He was one of the gentlest souls I have ever known. It saddens me to say I don’t think I ever had a real conversation with him – one where we talked about meaningful things. But in retrospect what I think is that to him – it all had meaning. He entered into the “ordinary moments” in such a way that he recognized before the rest of us that looking back, we would name some of these as among the truly extraordinary experiences that would shape and define us for the rest of our lives.
I was lucky enough to be friends with his son. And when you were friends with one member of the family, you sort of became friends with the whole family. I liked the noisiness of their house; the chaos of lots of people and the constant party that seemed to always be in progress and the fact that when I arrived at dinner time they just pulled up another chair and seemed genuinely delighted that there was one more to crowd around their already crowded table. And when they all bowed their heads (a cue I picked up on pretty quickly) he would lead us in a prayer of thanksgiving – and I never in all the years I knew him found him to be anything other than grateful and thankful for all that God had given to him – even in the hard times.
Pretty quickly, I became one of their tribe and would spend the night in the girls’ dormitory – a big room which had been created by closing in the carport and finishing it off as a bedroom for the five girls. In the morning the boys would rise early to deliver their paper routes and then we would all gather around the kitchen table for the breakfast that he had prepared – usually bacon and eggs and cinnamon toast. Lots of cinnamon toast (how that toast got divided is a whole story in and of itself) and while everyone was being seated he would go to their room and wake his wife and she would come to the table in her red robe (probably one he had given her the previous Christmas) and they would kiss and then he would pull her chair out for her and she would take her seat at the table. I asked my friends about it once and they just shrugged and said, “I don’t know. That’s just the way it’s always been.”
They were busy eyeing the cinnamon toast, but I was captivated by this ritual and though I witnessed it many, many times over the years, it never lost its effect. That ritual said it all. He adored her. There is no other word for it. He put her first. Always. It spoke of his genuine, pure, and unabashed love for her and every time I saw it there was something in my heart that ached and I hoped to God that someday I would find somebody who would love me like this man loved his wife.
On his son’s 16th birthday, a group of friends decided to show up at the house and take the birthday boy out to pizza. We all piled into somebody’s car and the bunch of us headed over. When we got there, the birthday boy was out collecting from his paper route customers and no, nobody knew when he would be back. “Well, tell him we stopped by,” we said and being the good friends that we were, we headed out to celebrate his birthday without him. When he got home his dad told him that we had been there and immediately noted the acute disappointment in his son’s face. “Where do you suppose they have gone?” his dad asked. “Oh, I don’t know. It could be one of half a dozen places.” And then his dad, who was tired and probably just returning from work himself said to his son, “Well, let’s go see if we can find them.” So he drove him around until he found us and left him there with us to celebrate. I don’t know why I remember this moment so clearly all these years later except that it spoke to me so profoundly of this father’s sensitivity to the feelings and longings of his son. And having celebrated my own children’s 16th birthdays, I look in the rear view mirror and wonder if maybe he had hoped that they might have a family celebration when he got home from work or he would at least be able to have some cake and ice-cream with this boy-growing-into-a-man. But if he did, he never said as much. To spend his evening driving around town looking for a bunch of kids wasn’t a big thing – except to his son.
When I married into the family, I came to understand that though Paul’s mom was the life of the party and the one who seemed to take care of us all, it was his dad who was the foundation of the tribe. He cared for her like a queen and she reigned over the kingdom well. She was his beloved and in that she had everything she needed. Theirs was a love story for the ages and it changed them both. It changed me. This is the man who baptized me into the faith and then officiated at our wedding. Over the years, many of them before I knew him, he pastored and cared for God’s people. He loved them the only way he knew how – like Christ loved the church.
He died in an accident in February of 2001. His last words were to his wife: I love you. It could have been no other way. A few short months later, his wife was hospitalized and died the next day – on their 56th wedding anniversary. She simply did not know how to be here without him.
The other thing that must be said about this gentle man is that I never saw a baby who did not love him. He was like a magnet and I watched him quiet many a fussy baby who would not be comforted even by their mother (my own included). It was not unusual for him to slip into the bedroom where we were sleeping on our visits home and take the baby downstairs with him to play and cuddle and love – giving us some much welcomed rest. His grandchildren loved him fiercely. When our youngest, Fletcher, was little and figuring out the language and the family relationships, he christened Paul’s parents “Gee-paw and Gee-paw” and it’s what they stayed for a long time. When he grew older, Gee-paw would call most Sunday afternoons to talk football with him after a Redskins or a Broncos game. And Fletcher loved it. I loved him for doing it.
Today is his birthday; he would be 92 years old. And if he were here I would call him to wish him a Happy Birthday and to tell him, “Dad, you done good! Your boy turned out okay. Actually he’s a lot like you. He loves me oh-so-well and the only thing you could have done better was to teach him to cook. Thank you.”
My mother was born on January 7, 1904. I’ll save you the math. She would be 112 years old today.
In 1904 the average life expectancy was 47. There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S., and only 144 miles of paved roads. The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph. Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub and only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents an hour and the average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year. Ninety percent of all U.S. physicians had no college education. Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores. One pharmacist sold it with this endorsement: “Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.” A different world and a different time, right?
Hazel and her sisters
Her father was a trapper and a true pioneer. He built the family home himself, a large house on the edge of town to accommodate his three sons and four daughters. He traveled to the city to buy clothes for his daughters, coming home with the latest fashion and the correct sizes. What kind of pioneer does that? I never knew my Grandpa Barnes – my loss.
Mom graduated from high school at 18 and went to the State Teacher’s College, got a teaching certificate and taught in a one room school house before she married my dad. In 1923 she was a college educated woman with a career – ahead of her time in many ways.
Whether shaped by temperament, by personality or by life events, she was a strong woman – one of the strongest I have ever known. She lived through two World Wars, raised five children in the Great Depression, cooked for a never-ending string of farm hands, cleaned houses and sold eggs, nursed her family through small pox, scarlet fever, whooping cough and polio, sent two sons to war and bore a sixth child at the age of 47. She became a widow at the age of 51, left the farm and started over with two dependants, a four year old daughter and a 21 year old disabled daughter. Once again, ahead of her time, she was a single working mom in the 1950’s.
I never knew the fashionably dressed teenage flapper or the auburn haired school teacher or the young farm wife or the woman who washed out her children’s clothes at night so they could wear them to school again the next day. The woman I knew had white hair and walked to the hospital every day where she worked as a cook. Once a month we took the bus downtown where she would deposit her paycheck in the bank, and we would eat fried shrimp and drink chocolate malts at the Woolworth’s lunch counter on Main Street. My mother never learned to drive a car. On my sixteenth birthday I got my driver’s license and we took the bus to the car dealership where she paid cash for a brand new 1966 Dodge Dart. I became her transportation to work, to the grocery store, to the doctor’s office. She was a terrible side seat driver (a habit I either learned or inherited from her), gasping at every stop or start or at the sight of another car. I didn’t like driving then and I don’t like it now.
She was an exceptionally practical and pragmatic woman. Probably because life had made her so. In her 80’s when she began to fail, she called my sister one day to take her to the funeral home. My sister assumed a friend of hers had died and she wanted to go to pay her respects. Not so. My mother was there to browse. She wanted to pick out her casket, plan her funeral and pay for it.
“I really like the lavender one. Do you think it’s too flashy?”
“I don’t know, Mom. Do whatever you want. I’m really not up for this.”
“Lila, you can do this with me now or you can do it by yourself when I’m gone. Those are your choices. The choice you do not have is to not do it.”
When they sat down with the funeral director to make the final decisions, Mom learned that to have her body moved to Nebraska to be buried next to my Dad would cost more than she was willing to pay. She turned to Lila “You and Tony can just put me in the back of the station wagon and take me there and save the money.”
My sister drew the line. Under no circumstances would she transport her mother’s body anywhere.
“Fine,” my mother huffed. “I’ll just rent a casket, have the funeral here, they can cremate my body and you can take the ashes to Nebraska!”
“Fine!”
“But you make sure they put me in that lavender casket. I’m not going to pay for it and have them cheat me out of it afterwards.” My sister always thought she won that round. I’m not so sure.
She sat Paul down and told him what she wanted from him. She wanted him to preach. She told him the verses she wanted him to use. She wanted him to sing. She told him the songs she wanted. “I’m really not comfortable with all of this, Hazel. It sort of turns it into the Paul Abbott show and…”
“But it’s really not about you, is it?” she said. “It’s my funeral so I get to say how it will be.” And that’s how it was.
In the last decade of her life she moved into a small apartment in a retirement home. It was an adjustment for her but she figured it out. When she’d been there a couple of weeks I called her to check on her. “How do you like it?” I asked. “Well,” she said, “it’s not bad. It’s just that there are a lot of old people here.” She spent her days baking for the old people and checking up on them.
My mother taught me many things. She taught me how to make pie, how to stretch a grocery budget and how to bake bread. She taught me that life isn’t fair but I could be. She taught me that sometimes you do what you have to do even when you don’t feel like it. And she taught me this: “When you are young, you have to practice being the kind of person you want to be when you are old.” When she was old sick and dying, she was gracious and grateful and appreciative. I’m still practicing.
I loved my mother. I didn’t always understand her or the world she had come from, but I know for a fact that she was a strong and remarkable woman. I hope that I am just a little like her.
So maybe today I’ll l have a chocolate malt and offer a toast to a woman who was a pioneer in her own right and one who was ahead of her time. To you, Mom, and Happy Birthday!
This is not my story. I’m not even a minor character in the story and in fact I wouldn’t be born until six years after the events recounted here. But it is a story that belongs to my family and shaped all of them who then, in turn, shaped me. Parts of it I learned from my mother – it was so a part of her and marked her in a way that I’m sure not even she realized. Parts of it I learned from other family members who lived through it and parts of it from those who came later – the ones who would ask the questions and record the answers.
My mother would say that it began on Dec. 7, 1941. The day that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
My brother is 16 years old, a farm boy from Nebraska. “I’m going to join the navy!” he announces with the passion and bravado and I-dare-you-to-stop-me attitude that only a 16 year old boy can pull off. My parents refuse to sign for him. “You will stay in school,” my mother insists (a decision she would second guess before it was all over). If Uncle Sam still needs you after graduation, then so be it.”
After graduation, the letter comes. He is needed, the draft letter explains. And so, just like that, Don Fletcher is drafted into the Greatest Generation – one month after his nineteenth birthday.
By early December, he is in France and headed into the Ardennes Forrest with the 106th Infantry Division assigned to the 423rd Infantry Regiment. Within days they will be engaged in what would later come to be known as the Battle of the Bulge – the largest and bloodiest battle of World War II.
They are told to expect the Germans to throw a few artillery shells, they will fire a few back. No shots have been fired in the past six weeks. This will be a minor skirmish, not a big deal. Early in the morning of December 16th, the artillery shelling begins. It goes all day and all night and on the morning of the 17th, the Germans come for them. It has begun to snow and the skies are overcast, grounding the Allies superior air power. On December 18th, Don is wounded in the arm and trades his M-1 rifle for a 45 semi-automatic because he cannot fire a rifle with one hand. They are going into their third day with no sleep, no food, and the only ammunition they have is what they are taking off the dead. They are surrounded by German troops and cut off from the Allies. At 2:00 p.m. on December 19th word comes down: destroy all personal identification except for their dog tags and prepare to surrender. Two hours later the white flags are raised, and my brother officially becomes a prisoner of war.
The telegram was sent to the Post Master in the small town of Wauneta because there was no phone at my parents’ farm. He brought it to the high school where my brother Irvin and sister Lila were in class and they carried the news home to their parents: Donald E. Fletcher was Missing In Action. And just like that – everything changed. Christmas came and went – unheeded and uncelebrated. My mother’s auburn hair turned gray and tears became her constant companion. My dad got quieter and worked harder; my sister Lila (a year younger than Don) put her plans for nursing school on hold, and life came to a standstill.
When the German soldiers divide their prisoners into the wounded and the non-wounded, Don is taken to a field hospital – a barn with hay on the floor and sheets over the hay. One stall is designated for surgery where they operate on the German casualties during the day and the prisoners at night by lantern light. After his surgery, Don is moved to the “hospital” which is a nearby school the Germans have commandeered. On Christmas Eve some children come through the halls, singing Christmas carols in German, but Don recognizes the tunes and is re-oriented in time. A nurse arrives with a Christmas meal, a big dishpan filled with fried potatoes, and dishes out a meager portion. It is the best meal he will have in captivity.
When he is considered sufficiently recovered to be moved, he is taken to a POW camp across the border into Germany. A German soldier tells him that if he arrives at the camp with his watch and his class ring, they will be taken from him. “Where would you hide them if you were me?” he asks and is advised to slit the lining of his boot and place them there, which he does. They become to him a promise of home.
Conditions at the camp are dismal and the prisoners are starving. They are fed twice a day – at midday they receive a half a potato in some broth and at night a piece of black bread, sometimes with molasses on it. In the beginning, the bread seems inedible to them, but eventually it takes on the feeling of a treat – almost like cake. He and his buddies pass the time by talking about food: they name every kind of candy bar they can think of and then eventually begin to make up names for their own imagined concoctions. They talk about recipes and reminisce about their favorite meals. They think about food. They talk about food. They dream about food. They are literally dying for food.
At home, friends and neighbors tried to prepare my parents for the worst. It is unlikely, they said, that Don is still alive. So many in the neighboring communities had lost sons, brothers, and husbands. “The sooner you accept it, the sooner you can start to heal,” they advised. “You can’t live with this day after day after day.” My mother prayed, she put one foot in front of the other, she sent her children to school, she waited and she cried. And then the dreams began. Don was standing at the foot of her bed and in his hand was piece of black bread, dripping with molasses. He was smiling. After the dreams started, no one could convince her to think of her son as dead. She didn’t argue with them and she didn’t tell them about her dreams, but she clung to them like life itself.
The Allies begin to push in and the Germans move their prisoners to another camp, deeper into Germany. They are still wearing the same clothes they wore the day they were captured and are covered in lice. Conditions will only deteriorate from here. They have even less to eat – but once a day, there is the black bread.
The prisoners assume the Allies are closing in again because they are loaded onto cattle trucks so closely packed they can’t sit or turn around and trucked further in, then unloaded and forced to walk to the next camp – Bad Orb, it is called. Somebody in camp writes a song to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic and they sing it every morning: We’re living on black bread and a beverage they call tea// We’ll keep right on singing till Patton sets us free// Come get us Georgie Patton//Come get us Georgie Patton//so we can all go rambling home. (I can’t, for the life of me, make those words fit into that tune, but it’s not my story so I will tell it the way it came to me.) The guards don’t like it, but they don’t make them stop either and so they sing.
The last week of March the prisoners and their guards begin to hear artillery shelling nearby and then small arms fire and speculate as to its significance. The gunfire grows louder and in the middle of the night on April 1, the Germans abandon the camp. On April 2, 1945, Allied Forces knock down the gates of Stalag 9B at Bad Orb and liberate 6,000 Allied prisoners. My brother is one of the 3,364 Americans freed that day- it is his 106th day in captivity. Behind the tanks comes the Red Cross, bearing gifts of donuts to the emaciated prisoners. Later they hear stories of freed prisoners eating so many donuts that they die. Nobody knows if it’s true. Not even taking time to get their names or their serial numbers, they put them on planes to France and from there my brother boards a ship to America. He is headed home. He weighs 90 pounds; no one will recognize him as the 180 pound, athletic young man who left the farm thirteen months ago.
On May 3 the Postmaster General came to the bank where my sister was working to deliver a telegram. “The Chief of staff directs me to inform you your son Donald E. Fletcher, private first class, is being returned to the United States within the near future and will be given an opportunity to communicate with you upon arrival.” Ulio, the Adjunct General. Lila took the message home to the farm – to deliver this unbelievable and unexpected good news to the heartsick mother and the grieving father. Many years later my sister wrote of that day, “That was a joyous occasion of course and I was so glad to be able to let them know. Seemed like the emotional reaction to that great event was subdued.” Maybe some hurts and griefs are so deep that they never completely heal. Or maybe they just refused to let their hearts believe what their eyes had not yet seen.
As Don makes his way home by plane, by ship, by train and finally by bus, he grows more and more anxious to talk to his family. When the troop train he is riding stops in Kansas City, he gets off and finds a phone. Because the folks don’t have a phone at the farm, he places a call to our Aunt Myrtle who lives in Wauneta. “I’m sorry,” the operator tells him. “That number has been disconnected.” “Then can you just let me talk to the operator in Wauneta?” he begs of her. Finally she connects him. “This is Don Fletcher,” he says to the man he knew in a different lifetime. “Can you get word to my folks?” he wants to know. “Tell them I’m on my way home. I made it and I’m on my home.” It is VE Day. The day that the German troops in Europe finally laid down their arms. “I’ll tell them, Don. I’ll let them know.”
Finally, he is on a bus, headed for Wauneta. His plan is to go to the high school and get his car from our brother Irvin who has been driving it back and forth to school. He goes to the principal’s office. “Irvin’s not in school today,” the principal says. “Well then, I guess I’ll just walk home.” But the secretary tells him that she will drive him herself. News in a small community travels fast. This is in the days of the “party lines” where you can hear your neighbor’s conversation with her sister-in-law’s cousin when you pick up the phone. Someone has heard someone say that someone has told them that someone heard it with his own ears that there is a Prisoner of War from Wauneta who has made it back and he is in town. The folks’ neighbor, Shorty Lambert, hears the rumor and drives to the farm, “I bet it’s Don!” he told them. “Don is home!!!” My dad says they had heard that he is on his way but aren’t sure when he might be arriving. “GET IN THE CAR!! I’ll take you to him!” And that is when the secretary pulled up in the yard. The missing was no longer missing – the lost was found. Later Don would say, “And that was a happy day.” I can’t even imagine.
Don gets ninety days leave and spends them eating and fishing. Someone complains later that summer that they have caught nothing in the local fishing hole. “Well,” comes the answer, “what do you expect? Fletcher was home for the summer and he fished 110 out of 90 days. He pretty much cleaned that place out.” My mother’s cooking and the therapy of that fishing hole gradually begin to calm if not eliminate the nightmares. He would live with them to some degree or another for the rest of his life. The War had exacted a tremendous toll on him and on our family as was true for so many, many others, but the world was safe and free. We would forever owe a debt of gratitude to those who made it so.
By the time I came into the picture in 1950, war was once again on the horizon. In two more years, the country would ask my parents for their second son and the nightmare would begin again. Instead of Europe it would be Korea, instead of Fascism it would be Communism, instead of Don it would be Irvin, but the heartache, the worry, and the burden would be the same.
Epilogue:
Two years ago, I heard, for the first time, this part of the story.
In 1972 Don and his wife bought a motel in Cambridge, Nebraska. They catered primarily to hunters who would come for the season and spend a week or two. A man named Milton came that first year with his son and some friends. They came back year after year and Milton and Don became friends. One evening, after a day of hunting and some drinks, the talk turned to days gone by and to the war and though my brother rarely talked of his experiences during that time, Milton began to share his story. He had been assigned to the 7th Army and was with the troops who liberated a POW camp near Frankfurt, Germany, on April 2, 1945. The name of the Camp was Bad Orb. Two men whose stories intertwine in an eerie combination of fate or providence and now find themselves these many years later, fast and true friends. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
Yesterday I heard this story for the first time:
For many, many years Don never spoke of his time in the War or his experiences there. He married, had a family, tended his huge vegetable garden, caught fish, and worked hard to support his family. When his oldest daughter Jolene was 12 or 13, a movie about the Battle of the Bulge came on the television. “Sit down,” he said. “We will watch this, now.” And then he told them. Most of it.
My mother said that the son who came back from the war was not the one who left – that somehow a part of who he was died there. How could it have been otherwise? And the 40 year old woman who sent her first born off to war was not the same one who welcomed him home from a Prisoner of War Camp. I never knew the first woman – part of her had died, too, somewhere in those 106 days. My mother could never tolerate the song I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas, and any time it would come on the radio or she would hear it in a store, her reaction was strong and almost visceral. I asked her once why she hated it so. “The year Don was missing, they played it over and over and over until I thought I would go crazy. I hated that song. I hated that they played it on the radio. I hated that other people liked it. I still get sick when I hear it.” Enough said.
And now my son is a Marine. My mother had been gone for seventeen years, and I never missed her more than I did during the months in 2006/2007 when Sean was deployed to Iraq. I stopped watching the news, reading the newspaper, or watching any movie that had anything to do with any war at any time. I sent care packages and wrote letters and waited for mail and prayed that no one in a uniform would show up at my door (today’s version of the telegram). Often I would wake in the night, crying for my mother. “How do I do this? How did you do this? How did you survive?” I wanted – I needed – to ask her. But knowing my mother the way I do, I could almost hear her voice, “What choice did I have? What choice, do you have, Sharon? You do what you have to do. You put one foot in front of the other; you put meals on the table; you pray; when you need to, you cry; and if you’re lucky and God knows it’s the only way you will make it through, maybe He will send you a dream.”
This is a war story and a love story. A story of suffering and of hope. A story about family and about friendship. A story about survival and about hanging on. A story about sacrifice. And so perhaps, in the end, this is my story. Maybe it is a story that belongs to us all: to those who pay the price of service and those who are indebted to them.
He was a mystery to me when I was growing up. My mother and I traveled to Nebraska every couple of years and we would stay a few days on his ranch in the Sandhills, but ranchers are very busy people and he was a grown up and I was a kid. Besides, I didn’t know him and I would rather hang out with the other kids. He and his wife and four daughters came for Christmas every few years, but he visited with the adults and I was one of the children and that would not change for many, many years.
Many of the stories I know about him came from my mother. In the last few years, as I have gotten to know him, I have pulled some of them out of the man himself and learned about a life, a family, and a brother who was gone by the time I arrived on the scene.
My parents named him Charles Irvin. Charles for his two grandfathers and I don’t know where the Irvin came from, nor does he. I never knew anyone who called him Charles. The family called him Irvin. Everyone else called him Fletch. My mother always said he looked a lot like my dad and also had his temperament: both quiet, hard-working men.
Our Grandfather Barnes was a trapper. Irvin and his older brother Don thought they would give it a try. They set traps along the river, trapped muskrats and sold them (who buys a muskrat and for what?). When the winter came and the weather grew cold, they moved their traps away from the river and set them for other game. My mother used to tell the story about the day that Irvin was sent home from school because he reeked of skunk. They had checked their traps on the way to school and found one trying to escape. “What were you thinking??!” she asked the twelve year old boy. “Why couldn’t you have left it for later?” “Because, Mom, he might have gotten away.” He might have been quiet, but cautious he was not and he loved taking risks.
Don, Irvin, and Lila
I think they must have been in grade school when the two brothers decided to spend the summer down by the water building a raft and making plans to float it down the river. Our sister Lila, who fell in age between the two boys, begged them to let her help. But they would have none of it – this was a boys’ adventure, pure and simple, and she was not invited. Yet she continued to accompany them down to the river every day and as the craft got closer and closer to completion and the moment of launch was approaching, Lila ran to the house. “Mom!!! Those boys are down at the water and they built a raft and they are getting ready to take it down the river!!” She had turned informant. My mother put a stop to the Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer adventure and my brothers learned a valuable lesson – never make an enemy of a potential ally – even if she is a girl.
almost 50 and still going strong
After high school graduation he stayed on the farm to help my dad, but every chance he got he hit the rodeo circuit – riding bulls and bare backs and livin’ the good life. Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado: wherever he could find a rodeo, that was his real home. And though eventually, as the responsibilities of family and running a ranch kept him out of the arena himself, the rodeo life was in his blood and he made it part of his life’s work to preserve this sport and way of life for other, younger cowboys. Whether it’s introducing toddlers to the Pee Wee Pen or judging, sponsoring, and supporting the high school rodeo clubs, he still loves it all. When they organized the first Old Timer’s Rodeo in 1974, he was back – and he won first or second prize (he would never say which).
He was 22 years old when I was born in March of 1950. By the next October he had been drafted and shipped off to fight the war in Korea. He returned home in 1952 with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. I know little to nothing of those years or his experiences of that war. I have read the citation that was given to him when they presented him with the medals, but I’ve never heard him speak with any detail about that frozen tundra and the battles he fought there nor did my mother seem to know much about it. A quiet man in the best of times, about the war years he is particularly silent. He was in high school when our oldest brother Don was sent to Germany to fight against the Nazis. One day Irvin was called to the principal’s office – his brother was missing in action they told him. You should go home and be with your folks. And though Don eventually did return home, I don’t think my family was ever the same after that. So I don’t know if it was against this background that he kept these stories to himself, or if it was simply that he was such a quiet man. I do know that it had to have marked him. How could it not?
By the time Irvin returned to Nebraska, my dad had bought his own farm and his son helped him to work the land and care for the animals; he also returned to the rodeo life. In 1953, he married a rodeo queen and worked as a hired hand on a ranch – living the good life. By the time I was five, our father was dead, my mother had sold the farm and moved me and my handicapped sister to Colorado where she could find work to support us. So I have no memories of my brother from my childhood other than the visits we made back to see family every few years and the Christmas visits where he would sit in my sister’s dining room and drink coffee with the adults.
the city slickers on horseback
The summer before Paul and I were married, we went with my mother to Nebraska. Paul had never met most of the family so this was his chance. To say that the city boy was intimidated by the country life would not be misrepresenting the situation. Irvin said, “The girls will take you out and show you around.” By this he meant that we would ride the pasture land on horseback to get the lay of the land. It wasn’t so bad when Raeleen took us (she was 14 and we were 19), but the day he sent us out with the five year old might have been just to get a reaction. And then came dinner. Irvin handed Paul a plate with a steak on it. Just a steak – nothing else. The meat hung over the sides of the plate. I could see the look of panic in his eyes. Paul had always said he didn’t like steak – that it was hard to chew and had no flavor. It didn’t help that his mother, God love her, tended to cook red meat until it was unrecognizable or that any beef he had ever eaten had come from Safeway. But he couldn’t afford to offend his new in-laws even though he whispered to me, “I’ll be here all night getting this down.” I was grateful that he didn’t ask for a bottle of ketchup. With the first bite, he became a believer. To this day he measures every other steak by that one and few, if any, come close.
After we were married, we didn’t make many trips back to Nebraska. We were busy raising a family and holding body and soul together. But as the kids grew up and moved away, I had a longing to connect with these roots and the stories of my family. In 1999, when Fletcher was 11 and Joy was 15, we made a trip west and stopped for a few days at the ranch. Irvin was retired by then but still had some cattle, some horses and some wild barn cats. He took our Fletch fishing for the first time. He baited his hook, stood him next to the water, put the pole in his hands and the line in the water and said, “If you feel a tug on the line, just reel him in.” Before long he had a bite. He hollered for his uncle. Irvin yelled, “Just bring him in! Bring him in!!”” Fletch yelled back, “But he don’t wanna come in!” One evening his daughter Raleene came for dinner with her two kids who were about the same age as Joy and Fletcher. Eventually someone mentioned that the kids were missing in action. A search turned them up out in the corral – blowing up cow pies with firecrackers – with the uncle/grandfather leading the charge.
Years later Paul and I would return to the ranch on our way to Colorado. We sat under the stars which were brilliant in the dark, Nebraska sky with no city lights to dim their light and listened to the quiet. And we went tanking on the Calamus River – meaning we sat in the tank which is used to water cattle in the field and floated down the river. It’s sort of like white water rafting – without the white water and without the rafts. We meandered down the river, we talked to cows, and we ate our cooler full of snacks, and Irvin fished. And of course, before the trip was over, we ate steaks.
And then one day a couple of years ago, Raeleen called me. “I have to be in Washington D.C. and I was thinking of bringing my Dad to visit you. I don’t know if he’ll do it. I doubt he’ll do it. But what would you think of the idea?” To get on a plane and fly to the city? Where there would be crowds, and noise, and concrete? Would he really do this? I wanted so badly for it to happen. She called back to say he would come. And then she called back to say he had changed his mind. “Why?” I wanted to know. “Well, he says he doesn’t have anything to wear.” Are you kidding me?? Put him on the phone, I told her. I assured him his boots and his hat would be perfect, we would meet him at the airport and that we would promise not to let the city eat him.
It was one of the best weeks of my life.
Sean asked him to bring his uniform. I wanted a picture. But who can fit into something they wore 60 years ago?? This guy. Seriously?
We sat on the deck and visited. We showed him our life here in suburban Maryland and the church we had built and Sean and his family came from North Carolina to visit with his uncle, a war hero from a different generation but one who understood and appreciated his nephew’s military life as only one who has served can do. We ate cinnamon rolls and pie and talked of our parents. He came to church with us and people wore their cowboy boots to show their solidarity and wanted their pictures taken with a real life cowboy.
Cedarbrook shows up in boots for this cowboy.
We took him to visit the Korean War Memorial. We wanted him to have time there. Time to just be there. To take it in in the daylight hours but also to see it lit up at night. But it was July and I was afraid that the infamous Washington heat and humidity would be miserable and unbearable and take its toll on this 85 year old man. I worried about how far we might have to walk. I worried that the city would be crowded and claustrophobic to a rancher from the Nebraska Sandhills who upon landing at the airport declared, “This place is so different you oughta have to have a passport to visit.” But all my worries were for nothing. Paul dropped us off as close as he could get us and went to find a parking place. As we walked along, I pointed things out to him and when we came to the foot of the Lincoln Memorial he stopped and stared up at the monument. “If the stairs don’t bother you, we could go up a little ways and get a closer look,” I offered. “We have time?” he asked. We had all the time in the world. He was off. I called to him to wait for us and though he claims sometimes that he doesn’t hear well, I think he hears everything he wants to hear and “slow down” doesn’t fall into that category.
When we walked down into the spot where the Korean War Memorial sits, it became a thin place for him and for all us who were with him. We walked slowly with him, stopping to just see or to read or to pray and I’m sure for him, to remember. To be there with him, haunted by his ghosts and memories, was to be in a holy place. As the afternoon wore on some of us went to find a place to sit and to wait, but he stayed, almost like a sentry standing watch. From our bench we saw a Korean family approaching him, a man with his elderly parents. “Excuse me sir, my parents do not speak English but they wish to know how old you are?” My brother told him, and he translated. “My father asks if you fought in Korea.” My brother nodded. “My father asks if he may shake your hand.” And the old woman bowed from the waist and spoke in Korean. “My mother says thank you for saving her country’.” The war veteran, in his boots and his cowboy hat, walked past us, not wanting conversation or company in what was understandably an emotional moment. But what a gift it was to bear witness to this act of gratitude, of humility, and of grace.
On the morning he left for home, he came into the kitchen. This man of so few words stood next to me and told me that he was proud of me and of what I had done with my life. “And Mom and Dad would be so proud too. I wish they could see it all.” Have I ever thanked him for that act of generosity? For speaking on behalf of a father I never knew and a mother who has been gone for over 25 years. To tell me, on their behalf, “Well done.” For reaching across the generation that separates us and saying, you belong.
Our sister Lila died the following January, leaving us the last of the siblings.
First there were five.
Don, Minnie, Lola, Lila, Irvin
Now there are two.
And then I was born and there were six.
And now there are only two.
I sat beside him at the funeral. This brother who shared my genes and my story, who was shaped by bull riding and ranching and war and the Nebraska Sandhills, and I offered a prayer of thanks for this quiet, true grit of a man with his courage and resolve and strength of character.
A year ago I went to Nebraska and stayed three weeks with him. We watched bull riding on television, worshiped together at the Easter sunrise service, went fishin’, ate steak, and even trapped us some varmints. And sometimes he would talk, and I would listen and those were the best times of all.
But next time I’m in Nebraska, could we build a raft and take it down the river?
What you have to understand first is that though Raeleen and I are related by blood (I am her aunt but only five years older than she), we really knew each other hardly at all. She was a country girl from Nebraska and I grew up in a city in Colorado. The oldest daughter of a brother 21 years older than I, we had spent a few Christmases together in our childhood though she was designated as one of the “little kids” and I was part of the “older crowd” – those nieces and nephews that were a little older or maybe a year or two younger. Other than that – our paths had not crossed at all. I knew about her, of course; when my mother was alive she kept me updated on the comings and goings of all the family but that was about it. As we grew to adulthood we bumped into each other from time to time – at my mother’s funeral, my sister’s funeral and a few other times when family circumstances brought us together. . . but the truth is, we really only knew about each other.
How then, you might ask, did I, as a woman in my 60’s, end up sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night to stand on a country road in central Nebraska under a start-studded sky waiting for my accomplice in an adventure which would lead us deep into a pasture with no-trespassing signs posted all over? This story is the answer to that question.
Raeleen is a physical therapist – and a very good one I might add. She has a thriving practice in a small town in Nebraska. People come to her from neighboring towns and even from out of state to experience her healing touch. My sister credited her with keeping her out of surgery and a wheelchair when everyone else had pretty much given up hope. And so, as the arthritis in my hip got worse and the pain from it began to impact my ability to function, I reached out to her. “Give me four weeks and I can help,” she promised. Of course, since I didn’t have four weeks to give, I wrote it off. My hip got worse. “Three weeks,” I said in my best negotiator voice. “I’ll see what I can do,” she promised. But as the time got closer, I began to get cold feet. I had too much to do, I couldn’t be gone from home for three weeks, and of course the real issue was “what in the world would I do THERE for all that time?” No WiFi, I wasn’t even sure I would have good cell phone coverage, no place to go and nothing to do. “I’m not going,” I told Paul. “It’s a bad idea.” But he was convinced that I should go. For no other reason, he said, than to spend the time with my 85 year old brother. When would I get a chance to do that again? “ It will be restful,” he said. “Take some good books, listen to music, spend time with God, and who knows? You might even have some adventures.” Plus – maybe she could help my hip.
And so I packed two suitcases one of which was overweight and cost me $75 (one would have been more than enough because as it turns out, you don’t really need that much in Nebraska) said good-bye to my home and to civilization and headed off to the hinter land.
I stayed with my brother and sister-in-law at their place outside the town of Taylor (population 190). We quickly established a routine. Every morning, either my brother Irvin or his wife Joyce would drive me the 20+ miles from their house outside of Taylor to Raeleen’s office in Burwell (population 2,210). My hosts had been forewarned that I would need to be driven to and from treatment because, as my husband told my brother “there is no way on God’s green earth that you want to turn her lose in one of your vehicles if you ever want to see it again. She can’t find her way around the block when she has street signs.” So off we would go every morning after breakfast. Raleen had an empty office in her building in which I set up shop and I was able to work (the office had Wi-Fi after all and lucky for me somebody knew the password) so I could actually communicate with my office back home via email.
Then, twice a day my niece would come to get me and put me on her table and work me over. And for an hour as she pushed and pulled, evaluated and stretched, rotated and chiseled, we would talk. We learned each other’s stories and how our lives had intersected the other’s in ways we had not known. We shared family history and filled in gaps in one another’s memory. She told me things about my mother that I had never known and I saw her through the eyes of a granddaughter rather than a daughter and I envied Raeleen the years that she had spent with my mother after I moved away and she moved closer to her. We talked about God and how we had each come to faith. We talked about our kids. We talked about being kids. We talked about books and movies and life. We talked about the joys and trials of small town life and what it was like to be a pastor’s wife in suburban Maryland. Daily I grew in my respect and admiration for this woman who was both salt and light in her community like no one I had ever seen. We talked about our failures and our journeys and in the telling and in the hearing we discovered in the other a kindred spirit and our “other best friend” – because we each already had best friends and of course would not want to replace them – we were just adding on. And then, at the end of the day, Cindy, (Raeleen’s sister and “office manager”) would give me a ride back to the Corner Stop (a gas station with a table in one corner where my brother often met his buddies for coffee in the afternoon) and I would ride the rest of the way home with Irvin and sometimes we would talk and sometimes we would just be and it was one of the best times of all. Joyce would have dinner ready for us and we would eat at 6:00 and then watch some kind of sports or bull riding competitions on TV until 9:00 when they would go to bed and I would go to my room and read. And the next day, we would do it over again.
But on Wednesday nights I would go home with Raeleen so that I could go to her Wednesday night “Bible study” with her. This consists of a group of ladies who get together, drink ginger tea which is how they came to be known as “the ginger ladies”, share their week and their lives with one another and sometimes study the Bible. And on those nights her husband Tom would cook for us. He is a rancher who raises his own cattle, raises the crops he feeds them, fattens them and then sells them. And so their freezer is filled with little bites of heaven – the best beef you will ever taste any time anywhere and the best argument I know not to be a vegetarian. I’m not sure I will ever buy another super-market steak again – I would rather just do without.
The Ginger Ladies
And then sometimes we would wake up before the sun, get in the car, and drive out into the pasture and sit in the dark and wait for the sunrise. Sitting in the dark, I learned to recognize the “night sounds” – the sound that insects make in the dark before the dawn. “Listen!” Raeleen instructed. And then it grew absolutely quiet. No sound at all. Then one bird. And another. And another. And soon the air was filled with their song – as if it were they who were waking the sun. And then came the first shafts of light and color, the sun would peek over the horizon and the day had begun. It was magical.
I was there for three Sundays: Palm Sunday, Easter Sunday, and the one after. The first two I went to the little Methodist Church in Taylor with Irvin and Joyce. We went to the “before service coffee time” and sat at the table and I learned where the best fishing had been the week before and we talked of the drought and how desperate they were for rain and whether it would snow again this season. It did. On Palm Sunday we marched around the sanctuary waving our palm branches as we sang a hymn and the children and the old men and young mothers all joined in the hosannas. On Easter we went to a sunrise service out on somebody’s ranch at sunrise and sang some hymns and a boy played the cello and we watched the sunrise and drank coffee and ate coffee cake and I loved knowing that all over the world on this day Christians would be celebrating the resurrection in one way or another and that we were a part of that.
I met other characters in the story. Cody: the son of my brother’s neighbor who was an award winning bull rider and now works on a local ranch. One day Raeleen and I found my mother’s recipe for lemon meringue pie in an old recipe box she had given to her granddaughter before she died. Raeleen loves lemon meringue pie and so I said I would make one for her.
Before leaving town, we stopped at the grocery store to buy the ingredients. When I went to bake the pies I realized I had neglected to buy cornstarch. At home this would have been no problem – just run back to the Food Lion and pick it up. Out here in the back country – not so easy. Joyce and I were debating what to do. Irvin said – call the neighbor and I can get in the pickup and drive over and get it (next-door has a different meaning where they come from). And so we did. And they did. And Cody was heading out to go do some branding and would drop it off. Which is how I came to have my forgotten grocery item delivered to me by a cowboy in his hat and boots who came in and sat down and had a piece of banana bread with us before being on his way.
Food Lion is sooooo overrated.
I met Carol: one of Raleen’s best friends who is the post-master in a little town where she ministers to and prays for everyone who comes in to collect their mail. Who has an amazing gift of hospitality and opens her home to the ginger-ladies each week and her stable to some city slicker who wants a photo-op on a horse. And who loves her community to Jesus each and every day
I met Dennis: a retired teacher who went into ministry in his retirement and now pastors my brother’s little church as well as another church in the next town over and goes between them every Sunday, making a long day for him and a blessing for those whom he serves.
I met Dan, a friend of Irvin’s who opened his private fishing pond to us one afternoon and evening so that I could go fishing with Irvin without a license – and stayed and had a picnic dinner with us down by the pond and how we didn’t catch any fish but I got to have physical therapy by the lake and really – how often does that happen where I come from?
And then there was the time my cell phone rang in the middle of the night. The sound that actually woke me was the pounding of my heart against the wall of my chest because my body had already registered what my mind was struggling to hear as I swam toward consciousness – this could not be good news. But it was Raeleen: HAVE YOU SEEN THE STARS??!!!!! I had mentioned to her a few days before that you could never really see the stars at home because of all the lights. “What time is it?” was the only answer I could muster. But I did as I was instructed and went out into the yard and gazed at the heavens. And then I cried for the sheer beauty of it. My phone rang again, “Get dressed! I’m on my way. We’re going star-gazing!!!” I knew it would take her 40 minutes to get there so I went in the house, got dressed and left a note explaining my whereabouts. Then I locked the door behind me and tiptoed out into the night. I walked out to the road so that the headlights wouldn’t wake my brother and his wife. Was I concerned about their sleep or about getting busted sneaking out? Hmmmmm….
.She arrived with two travel mugs – coffee for her and tea for me, blankets, and away we went. We drove through a gate into a pasture off the beaten path – the headlights shown on a no trespassing sign but she didn’t seem too worried. I assumed she knew the property owner so I wasn’t worried either. And there we sat and watched the stars, tried to pick out constellations, and marveled at the beauty and mystery of it all. Shortly before dawn, one bird began to sing. And then another and another. Raeleen named them for me by their songs and there was not one she didn’t know. Then came one from the darkness that was deep and low. I heard it over and over again. What bird is that? I wanted to know. “That” she laughed, “is a coughing cow”. I still had so much to learn! As the stars faded and the sky colored with the coming dawn, we basked in the beauty and sat surrounded by cows and birds and windmills and grasses and flowers. And more “No trespassing” signs. Whose property is this? I asked her. “I have no idea,” came her reply.
Those three weeks changed my life. They gave me time. Time to move slowly with the rhythm of the season and the land. Time to visit with characters in the story and learn from them a different way of life than my own. Time to sit in a rocking chair and watch my brother braid the leather harnesses and headstalls that are nothing if not a work of art. Time to plot how to catch the varmint that was digging up the garden and set the traps and marvel every morning how the trap was sprung, the bait was gone but so was the varmint. To bake lemon pies and go fishing and eat homemade biscuits and gravy at the fundraiser for the high school. Time to read and to talk and to listen. To watch the sun come up and go down and star-gaze and enjoy conversation over a good steak. Time to fall in love with the land where I was born. To hear the stories of my family and my heritage and to learn what it looks like to love and to serve God in ways I never knew and to learn from this truly amazing and remarkable woman who is related to me by blood and now by love. Oh, and my hip is better, too. Thanks for asking.
Father’s Day wasn’t celebrated at our house when I was growing up. My father died when I was four. If I could go back in time I would ask my mother if we could celebrate the day by telling stories about my dad. Tell me what he said the first time he saw me. Tell me what was his favorite meal. Tell me what you thought the first time you met him and then why you wanted to marry him. Tell me how I am like him and how I am different from him. I know so little about him and I have no memories of him. My siblings were all grown by the time I was born so they had memories. I only know what others have told me – I only know the stories. He met my mother at a box supper. She was the school teacher in town and he was traveling through as a corn shucker -“The fastest one the county had ever seen” my mother once bragged. When it came time to bid on the boxes, someone sitting next to my dad said, “Get that one no matter how much it costs. She’s the best cook you’ll ever meet.” He outbid all the others, ended up with my mother’s box and of course, as was the custom, ate its contents with the one who had prepared it. And that’s how Ray Fletcher met Hazel Barnes.
He was a quiet man. Today we would call him an introvert. He liked solitude and being outside which worked out well for him since he was a farmer and spent most of his time with his cows and his crops. He rolled his own cigarettes and never drank. He suffered all his life with “sick headaches” which of course today we call migraines. He had a hard time showing or expressing emotion. Was that the times he lived in or his temperament?
He was an extremely hard worker. When his own farm work was done he would help a neighbor with theirs. He was the first to help those in need and the last to ask for help for himself. He was intense and had a hard time relaxing or being idle, though he did like to rock the babies. On winter nights when he couldn’t be outside, he played checkers and cards with his kids and while they all looked forward to the day they could beat him, that day never seemed to come.
He only graduated eighth grade, but by everyone’s telling, he was smarter than most. Determined that all of his children would get an education, he forbade my brother to quit high school when WWII came and insisted he stay in school until graduation. While other farmers would keep their sons home from school to help with the farm, he never allowed his children to skip. Though probably none needed the help more than he.
When the dust bowl came and the depression with it, he struggled to provide for his family: a dark and bleak time for him. Determined to care for them, he got day jobs in town when he could and worked for the WPA; but the bank foreclosed on the farm he was leasing, he had to sell all his equipment, and the family moved to town. My mother cleaned houses to buy food. He was a proud man and unwilling to take help or assistance. Eventually my grandfather asked him to come and work on his farm and live there. He was back on the farm, working hard. doing what he loved to do. And then came the flood. My sister remembers standing on the front porch of the house which was up on a hill and watching a wall of water come down the Frenchman River wiping out crops and drowning farm animals. Dad just picked up the pieces and started over.
Three years before he died, he finally was able to buy his own farm. Yet his troubles were not yet behind him. He sent his second son off to fight in Korea and his daughter contracted polio and was very, very ill. He worried about me getting it and how they would pay the mounting medical bills. Everyone agrees he worried a lot, though never talked about any of it.
By 1952 things were turning around. Both his sons were home from the war, all his children would be home for Christmas, my sister was on her way to recovery and they were celebrating in their very own place! They took a family picture – the only one ever taken of my parents with all six of their children. I don’t have many pictures of him, but this is the only one where he is smiling and seems relaxed.
In July of 1954, he was working construction in town to bring home some needed extra cash. On the way home, the tire blew out, the truck hit a telephone pole and he suffered a spinal cord injury. Every day he asked the same question: Doc, how long before I’m walking? Then finally on the 14th day the doctor explained that he would never walk again. Two days later he died.
My sister once wrote this to me in response to my questions about our father: “Dad got along well with all his children but then he was an easy man to get along with. He was not one to let his emotions show and didn’t give hugs or kisses or show outward signs of affection. However, from his actions you knew there was a lot of love there and you were his life. His entire life seemed to be focused on providing food, shelter and clothes for his family and most of it seemed to be a struggle for him. Nothing came easy for him, but he just kept trying.”So today, on this Father’s Day, thanks to all of the dads who just keep trying. Because, in the end, that’s really all anybody can do. And it is left to us to pass along their stories.
It was a Monday. I only know this because I looked it up on the internet. The date was March 26, 1950, and a 47 year old woman labored away in a hospital in McCook, Nebraska, to bring her sixth child into the world. The doctor told her husband that he thought the baby was dead. They couldn’t get a heartbeat and they needed now to turn their attention to saving the mother. She had delivered five other children: all at home in her own bed with the country doctor attending. She was convinced the problems were with the hospital and insisted if they would just let her go home, she could have this baby by herself. The doctors were not convinced. The husband was adamant – they would do nothing until his daughter, the nurse, arrived. She was on her way from Pueblo, Colorado, and she would know what to do.
My sister arrived from the big city with her “modern technology” – a stethoscope designed to detect a baby’s heartbeat. “This baby is alive and well,” she told my mother – we just need to get it here!” My mother was worried about my dad, pacing the hall outside her room. My sister assured her he had been tended to. “It’s okay,” she told her. “He fainted a while ago and they have him in bed in a room down the hall.” And so it was that my sister, Lila Rae, attended our mother as she brought me into the world. And the “new” parents, who were also grandparents twice over, began again this journey of caring for and raising a child.
By this time in her life my mother had already survived some hard times: her fifth child Lola had contracted whooping cough when she was five days old and the raging high fever had left her with some brain damage and physical disabilities. Surely she was concerned with the health of this child now born to her 17 years later. She had sent a son off to fight a World War and lived through the hell of the 118 days he was missing in action. She and my father had lost their farm in the Great Depression and she knew the despair of trying to feed five children with a husband out of work and no way to pay the bills or provide the necessities. But by 1950 things were looking up and though this red headed baby girl was not in the plan – they made a new plan, welcomed her enthusiastically and maybe thought that the hard times were behind them.
In four short years, my mother would find herself a widow with a handicapped daughter and a four year old daughter and no way to provide for them. She transitioned from a Nebraska farm wife to a single working mother and did it all with grace and with determination and it is to her credit that I never once felt like I had made her life harder instead of richer.
I was 16 the year my mother turned 63 – the age I am now. And 63 seemed so old to me. My mother seemed old. Am I that old? Surely not. Sixty three is the new fifty, right? But I am really only beginning to learn what by now my mother knew so well . . . it’s not the years, it’s the mileage.
I always think of my mother on my birthday. And of my sister. Two strong and beautiful women. I owe my very life to them. And I miss them.
It’s an odd holiday, really. No one takes the day off work; there are no special foods associated with the day; though a movie was made in its honor and the news media usually covers it to some degree, it doesn’t really rank up there as one of our favorite celebrations. No gifts are exchanged to mark the occasion and when all is said and done, it’s just sort of lame. Except in my family.
February 2 was always a big day in the Fletcher family. My parents were married on Groundhog Day. At the time, no one really made a big to-do of the wedding. They simply got in a car and drove to the next county to a justice of the peace and said their vows. My mother’s sister Violet went with them as did my dad’s brother Buck. Buck and Vie later married each other, but that’s another story and one which I do not know much about. I don’t think my parents “eloped” . . . they just didn’t make much of a fuss about the wedding part of it. As Anna from Downton Abbey says, “I’d rather have the right man than the right wedding.” I can so imagine those words coming from my mother’s mouth. So on February 2, 1924, they were married.
I wonder about the story behind this wedding announcement sent by mother’s parents to their friends and family. Were they disappointed not to have been included in their daughter’s wedding or had they agreed with her “no-nonsense” approach to such things?
Ray & Hazel Fletcher – married Feb. 2, 1924. We know this picture was taken in 1924 because that year was written on the back. We assume it was taken on their wedding day because Dad is wearing a suit and no one remembers ever seeing him in a suit – ever.
However, an anniversary, though important to the couple, does not usually become a “family holiday”. But wait. . . there’s more. The winter of 1925 was a very stormy one with several big blizzards. The young couple were 30 miles from the nearest doctor and had only a wagon and horses for transportation. When a break in the weather came, Dad loaded his pregnant wife in the wagon and took her to her parents who lived near the doctor, and she stayed with them until Don was born. And on their first wedding anniversary, Feb. 2, 1925, my mother gave birth to their first child: it was Groundhog Day.
The next 25 years would bring the Great Depression, a World War, and many other hardships to this farm family. They would lose their farm and livelihood and struggle to feed their five children and, along with their neighbors and friends, fight to keep body and soul together. They would send that first born son off to fight in Germany and agonize through the days and months when he was listed as Missing in Action and then finally begin to put their lives back together again when he was liberated from a German POW camp and eventually sent home. Life began to return to “normal” and they dared to once again believe in a future. Don married a local girl, their oldest daughter Lila Rae completed nursing school in the big city, married a “foreigner” as my father labeled him (a Democrat and a Catholic), but all in all, things were looking up! They were even expecting their first grandchild.
Jolene was born on a bleak winter’s day and became the first of the next generation of Fletchers. She was born on her grandparent’s Silver Wedding Anniversary and her father’s 24th birthday. The date was February 2, 1949: Groundhog Day.
Hazel Fletcher with her son Don, granddaughter Jolene and father, Charles Barnes
And that’s how Groundhog day became a holiday in the Fletcher family: with special foods, special traditions, and special significance. And if anyone outside the family ever wondered why the Fletchers made so much of a non-holiday that centered around a rodent named Punxsutawney Phil, they never said.
Epilogue: After I wrote this piece I learned that this Groundhog celebration has continued in the Fletcher family into succeeding generations. Jolene’s granddaughter was also born on Feb. 2 … in 2007. Long live Punxsutawney Phil.
When Paul and I traveled home to see my mother it didn’t matter if we were to be there overnight or a week. Sitting on her kitchen counter we would always find three chocolate cream pies. “If these are not gone by the time you leave,” she would threaten “I’m never making you another one.” Not to worry. All of us, but especially Paul, loved Hazel’s chocolate pie.
My mother was an extraordinary cook and she made the best cream pie in the world. As a child my favorite was Banana Cream and I always requested it for my birthday. I remember she made a peanut butter pie that was so good and so rich that I made myself sick on it one time and could never stand the thought of it again. But as I grew up, I too preferred the chocolate. For some reason that I cannot fathom I never got her recipe. I learned to make a pretty good pie from the Better Homes and Garden cookbook with the plaid cover, but it never matched Hazel’s.
When we were home for my sister Lila’s memorial service a few weeks ago, the conversation turned, as it inevitably does, to food and our memories of it. My niece Shirely happened to mention that she had her grandmother Fletcher’s recipe for chocolate pie. Seriously??!! How had I not known this? And so she sent the recipe and I vowed to try it and see if it was as perfect as I remembered it or as it had grown in my memory to mythical proportions of goodness.
Today is as close to a snow day as we have come here in Maryland for a couple of years. Not much snow is expected, but the ground is so cold that whatever falls will stick to the roads and make driving hazardous and so they are closing schools early and people are settling in to pretend that we are snowed in. When the kids were little, snow days consisted of cooking and baking and movies and hanging out in front of the fireplace. They were like a holiday. I miss those days. Now there is no one here to eat the the goodies, but I have decided to use it as an excuse to cook something yummy, to watch episode after episode of Downton Abbey, sit by the fire and bake my mother’s chocolate pie.
When they were going through her papers, Lila’s kids found Big Chief tablets, spiral notebooks, and loose pages of paper containing notes and stories about her childhood. What a treasure! Many of these read like a chapter of Little House on the Prairie and though they are stories about a time and place of which I have no memory, when I read them I feel connected – this is where I come from. One of the stories is called “My Happiest Memory.”
MY HAPPIEST MEMORY – by Lila Gradisar
Sadness and deprivation precede my happiest memory.
At the age of 10, I understood very little of what it meant to be in the midst of the great depression. I did understand however that whatever this “thing” was, it had changed our family’s life tremendously.
The draught with the accompanying dark dust bowl days had forced my Dad to have a farm sale and move the family to town. We lived in a rented house at the edge of Palisade, Nebraska. The house had three bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room.
“No luck today”, my dad would say as he returned from looking for work all day in early December.
Unemployment was not acceptable to this energetic farmer. As jobs were available, he worked on WPA some, but even that hadn’t been available lately. Most of his unemployed time was spent with his brother, my Uncle Bill, in finding trees to cut down and saw up to keep our wood pile high.
My mother spent most of her days working for the only Dr. in town and his wife: She cleaned their house and in return brought home a little cash and medical treatment for our family.
Christmas was approaching and naïve as we were, we children were making our wish lists and the younger ones were getting ready for Santa’s arrival. The more excited we became the quieter and more worried our parents became. “Can we get our Christmas tree tomorrow?” I asked one evening as we were all gathered in the kitchen. A silence followed which was so long I thought both parents had gone deaf and hadn’t heard me. Finally with tears in her eyes and a trembling voice my mother replied, “Things are different this year. Dad doesn’t have a job. We have no money and we won’t be getting a tree. There also is no money for presents.” We all sat quietly trying to understand what this meant. My dad said, “Next year will be better.” I went to bed thinking, “Next year is a long way off.”
Two days before Christmas, I was sitting at the window watching for my mother to walk up the road from work as I did each evening. To my surprise a car drove up. Few people we knew had a car. All five kids ran out the door to greet whoever it might be. My mother got out the passenger side and Mrs. Kauer out the driver side. In the back seat with its branches sticking out through the window was a Christmas tree. The car was piled full of presents and boxes of groceries. Mrs. Kauer said, “Come help us unload the car.” I couldn’t believe it. All this was for us. We children jumped with glee, shrieked and chattered as we carried all the things into the middle of the kitchen floor. Mrs. Kauer was gone in a flash as soon as the car was empty, leaving my Mother to explain. Mrs. Kauer had begun to quiz my Mother about our family’s Christmas plans and finally my mother had confessed that due to the circumstances, we didn’t have many plans. Much to Mother’s surprise, the kind lady she worked for had taken it upon herself to change the plan. And change it she did. Mother was all smiles.
Finally it was time to put up the tree! The excitement was electrifying. We began to rapidly open up all the boxes. “Real electric Christmas lights” I yelled and I opened a box. This was indeed a first. There were balls and tinsel to put on the tree. The tree was decorated and Dad plugged in the lights. We stood in awe – mouths agape. It was the most beautiful Christmas tree I had ever seen. Everyone had a brightly wrapped package which was placed under the tree before Mother scooted us off to bed way past our bed time. When I awakened on Christmas Eve morning the house was already filled with the wonderful aroma of my mother’s baking. She had been up before daybreak preparing our favorite holiday foods. In the boxes of groceries she had found everything to make a feast. We helped her bake sugar cookies; she made a batch of fudge and divinity and pumpkin pies. Again the excitement lasted all day. On Christmas Eve, Dad again started the fire in the living room. We turned the tree lights on and sat around the fire before finally going to bed.
On Christmas morning at 4:00 a.m. the fist child was awake asking “When can we get up?” Dad said, “Not until I build a fire and it gets warm. Go back to sleep for awhile.” My sisters and I giggled and squirmed and there was no more sleep. Dad gave the signal and all five of us were up. Such a clatter. As I held my present trying to guess what was in it, my heart was pounding. I received the most wonderful brown wool pants which gave me Christmas warmth every day as I walked to school. After the excitement of opening the presents, Mother fixed breakfast. We played in the living room all day. Mother made Christmas dinner with turkey and all the trimmings. As we gathered around that Christmas dinner table, we thanked God for those who were willing to share with us.
In my memory I can still feel the warmth of the fire and the glow of the Christmas tree lights as we sat in the living room that Christmas night dozing off in our childhood contentment – making it my happiest memory.
because our stories matter 