Stars in the Firmament

Goodnight, Maya Angelou- joining our friend Odetta and the matriarchs of the ages.   We stand taller for your faith and poetry and dignity.

Return of the Native

This harsh winter has brought out the old-timers’ refrain:  ‘Back when I was a kid, we knew what winter was.  We’ve been spoilt with these easy winters.  This is an old-fashioned winter.’  Followed by a satisfied ‘Harrumph’ and the Midwesterner’s perverse glee in recalling just how cold it got last night.  We love to complain about the weather.

I grew up in Thomson in the 50s and 60s, and the winters did seem longer and snowier, if not colder.  Around November the leaden skies descended and we didn’t see much sunshine until April.  We wore rubber boots with fake fur trim and either zippers or buckles.  When we went sledding down by the slough and in the old sandpit, our boots filled with snow and we were soaked through by the time we trudged home, where chili and hot cocoa awaited us.

We skated the rough backwater ice down by John Simpson’s, where the old Melon Grounds lie.  We often had to sweep the snow off the ice.  Occasionally Mom and Edith Cate accompanied us, but mostly we were left to ourselves the day long, until it was too cold and dark continue.  Dick Sloan was probably the bravest skater, jumping muskrat huts and sketching figure 8s.  I can personally attest that the ice wasn’t the best for practicing backwards skating.  After dark we could go down the street to Beth Williams’ house, where her dad had flooded the front yard.  Some winters the fire department was able to create a skating area by the old water tower, and sometimes we ventured out to Cate’s to skate on Johnson’s Creek.

Thomas Wolfe famously said you can never go home again, a Chinese proverb cautions that we never step in the same river twice.  Everything changes.  Some of us leave our geographic homes, others stay.  The common denominator is memory; we retell old stories, we wander back home.

We had a storybook childhood in our village.  That’s the way I remember it, and that’s the way it was.

Potter's Road

I have written a couple of columns for the county newspaper, the Carroll County Review, which is published in my home town, Thomson, Illinois.  The third one is the Mother's Day post.  I am posting the other two - hope you enjoy them.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a sesquicentennial meeting and the question arose:  what is quintessentially “Thomson?”  Well, the term “quintessentially” did not actually arise, but “What does Thomson mean to you?” evoked a variety of responses. For some, it was watermelons or the old red brick high school. To others it meant the Depot, or sandburrs, maybe McGinnis’ produce stand.  Or the river.

I grew up in the West End, before Potter’s Road became a causeway, before the road was paved and a guard shack stood sentinel.  Potter’s drew us like a magnet to the wonders of the sloughs, the waterlily choked ponds, the old dump.

No one went down there much except the Potters:  Bess, Frank and Ora, Hick and Glen; and Don Hall, whose cabin sailed off for the Gulf of Mexico in the Flood of ‘65.  A few local fishermen were regulars.  Beano and Billy Groharing, my Mom and Mary Simpson were down there nearly every day.

We rode our fat-tired bicycles down past Mr. Dimmick’s house, and it was a hard ride in that sand; sometimes we had to get off and walk.  Catalpas, mulberry trees and black locusts canopied the road, and wild grapevines were entwined from treetop to treetop. We ate all the raspberries we could find, and the air was filled with apple blossoms and the acrid odor of hedge apples from the osage trees.

For a time we had a leaky rowboat, and we rode down to Potter’s with the big oars across our handlebars to spend the day drifting around the backwaters.  My great pal in neighborhood adventures was Billy Groharing.  His dad, Beano, was the school custodian, and his dog Sandy was a fixture on the playground.  Sandy always came with us and had a high old time chasing rats at the dump.  I dreaded seeing rats, but Sandy found them great sport.  We’d be down there all day, poking around, hunting arrowheads and pottery, maybe fishing or trying to spear frogs.  Be home when the streetlights came on, that was the rule.  My Uncle Harry Diehl had convinced Billy that the red lights across the river were the eyes of giant muskrats that populated the sloughs.  So Billy didn’t really want to stay down there too late anyway.

We fished off the road, my folks, Grandpa Bristol and us kids, for crappies and perch and bluegills.  Mary Jo and I used cane poles with no reels, and those old red and white bobbers.  My Dad would go over to Gus Roggendorf’s for a pail of minnies scooped out of a big galvanized tub. We dug our own worms, mostly. We’d install Grandpa in a lawn chair, safari hat pulled down over his eyes.  My sister and I jumped around on the logs and generally disturbed the fish. The ones we did manage to catch were strung on a stringer and left in the shallow water to languish, their golden underbellies and jeweled scales flashing under the water like treasure.

As we got older, my Mom and Roberta Sikkema sponsored a bird-watching 4-H club, the Driftwoods, and we spent a lot of time down at Potter’s on bird watching expeditions. Marilyn Dittmar and Edith Cate helped herd us girls around for picnics.  The Upper Mississippi Flyway was a bird-watcher’s dream all the year round.  I learned to drive on Potter’s Road, taking my Mom out at dawn to watch birds. We drank coffee out of a thermos, with binoculars at the ready.  Back then you could drive east past Frank & Ora Potter’s place and come out by the railroad tracks.

I drive down there now and look out over the riprap, the ancient Woodland mounds exposed, roads paved and camping spots carved out of the undergrowth.  If it’s dusk and I look real hard, I can still see Hick and Glen’s place, the ghost buildings shadows in the fading light and the wood smoke of the campfires. Not so many mosquitoes now, lots of folks I don’t know; folks who won’t ever realize they are camped on Shear’s Point, where we used to sit with our mulberry-stained feet in the sand, never imagining it would be any different.

Happy Mother's Day

As a teenager, the last thing I wanted to do was to be a clone of my mother.   I can remember guys being cautioned, “If you want to know what a girl will look like in thirty years, check out her mom.”  All in all, a pretty scary proposition.

Nowadays, I could only hope to be a clone of my mother, and remember all the moms who helped us along our way.  Our moms baked cookies and brownies and brought them to school for our birthdays. They were room mothers and den mothers and if we messed up, they weren’t afraid to tell us just what our own mom would have told us. 

Moms were everywhere. They worked at the bank, and cooked at the school cafeteria.  They were grocery shopping at Bub Smith’s or Mc Bride’s and if you are old enough, at Sweat’s dime store. You were never unobserved, believe me.  Someone’s mom was looking out the window and picked up the phone to dial your own mom to tell her what you were up to.

Our moms wore housedresses and aprons and had some pretty serious undergarments – items that were hung on the inside clotheslines so they could not be observed by passers-by.  We were instructed in modesty and lady-like behavior and tutored by women who wouldn’t consider going out of the house without lipstick. 

Our moms had a sense of occasion; they got dressed up for church and card club and the rare dinner at Meeker’s.  They had survived The Great Depression and every one of them had a brother or uncle or sweetheart who served in World War II.  Life had touched them deeply.

My strongest impression of those women was a sense of grace, a sense of dignity.  My mom’s friends and my friends’ moms were elegant and funny and well dressed.  I had a cadre of smart, outspoken aunts who arrived in a cloud of perfume and a susurration of silk. They smelled like Ponds and Jergen’s Lotion and talcum.  They carried real handkerchiefs and compacts with pressed powder in their mysterious handbags.

Springtime carries the scent of violets and lilac and lily of the valley - old-fashioned scents that remind me of ladies in hats and gloves and costume jewelry, stockings straight, with smiles that would light up a room - our moms. 

To all the moms, thanks.