Dances and Rhythms - 9

Borrowing memories from my sisters, Helen, and Bertie, when I graduated from Stetson U. in 1996, I was able to blend what I know about my dad to their experience of family.  They were grown when my mother died. My parents had joined Alpha Lutheran Evangelical Church in Turtle Creek, PA in 1925.  How my dad got on the roles is a mystery.  He'd inherited a long-standing hatred of the church.  My father could barely tolerate the religious radio broadcasts that my mother took to heart."Do you have to have that thing on?" I imagine his crisp remark from similar ones I'd heard growing up.  He more preferred the jokes of comedians like Groucho Marx or George Burns and was crude with his own one-liners.  "I've found that women are the chief cause of mens problems," he would quip. "Why?" someone would ask.  "They insist on asking too many d--- questions." Many of his jokes involved sex.  "Do you know why I cut holes in my pants pockets?" "No, and I don't care!" I replied.  "When the ladies try to pickpocket, I give 'em a surprise!"  Dad was good at making you visualize what you didn't want to think about.  My own experience growing up was a continual conflict over needing him and being repulsed by his obnoxious behavior. I wondered what it was like for my real mother to live with his sharp-witted criticism and off-colored remarks. Helen and Bertie told me that our mother seldom mentioned how she felt about our dad, other than he embarrassed her in front of church friends. They said she focused her energies on being kind to everyone, including my father.  But I wonder if she ever agonized beneath the surface.  Whatever secrets she may have held, everyone - including my father, agreed that Iva was a woman of faith.  Iva believed that life held a larger purpose beyond her life in the home.  I'm told she lived in such a way that others considered themselves richer for having known her.  Iva had an entrepreneurial spirit in her blood that she refused to give up, which was kind of amazing given that she had been born in the early 1900's..  My father was jealous of the time she spent outside the home, but that didn't deter her.  Determined to have a public life with or without him, she attended church regularly, took on a leadership role, and sold candy to the wives of the men my father worked with.  Iva was following in the footsteps of my maternal grandmother, Bertha Elizabeth who had sold girdles two decades before. It was my good fortune to be nurtured by my mother's Christian worldview and to become a member of Alpha Evangelical Lutheran Church at my birth.  Alpha was a rainbow-capped vessel of stained glass, dark wood, and polished brass that sailed weekly.  When the weather was bleak, her pastoral scenes lost their brilliance.  But when the sun exploded into rainbow colors, I'd imagine God himself pouring into our sacred space.  The sensibility of that place left a lasting impression on the white space of my mother's absence.  It was there I learned to wean myself from things other children took for granted.  It was there that I learned I was part of something much larger than myself. Higher than the congregation, even higher than the alter was the esteemed Rev. Logan.  I imagine we looked like fish in the belly of a ship as he tossed out the parables, Psalms and Proverbs I'd grow to love. During sleepy sermons, I'd rest against the thick of a neighbor's arm, while our white-haired parson fixed our minds on heavenly things.  The rhythm of my early social and religious education was modeled by my mother at just the right time. It is thought that the first six years of a child's life determines the rest.  Helen and Bertie told me that even when the weather was bad, my mother would go to church on my brother's sled, to get off the steep hill in Wilkins Township.  My brother Carl Jr. would lay down with both hands on the steering mechanism.  Like a heavy piece of furniture, my mother sat behind, and off they went on a wild downhill slide into the Turtle Creek Valley.

Dances and Rhythms - 8

"What did you study at school?" I asked, noticing a large crumb clinging to the bottom of my Dad's left elbow.  He laced his shoe - heel resting on the edge of his seat.  He was wiry, weighing around 119 pounds.  His legs were strong from repeated walks through the woods behind his trailer.  Dad continued.
"We learned to read, write, and figure on slates and when we got older - quill tip pens and paper. A buddy and I dipped a girl's pigtails in his inkwell." "What happened?" "We got the switch - both of us!" Dad had a stylized laugh.  I'd memorized it - the turned up corners of his mouth, his widened eyes, and the way he arched his eyebrows as though surprised.  I learned that day that his schoolhouse chalkboard was made of black-painted wood and that his lunch often consisted of leftover breakfast.  I had remembered singing patriotic songs in grade school.  "Do you remember any songs from when you were young?" I asked.  "We sang one at the end of every school day," he replied.  "Really...would you sing it...do you remember it?" "Wait till I get my mouth harp." I couldn't believe my good fortune. Dad had seldom talked to me in any significant way and rarely shared family history.  As he walked to the couch and sat down by his German-made Hohner, I remembered that years that passed since I'd heard him play.  Dad blew a note, hummed in high tenor, and began to sing, It was wondrous to me - a happy accident! "Tis four o'clock by the cuckoo clock - cuckoo, cuckoo. And down the street come the children's feet - cuckoo, cuckoo.  The school is over for the day. The books and slates are put away. The time has come for fun and play - cuckoo, cuckoo." I was about to respond when Dad interrupted. "Well, enough of that - here Peanuts.  I better let this mutt out before we leave."  That day had me taking my "quiet-nature" father to John's drugstore, with one "sweet" exception in an otherwise ordinary day.