rfromme@ns1.crl.comrfromme@stic.net
The old pickup routed through town early this afternoon. It was 1:45. I was
on my way from one work site to another. Somehow, the mid-morning break had
mysteriously changed my sack lunch into a small wad of brown paper rolling
around in a nest of wrenches, wire and other rusty tools on the floor of the
cab. I knew the afternoon job would take me well past sundown without a
supper break. The ''Spoon'' was just ahead. It was time to stop in for an
egg-salad and coke to keep me going for the rest of the day.
This Saturday afternoon I found the town quite busy. Most of the curb
parking was taken but luck delivered a spot for my tired old truck just
across the street from the cafe. I don't often come through town in the
middle of the day like this. Each time I do, I am struck with the activity,
the life, that goes on here. My time in the town is usually early or late.
They are times when the shadows are long and arguing with the dark. The
parking is easy and most folks are not part of that lonely picture.
Activity on the street kept me waiting at the bumpers before I could cross
to the ''Spoon''. I noticed two people trying to negotiate the crosswalk on
the side street. They were pushing a third person in a wheelchair. Distance
kept them anonymous.
A break in the traffic finally came. Soon, I had the cafe door
open. The place, like the town, was busy. By default, I won the squeaky,
end stool, the last space at the counter. That spot seldom has an occupant
and it had become an un-official resting place for the daily accumulation of
newspapers. It was a kind of stopping off place, a sort of purgatory for
lost and confused pages, where the ''Spoon'' patrons' newspaper refuse rests
for several days at a time before Della remembers to take them out back. I
tried to fold and shuffle the lot so that when my order came I could fit my
late lunch there amidst the week's crime, ads and sport. It was a loosing
battle. I finally resorted to stool squeaking my way around so that I could
place the crumpled and confused mess of the world onto a stack of plastic
straw and dixie cup boxes which were crammed into the narrow spot behind me.
With my paper placing mission accomplished, I began to squeak and squawk on
my stool back around to face the counter. Turning, I noticed three slow
moving forms come past the front window of the cafe. They were the
wheelchair pilgrims from the side street. I strained to see if I could
recognize them now. I could not. Something told me that I should know them,
yet they were lost amidst years of travel, of war and of work. The woman
looked to be in her late forties. The teen pushing the old man in the chair
must have been her son. The long thin old man had a face masked by an angry
and confused stare. I had seen the same expression on the face of my aunt
and mother in their last, Ulsheimers years. The little group made their way
on down the walk. The image and its moment would have evaporated giving way
to thoughts of work in the afternoon but others at a booth near the window
also noticed the sad passing.
A woman asked, ''Who was that?''
Across the booth, came the reply, ''It's old Charles Lowrey.''
It was like getting kicked in the chest. I did know the old man in the chair.
Some thirty years earlier, when Dad was alive and practicing law in this
little town, Charles came to be his good friend. In those years, Charles
raised cattle and cultivated crops of wheat, corn and milo on their family
homestead of several hundred acres. It was a long drive to their dry land
farm thirty miles north of our community. In spite of the distance, Dad and
Charles spent many weekends together, hunting, fishing, talking, enjoying
the leisure they could make in their lives. In those years, our two
families spent so much time together we seemed to grow into one larger one.
Charles became like a second father to my younger brother, Phil, and I.
Then, there were the college years and the town never seemed quite like
home again. My family moved away when Dad was appointed and accepted a
position on the State bench. Life moved on and most of us kids just lost
track with this little community. For me, it was the local order of the
Selective Service Board, the draft notice, the war and the bitterness that
followed which kept me away. Many of the local sons were able to avoid the
draft, but the life altering notice found me in my last few months of
college. With the crazed and hungry dogs in the Press and Dad on the bench,
I had no choice. Canada was out of the question. I had to do my time for the
sins of that community. I could not disgrace my family.
After the war, I swore I would never return to the place. I would not be
here now except for a string of deaths and other problems. Certainly coming
alone, back to this little community of my youth, was not at all like coming
home.
Yet, I remember the trips out the Charles and Martha's farm. Somehow, there
was richness and wonder in quiet family evenings we shared with them,
sipping slightly scalded milk in oyster stew and then walking out to the
barn at milking time. There, Dad would stand with Charles on the milk
stool, big arms and rosy cheeks, talking and joking with us kids. I
remember the late evening light streaming down though the hay dust and the
sound of the milk on the side of the tin bucket, drumming into a calming
rhythm of squirts. Then the rhythm would be broken and out would come an
occasional squirt from the teat in Clarence's huge and muscular milking
hands. The bucket rhythm broke and with a white liquid swish, the milk
stream arched a good ten feet out and over, past we wide eyed brats, to a
row of dripping, milky whiskered cats who were, like us, all lined up for
the evening's milk barn events.
I remember the grownups talking about 4-H, canning, cooking, butchering,
history, old guns, fishing, coyotes, bobcats, cattle and the crops. It was
on the back of Clarence's tractor, one summer afternoon, holding on through
the sunlight and the hot dusty bounces with Phil on the other side, that I
learned how not to chew tobacco ...... and why one should always carry a
jug of fresh water on board. Yes, I learned about the ''dry-heaves ''.
I remember that it was also at the entry gate of Clarence's milking barn
that three year old Debbie, my youngest sister, riding atop big brother
David's shoulders, grabbed a hot overhead electric fence lead wire and
decided to hold on for a while. David, closer to the ground, and grounding,
seemed to naturally develop an electrifying dance complete with ''yikes!,
whoops! and hollers!'' The little girl never felt a thing and could not
figure out just what the excitement was all about. On second thought, I do
remember a faint little impish smile did sneak across her little round
mouth, after she let go.
Perhaps there is some symbolism in that situation, somewhere; little one,
high in the air, doing the electric wire holding, and David, a precious
little load on his shoulders, doing the hurting, the yelling and the dancing
in the barnyard dust. Perhaps that was a metaphor for the way we all grew
up in the loving home of my parent's large family. Sometimes we were up in
the air , not quite aware of the trouble we were making for others who loved
us and sometimes our feet were firmly, painfully, planted on the ground and
we were very much aware of the situation at hand. One thing was for sure,
we were all in it together. We got along quite well, bathed in the love of
our parents and their close friends of those years, Charles and Martha Lowery.
Years later, Mother mentioned that Charles had lost Martha and the oldest
daughter in an automobile accident. They were returning from a distant
beauty pageant and one of them must have fallen asleep at the wheel.
Several years later, Charles' youngest son fell in with the wrong crowd and
developed a drug problem. It was more then the kid could handle. It took him
to jail and later took his life. Life sure seemed to turn on Charles.
I didn't realize the old man was still alive after all the years. His later
life was a gauntlet of tragedy. I wish I had remembered him when I first
came back here. Perhaps I could have paid him a visit before his mind
went. It is just damned hard to connect the angry and confused stare on the
face of the old man in the wheel chair with the huge, kind, rosy cheeked,
sun-burned, smiling, healthy man I remember from my youth.
The egg-salad seemed to stick in my throat now and even the coke would not
help it wash down.
As I walked back over to my truck, I remembered Dad and Charles having a
great laugh over a freak pheasant hunting accident. It had been a Sunday
morning and Martha had set the table after breakfast so that when they
returned from church there would be one less job before their family meal.
Charles had gone out front to bring the car around.
A quarter of a mile away, hunters were lined up in the crisp morning air
across the fields flushing an occasional bird. The wind seemed to take the
wild and beautiful fowl in an escape path high over the Lowery house.
Charles, in spite of the Sunday suit and tie, could not resist the challenge
of trying to test the range of his new model 12. He stepped into the house
for the shotgun, returned, and planted himself firmly on the stoop just
outside of the front door. Soon he could see another speck rise from the
distant hunters in the stubble. It arched up turning with the morning wind
toward the farm house. The bird was high beyond normal shot range when
Charles set the bead and gave the tiny target a solid lead. The shot rang
out. In clean geometry, the bird changed course. Like a rocket fired at
the enemy, it came down hard and fast, right at Charles. The huge jolly
farmer jumped aside just in time to see the thing crash through the front
picture window, explode into a puff of feathers and glass on the front room
floor, bounce, and then and slide thirty feet into the dining room and under
Martha's table set for the Sunday meal.
As I stepped up into the truck and gave the door a good tug to set the
latch, I found myself smiling. The smile broke into a good laugh
remembering the image of Charles telling the story to Dad. It was almost as
if jolly Charles had broken through the prison of his age and disease to
share the story with us once again.
As I turned to back the pickup out into the street, a car was coming past.
In the front seat of the Buick, I saw the woman and her son. Behind them,
there was old Charles propped up with pillows, sporting the same angry and
confused stare on the face. Yet, this afternoon I chose to see the sun
fell across the face of a kind, rosy cheeked, gentleman farmer who could
tell a good story.
