"The Spear Farm" meets "The Great Thumb Fire of 1881"

My father has been gone for more than a year now. Acknowledging that no one lives forever, nine years ago I spent several days interviewing him, mostly interested in hearing about his early life in the 30s, 40s, and 50s.

During that period a major part of his life took place on “The Spear Farm,” a plot of 160 acres a few miles east of Kingston, Michigan on the north side of M46. For most of my childhood this farm was a mystical, almost legendary place; I’d listen intently whenever Dad spoke of life there, what it was like during his boyhood summers working on the farm in the 30s and 40s. To this day that sandy rolling parcel of Michigan’s central “Thumb” region continues to be an important part of the Spear family legacy; even though it was sold off 30 years ago by greedy opportunists in the family, most of them not even Spear’s.

Occasionally I open the transcripted interview, and I did so again about a week ago. Near the beginning of it Dad and I discuss a few memories about the old place where he had been born in a big old feather bed in a downstairs bedroom on May 10, 1928.

Phil....... I remember the area way out in the back...the cedar swamp. It was so spooky...all the skulls, ribs and white bones from the skeletons of all the animals that had been hauled back in there since...when did they start hauling their dead animals in there? From the time the farm first started, right? What year did the farm start?

Dad..... It had to be in the the late 1800's. I remember that it was declared a centennial farm, but I can't remember when. My dad was born in 1897 and he was still a young man when they were still clearing land. They didn't actually buy that place till after the fire of.... 1893... was it?
Phil..... There was a forest fire?

Dad...... Yeah. In the late 1800's a forest fire swept from one side of Michigan all the way across to the other. And all the massive white pine forests just roared with flame.

Phil..... I remember seeing a stump right behind the house (toward the north side)...it was a huge thing, at least 5, 6 feet across.

Dad..... There was a bigger one, the charred remains of a stump that was so full of pitch, because it was pine, that it never did decay, even after all those years. It was from that big Michigan fire way back in the cedar swamp. It came from the time when there was nothing but giant white pine all across the state.

For years I’ve been meaning to research this mysterious forest fire spoken of by my dad in the interview. Other than his occasional mentioning of it over the years, I had never heard of such a thing, even during the four plus years that I’d lived in that state back in the 70s while attending high school. According to family lore carried forward by Dad, the alleged conflagration had apparently ravaged much of Michigan sometime towards the end of the 1800s.

I’ve said this before, but it gets truer every time I say it: the internet is a wonderful thing. My very first search provided two possibilities—the Great Michigan Fire of 1871 and the Thumb Fire of 1881. From my internet reading I ruled out the 1871 event as having been the cause of the blackened stumps on The Spear Farm. Considering the areas affected in both fires I figure that the fire my father must have been referring to was The Great Thumb fire of 1881. Then again, it’s possible that the farm was affected by both, but surely the stumps resulted from that in ’81.

It had been extremely hot and dry toward the end of the summer of that year; in fact newspaper accounts of the fire talk about the extreme drought conditions. Wikipedia sparingly describes the fire, its causes and effects as follows:

Thumb Fire From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The great Thumb Fire took place on September 5, 1881 the Thumb area of Michigan in the United States. The fire, which burned over a million acres in less than a day, was the consequence of drought, hurricane-force winds, heat, the after-effects of the Port Huron Fire of 1871 and the ecological damage wrought by the era's logging techniques.

The blaze, also called the Great Thumb Fire, the Great Forest Fire of 1881 and the Huron Fire, killed 282 people in Sanilac, Lapeer, Tuscola and Huron counties. The damage estimate was $2,347,000.

The Thumb Fire, which reportedly began in Tuscola County, was allegedly the first natural disaster served by the American Red Cross.

A more detailed account of The Great Thumb Fire is on this website, titled “The Great Fires of 1871 and 1881.” From this and other sites it’s obvious that it was the 1881 fire that rolled through The Spear Farm and left the ancient blackened pine stumps still in existence a century later. The 1881 fire was no small-scale disaster; indeed, it was one of the first great “natural” calamities ever to befall the United States, although, in reality, its causes were anything but natural. The death and destruction was horrendous, the human interest stories are horrifically spellbinding and heartrending. You can read about them on this site, with excerpts posted by Tim Taugher of the 1881 national newspaper accounts of the time.

In trying to find out if any actual Spears had been much affected by the inferno I became frustrated realizing how little our family knows about the early timeline of The Farm’s developmental period. I suppose not many of the farming Spears ever gave much thought to it; being practical folk, that stuff just wasn’t important to them. In fact it’s only been relatively recent that we began to learn about our ancestry at all, a real shame considering how extraordinary it’s turned out to be thanks to the outstanding efforts of the family genealogist, Ted Spear. Thanks Cousin Ted.

The entrance to The Spear Farm taken from M46. There wasn't much left. The barns and house had long since burned down by arsonists. Only a few collapsing outbuildings remained when this was taken in September 2000.

It was in the late 1840s that the very first land deed ever issued on that particular plot of land was issued to my Great Great Uncle Seth Lount. Seth had volunteered at a very tender age, at only 17 or 18, to fight for his country in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). He survived that adventure and upon his return to Michigan was compensated with the 160 acres that would eventually become The Spear Farm. I suppose it could have been called The Lount Farm, or The Seth Lount Farm; but I doubt that Uncle Seth ever actually worked its land.

In 1849, at the time that Seth took possession of those 160 acres, it was likely still covered thickly with Great Easter White Pines, gigantic trees that grow upwards of 150 feet high and 5 to 6 wide at the base. Fully mature they are towering monsters, the Sequoias of the East. Thousands of square miles of forests of these massive behemoths would block the sun from reaching the ground. In the days before hordes of lumbermen cut them down en masse, walking through those primeval forests would have been a dark, almost menacing experience; nothing at all like the pastoral Michigan that exists today. An irony is that back then, compared to today, settlers would have had a lot less wild game to shoot at; thick lightless forests do not support woodland creatures like turkey and whitetail like the tamer deciduous woodlots and sunny fields of today do.

I remember clearly one large pine tree, still original to the early days of the farmstead. It stood alone and proud in the center of a field at the end of “the lane,” the only reason it was allowed to continue to be there was due to its position exactly in the center of a huge pile of field stones. This cairn was massive in its own right. Over the years, as the stones came to the surface from each season’s plowing and tilling, the Spear boys would carry them to the center of the field and toss them up around the tree. I used to wonder what existed first—that pile of stones or the tree. My money was on the tree. I figured that rather than spend the effort of cutting it down and uprooting it; they opted instead to pile each year’s harvest of stones around it. There is no reason why that amazingly beautiful tree standing atop its mini rock mountain wouldn’t still be there today. I wonder if it is. I hope so.

"The Lane, Sep 2000"

Standing at the entrance of what was once the access road leading into the heart of the Spear Farm.

Anyway, as I said, I doubt that Uncle Seth ever worked the place. Sometime in the late 1850s, when he sold it to his sister and brother-in-law, Uncle Seth was still only in his late 20s and not yet married. The fact that Seth was still single is what tells me that he hadn’t yet tried to cultivate that land located just inside the western border of Sanilac County within shouting distance of Tuscola County. I’m pretty sure it was located in the township of LaMotte. A single man would have been completely overwhelmed by the immense tasks at hand. Settlers attained farmer status only after getting a patch of land cleared of trees and stumps enough to get some seed into the ground; the more people working at getting that done the better. Thus, a primary duty of a farm wife was to produce children to help work the farm—no wife meant no kids, which meant no farmhands to clear fields, plant crops and tend animals.

It was just as well, as his land received for his wartime service became his ticket to adventure. Seth got word from his two brothers out west that gold was to be had; they urged him to join them. Gold fever, once caught, is a powerful thing; so, he unloaded his 160 acres to Mary and Moses Spear, my greatx2 grandparents. Seth used the money to go to California to seek his fortune. Alas, he never returned and he definitely did not make his fortune. (More on Uncle Seth in a future post).

The next question that remains unanswered: Were Grandma Mary and Grandpa Moses the ones to first settle that acreage just inside the Sanilac County line? I’m thinking that they didn’t, since both are buried in Pontiac in the Metropolitan Detroit area.

Pontiac was Mary and Moses’ home for much of their lives. A son, George (my great grandfather), was born to them in their apartment over the Oakland County jail in the county seat of Pontiac in 1850. His birthplace became the source of a lot of family jokes, that according to my dad. At the time of George’s birth, his father, Moses, was the sheriff of Oakland County.

Moses, born in 1807, died in 1890; while Mary, born in 1822, daughter of the Canadian patriot martyr Samuel Lount, died ten years later in 1900. Both Moses and Mary are buried together in Pontiac. That tells me that they probably never made their home up north on the land they bought from Seth; although, I do notice in the family bible that Mary did pass away in Lamotte Township in Sanilac County. From that, it would seem that Mary died on the Spear farm with her son, George, in attendance; or very close to the farm, since I believe that is where it's located.

George, the Spear boy born over the Pontiac jail in 1850, married late in life. In 1893, already middle-aged at 43, he said his “I do’s” to a woman 19 years his junior. That woman was 24 year old Hettie Green, my great grandmother, born in 1869. I believe it was the two of them that finally began the arduous process of clearing land to turn Seth’s original property into a working farm. Chances are either Seth or Moses had already sold off most of the pine to the lumber companies; even so, it would likely have been covered with stumps and unsightly piles of snags and old waste wood, although much of that was likely consumed by the 1881 fire. Much of Michigan was made ugly by the aftermath of the hungry axes and saws of her famous lumberjacks. It was up to the settlers to clean it up and make the newly exposed land suitable to grow crops and raise pasture animals.

George and Hettie’s first child, a boy, was born in 1894; for quite some time after that much of the work must have been done by George alone or with the aid of neighbors and family, or even with Grandma’s help. The boys, along with one girl, kept coming, eight children in all, with the last one, named after his Uncle Seth, arriving in 1910.

Now then, I think I have my answer to the question that started me on this quest for family knowledge, that question being whether or not any Spears were affected by The Great Thumb Fire of 1881. My father’s answer was certainly correct, that his Grandpa George probably didn’t buy the land from his mother until AFTER the fire of 1881, and so, most fortunately, there were no Spears present when that intense firestorm swept across the land that would eventually become The Spear Farm. If there had been Spears present, it’s a certainty that the memory of the event would have been seared into our family lore, but other than those charred ancient white pine stumps, it isn’t—case closed.

And Ted, and any other family members who happen to read this, if you can make this account more detailed and correct, please contact me at my email or comment right here on this post. Thanks!

My Grandma, My Time Machine

There was a time when one of my best buddies was a 70 year old woman—my grandmother. Born Winifred Kehoe in 1902, such a long time ago now, but in the early 70s, when she and I used to talk everyday before I delivered my newspapers, back then, her birth year of 1902 didn’t seem so impossibly distant.

When my dad retired from the Air Force late in 1970 we lived with my grandmother and Uncle Bill until late the following summer waiting for our new house to be complete enough for us to move in and finish it up ourselves. I started my paper route a few months before we moved to that half finished structure out on 12600 South Beyer Road, just over a mile as the crow flies from my grandma’s house in the town of Birch Run, Michigan.

It was while we still lived at grandma’s house on Oak Street that I started what became my Friday evening ritual of hand scrubbing her dining room and kitchen linoleum floors for her. I continued this practice even after we moved into our own place, because more often than not I simply stayed over at grandmas on Friday nights since my papers had to be delivered so early on Saturday mornings.

Every afternoon after school I’d be at her place waiting for my papers to get plopped off the Saginaw News delivery van; and then on many a Friday and Saturday night I’d be there as well for the same reason for the early morning weekend deliveries. That was my routine for the next four years until my senior year in 1975. With all that quality time spent together it’s no surprise that we became great friends.

It wasn’t until many years later that I realized how truly unique it was, this bond between grandmother and grandson. I was closer to her than to my mom even, and my mom is a real sweet heart. My brother and sister mentioned this when I asked if they had any memories to include, both claiming no particular connection with her, perhaps partly because I was older, but it probably had a lot more to do with me being around her so much because of my paper route. Until now, it never occurred to me; I just assumed that all of us felt a special affinity for her.

However, my brother did email a short remark of what he did recall:

xxx

“What I remember most was her perfect handwriting. And, she could really bake. Butter tarts. I was younger, of course (by 4 years), but I don't remember her talking much. I know you do, from all those paper route weekends.”

One of the reasons I bought a mini-tape recorder in 2000 and taped over 6 hours of me interviewing my dad is directly because of my grandma. Forty years ago, with all those hundreds of hours of conversation, it drives me batty that I remember almost nothing of the stories she told me about what it was like growing up just after the turn of the last century, and all the other myriad stories of her life. I wasn’t about to let that happen again. (And I believe my sister is still working on compiling our mom’s story—I sure hope so).

I think due to my military brat upbringing and exposure to so much geographical diversity I had already developed an abiding curiosity in all things historical. I would learn about something in class about WWI, or maybe about the sinking of the Titanic from my personal reading, and I would ask grandma what she recalled of those events. She was 10 when the Titanic went down and she remembered the news and her impressions of it; she was 15 when in 1917 we became embroiled in Europe’s “Great War” and she certainly had some recollections about that, and about most everything else that had happened during the course of her life.

There was more to it than that though; she talked about what life was like as the automobile took over from the horse and buggy; we discussed how long distance travel, long dominated by trains for most of her life was usurped almost overnight by planes and long distance highway driving.

Grandma was my time machine. Even back then I saw everything through an historical lens; through her I found out what it was like to be a kid during the time of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. She remembered those guys and a host of other famed figures, which to me was fascinating stuff. She couldn't tell me too much about them specifically, but she talked about her life in the context of those times. Knowing that she was around when they were made the host of hazy characters from my reading and in the classroom seem real.

My questions were nonstop, about everything under the sun, including some really silly ones like, “Grandma, you didn’t have TV when you were a kid. Did you guys watch your radio back then or something?” I asked it as a joke, but the funny thing is the answer was yes. It didn’t matter what I asked, she answered everything the best she could; and her answers would generate even more questions, exactly like an interview. I know it wasn't always easy for her, because I made her think of some things that she hadn't considered for decades.

xxx

My sister came through just before I was going to post this with some pretty cool reminiscences written in a “stream of consciousness” style. I think this is the perfect place to insert them:

* She always fell asleep in her chair. (Just like our Uncle Bill…grin!)

* Gail & I shared a room with her for a year and when she was sleeping in bed, she had the most incredibly loud snore. (Again, just like our Uncle Bill…grin!)

* She had an awesome treadle sewing machine. I always wanted to learn how to use that. I'm not sure if she even did.

* I loved looking at her tea cup collection in that glass breakfront/curio cabinet against the kitchen wall. Mom used to tell me that some of the pieces were her grandmothers & great grandmothers. I used to imagine these old time ladies having "tea."

* She made the best chocolate cake in the world, put coffee in the frosting. Amazing. She was an incredibly devoted mother.

* When the dementia/Alzheimer’s set in (not sure if anything was really diagnosed) she hid half eaten bologna sandwiches in her dresser drawers. She also took to cutting people out of her old snapshots. Can't remember who she cut out or if it had any significance.

* She loved me to bring Jamie to see her at the nursing home when Jamie was a baby. Jamie sat so still on her lap and Grandma seemed so calm as Jamie's little fingers every so softly ran up and down the veins that stuck out on Grandma's arms.

* When she was dying and couldn't speak at all she had the most peculiar look about her eyes when she just stared at you. I think she was trying to figure out who I was. This may sound weird, but when Stacy's cat meows for attention, I swear those are Grandma's eyes looking back at me.

We watched lots of TV together. I still chuckle remembering a Merv Griffin talk show we watched together one afternoon on her little black and white while we sat at her kitchen table. One of Merv’s guests was Charo, at the time a very flamboyantly sexy Spanish guitarist. She actually played pretty well, but that’s not what she was known for. She did this over-the-top cuchi cuchi thing, where she shook her ample round boobs while saying “Cuchi Cuchi Cuchi.” Now, being a typical hormonally-charged young teen I thought Charo was wonderful, but Grandma was not similarly enamored. She wouldn’t turn the channel out of respect for my choice of programming, but with pursed lips she sure made me understand that Charo’s behavior was unacceptable. It was classic — a case of Victorian Age sensibilities clashing with the Age of Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll, and as far as my grandma was concerned ne’er the twain shall coexist.

Back then, from 71 to 75, while we spent so much time in each other’s company, I could not imagine her as anything other than what she was then—a stooped wispy haired old woman in her late 60s and early 70s. I had not yet seen the photos of her progression through life, first as a young girl, as a young woman, and then as a married lady passing into middle age.

I asked my mom, now a youthful 75, to share a few memories of her mom and she had this to say:

xxx

“Right now I picture her as a young graduate from High School. She found school a little hard, could have been ADD, they knew so little about that then. Anyway, her parents sent her to boarding School, St. Mary's of Monroe, so she could get more one-on-one attention. She did well there and graduated and had many wonderful memories of her years there. That picture of her as a young woman was her graduation pic. She was 20 yrs old. Also, (she made) many lifelong friends from those years. She saw those women often. When my Dad died (in 1962 at age 58) they all came over and hosted a lovely lunch for the family after the funeral.”

I’m struck with how pretty my grandmother is in that photo from 1922. Photos like that make me sad. Looking at that beautiful "young woman grandma," she has her whole life in front of her; growing old, going through the pain of life’s hardships and tragedies is the last thing on her mind.

Alas, it happens to us all; with age she lost some height from a moderate case of kyphosis in her upper spine. She had worked as a secretary for some time as a young woman, and that, according to what my mom used to claim, was the cause of the hump in grandma’s back—bad posture my mom would say. I used to think of that whenever I caught myself slouching. Whether it was true or not, it certainly worked to remind me to sit up straight over the years.

After I left for the marines in the summer of 75 she was able to only write me about a half dozen times before the letters stopped. I was saddened when our relationship pretty much ended when she became afflicted with some kind of Alzheimer-like condition. She kept a portion of her personality for a few years, but it would come and go, and basically, she was never the same. Bits and pieces of who she was gradually broke off and floated away forever. It was a slow heartbreaking process that thankfully I did not have to witness due to my service in the military.

My mom and aunts would always say things like, “She had a good day last time I visited her; it seemed like she knew who almost everyone was.” My stomach sank every time I heard something like that.

In 1979, before she was too far gone, I was able to present her with my first child, her first granddaughter. It’s always amazing to see the very young of a family meet with the very old. The one picture I have of that event will always be a treasure to me. You can tell from the photo that grandma really enjoyed her moment with her little granddaughter — it was precious. I should have taken more photos; it was a mistake to presume that there would be other times to do so.

I was most of the way through a 60 day deployment to England in 1987 when my acting first sergeant came knocking on my barracks room door. The Red Cross had called and asked that I be allowed to go back to Michigan; it was then I learned grandma was dying. I called my mom who told me that she “sensed” that grandma wanted to see me before she passed away. Whether that was true or not I wanted it to be so and I began the long journey back across the pond. But seeing her one last time in life was not to be. By the time I got back to Dover on a C5 Galaxy I learned that she could not hang on—she was gone at age 85. Still, I was gratified to be able to be there for her funeral. It’s hard to believe she’s been gone 22 years already. She was a fine woman.

"No Easy Way Out"

The Ray & Elizabeth Spear Clan circa mid 1930s

Nelson, Keith, Donna, Eugene, Dale

I was fortunate to be able to spend a significant amount of quality time with my mom after my father’s passing. One of the last things my mother and I did together before I left Michigan was to visit my dad’s older brother, my Uncle Keith, at his home. He was the last living member of the original clan of five siblings—all born in the 20s with the youngest, Dale, in the early 30s.

I felt bad for my Uncle Keith. At 83, almost by accident, he managed to outlive not only his parents, his sister and four brothers, but he also survived his wife and youngest child to boot. Based on observing his sad experience, I can definitely say that outliving nearly everyone in your immediate family is not like winning some kind of contest. On the contrary, the poor guy was miserable with a capital M.

Eugene & Keith in the late 1940s

During our visit, he’d intermittently stop in mid-conversation and weep bitterly at the thought of his recently departed “baby girl,” Dawn, having left us much too young in her mid 40s. Openly weeping, head bowed nearly to chest, he continuously sobbed how he missed her. Her recent passing obviously had broken his fragile spirit, what there was left of it, not to mention breaking his old heart, already weakened from decades of atherosclerosis and more than 60 years of some serious chain smoking. I noted an ash tray full of butts on the table next to him. Obviously his health was the last thing on his mind.
Over the years, I became very fond of my Uncle Keith and Aunt Marilyn; I think, because they had demonstrated so much fondness for me. From the time I left for the marines at 18, over the next 27 years thereafter, whenever I made it home on leave they always made it a point to come see me. No matter what they had going on, no matter how busy, they made time to come visit, without exception. They dropped everything and came, every time. It was probably Aunt Marilyn who had the most to do with this wonderful aspect of their affection for me, but as a team, I think they were both pretty special. Even after Aunt Marilyn died of cancer a few years ago, Uncle Keith never failed to ask my parents how I was doing whenever they spoke.

In a special homage to the Aunt Marilyn side of “the team,” over the years, she spent hundreds of hours knitting Afghan coverlets, one for each of my kids, starting with Marie in 1979 all the way through Sarah in 2003. Only my mom showed more interest and got more involved in welcoming my children into the world. Indeed, I was determined to name my child (the one that turned out to be Sarah) either Marilyn or Keith, depending on the gender. My wife at the time wouldn’t go with Marilyn, so, she compromised and agreed to Sarah Marilyn. Post Mortem: Strange how things rarely go as imagined. When I learned that Uncle Keith had passed away last week I pictured him as leaving us by way of a simple heart attack or stroke, where he simply left us and moved on to be with the rest of his departed family and friends, but no, unfortunately I was disavowed of this notion when my mom sent the following email:

“…There is some controversy over Keith's death. When they were taking him to the hospital the original responders were just transporters. When they tried to move Keith from their gurney to the medical ambulance gurney they dropped him and he landed on the right side of his head. He died shortly after that. They tried to resuscitate but could not save him...”

I answered:

“What a Keystone Cops episode that was for Uncle Keith's last moments. Geez. Seems like all the Spear boys just had bad luck on the end side of their lives, didn’t they? I mean, didn't any of them get a break? Now this... and what does that mean...transporters? What the heck? He had a heart attack at home or something and they didn't send a medical ambulance? I never heard of such a thing as "transporters." Explain please?”

My mom:

“He was at St. Francis Nursing Home, as the doctor said he could no longer live alone at home. They called the ambulance to take him to the hospital, as he was having some bad chest pain. Instead of the ambulance coming, it was people who are equipped to only take the patient to the hospital (transporters); there must have been a problem at the EMT Center. Well, then the medically equipped EMT ambulance finally did arrive, but only after they had already gotten Keith on the transporter gurney outside the nursing home. So, they elected to transfer him. Why they couldn't use the same gurney is beyond me.

You are right though; all four of the brothers died the hard way—no easy way out for any of them.”

Death and Sadness

I'm pretty sure that the last time I felt deep racking sadness over a death was when I was about eight. We were staying for an extended time at my grandma’s house in Saginaw, probably on our way to my dad’s next assignment. I can’t remember exactly how I came to have it, but I had brought home a small snapping turtle, perhaps from the lake where my grandpa Spear had his cabin.

(I have to give my parents some credit, for I would never allow any of my kids to have such a potentially harmful critter as a pet. It was neat how much leeway I had as a child, to explore and delve into the world around me. Things were different back then; that’s for sure.)

Anyway, someone had left the wooden gate open to the back yard. My juvenile 7 inch snapper proceeded to make a break for it. I knew this only after spotting the aftermath of this “jail break” from the upstairs dormer window overlooking the street. There below me I saw that my turtle was now mashed into the pavement—the shell flattened and cracked, head and four limbs sprawled, forming a five-pointed dead turtle star, and worse, massive amounts of spurted blood and gore.

I have never been more devastated. The sense of loss was crushing. I sobbed and sobbed as if this turtle had been the most important thing in my life, ever, which funny enough, it wasn’t. I had only had it for a couple of days, yet I was overcome by its demise.

Flash forward to more deaths. My Great Aunt Helen died when I was about 12 or 13. I was more uneasy with having to see her dead in her casket than I was sad. Not long after that my wonderful Grandpa Spear died. I was sad, but never cried. I really loved that man, but not even a single tear did I shed. I remember feeling confused about myself at seeing my other cousins crying and freely shedding tears.

Over the years I lost other friends and relatives and it was always the same, although I missed them I did not feel profound melancholy. This was true even when my beloved Grandma Haley died in 1987, and I was closer to her than even to either of my parents. We were great pals, having literally spent thousands of hours together, conversing and learning about each other; yet, when I learned that she was gone at 85 I felt next to nothing.

My brother warned me many years before my father finally passed that his kidney condition would likely end in his death. Sure enough, about 18 years later, that’s pretty much what happened. I had always figured that when he died that I would be as distraught as when my turtle was killed, but again, nothing.

I’m still trying to figure this out. I’m the kind that hates going to poignant movies because I tend to cry at the parts meant to elicit that response. I actually sobbed out loud during Schindler’s List, you know, the part where Oscar Schindler loses it at the end and laments that he could have saved more. Even now, thinking of that damn scene I feel pressure in my chest and tears welling. Cripes! So why do I feel no sadness when people I love die?

I spent a lot of time talking with my mom about Dad’s passing, how we felt about him and how we feel about him. Every so often she would cry, not uncontrollably, but for a minute or so, and I would ask her afterwards what brought on that particular episode of emotion. There were two primary reasons: one, she felt so bad that she could not do more to save him, to make him eat, to make the doctors want to do more to make him well; and two, the memory of his suffering, his yearlong crumbling into death, during which he lost his appetite, lost weight, lost interest, and finally lost his ability to keep breathing. It was a slow process that very nearly took her along with him.

One thing that both my mother and I have in common concerning the after effects of all this: We both feel some level of guilt over not feeling “bad enough” over his demise. She feels awful that in spite of herself she feels a level of relief. When he finally left this world her life instantly became easier. Intellectually, she knows that he is in a “better place,” yet, she feels guilt, thinking that maybe she could have done more, and now that he's gone, that she SHOULD feel worse.

I made an argument for her, trying to put into words against her continuing irrational self-reproach over “not feeling bad enough” over his passing.

“Mom, literally thanks to you, Dad LIVED 80 years. No other woman would have put up with him over the entire course of that 50 year marriage. YOU were God’s gift to him, from start to finish, because I can’t think of any other woman that would NOT have divorced him. He needed a kidney and YOU gave him one. Then, you made sure he took his dozens of pills per day, that he ate what he needed to eat, that he did what he needed to do. It was all YOU! No one could have done more for another human being, especially someone so difficult at times, NO one. Because of YOU, he lived LONGER than most. YOU did that.”

I went on, as I CAN do:

“Besides, how long should anyone live? For instance, do you want to live long enough to have to see your own children die? I think that alone would kill me, to see one of my kids go. There is a natural order of things. We live, hopefully into old age, and then we die. 80 seems to be just about right. Besides, we all end up where Dad is now. I think that’s why I haven’t cried or felt any deep sadness since that snapping turtle died in the street in front of Grandma Haley’s house. None of us are here for all that long. We all end up dead, and hopefully, together again with God on the other side. That’s the hope, right?”

Death and the VA

I was in Las Vegas when I received word by way of an email that my dad was dead. Actually, it was two emails. The first one was from my oldest daughter, the one married to Barry, a US Army Blackhawk pilot currently stationed in Iraq. She simply wrote, “Daddy, call grandma right away!” I knew then that my father was either gone or very close to it. Before calling my mom I opened the other email from my brother: “Dad breathed his last this morning at …”

Even now, many weeks later, I still feel nothing. One of my buddies is a psychiatrist and I mentioned to him that I have no sadness. In fact, that I feel nothing at all—neutral. His style of analysis is partially to use his own life experiences in helping his patient’s to cope and understand. When his dad died he also felt little, or so he says. In other words, if it happened to him that way, well then, it must be normal, whatever “normal” means. And just between friends, I think both he and I are both “football bats”—we be screwed up, ebonically speaking.

I started writing this not long after I returned from across the Pacific, but I stopped after finishing just the two paragraphs above. Other than the arthritis in my fingers and the tendonitis in my wrists, the real reason is something else—the current bane (and purpose) of my life.

I feel like two people: the person I show to others, the guy who seems to have it fairly together—that’s the fellow that speaks pleasantries and nods hello when he’s forced to leave the sanctuary of home to meet with and help local fellow veterans down at the office. But truthfully, that doesn’t feel like the real me; that’s a fake, an imposter. The real “hidden me” lurks in a dark place, lost in a sea of stormy nothingness. Actually it is a sea of something, and that roiling sea consists of anger, no, gusts of outright visceral rage, and all of it mostly directed at the local VA.

My voluntary (unpaid) involvement with service officering, which entails my assisting fellow veterans and dependents in trying to deal with a very difficult to deal with Veterans Administration, is in fact killing me, exactly in the way that cigarettes leisurely kill smokers, or the way high blood pressure silently kills the sufferers of that deadly condition. In fact, just writing that word, “VA,” causes my blood to boil, my teeth to grind, and my thoughts to seethe.

I’ve noticed too that my failed marriage, the resultant separation from my girls, and the death of my father and others, that all of it seems to make the continuous problems I encounter with the VA, and the schmucks in there intent on screwing over my people, all the more worse.

I was trying to explain the depth and cause of my VA-induced fury to someone the other day. You see, it occurs to me that, unlike most, I never get to get to achieve closure. The irony is that most of the people I’ve assisted to an endpoint rarely continue to harbor any ill will towards the very institution that gave them so much trouble over the months, and even years, of their quest for the benefits due them. Not so with me, since there’s always a fresh line of vets in the midst of getting their dose of “VA hard time” before hopefully eventually getting their claims awarded to them, albeit at times many years after filing the initial claim.

My predecessor, and the guy who originally asked me to help him do this stuff, used to growl at me as he listened to me complain loudly and continuously against the barrage of boneheaded decisions coming out of Manila, “Spear, calm down. You can only do what you can do. When you leave the office, don’t take it home with you.” If only I was put together that way, but I’m not. Most nights I hardly sleep at all, as my mind squirms with the latest bit of obtuse VA meanness.

So, my father died, and instead of pondering his passing, all I can think of is my vitriol for this merciless government bureaucracy. Is that healthy? One of the other ironies of this very real detestation is that my own personal dealings with the VA have been fairly good. I was eventually awarded compensation for all the conditions I claimed (after about 18 months of challenging and fighting) and I now receive all the meds I need to keep my body in one piece, although, I seem to be losing the battle to keep my mind together (perhaps because of my volunteer work with vets—my cross to bear, as my mom calls such things). So, I’m not angry for me, I’m mad because of what I see being done to others. I want it to stop, but I’m mostly powerless against this non-empathetic heartless machine. After all, nothing breeds despair more than helplessness

On the other hand, perhaps it’s good. While my heart and mind are filled with spite and hostility, and yes Mr. S, with disdain, maybe it’s keeping me from falling into a pit of isolated gloomy sadness, where I think I might otherwise be, for I’m pretty certain that once I stop doing this stuff that I will rarely find cause to leave the confines of my compound. Even now, I hate leaving it and can’t wait to pass back through the gate.

PS: Whenever I post about the VA, as soon as I do so I feel uneasy about it, as if I should keep these unhappy thoughts just between me and the veterans to whom I normally vent my spleen. Notice though that I don’t include specifics on active cases. I’m not supposed to do that while still doing my service officering. Anyway, my counterpart is the one who speaks nicey-nicey. I don’t like what they are doing down there and I obviously don’t care if they know it. As for my counterpart, he’s not any happier with the way many of the things are done at VARO Manila, but he keeps his really foul thoughts between the two of us. Poor guy—he still believes he can make them change their ways. I just don’t see it ever happening. Institutionalized unresponsiveness, I believe purposeful, predicated on advancing careers based on building reputations purely on budgetary mindfulness. I don’t know how else to explain it—it’s all about the money. If I was in charge of it all, if the shoe was on the other foot, I certainly wouldn’t allow the things I see from my perspective. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.

More thoughts and observations on the death of my dad in the works… I’ll try to stay away from venting on the VA for a while, or try to. I mean, what good does it do?

My Dad

I’m not the sort of person to tell all about sensitive personal stuff; so I’ll just say that my dad is not doing well. In fact, I think he is probably dying.

It’s tough in that I am exactly on the opposite side of the world from where my family is dealing with what may be his final “crisis.” Now, waiting for news of the worst, writing here in this self-indulgent little blog, and self-indulgent is what all blogs are, it’s hard to make myself find words to properly express sensitive thoughts (How to say them so as not to hurt feelings or come off sounding callous?) I suppose I do so not so much for whatever little readership there might be, but for myself when I might go back and read this at some time in the future.

I don’t want to write a requiem now, not while he still struggles to live, but speaking to my brother and sister over the last day or so has forced me to think about how I feel about him.

My dad is not the easiest fellow to be around, in fact, he can be downright mean-spirited. From about the time I approached my teens our relationship became uneasy at best. He’s the kind of hypersensitive person whose overreactions to comments and harmless remarks have taught folks over the years to walk on eggs around him. That was tough for me since I am the supreme wiseass, the ultimate quipster. The irony is that I probably picked up my wisecracking from him. I guess you can say he could dish it out but could not take it in return.

The funny thing is that out of all my siblings I just might be the fondest of him; and believe me, it’s not because he was any nicer to me than he was to them, for he was universally difficult to all of us. I’ll explain.

Within days of my graduation from high school I was on a bus heading for the Marines. Here’s the weird thing: from the moment I left, all the teenage odium that a young man can feel for a thorny father evaporated. It evaporated in a puff of wispy smoke.

From that exact second on, my mind pushed away to the back of my brain all the memories of slights, unpleasantness and unkind remarks; they became unimportant. Instead, over the decades what became prominent were all the good memories I have of him, and thinking back I realize that there are more than a few. For instance:

I remember the last fatherly kiss he gave me. It was while we lived in what I think fondly back on now as an enchanting spot, especially for a little lad that grew to love nature. Of all things to be fond of, it was a simple trailer court (nothing paved, all of it gravel) in the wilds of Maine not far from Bangor at a place called Mud Lake. I was about 4 years old and in my mother’s arms one evening. It was time for bed and she brought me outside in my pajamas to say goodnight to Dad. As if it was yesterday I remember saying, “Goodnight Daddy,” with him answering gently in kind. Then he kissed me through the screen of the porch door. I clearly remember the strange feeling of kissing through that screen. Believe it or not, that was probably the last time he kissed me. It’s a precious moment.

Another sweet flash of recall comes from about two years later when we lived in the base housing of Dow Air Force Base in a pleasant subdivision called “K Park.” I don’t remember what caused it but some other little kid had me in tears, as usual. I was a pretty sensitive little wimpy child back then. I came into the house wearing all my winter clothes, choking back sobs, with tears running freely down my face like salty rain on a window pane. With me blubbering and struggling to gasp out my sad little story he said nothing at all as I desperately tried to explain my latest little personal catastrophe. Fully expecting to be chided about not crying over silly things, instead, he silently comforted and silenced me without saying a word by putting a hand on my head while I hugged his legs. At that moment all was right with the world. I probably remember that moment more so because he never did anything like that again. I’m sure that’s why it’s stayed with me.

I became a pretty good ball player because of him. We played catch almost every day from before the time I was four years old. Strangely, he never once played organized sports his entire life, yet he was pretty good when he tried to be athletic. Before bursitis ruined his shoulders he could really put some heat on his throws. By the time I started little league at the age of 8 we would play what Americans call “burn out” where two guys playing catch try to throw the ball back harder than it is thrown to you. The ball literally whistles through the air directly at you before popping loudly into your mitt (hopefully). Catch it wrong and it can break bones. (In fact I have two broken fingers from playing baseball). I learned courage doing this simple baseball exercise with him.

I used to caddy for him during the late 60s before I began to play golf with him myself on occasion. It was interesting observing him reacting with his friends (he was always so pleasant to his buddies), and I really liked that he was nicer to me around them and treated me like a little adult.

He probably enjoyed that game more than any other pastime he ever tried; but in the mid-60s it about killed him and probably changed him for the worse when he was struck in the temple from a toed shot off the tee by one of his golf pals. While looking expectantly down the fairway the errant shot knocked him to his knees and into the hospital for several weeks. Whatever personality glitches he had before then only seemed to grow worse after that. All his emotions became amplified and he was less able to control cutting remarks. Whatever patience he had for those of us in his immediate family became miniscule. Over the years the effects grew worse until by the time I was in my early teens I used to avoid him or simply clammed up sullenly to evade provoking him.

I learned early on that it was easier to love him from afar. I wrote about it a little in an earlier post describing how proud of him I was while covertly watching him on his bicycle one afternoon as he rode hell for leather from his worksite while we lived at Karamursel Air Base, Turkey. Seeing him like that from far-off made me feel an affection that I could not explain.

In the same period I got to see another fleeting side of him that made me feel extremely uncomfortable but gave me insight into his heart of hearts. It was also in Turkey at a party my father had thrown for the airman that worked for him. He got drunk quick that day and calling me over he put an arm around my shoulders. Squeezing tightly he announced loudly to all there in a heavily exagerated amiable slur, “This is my boy Philip! He’s my buddy. You and me forever, right Philip!” Embarrassed, I just grinned and nodded.

Contact with my dad became much limited after his retirement from the Air Force after he started his second career at Saginaw Steering Gear. He worked second shift and that meant our paths crossed little, which was probably a good thing for the angst-ridden sullen teenager that I had become. By that time, whenever we were in the same room together I always felt tense and resentful. It was the classic old bull unable to get along with the younger, or perhaps the other way around is more like it.

Counter to what many close to me might believe, I couldn’t wait to get out and on my own not so much because I was miserable at home but because I was anxious to experience the world. Getting back to what I stated at the beginning of this piece, it's strange that the moment I got on the bus for bootcamp whatever hostility and umbrage I felt for my father disappeared. Sometimes it’s actually true, no, a certainty in my case, that absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder. To know this is true all one need do is read my letters sent home from my basic training days. In them, I have nothing but good things to say regarding my dad.

At the time I write this he’s still with us and I hope it will continue to be so, especially if he can recover and then maintain some kind of quality of life. Just the same, it’s not looking good. I wanted to record these scattered thoughts while they occur to me while I know that he is still here on this earth with me. It feels strange to think that he will probably be gone, if not soon then in the immediate future. It happens to us all; we all lose our parents eventually…

I love you Dad.

My grandfather, Samuel Lount

Ted, my cousin, has done some great things for our family in the realm of our genealogy. Because of his in-depth research, he has greatly enhanced my own interest in our family heritage. All of us in the family line owe Ted a big thanks. I look forward to the book he has promised to eventually publish that will comprehensively document our lineage. I’m down for at least a half dozen copies.

One of our most remarkable ancestors is Samuel Lount of Toronto, Canada. He is my great x 3 grandfather hung in 1838 by the British and their Canadian Loyalists in 1838 for treason. I won’t go into the details here of his righteous life and unjust death, but I will say he was a remarkable man. Thanks to Ted, I’m learning that he was one of several extraordinary people to whom I am directly related.

Just as Jose Rizal wrote “My Last Farewell” the night before he was executed for his beliefs here in the Philippines in 1896, Samuel Lount wrote his own poignant final farewell while waiting to similarly die for having acted on his own idealistic values.

I can’t imagine trying to write something beautiful and important knowing that death awaits just moments away; and that makes Samuel’s last prose all the more amazing, especially considering how truly lovely and heartrending it is.

Please read and appreciate my grandfather’s last written words, all devoted to his family and to his high ideals. And so, here is Samuel Lount’s Farewell…
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Samuel Lount's Farewell

Oh! All my friends and kindred dear,
Read o'er my sorrows with a tear;

Though all my foes may strive to stain,
There is great Honour to my name.

My soul from heaven with love was blest,
My pain gave way to peace and rest;

My God removed the load I bore,
I rest where Crowne can do no more.

My mortal life to man I gave,
Though thousands prayed my life to save;

But pray'rs and tears and groans were in vain,
To save my life from tyrant's chain.

I trust my blood will satisfy,
The thirst of same should bleed and die;

But oh! My blood will not atone,
For griefs unseen, unheard, unknown!

Farewell fond wife and children dear,
Although we part with many a tear;

Still trust in God and still maintain,
My blood that's spilt is not in vain.

May God look down with pitying eyes,
And lend His ears to hear your cries;

And all your grief may Jesus see,
That came from heaven to comfort me.

Dear babes, sweet treasures in my eyes,
May you from earth to heaven rise;

In heaven may God record your name,
That bore away my grief and pain.

Dear brother, how thou wert distressed,
For days and nights thou would not rest;

And when thou sawest me near to death,
Thou fellest and gavest me thy breath.

May God reward thee for thy pains,
Thy brother's freed from binding chains;

The nights I saw, the grief I bore,
Shall unto me return no more.

Farewell! To all that round me stood,
To all earth's joys, 'Tis blest and good;

To give my life by God's command,
Farewell! I leave this troubled land.

Written By Samuel Lount
The night before his execution
By hanging April 12, 1838

Grandpa Ray

Ray Spear was my grandfather, my dad’s dad. We are mostly sure that he was born on June 23, 1897, exactly 60 years to the day before I was born.

In 1971, he died much too young at the age of 74 of a heart condition that these days would probably have merely slowed him down for a while. Had he been born just ten years later he might easily have lived into his 80s. After all, his own dad died in 1937 at the age of 87.

Ray Spear was 20 in 1917 when the United States began canvassing the country for recruits to go and fight “the Hun” in France. The story goes that he was rated 4F due to flat feet and rejected for military service. Perhaps it was fate; otherwise the family tree branch from which I was derived might well have ended before it even had a chance to sprout.

His full name was Ray, not Raymond, and he was always known as the mechanically gifted one. He was the second oldest of his six brothers and one sister. Oddly enough, five of them had three letter first names—Glen, Ray, Irl, Leo, Dor, Bud, Florence, and Seth. Being the youngest, Seth’s nickname was Bab, pronounced “Babe,” and also spelled with just three letters, I suppose to carry on the three-letter tradition.

My dad, Eugene, explained what it was like to live on a family farm in the middle of “The Thumb” of Michigan a hundred years ago:

“Let's see...Glen; my dad, Ray;...Irl; Leo; Dor; Florence; Bud...and...Seth. So they had 8 kids. That's what all the farmers did back then: they had big farms, so they needed plenty of kids to work the farm, clear stumps and such. My dad remembered his dad making him get up every Saturday morning to dig out big old stumps so they could clear out another 4 or 5 acres to plant the following year…"

Their father, George, born in 1850, married Hettie Green, their mother, who was born in 1869. Old men marrying much younger women was common back then, which is why the last Civil War bride might still be alive today, or only just recently died.

Being extraordinarily resourceful, whenever the family farm required a new wagon or if any of the other myriad contraptions on the farmstead needed repair, my grandfather was the one the family depended on to either fix it, make it, or to invent it.

After several of his business ventures failed in automobile brake repair—sometimes because advances in technology passed him by, or simply due to the punishing role of the Great Depression and once due to a fire that destroyed his garage—Grandpa Ray at last found his life’s work with the Michigan Highway Department in vehicle maintenance. He stayed more than 30 years with “Roads and Highways” from the 1930’s until his retirement in the mid 1960’s.

By the time I knew him he was an old man, but pictures exist of my grandfather back in his “hey day” in the “Roaring 20s” when from the seat of his motorcycle he courted my grandmother, Elizabeth Metzger of Marlette. Back then, with paved roads being the exception and dust and mud being the rule, riding a motorbike took a tough and adventurous sort. In the old photo from the 20’s, he is quite the snappy dresser; the way he is attired reminds me of The Great Gatsby.

Right up until the time of his myocardial infarction Ray was strong and productive. In fact, at the very moment that he was struck down he was right in the middle of building a good sized two-story combination shed and workshop for his cottage on the lake (see below).

I remember exploring the large garage that he had also built out behind his house. It was a musty brick structure that—although forlorn and dingy looking—still exists today on Gratiot Road. Over the decades he continued to expand it with more rooms and additions. I was in awe of the hundreds of tools and mysterious devices that he had either built or was tinkering with that I found throughout the expansive building.

It seems he always had a new undertaking in work that either involved welding, mechanics, carpentry, masonry or all four. Ray came from the generation directly after the Wright Brothers when self-schooled men developed their own engineering skills, sometimes, as with the Wrights, “on the fly.” They were amazing people from whom the term “American ingenuity” originated, and Ray Spear was right there amongst them.

Not long after his retirement, he bought property overlooking a lake west of Saginaw in Central Lower Michigan near the town of Edmore. My dad described that particular project to me a few years back:

“You know—that was fabulous what he did there. It’s not like he went down to the lumberyard and just bought what he needed. He went downtown in Saginaw and bought an old house that was going to have to be destroyed and removed. He hired a couple of teenage boys for a few bucks per hour and with hammers and wrecking bars they tore the house apart, board by board. He and those kids worked hour after hour removing the nails. The house was so old—2x4s today are actually 1 3/4 by 3 ½, because they’re planed, but these were the full-sized original 2x4s. It was old-fashioned rough-hewn lumber. So he planed all that on a planer that he built from scratch. He put the blades and motor, everything, into it. He’d just take a board, run it through, and it came out planed to the dimensions of a modern day "2 x 4." And then he took a big carbide saw and used it to slice raw rock to make the fireplace facing and mantle from from different types of large stones he’d found on his property. Now that’s REALLY building from scratch.”

An 8 mm home movie exists of my brother and sisters and I walking with Grandpa Spear down to the small wooden dock on the lake below his cottage. Being the oldest, I wasn’t quite 10 years old at the time. He was already 70 and yet he’s easily carrying in one hand an outboard motor and a full can of gas in the other. Its only now that I’m starting to feel old and achy that I realize how amazingly robust and vital he still was.

In fact, his strength and reflexes might well have spared me a broken neck during that same trip out to his cottage. I wasn’t paying attention when I entered through the back door and suddenly I was falling. I had stepped through a trapdoor going down into a small utility room. My grandpa was standing at the bottom of the ladder and easily caught me before I could land and break something. Thinking back, now I remember Grandma giving him holy heck for not closing the trapdoor and “almost killing me.” I think he knew she was right and he just let her fret about it for a very long time. He stayed silent, but I could tell he felt very bad about it. Usually when she fussed at him like that for more than a few minutes he would just tell her quietly and sternly, “Hush woman.”

My grandparents became Baptists in the 50s. Grandma Spear’s forte was cooking and once her tantalizing fare was spread out in front of us on the table, Grandpa would intone a pre-meal grace of thanks. Being raised Catholic and used to the venerable and wonderfully brief “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty; through Christ our Lord. Amen;” I was always intrigued when my grandpa would go into his extemporaneous Baptist style of prayer. Whereas our Catholic grace was said and done in less than 5 seconds, Grandpa Spear’s prayers could go on for a seemingly interminable 45 seconds and more.

Thinking back on Grandpa Ray’s personality, he tended toward strong and tranquil, his speech always slow and measured. I don’t remember him being a chatterbox or allowing anger or emotion to get the best of him. I think if he’d served in the military that he would have easily advanced through the sergeant ranks. People who knew him respected him. He was a natural leader. Even today, 36 years after his passing, people still speak well of him.

In fact, his reputation was so solid that it might be the reason my mom married my father. When Grandpa Haley heard that his daughter was going on a date with a young man from Shields, he was NOT happy. “Shields boys” were known for being rowdy and quick with their fists. But once Grandpa learned that my father was Ray Spear’s boy, now THAT changed everything; and it was probably a good thing too, since my father admits he really WAS a typical rowdy Shields boy! Well, my mom tamed him of all that and the rest is family history.

Whenever I visit my parents’ Michigan home I enjoy relaxing out on their little back porch. It’s a great place to have coffee and watch the birds flit about among the flowers and bushes. Inevitably, my eyes stray from that natural splendor to the simple exquisiteness of a modest plant stand made long ago by the hands of a kid—that kid being my Grandpa Ray. Seeing that crude yet sturdy ancient stand pulls my thoughts 50 miles east to what used to be the Spear family farmhouse and to the room in that house that no longer exists, except in my mind, where that three-legged little stand sat for close to 70 years.

The Spear farmhouse was located five miles east of Kingston. By the time I remember it, it was a creaky moldering relic of its once vibrant self. By the 60’s only two of the original “boys” still lived there, and soon it was only one. Glen and Leo were very old, although not as old as the house, and didn’t have the know-how or the time to keep that ancient edifice from falling ever deeper into ruin.

One of the wonderful aspects of that hundred-year-old dwelling was the formal parlor. My dad said during its prime it was filled with his Grandma’s plants and flowers. Basically a sunroom, its large bay window faced south and east overlooking Route 46.

The parlor was the place Grandpa George sat in his rocker for the last 20 or so of his 87 years. From that room he could watch out the big window at Hettie as she worked in her famous garden (folks from miles around would stop in to see it) and he'd see what was coming and going out on the road. Occasionally he would call his boys and have them prune back a tree branch or two when they blocked his view of the outside world.

My dad, just 9 at the time, told me of the last days he saw his Grandpa George. After he died, the old fellow lay there in that sunny parlor in his coffin for three days before finally being laid to rest in the nearby Marlette Cemetery. My father clearly remembers his grandfather sporting his full white beard and wearing his very best dark suit. Hettie pulled a cot into the parlor and slept there every night next to her deceased husband.

Near my great grandfather’s coffin, as he lay in state there in the parlor, was the plant stand. By 1937 it was already about 30 years old, having been constructed around 1910 by my Grandpa Ray. The fact that he built it nearly 100 years ago causes me to marvel every time I see it.

For most of its existence as furniture the plant stand was indoors. When Uncle Leo, “the last brother,” died in 1979, my father acquired the stand at auction from the old farmhouse. Even though he’s lacquered it every spring since he got it, I’m afraid its outside life these past 30 years has taken its toll.

When I first saw it and had a chance to pick it up I was surprised at its heft—it’s basically just a tall three-legged stool, but it is heavy. My grandfather used green cherry wood branches and slender nails to put it together. I don’t know if he pre-drilled the holes before nailing the pieces together, but I assume he must have since none of the wood has split at the nails. He didn’t remove the bark, which to me always made the piece seem that much more charmingly roughhewn. Remarkably, its only now after being left outdoors these past few decades that the bark is beginning to come loose.

Also remarkable is its steadiness. It sits perfectly level, and the very nature of having just three legs instead of four makes it very stable. Try building anything with four supports and you’ll see how hard it is to get it to sit firm without rocking. A few years back my dad added a topmost platform, but as far as I know, apart from the yearly coats of lacquer, that’s all that’s been done to it.

The fact that the old plant stand was made by my long gone grandfather and all those years ago before he was even a man, makes it all the more special and precious to me. Way back then—almost a century ago—I wonder as he constructed it if he had any inkling that it would still be around in a hundred years, still doing its simple job and even more significantly, reminding his descendants that he existed.


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThe Plant Stand