When I was about 10 years old, or so, I had a vision.
I saw Jesus and his disciples ascending a great, green hill in Galilee. At the base of the hill a multitude had gathered. Me, and my Mother and Father too, were among those gathered. As we drew closer to hear the words of the Savior we could see the faces of the disciples. Some of which seemed oddly familiar. There, to the left, and to the right of Jesus I saw... Grandad Bill... and Uncle Archie. And, we weren’t amidst the hills of Galilee after all – although it did look like we were. In fact, we were amidst the hills of Cainsville, Missouri, and this event was the annual Cainsville Easter Pageant.
Cainsville was famous for it’s Easter Pageant. Every year people came from as far away as Des Moines and Kansas City just for this occasion. And, unlikely as it may seem, Grandad Bill and Uncle Archie were regulars in the cast for many seasons running. Grandad Bill wasn’t strong on church-going, but that wasn’t because of a lack of faith. I think what put Grandad off church-going was the sanctimonious clucking of the self-consciously pious. A certain number of whom are inevitably present in congregations, everywhere. That, and the prospect of sitting immobile and silent for an entire hour. In Uncle Archie’s case the incongruity was with Thespis rather than Theos. Church service was natural enough, but, acting – in sandals and robes – in broad daylight? It’s just not the sort of thing anyone who knew him might have expected. Uncle Archie was a no-nonsense kind of guy. Bib overalls were part of his personality. A suit and tie on him would be startling; in biblical robes he was astonishing. But, both he and Grandad loved that Easter pageant. So did I. Everybody did.
After the performance we would all go back to Uncle Archie’s place. Grandad Bill was living there at the time, in a house trailer, parked between the house and barnyard.
I often stayed at Archie’s, too – sometimes for days. In summertime I would often stay for a couple of weeks, or more. Archie’s oldest son, Bub, was about my age and we always had a lot of fun together. More fun, for sure, than traipsing around with Mom & Dad, visiting all the relatives, many of whom were elderly, with children that had already grown up and moved out on their own. I have warm memories of those days. They were the last years of my childhood, and they were also the last years I can really say I lived in Missouri.
After we moved to Ohio, I only went back for brief trips that slowly became fewer and further apart. Even so, Missouri has lways seemed like my real home.
I still miss it a lot.
Easter always reminds me of Uncle Archie’s farm, and those last days in Missouri. Not just because of the pageant, either. Easter commemorates the last days of Christ’s mission on Earth. And, Easter coincides with the vernal equinox, which for ancient religions was the signal to begin the rites of spring – ceremonial recognition that winter had passed and spring was born anew.
My own passage, from childhood to adolescence, was hardly in the same grand category, but it, too, was a transition, and somehow all of these events got cross-filed together in my memory retrieval system. Not that there was anything as formal as a rite associated with my memories of those Missouri days.
In fact, I associate Missouri with just the opposite of formality. For me, Missouri was a place were all the normal rules were relaxed, or better yet, altogether absent.
It was a place where Grandmas and Grandpas filled you with all the soda pop it was possible to drink, where school was never in session, and playtime was all the time. It was a place where bedtime came only with exhaustion, where you could roll in the grass, run wild & barefoot, and keep at it ‘till long past dark. So what if you ended up covered with chigger bites from head to foot. Every welt was worth it. And, at Uncle Archie’s place there were joys beyond these. There you could set off fireworks, fire guns, swim naked in the river, and, best of all – drive! Yes, even if you were just a kid, you could actually get behind the controls of a genuine internal combustion engine. Of course, you had to stay within the boundaries of the farm (usually), but, no matter, for a boy at the edge of adolescence, this was clearly paradise.
Uncle Archie farmed some of the only flatland to be found in northern Missouri – along the flood plain of the Grand River. (For some reason the Grand River has since been renamed the Thomson River, though, as far as I’m concerned it will always be the Grand River.) I don’t know how many acres Uncle Archie’s farm encompassed, but I do know it had plenty of wide open stretches that were just right for flat-out, open-throttle driving. And plenty of opportunity, too, mostly in cousin Bub’s custom vehicle – a homemade contrivance of cart-hitched-to-garden-tractor peculiarity. The tractor was a two-wheeled model, steered with handlebars – ordinarily, by someone walking behind it. But we didn’t walk behind it, we rode. We steered it while standing up in the cart, which made it look as though we were zooming around in a sort of loony, mechanized chariot. We must have racked up hundreds of miles in that contraption, and every one of them was a delight.
Once, when Bub and I went with Uncle Archie to the field, I even got a chance to get behind the wheel of the real, full-sized tractor. Uncle Archie was cultivating between rows of new corn. I believe the cultivator covered about eight rows of corn at a time. He gave me some instruction, which was mainly to pay attention to what I was doing, and keep it straight and steady. No problem. I could do that. I did, too, for quite a while. After Uncle Archie was satisfied I could handle it, he climbed down to yank out some weeds that were too close to the corn for the cultivator to catch. Then it began to go wrong. I noticed I was veering a little off course.
I cranked the wheel to correct my position. I cranked too much. Then I cranked too much the other way. In the very short span of time it took for Uncle Archie to jump back on the tractor, and grab the wheel I managed to destroy eight rows of corn – for some twenty, or thirty feet. I thought Uncle Archie would be mad, but he wasn’t. It cracked him up. He was actually laughing out loud, and that’s the only time I ever remember him laughing out loud. He was a pretty sober sort. But he didn’t think it was funny enough to offer me control of the tractor again.
Bub didn’t have any trouble with the tractor. He’d been driving for years by this time. Archie even let him take the old pick-up out on the road. Bub was a still too young to get a license, but this was Missouri, and out in the country, to boot. As long as he didn’t run into anything nobody was very concerned about a license.
Sometimes Bub and me would take the pick-up into Cainsville, just to bum around, and act grown-up. One evening, when we’d driven in to see a movie, we decided to get a couple of cigars to smoke after the show. We were too young to buy tobacco legally, but the guy behind the counter at the drugstore didn’t bat an eye. He might have smiled, though. I’m sure he figured we’d just make ourselves sick, and thereby learn a valuable lesson. We tucked the stogies in our pockets and proceeded in our sophisticated way to the theater.
The Cainsville movie theater did not look like other movie theaters. It was obvious that the building it occupied had originally been intended for some other purpose. The floor, instead of slanting downward toward the screen in the customary way, was perfectly flat. The seating consisted entirely of wooden folding chairs, rather than the usual upholstered variety. And the screen, instead of the expected wide and curtained sort, was the same kind teachers put up for classroom films. Nonetheless, the movie was the real thing – a black and white Western, starring Audie Murphy.
After the film we walked around for a while, puffing great clouds of smoke from our cigars, and just generally luxuriating in the mannish pleasure of our newfound vice. We did not get sick, although I did get a little dizzy.
At times like those, we were in serious danger of growing up, but such times came and went. Often enough, it was the lure of some pointless amusement that would pull us safely back to childhood – like dropping cherry bombs into the quicksand pits down by the river bottom.
Cherry bombs have fuses that will continue to burn, even when submerged in water – or quicksand. If you drop a lit cherry bomb into quicksand it will sink until it explodes, at which point a hole of some 6" inches in diameter and maybe 12" in depth will silently, almost magically appear. The hole will hang suspended, smooth and perfect, for a fraction of a second, then with a quiet plop it will fall back into seamless quicksand. Now, if that doesn’t strike you as completely fascinating, then you’re probably not a 12 year old boy.
Fireworks figured prominently in many very entertaining diversions. Turning tin cans into rockets can be accomplished with any of several sizes of firecracker – depending on the size of the can, and how high you want the rocket to fly. Here’s how. Place the open end of the can in an inch or so of water. This could be in either a shallow stream, or a pan of water. Make a hole in the top of the can just large enough to fit the size firecracker you’re using. Light it, and stand back. The smallest size firecracker will provide enough thrust to put a 10 oz. can about 20 ft. in the air. With the larger size ‘crackers you can expect flights of 60 ft. or more. Fireworks – especially cherry bombs and M-180’s – can also be used to launch missiles from homemade cannons. On one occasion we had a pretty good war going with just such cannon.
The occasion was some kind of family gathering. I don’t recall what it was about. Maybe it was after one of the Easter pageants. In any case, more cousins than usual were there. One of Uncle Doral’s boys, probably James, was in on it, and several of Aunt Ruby’s boys, too, and more whose names I can’t remember. There were enough present to allow 7 or 8 kids per side. We erected makeshift barricades with split logs appropriated from the wood pile. The cannons were nothing more than 5 ft. lengths of steel pipe, closed off on one end with a rock, or piece of wood. After we had them properly aimed at the enemy camp, we would drop a lit cherry bomb or M-180 down the business end, followed by a corncob. We augmented the rain of corncob missiles with withering fire from our BB guns. Had our mothers known what we were up to they would have had a collective heart attack. Of course, our dads wouldn’t have been too pleased, either. But they didn’t know about it, because they were all busy doing whatever they were doing – and we did have enough sense to wage our war out of their earshot. Despite our best efforts, nobody put out an eye, lost any fingers, or suffered much of anything beyond a few red marks from BB wounds.
During all those years of explosions, BB gunfire, and racing about with the garden tractor cart, I believe there was only one incident of serious damage. And it had nothing to do with me, Bub, or any of our reckless pastimes.
Grandad Bill had carved out a bow & arrow for Richard – Bub’s younger brother. Both bow & arrow (just one arrow) were of Grandad’s own, unusual design. The bow was quite small, to match Richard’s size. It had a round hole slightly above the center grip, through which the arrow was intended to fly. The arrow was sharpened to a point on one end and notched on the other. It had no fletching at all, because feathers would have prevented it from passing through that little hole in the bow. Odd though it was, it was wonderfully effective. Richard promptly killed a chicken with it. There was some doubt that he was actually aiming at the chicken, but this was a fine point of no importance to Uncle Archie. He confiscated the bow, and the arrow, and that was last we saw of it.
After that Grandad Bill went back to whittling more pacific tools, like hatchet handles.
I still have one of the hatchet handles he made. It is so smoothly shaped that only close inspection will reveal that it was carved by hand, rather than milled by machine. Grandad did a lot of carving, of all sorts, of items, and the only equipment he needed was a sharp pocketknife – a very sharp pocketknife. Grandad took nearly as much pride in his ability to hone a blade to razor sharpness as he did in his ability to whittle beautiful objects.
Most of my Missouri kin, including my Dad, shared Grandad Bill’s interest in knife sharpening. There were practical reasons for this, but there were cultural reasons, too. Skill with a whetstone was much admired. It takes considerable practice, and possibly talent as well. Anyone who’s tried to sharpen a knife with only a whetstone will know what I mean. Novices in the art usually sharpen with one stroke, and dull with the next. Me included. I have respect for those who are good at it.
I have a pocketknife that belonged to my Great Grandpa Hamilton – maybe the last one he owned. The blades, honed to a fraction of their original size are sharp enough to split a hair. But, back to Grandad Bill. Sharpening skill alone doesn’t account for the first-rate carvings he produced. He also had the eye of an artist. Had he been born in another time or place he might have been an artist – or a scientist.
Grandad had an inquiring mind. He was a keen observer of animal behavior, especially reproductive behavior. I remember him telling me about the mating activity of some porpoise he had seen (studied) during one of his trips to Florida. According to Grandad the action was pretty much continuous.
The unfortunate chicken that fell to Richard’s arrow gave Grandad yet another opportunity for field research. Before removing the body he observed the effect this death had on the other chicken’s behavior. His findings may shock you. They certainly gave me pause.
The presence of a rooster seems to inspire hens to greater regularity in egg laying. Although one rooster is enough, it’s not uncommon to have several roosters hanging about – but only one rules the roost. This King rooster suffers the other roosters to walk amongst his hens, but he does not suffer them to mate with his hens. Now, that’s not too surprising, but this is: apparently the King rooster’s proprietary interests extend only to the living members of his flock. Grandad spent an hour, or so, counting the number of times the frustrated, lesser roosters had their way with that poor deceased hen. I don’t recall the count, but I do remember that the total was impressive.
I guess that was probably the last of Grandad Bill’s science field work, though not the last of his whittling. Not long after the chicken tragedy, he remarried Grandma Mary, and moved into her house in Ridgeway. And I moved to Ohio. It was the end of an era.
Bub didn’t stay on the farm, either. After he graduated high school, he moved to Kansas City and got a job with an insurance company. He wasn’t as fond of farm life in Missouri as I was. For me it was an adventure; for him it was just dirt and hard work. The bright lights beckoned. I remember once, some nice lady asked Bub if he was going to be a farmer like his dad when he grew up. Bub said he didn’t know what he was going to be, but whatever it was, it would sure have to be something that would get him off that goddamned farm.
I guess that says it all. I haven’t seen Bub since those days. I understand he still works at that insurance company. He’s married now, with kids of his own, and no doubt his friends call him by his real name, Norman, rather than Bub.
Well, that’s some of the things Easter has reminded me of from days long gone. Uncle Archie, Grandad Bill, my parents, and so many others I have loved have all passed on. Almost half a century has rolled by and the world is very different.
It’s 1995 and Easter once again. Outside my window new buds are unfolding on the trees and new life is pushing up everywhere. The old rites of spring seem to be rising once more, too – only this time, in cloy disguise. In order to befuddle the innocent the rites are now celebrated as Earth Day, and the mother goddess has been renamed, Gaia. But this charade won’t last.
It’s just the dying gasp of a paganism that was doomed 2000 years ago by an event far more important than the return of spring – the risen Christ, and the promise He brought to this world of life eternal.
And this Easter I have even more to celebrate. My son Ian called yesterday to tell me that by the end of the year I will be a grandfather.
New life indeed – life eternal.
Grandad Bill with a beard grown just for the pageant. Standing beside him, the notorious chicken killer, Richard.