Monday, January 1, 2024

The Small Blue Ball: A New Year Greeting/Warning

 New Year's Eve...

So, the past year was tumultuous to put mildly.

Political dialog: Non Existent/Divisive 

War: Seeming around the globe 

Weather: Destructive and unpredictable

 Water: Scarce and getting scarcer

 Stewardship of our ecosystems, flora and fauna: Lacking/Dwindling 

Human condition: Dire 

Well, ain't that a bummer of 2023!

The above observations are one Octogenarian's view from my 15 acres of paradise on a The Small Blue Ball.

 We, the People of this fragile Small Blue Ball must not and cannot forget it's is our home, our only home.  The moon ain't our home, nor is Mars. Put the money wasted on narcissistic fantasies of  living "somewhere else" to good use on the Small Blue Ball and leave fantasy to Walt Disney and Science Fiction writers. It's gonna' take a monumental amount of imagination and cash to fix what we've already messed up in the last 50 years to begin to put right the Small Blue Ball. It's our nest.

Keeping the Small Blue Ball happy, the water flowing, trees producing oxygen, coral reefs filtering, glaciers moving, oceans working, flora and fauna, including our animal selves is tantamount to our survival as large brained pedal, intelligent homo sapiens. Are we a noble experiment gone awry?

The Small Blue Ball  isn't a oyster or a cherry to be plucked bare. When that happens, and it is happening with amazing frequency, there ain't no more. Forever is a long time.

Government that should administer to the people who elect and trust them to do right by trust placed in those officials. More often nowadays, they tend to abuse those who empower them.

War seems to be in style again. Mostly against the innocent populations that inhabit the unjustly invaded countries. I've never seen it written that War is Necessary on the Tombs of the Ancient Pharaohs, or anywhere else, for that matter. I don't believe war is a necessary human condition. It proves nothing except who is left at it end.

The Small Blue Ball Weather has taken a toll in 2023. Hot/ Dry/ Wet/ Cold/ Cyclonic/ Fiery/ Quakey, and generally traumatic for many in the world this year.

We have nomenclature:  climate change, global warming/ natural cycles of nature. Our planet is under siege. As I have stated many times. Pogo Possum had it right on the first Earth Day..."We have met the enemy, and he are us". The Small Blue Ball is losing the ability to reliably deliver climate zone heat and air at the moment. Why is under investigation, but I suspect the answer was succinctly put by a small cartoon Possum. 

So we should try to reverse some of the known causes, and see if that helps. If it doesn't, and it will take time, blame it on the Stones.

Our very food source is under siege.We have lost so many species of plants, animals and insects to our lack proper protection of our nest...more are never seen on earth again everyday. Lost to Greed?  Lack of Stewardship? Education? Again, Possums can talk.

Harmony People...Harmony and Understanding, Hard Work, Attention to the Blue Ball that feeds us will give us the Peace on Earth we wish for. Find your courage of pursue the salvation of the Small Blue Ball

Jan 1 is only a date...everyday counts,

Happy New Year...

Patrick

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Our Spring by Robert Samuel Lancaster


" Covered by a great block of white flint, the spring had been there since ice had rent the land. It was shaped like a mitten, and a sweet stream of water ran from the trunk. In winter, it was too warm to freeze; in summer, too cool to believe. 

It’s cooling grace sprang from a high hill on which Popular and virgin White Oak gave shade. For eons it was unknown to man, know only water sprites that haunt such places. Long ages passed before even a deer dropped an antlered head to drink. The water was not like all water; more lipid, damper, showing all the qualities of the original element. Its name was life and magic. 

This hidden, haunted place was at last discovered by man. No longer did it flow free as nature permitted. Now it began to obey, to be channeled, to be led. Some one of my ancestors acquired the land. He built a log house nearby because of the spring. For the spring too, he built a log house, small and neat. The branch was channeled between two cucumber tree logs. Space was provided in the spring house for churning butter. A little dairy house, it was filled with crocks of cream and buttermilk, choice vegetables and other things needing to keep cool. 

Much activity centered around the spring house; the milking gap was nearby. Wash pots for washing clothes of farming people lay within comfortable distance. A path lined with Walnut Trees line the path to the spring from the house. The distance was about 100 yards. Uphill from the spring, water was carried for a hundred years by hand. Ten thousand gallons I alone carried to the house! All water for a myriad of household uses came from that free, stone covered spring. I grew up and first became a man by experiencing my years by that spring. 

Coming to the spring at night, the hair on the back of my neck stood erect, feeling the hot breath of a panther breathing nearby. No place was lonelier at night; the great trees, the burble of the creek flowing nearby, the sound of an owl’s wing, muffled, but threatening. A boy became a man by that spring."

In rummaging through my Uncle Red's writings, I occasionally come upon a reflection. They are usually short, as the one above. His notebooks are filled with hardly legible lecture notes on Russia, the mid East, Cuba, and other world  issues and problems of the late 50's and 60's. Hard to read and barely remembered by my teenaged self of the 60's, making the task harder now.

Uncle Red, or Robert Samuel Lancaster, taught Jurisprudence Prudence at Baghdad University, University of Tokyo and Political Science at the University of the South at Sewanee TN.

He grew up on a 70 acre farm nestled in the hills around Floyd Virginia.

This is my latest find; nestled on a page that included his synopsis of Russia and the Cuban missile crisis. 



Friday, December 22, 2023

My Christmas Story


I have had a Christmas Day for 82 years. 83 if I add the one that Mama had me squirming around inside. Some better than others, but each unlike every other day. Some are better remembered than others and some are romanticized, as memories fade and are brought to mind again by the season. I dwell on the 1947 to 1955 version of Christmas remembered.

Well, on June 25th 1941 out into the world came a little Patrick Rhodes Shields, named Patrick 'cause Mama liked the name, middle name Rhodes for Daddy's Grandfather Rio Rhodes. Sarah Virginia Shields was born in 1944 and Robert Wayne Shields in 1945. Future wild Indians of Oconee Heights.

The end of WW2 set off a great change in the lives of the American public. New job opportunities, for one. My Daddy, Wayne Rhodes Shields took a job in Athens, GA. as Recreation Director. 

Thank you Jesus, I could have been raised in Meadville, Pa., Grafton Il., Mill Village, Pa., or McClean, Va. Daddy chose Athens, Ga., great place to grow up and a good wonderful small town to grow and sprout wings. Dreaded and despised college (mandatory) behind me, adventures awaited. As my Uncle Red said to me once,"you never let your schooling interfere with your education". 

Athens was a small Piedmont town in 1946. It was the County Seat of Clarke County, the smallest of 159 counties in Ga. It was home to the University of Ga. Athens population was around 19,000, and maybe 1300  students. That changed dramatically when the free Government GI Bill for Veterans began to expand college enrollment at colleges around the country. Athens became a intellectual and cultural center.

We found an apartment in a huge Georgian style house that had been broken up into apartments for the first year in Athens. Mama wanted a "farm". Daddy really wasn't convinced, but the price was right; it was 4 acres, with a run down old house with good bones built in the early 1900's. It had been a English White Leghorn chicken farm in the 30's. The chicken house was repurposed and there were about 5 smaller buildings and a garage. This was in 1947.

There was plenty of elbow room back then for we three to roam. We had  a cow, a bunch of chickens, usually a hog to butcher every year. There weren't many kids around. Mama grew up on a farm. Daddy grew up in a small Pa. town with farming relatives. It was a big step for them both, bless 'em. Guess they thought it was a good place to raise young'uns.

So,  the farm was cleared of Kudzu, Wisteria and a bunch of Privet, and the house stabilized, sorta. We didn't care... we three were happy there. Heat was provided by fireplaces and a coal stove, with the help of a small laundry heater style wood stove in the kitchen. Cats, dogs and blankets furnished the heat in our freezing bedrooms.

Now, that out of the way, let me tell you what Christmas was like for us 3 little country kids.

First things first. SCHOOL'S OUT!!!  Christmas vacation! Of course, our parents were not really with the program. They were working. We were pretty much in our own custody to roam the hills, creeks, and fields for miles around. I can't remember any parental instructions except feed the animals and be home by dark or when you hear the car horn. 

A day came to hunt up a Christmas tree! We never  heard of buying a tree. We cut one down and brought it home. 

Daddy had an old A Model Ford with a Sears one wheeled trailer to pull behind. We three kids would load up in the trailer with Wan, the bird dog. Mama rode up front leaving us to bounce down the dirt roads. Cotton was no longer king. Fields, worn out from years of misuse, reverted to sagebrush, scraggly pine and sweet gum thickets. 

We'd go to a friend's 300 acre farm on the Jefferson River Road, unload and start walking. Selection of the tree was Mama's job. I don't know what kind of tree they had at her "Mama's" but that kind wasn't available in a sagebrush field of Ga. She tied white cloth to likely candidates. Daddy carried the bow saw and the old .410 shotgun in case we jumped a rabbit, or Wan pointed a covey of quail. Mama sent us three to the "swampish place" to find Smilax, and admonished us not to get our feet wet. Yeah, right.

Mama finally made up her mind. The tree finally selected. The ride back in the trailer was chilly as the sun sank lower. Daddy could never find the "tree stand" he made last year. We had long spikes and nailed the tree to it after cutting off the end to Mama's specifications. We marched the tree into the house, usually knocking something over. The tree resided in front of the fireplace at one end of the big living room, leaving the other fireplace to help heat the house.

Daddy would get out the light strings. He was a stickler for making sure all the lights were working when they were put away last year. They never worked this year. We would replace each bulb until the offender was found and replaced, a string at a time. The big argument would what color to replace the dead one with. Sometimes you could just flick the bulb with your finger and it would magically come on. Daddy always said you woke the Gremlin up that was trapped in the bulb when we took 'em down. They waited all year to get out and into the wire again! 

Daddy would get an old wooden 6 ft ladder and we would plug each string into the next as he wound them around the tree, top to bottom.  I loved the "bubbling candle bulbs". I would beg Mama to buy one or two at Kress' 5 and 10 each year. They always burned out first. I'd add them to the middle strings and love to just stand and watch them start to bubble as they warmed up! Magic!

Decorating was never finished. There was always something new to add...old bird's nest, construction paper chains glued with flour paste at school. We also had little Styrofoam balls that you could pin sequin stars on with straight pins. That exercise was left to Sally, our artist in residence. Boring to me.

An old quilt was put under the tree, and accepted the presents as they appeared.

There were phone calls from Uncle Bob and Ethel Phlegar, Uncle Red, and Uncle John. Bird hunting in the Quail Capitol State of Georgia was a treat for them. We boys weren't invited, but it fell to us to clean birds or rabbits in the cold twilight in pans of ice cold well water. The Victorious Hunters AND the dogs languished by the fire with a drink, boots off and drying for the next days hunt. Not my favorite holiday  experience, but not one forgotten.

Uncle John and Dot would usually stay through Christmas. They had no kids then. Cousin Lynne would come in due time.

Uncle John had come to UGA under the GI Bill, and lived with us for 4 years. I think he sorta' thought of Athens as home after surviving WW2 as a co pilot in a B-24.

He met Aunt Dot at a fraternity party. Dot was from South Carolina; petite,talented and very patient. She always brought thoughtful kid presents and alway made desserts to die for. She moved effortlessly through the many storms of the Shields' Christmas fracas.

I always thought the real reason she loved coming was going shopping the day after Christmas sales with Mama to stock up for next year. She was a thrifty shopper.

Grandma Rachel, Mama's mother, usually made the rounds as she got older. She would spend time round-about with mama's siblings, her ten children, for the winter months and move back into the homeplace in Floyd, Va. for the summer. She loved to spend Christmas with us and stay the month of January. When I was 12, Grandma would let me drive her in the old Model A through the woods to Arnold's store so she could buy some groceries. She never told Mama or Daddy.

There were Christmas parties that Mama and Daddy would attend. We were left at home with me in charge. We three got along pretty well, especially at Christmas. Brother Bob was a squealer and would tell tales about his siblings transgressions to Mama next day. True or not, he'd get his pounding later.

We'd turn out all the lights except for the tree lights. We would make real hot chocolate from Hershey's Cocoa mixed with sugar and real cow's milk from our cow, Bossy. We'd pop corn in an old pan shaker over the fire, gather all the Siamese cats and Wan and sing our favorite carols. We'd  play Go Fish by firelight, read stories and be asleep by 9:30. Those were good nights. Home alone! 

Mama sang in the choir at the Presbyterian Church and we would occasionally go to the Midnight Service when we got older. It was a huge church with a 40 foot pipe organ at one end. The organ could be heard all over Athens, almost drowning out the voices of the multi church choir. We kids sat in the balcony. The candles, greenery and the organ made it look as if watching a movie. An awesome reminder of what the season was about.

Could it be better? Two weeks out of school, going to Woolworth's to pick out $1.00 present for family, driving around town to look at all the Christmas lights in the neighborhoods in the warmth of the big ole 48 Packard Clipper. 

We opened presents on Xmas morning. Daddy was very formal about it. He and Mama would get a cup of coffee. He'd light the fire, we'd fidget, he'd light his pipe, we'd fidget, THEN he'd hand out the first present...to Mama. Things went pretty fast after that. Stocking with oranges, candy etc. had to wait until after breakfast. During the day, there would be visitors just dropping by with presents or treats and often an OPPS! present Mama had "forgotten" about. 

Christmas dinner was always a free for all. The table sat about 12 and the kids tables were set up in the back bedroom. Turkey, ham, quail pie, and chicken 'n dumpling if Grandma Rachel was there.The deserts were never ending. Chocolate cake, Pecan pie, Chocolate Pecan Pie, Coconut Cake, cookies and fruits, nuts and candies. Best of all, no referees. We gorged ourselves on sugar, sugar and more SUGAR!

After the mess was cleaned up and dishes put right. Nap time would be interrupted by Mama playing piano and singing carols. The Epting family and others dropped in to sing a few with us until dark. 

Next Day was Boxing Day. The tree had to be undecorated and ceremonious taken outside...to be burned with all the years bad luck notes attached to it. That happened New Year's Day. We never kept a tree after Christmas. Mama said it was a fire hazard and it did make a mess with falling needles.

One thing I remember during the early years of living on the "farm". During the week before Christmas Mama would load us up in the old 50 chevy station wagon and we would go visit with all the families that had been hired to help us that year. Each family got a box with fruit, cookies, candies and clothes that Mama had put together especially for them. We couldn't have managed without them! 

Ed and Louise Hitchcock, Harris and Matilda, Mattie B and Earnest Scott were always there for us. They were our babysitters, maids, gardeners, wood splitters, fence builders, shrub planters; they could do anything. They could cure a cow, butcher a hog, wring a chicken's neck, cook and clean. These people, along with my relatives, were a fount of knowledge and always willing and helpful.  I learned things from them as a kid that, at the time, I could never imagine actually doing. However, I relied on every one of these experiences in my own quest for country living many years later in West Virginia. 

Those are the Christmas memories I choose to remember. Ahhh, innocent childhood.

I leave with this sad note. Cousin Lynne emailed to say that Aunt Dot died quietly on Dec 15, 2023, the very night I began to write these memories. She was 98 and was the last of the "old ones". Uncle John died a couple years ago, also at 98. He was the youngest of the ten Lancaster children and the last to pass. 

We cousins are so proud to have had them all to help guide us on our many and varied life journeys. We rejoice in our time with them all! May we all be so loved and remembered. So long as your name is spoken you will be remembered.


 



Sunday, November 26, 2023

Imagine

Imagining is at it's best lying on your back with nothing else to do... cloud watching...season by season. 

I always enjoyed watching the spring clouds ripping across the sky as my homemade kite of newspaper, mucilage, and privet sticks, struggled to get out of my hand and into the wind. Minutes later there could be a spring shower from a cloud just passing by to rain on your parade.

In summer, big puffy, slow moving clouds formed shapes; bears, clown faces, even rabbits. Shapes shifted by invisible wind not touching earth, but high up tickling clouds into whatever you could imagine in your limited mental vocabulary of shapes.

Fall clouds are fickle. They spring up overnight and promise a cloudy day, but melt with the winds that are created by the heat of the sun above them. As evening comes clouds reappear as the air cools. They are lazy, taking day after day of Indian Summer to prepare for the tempest to come...the dreaded winter.

 The leaden sky of winter aren't clouds to me. I's a silent envelope keep silent watch, hovering above brown, gray and white watching for signs of spring, determined to drive  it away. 

Grandma Rachel always referred to the battle of winter to spring as "the storms of the equinox". An apt analogy, if you pay attention.

There was a camp song we sang when at Boy Scout camp that went
Ain't gonna' rain no more, no more, 
Ain't gonna' rain no more
How in the world do the old folks know
It ain't gonna rain no more.

Like all of us, everyone asked the "old ones" what the weather would bring. The Old Farmers Almanac came out every year and was a guide based on passed daily observation made and recorded by farmers, woodmen and the like as to weather patterns in there daily lives. They and lived season after season in a more rural setting than we moderns live in. Our main worries are violent storms that can be predicted by satellites, Doppler Radar and boots on the ground.

 The timing of the Battle of the Bulge was dependent on weather conditions gathered "modern" methods; weather balloons Equipped with instrument packages which radioed results, coded messages from informant in many locations. It wasn't looking great, but good enough to go with.

The destruction of the Spanish Armada, and the two attempts by China to invade Japan are  examples of weather gone awry.

An old farmer was convinced by his son to buy a hay baler after years of putting up hay with horses and manpower. Half way through  the process, the baler stopped tying. An afternoon "cloud" began to form. His son frantically  worked to fix the baler. The father said "Ya know son, sometimes the solution to the problem is more complex than the problem itself. I'm just trying to get the hay in, not learn how to fix a baling machine."

Those going West in wagon trains leaving St. Louis knew not the challenges weather might play in the success or failure of there journey. They entered the endless prairies to a whole new set of challenging weather related issues. Tornado, wild fires driven by high winds started by dry lightning, dry water holes, early, and late snow falls were not in there experience.  A savvy Wagon Master and a good crew were necessary to help navigate an already dangerous undertaking. There was safety in numbers...but a few good frontiersmen with experience won the day for many a westward journey.

Speaking of journeys.  I've always wondered how it was Columbus was lucky enough to cross the Atlantic to the Americas in hurricane season more than once. Just lucky I guess. Our history might be different?

I still watch for lenticular clouds or thunder heads, mares tails, butter milk sky, red sky at night, sailor's delight, yet the weather brings surprises after 20 years on the farm. 

Nothing like watching clouds gather the red and pink of a sun gone down over the horizon giving your world a beautiful pink hue turning to purple and finally giving up to the first star.

Ask  a child to look up at the clouds and tell you what they see! You might be surprised at what they see.
 




I

Monday, June 12, 2023

I'll have to say the 2020's thus far have been more than trying. The ravages of Covid, Putin's war in Ukraine that threatens all Western Europe, the Trump Maga movement that threatens our democracy, mudslides, forest fires, immigration woes, the renewed attacks on ethnic American citizens, the shift in how we work, inflation, mass shooting of innocents, police malfeasance. I'm 81 years old, and I have never seen the chaos of this last 4 years. Enough said? Every society in every land mass in the world has risen and fallen from within at one time or another. The Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Japanese, Egyptians, Russians have all fallen and risen again. Personally, I don’t want to experience any fall at my age. I can’t run, and I have nowhere to hide. For centuries, war, civil war, genocides, natural disasters, economic disasters, culture wars, brutal dictators, Mongol Hordes have had their way with our meager bipedal selves, yet we, as a species, have survived. In there demise, they left a legacy of knowledge, art, architecture, food, customs that are still appreciated and the basis for much of how we live and what we know of our world today. I am hopeful we can overcome this latest unpleasantness and divisiveness in this UNITED states of America. My attempt to understand how we have gone to and interconnected world in which every “wrinkle” in one part of the world directly affects the sum of the whole is woefully lacking. I feel a hopelessness I have not felt in my life that the world is truly out of control. Humanity is threatened, natural resources and our planet's weather are migrating to keep us off balance. We are being inundated with climate anomalies that baffle us. There are those who deny we have any part in it. There are those who doubt that anything at all is happening. I don't believe Columbus could have gotten to China through the Northern Passage that will be completely ice free by the summer of 2031. In my mind, our fascination with social media has taken our eyes off the road and are heading for the ditch. Our inability to elect and attract viable political candidates that can govern effectively are evasive We are a nation made of communities, counties, states that have laws that govern how our lives stay between the white lines. There has been a disconnect, an ambivalence, to how we vet those who wish to govern us. I took Civics in high school. I feel dropping it from school curriculums has caused a failure to understand how our Constitution works. We need to revisit that mistake. These two guiding documents are being labeled as old gray and only in the way by our courts and politicians. Interpretation to fit whims of politicians and courts do not change the original intent. The Kingston Trio sang a little ditty that sums up my evaluation of today’s world
Can we save ourselves? Pogo a cartoon character created by Walt Kelley in the 50’s was known to say.” We have met the enemy, and he are us”. I have never been this uneasy about the future of our world, our environment, our fragile ability to "live free". Gun, knives, political unrest, racism, book banning, science bashing, trash mouthing, storming forts of democracy do not bode well for our future. Speaking Chinese or Russian really doesn't appeal to me. Rotting in jail for speaking my mind doesn't appeal to appeal to me. Getting shot by some deranged person with an axe to grind in a grocery store does not appeal to me. Democracy is a noble experiment, a fragile experiment that we have fought for. Don't give it away by allowing it to be turned to the will of those who would be kings, or dictators. These are trying times and demand our best efforts to stay on the course we have been on for 200 + years. It’s worked so far. Come together, people!!!

Wednesday, January 25, 2023

 

Memories of Home and Aunt Rhody

by Virginia Lancaster Shields from Floyd, Va.

Minnie Rakes, a girl from “down the mountain” had achieved the title “Aunt” by marrying Ike Martin. Ike’s wife, Amelia Barnard Martin, was my mother Rachel Barnard’s sister. Amelia had died, leaving Ike Martin a widower.  

Ike Martin had built a beautiful two-story brick house on Franklin Pike that survives today. Minnie was much younger than Ike, and when he died, Aunt Minnie became queen of the castle.

Mama always said the Barnard family were not happy that Aunt Minnie inherited that property. It was said Aunt Melia (Amelia) promised her portion of the estate to her Barnard kin, but Ike left it all to Minnie in his will when he died.

Johnny P Cocks, from Meadows of Dan community began courting Minnie. He was a successful insurance salesman and eventually owned the Ford Dealership in Floyd, Va. He and Minnie married after a long courtship.

 Johnny P Cocks was a funny man with a red face and light pink hair. In his later years, after Aunt Minnie died, he took to using liquid red shoe polish to keep his hair “pink”. He and Aunt Minnie were frequent visitors and would often come over to play Set Back with Mama and Aunt Lou or just sit on the porch and talk.

There was an older woman, Rhody, whose last name I never knew, that lived in a tiny house beside the Franklin Pike across the road from the big Victorian brick house.  Johnny P. made Rhody’s live rather miserable by constantly playing tricks on her.

One Halloween night, he and my sister, Mary, made a scarecrow man, overall stuffed with straw, shirt stuffed with straw and finally, one of Mr. Cock’s old felt hats. They sat it on the bench right outside Rhody’s door, knowing Rhody hated men.

Rhody’s eyesight was not good. The next morning, she found “the man” on her porch. She ran back into her house, snatched a boiling tea kettle of water off her small fire and scalded the Scarecrow.

Mr. Cocks laughed for days. Rhody was embarrassed and angry but never spoke of the matter. Mary told us about the prank. It’s said Rhody just mumbled to herself and ignored the whole episode.

Once she got so angry at Aunt Minnie and Mr. Cocks that she came to Mama’s and asked to live in Grandma Octavia Lancaster’s old log house.

 That was a two-story log house built in the 1820’s for Grandma Octavia West and her husband Robert Lancaster. Both had died, leaving the house to Mama and my father Tazwell Lancaster. We called it the “Old House”. That was its name, and still is.

 Rhody would live with us for a couple of months, or even a year sometimes. The downstairs was her workplace and living room. She cooked, baked bread in a Dutch Oven, and heated flatirons in the immense fireplace with which she ironed out clothes. The old swinging pot hooks still stand in the fireplace. Upstairs was her bedroom and a fireplace. It was a comfortable house.

When my sister Anne and I were in our teens, we took over the washing of clothes as Rhody was becoming frailer.

 Wash day was an event. The wash area was in and area under a huge Cucumber tree down by our spring. A creek ran nearby. A black “wash pot” kettle was suspended on an iron rod between two posts. The pot was filled from the spring and a fire lit under it and lye soap flakes were added. White clothes were boiled first, stirring them with a wooden paddle. Two galvanized tubs sat on a sturdy wooden bench turned black by time and mildew. One tub held a brass washboard: the other, rinse water. Albert, my brother, had bought an old wooden hand cranked wringer that sat by the rinse tub. We’d put each rinsed garment through the rollers. A basket was placed under the wringer to catch them to be carried up to the hill from the spring to the Old House yard to the clotheslines where they were hung. The weight of the wet clothes required that sturdy poles be placed under the wires to keep the clothes from touching the ground as they dried. Rhody would take them down and into the house to be ironed. Once one of the cows got out and pulled a pair of Annie’s underpants off the line and one carried them around, trying to eat them.

Rhody would come to the house and tell us the ironing was done and we girls would go fetch it back to the house. She loved to sing hymns and would ask me to play piano and she would sing her favorite, “Home of the Soul”.

“Oh, they sing of a land on a faraway strand.

The beautiful home of the soul,

Where no storms ever blow in the far away land

That beautiful home of the soul”,

I’d sing other songs for her, and she would rest on the couch with her eyes closed. I don’t know where the other siblings were.  I just remember Rhody and me. In my mind’s eye, I see her baking light bread, ironing, picking up wood for her fireplace in the Old House, or hoeing her small garden.

She knew her Bible and deplored the wearing of pants by women. She and I found the passage in Deuteronomy which abjured women not to dress as men. The sight of Annie, Helen and I running down the hill in scanty bathing suits to the swimming hole in the Little River would have her mumbling, “don’t let Irving Smith see you like that”!

Irving Smith was an old bachelor who seldom spoke, an “Ethan Frome” of a man. Irving was the son of Fountain Smith, the neighborhood sage, well-read man with a long white beard. Once we went to Fountain’s house and he gave us a little glass of “hard’ apple cider, I remember him saying, “Now this has a “head” on it, children, don’t’ drink much”. We got a little giddy going home. Irving lived to be an old man in Fountain’s house. An equally old sister took care of him.

Rhody’s death was tragic. As she aged, Rhody’s sight began to fail.  She would have to cross Franklin Pike to get to the big house. Aunt Minnie worried about her getting hit by a car.

 Minnie began to lock Rhody in her little one room house when she a Johnny P. left to go into Floyd or be away for any amount of time. Once Minnie went to Roanoke on a shopping trip and locked Rhody in her house. Rhody was sick and frail but wanted out of her house.  Aunt Minnie and Johnny returned home about dark, and Minnie went to see about Rhody. She found her on the floor, victim of a stroke. She had taken a stick of wood and had tried to get out by breaking a window.

Rhody never recovered and died soon afterwards. I don’t know where she is buried. I knew only that she had come “from down the mountain” to be the hand maiden to our Aunt Melia, who “wore many Victorian petticoats under black silk dresses with a corset and things”. Aunt Amelia was a big woman who needed Rhody to dress her.

When Mama thought I was being headstrong she would say “You’re just like Melia Martin,” “She would jump on a horse and ride just like a man”! I have a picture of Amelia and Uncle Ike sitting in a double buggy dressed for Church. They are in front of the Victorian house with the gingerbread porches. Two horses stand in the traces ready to roll. I had an artist friend pain that house for me.

Poor Rhody. She lived alone in her little house that Aunt Melia willed her until she died, with and occasional stint in Grandma Octavia’s Old House where we children would play merrily, thankful for Rhody’s salt rising bread and ginger cookies!

The Small Blue Ball: A New Year Greeting/Warning

 New Year's Eve... So, the past year was tumultuous to put mildly. Political dialog: Non Existent/Divisive  War: Seeming around the glob...