MEMORIES OF A DIRE AND WONDERFUL TWO YEARS

My husband died three years ago.

                  Three  long years.

                          Three short years.

His clothing is gone

Except for the two  sports jackets I made for him and the combat boots from his Army basic training.

His lecture notes are shredded and composted.

His bulletin is dismantled except for his army pin up picture of Anita Ekberg and his father’s 1934 calendar given to coal customers the year he died.

Memories of our 50+ years.

                 Memories of the last two years.

AML Leukemia (no cure) came.

                Two years with treatment.

                           Two months without.

We chose the two years. The next few entries will be memories of that sad and happy time.

DESPAIR OR LAZINESS

The discipline required of a serious blogger eludes me, I fear. Whether from sloth or lack of talent is open to question. Or not. Likely a little of both. BUT I ask you-- how many of you would or could produce a daily blog?

If many of you should and would, I shall either make lame excuses why I cannot or cry in despair.

Despair!
Despair is likely my problem.
Despair is surely my problem.
Despair from the chaos I see in our current political situation.

If there be a God, or if there be gods I beseech you see to this!

Alas I fear the fault is not with our gods but with ourselves.

HASKELL'S BOOZE MYSTERY

Orchard Cove 1957

The barn was a barn in name only. For years it had seen no animals, no hay, no equipment.  Only the shelf in the first horse stall served any useful  function. On this shelf Haskell kept his booze. Unknown to his wife, Cora.  Generally known to his intimate friends whom he needed.  Years ago, after a string of DUIs Haskell lost his driver’s license and depended on Cora for transportation.  Except when he needed to re-supply his booze.  Intimates met that need; intimates knew where he kept his stash.

When Haskell first noticed the lowering level of his booze bottle, he pondered who of his intimates was the culprit.  He relocated the booze to the hay loft, used now for storage of discarded furniture and ‘never to be used again junk’.  The theft continued.

After the fourth hiding place failed to prevent the loss of his liquor, he moved it to his workshop, in the tiny shed between the house and the barn.  For several weeks his stash seemed safe. The safety ended and Haskell noticed a daily dwindling of his supply.  He had never in his life felt the necessity of locking things up until now. He installed a lock on his shed  workshop. His booze was again safe. Less than a week.

Haskell began to doubt his sanity.  Was his drinking out of control?  How could he not remember? Everybody noticed the change. Haskell seemed to be aging before their eyes.

Cora urged  him to see a doctor. He struggled to hide his reaction when she said, “Haskell, this is way more than your booze drinking.”  Before he could protest she continued, “Now don’t go telling me you don’t drink. Everybody knows you keep moving your booze from one place to another.  You are so afraid someone will  drink a little of it.  Really Haskell, how selfish can you be?”  She put her hand on his arm. “Now there’s no  need to keep hiding it. You know what you need? You need a good stiff drink right now. You just sit down and relax."

Cora retrieved a key from her silverware drawer. “I’ll fetch it for you.”

Cora returned with two glasses. “Now Haskell, here you go.”

JODY AND THE BIRTHDAY CAN

1953 

Everybody knew everybody in Orchard Cove. The houses strewn along the dirt road between Appletown and Clarksville ranged from tar paper covered shacks and well- worn mobile homes to the near mansions of the Carswell clan. Most residents attended church on Wednesday night and Sunday morning. Two thirds to the Missionary Baptist; one third to the Church of God. The few who attended neither were by general opinion considered ‘jest plum no good’.

The parents of Jody Davenport fit the category. Jody’s father worked at odd jobs now and then; his mother rode once a week into Appletown with Willie, the mailman, where she cleaned the house of the town doctor. Labeling Jody, their only child, was not easy. Jody never missed Sunday services. Sometimes the Baptists; sometimes the Church of God.  Jody’s size – for he was short and thin—and his red hair and freckled face elicited genuine warmth and generosity from the members of both churches.  Regularly Jody was slipped a nickel or dime and occasionally a quarter which he obsequiously accepted.

Both churches kept their finances in order by the Sunday collection. Each had its special way of covering unanticipated costs. The Baptists used the birthday can. Every week any member, young or old, added a nickel per year of his life to the large Prince Albert Tobacco can with a coin slot carved in the lid. Care of the can rotated among the Deacons, who each Sunday carried it to church where it accepted its nickels for the week.

Jody’s church attendance fell by the wayside, at first because he had the mumps, then bronchitis and finally a newly developed habit of doing something else on Sunday.  The people of Orchard Cove paid scant attention, shaking their heads and asking, “What do you expect with shiftless parents like that?”

That is until they were forced to think about Jody. The Birthday Can was stolen, taken off the closet shelf in Carl Martin’s house sometime between the Sunday he stashed it away and went for it the next Sunday.  On evaluation of the situation the unanimous conclusion was “Only Jody could have done it.”

Demand repayment from Jody’s parents was the plan.  At the agreed time on a Saturday afternoon,the Deacons met at the church and planned to go in masse to the Davenports.  No one had asked Jody; no one had considered anyone but Jody until just before the departure time to the Davenport house.  Harry Carswell  arrived at the church with his two boys, ten and twelve,who looked none too happy.  As Harry stood by with lowered head, his boys confessed to the crime and handed over the money. Jody never knew; Jody resumed his church attendance.

THE STOLEN DEER

Orchard Cove 1944

Orville took a last look at the deer, properly bled, hanging in the shed next to the smokehouse. It was a beauty, meat for some time and a marvelous head for the wall. Tomorrow he would do the processing.

Twice during the night the barking of his three dogs woke him. Both times he went out with his lantern to investigate. Twice he was met by the little gray fox who, it seemed, considered this home. Twice Orville went back to bed with visions of deer steaks in his head. The third dog chorus Orville ignored, silently swearing at the persistent nocturnal antics of his resident fox.

The chill of morning on any other day would have kept Orville in bed until the last possible moment. But this morning he had a deer to deal with. Before the morning feeding and milking he went to the shed to check on his deer.

The shed door was open; the deer was gone.

Orville was not a ‘shoot from the hip’ kind of man. He was thoughtful, calm, and calculating. He analyzed and re-analyzed all situations. Who would have taken his deer? Who knew he had it? He had told Harry, the mailman and Tom who came to borrow a level. No one else. Neither of them would take his deer.

Orville said nothing; he forbade his family to say anything. Orville waited. He would wait as long as needed; he would watch; he would learn who took his deer.  “And when I find out,” he told the family, “there will be hell to pay.”

Orville’s patience paid off and from an odd source – or as the saying goes ‘out of the mouths of babes’- came the answer. It was his six year old daughter  who identified the culprit. At dinner two weeks after the theft she nibbled on her chicken drumstick.  “Daddy,” she said, “when can we have deer?”

“When I shoot one.  But I wonder since when did you decide you like deer?  Last year you said it was yucky.”

“Since Carrie told me how good it is.”

Orville’s mind did somersaults. He knew. Carrie’s family was going through a rough patch. Dave had not worked for months now, not since the accident. The church had offered on several occasions to help, but Dave harbored a male pride keeping him from accepting.

The next afternoon Orville dropped by Dave’s place.  Dave down to one cane now met him at the door.  “Dave, how’s it going?”

“Not bad.”

“I was at the mill this morning. Clint asked me to stop by here on my way home.   Seems like you left some corn over there just before your accident.  Asked if I’d drop off the ground corn. Got three big bags of meal. Where do you want me to put it?”

“I’m grateful, Orville.”

"I'll take it to the smokehouse."

"No just leave it here on the porch."

"If you're  sure", Orville stacked the three bags of corn meal on the porch floor. "Then I'll get on home. Let me know if you need anything."

I'm grateful."

Orville took the long way to his truck, past the smokehouse ,   A quick glance inside showed the signs of butchering activity.

LYDIE POTTER'S DISAPPEARANCE

Orchard Cove Tennessee 1941

Clyde Potter drove his newly acquired Model A past Walter’s house. Seeing Walter coming out of his sheep barn he stopped. “Hey Walt, I got me that car.”

Walter examined it. “What’d it cost you, Clyde?”

“A good hunk, I can tell you. But I managed, and she’s a beauty don’t you think?”

“She is that.  Lydie all right with it? She said to Mary she wasn’t going to have no car before the roof was fixed.  Get the roof fixed?”

“Not yet, but I nearly got enough saved up for it. Lydie is coming around.”

“Guess she’ll  be all right when you drive her to church and she don’t have to walk or ride Old Solomon.”

“Guess so,” Clyde said.

Lydie did not come to church Sunday; nor to Wednesday prayer meeting; nor the next or the next Sundays.  In Orchard Cove  one did not miss church more than once without explanation.  So questions floated; rumors soared. Mary nagged Walter to check.

“Check  what?”

“On Lydie. It ain’t like her to skip church.  She might be sick.”

“Then ought it not be you and some of the other women to check? It don’t seem right for me to do it.”

Lydie was not at home when Mary appeared at her door.  She was gone when Walter, yielding to Mary’s nagging, checked.  Lydie, it seemed, had dropped out of sight.  Clyde offered no explanation.

The incessant questions of one after another of the men and women of Orchard Cove proved too much for Clyde. Under duress and sweating brow he confessed. He had traded Lydie to Harry Martin over in Peavine for the car.

ABBY'S SECRET LOVE

Abby slipped as surreptitiously as she could into a seat at the back of the funeral home. The service was underway.  Frank’s body lay in the open coffin before his widow, Karen, his children, Nancy and Harry, his sisters, Mazie and Lily.  A preacher Abby did not know was speaking.  He regaled the virtuous life Frank had lived, the courage with which met the cancer that took him.  “He was a true servant of God, strong in his faith, faithful to his family and friends.”

On and on the preacher recollected specific  godly acts of Frank’s seventy years.  Karen sobbed; Nancy wept silently; Harry blotted tears.  “To his beloved Karen”, the preacher said in a high pitched voice. “we  offer the promise that one day she will join Frank in the wonders of Heaven where they will spend eternity with the love and trust and faithfulness that marked their time on this earth.”

A chorus of ‘amens’ followed.

Abby closed her eyes; she breathed deeply; she fought back her tears.  She would miss Frank.  She had loved Frank since they were in their teens—ever since that first kiss behind the barn.  She had loved him through her marriage and divorce, through his marriage to Karen and the birth of his children.  It had been rife with joy and difficulties.

Her memories were sweet and bitter.  Sweet were those stolen hours when they spent an evening, a night, a weekend together.  Bitter when he left her and returned to Karen and his children.

Shaken from her reveries by the quartet’s cacophonous rendition of AMAZING GRACE Abby surveyed the congregation—fighting her desire for revenge against the woman who stole so much of her time with her only love.

All heads bowed for a benediction.  Abby surreptitiously slipped out of the funeral parlor.