ONE
SUMMER NIGHT of the distant past, three of us, father, brother Cecil, five
years old, and I, two years younger, got off the train at Wallingford,
Vermont. All was darkness except as it was broken by the flickering light
of a lantern held by a tall man I had never seen before. On the delicate
film of my consciousness the scene was etched so deep and clear that it
can not be obliterated or dimmed while life lasts.
The tall man took my clenched fist in his warm, strong hand which was ever
so much larger than father’s, with enormous thumbs which made excellent
handles for little boys to hold to when going over rough places and so we
walked up the street, father and Cecil following. This tall man was my
grandfather. It was a solemn procession and the solemnity was emphasized
by the awesome stillness and darkness of the night.
Grandfather, father, Cecil and I turned north at the first corner, crossed
the road and grandfather opened a gate and we entered a yard.
As we approached the side veranda of a comfortable looking house,
a door opened and a
dark-eyed elderly lady stepped out into the darkness holding a
kerosene lamp above her head and peering out into the night. She was
father’s mother and was destined to be mine as well. Grandmother weighed
precisely eighty-nine pounds; never more; never less. It is said that fine
goods come wrapped in small packages and grandmother was certainly fine
goods.
On that summer night she greeted her son and his two children
affectionately but quietly. We gathered in the dining room and grandmother
and father talked matters over. I was not conscious of what they were
saying but I can plainly see them through the mists which have been slowly
gathering for more than seventy years.
Eventually grandmother arose and went into a big pantry, (buttery, she
called it) adjoining the dining room and soon re turned with three yellow
earthen bowls, a large one for father and smaller ones for Cecil and me. A
generous loaf of bread, possessed of virtues beyond any I had ever tasted,
soon made its appearance together with a pitcher of sweet, rich milk fresh
from the udders of the benevolent old family cow, with which I was soon to
become acquainted. Oh yes I nearly forgot the heaping dish of blueberries
plucked from tangled bushes which lifted their heads between the rocks on
mountain sides, triumphantly offering to hungry humans the luscious
harvest which they, in spite of long cold winters, had succeeded in
extracting from sour and sterile soil.
Three chairs were drawn to the table; one, a high-chair, survivor of
previous generations, was manifestly intended for me, and the feast began.
Father and grandmother continued their conversation as we ate while
grandfather listened. We boys were hungry and had but one matter to attend
to—the matter of filling up.
The banjo clock, hanging on the north wall was amazed at the unusual
happenings and pointed its long, scrawny finger warningly at the passing
numerals until it finally succeeded in attracting grandmother’s attention,
with the result that she arose suddenly and said, “For the Land Sake, Pa
Harris, it’s nearly twelve o’clock!” The banjo clock was in no way
responsible for the remission; being both deaf and dumb, it could do
nothing further than to point its warning fingers and that duty, as
heretofore related, it performed.
There was another clock hanging above the mantel-piece
in the adjoining sitting-room. It also was deaf but it was not dumb. While
the best that the banjo clock could do in the way of giving audible
expression to its thoughts was to emit an entirely meaningless tick-tock,
the sitting-room clock could make itself heard throughout the house and it
unhesitatingly did so whenever it had
anything worth while to say. The sitting-room
clock, working in complete harmony with the dining-room clock, had been
making a rumpus each and every hour during that eventful evening.
The truth was that grandmother had been preoccupied with the distressing
troubles of her son, my father, and in the multitudinous problems which
confronted her as a result of them. After her startled announcement, we
boys were taken to a bedroom henceforth to be known as our own.
The most conspicuous object which confronted us in our new quarters was an
enormous something which had the appearance of a very sick and swollen
bed. After having been undressed and put into clean nighties, one after
the other, we were lifted high and launched smack into the middle of the
distended stomach of the very sick bed and the next thing we knew it was
morning and we were wondering how to get out of the predicament in which
we found ourselves, almost submerged in the yielding folds of the mattress
which, in honor of our coming, had been stuffed with clean, fresh straw,
sufficient to provide restful and cooling comfort until the cold nights of
autumn would proclaim the coming of winter and the necessity of providing
the amazing bed with an entirely new stomach, composed of downy, homegrown
feathers to keep us warm during the long, cold nights when winter winds
would be howling like wolves around the corner.
How it happened that we three,
father, Cecil and I, had so disturbed the serenity of the home life of our
early-to-bed paternal grandparents, and how it happened that the
most important personage of all young families, our mother, was not of the
group, calls for explanation. To satisfy those interested, I will
state that economic considerations had made it necessary to divide our
family. In other words, father, having failed in business in the West, had
taken us boys to his paternal home as a refuge, just as thousands of
fathers bad done, and still do, during periods of financial extremity. As
our sister,
Nina May, was still an infant in arms, our mother felt that it
would be too much of an imposition on our grandparents were she to come
along. She preferred to carry on as best she could in Racine, a beautiful
little Wisconsin city on the shores of Lake Michigan, where we children
were born. Mother was a Bryan and the Bryans were proud.
Father
had been given a drug store and a house of his own by grandfather Harris,
a thrifty New Englander, whose indulgence of his son was one of the
reasons why my father found it so difficult to keep income up and expenses
down. Having been given so vigorous a boost at the beginning, it was quite
natural for father to assume that other boosts would follow as a matter of
course. They did for a time, but eventually, grandfather found it
necessary to liquidate father’s business and to establish a new base
nearer his own home where the books could be frequently audited by one
familiar with “double-entry” bookkeeping—grandfather himself. His books,
such as they were, were always in balance. No entries ever had to be made
in red.
Little as our elders realized it at the time, all of the events above
related, even including the liquidation and closing of father’s drug
store, proved to be fortunate for us boys. Cecil was to realize temporary
benefits and I was to have the benefit of a well regulated, permanent home
where nothing was ever either over- or underdone; where ideals were of the
highest and education the supreme objective.
While
some of the Bryans were disposed to view grandfather Harris’ family from
what they were pleased to consider a higher plane, they would, I fancy,
have freely admitted that there was not the slightest danger that
grandfather Harris would ever convert his possessions into cash, leave his
family to shift for itself, and fly away to parts unknown in search of
gold, pearls, diamonds or other so called valuables as my maternal
grandfather had done. It may also
as well be stated that it was my frugal, hard-working New England
grandfather Harris who made the last days of my more brilliant but less
provident grandfather Bryan and his self-sacrificing wife comfortable; and
that it was this same grandfather Harris, who, encouraged by his own
sympathetic and hard-working helpmeet, Pamela Rustin Harris, spread his
mantle of helpfulness over the needy of all his descendants. Even to this
day the estate of grandmother still stands open in the records of Rutland
county’s probate court, one of our family still being a beneficiary of the
small remaining income.
There must have been great doings, much confusion and some weeping when
our family broke up housekeeping in Racine. It is always a sad piece of
business to break up housekeeping, even in cases where the gloom is not
deepened by a sense of defeat. In the case of our family, the grief must
have been particularly poignant. Everything had been done for my parents
and still they had failed. The future held no bright promise; there was
nothing to fall back upon except the supporting hands of grandfather and
grandmother Harris. It must have been especially humiliating to my father
to return to his native village vanquished and with only dim hopes to
sustain his drooping spirits.
Father, Cecil and I constituted the vanguard of the refugees; the other
members of the family were to come to Vermont after suitable provision had
been made for them.
The incidents above related were beyond the understanding of Brother Cecil
and myself. No defeatism tortured our souls. So long as we were fed,
clothed, kept comfortable and permitted to do very much as we pleased, all
was well.
However, we were now in our new home, and sad to relate mutiny broke out
the very next morning. She, who soon proved to be Skipper-in-chief,
happened at the moment to be lacing my shoes. Not knowing her exalted
position in the family, I naturally sup posed her to be one of the crew
and refused to do her bidding when she told me to lift my foot. Thinking
it high time to put her where she belonged, I said, “You are not my Mamma
and I won’t mind you.” The Skipper forthwith called my father to
straighten things out which he did with lasting effect, and I did not
question further the authority of the little elderly lady who, after all,
seemed to have matters well in hand.
Cecil and I promptly and industriously proceeded to explore the wonders of
our new home. What I discovered and experienced as the days, months and
years went by will appear in the chapters which follow.
Soon after our arrival in Wallingford, grandmother saw that the clothes we
were wearing were not suitable for the lives we were to lead and the
family seamstress, Margaret McConnell, was soon at work on a hurry-up
order. Margaret was the personification of patience, otherwise she would
never have succeeded in inducing wriggling, squirming boys to stand still
long enough to have their clothes “tried on.”
The entire outfit for everyday summer wear consisted of waists and pants
which were neither long nor short; how far the latter extended below the
knee depended on how much material there was on hand; the idea being that
if they didn’t fit this year, maybe they would next when, presumably, our
legs would be longer. Half way between knee and ankle was considered a
safe place to leave off, high enough to allow for wading in mud and long
enough to bag at the knee according to the prevailing mode. To make
suitable allowance for the fact that next year’s boy might be anatomically
different from this year’s boy, called for something in the nature of
prophetic vision, and that quality of mind Margaret undoubtedly possessed.
Only once did she fail. On that occasion the extension of my legs was
shocking and the expansion was also considerable. Had I ever succeeded in
getting into Margaret McConnell’s creation, nothing but a corkscrew would
have pulled me out again.
Our summertime costume of those days included, in addition to our waists
and our nondescript panties, broad-brimmed, some times badly torn straw
hats. Shoes there were none nor should there have been. I pity the small
boy to whom the joy of wading in mud puddles and twisting his toes in the
long, cool grass in the early morning hours is unknown. Grandmother knew
these things and forthwith emancipated us from the restrictions of city
life. Every evening, of course, we had to have our feet bathed in hot
water before we were permitted to insert them between the clean, crisp
sheets of our beds but that was a small price to pay for the infinite
satisfaction of being bare-foot boys.
Whittier must have had a warm spot in his heart for
such boys else how could he have written:
Blessings on thee, little man
Barefoot boy, with cheeks of tan,
With thy turned up pantaloons
And thy merry whistled tunes.
