ProetryPlace Blog 60 haibun: Wilcox
My older sister and brother and I squirm and stretch in the cramped back seat of the 1932 Buick sedan. For hours we have counted horses on one side of the highway or the other, then buried them when a graveyard appeared. Now the highway, US 41, runs through the tall second growth pine forest of northern Wisconsin. No more horses. No more graveyards.
My younger brother, in the front seat with Mom and Dad, asks the inevitable, “Are we there?”
Dad says, “Watch for the marker.”
We all know he means the roadside plaque that denotes the 45th parallel, the magical marker halfway between the equator and the North Pole. We know then the road to the farm is very close.
The road is exactly one mile long, unpaved and closely surrounded by trees. The cool, shady passage is doubly welcome on a hot mid-summer afternoon. As we turn off the highway onto the gravel, six voices in unison whisper, “If you’re very quiet, you might see a deer.” Then we laugh. Ritual. And sometimes we do see a deer behind a tree. Or think we do.
The road at last spills out of the forest onto flat fields and pastures. As we slow at the railroad crossing marked Wilcox, the old barn and its single tall silo come first into view, then the sturdy, gray weathered farmhouse. Smoke from the black kitchen stove curls from the chimney. We can already taste Aunt Annie’s light as air, fresh hot biscuits. She stands in her long white apron on the back porch, smiling her welcome as we pile from the car.
~
This small farm near Peshtigo, Wisconsin was home to my father. Dear Aunt Annie and Uncle Charlie took him and his two younger sisters in to live with them when the children’s parents both died of tuberculosis at a young age. It is here he took the family for his one week of summer vacation for many years.
The farm held a fascinating strangeness for children from the city. Even the lack of electricity and indoor plumbing held their own odd measure of enchantment. At the end of the week we invariably plead, “Please! Can’t we stay just one more day?”
In the 1940s, while the killer, Polio, stalked children and adults on the streets of Milwaukee, my parents sent me to the farm alone to spend the entire summer vacation. Seventy years later, I still think of those wonderful days.
kerosene lantern
circle of warm light
holding back shadows
great cast iron stove
graceful curved legs
steam from the kettle
Sears catalog
tractors, shotguns, brassieres
three hole library
last biscuit, chicken bones
you’re excused from the table
adult talk begins
player piano
The Death of Floyd Collins
again and again
rhythm and music
warm milk from the udder
plays into the pail
fresh milk every day
chicken on Sunday, fat
mice in the granary
headless, bewildered
chicken running in circles
unable to cluck
Ned and Roscoe
strain haunches against leather
wagon wheels groan
neighbors together
chicken, hot biscuits and pie
the grain sacked and stacked
evening shadows
long, cool pump handle
the taste of iron
No comments:
Post a Comment