Searching for the Raintree — Eclectic Essays

I suppose most folks will have no idea of what a “Raintree” might be, or why anyone would want to search for it. Had you been born a hundred years ago, you probably would know. From pioneer days until nearly the turn of the 20th century the promise of the Raintree was passed from dreamer to dreamer: whomever finds the Raintree will also find wealth, and every ambition fulfilled.

No one knows where the story came from. Few believed it, anyway, and by now the story has been largely forgotten. The hope for hidden treasure remains. The idea that fortune is just over the next horizon waiting for those who will search for it - for those who will work for it - for those who will not give up - is deeply imbedded in the America spirit.
This searching for real opportunity is not the same as searching for the mythical Raintree, but it has poetic similarities. Both require faith, effort and perseverance.

It will do as metaphor.

At the end of WW II, Thousands of G.I.s returned from saving the world only to find that the world they’d saved now had too few jobs for too many ex-soldiers. My father was one of those soldiers. He returned to no job, no prospect of a job, a wife, and a newborn son – me.

My mother did have a job. She had graduated from Marysville Teachers college and had then taught at several schools. After she married my dad, and before I was born, she resigned her teaching position and took a job as switchboard operator in our hometown, Mt. Moriah. MO.

I assume she did this because she couldn’t take care of a kid and teach school at the same time. I guess she kept a crib in the switchboard office.

Beyond that, my Uncle Bud and Aunt Arlene lived just across the road. Aunt Arlene was like a second mother to my mom. I spent the first year, or so, of my life in that switchboard office. I remember nothing of it. I have seen a picture of it. It was a pathetically small building, about 10 x 16 feet.
Aunt Maudine has told me that the lady who owned the building lived there as well. I cannot imagine how.

For nearly all the time we lived there, dad was overseas. He served in Europe, until the defeat of the Axis powers. Then he was sent to the Pacific to fight the Japanese. My Uncle Frank also served in the Pacific. When they came home, they discovered that the benefits of the G.I. Bill did not apply to soldiers from Missouri. I don’t know why. No benefits, no jobs, mouths to feed; something had to be done.

Pack-up and move on.

A friend of my parents, Steve King, brought word that a farm up north in Iowa was looking for field hands. We moved, as did several of my uncles and aunts. The, “farm”, turned out to be a small empire of farms. All who went were hired.

Two of my uncles worked there until they retired from farming. My Dad worked there for a while. Then a new opportunity came by, by way of a tragic accident.

The son of a local farmer had lost his leg in a grain elevator accident. His father, Johnny Kalsem, was elderly and bedridden. For some time, Mr. Kalsem had depended on his son to do what he could no longer do. Now, His son was incapacitated, too.
He needed someone to run the farm. Somehow my Dad got the job. I don’t know the details, but I have some fragmented images of living on that farm. I was around three years old, even so, I have pictures in my head of the general layout of the house and farmyard.

I also have photos of the time. Mom was pretty good at documenting all our moves. She notated the what, where, and when, of every photo in her typical crisp, clear script. Had she not done so I would have many more holes in my memory than otherwise. One of her photos shows Dad standing, pitchfork in hand, next to a truly enormous mountain of straw. Mom’s writing, somewhat understated, describes it as, “Don’s first strawstack, Huxley Iowa, Johnny Kalsem’s farm, 1946”.

          I don’t remember the straw-stack, but I do remember pedaling my tricycle down a long path of loose gravel. It was the driveway out to the county road. I didn’t get all that far.
          Dad picked me up on his way back from the fields and hauled me back to the house. Mom said my explanation was that I intended to go see dad out in the field.
         I had no idea where the field was. That didn’t stop me, but I do remember tough going on that loose gravel.

Sometimes I went with Dad to get his paycheck, or report to Mr. Kalsem, or both. Mr. Kalsem lived in a very tidy brick house in the town of Huxley. He always spoke to me kindly. He seemed very old. Despite that, and the hospital bed, he still enjoyed a good cigar. I recall the pleasant aroma to this day.

Another memory is less pleasant. I had been playing in an abandoned truck on the property when the wasps that had built their nest in the truck objected. I only recall the first few seconds. Mom said she ran to the screaming. I was stung hundreds of times. Mom said I nearly died.

After a year, or so, we moved again. Again, I don’t know why. Maybe Mr. Kalsem died, and the farm was sold. I don’t know what beckoned. Maybe rumors of a raintree
in Chicago.

In any case, we set off for Chicago. Uncle Gordan went with us. I guess he was looking, too. I have a photo of My Dad and Uncle Gordan changing a flat tire along the way. They both look impossibly young. Uncle Gordan must have found what he was looking for.

He and my Aunt Iona lived there, thereafter.

All I can remember of Chicago is an image of a wall about two or three feet from the window in that very small, dark apartment. I didn’t know what to make of it at the time. Now, I recognize it as a light-well. The only good thing to say about a light-well, is that it’s better than no daylight at all.

Dad got a job as a mechanic.

Nearly all farm boys are also mechanics. The only repair garage around most farms in North Missouri is on your own farm. In addition, Dad worked on military vehicles during the war. He was good at the work. One of the regular customers he impressed was Mr. Rube Young.

Rube Young was a wealthy man with many businesses and many interests. He often
went on safari to Africa capturing animals that he then donated to Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. One of Mr. Young’s businesses was a farm in Wisconsin that needed a manager. He offered Dad the job. So, we moved to Wisconsin, near the town of Palmyra.

Strangely, a few years ago, my son, Ian, moved
to a town in Wisconsin only about 25 miles from Palmyra.
I guess that should be dismissed as mere coincidence.

I don’t remember the town. I do remember the farm. I have a photo of myself and Mom setting on the grass outside the farmhouse. Mom looks very pretty, I look like
a happy, spaced-out four-year-old.

In the attic of that house I discovered some dusty comic books. I couldn’t read, but I studied the pictures. One depicted a heroic cowboy with two six-guns. They were often blazing. I admired the drawings of the smoke and flame. The story was beyond my grasp.
It may have been the first flickering of my lifelong interest in books.

Mom was interested in books, too. Especially in me learning to read them.

When I turned five, she started angling for a way
to get me into school. The educational system of Wisconsin did not provide for kindergarten. Mom was not dissuaded by this. She managed to have me enrolled in first-grade. Mom could be very persuasive.

The school was one of the last one-room schoolhouses around. It had five rows of desks, with five, or six desks, in each row. First-grade was to the right of the doorway. There was one girl in first-grade with me. To our left was second-grade with three students. No one seemed to be in third, or fourth grade. I don’t recall how many were in fifth-grade. I do recall that even though I was only in first-grade, I could hear the lessons taught to all the other grades.

I liked that.

Halfway through the year, we moved again, this time to Kelly, Iowa. Again, I don’t know why, and I can’t remember what sort of job Dad had at the time. I do remember the school. It was a large, modern, two-story brick building. Iowa did provide for kindergarten. Despite my half-year of first-grade they insisted I finish the year in kindergarten.

Next year I went to second-grade. Somehow, they thought that made sense. Mom may have had a hand in this compromise.

We must have arrived near Christmas time because I remember being in a Christmas presentation of some kind. I, and the rest of the kindergarten class, appeared as Christmas cranberries. We were outfitted in a ball of red crepe paper with only our arms, legs, and heads showing. We trundled onstage to thunderous applause. Well, it seemed thunderous.

Our home in Kelly was on the first floor of a two, or three-story, apartment building; probably the only apartment building for many miles around. It was so large, I couldn’t tell where it ended. The only taller structure in that tiny town was a looming grain elevator.

I think the top floor of the apartment building sometimes served as a dance floor. I have memories of lying in bed and hearing thumping and music from above. I think Mom and Dad danced there, on Saturday nights. I’m not sure of that.

           Mom must have had a daytime job of some sort. I say that because after school I was told to stay with Mrs. Carrol until Mom picked me up. Mrs. Carrol, (her first name was Grace) was a very nice lady. She lived within sight of the school.
          Mrs. Carrol ran the Kelly switchboard, she also had the first T.V. I had ever seen. It was quite a novelty to me; as was the programing. I think the T.V. show she had on was, Fred Waring & The Pennsylvanians.
          Up to then, the only music I had ever heard was country music. This was not country music. I wasn’t even sure it was music. I can’t say I enjoyed it, but It certainly gave me something to think about.

Around the time I entered third grade we moved back to Huxley; on the outskirts of town. Outskirts doesn’t mean much in Huxley. You can walk from the center of the town to the outskirts in 15 to 20 minutes. I made that walk several times, whenever they let me out for recess. Mom took me right back - every time. Eventually, I gave up and stayed in school.
Also, around this time, Dad started working as a guard at Iowa State college, known locally as, “College Town”. It occupied about half of the western side of Ames, Iowa.

I imagine Dad thought of the guard job as just another job. It turned out to be providentially pivotal. The Raintree wasn’t quite seen - but it was nearby.

          The driveway to our house came directly off Hwy. 69; a two-lane blacktop that ran in a perfectly straight line from Des Moines to Huxley. About 1000 ft. from our house it took a sharp 45 degree turn to the west. Also, at this same point, the elevation dropped some 18 ft.
          Several times each year some high-flying motorist would achieve actual flight – at least for a few seconds before crash landing on the scrub-land between our yard and the deadly turn.

          The wreckage was spectacular.

The County cleaned up most of it. I often combed the site for the curious left-over bits of metal. The following year we moved further into town. I don’t know why. The new house was a newer house. That might have been the reason. My parents - in fact their entire generation - was much drawn to newer, bigger, better. Or, it might have been because of the crashes.

Around this time Carr’s Swimming Pool in Ames was offering swimming classes for children. Mom suggested I enroll. I resisted. Mom insisted. I enrolled.

Those of us from Huxley were taken by school bus from Huxley to Ames. I had missed the first few days. When I arrived at the pool our instructor, a pretty girl of about 18 years lined us up at the shallow end of the pool. She told us to jump in and do the steamboat. I had no idea what that meant. I looked around. The kids on either side of me had raised their hands over their heads with their palms together. Then, holding that position, they jumped in, propelling themselves by kicking their legs and feet. Their faces were completely submerged – completely submerged! I was terrified.
After an unimaginably long period of two, or three seconds, I jumped in, too. In those few seconds I calculated that drowning was preferable to dishonor. I did not drown. In fact, I turned out to be a good swimmer. Who knew.

While Dad was doing guard duty, Mom was typing. She had a part-time job with the Rueben H. Donnelly Company, located in the nearby town of Nevada. She worked at home. I’m not sure if Mom drove back and forth with the work, or, if someone from the Donnelly Company made the transfers. I still have the typewriter she used –
a massive Underwood. It may now be a valuable antique.

Meanwhile, Dad was making friends. While Dad was making his rounds on the campus, he would stop to chat with the staff of the various departments. One of these departments was the glass shop. The three guys working there got to be pretty good friends with Dad; likely because he took genuine interest in what they were doing.
Their glassblowing had nothing to do with making pretty objects of art. Their work was the creation of one-of-a-kind glass devices that were made to order for the research scientists that had needs beyond standard issue. Dad was much taken with this work. He asked questions. They offered to teach him.

Dad spent many unpaid hours learning the craft
of this special sort of glassblowing.

Some year or so later, one of the three original glassblowers left. The remaining two recommended Dad as a replacement; first as apprentice, then not long after, as an accredited professional glassblower.

This was the Raintree.

Dad was good at many things. Now he had found something that he was not only was good at – but, something he truly enjoyed.

I don’t think anyone realized that this was a turning point. An era had ended. A new era had begun. Life slowed down.
My brother, Rick, was born. Rick’s birth was certainly a big change, but not much else changed for the next four, or five years, until Dad started thinking that maybe he should be paid more than Iowa State College was paying. He sent out resumes. One to the complex of laboratories established by the Atomic Energy Commission at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Another, to the Union Carbon Company in Cleveland, Ohio. We moved to Ohio.

It’s sobering to think how much a single decision can affect everything that follows. Perhaps every decision does that. Perhaps we don’t always notice. In the years that followed my sister Rhonda was born. We moved to a few more houses. I moved out on my own. We never left Ohio. My Dad worked for the Union Carbide Company until the day he retired. Once you’ve found your Raintree, you needn’t look further.

Coda: The apogee of my Dad’s career as a glassblower came when the Union Carbide Company sent him to Toronto, Canada, to learn the secret of making an exotic glass device that only one person in North America, perhaps the world, knew how to make. The man who passed the knowledge to him was retiring. Dad was sworn to secrecy.

When Dad retired, he passed the secret on to his successor, also sworn to secrecy. I have seen this device.
I have no idea what it does.

Jan 22 Searching for the Raintree

Jan 29 Faerie

Jan 15 The Story