Letters for Lewis

Postcards and letters from that era

When word went out from the Post Office about the letter, the town’s curiosity raised more than just an eyebrow.  

No one received actual letters in Lewis and Marie’s town.  Bills were natural and expected, but a true letter?  Postcards which were passed from hand to hand before reaching the addressed house were common.  

But a letter with a stamp and postmark?

The town women flocked to the post office, cackling all the way with speculation.

When Postman Harold Sims swung the bag over saddle back and then mounted, he turned to the brood.  “Y’all old hens go on about your business.  If’n I see one of yous, I’ll tattle to the preacher aboutcha.”  

Then Sims clicked to the horse who began the memorized mail route.

Grumbling and clucking, women dispersed to their own cozy coops.  We’ve never gotten a letter…Why’d they get a letter?...speculation lingered unanswered.

Marie swept dust off the porch, watched Minerva and Rosemary with a sense on contentment.  My children!  Our babies!  She placed a gentle hand on the rounding belly, anticipating a January birth.  It was a chilly November now with Lewis and other farmers bringing in the corn and bean crops.  A smile of joy lit her face.

Sims rode and stopped at her home, with Marie ambling to meet him. Her smile dropped like a bushel of rocks as he handed her the letter addressed to Lewis.  The postmark and two-cent stamp brought a shiver across her.  Minnesota?  October 30, 1927?  Lewis Cardiff?

Marie shushed the girls inside, with the letter in her deepest apron pocket.  What to do?  What to do?  Marie carried the letter and shoved it into an old shoe box way back in the closet.  I’ll think about it later.

Breakfasts, dinners, and supers passed over the kitchen table day after day.  January came, and with it a little girl.  Lewis attempted to hold back his disappointment about it not being a boy, but Marie knew with all her heart that the girl she held in her arms was another child who would not replace Bobbie.  They named her Irma after Marie’s best friend, loving the girl each day.

Marie Cardiff on the farm

In March during planting time, when Lewis would work sunrise to sunset, Hal Martin’s wagon from the train station drew up in front of the porch, with an unknown woman and her son descending.  Marie peered through her starched lace curtains as the two walked hand in hand to knock on the door.

Marie cautiously and slowly opened the door.

“Miz Cardiff?  My name is Norma Swenson and this here boy is my son Billy.  He’s only twelve, and a might shy.”  She shoved Billy forward where Marie could view him.  Brown hair…tall…and blue eyes just like Lewis…

Norma Swenson rambled on about Billy being Lewis Cardiff’s son and could Lewis take Billy for a bit as she was getting work down in St. Louis through the summer and---

Marie saw red, blood red as she grabbed her broom and batted the two off the porch, shouting words she didn’t think she knew.  “If you EVER come back, I will shoot you myself!  You and your bastard son.  You go to St. Louis and do what do best… lying on your back with your legs in the air!”

She hit them with all the force a strong woman could.  Hal Martin tipped his hat to Marie, whispering, “Them whores! They picked up soldiers like yer Lewis just as gold pieces back then. Don’t you worry about this’n.  You’re a good woman.  No one won’t hear a word about ‘er.”  Hal and his wagon of huffing lady and confused boy disappeared.

Lewis, on his way to The Front

Marie hurried to retrieve the shoe box and its hidden secret. And to read it, anger growing and creeping, until it reached her heart. 

When Lewis came in the kitchen the door, Marie shoved the letter into his face, shouting for him to read it, read it right now.  His face turned ashen white and then crimson as he read.  

All the stuttering excuses did not save him as Marie swatted him as if he were a blue bottle fly.  Lewis stumbled backwards, sprawling on the dusty ground.

Marie volleyed his dinner at his face.  Then she shut and locked the door.  Lewis would eat pig slop for the next week all the while wondering if there were any more bastards up north.  

What will I do?  What will Marie do? Those questions would linger for some time.

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 a 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.”

Actually, a family reunion photo, but still
fried chicken and pie.

The silent pie eating group nodded in agreement.  Who would do such a thing?  Why, no one we know would do that.

It was determined that Robertson and Lindbergh would fly the plane from the pasture and head to St. Louis.  A mechanic from the company would join them, after Robertson had a meaningful talk with his pa.

When the three returned it was already dusk.  Marie hustled the three men into her house and made up the rooms for the night.  She handed Rose Mary to Don Robertson, a desperate looking Robertson, who seemed glad to hold an infant who would not say one single word to him.

Minerva climbed onto Lindbergh’s lap and played with his collar. 

The next morning while the mechanic worked on the broken plane, Lindbergh remained in the parlor, quietly reading magazines.  

Source

By mid-afternoon, the broken plane had been repaired and they all flew back in the two planes to St. Louis.  

Lewis, Marie, and their children were planting corn in the field, as they looked to the sky.  Lindbergh dipped down his wing to them.

After Lindbergh had flown across the Atlantic and was in Paris, he sent to the Cardiff family
a postcard with his photograph printed upon it.  They both read it many times. Well, then.  He made it.  Sure was a nice man.

Nearly seventy years later, Marie said this about Lindbergh:

“He was a quiet man, a gentleman.  Yet he talked about his childhood on a farm, and about his father, who was a Senator.  His mother was a teacher, he said.”

Somewhere in our family history, the postcard was stolen. Who would do such a thing?  Why, no one we know would do that.

For Lewis and Marie, life and living is about going on, going forward.

Love Heals

Love stories are not as unique as we like to believe. 

Of course, when I was falling in love with my future husband, it was the love of the century.  The stuff of books, legends, and movies-- that was what we had.

It is only now in the present that I find myself looking back at the grand love affairs that led to my existence.  In looking at my mother and father, their respective parents, and back for generations, one will find a man and woman whose eyes spoke of longing and desire.  Then they fell in love.

My mother’s parents were Lewis and Marie Cardiff.  Their love was always clear to me in the way he patted her behind as she walked by him, even when they were in their senior years.  It was the way she giggled when he did that, blushing a little.  They held hands at the table.  Love.

This is the photo taken of my grandfather before he left for France.

They met near Grandpa’s childhood home, right after WW1.

Grandpa had experienced the worst of the war, the most horrible carnage, unimaginable to those at home.  As a skilled hunter and sharp shooter, Grandpa Cardiff (his father called him "Sam"), and another farmer like himself were assigned to scout behind enemy lines.

They were on the run, sleeping in barns and ditches, and making their way back to deliver information about the enemy troops.

The things he saw, the things he had to do scarred him forever.

 Shortly before he died, Grandpa told my brother some of those things.  Horrible things he witnessed the Germans, taking a baby, bayoneting it. and tossing up to be speared by another soldier.

The major battles, Saint Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne, were and forever would be etched into his mind.**

He returned home a battered soul who just wanted peace.  He got a job collecting milk for the local dairy company.  Along long stretches of quiet green pastures, Grandpa guided the horse-pulled wagon, and collected the milk cans that farmers set out for him early in the morning.

Caroline Marie Shive with her mother and Aunt Daisy.  Wearing a new dress ,. Graduation from 8th grade?  Leaving home to be a home helper for a cousin.  Twist of fate.

A young woman had observed that lonely journey day after day.  Working as a serving girl for a large farm family far from her own parents, Marie was homesick and watched the world go by from the kitchen window.

Barely 18 then, Grandma decided that she needed to be on that road just when he went by.  They waved at each other for days.  Then he stopped and talked for a few minutes. 

Over a period of weeks, they learned about each other through the spoken and unspoken language of love, always respectfully.  Lewis was, after all, ten years older than Marie.  One evening after supper, Grandpa showed up at the house where Grandma was a serving girl.  She went out onto the porch behind the kitchen where he waited, hat in hand. 

He scooped her up in his arms, their eyes meeting.  Grandpa said, “Marie, I want you to be my girl forever.”

My grandfather was a farmer before and after WW1.  He suffered lung damage from the toxic gas used in war.

That was it.  The next day or so, Grandma packed up and went off with Grandpa.  They were married in a simple straight-forward ceremony.  Grandpa had $100 from his army discharge.  With it, they bought a bed, a plow, and a sewing machine.

This was Grandpa and Grandma Cardiff's home.  

A love affair to remember?  Like Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr?  You betcha.  As for the other side of the family, my father's family, you will have to return to learn about them about them.

   

** How did I know all of this?  I was 12 years old, had an excellent memory, and eavesdropped in the bedroom, while this story unfolded in the words of a man who needed to tell this to another human being.

The Road Runs Both Ways

Not sure.

What is this?  Are these segments fiction?  Did you make up all this?  What are you going with this? Is there more following?  So many questions, so here is a scanty explanation. 

When I visited my parents back “home” until my father’s death in 2005 and mother’s in 2011, we always did these few traditional actions, without fail. I had a sense that these were essential rites that we absolutely must do.

We always went to Pam's Cafe, and ate catfish or buffalo carp “fritters”, deep-fat fried, served with two slices of white bread, a big slice of strong onion, and cocktail sauce at Pam’s, the best and only restaurant in their town. Dad always had a cup of the blackest coffee I had ever seen at that time.

The waitress, usually a wild exotic teenager who grew up to be a worn-out waitress--Wanda?  Betty?, brought refills of coffee by.  She never asked if my father wanted a refill; he would tap the cup on the saucer to let her know.

My folks always sat in the same corner table that gave them the best view of the front door.  That way they would know who came or left, and then they would tell stories about them to me.  Oh, those stories. What these old wrinkled people who walked through those doors did with their lives could make a sailor blush.  

We always went across the “new” Missouri-Illinois Pike Bridge that spanned the Mississippi River (The River)to drive up Hwy. 79 in Mih-zer-uh (Missouri).  

The bridge was built in the early 1920's and opened up for traffic with a Gala Potluck. He was only six years old and had to pee.  Badly.  "Ma" told him to pee over there on the slope next to a tree.

Well, then.  He was  in his best clothes--knee pants, high socks, seersucker jacket--and just as he was getting his business done, he slipped on the long grass, sliding down the slope into the mud.  That is all he told me about that.  

We would drive up and around that road until we came to the places to stop—could stand there and look down The River and its spots of little islands.  Each stop gave us a new love for The River.

And we always went to visit  the cemeteries.  My father’s side of the family was buried in the small Nebo Cemetery in Illinois, while my mother’s side were buried in the sizable Crescent Cemetery in Pleasant Hill, Illinois. The farm where we lived for 40 years was a mile north of Nebo Cemetery.

The most interesting things about these places are that I did not know 97% of its occupants, and I really didn’t care.  My folks would walk around looking at headstones, talked about what those people did in life, and my father would speculate whether or not if they made it to Heaven. 

His staunch opinion was they did not.  In fact, my father generally believed that most of the people he knew were damned to hell.

Nebo Cemetery became interesting to me when two of my brothers were buried there in 1997 and 1999. I would go by myself in my rental car to place silk flowers at their graves, talk with them a bit, and look around the corn fields, at the rusted abandoned train tracks, and try to remember the town as it was in my childhood.

Now, I cull volumes of photos of those visits and re-live it all with stories my folks told me. Connecting those memories with faces, and reading letters not meant for my eyes have connected me with a totally different world one hundred years ago.

*The stories here in following posts are non-chronological and have a strong basis in truth.  A few tidbits here and there have been added for the story's sake. But, I have to say, just a few. 

** This is actually a re-post from years ago, which now can be called a back story.  I apologize for not providing readers with this cement.

***My mother told me other stories--oh my goodness, the stuff she knew!  Another day. 

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.”

...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