A Little History, Part 3

The Mowing Shed

It was on that farm Mama got her scar, the scar she carried on the inside of her right arm from the day she got it until she was eighty. It was actually seven scars, one very long one and six small scars surrounding it.

I didn't mind the scar. I used to touch the long part to see if it felt as silky as it looked. But I'll bet Mama minded it, since it ran the length of her forearm.

I liked to hear the story of it, even though it scared me. I could just see it too well, I guess.

It happened this way.

Dinner time she heard her kitten meowing, trapped somewhere, and ran to rescue. Kitty was locked in the mowing shed and her crying just got louder and louder until my mother found her. Mama yanked open the shed door, and the kitten ran out. I don't know which action dislodged the mower blades, but they fell. All seven stuck in her arm.

Mama’s screams froze Grandma halfway out of her chair, afraid she’d lost her only child. Grandpa ran to the shed, pulled the mower blades from his little girl's arm and wrapped it tight to slow the bleeding. He bundled her in blankets, hitched up the team, then loaded her into the wagon and raced around the butte and down the valley to the hospital in Caldwell.

It must have seemed a long ride that night, a race against time and against the bleeding. I suspect Grandma made the trip, too, cradling her little girl all the way. I don't remember that part of the story, but I can't see her waiting through the long night at home. I think she blamed my grandpa for the whole thing.

But Mama didn't.

A Little History, Part 2

Pioneers

If Mama were here today, I believe she'd tell me it was a bold thing for my grandpa and grandma to do, leave Bloomington, in eastern Idaho, where their people, the Nelsons and Madsens, had long-established farms and where the friends and family of a lifetime lived. Grandpa's cousin Warren had gone to western Idaho a year earlier and told Heber to come on.

And he did. They did, leaving behind everything they knew. But they were young then, a family of three. Heber, Samantha, and their little girl, Lola. They would make a go of it.

The farm they built made Mama proud. "The best dry farm in the valley," she said.

But it was Grandpa that made her proudest. She was only a small child back then, so I wonder if she knew what it meant to eat well, but that's what she told me. They ate well those years, because her dad could make anything grow. I guess everyone else in the place knew it, too. “Heber Nelson, he knows how to work the land. Plain outwits that old white soil.”

And you could tell Grandpa's farm afar off, Mama said, by his hay stacks. Most farmers in that Idaho valley rolled their hay. Not my grandpa. He baled and stacked it tight, a point of pride with him, used his Mormon derrick to lift and lay the bales so you couldn’t even get a knife blade between them.

A Little History, Part 1

Bramwell, Idaho

Laid out in alkali soil, Grandpa’s farm flourished anyway. The land sat flush up against the foot of the butte and had little on it when Grandpa bought it, their first home the chicken coop sitting on the land. Grandma scrubbed and white-washed every inch, tacked flour-sack muslin on the walls, Mama said, and they moved in.

Grandma always set a pretty table, so Mama told me. She used her whitest linens, put out her best cooking and her best China for visitors, never once apologized for living in a chicken coop.

Grandpa got the house built the next year. Their own house, with fence, gate, and a black dog named Collie to keep Mama in the yard. They housed the school teacher there, too, partly because they had room, mostly because of Grandma's cooking.

It must have been a nice place, set right on that road I drove down not so many years ago, looking for it. I never found it, wasn't even sure I had the right road. All that's left now of Bramwell is a railroad crossing and a cemetery.

Yippee

Off to Pennsylvania. Come Valentine's Day, that is. Finally I will see those people I miss so much. See where they live, figure out the geography of the place, look the University over, talk and hug and celebrate and such.

I'd like to be taking something of the grandfather those little boys never knew. But no. Only whatever of him rubbed off on me and stuck. I suppose he is mentioned from time to time in their home. Pretty sure.

It's for certain sure he loves them, as I do.

Still . . .

Today is the day. I mark it, of course.

Eight years. Enough said.

We Have a Red, Red Sky Tonight

And it is beautiful

My mother taught me this. I'm sure you've heard it.

Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.
Red sky at night, sailor's delight.

So tonight's sky would delight the sailors. I do not know any. And I cannot know why we who are not sailors keep the saying in our store of knowledge. It may be taking up space that could well be used otherwise. Who knows?

But as soon as I saw tonight's red sky I thought of it, said it aloud to be sure I remembered it correctly. Oh yes, I want to get it right.

Is it human nature? Or just my nature?

Quote of the Day/Memory of the Day

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
- Groucho Marx

I like this kind of thinking. Sounds like something Wayne might have said.

Besides, I think Wayne and I used to watch Groucho once in a while on "You Bet Your Life." Groucho, by the way, was never without his cigar. Yep, it's true, right on live television. Handsome George Fenniman was the show's announcer. Couples were the contestants, not necessarily married couples. I don't remember the premise of the game, but I do remember the duck.

That strange duck would be lowered, carrying the secret word in its bill, then be pulled up out of sight. All this before the contestants came out. Then Groucho would tell them, "Say the secret word and collect $100." If you ever heard Groucho say it, you know he said woid, not word.

That's a long, long time ago.