Farm life and that fun what with the fields to gaze out on in their beautiful shades of green and yellow when the crops came in. Vegetable garden to hoe and a veritable ribbon of tomatoes to can until the stove feels red hot and the kitchen feels hotter with the flies dancing on the other side of the screen door. Ones in the store in pretty cans with pictures but the other ladies carrying on. Something about a real wife growing her own food and not being lazy and buying it canned by someone else somewhere else with the stems and things living someplace else in their giant mound.
A writer turned into a gentleman wheat farmer and that not . . . . just not. . . Skies that go on forever and the children to tend and knit sweaters for while they grow like weeds. But not normal things for them to do. Jumping from haylofts and walking into town instead of taking the streetcar into town to window shop and have lunch at the lunch counter in the big café in the train station.
A grand life but a photograph falling out of the back of the album that fell behind the bookcase and a dreamtime back. Wanting to be a model and the neighbor lady knowing someone at Neiman Marcus. Getting a job wearing evening gowns for rich ladies to see while their granddaughters sit on little gold chairs on either side with eyes big as saucers. Not a forever thing for sure but a dream lived for real instead of in your head . . .
Summer into fall and the new year about to begin. Funny. Decades living where the year starts in January but growing up in Boston with so many schools everyone starts over in September even if you are 103.
Fun back then and wanting to stay forever but a handsome young man living around the corner who went to West Point and ending up traveling the globe one army base at a time. Children that pick up new languages at the drop of a hat with mothers who only know the words for “gin and tonic” and “Where is the dress shop, please?”
All of that fun with dolls and other fun things sent back to relatives who never travel further than their feet will take them but still . . . .fun it was back at school . . .four years all in the same place and a college bookstore that never moved the hand lotion instead of a new PX and having to dig things out like a dog digging in the sand . . . Christmas and being an elf in red tights with a green tunic and a headdress with tinkling bells . . . a vision it was and a treasure forever. . .
Georgia State Women’s College (now Valdosta State University), Valdosta, Georgia. Page 19 from the Georgia State Womans College 25 Year Anniversary Bulletin, 1913-1938. PDF Link here https://buff.ly/3wEWdhv Screenshot from a PDF of it. I found the link at Valdosta State University Archives and Special Collections on Facebook. What is now Valdosta State University was called Georgia State Woman’s College from 1922 to 1950.
A forever home and a husband to help take the grandbabies for ice cream cones every day after supper when they come to visit. A lunch of whatever one wants as long as you remember to check the icebox before you make your list.
Smiles all around and the same pew at church with the same child holding the incense boat. Not the same child but not like Christmas with a new child in each place.
Better it is but only sort of. The train into the city to shop every few months and the big city station with a place to get tea with chairs with caned bottoms and ice cream with chocolate sauce in dishes.
Knees that ache in the rain and ears that don’t hear so well but a memory in flood. A lounge for ladies to sit with their babies with a long-ago vision of a mother sitting up all night waiting for the early morning express, a child at either end of the bench, and two more towards the middle kept warm with their coats.
Wanting to leap on the next train when the man calls the stations. The express to New Orleans or maybe Los Angeles or Chicago. None of that mattering except for the train part. A married lady name now but little Flossie Shepard back then telling stories behind the limelights and banging on the drum with every sister on her violin with Burtie blowing away on his tuba. Mother and father smiling after in the dressing room. The next train to the next place and a hop, skip and jump to another contract touring on the vaudeville circuit.
Elmira, Charleston, Baton Rouge, and tiny places that blur with the hotel up over the restaurant and an opera house up over the Masonic Hall. Big places with four opera houses and elevator hotels with bellboys.
No vaudeville anymore and everyone gone. But something to remember forever and that every time a freight train whistles along its track. . .
Originally from Lawrenceville, New York, the Shepard Family Band toured throughout the Northeast in the 1880s and 1890s, eventually settling in South Royalton, Vermont. All members of the family were apparently musically inclined: “In addition to Minnie (mother and matriarch Mary “Minnie” Shepard), and her husband, patriarch James Monroe Shepard, all of the children were pressed into service. Daughter Laura Belle, the ‘violiniste,’ was getting better all the time, under the instruction of a ‘competent master.’ (Her fans “will be astonished at the improvement in style, tone and expression.”) It was said of little Lessie that, ‘Among lady cornetists she has no equal.’ The darling little son of the family, Master Burtie, could not help but please, for he was well-known to be, ‘The youngest Tuba soloist in the world; only nine years of age; scarcely larger than the instrument he plays.’ He was also a ‘clever comedian, singer and character artist.” The baby, little Flossie, “a sweet little miss of four summers,’ was said to be a “wonderful mimic and impersonator…a veritable little fairy.’ Daughters Kittie and Georgia were also part of the troupe.” Henry Sheldon Museum.
Tea and a blazing fire with the maid about to open a box of cookies back in the kitchen. Well, only three boxes left but more to come as soon as a grandchild comes to visit from England. An entire second suitcase filled each time and that enough to last until Christmas or maybe next June depending on how many young people there are to help eat them up.
Helsinki more fun what with its theatres and all but a husband lost and a need to economize. Funny. Lived through all that excitement in Saint Petersburg and sneakings out after that man made the tsar die, only to have a spasm and collapse eating mushrooms that turned out to be the poison kind and not the sort to fry up in a little frying pan with sherry.
But the quiet nice, too. So many years with babies to take care of and not enough time to sit and read let alone sit and think. . . .a long way back .. . only time to think and not have to take care of anybody . . . an album tucked away and a memory in flood . . . science class and everyone with a long braid down their backs instead of grown up lady things. . . . time and all the energy in the world . . . .the energy gone but all the time in the world to remember from before it all got gone.
Fringe of Boston and lilac season with scents so heady one almost feels dizzy just walking down to the end of the driveway to get the paper when the boy misses the porch.
Winter finally gone, and the coats sent off to be cleaned. Cedar closets sitting empty soon to be filled up with sweaters and summer chests in the attic to be taken down with things to be got ready for the house in Bar Harbor.
Children in high school and a child off to college. The swing set taken down in the back yard and more and more cars in the driveway instead. A bigger garage, but no. Gone soon they will be and money needing to be spent on grandchild bedrooms where the maids used to sleep soon enough. Three rooms already and not wanting more. The house big enough and not needing something the size of another with a suite or two for nursemaids or au pairs or whatever the young people call them now.
But the neighborhood grand and the flowers divine. A good house for children but not the mother.
A long time ago it was, that year in the apartment on Beacon Hill. Bedrooms needing to be shared but a walk across the Common every Thursday and a sister to meet for dinner. In the same space and not needing a car, just feet. . . far away now she is but not in one’s heart . . . no, there and two ladies in a restaurant laughing over pot pies and a cocktail and cigarette forever . . .
This is the story of Isabelle C. whom I worked for when I was young and she seemed terribly old. She had long since moved to the suburbs but had fond memories of her apartment and told me how once a week her husband would watch their children and she would cross the park to meet her sister for supper.
Hawaii and the sun just beginning to set. World plunged into darkness soon but not yet. No dusk or blue light, but friendly people and the scent of frangipani glorious.
Mornings to watch the waves while the children are in school. Afternoons spent playing bridge at the club with a big gin and tonic.
Home by five and sitting in the breakfast nook watching the children eat their supper. Big dinner in the dining room and then up to bed.
Husband with a big job in the navy and a chestful of ribbons. So many places lived in that who can remember. Hopping around the world like a kangaroo but never sticking long enough to make memories. Christmas parties with Santa and toys for the children draped in palm fronds one year and icicles the next.
Language after language but none of it sinking in very deep. Venice with its canals and Okinawa with its beach.
Home as a series of boxes and furniture that always sits in the same place no matter where you are. Same napkin rings on the same table with a background that’s always in flux.
But home and that all that counts, even if no one would have thought that back in Wales. No one ever leaving or having pets gone and buried in backyards spanning all the oceans of the world like a necklace of memories that purr.
But the old cigarette cards in the bottom of the trunk in the closet and a private memory that goes on forever . . .afternoons up under the eaves in the little room at the end of the attic and another world . . . ships with swimming pools of their own and ending up with one’s own pool even if it doesn’t have torch-like things and columns like the picture in the book of Homer at the school . . . a blessing.
Hungary and up early. A cup of coffee and then another. Hands that feel cold and a little more coal for the fire.
Pancakes for breakfast with a knob of butter. The children visiting later and all that but peace for now. Not coming till supper time and the cleaning lady getting everything tidied up by two.
A morning to memory drift. A better time. If only. Papa having hated wars but ending up in two of them. The first war taking the big house in Vienna and the second two brothers. Someone else getting what was left after.
But things that were there in one place or another to pull out and remember by. Porcelain shepherdesses from Vienna, silverware that looks like twigs from the house in the Carpathians that Mother’s cousins owned and love letters that someone’s beau sent from the old hope chests in the attics in the summer house in Tyrol.
Old books to look through and photographs that fall out . . .funny . . .history as bookmarks. But one at the very back . . .Papa and his friends on that winter trip to where someone’s uncle had a hunting lodge. . . . way up in the mountains and snowed in for days . . .another five years and it all starting to go but no one knowing it then . . .
A North Carolina June. Terrace to sit out on and listen to the college boy from down the hill mow the lawn.
Things all right and a new grandchild almost every year. Done soon, one hopes, while there are still enough bedrooms to put everyone in. Wanting everyone home for Thanksgiving and that impossible otherwise.
But a fine life. Work one likes and things that are fun. Better than they had it back then, anyway. Great grandfather having had to leave home to seek his fortune at twelve instead of going to school. Made a lot of money but no. Not enough ladies to choose from, he said. More where he had come from but going back not possible. The mills not doing well enough for someone else to help run them.
Long ago and far away but still fun it must have been . . . like the dinghy that time out on the lake with a big brother to take the oars . . . a story like that with a rowboat and a creek . . . no picture but must have been much the same . . .two boys having an adventure. . . .best thing about a picture . . . goes on forever and it doesn’t matter how it ends up.
Minnesota and January into another February. Memories of being somewhere warmer but back there so far it’s more of a mirage than anything else.
Big house on the coast near Havana, a dining table so long it looked to be slipping into the sea and maid after maid. Father an attorney downtown and a mother that party planned when she wasn’t sipping her way through another pitcher of daiquiris.
But better. America never home. Home for husbands and children but not for oneself. No, snow and ice with lines on telephone poles where it came up to so high even the tall gentleman who lives down the street has to jump as high as he can to touch it.
But one day. Out in that tiny boat when the revolution came and mother clung to all the way to Florida.
Two albums filled with pictures that were under the seat and nothing more . . . dinner party for one of the ambassadors . . . only a mayoress now and a table by the window but the rest only a dream anyway . . . doesn’t really matter that it was all real . . .
Pacific Northwest and fish that almost hop right out of the water. Fisherman neighbor down the street and three the other way. Vegetable garden big enough to barter all summer long and never run out of tomatoes.
Husband that lawyers in Seattle and children heading off to college. One for Idaho, one for Nevada and a third for who knows where, as long as they’ll take him.
Things great fun but still. Hard. Nurses and all that in Mississippi but not now. No, cleaning ladies all right but having to tend one’s children in person.
Dreams dreamed and left on a shelf. Hopefully coming back or maybe new ones that are even more fun.
But scrapbooks with things saved and memories of glories past that never leave. High school and a basketball championship won with a gym full of cheers that echo forever. Out there somewhere now if one tries to hear. Like the roar of the sea down at the beach but coming sideways instead of in . . .
Women’s championship high school basketball team, McComb, Mississippi. 1945. Vintage photo. via Facebook.
