I could get a little more angle,” Doc said. “Joe, tug lightly on the calf’s front shoulders. That’s good!”

Doc lifted the rod a little and ratcheted quickly. He lowered it again, still ratcheting.

He lifted and lowered, lifted and lowered, until, quite suddenly, the calf slithered all the way out. Joe was kneeling and caught the calf’s hind quarters, guiding them gently down.

“She’s a girl!” Doc said.

Robert marveled at how bright the white and black fur of the calf looked. The white was as pure as new snow.

Doc ensured that the calf and cow were in good condition all around before washing his hands and arms, drying off, and putting on his shirt and coat and hat. Joe, meanwhile, scattered a bale of straw around the calf as a temporary measure.

“I’ve seen calves in worse positions,” Doc said, when he had loaded his truck and was ready to return to his clinic. “If they’re going to be presenting wrong, I’d prefer they be like this one. Still, it’s a job to push those hind legs and that butt back over without losing hold of the front legs, which are crisscrossed with the back ones.” While he was talking, Doc was gesturing to demonstrate the effort that he had made deep within the cow. “Getting the calf to come on around isn’t as difficult. It looks like you have a good calf there.”

Robert asked, “Will that cow always have trouble having a calf?”

Doc smiled. “That’s a good question,” he said. “Most likely, she’ll have easy deliveries after this one. She’s just young and a little small. That’s a nice big calf!” Doc turned toward Joe. “If she does have trouble the next time, can we make it a warm day, Joe?”

Robert’s father laughed and shook his head. “I’m sorry she was due this early,” Joe said. “I usually get their dates worked out so the bitterly cold days are over before calving begins.”

“I’m only razzing you,” Doc said. “Let me know if you have any more trouble.”

After Doc’s truck pulled away, Joe said to Robert, “Help me encourage her to get up.” As the two of them walked toward the cow, she stood of her own accord, turned around, and began licking her calf. Within a few minutes, the calf stood on its own!

“Now that the calf’s standing, I’d like to get them in the barn,” Joe said. “You stand back and encourage the cow a little if necessary.”

Then Joe slowly approached the cow while talking gently to her. He bent over, putting his arms around the calf’s chest and hind quarters. In this way, he helped guide the calf ten feet to the barn door. The mother muttered but did not become belligerent. She followed along, her nose inches from her newborn. In no time, Joe had both within the stall. He and Robert put in extra straw bedding to help ward off the cold.

Watching Doc at work had deepened Robert’s appreciation for expertise gained through long study and broad experience.

6. The Cousins of Willowwood ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

Joe’s cousins Vera Fenton and her older sister, Pearl Fenton Clark, who was married to Arthur Clark, spent much of their adult lifetimes living and working in Chicago. Vera, Pearl, and Arthur were in Joe’s mother’s generation. In her youth, Pearl had been considered beautiful, and, now, as a white-haired, older woman, she was regal. Vera had a wonderful sense of humor, which living in the Windy City had refined. Vera was as elegant as Pearl was royal. Arthur typified a Chicago businessman; he was urbane and confident. When they retired, the three returned to Pine Village to live in the house that Pearl and Vera’s father had owned. The sisters’ father was Thomas Eleazer Fenton, the blacksmith who designed the special shoe that transformed the horse Dan Patch into a legendary pacer. Pearl, Vera, and Arthur lived just to the west of the blacksmith shop. In his spare time, Arthur, a skilled artist, liked to paint. His canvas depicting deer in a forest adorned a wall of the living room.

With their earnings from Chicago, the three purchased Willowwood, which was a glorified cabin in the hills and woods near Kramer, only a few miles north of Williamsport, the county seat. Arthur, Pearl, and Vera repaired to Willowwood for several days at a time during the hot summer months. What Willowwood, the small house, lacked in refinement the landscape around it more than compensated in magnificence.

To the north arose a high cliff of crumbly sandstone. The sunshine lit the nearly vertical escarpment a bright yellow with hints of coral pink. Between the crag and the cabin, cottonwoods fluttered their leaves like oversized coins on both sides of a tiny gully that could become a raging rivulet when it rained. Immediately adjacent to the cottonwoods was a bevy of weeping willows, for which the cabin had been named. They draped their long, lithe branches almost to the ground. Strolling among the lime and lemon leaves felt like walking through graceful streamers at a Japanese festival. Surrounding the cabin stood towering pines that kept the cottage in perpetual shade.

Willowwood was close to where the school bus had parked on the 24th of September in 1963 when the fourth and fifth grades had taken a special field trip to see the beaver dam on Big Pine Creek. That day in late autumn had been gray and cold. Robert and his classmates had hiked through a forest and arrived atop a hill commanding an excellent view of the pond the beavers had created. Robert had felt a twinge of disappointment because he had expected to see beavers, resembling the animated versions in Saturday morning cartoons. There had been no beavers that day because they work at night. Even with no animals in sight, Robert had appreciated the opportunity to take a close look at what the animals had built. Constructed of mud mixed with twigs, their dam had crossed the creek and had reached a height of six feet or more. On the dry slope of the dam, hundreds of branches and numerous trunks of trees as big around as stovepipes had been piled. Robert had been impressed with the orderliness, for the branches and trees had been aligned vertically—not strewn haphazardly. In the middle of the pond, the beavers’ lodge could be seen: a mound of sticks protruding above the deep reservoir. When Robert had played in the mud near the barn after a spring storm, he had used a small shovel to dig a channel no wider than three or four inches where the water was the deepest, needing little encouragement to form a small stream headed toward the meadow. Then he had attempted to build a dam across the channel. The water kept tearing away his preliminary work. When he finally resorted to dropping a large shovelful of soil squarely over the stream and had stepped on the dirt to make it stay put, the water immediately went around one end. Beavers were experts, Robert had decided when the field trip had ended and everyone was climbing aboard the bus for the return trip to school.   

On a sunny June day—the exact opposite of the overcast day when Robert had studied the beaver dam—Joe and Ida took the boys to visit Arthur, Pearl, and Vera at Willowwood. The three greeted the family at the door to the little house.

Ida said, “Charles and Robert, you may entertain yourselves by the cliff, and we’ll call you when it’s time to eat.”

Charles and Robert were happy to be excused, although they would not have minded listening to the adults’ conversation, which was sure to roam through stories about the olden days. The boys lingered in the cool shade of the pines, examining cones that left a sticky tar on their fingers. Charles showed Robert how the cone protected the seeds. Next, they passed through the grove of willows with its spongy, sun-dappled floor. As no water was running through the rill, they found tufts of dried sedge where they could place their feet and cross the muddy streamlet. Now they stood before the cliff. They looked up, admiring its height. They wanted to climb the sheer face, but to scale more than eight or ten feet upward was impossible. They balanced like goats on small projections as high as they could go without losing their footing.

Robert was amazed to find tiny snail shells, which seemed to him to be so foreign as to belong in a different part of the world. Each was perfectly formed. They were empty, and he found—quite by accident—that some of the smallest ones could be crushed with very little pressure between the thumb and forefinger. As he wanted to take them home, he tried not to flatten them into minuscule shards.

When the brothers returned to the level ground, Robert searched for a chunk of sandstone that he could pocket for his collection. At home, he had a shoebox with stones lining the bottom. He had found them wherever the family went, and they reminded him of the places Joe, Ida, Charles, and he had visited. Robert crouched down to lift a triangular piece of sandstone from the sandy, pebbly soil near the rivulet. He liked the granular feel of the rock, which he put in the pocket of his tan shorts—first making certain that his shells were in the opposite pocket!

Just then, Ida called for the boys to come to “dinner,” the midday meal.

When the boys entered through the screen door, Arthur and Joe were discussing the Battle of Kickapoo, which had been fought on the 1st of June in 1791. The battlefield was between Williamsport and Independence.

“The battle took place not too far from the falls on Kickapoo Creek,” Arthur said.

Robert knew where Kickapoo Falls was. Joe had taken the boys to see it, even though the site was on private property. The somber cliff stood in a dense forest. The rocky cleft loomed up from the shadows and impressed Robert’s young imagination as ancient and elemental, as if Titans had fought there. Joe had warned the boys not to circle around to the top of the falls, as Charles had suggested. With his fear of heights, Robert had felt considerable relief.

“Warrenton, which had been planned as the county seat, was near there,” Arthur added.

“Is there anything left of Warrenton?” Joe asked.

“Not that I know of,” Arthur said.

“Doubtlessly, you are aware that another Indian battle took place in 1822,” Joe offered.

“Refresh my memory,” Arthur said.

“After the Battle of Tippecanoe, unrest persisted, and the government conducted what might be called ‘clean-up operations’ in Indiana, even after statehood,” Joe explained. “Groups of Kickapoo and Potawatomie Indians lost a battle in 1822. As I understand, it took place near Warrenton. That was only four years before my ancestors began felling trees for their farm south of Pine Village.”

“We’re going to eat now,” Ida suggested.

Ida had helped Pearl and Vera prepare chicken salad sandwiches and lemonade.

Vera, who always took an interest in what the boys did, asked Charles and Robert, “Were you having fun while we were talking about battles?”

“I found snail shells,” Robert said. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a handful to show Vera.

“Those are lovely!” she exclaimed.

“And I found a rock,” Robert said, while he carefully replaced the shells and transferred his hand to his other pocket, pulling out the sandstone.

“I find the color almost pink, don’t you?” Vera said.

“Yes,” Robert said, “especially when the sun shines on the rock.”

“My, it’s a hot day!” Ida said.

“We can better appreciate the shade of the pines on a day like this,” Pearl said.

“I would rather be a little too warm than to be freezing in air conditioning,” Vera said.

Robert hadn’t even noticed that it was hot out. He wondered why the adults thought it was such a hot day.