A Story of Life's Remembrances by Another Brought Me to This Place

Funny how someone else's story of growing up in the country or in a rural setting conjures up wonderful love filled memories of spending the summers with my grandmother.  I think I started going when I was 6 or 7.  Back then and before me, back then, she lived in the country.  There had been an apple orchard on the back part of her property.  I never had been allowed to go back there in all the underbrush and old apple trees.  I wanted to but really I wanted to have someone along with me for that adventure.  Close to the apple orchard were several plum trees.  Grandma and I would go back and pick the ripe plums and put them in the lap of her apron.  Sometimes we would sit down on the rickety back porch steps and eat them.  Sometimes we brought them in and made an abbreviated  form of jelly.  Her side yard was huge.  She had some flowerbeds with a mirrored glass globe on the pedestal.  I loved looking into that globe and see the distorted colors and trees and the distorted reflection of me.  I truly believed the distorted image was who I really was.  In front of the flowerbeds she had those old timey metal lawn chairs.  Sometimes in the evenings we would sit there, taking in the beauty and always making mention of the cars that went by too fast for a two lane road.  She would always say, oh it is shift change and either everyone is in a hurry to get home or they are late to work.   The trees in her side yard were huge, some of them were apple trees.  Sometimes in the afternoons I would take one of her quilts and lay it out in the shade.  I'd have a sandwich and maybe some lemonade to accompany me while I laid on the quilt reading and many times writing in a beat up composition notebook.  I dreamed and day dreamed.  Back home I would have never done this.  I'd say the crowd that I ran with wasn't this sophisticated but I didn't run with a crowd.  Reading on a blanket didn't transfer into life at home.  I was deathly afraid of the boys who lived next door and I had every right and reason to fear them.

 More often than not, most of the time we sat on her front porch.  My uncles, her sons, had screened it in for her.  I can barely remember what it looked like when my grandfather was alive.  He would sit on the steps of the porch and I would bring him a leaf from the yard.  I must have been only three or so.  In my memory he looks like General Eisenhower but I think that is only because of his bald head.  I am not too far off in that description of him, but when I see pictures, he is clearly much older looking than the pictures in text books of the General and then President. 

 

 

Grandma and I would sit on the glider.  I don't remember if we talked or if we just enjoyed watching the world go by and we didn't have to be a part of it.  She never learned to drive and was dependent on others to take her to the Kroger.  The butcher at Kroger had grown up with my mother and some said he had been sweet on my mom.  I would look at him and wonder what life would be like with him being my father. I liked his name, Corky.  Usually if it was a week night for a shopping trip my Uncle Robert took us but if it was a weekend Uncle Charles and Aunt Mary would take us and then we stopped at the Dairy Queen. 

 

 

Off the dinning room was an alcove of windows and below the windows were bookshelves crammed full of Reader Digest books and stacks of magazines.  Grandma had two rocking chairs.  One was an old wooden rocker with no arms.  The stain and shine were nearly worn off and one of the back staves was missing.  The rocking chair by the bookshelves was really an outdoor type rocker made of aluminum and cedar wood.  I loved sitting in that rocking chair gazing across the side yard, across the field filled with wildflowers over to Ruthie Blackburn's house.  I would line up those Reader Digest books in the order I wanted to read them.  I remember being introduced to the stories of Pearl S Buck and the condensed version of Mr.Hobbs Takes a Vacation.  Truthfully, sometimes it was difficult for me to find stories that were halfway interesting to me.  I brought books with me and Grandma always let me buy some comic books when we went to the store.  That was a treat for me but looking back now I see what a sacrifice it was for her to buy me those comics on her limited budget. 

 

Ruthie lived to the right of my grandmother and I wish I could remember the people that lived on the left.  I think their last name started with a B.  I was halfway scared of them because I had heard my parents and Grandma talk about them because the Mr. drank.  He went to the Tavern and also had beer in his house.  At night I would lie in the dark bedroom and peep through the blinds and watch the inhabitants of that house.  I wanted to be prepared in case anything wild happened because liquor was not found in our house and my knowledge of drinking came from TV shows and movies.   Nothing in all those summers did anything happen.  Through the window I could see them drinking beer and watching TV.  If anything they were just noisy, maybe because they were loud or maybe because all the windows were open for the evening summer breeze. Sometimes the Mr. didn't go to work the next day.  It was always quiet around their house on those days. 

 

My grandmother let me explore every nook and cranny of her house.  Between the two bedrooms ran a long closet.  My grandmother's dresses hung to the front of the closet and the rest of the closet was long and dark with no light.  There were boxes stacked along each side of the wall.  One afternoon as I was exploring the dark closet I came across a box that advertised the benefits of health that were contained inside under the lid.  There in the box was some kind of water bottle or material that retained heat.  It was squishy and it was red and I ran out of the closet crying because I thought I had found my grandfather's heart in that box.  Grandma assured me it was not his heart.  I think I mainly kept to the findings and exploration of her back porch from then on.  There were all kinds of interesting tools and do dads out there.  I rescued an old wooden medicine cabinet off that porch and it hangs in our home today. 

 

Very rarely did I ever go into the basement.  The stairs didn't seem that sure and a dark basement contained secrets, or so I thought, that needed to remain in the dank dark.  The noisy furnace was down there.  The only reason my grandmother went down there was due to the washing machine was there.  As she grew older and the steps became more difficult, some one finally thought to bring the washing machine onto the back porch.  I wouldn't go into the basement but I would help my grandmother hang up the wash on the clothes line in back of the house.  I had to be careful back there because an old well only covered by wood and some kind of composite material was a little unsafe.  Naturally, I was mesmerized by this well but kept my distance only because I thought the well might just drop into the basement and I have already shared how afraid I was of the basement. 

 

 

I think I stopped spending summers in Illinois sometime in junior high school.  By then my grandmother had sold off some of her back acreage to a church who planned to locate out that way.  A subdivision had been built where there had only been farm land.  My cousins loaned me a bike and I would ride through the subdivision to look at the cleared land where the apple orchard used to be. I rode on all the back roads but knew enough to stay off the road in front of the house with the shift workers returning home or going to work.  Even as a child I worried every summer what would I do if Grandma died when I was there.  She seemed ancient but I have a feeling she was maybe just a little older than I am right now.   Those summers were such a gift and I think I had some inkling how much those summers meant and how they would shape me. 

 

When we began to furnish our home so many of my decisions were based on the feeling of warmth and cozy of my grandmother's home.  She did not have arts and craftsman style just a few odds and ends of an old couch and an even older horsehair chair.  The one beautiful piece of furniture she had was a secretary.  The top filled with theology books and commentaries that had belonged to my great grandfather. Some of those books had been bought "on time" and the record of payment was scratched in pencil with paid in full in ink.  The desk had cubbyholes full of interesting papers and pens.  My grandfather's five year diaries were there too.  I would read them looking for any mention of my mother or of me.  He copied poems and cut out interesting things from the newspaper.  He loved a good quote.  Maybe this is where my love of journals, pens and quotes came from.  I know my grandmother's collection of condensed books help cultivate my love of reading and reading while surrounded by books. 

 

When this evening began I no more thought I would sit down and write these words.  Funny what reading a short story of a long ago can do and cause the same rippling effect in others.