A Classroom Visitation

“Good morning, girls and boys,” said the delicate, snowy-haired lady. She traversed the front of the classroom, fading in and out of the morning sunlight that punctuated the long blackboard.

“My name is Mrs. Artemisia Blount Walton and I’m visiting from Sheperd, Michigan, where I lived for 73 years,” she said. “I am 97 years old and am the oldest pioneer in the county. Sheperd lies in Isabella County, smack dab in the middle of the Michigan mitten.”

She raised her left hand, palm facing away from the students, and with her right, pointed to the spot just above her left hand’s middle knuckle, the place where Shepherd would be.


“When I was twenty-four years old I married John Billings Walton. He was a strapping young man with a furious head of auburn hair and a woolly beard to match. He had recently acquired 160 acres of land for $80.00 in the wilderness of Isabella County. So, as a young bride, Billings moved me from my parents’ home in Troy into the wildernss. We set out in a wagon pulled by oxen, over tortuous trails, and arrived nearly two weeks later at the log cabin he had built for me.”

“Maybe she’s related to Abraham Lincoln,” heckled a boy in the back.

But she continued, oblivious of the comment.

“The cabin was in the middle of a great forest; it had one room, a large stone fireplace, and a simple dirt floor. Our nearest neighbors were miles away and hard to reach. The closest post office was in St. Johns, a day’s journey to the south. There were many bears, wolves and Indians in the woods. We hauled our water from the nearby Salt River.”

Mrs. Walton stepped from a bright ray, disappearing momentarily into the classroom’s dark shadows.

“With our oxen, we began clearing land,” she continued. “Little by little, the level patch surrounding our cabin grew larger and larger. Within three years we had cleared enough land to build a one-room schoolhouse. Pupils came from far and wide, walking miles on Indian trails to attend. I earned $1.50 a week for teaching back then.

“In 1863 Billings entered the service during the Rebellion. I had two little children at that time, but managed to maintain the farmstead as well as teach while Billings was off fighting. In June the following year, Billings survived the Battle of the Wilderness only to be shot in his left hand at the battle of Petersburg. He was taken to Harwood Hospital in our nation’s capitol, but was transferred to Haddington in Philadelphia where his little finger was amputated. Billings was luckier than most other soldiers — he returned home after the war with only a finger missing.

“We had four more children after that. Our youngest son, Willard, was the great-granddad of your own classmate, Danny Powers.”

Everyone’s heads turned to look at me in disbelief as she continued.

“Billings died in 1879 and is buried in Salt River Cemetery,” she said wistfully. “I’m buried right next to him.”

Heads shot back around to the front of the class just in time to see Mrs. Walton fade from sight as she stepped out of the bright morning sunshine.

Life Savers

WHEN THERE WAS NO OTHER SOLUTION, I went fishin'.

Connections Upstairs

SISTER JO JO WAS MY AUNT. Her real name was Sister Marie André, OP. (OP meant Outstandingly Pious.) Her actual real name was Joan, which is why we called her Sister Jo Jo. She was my favorite. She was a nun, but not like the nuns at school. She was just like us. We roller-skated and went fishing together. She brought presents when she visited — scapulars, medals, statues of Mary or St Joseph, holy water fonts for our bedrooms. (I couldn’t imagine Mother Mary Paul giving me any of these things without me having earned them.) Sister Jo Jo really wasn’t like most nuns. Ma even said that Sister Jo Jo nearly burnt down the motherhouse when the cigarette she was smoking in the basement caught the sisters’ laundry on fire.

When she visited in the summer, Sister Jo Jo raced us to the field for a baseball game. She had an arm on her and could slam the ball right into the river (an automatic home run), and when bat met ball, she blasted off of home plate, a flurry of black and white. We fought over whose team she’d play on because she had Connections Upstairs that guaranteed a win. She was even better at baseball than Lenny Walczak, and he was the best. She taught me how to hit and to pitch and to break in my new mitt.


When Sister Jo Jo visited, Dad lit the grill and Ma loaded the metal tub with ice and filled it with pop and beer, then put it out on the grass. We pulled the folding chairs from of the garage and situated them in the front lawn. The Walczaks and the Dornwalds came over with badminton, hula-hoops and Jarts. We got out our stilts and the big tire. We played and ate hot dogs and turned our lips purple with grape Nehi. After we ate, the lightening bugs came out and so did the peach tin. We played kick-the-can until it was time for bed.

Sister Jo Jo always tucked me in. She knelt with me at the foot of the bed to say our Angel-of-God together. It always ended with, “and God bless Ma and Dad and Sister Jo Jo.” But before closing with an Amen, I’d fling myself into Sister Jo Jo’s arms, wrapping mine around her waist, adding, “I love you T-T-T-H-H-H-I-I-I-I-S-S-S much,” squeezing with all my might.

I sunk my head into her habit. After a day of running and jumping and skipping and hopping and slamming and blasting and laughing and talking, her crisp, cool linen smelt like a summer night and her strong, patient hands felt like sunshine on my back. We stayed this way for a moment, quiet for the first time that day.

I climbed into bed and she tucked the covers up around my neck, kissing me on the forehead.

“Good night,” she said.

“Sleep tight,” I answered.

“And don’t you let those bedbugs bite,” she ordered, turning off the light.

I didn’t want the day to end and she was about to close the door. So as fast as I could, I blurted out, “andiftheydojusttakeyourshoeandhiththemtillthey’reblackandblue!”

“Good night!”

She quietly closed the door and I lay in the dark, listening to the crickets chirping over the laughter of the grown-ups as she silently walked down the hall.

I fell asleep wondering what sorts of games we’d play when I woke.

Observational Inquiry

THE NARROW PASSAGE BETWEEN THE GRADE SCHOOL AND THE HIGH SCHOOL WAS A PECULIAR PLACE. It stood in continual shadow except for the noon hour when the sun aligned itself to brighten this dark alley. Whispers echoed off the canyon-like walls and allowed us to play telephone at recess without the use of tin cans and strings. Darkness gobbled up color between the two old buildings — even the spring-colored Easter banner we carried to Mass took on drab hues as we processed through this walkway. The wind blasted furiously between the two schools, causing rain and snow to defy gravity and fall upward.

It was this gravity-defying character of the passageway that gave me hope of discovering the continually debated question of whether Mother Mary Paul had red hair. (Her temper indicated as much.) When the wind was right, this brick chasm did to the Sisters’ black veils what the subway vent did to Marilyn’s white dress in The Seven Year Itch. I figured if I followed behind Mother Mary Paul at a discrete but calculated distance, I might catch an improper glimpse of her hair from beneath her airborne veil.


Alas, the only thing I caught was heck when Mother Paul discovered me sidling up behind her, my neck craned and my face contorted, trying desperately to discern whether she had any hair at all. My observational inquiry earned me one detention and one very long Boston Cooler (and I’m not talking about the fountain drink). Curiosity killed this cat. After that botched attempt, I kept to my place at the front of the line and decided to leave the sleuthing to someone else. For now.

'Twixt Earth and Air

SAILING THROUGH THE AIR wasn’t something that came naturally to me, like it did to other kids. While Jay-Bird was agile and flew through the air (as his name suggested), I was clumsy (so he called me Bo-Bo). Stretching or bending or moving like other kids was impossible for me. I was a rock. A Bo-Bo. Whenever I tried to reach the heights, I invariably toppled through the air, landing with catastrophic consequences.

I was embarrassed that local ER nurses knew me by name.

To my credit, I wasn’t stupid. I learned not to climb up into things that I could tumble out of, or to lean over gaping expanses that I could spill out into.

But the tree house that Jay-Bird and Stover built was too much. Their treetop fortress tempted me as I sat drawing on the forest floor far below. What did they do up there? What was all their laughing about?

I’d seen them climb the tree a million times, so I knew how. They started by stepping onto a cement block then jumped up to grasp the lowest branch. Then they pulled themselves up using only their arms and swung their legs sideways, up into adjacent branches. For a moment they hung upside-down before pulling themselves upright into the tree where branches spread out to create a vast network of ladders and stair-steps. They made it look so easy.

But even the first steps of ascending the tree eluded me. When I jumped up from the cement block to grab the lowest branch, my belly collided with the tree trunk, ricocheting me backward to the ground. If I did manage to reach the lowest branch, it was all I could do to simply hang there — I found it impossible to swing my legs up to yet a higher branch. I couldn’t even keep hold of the branch — slowly, its barky roughness slipped through my fingers and I landed with a thump.

“Hey, you guys! I wanna come up, too!”

Their heads popped out from the tree house and disappeared again. Laughter ensued.

“Stover! Jay! I wanna come up. I need help!”

“We don’t wantcha up here!”

“C’mon! I’ll buy you guys some pop and chips!” I pleaded.

I could hear conferring whispers before Jay called down, “Okay. Butcha gotta get ‘em now.”

It was a deal. So off I raced to the corner store to secure my bribes.

I returned, as breathless as I was penniless, with two Hires and two bags of Ballreich’s. Jay-Bird and Stover were slinging a rope over the tree’s upper branches.

“Whaddaya, whaddaya doin’?” I asked between gasps.

“We’re gonna getcha up the tree,” Jay announced.

“Whaddaya mean? You just need to give me a boost up.”

“That wouldn’t be any fun,” Jay said as he cinched the rope around my waist. Then Stover gave the other end of the rope a firm tug, and I was airborne!

“Help me hoist him up,” Stover grunted. “He’s heavy!”

As Jay-Bird and Stover strained with the rope, I rose higher and higher. I felt like Peter Pan. Or like Sandy Duncan playing Peter Pan.

“Tie it off,” Jay commanded.

And as suddenly as my ascent started, it stopped.

I hung there like a lifeless yo-yo. Yo-yo. Bo-Bo.


Stover and Jay-Bird clatter back up into the tree house with their pop and chips. I swirled about, neither in the tree nor on the ground. But I wasn’t on the ground. And I wouldn’t fall. (Jay was a good knot-tier.) So I lurched myself forward. Then back. Then forward. Then back. As chip crumbs landed on my head, I swung around under the tree house, laughing giddily and getting dizzy.

“I wanna try!” shouted Stover, starting down the tree.

“Me next,” yelled Jay.

We spent the rest of the day hauling one another up into the air. Jay-Bird and Stover eventually got me up into their tree house. It wasn’t long before I learned to make it all the way up, unassisted. Unfortunately, I never outgrew my clumsiness. But that’s another story…

The Barn

WHILE I HAD A BIG FAMILY, MA'S WAS HUGE. We had six kids in our house, but she had nine in hers, which meant that I had lots of aunts, lots of uncles, and more cousins than I could name. Even if I could name them, I never knew which cousin belonged to which aunt and uncle. Except with Aunt Kittie and her family.

She and my uncle had a small farm, just across the border, where Uncle OJ and Jerry raised hogs and planted wheat, corn and soybeans. Ida and Katie-Ann tended the chickens. Little Walty even had a job — he kept the barn cats fed. (“But not too well fed,” quipped Uncle OJ, “or they won’t want to eat the mice.”)

Jay-Bird and I spent summers on the farm where we melded seamlessly into Aunt Kittie’s family. It was a fun change for us to get up before dawn to slop the hogs and feed chickens, to water and weed the vegetable patch, to collect eggs. While there were plenty of chores to do, once they were done, there was plenty of time to play.

The barn was our favorite spot for hide-n-seek. It had zillions of places to hide — horse stalls, pigsties, the pump room, the tool shed, and haylofts. We could climb into cubbies, lay flat on roof rafters, or bury ourselves beneath bails. We played hide-n-seek from morning chores until evening chores, and, after dinner, we played some more.

One afternoon in the late summer our hide-n-seek game took a turn.

Uncle OJ and Jerry had harvested the wheat, so freshly mown bails rose high in the haylofts, reaching the roof. That same day they brought in twenty acres of soybeans and had taken them to Morenci to the grain elevator. But storms were rolling in at the end of the day and Uncle OJ didn’t want to risk getting them wet, so he stowed the final gravity box of beans in the barn.

Maybe it’s because the barn looked so different that day, with its new mountains of straw, and the gravity box standing where the combine normally did. But something caused Jay-Bird, who was hiding, quiet as a mouse in the hayloft, to change the game. Without warning he jumped out of hiding and grabbed the heavy rope that hung from the rafters. He screamed, Tarzan-like, and swung through the barn’s gaping rafters, sailing over the gravity box, flinging himself feet-first into the hay on the other side of the barn, where he landed, cackling with glee!

“Did you see that?” cried Ida, stepping out from behind the rusted corn shucker.

“I’m next,” shouted Katie-Ann, her head popping up from behind the horse trough. “C’mon, Danny. You, too, Ida. We all getta try!”

My cousins clattered up into the hayloft. But I stayed next to the gravity box, weighing my options. I wasn’t sure I even liked Tarzan. What if I couldn’t keep my grip on the rope? What if I fell through the air rather than fly through it?

“C’mon, Danny,” goaded Jay-Bird. He was a year and a half younger than me and had his training wheels off his bike long before I did. “Are ya chicken? Beeee-yaaawwk! Bee-awk, bee-awk!” he mocked, flapping his arms about like a headless banty. My cousins doubled over laughing.

That did it.

I started up the ladder, not daring to look down, but determined to show them that I was no yellow-belly. Nearing the top, I heard another Tarzan scream as Katie-Ann sailed through the cavernous barn, landing on the other side. She flung the rope back to Ida, but Jay stole it from her and catapulted himself back across the void, landing next to Katie-Ann.

“Not fair,” cried Ida. “I’m gonna tell!”

“Baby,” yelled Jay, as he flung the rope back to her.

Rope firmly in hand, Ida let loose and streamed through the dusty barn toward the others, yodeling for joy. She pitched the rope back to me, but I missed it, not wanting to lean too far over the edge.

“I’ll get it,” called Katie-Ann. (She was my age and my favorite cousin. We were going to be married someday and live happily ever after.)

“I wanna do it,” demanded Walty as Katie-Ann returned with the rope.

“Nope. You’re too little,” countered his sister.

“I am not,” he protested, snatching the rope from Katie-Ann. He hurled himself out of the hayloft. But the rope went in one direction and Walty went in another.

“Walty!” screamed Katie-Ann.

Four mouths gaped as little Walty plummeted toward the barn floor. Our hearts stopped. We couldn’t breathe.

There was a Walty-sized thump. Time froze. Then hysterical chortling rose up from the gravity box. Walty landed, unharmed, in the soybeans.

“I’m next!” exclaimed Katie-Ann, relieved. She launched herself toward Walty and the beans.

“These people are nuts,” I thought, my fists clamped firmly round the rope, my legs like rubber.


“C’mon, Danny! You can do it,” shouted Katie-Ann.

“Chicken!” mocked Jay-Bird.

I filled my lungs with air and held it, checked my grip, then shot myself across the barn, exhilarated, leaving my fear behind. (Well, most of it anyway.)

Dispensations

GROWING UP CATHOLIC meant big families and fish on Fridays. Both were fine by me. We lived on the Pulaski River where my brothers, sisters and I spent tireless hours horsing around, swimming and fishing.

Thursday evenings in the summer we strode barefoot through dewy grass, armed with flashlights and tins cans that we filled with unsuspecting night crawlers. The next day we fished until we ran out of worms. We always had fabulous feasts on Fridays — catfish, pickerel, perch or bass.

Our arrangement worked well until winter when the temps dropped and the river froze. This seasonal dilemma plagued everyone in the diocese, and for families as large as ours, obtaining fish on Fridays became a hardship.

One snowy Friday evening while Ma and Lu were making dinner, I heard Ma say that the bishop had given us a dispensation and we wouldn’t have to eat fish on Fridays in the winter.

A dispensation? I was excited!

Since the bishop was a good man, it followed that a dispensation must be a good thing even though I had no idea what one was or even what one tasted like. My mouth swam with possibilities!

When Ma called, “Dinner,” I couldn’t get to my place fast enough. Ma was carrying a weighty plate to the table but I wasn’t able to see what it contained. What was a dispensation? Was it like chicken? Like hot dogs? I craned my neck but couldn’t see. Ma sauntered around Jay’s highchair and set the steaming platter on the table.

“What is this?” asked Annie. Bull’s eyebrows arched. Paddy grinned. Ma smirked.

“It’s a dispensation,” I announced. Everybody laughed.

“It’s muskrat,” Lu announced, “and we have the good bishop to thank for it!”

The Annunciation

ART WAS MY FAVORITE CLASS and we had it every Friday. One such class changed my life forever.

Sister Mary Alma Rose presented me with a picture of the Annunciation to copy. I had seen it before in my prayer book, depicting the first joyful mystery. Mary was sitting on her back porch, arms folded across her chest, while Angel Gabriel told her his big surprise.

Armed with a 64-pack of Crayolas (sharpener included) and a sheet of Manila paper, I meticulously duplicated each color of each feather in Gabriel’s glorious wings. I labored over every blade of grass and each flower in Mary’s back yard, and I included all the nails in her fence. The folds in Mary’s and Gabriel’s dresses were hard to draw, but I did those, too. As finishing touches I added all the cracks in Mary’s porch.

My picture was really good! Sister Alma Rose thought so, too, and hung it in the front of the classroom.

When I came to school the following Monday, Sister asked whether I wanted to draw more pictures instead of doing spelling. I couldn’t believe my ears! Art on Monday!

She pulled my desk to the front of the class and gave me a pile of paper and a stack of holy cards to copy. I riffled through them to see whether there were any I didn’t already have. (We Catholics swapped holy cards the way normal kids traded baseball cards.) There was one of St. Theresa of Ávila I’d never seen before, and since I was born on her feast day, I started with her.


“I will give your pictures to the other sisters as gifts,” Sister noted as she checked my progress. I beamed inwardly learning the fate of my pictures.

I worked my way through the stack of holy cards. As it shrunk, my pile of drawings grew. When the final bell rang, my hand was tired and my middle finger hurt, and I was proud of all of the pictures I’d drawn. Maybe school wasn’t so bad after all.

As the week wore on, I continued drawing saints in the front of the room. I never knew there were so many — saints with names like Ignatius, Pancratius, Polycarp and Caius. By the final bell on Friday, I had drawn them all.

When Ma checked my hands at lunch on Saturday, she gasped, “What happened to your finger?”

I tried to hide it. But it was too late. The inside of my middle finger had grown a hard, purple-green knot where I held my crayon. I told Ma what I got to do at school that week, and she marched straight to the telephone and dialed the convent. (She knew the number because I had older brothers.)

The following Monday my desk was back in its usual spot. I expected Sister to pull it back to the front where I would resume drawing, but instead she asked us all to turn to page 34 in our readers. Sullenly, I pulled out my book, realizing my burgeoning career was over — at least for the time being. For now it was back to reading, writing and ‘rithmatic. And to this scholarly repertoire I had added a personal fourth R: rendering. Thanks to Sister Alma Rose (and Fra Angelico), I’ve been enthusiastically drawing ever since.

Cynthia

CYNTHIA WAS MY SISTER'S MARIONETTE. She was a beaming bride. With tight, blond curls under a wiry white veil, Cynthia was fitted out in a satin gown. Her fixed, glass eyes stared squarely ahead, unblinking and immobile, yet were disturbingly realistic and crazily alive. She wore hard, white shoes and had a mouth that hinged open to reveal an astonishing number of teeny pearl teeth.

Cynthia terrified me. When she hung in Annie’s closet, she was little more than a mass of strings, fabric and plaster. But when she sauntered about the house (with Annie’s help), barely touching the ground, floating-dancing-twitching, simultaneously graceful and monstrous, she became a real person, haplessly bewitched and fettered with cords. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

Cynthia hated me. She ran after me, her pointy shoes clattering across the wooden floors, then kicking out at me from beneath her wedding dress, her minuscule incisors flashing in her snapping jaws. I ran out of Annie’s room howling.

Despite my growing fear of Cynthia, I wanted to see her move about, to interact with Annie’s dolls and stuffed animals, to play with me. I wanted to see her dance around the room and see her spasmodic pliées. I wanted to be scared — though just a little. But it never stayed “just a little.” Every time Annie animated Cynthia, what began as gleeful entertainment invariably ended with Cynthia chasing after me, teeth gnashing and feet kicking. It ended with me crying. And I was too big to let Ma or Dad see me crying.

So after weeks of torment from the diminutive bride, I decided to get even. I couldn’t do anything to Cynthia — I was forbidden to touch her. But Annie had plenty of other dolls, and, unlike Cynthia, they weren’t off-limits to me. So I concocted a plan and carried it out when I knew Annie would be gone from the house.

When she returned home and entered her bedroom the house sounded with horrified shrieks.

“Maaaa!” wailed Annie, racing to the kitchen. “Come see what Danny’s done!”

From my hiding place behind my bed I could see Ma’s brow furrow as she surveyed Annie’s dolls. I knew by the purse of her lips that I was in trouble. Again.

Five Doors Down

THE HORNS LIVED FIVE DOORS DOWN FROM US. They were the first on our street to have a colored television. Lorna was a year younger than me, and relished (just a little too much) describing Dorothy Gale’s ruby-red slippers, or portraying Casper the Friendly Ghost as being a “lovely light pink.” The Horns were the only family to have a two-storied house or a built-in pool (which Lorna referred to as their “pooh” — as in, “you can’t swim in my pooh”). Mr. Horn sold insurance and bought a new car every year while Mrs. Horn gave piano lessons and hosted bridge parties.

At Christmas the Horns decorated their house with alternating blue and green lights, unlike everyone else on the street who decorated with every color at their disposal. Ma said Mrs. Horn had told her that their house looked very elegant and subtle, while the rest of the street was lit up like circus tents. No house on our street boasted as many Christmas lights as the Horns’. “Subtle” was how Ma referred to their blue and green lights as we’d drive by, but she said it in a way that made me wonder what she meant.

The Horns were the only family to have an outdoor nativity. We all had crib sets in our homes, but only the Horns had one outside, just like a church. Its thigh-high figures were comprised of silhouetted shepherds, kings, and the Holy Family, all cut from plywood, painted black, placed in front of a white stable, and situated beneath their immense spruce. Two glaring floodlights illuminated the sacred scene.

This tableau of light and shadow captivated me completely. Lifeless cutouts cast shimmering shadows that moved independently of one another as headlights traveled up and down our street. It was unearthly the way these spectral forms interacted; they made it easy for me to imagine Mary’s outpouring of love for her newborn, and Joseph’s concern at having landed them in a dusty stable. I empathized with the shepherds and kings as they paid homage to Baby Jesus. This glorious scene transported me from Fennville directly to Bethlehem. So moved was I that I dropped to my knees to offer up an eight-year-old’s prayer. Making the sign of the cross like the good Catholic boy that I was, my reverie was shattered by an unexpected bam, bam, bam from the Horn’s front window.


“Danny Powers! You get outta my yard!” came Lorna’s muffled cry from inside their front window. “Ma! Danny is prayin’ to our crib set again!”

I jumped up and raced home as fast as the knee-deep snow allowed. I flew down our basement steps to rid myself of wet boots, wet coat, wet leggings, wet hat, wet mittens and scarf. By the time I got up to the kitchen, my glasses had fogged over and I could barely make out Ma as she hung up the phone. Despite my clouded lenses, I could tell that she had just gotten off the phone with Mrs. Horn. Again.