Ridge Stories Read online

  That event spelled doom for my sheep family. As I became more and more involved in campus life, I came home to the farm less and less. Ultimately, I consented; Charlotte and her son were sold down the river, and once I left home, my father bought a riding lawnmower. Used.

  A Civil Defense

  We can find dark humor in the 1950s drills conducted for schoolchildren in preparation for a possible atomic attack. On command, boys and girls were directed to “duck and cover at the first sign of a flash,” crawl beneath their desks, tuck their knees under them, put their faces against the floor, and place their hands over their heads—as one wag said, assuming the perfect position for kissing their asses goodbye.

  On Pleasant Ridge, my family took a more informed approach toward dealing with a nuclear disaster. My father became the Willow Township Civil Defense coordinator, and I, a seventh grader, served as his assistant. We attended Civil Defense training sessions in the Richland Center High School gym where, on the shiny wooden floor, representatives of the other townships in the county assembled to hear lectures about scary nuclear disasters, to receive directions on building bomb shelters, and to practice using Geiger counters to detect traces of radiation.

  It was serious business, a matter of life and death. We were to serve as the go-to guys for people in our township who had questions about preparing for a nuclear holocaust and surviving should one occur. After we had completed our training, my father and I had the answers, but I don’t recall that anyone asked us for information. For most of the nearby farmers, making hay and milking cows seemed more pressing concerns at the time.

  But we were ready for the worst. Our house had a full basement, one-half of the space lacking windows. My mother tended a huge garden, canned throughout the summer season, and stored her produce on shelves in the cellar: tomatoes and applesauce, pickles and green beans, corn and even canned beef. Assuming food would be our biggest obstacle in such a disaster, we would survive.

  Presumably, my father and I would be able to poke our heads outside and, with the Geiger counter in hand that we had checked out from the Civil Defense authorities, determine whether or not it was safe to return to our daily lives on the farm.

  We were prepared. We had watched made-for-television nuclear apocalypse movies on Playhouse 90. I remember one in particular in which a family had survived because they lived high on a mountain, thinking they were the only humans left on earth, but then, after the radioactive ash below had cooled, saw a family walking toward them, survivors because they had taken shelter in a mine shaft. With the possibility of this genetic mix, life would continue on Earth, the boy from one family and the girl from the other—metaphorically speaking, the next Adam and Eve. Maybe I’d have that responsibility when I emerged from our basement, if the Crary girls on the farm to the east had had the foresight to hide in their basement!

  And then I read the end-of-the-world novel On the Beach, a grim scenario in which the United States had been completely obliterated by an atomic bomb, leaving a radioactive cloud that slowly drifted west toward Australia. Down under, people were issued cyanide capsules to ingest for a humane death at the first sign of radiation sickness. The romantic couple serving as the Australian protagonists drove up to a lovers’ lookout, kissed, and then, Romeo and Juliet–style, popped their pills. Not for me! Luckily, we had a snug basement!

  Of course, even the people in charge did not completely understand radiation. Soldiers were issued sunglasses to protect their eyes while they watched atomic test explosions from a “safe” distance. Customers in shoe stores stuck their feet in X-ray machines to check the fit of their new purchases. And the sickly could buy tickets to a small stone cavern in Lone Rock and sit in the presence of low-grade radiation, in search of a cure for whatever ailed them.

  The post–World War II generation experienced a life of ambivalence. The United States had emerged the victor in battle, vanquishing the bad guys and enjoying their reward of prosperity. But the complacency that was a part of the 1950s was troubled by worries that the good life would be taken from them, either by Soviet communists who were secretly infiltrating our society (until ferreted out by Senator Joe McCarthy) or the Soviet bomb-makers who were planning to blow us to kingdom come (unless we intimidated them by building bigger bombs).

  On Pleasant Ridge, a farmer may have grumbled about politics as he leaned against a pickup truck in a neighbor’s driveway, but many of them felt they were too busy to even vote, much less worry that Leonard Turnipseed on the lower branch of Buck Creek might be a communist or that some misguided Russian was going to bomb the hell out of their back forty.

  My family, though, was prepared. Once the threat had passed, our civil defense shelter that had in an earlier life been only a basement regained its original purpose as a cellar, the Mason jars glistening in the dim light, as un-radioactive as ever. I don’t remember when we returned the Geiger counter to the Civil Defense Commission office in Richland Center, but after my parents sold their house to move into town for their retirement, I didn’t find it among their belongings. Like the worry of communism and nuclear holocausts, it had disappeared.

  But for any of us who have fond memories of that era, vintage Civil Defense Geiger counters are available for sale on eBay.

  Hike to Steeple Rock

  The month of May was Steeple Rock time back on Pleasant Ridge. I’d hike out across our north forty along the ridge, through the Quackenbush’s second growth of woods, until I came to the sandstone formation known to locals as Steeple Rock.

  Wind and water erosion, and perhaps the lapping of some ancient sea, had carved five whimsical pillars of stone, each twenty-five to thirty feet in height. Some of the spires interlocked, forming crude Romanesque arches. Others sported little plateaus that enabled climbers to scale them with ease.

  Sometimes my brother and sister, parents, or grandparents would accompany me on my annual trek. Other times, I’d take it alone. But regardless of the pilgrimage to the rock, the ritual was unvaried. On the way, we gathered flowers. Most abundant were the delicate blossoms in pastel blues and pinks that my grandparents called mayflowers.

  At the rock, the adults rested, admiring but not picking the delicate, lacy-leafed native pasque flowers that grew at the base of the steeples while the young folks clambered about the stone formation. Imagine the feeling of freedom a child experienced standing atop a thirty-foot column of stone, the breeze caressing his body, and a billowy floor of yellow-green treetops at his feet.

  Once the adults had caught their breath and the young ones had their fill of scrambling about like so many goats on the rocks, we’d all descend the hill below Steeple Rock to the spring. Pure and icy cold, the water bubbled out of shale and rippled as clear as air over the sand. Hot and tired from the long walk and the play on the rock formation, we’d slurp the delicious water directly from the spring, down on all fours like woodland creatures.

  My earliest memory of that spring was when my friend Edna, now long passed, took me there on a walk when I was a child. She and her husband farmed the Quackenbush place at the top of the hill, not far from Steeple Rock.

  When my family and I hiked to Steeple Rock, first we drank from the spring—a novelty after our well water—and then we began gathering watercress with its round peppery leaves the size of pennies clustered on tender stems growing directly in the spring bed, the white, threadlike roots securing each plant in the sand. The patches make a dense emerald-green carpet, six to eight inches deep.

  We chose watercress that grew nearest the source of the spring, pulling up handfuls and then washing the sand from the roots in the spring water. From my back pocket I pulled plastic bread wrappers and gently coaxed the cress into them. The watercress kept best in the refrigerator as whole plants; it would be carefully sorted and washed right before mealtime, leafy stems broken free from the roots.

  Once our bags were full of cress, we began the long, slow ascent up the logging trail that emerged at the gravel lane just belo
w the Quackenbush farmhouse. While this route was slightly longer, it was easier on tired feet than the uneven terrain of the woods. For the next week or so, our salads and especially our sandwiches would be more delicious because of the addition of watercress.

  One of the nineteenth-century American romantic poets wrote about finding a beautiful seashell on the beach and bringing it home as a souvenir only to find that once it had been moved to another setting, something was missing. So it goes with grocery store watercress.

  Not long ago my wife picked up a package as a special treat for me, and I appreciated her thoughtfulness as I made a sandwich of it, white bread slathered with mayonnaise, like the ones I had enjoyed as a kid on the farm. The cress was not as peppery as the fresh cress of my youth, but it conjured images of Granny beside me on her last walk to Steeple Rock, before she became too old to make the journey.

  My extended family had just finished a Sunday dinner at our house when, drinking the last of her coffee, Granny announced, “I’m going to walk out to Steeple Rock and pick me some watercress.” Her pronouncement was met with silence around the dinner table, as Granny was getting up in years, and always a heavy woman, she had not gotten any lighter with age. “Who’d like to come with me?”

  “I’ll go with you,” I said and immediately went into the kitchen and pulled out the drawer where my mother kept string, paper grocery bags, and plastic bread wrappers. As I stuffed a couple wrappers in my back pocket, I heard my mother say in the other room, “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  Granny’s answer was to get up from her chair and go into the kitchen. “Got the bags?” she asked. “Good.”

  And leaving behind the murmuring of adults in the other room, we went out the back door and began our hike to Steeple Rock. It was a glorious day in May, sunny and warm, but not too hot, with a gentle breeze but not a brisk ridge wind. I loved my Granny and savored the idea of spending time alone with her. And as a thirteen-year-old boy who felt that he was coming of age, I liked the idea of being responsible. Dutifully, I pulled openings between barbed wires in fences and gently put my hand on Granny’s back to keep her from snagging her dress as she laboriously clambered through.

  Time passed quickly as Granny, invigorated by the adventure, retold stories of her trips to Steeple Rock as a girl. One Easter, she and her friends had taken a picnic that included hard-boiled eggs. Another time, while she and Gramp were courting, he carved their initials in the rock.

  The walk out to the crest of the ridge was fairly easy going, but the descent halfway down the hill to the beginning of the outcropping was less so. Granny was not wearing hiking boots, but rather a pair of those old-lady Oxford-style shoes with clunky stacked heels. She had an improvised walking stick in one hand and my hand in the other.

  At the rock formation, she found a low ledge to sit on and rest while she tried to remember where Gramp had carved their initials. She pointed to likely spots, but I couldn’t find the inscription. Perhaps decades of wind and rain and ice had erased the declaration of love.

  The descent from the rock to the spring was worrisome for me, as Granny was obviously still tired. Should we take a longer route with a more gradual decline, or should we move extra slowly and extra carefully down the shorter steep grade? Ultimately, I sorted out a compromise, and we made the descent safely to the spring. Granny lacked the agility to hunker down and slurp from the spring as I did, so instead she bent over at the waist and scooped up water in her cupped hands.

  She caught her breath while I harvested a bag of cress for her and then another for my family. Then I took both bags in one hand and Granny’s hand in the other as we began our difficult and treacherous ascent. When I asked her which return route she preferred, she opted for the shorter option, up the hill. As we started up, both of us occasionally grasping saplings for support, I wondered if she had made the correct decision, but now we were committed.

  When we had made it as far as the rock and Granny declared she needed to rest, I felt a strong sense of dread. Would she be able to make it up the hill? What in the world would I do if she couldn’t?

  After a lengthy rest, we continued on, Granny determined to make it to the top before she rested again. And she did, leaning on her walking stick as she paused, breathing so hard at first that she didn’t want to talk. Finally, she said, “I’m so pooped I’d like to sit down in the grass.” She laughed. “But I probably couldn’t get up again!”

  Finally, we continued on, my heart thumping not from exertion but from anxiety. What had I gotten us into? How could I be such a stupid kid! What if Granny had a heart attack? I furtively swiped tears from my eyes so that Granny couldn’t see them. Whenever we stopped to rest, I’d try to calculate mentally how far we had gone and how much farther we had to go, grateful when I determined we had passed the halfway point. An overwhelming sense of relief flooded over me when I could see our house in the distance.

  We had made it.

  “How was the walk?” my father asked as we entered the living room and Granny plopped herself in a rocker.

  “It was good!” she said. “But I’m pooped! Is there any more coffee?”

  “I’ll get you some,” I volunteered.

  “The percolator’s still plugged in,” my mother said. “But it’ll be pretty strong.”

  Granny laughed. “I don’t want to have to drink a barrel of water to get a little coffee. Bring me a cup!”

  In Gramp’s Shoes

  “You look just like him,” my second cousin said, pointing at the image of my grandfather. Gramp was pictured standing in a row of relatives in one of the old photographs that she had copied and brought to my uncle’s ninetieth birthday party.

  “No,” I said, frowning, staring at the short, skinny, forty-something guy in the snapshot that I held in my hand. “I don’t see it at all.”

  “I do,” my wife said, taking the photo from me and studying it carefully.

  “Thanks,” I scoffed, assuming that she was teasing me. Gramp had not been my favorite grandparent, as she well knew.

  “No,” she said, seriously. “I can see a family resemblance.”

  My Granny had been a favorite, probably because she had cared for me when I was a baby while my mother had gone back to teaching. In many respects, she was like a second mother, only far more indulgent. I was the first of her grandchildren, and I always hoped that I was her favorite even after her total number of grandkids reached six.

  She had been a large and pillowy woman who liked rocking chairs. Her hair had been pure white for as long as I could remember, regularly permed into a halo of white frizz. She wore a house dress, her hankie tucked inside the bodice within easy reach. Every time I sat in her lap, I felt that she had been custom designed for my comfort.

  I am told that when I was a little boy and she would visit our farm, she’d walk around the lawn, her hands clasped behind her back, checking out the flowering shrubs and perennial beds. I’d follow a few steps behind, my hands held behind my back in imitation of hers.

  But I felt no such affinity for Gramp. When I was a toddler, I once opened the door to their icebox and took out the butter, which I held in my hands and examined with curiosity.

  “Give that to me!” Gramp commanded.

  In fear of his retribution, I threw it in his direction with all my might, where it landed, short of its destination, in a flop on the linoleum floor. That misadventure, unfortunately, set a tone for our relationship.

  When my mother was assembling the clothing that I would wear for my eighth grade graduation ceremony, an occasion when graduates from one-room schools all over the county assembled at the Richland Center High School gymnasium to receive their diplomas, Gramp announced, “Gary can borrow my shoes so you won’t have to buy him a pair. We’re the same size. He’d just outgrow new ones anyway.”

  As Gramp and I both wore a men’s size 6 shoe, technically his fit me. But he had short wide adult feet while mine were the slender growing feet of a boy. I had t
o pull the laces extra tight and still felt as if I were walking with webbed duck feet. But the sports coat that my mother had ordered from the JC Penney catalog was new, as was my clip-on bow tie. I could tolerate the shoes.

  Now the loan of Gramp’s footwear seems more than an indication of his waste not, want not penury. In retrospect, his desire to put me in his shoes seems both literal and metaphorical. Both of Gramp’s sons had become farmers like him. And like him, he wanted me to be a farmer, too.

  Sometimes it felt as if he were trying to physically shape me, like God molding Adam from clay. Whenever he thought the fingernails of his young grandson were too long, he’d pull me onto his lap, reach into his pocket for the jackknife, one that he used to peel apples, make willow branch whistles, and “fix” little boy pigs, and then pare my fingernails. My protests were in vain. Although the fingernail-cutting was more like an enhanced interrogation technique than a manicure, my parents insisted that I sit still and submit. I squirmed until Gramp would scold, “Jee-shus Kee-ryest, stop squirming!”

  Gramp also announced that he would cut my hair, saving my parents the expense of taking me to a barbershop. He had a pair of manual hair clippers that worked on the principle of grass shears and required a steadier hand than Gramp’s. Intuitively, he felt that a gentle tug of the handles along with the squeeze that closed the blades was necessary for the clippers to do their job, and as I protested “Ow!” whenever he pulled my hair, he’d shout, “Jee-shus Kee-ryest, sit still!”

  Gramp had one hairstyle in his barbering repertoire: skinned on the back and sides with a cockatoo crest, a farmer’s haircut.

  Eventually, my parents excused me from Gramp’s home-style haircuts. I suspect that I had gained an ally in my father, as no doubt he had been subjected to the same tonsorial regimen when he was my age.