Lantern in the Dark

Utah

On this day, some time after breakfast on this particular day, some conversation sent Dad to tell about a desperate memory in his life, horrible time after his Pa died.  July to October slid down to harvest to a sharp, cold November.  The corn sown in May merged to hard gold on cobs, surrounded by brown stalks.  

Dad leaned back, resting his big worn work shoe on his knee. He cleared his throat, “I tell ya, Sis, those were hard times.  Oh they were hard. Pa and me had planted that field together, with Helen carrying the bag of seed corn.  He told me, Buddy!  No big handfuls thrown on the ground!  Take just this much, and he held my hand just so.  Then cast it easy like…yes, like.”

Dad looked at his big calloused hand, “Pa’s hands were big, but not ham-hocks like mine.  No, his hands shoulda been playing a piano…” Dad’s head tucked along his shoulder as he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.  He wiped his nose and his eyes. 

“I shoulda known Pa was sick, shoulda seen it in the way he walked up the back porch steps.  How he reached for aspirin so many times.  But I didn’t.  Nine years old, that’s how old I was…nine years old when Pa died.”

His face turned away, like he was looking at the clock, like he had to be somewhere at a certain time.  But he wasn't.

Dad cleared his throat, I can still hear how he cleared his throat before he told a story.  “Well, I’ll tell you straight.  A boy who don’t have a pa anymore gets treated different at school.  Out on the grass, racing and playing around, a boy gets pushed around, teased, Orphan!...Orphan!  Aint's got no pa….  No pa to go over to those fathers and set them straight about their boys.  No pa to stand behind you..”

Dad is the boy holding the ball in the front, after his Pa died.  

Mom set a cup of coffee on the kitchen table by his hand, with her hand drifting along his shoulder softly, like a feather on straw.  Steam drifted up, disappearing in the kitchen. He leaned onto the table, big arms resting on the table.

Horses in the harness rig

Dad sipped hot coffee.  “Corn was ready for picking late that year, November.  It was cold, getting cold. Ma saw that snow would be falling in a week, and that corn had to be brought in quick.  So Ma harnessed our old horse, Salty we called her, and I hitched up the wagon.  Couldn’t do it by myself, too heavy, I’d turned ten in October, but that didn’t make me any stronger.”

Dad never had a full smile, it was always a half-smile.  Only his eyes could tell if he was really smiling.  His eyes never smiled as he told this story. His pale blue eyes shifted into a muddled grey.

“Now, Salty didn’t much like me, he cleared his throat, I didn’t like her.  She grumbled and shook her mane.  I pulled her, finally got her going.  I pulled her to where I left off picking the corn the day before.  My Pa’s farm gloves lay on the wagon bench from when he called in hay, like it was the day before.  The inside still smelled like him, and I liked wearing them.  Can’t tell you why, but I just did.

"They were too big for me and they kept dropping off, on the ground.  Took ‘em off, laid them on the bench like Pa used to.  I didn’t want to lose them in the dark.”

Another sip of coffee, then tilted his head back, eyes on the kitchen light.  “I had to pick the corn by hand, and I tell you, Sis…corn on the cob is hard on a boy’s hands.  Cuts from the day before and the day before that still stung.  I’d pick, shuck, and toss into the wagon, then pick some more.  Over ‘n over with Salty moving down the row.

"Wouldn’t get the field done, I could see that.  Maybe tomorrow…or the day after…  Then I looked around.  Dark,  oh it was dark... had sneaked in quick after the sun went down.  I was lost in that big black cornfield and I didn’t know how to get back.

"I grabbed Salty’s mane and burrowed my face into it.  I was crying.  I was so lost, so hollow.”

Mom pulled her chair over to Dad, and took his hand.

 

Dad cleared his throat.  “I tell you, Sis, and this is absolute truth:  If there had been a cliff nearby, I woulda walked right off it.  Right off it.”

Hearing Dad say these words snagged in my heart and cut right through it. Desperation and sorrow incarnate. My God, a boy in the dark alone, holding his Pa's glove. Oh, Dad.

Silent, the kitchen was silent.  Even the clock stopped beating, I swear.

Dad leaned to put his big arms on the table, pushing the coffee cup away.

 “Heard a sound and it got louder.  Couldn’t tell where it came from at first.  Then I saw a lantern light, coming close and calling, ‘Buddy!  Buddy!’ Ma had come lookin’ for me.  She called my name and I called hers.  Don’t think I was ever gladder to see someone as I was to see her.

"I held onto Salty as Ma set the lantern on the bench.  I wanted to grab onto Ma and hug her forever, but I didn’t. I was supposed to be the man of the family, and I couldn’t let myself be weak like that.  But Ma hugged me instead.

"Ma’s face was in part shadow, but I could tell she’d been crying’.  'Now, you get on up there, Bud.  And you eat those biscuits and bacon I brought you.'  

"Ma grabbed Salty’s harness and guided us home, with the lantern sittin’ by me, lighting the cornrows back to the barn.  She sent me on into the kitchen while she unhitched and settled Salty with feed in the stall.

"Yup, Ma brought me back home.  She called me Bud the rest of her life.”

Dad stood up, placing his John Deere cap on his head.  Just so.  He always angled the hat like that for as long as I can remember. He gave Mom a loud smacky-kiss and went out the porch door. The golden corn fields in rows stretched out from the house, and the combine was there waiting.

I asked Mom if she had heard this part of his life before.  She shook her head.  “No, first I ever heard it.”

Helen and Bud on Pa's car running board

I am sorry about the time lapse between these posts.  Sometimes dredging up stories told to me are difficult.  The voices of those I loved have to ring true.  I am glad you like them or find them a slice of history you would like to find out from your own family.  Find those stories of your own and hold onto them.

Going on, Going forward

Marie and Lewis; Left to right Rose Mary, Irma (my mother), and Minerva
about 1928

Oh, Bobby!  My Bobby!

Those words were never spoken aloud, by Lewis and Marie Cardiff.  They knew if they did, they would never stop crying.  And all the parents in their small town, who had lost babies and children to diphtheria, would never stop either.  The streets would run with tears.

Minerva was a baby when Bobby died in 1922.  Marie hugged her tighter than a tick, afraid to let her go.  Lewis took her and rocked her through the late hours at night.

Another child was born in 1925, Rose Mary.  Marie and Lewis had silently prayed for a boy, but those words also were never spoken aloud.

Life on a farm is about life and living.  Crops were planted in spring, harvested in early fall.  Cows birthed calves, giving milk for them and the Cardiff family alike.  Horses, hogs, gardens:  all were life and living.  Going on, going forward.

Cars were now on the streets, “…dirty nasty things,” Marie Cardiff said some seventy years later.  Electric lines were appearing and some folks had phones.  Going on....

Lewis and Marie with last child,
Vada 1940

From his field south of the town, Lewis heard a sound, one that he prayed he would never hear again.  World War…bombs…planes…sounds that still froze his being.  

A plane wobbled from the south, its wings near to breaking off.  The nose dipped down and landed in Lewis Cardiff’s field.

Marie carried Rose and dragged Minerva to the field. What is that?  A plane? 

The entire town poured into the field and surrounded the plane.  They had never seen one, read about them, but now, here it was.  A plane in Lewis Cardiff’s field.

Robertson Aircraft Company lettered the side of the crumpled plane.  The nose was in the mud and the tail was up in the air.  One wing was punctured and the rudder was askew.

Next thing people knew, the pilot leaped out of the plane with Don Robertson, the owner’s son.  “I tol’ you this heap was a piece of shit, you knew it and I knew it.  You bastard!  Coulda killed us both!”  He stomped to the road and roared, “Where’s the goddam train!” 

In unison the silent townspeople pointed to the station a mile away, and the pilot stomped all the way there, raising his fist at the plane and shouting a variety of obscenities.  Some gasped, some roared with laughter, and the more holy ones smirked inwardly.

Mr. Robertson waited for a second train heading to St. Louis, Missouri, pulled into the station.  The tightly packed crowd moved with him, over one hundred souls.  Like yellow ducklings with their mama, they followed the poor man, who was wondering what the hell his pa would say when he heard about this.

A day later another plane circled the field, where the crumpled wreck sat.  The new plane chose to land in the Cardiff pasture next to the house.  A pale and defeated Don Robertson exited the plane, followed by the new pilot, Charles Lindbergh. 

His name whispered through the re-gathered town.  Daredevil Lindbergh? Air mail?  

early flying years

The town had foreseen that Don Robertson would drag his tail back to the damaged plane. En mass the ladies brought out boxes of fried chicken, pies, more fried chicken and more pies.  Tables were lugged by the men unwillingly straggling after them. The men also set the rusty table up around the crumpled plane. The tables would later be moved to the replacement plane.

Don Robertson and Chas. Lindbergh examined the plane wreck, determining that it was useless. 

Then Robertson shouted to Lewis Cardiff so that all could hear, “This here plane is simply broke.  But,” and he looked at the chicken-eating crowd, “We’re fixing it up.  And, there’d better be every last piece o’ metal and the like.”