AS THE YEARS GO BY…
WE ARE CHANGING.
I found this amazing article in an early 1920s Herald Record. It was the reminiscences of an elderly man, so we can assume that the years being described would have been the 1850s or so. I found it a wonderful read. I hope you enjoy his walk down memory lane. I’m sorry to say that there is no author to credit.
“It was a farmhouse of the colonial time, built before the architects were about. It was broad at the bottom, but broader at the top, with eaves where the swallows could nest in communal force. The eaves reached down so low to the ground that I have myself ridden off the rear slope from the big chimney and dashed into a snowdrift – none the worse for it. There were snow piles in those days, almost to the eaves themselves, and under those eaves- God bless them! – There were warm hearths; and there were also doughnuts in huge piles, pumpkin pies in rows; and other comforts for no one had then discovered bacteria, and we were in no danger from eating good food. When we got cold outdoors, we could go inside and be warmed internally. The house was painted red, for that was the warm color, like the fire in the chimney. I know no other reason why all old-time farmhouses were of that color. Only the front was white, and there were green blinds – I think it was the fashion, and the time never was when anyone would be out of fashion – innovators and radicals excepted. Fashion, you must know, is simply doing what others do, and not bothering your head about it, believing what others believe, with just as little trouble to yourself. It is a beautiful way of keeping us all alike, for what might come of it if no two ever did the same thing, or believed the same thing, or wore the same coat, or, for that matter, loved the same person? The old-time people had a reason for the catechism. It was a good one. It kept them all together, like a regiment. Nowadays there are some who would even throw away the dictionary and spell the Lord knows how – just as each one pleases.
Over the double door reached the big arms of a great butternut. Do you know there is no tree in all the world so ‘homeful’ as a butternut? Its arms are like those of a father. It has not a stingy trait about it. Then, you should lie, as I have, in September, and hear of a night the nuts falling off, one, two, or three at a time on the roof. Rat, tat, tat, until our dreams were full of the joys of the morning; or, for that matter, even of the puddings, which should come of it when the meats were enough to fill a big bowl. Yes, indeed! A butternut pudding, with a plenty of cider, is good even in dreamland. To the back of the house was an orchard, where Spitzenbergs (Apple whose flesh is a buttery dense yellow, and there is a rich sharpness which is often characteristic of high-quality dessert apples.) and Pearmains (any of several varieties of apples with red skin, dessert apple, eating apple) grew. Some of the trees leaned so that we could walk up them and sit with the birds. I, when a boy, knew a robin so well that she built her nest within five feet of me, while I whistled and talked to her.
To the side of the orchard stood a fine grove of basswood, in which were fifty hives of bees in two big houses – two rows in each house. There is nothing so wonderful in the world as an apple orchard in blossom. It is fit for worship. The trees are friendly and hearty. Their arms come low down to the ground, as if reaching after us. What wealth of blossom! Ah, even now I see the old grandmother in her chair, when the petals came down in a great shower and laid lovingly on her white hair, the blessed mother beside her also. Nature loved them. There was a sweet fitness and when we boys came to their side and brought the ripest Pearmains and Lady Sweets, and otherwise identified them with the fruit, it was out of our hearts. But how shall I ever get to New Year’s at this rate, for I am not yet half around the house and my soul will not let me hurry on. To see things and hear things when they happen is well enough; but, ah, to have them in oneself and be able to call them out of the memory, that is worth the while. Tis better than any phonograph.
There was an offset in the turf just beyond the harvest pear; and this was where the little mother had her pinks, poppies, bachelor buttons, cinnamons roses, and johnnie-jump-ups. It was a place of marvelous beauty and of marvelous work – of that I can testify. But it was delicious in the early morning before the day was on a gridiron – and again after sundown. You should have seen the little mother and Granny Williams, or some other one, going about this treasure in and in the midst of the world. “All this and All that.”
“It smells like a fresh young baby,” said Granny Williams.
“Indeed,” said the little mother, “but I had not thought of that; but likely as not, for it has a soft pinkish yellow color.” Then she would snuff at, like any professional chemist to a new chemical mixture. All the time she was gathering in her apron dropped rose leaves and poppy leaves to press between the leaves of the bit Bible.
A little down the slope lay the vegetable garden of my father, full of long, narrow beds, all turned over each year by the spade and the spine. Oh, Lord! But yet I have the memory of it in my back. Why had they not thought of gardens to be furrowed by horsepower? But they had not. I think because they were yet too full of Old England, and a Yankee was, after all, the most imitative creature in the world. He shook his fist and wagged his tongue like the great bell at Moscow at the word Englishman, but after all that he was himself English, both in his stomach and in his head. He not only spaded his gardens, but he took his snuff like an Englishman, and he built his fence after an English pattern. What else could explain why he had so many little yards about our house and built our house close down by the road? As if we were crowded into a little island and had not room enough to turn around in. We are more independent now and really are getting some notions of our own. But then our house stood only a stone’s throw from the highway and there was a little box of a yard in front, and this was full of locust trees and honeysuckles, and there at night the honey moths would come and play high spy in the blossoms. George III, our great gray cat, would sit down to look at one that come too near – for what was it? – a bird or a butterfly? And like all of us, he was a bit of a naturalist. He liked very much to classify the world, but never hesitated to put the choicest specimens in his stomach, which is, I see, the way with other scientists. They will eat a megalothoporoid as quick as a pig.
But you should have seen the “sturtions (a corruption of Nasturtiums),” as they grew in rows all about the vegetable beds, for our father also had an eye to beauty. Did he not set hollyhocks all about his corn fields? Then, when the great stalks of crimson and gold stood up in summer, and the folk that went by to church stopped to look with admiration, he said, “Truly, one shall not live by bread alone.” And he liked best those neighbors who looked the longest, as the little mother liked best those who ate most of her goodies. The saffron, and dill, and the rue and rosemary, and carraway, and fennel, and the mints grew by the brook that ran down back of the house and garden; and, indeed, there were also more of these herbs that stood always in the place of a family doctor. Indeed, you may look; but it was not so bad an exchange. And as for the notions, they may have been no worse than the guesses of the profession nowadays.
There is no good living where there are no brooks, and this was a brook of the first water. It bubbled out of a rocky hollow, some little secret cavern, and then it laughed and tumbled for half a mile before it got over its fun. The little mother in summer would walk with us there and she would sometimes say, “Now, let us go father over to the glen, where the bigger brook is, and the ferns, and the witch-hazel and the yellow birch and the
beechdrops.” Oh, it was glorious fun! But at night, after work, the dear father would come early from the field and say, “Now let us all go for strawberries.” Then – ah, but how can I tell you such delicious joys! You know nothing of wild strawberries, much less do you know the delight of creeping about the meadows and down by the stumps in the pastures, while the bobolink whistles and the brooks gurgled as we gathered the long stems that lay lovingly against the grass.
Where are we? I had no business out of season and in midwinter to take you through snowbanks to pick strawberries. But ‘tis such tricks the memory plays. We will get at once back to the house. The front door, as you see, opens just in the middle in halves, and from that the hall runs back as straight as a Puritan’s pose, right through everything till it lands in the big kitchen. The two halves of the door swing open separately. I know not why it was, unless it were an inheritance from pioneer days, when it was well to be able to look out and parley a little before opening the way for an Indian rush. So, at any rate, all the doors in those days were cut across the middle. In the big yard was the woodshed that was full of piles of wood as dry as tinder. It was the comfort of winter and the very right arm of a successful home. From the woodshed we all went, kicking first the dirt from our boots, into the great living room where we were all together. Over this door was twined with care a great bittersweet and all over the stone curb of the well was a wild white-flowering clematis.
“Father,” said the little priestess, “’tis as well to cultivate the beautiful and enjoy it. Why should it all be shut up in books?” “It is so,” said my father. “God made the world and He put the flowers here as well as the potatoes. I have not patience with those who do not follow God.” “To be sure,” said my father, “that might as well be left out.” “And the burdocks,” said she, “are excellent for beer, and the leaves are good for draughts.” Perhaps, if we could see it,” said he, “all things are good.” “It is for us to make the best of everything,” said she. And as our Jim came up, she put her hand on his arm and on mine, and then said slowly: “Tis a world in which we can make beautiful boys and girls – if first we ourselves are right. What more could we ask?”
And the birds, ah, but you should have seen how they nested about that house. “They will eat all the cherries,” said my Uncle George, and he rapped his cane lustily on the floor of the porch. But our father smiled and said, “Let us count them all into our family, and plant for them also when we plant.” So, he put in a few rows of peas more, and said, “They are for the orioles.” And a dozen cherry trees down by the fence were for the robins, and for the cedar birds who have a cherry tooth. Then he went up to the wood’s edge, nearby the big beeches, where there were wild cherries, and into these he put scions of finer sorts; “for the birds, my boys.” So, the robins, the bluebirds, the wrens, indigo birds, the goldfinches, the catbirds, all other sorts of thrushes, finches, and I can’t tell you how many more, came to us. They filled the trees with nests, and they paid for all they took in song and helpful labor. A robin built its nest in the window seat of his bedroom and sang to him in the morning, while he lay in his bed. Ah, yes, they worked well together, my father and the birds.
The barn was not far away. “’Tis not decent,” said the little mother. “There should be shade for the cows, the pigs and the hens.”
“You are right, little mother,” said my father, and he brought a load of willow sticks; and he planted them all the way around the barn and its yard. These grew and throve mightily, and at last they were a great grove that hung all over the barn and hid it.
The little mother said, “Did I not tell you?” – and then she drew the breath coolly through one corner of her mouth, as she surveyed the transformation. “Indeed, you did, little mother – you said it – and no one would have done it, had you not.” The hens cackled their delight. The cows at night lay down facing the moon as it sifted in between the leaves and all day they were nicely comforted from the sun. When Old Daisy went to the tub to drink, she would look up between sips as if to say, “The Lord be praised for this shady yard.” A true barnyard is a delightful place, full of peace and love.
Lilah, the collie, comes and puts her head through the gate once an hour, surveying matters, says, “Yes, all is as it should be all is correct.” Then, she goes back to run along where Jim and I and our father are at work in the orchard. Or if it be – and it really is – or it ought to be, New Year’s Day. She looks in at the kitchen window and waits till we open the door that she may curl up by the fire. But George III gets up on his hind feet to the door latch and rattles it and then waits till we let him in. A true cat is half human. Ah, if but – if they could once get articulation, what would come of it? It is well that they cannot, for they would rout out and dispossess half or more of the human sort. So, with quack and thistles, and talking cats and collie dogs, we should be made either wiser or killed off.
“Come,” said my Uncle George, “let us make our New Year’s call!”
In those days it was not yet forgotten to be neighborly. Once a year, we all expected to look in on each other and break bread, or at least cut cake. We sat down to a bit of gossip and exchanged news. When it was over, everybody knew all about everybody else and there was no need to print it. But I shall tell you nothing at all about it. It was our own business, and we were simple folks. You who live today have your big notions and your new ways. You laugh too easily. So, our New Year’s Day went by in its own homely way, and we had our calls. We went home at night and rubbed our hands and our stomachs and were content. Not one of us envied your telephones and telegraphs and other knick-knacks – or ever gave them a thought.
Bless the Lord enough is enough. It is not likely you have any more idea of what will be about a hundred years from now (now abt. 170 yrs. from the time being remembered by the author). Indeed, I think they will call you savages. Pish, but what a world of conceit it is.”
God Bless
Patricia Richards Harris