A Time of Wonder

He landed in the Nebo Cemetery in Illinois.

October of 1911 was a time of wonder.  The streets in the rural town no longer had to pick up horse manure (well, some manure) as many families had access to a car.  Roads were improved, made wider, and all who had a car could whiz the fifteen miles to the county seat in a matter of an hour or so.

God bless Henry Ford. God bless Thomas Edison.  God bless Alexander Graham Bell.  God bless....all the many others who followed after them.

Theodorus was a young man and still out searching for knowledge and adventure.  A younger brother Leo was still at home, in high school.

Leo was sixteen years old at the time when an unfamiliar sound was heard.  While the entire school was eager to break out and follow the sound, Miss Cromwell—the very strict Miss Cromwell--told all to sit down.  All obeyed, except for Leo.  He needed to visit “the necessaries”.  With that, Leo raced down the six flights, passed the place for necessaries and followed the sound.

Long legs ran in the family and Leo made use of them, arriving at just about the same time as the source of the sound touched down.  A plane—no one in the county had ever seen one, touched one.  But here it was.

The pilot was Cal R. Rodgers.  It had been only eight years after the Wright brothers made history, and a plane sat in the middle of Arch Wells’ hay field, just north of Hunter Cemetery.  

Rodgers had been promised $50,000 from William Randolph Hearst for flying from New York to Los Angeles, navigating by following the Charles & Alton Railroad tracks.  Rodgers had received about ninety hours of instruction from the Wright brothers before setting out on the first trans-continental flight.

Source

“Why the heck is he here?”  That question reverberated through the town.    No one knew.

Then the story came out.  Rodgers was part of a big advertising campaign for Vin Fiz, a new bottled fizzy drink.  Larger towns had already paid a fee for Rodgers to make a stop in the towns so the locals could see the landing and the plane.  The next few towns further down the track didn’t have the money, and the Vin Fiz needed gasoline. 

The town obliged, running with cans of gasoline.  The entire town evacuated to Arch Wells’ hay field, except of course the school kids, who missed an opportunity of a lifetime.  The shop keepers ran, leaving the doors wide open.  Even the bank tellers ran, leaving the cash drawers open.  Every one ran, seeing a part of history in a plain old hay field.

Laura Peck heard the buzz of the engine and saw the Vin Fiz fly over her house.  She dropped her dishtowel and took off running, hiking up her skirts as she ran.  She was a tall lanky woman with skinny long legs and sassy attitude who didn’t care who saw them. 

Laura scrambled over the woven wired fence, catching her dress on the two strands of barbed wire.  She didn’t give a damn, tore her dress up the back, and took off. Laura Peck was known for her spirit and devil-may-care-take-a-chance.

Maybe that was something Theodorus inherited?  That led him to Detroit?  We'll never know.  

Anyway....

The commotion and excitement was high on the hay field and everyone made sure to touch the flimsy plane.  Local photographers made huge profits that day.  It was a day to always remember.

Rodgers had a lot of confidence.

Huge profits were had by many people.  When all had settled down and life returned to normal, it was discovered that the bank had been robbed, the grocery store as well.  A side of beef was missing from the butcher shop. 

Apparently, ransacking and thievery did not need to be invented.  Also, Rodgers missed the deadline by nineteen days, which meant Hearst did not give him the $50,000. 

One U.S. Patent employee, Charles H. Duell had recently announced that all that could be created had already been created.  The year had been 1899.  Since that date to 1911, Mr. Duell had been proved incorrect many times over.

...Just Ten Miles Away...

Source: saavem

When Marie gazed out her kitchen window, she felt a bubble of indescribable joy grow within her.  Her kitchen window in her house was a portion of the joy.  Too long all windows belonged in a distant cousin’s house, where she was paid to clean, cook, and care.

Lewis emerged from the barn, a laughing two-year old son on his shoulder.  Her husband and her son.  Marie’s heart burst at the sight of them. 

Dinner was steaming hot on the table when Marie finally sat down next to Lewis.  A six-month old baby girl Minerva tugged at Marie’s breast, as Lewis dished out a plate for Bobby, his little boy.  If a photo could have been taken, it would show a glow around the table, ringed with laughter and great happiness.

It was the summer of 1922, a glorious summer when the crops were good, Lewis and Marie were rejoicing over their life together, and the children were healthy.

Marie Cardiff holding baby Minerva; Lewis Cardiff holding Bobby; their dog, Spot

Like a summer storm rolling across the flat fields, diphtheria moved over towns and farms all across the country.  Over 100,000 children would die that year from this horrible disease. 

Bobby woke up feverish one morning, coughing, and crying, “It hurts, here!” pointing to his throat.  Immediately baby Minerva was sent away, to a relative’s farm out in the countryside, away from town.  Doctor Edwards was summoned and confirmed the worst fears of diphtheria, which was affecting too many children in the area.  The next seven days were text-book in the progress. 

For all those nights and days, Marie worried over little Bobby, with Lewis at the foot of the bed.  His face was a mask of pain, remembering the death and dying behind him in France.  Day by day, Bobby struggled to breathe, his throat swollen and his eyes desperate.   Finally, his little heart gave out. 

Bobby Cardiff,  b. 1920- d. 1922

Folks said that Marie’s screams could be heard a mile away, but then, a lot of mothers were heard screaming during that long month.

 

In a day or so, Lewis boarded the train, carrying with him a lead-lined coffin containing his dead little boy.  Taking the four hour train trip to his family’s home cemetery in Oakford, Illinois, Lewis sat in the cargo boxcar holding the coffin under his arm.  Slowly teardrops covered the top of the lid.

When Lewis returned to his farm after five days, Marie was stone-faced and quiet, so quiet.  Her breast milk had dried up, requiring that Minerva be fed by a friend.  Marie’s dark hair had started turning silver white.  They sat side by side on their marriage bed, holding hands, silent.  They would not talk about Bobby again, until 1941.

Her home and her family, Marie had to hang onto them even tighter.

Add captionSource: EveBlackwood

What happens now?

Theodorus Peck, 1927?, during Good Times

Over the decades after Theodorus had died, my father spoke very little about his own father, hardly at all.  It was a door he had nailed shut, never opened unless a sudden flash of a memory appeared. 

The photos of him growing up and changing into a man showed how he and his siblings handled grief by never allowing themselves to grieve.  The three of them posed for photos, three wooden soldiers with hands to their sides and awkward half-smiles pasted on faces.  The gray photos never permitted them to touch each other, to hold on to each other. Their eyes were still, frozen where grief had met them the day their father did.

Aunt Helen is the tall girl in the back row.  My father is holding the basketball.

“What happened to your pa?  Why’d he die?”

Those questions had been asked throughout my own growing years and answered only with a few words, usually provided by my mother.  So, it was only when grief had struck my father’s house twice more that my father allowed tears to fall and feel the bereavement long denied to him. 

Robert Peck 

First, death stole in, when my older brother, Robert, died at age 46 years with a brain tumor.  Then two years later, death returned like a thief and took a second younger brother, Bill, at age 44 years with blood poisoning.   

Bill Peck

My father aged in front of us and finally, nearly 70 years after Theodorus Peck died, Dad began to talk about his pa.

It was summer, a hot summer when we sat out on the back yard and listened to the night crickets start their songs.  Still dusky light slanted over the porch roof and bathed us in silver, black and white. The porch seemed to take a deep breath as a silence settled over us, heavy and filled with long held sorrow.  Mom’s hand snaked through Dad’s arm and interlaced his silver fingers with hers.

 

“My pa....” Dad began, and then paused, searching for words that were choked back before he could speak them.  Finally, he spoke, his voice a stranger’s voice.  “The night he died, my sister and I were upstairs in my Grandma Peck’s house.  The phone rang and I looked at her and said, “Sis, Pa’s dead.  They’re calling to tell us that he’s dead.”  
 

"She didn’t believe me, but I knew it as sure as I knew what day it was.  I heard Grandma say that they’d wait to tell us the news in the morning.”  Dad raised his head, his strong angular face lit with moonbeams, and we could see a slow snail trail of tears.

Mom’s hand squeezed his, as he continued to speak in that stranger’s voice.  “I got up as soon as it was light, went out to the back porch to watch the sun come up.  Pa’s work boots were there, where he had taken them off not two days ago.  I lifted them up, smelling Pa’s smell on them yet.  A piece of mud, dried in the sole’s instep, fell into my hand.  When he last wore those boots, the mud was soft.”  Dad’s head ducked down into the black night as he continued.  “I wrapped that piece of mud up in a handkerchief and ran home with it.  I kept it in my drawer for years....”  And the story ended.

Memories folded up in that handkerchief and drawer slowly crept out over time.  Not big memories, but ones speaking about the loneliness of a ten-year old boy trying to harvest the corn field by himself.  Such loneliness and despair swallowed up his youth.  And when his sons died, something had to break free.

My father slowly released parts of his grief over the remaining years of his life, but I know that when he closed his eyes at night, the images of his pa and two sons were the last to leave when sleep came. 

My father in about 1944

And then...

Happiness and Ever After should be a requisite in unexpected love stories.

After Amy’s family forgave her, throwing a big reception for the wedded couple, things settled down.  Theodorus informed his family about the wedding, and they were thrilled.  A little shocked perhaps, but thrilled. 

Amy in her modern traveling suit

His parents set about building a new house on a portion of farm land they deeded to Theodorus and Amy.  For Amy, this was beyond her hopes.  Living in a town or city in a shared bedroom with her two sisters and supporting the family had been her future.  And now, Amy would have her own home, her own husband, and even farm land.

Theodorus traveled ahead of Amy, kissing her good-bye passionately at the train station in Detroit.  “Soon!” was the word they whispered.

He arrived and inspected the progress.  Like Amy, a house of his own had also been beyond his hopes.  He sent a telegraph, and she arrived within days.

Theodorus with Helen

That was 1919.  In 1920, a daughter Dorus Helen was born to them.  Life was wonderful.  Theodorus was president of the town’s bank; his parents were prosperous with ever increasing farm land.  In 1922, my father Louis Edmund was born.  In 1925, William was born. 

Helen and Louis "Bud"

Smiles on my grandmother’s face in old photos say everything:  Life is wonderful, Love is wonderful…

son Louis, Amy Peck, her mother-in-law Laura Peck, and  Theodorus with their new car

The Stock Market Crash of 1929 punctured the big balloon.  The bank was closed and land had to be sold.  But, still, Theodorus and Amy were together.

And, then…I hate those words.

Theodorus had never been a robust man like his two brothers.  Over the next two years, he began to grow more fragile.  He lived in constant pain, on aspirins.  Amy worried over him.  She unpacked her boxes of medical books and sought answers. 

In 1932, his doctor decided that Theodorus had to be admitted into a hospital. 

People seldom went to hospitals in a rural area.  Those who were admitted were suffering from serious life threatening issues.  This usually resulted in death.  Which is what happened.

Theodorus was taken by ambulance to a hospital over sixty miles away.  After his admission, plans were made for surgery, as a kidney tumor was suspected.  The night before the surgery, while Amy sat at his bedside, Theodorus suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage.  Death came quickly.

Amy L. Peck as a widow

Amy was about 40 years old, and the only love of her life was buried.  The next decade for Amy and her three children would be harsh.