Finally Walking Those Hills

Back in March, 2010, nine and a half years ago, I wrote about wanting to take a trip to Kentucky with my dad, to the area around Greenup, Kentucky, where the Nelsons and the Gulletts have lived for many generations. At that time I wrote: It has weighed on my mind for some time now that before too much time passes, Dad and I need to drive down to Kentucky and visit the family cemeteries while we can still explore them together. 

Later that same year, working with my dad on cleaning and repairing a rental property of my brother's, he and I spent many hours in his truck driving to and from the site, and many hours working alongside one another. We had not yet gotten down to Kentucky; my brother's broken leg and his needs intervened. Then I wrote: Dad and I are racing to get the harvest in before the snow and the dead of winter. We are each on a small combine, the small beams stabbing the growing dark, combing the fields and wanting so much for one more season together. 

I wrote again in late 2012, after my Aunt Eunice died, that Dad and I had not yet taken the trip. By then I was doubtful we ever would. Mom was sinking deeper into dementia and, even without that hanging over our heads, the reality was we were all getting older. Dad was looking at 80; I was by then eight years into a disease with a prognostic lifespan of only six to seven years. So the trip went on the back burner, perhaps indefinitely.

Time went on. Uncle Burl died, but I did not make it down to the funeral. My brother Dale died. My mom's dementia increased until she went into memory care late last fall. Dad coped with being alone after a lifetime spent as a couple.

And then we took the trip down home, that trip I was not sure would ever happen. On the fourth Saturday in June, from early morning to early evening, Dad, my brother Mark, his wife Jackie, and I all piled in a car and headed south.

So why now? A variety of reasons: age (again, always), health (again, always), wanting to see those sites one last time, wanting to mark places in my mind with dad. Any number of reasons.

And what a day it was.

Greenup is the county seat of Greenup County. By the time we rolled into Greenup, it was close to lunch and we needed to eat. Not knowing the lay of the land (and Google being little help), we parked across from the county courthouse and Mark crossed the street to where a store proprietor was watching to ask him about eating. A few minutes Mark waved us over.

"This guy is asking all about which Nelsons we are," he explained. "I figure Dad can answer the questions."

"This guy" was Charley Osborne, proprietor of a small antique and junk shop (his words, not mine). He and Dad started talking. In about five minutes, they had connected several dots as to who knew who in which family. In another five minutes, they figured out that Charley was related by marriage; one of his brothers had married one of Dad's cousins.

Charley and Dad talking about a cane press

Well, of course.

Charley and Dad talked for some 20 minutes, much of which Mark recorded on his phone. Dad talked about where his family had farmed and lived up in the valleys and hollows of Greenup County. Dad talked about going up on Shell's Form and Charley came back with "Well, go on up and over one hill to Hood's Run and that's where I was raised." He showed Dad some paintings by a local artist of a sugar cane press; Dad responded with that was what his grandfather did and he had memories of it. They talked about moonshine and stills. "My grandfather pulled two years [in prison] for moonshine," said Charley, added that other family members had "pulled some time" for the same. "They done what they had to do to make a living," commented Dad, "This [area] went through a lot to make a living."

It was a great way to start the day.

After taking our leave of Charley, with hugs and handshakes all around, we headed out Route 2 along the Little Sandy River. Dad commented on a few things as Mark drove; we were headed to the Gullett-Lambert cemetery, Dad's maternal side of his family.

A comment about Kentucky family cemeteries, which are common throughout those hills. The cemeteries are at the top of the hills, with a road, usually gravel, winding up to it from the main road. That means you pull into the driveway, sometimes the main one, of someone's home, requiring a brief explanation of why you are there ("Got family up there," I said at one stop) and getting a nod and a "go on up" in response.

And sometimes you chat with the family below, even though you have never met them before, just to be sociable. The man living below this cemetery welcomed us, told us his dogs wouldn't bite (and one, Wayne, went up with us), and that they were expecting cousins in later that day from Ohio.

My great-grandparents are buried in this cemetery: Galen, who died before I was born, and Myrtle, my beloved Grandma Gullett. Grandma Gullett lived until I was well into adulthood and I have wonderful memories of her laughter, of her welcoming arms. She taught me to braid, using one of my troll dolls, when I was young. And she was a great shot with a muzzleloader, apparently able to put a candle flame out without disturbing the candle. Mark shared that story as we were driving along, causing Dad to add "Yeah, Mom [his mother] was a great shot too." Apparently Grandma Gullett and Grandma Nelson, her daughter, spent a lot of time shooting "just for something to do," according to Dad, as once the late fall set in, roads in that part of Kentucky were pretty much impassable until the spring, and you stayed close to home for months on end.

From that cemetery, we went looking for the original Nelson cemetery (there are two). Dad knew more or less where it was: you take Shell's Fork until it turns into gravel, then pull into a little side cemetery, the McConnell cemetery. "Right there," said Dad. "That bench up there is where the Nelson cemetery is."

My brother Mark got out of the car and looked up the hill, puzzled.

What?

"I'm looking for a bench," he explained.

The bench is just above the trees on the hill, where they level off 

I cracked up. "The bench is that flat strip of land up the hill, up there in the trees," I pointed out. "Not something you sit on."

Dad and I alone made the short trek to where the cemetery was as Mark and Jackie were wearing shorts and the site was clearly overgrown. We climbed up and looked around. There were some stones, but not family names. Dad was sure it was over to the left, but the vines and undergrowth covered so much he couldn't tell. We veered that way, stumbling on the ground, and then found what he remembered: his great-great-grandparents' stone.

Nancy and George. Somehow I did not know or had forgotten that my great-great-great grandmother's name was Nancy. I think of Nancy as a modern name, but with a birthdate of 1817, she was a contemporary of Abraham Lincoln, whose mother's name was Nancy.

Nearby George and Nancy was their son Jacob, my great-great grandfather. Jacob Nelson fought in the Civil War, for the Union. Looking at the dates on his fading tombstone and the military marker, I suspect he was the last Nelson buried in that cemetery:

 When Dad and I made our way back down to the car, Dad said, reflectively, that we would probably be the last ones ever to set foot in that cemetery. In another five years, "it'll be all gone. The land will take it back."

I could not disagree with his assessment. Mark was quiet. "I wish I'd worn jeans so I could have gone up there too."

We turned around on the narrow (narrow) gravel road and made our way back out to the main road. The Nelson cemetery sets off of Route 2 and we were soon there, explaining again to the householders at the foot of the hill where we were headed and could we park our car there? Of
course; they waved us up the hill.

I was last in the Nelson cemetery in 1975,  many, many years ago. If Mark had been up there, it would have been a long time ago also. The climb to the Gullett cemetery is considerable. The climb to the Nelson cemetery makes that one look and feel like a cakewalk. Whichever Nelson started it clearly picked the highest hill in the family, then carved a road up, which has to twist up because you can't climb it in one straight shot.

A small portion of the road up 

When I was there many years ago, for a family funeral, relays of community men waited at several points up the hill, because there was no way a hearse could get up there, and no way just one team of men could carry a coffin that far up.

Now that's steep.

The Nelson cemetery is where my great-grandparents, Linnie and Iven (pronounced I-ven with a short "i") are buried. Iven was Jacob's son. Linnie's parents, William Skaggs and his wife, are buried nearby in a sinking grave. (I do not have her name and the stone is too far sunk to pick it out, if indeed she is buried there.) Many of my grandfather's siblings are there, as well as my dad's cousin Athine, who died in 2011. I suspect, but do not know, that Athine was and is the last burial up there.

After we came down from that third, we twisted our way around the area to see a few key spots. This cabin, moved to this site and restored by cousin Athine, was where the Nelson home where Iven and Linnie lived:

 And up on the flat area behind the RV just sticking into the photo? That's where the log cabin sat that my dad was born in:

He pointed out his grandparents' property a piece down the road and set way back: as a little child (somewhere past two, but not much past three if at all), his mother would set him on a path to spend time with his grandparents. He walked it alone, soon out of sight of one cabin and not yet within view of the other. Looking at the distance between the two sites and thinking of how short a small child's legs are, I was stunned at the expectation that he take himself there. Dad had only shared that story with me recently; seeing the lay of the land and the distances staggered me as to the enormity of that walk.

Soon after turning of W Hollow Road onto Route 1 (where Grandma Gullett lived in a little tiny house when I was growing up; one that it turns out her husband ran a small store out of), we headed back to Ohio, sharing a meal along the way. Our talk turned to other matters; we were all tired. Twelve hours after we left, we were home.

When we dropped Dad off and said our goodbyes, I thanked him. I told him I had wanted to go see those spots with him for a long time, and I am glad we did it before one or both of us weren't able or were gone.

Dad was quiet a moment. "I wasn't sure I'd ever see those places again," he finally said. "I'm glad I did."

I finally got my walk with Dad. And what a walk it was.

Inch One Hundred Seventeen: Windings

I have the day off and have spent the morning running some errands and doing some chores. I needed to stop at my Aunt Ginger's apartment, a block away, to get her signature on various documents for an upcoming medical appointment. While there, I asked her if she wanted to come out with me while I went to the bank, and then take a drive.

Ginger jumped at the chance. As she ages, her world becomes smaller and smaller. A car ride is a great opportunity to see some sights.

After a stop at the drive-through bank, I told her we were heading to the East Side, the side of town where we both grew up, the side of town where Ginger lived more than half her life. She would like that. So I headed across the river, turned on Milo, and turned up Flax Street.

The house—the one her father built, the one she lived in for almost 50 years, the one I grew up in—still stands. It has been clad in vinyl siding, replacing the old, soft white asbestos singles that used to cover it. I had to point it out to Ginger: between her fading memory and the different appearance of the house, she wasn't sure which one it was. We turned up Carlisle to Delta, passing the house that Mrs. Willis lived in throughout both our childhoods, turning past the house that was always Aunt Jane's house and, before that, my great-grandfather's house. She commented on all the new houses in what used to be large lots; Habitat For Humanity has transformed the neighborhood. We drove past the old junkyard, long decommissioned and now empty. We turned back down Flax and I commented that whoever owned the Flax Street House had fenced off a small part of the backyard and let the rest to the north go to trees and brush. It gives the backyard a wild, enticing air.

I then drove Ginger out of town, first to the cemetery where her parents and her paternal grandparents are buried. Three of her infant brothers are out there, as well as Uncle Arthur, who died in combat in World War I. We walked slowly back to the graves, Ginger holding firmly onto my arm. From there we went to the Kilbourne cemetery where my brother, my dad's parents, and my infant sister are buried, and where my parents and Aunt Ginger will eventually be. Then we turned and headed back to Delaware.

At 86 and several months, Ginger is unsteady on her feet. Her body is slowly winding down: the bones ache, the arthritis flares, the gait is shaky and uncertain. She always takes an arm when it is offered.

Her mind has been winding down for the last few years as well. There are more and more gaps in her short-term memory, and I have taken over most of her responsibilities for appointments and financial matters. She may ask the same question several times; today's question was whether she had a headstone yet. But Ginger's sense of humor is intact, and her memories of long ago, even though repeated more than once in a conversation, are still strong. Today the talk was of an adult neighbor up Flax Street who had dirty feet (Ginger knew this because the woman went barefoot and often propped her feet up on the porch rail) and the proprietor at the little corner store who ran a numbers racket on the side back in the 1930s. We shared memories of Aunt Jane, her older sister, and laughed together.

At 60, I am aware of my own winding down. Some of it is just being reflective of my age, as in both "I never though I would make 60" and "so this is what 60 is like." More of it is my awareness that the myeloma is wearing me down. In my most recent Myeloma Beacon column, to run later this month,  I compare myself to Tik-Tok of Oz, Baum's mechanical man who was tireless as long as he was wound tight, but who came to an abrupt halt when he wound down.

At this stage of the myeloma, I too am starting to wind down.

We had a beautiful morning, my aunt and I. We laughed, we talked, we wound our way around the county from town to rural cemetery to rural cemetery and back again. By the time I walked Ginger into her apartment, she was glad to be home so she could rest. She is winding down. By the time I drove the block to our house pulled in, I was glad to be home as well and for much the same reason.

I am discouraged somewhat by my winding down, but not surprised and, so far at least, not overwhelmed by it. For some months, I have been coming to the realization that I am having to learn how to say goodbye to the world. Even so, there are still those moments, so many moments, of incredible joy and delight and wonder. I would say even at the lowest points, joy and delight and wonder still light my path.

One of today's joys was being out with Aunt Ginger, just two aging women who are winding down, winding through the county and through our memories.

Inch Ninety-One: Our Last Doughboy

This is a post I first ran November 11, 2009.  November 11, which we now call Veterans Day, is the day World War I hostilities stopped. Last year marked the centennial of the start of that war; this is the 97th anniversary since that war ended.

The centennial of World War I brought renewed attention to that event, which many historians say was the most significant and devastating war in the history of man, especially with regard to its impact on Europe. Here, we long ago relegated it to a dusty shelf for the most part.

I continue to be fascinated with World War I, more so than its successor. Maybe that is in part due to the story below.

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When I was growing up, there were two sepia photographs of soldiers in my grandmother's bookcase. One was a photograph of her husband, my grandfather. The other was a photograph of a wistful looking young man who was always referred to as "Uncle Art."

Uncle Art was my grandfather's younger brother. Both were in the army during World War I.

My grandfather was mustered out quickly as he was blind in one eye from a carpentry accident. Uncle Art, however, served from 1917 until 1918, when he was killed in France.

The family story was that Uncle Art "got his head blown off" in battle. He was buried in a small country cemetery a little ways outside of town here, next to his parents.

Growing up, that was about all I ever knew about Uncle Art. Neither of my grandparents ever mentioned him.

Even without his being mentioned, it always seemed to me that World War I had a profound impact on my grandmother. Although all four of her sons served in World War II, World War I seemed the more immediate and more personal war in the household. There were the photos of the young soldiers, of course. And in the living room was a framed copy of the quintessential poem of that war, McCrae's "In Flanders Field:"

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

My grandmother would often recite that poem, especially on November 11th. It was one of the earliest poems I committed to memory as a result. To the end of her days, she always referred to November 11 as "Armistice Day," and made sure the flag flew from sunrise to sundown. Sometimes she would intone "on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" in referring to the significance of the day.

In recent years, I did a little bit of research and discovered a little bit more about Uncle Art. He entered the Army in 1917, a member of Company K, 166th Infantry, which was a part of the 42nd Division, known as the Rainbow Division. In all likelihood Uncle Art trained at Camp Mills, located on Long Island.

After training, Uncle Art shipped to France. I don't know whether he came back to Delaware before shipping out or went straight on by troopship to Europe. He made the rank of corporal.

The 42nd Division saw a great deal of action during World War I. Its first engagement was the Champagne-Marne offensive, which was the last great thrust of the German Army. The Germans were unsuccessful, in large part due to the influx of American troops to bolster the French army.

2058 soldiers of the 42nd Division died in that battle, which only lasted three days. Uncle Art fell on July 15, 1918, the first day of the engagement. There was a small death announcement in the local newspaper.

Uncle Art was buried in France initially. His body did not come home until three years later, when a number of bodies of American soldiers were exhumed and returned by ship to the United States for reburial.

Uncle Art came home on the SS Cantigny. The Cantigny, a troopship that wasn't built until after the end of World War I, primarily saw duty repatriating the doughboys after the war ended. After transporting the ones who survived, the Cantigny apparently repatriated those who did not. Its active military use ended in September, 1921, which was the same month that Uncle Art returned. He may have been on the last military voyage of that ship.

Uncle Art was buried in a small country cemetery about two miles outside of town. Looking at the little cemetery, I cannot fathom why his father picked a cemetery that at time would have been a fair drive from town. It was not a "new" cemetery even then, and to my knowledge my grandparents and my great-grandparents had no affiliation with the little church that operated it.

I went out there two days ago to visit the graves. There is Uncle Art alongside his mother and father. My grandfather, who was his brother, and my grandmother are close by. It is a quiet, mossy cemetery, ankle deep in leaves in the fall.

The War to End All Wars ended 91 year ago today on the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month." Uncle Art came home three years later. Alice, my great-grandmother, died a year after that. I have wondered whether her son's homecoming was the strain that killed her or the relief that released her?

No one is left to answer that question. No one is left who knew my great-grandmother. No one is left who can tell what her reaction was when her doughboy came home from France at long last.

Family Ties

Aunt Eunice died mid-October.

This was not entirely a surprise. Aunt Eunice (my dad's aunt on his mother's side) was 97 and a few months back had broken a hip. She had been poorly (as they say down home) ever since. And now she was gone.

The funeral was two days later, down in Greenup, down in my dad's homeland. I was able to join Dad and my youngest brother, Mark, for the trip down.

I am so grateful I could.

"Quality time," and by that I mean not hemmed in by other demands, quiet enough to concentrate on one another time, with Dad or Mark is hard to come by. Mark has a busy life, I have a busy life, Dad, for being 79, has a busy life. So just the three hour drive down Route 23 was a gift. We talked, we shared memories, we were quiet together.

It was raining lightly in Greenup when we parked at the funeral home. We all three more or less hop-skipped the puddles in the driveway and entered the building.

Walking in, I was facing a wall of family. "The cousins"—Dad's cousins, really, but folk we always called our cousins too—were there in full force, some in the lobby, some in the big room. Cousin Sharon, Eunice's daughter, came over and hugged me. Cousin Judy, Helen's daughter, knew me because I walked in with Dad.

Then I saw my cousin Sandra Kay, "Sandy" now. We pointed at one another across the lobby, then met and hugged hard. "I miss you so much," I blurted out.

Sandra Kay is older than me by a few years. We saw a lot of each other growing up, as my family would often travel to Greenup to see my great-grandmother, who lived in a little three room dollhouse on the edge of the property owned by Sandra Kay's parents (Aunt Helen and her husband). Back then, Sandra Kay lorded her age and maturity over me every chance she got.

Now those years are not so big a gulf. In fact, now those years are not a gulf at all, hence our hard hugs.

For the entire two hours of the calling hours, there was a lot of catching up to do with a lot of family. I bent down to talk to Uncle Burl, the baby of a large family that is down to him now that his sister Eunice is gone. Burl was always my favorite, a tall, handsome man with a honey smooth voice and a knack for storytelling. Now Uncle Burl is bent by age and Parkinson's, and his voice, always so strong, is so soft you have to bend close to hear him. His illness causes him to carefully thread together his sentences, so it was a slow conversation. But flashes of his smile would play across his face, and he told me and Mark, who'd also stooped down to talk, a story about his father, our great-grandfather, that I had not heard before.

After the funeral service, about half of us drove out Route 2 to the Gullett family cemetery. It is not unusual in Kentucky for the old-time families to have small cemeteries, usually started well back in the 1800s, atop this or that hill. I had not been up to the Gullett cemetery before but it was like the Nelson one a few hills away: to get to the top meant a long walk up a steep dirt road.

The cemetery was small and somewhat overgrown. Uncle Burl used to maintain it, but doing so has been beyond his capacity for some time. Still, we had no trouble walking around looking at headstones. My great-grandmother Gullett is there, as is her husband, my great-grandfather, who died three years before I was even born.

After the graveside service, Cousin Jimmy, Eunice's son, called out to the rest of us. "This is the last burial that will be up here." He pledged to continue to maintain it. His voice broke as he added, "for as, well, for as long as I am able."

There are family ties and there are family ties. As we drove out of the valley back to Route 23, Mark said that he always felt he was at home when he was in Greenup. I responded, surprised, "You do? Me too!" It is the one place we both feel centered, even though neither of us live there. For me, it is the one place in the world where I can look around at a gathering, or even in a store, and see people with my facial features. Like Mark, I am "at home," in some deeply fundamental way, when I enter this valley.

With each passing generation, the earthly ties to Greenup, to Route 2, to W Hollow Road, to the tiny cemeteries tucked atop the hills, grow fainter. I don't know if I will ever make it down here with Dad to go to the family cemeteries. When Uncle Burl dies, we'll gather together but it will be somewhere "out" on the flatlands. I doubt my children will ever make a pilgrimage to this area, even though a full quarter of their blood runs right back to this valley threaded by the Little Sandy River.

At the funeral home, cousin Janet, Eunice's oldest daughter, introduced her oldest daughter to Dad, reminding him he'd probably last seen her when he was spending weekends in Kentucky looking for work. Dad used to come down to Kentucky and look for work? I pounced on that comment and asked him over supper on the way home. Turns out that after he was out of the Army, jobs were hard to come by in Ohio and he had a wife and children to support. So he would drive down to Greenup on the weekends, sleep on a couch at Janet's house, and make the rounds of the railroad shops and yards looking for a job. He must not have found one, because he and Mom still live in Delaware almost six decades later. Still, it made me wonder how I would have turned out, who I would have become, had I grown up in this valley I still feel pulled to after all these years.

When I got home that night, I noticed there was a fine clay dust from the cemetery road on the hem of my slacks. Try though I might, I could not brush it off by hand.

Small wonder.

The Rest of Chicago

There was more to Chicago than the Alumni awards last weekend. How could there not be? Chicago is the city of my youth and it has never left my heart.

I first set foot in Chicago in September, 1974, as a freshman at the University. It is my singular good luck that I first saw the University of Chicago, in all its Gothic splendor, and met Katrina on the same day. They are forever melded in my mind. Even though she and I have traveled far from Hyde Park (the University's neighborhood) and the gauche eighteen year olds we were, I never see the campus without thinking of Katrina.

Which is why it was perfect that Katrina was in Hyde Park herself last weekend. As a member of the Alumni Board of Governors, she chaired the awards committee. (Truth be told, I knew months ago that Muriel was receiving the award.) Katrina had duties and obligations on Saturday, and Warren and I had a meeting with Muriel, but Katrina and I nonetheless found time for a meeting, a hug, and a walk across campus talking furiously the whole time.

The campus was beautiful and all three of us commented on that beauty as we walked. It holds memories―memories of Katrina and me dancing and singing our way across the quad ("The minute you walked in the room, I could tell you were a man of distinction, a real big spender. Hey, big spender, spend a little time with me..."), memories of exiting Cobb Hall after a movie into a misty spring night and being overwhelmed by thoughts of Warren (he will know why when he reads this post), memories of walking across the Midway on a silent, cold winter night and seeing the full moon rise up, terrible and large, and hang over the IC tracks at the far end of the Plaisance.

We met up with Katrina's husband, Ed, near Harper Tower, and Warren and I gave Ed and Katrina a ride to their downtown hotel. The talk never ended. It was too fast, I wanted more, and I was thrilled to see Katrina at all. There were more hugs on Michigan Avenue as they got out of the car; Warren, watching the traffic in the rearview mirror, said tersely, "get back in the car now!"

Warren and I spent the night in Oak Park, where a century plus ago a young architect by the name of Frank Lloyd Wright began to turn architecture upside down. As a freshman, I had lived across the street from the Robie House, one of Wright's masterpieces. The predecessor (and to me the handsomer house) is in Oak Park:

So is what is undoubtedly my favorite structure in all of Chicago, if not the world:

It is a ticket booth—an original!—from the 1892 Columbian Exposition. I find it simply incredible that someone has an original ticket booth in their side yard.

Sunday morning before leaving for Ohio we drove back into the city, to meet another friend for breakfast. John is the same age as my son Ben, and is one of "my kids" from when I used to coach Destination Imagination. He now lives and teaches in Chicago and we were meeting at Ann Sather's.

Well, that was the plan. And a good plan it was, too, except for the fact that John got assaulted after parking his car and before entering the restaurant and it was some 30 or 40 minutes before he could rush into the restaurant, disheveled and wild-eyed, announce he had been assaulted and was filing a police report, and run back out.

I was so distraught that I had to order a second serving of what are surely the most amazing cinnamon rolls in the world:

From the blog Lucky Taste Buds! 

We never met up with John. We had to head home long before he completed the reports, so we left him our good wishes and a gift certificate for the breakfast he never got. There will be other trips to Chicago and other times to sit with John and enjoy breakfast.

The drive from here to Chicago or Chicago to here is a bit under six hours. We took a little longer coming home on Sunday. We meandered deliberately to a small cemetery in a small Indiana town which my great-great-great grandfather helped settle in the 1830s. Henry is buried there and we found his grave fairly quickly.

And we meandered again to drive a portion of the Lincoln Highway, the original US 30.

In recent years, most of US 30 in Ohio has been "improved" into a four-lane freeway and routed around the small towns and cities it once fed. I understand the reasoning behind that: the "new" US 30 is able to carry far more traffic, especially semis, swiftly and more directly than the original roadway. The small towns are no longer congested with diesel fumes and rumbling trucks.

But, oh, what we gave up when that improvement occurred.

We drove the portion of the Lincoln Highway that went into Van Wert, on the western side of Ohio. We came into town through an old residential section, slowing our pace down to match the narrow street. We rolled through a portion of the downtown, much of it shuttered, we drove past the courthouse.

We were driving on what William Least Heat Moon called (and immortalized in a book by the same name) "blue highways." On a blue highway, you will find the local doughnut shop. On a blue highway, you will find the hand lettered sign, "Fresh Eggs," at the edge of a farmhouse. On a blue highway, you will see the small stores and not just the strip malls.

On a blue highway, you will find a piece of this country's, and perhaps your own, past.

My life is threaded with blue highways and they are my preferred routes for travel. Back in my student days, I would sometimes take the Greyhound bus from Chicago to Delaware and back again. The bus in those days only traveled the blue highways. I knew the look and feel of downtown Fort Wayne, of Van Wert, of Delphos and Lima and Kenton.

Driving on the Lincoln Highway decades later, after a weekend in Chicago in my old haunts, I felt the faint touch of the past, light as moth wings, whisper against my face. I raised my hand as if to brush the memories away, drove on through town, and onto US 30.

Juvenilia IV: Let Her Speak

In Bring Me A Unicorn, the first of five volumes of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's letters and diaries, the author spoke about the embarrassment of rereading, let alone publishing, writings from her teen and college years. In explaining why she chose to do so, Anna noted that she "had a certain respect for the early efforts of this struggling adolescent, who now seems so many lives removed from the self of today. I can laugh at her and am often embarrassed by her, but I do not want to betray her. Let her speak for herself."

I feel the same way about this last poem from my early years. As I typed it out for this post, I saw lines and phrases I wanted so much to rewrite. I corrected a few spelling errors, but otherwise chose to let the poem stand on its own awkward legs.

This was written after going with my parents to a family funeral down in the Kentucky hills. Over 35 years later, my cousin Atheen still mentions this piece and how he "never was in a poem in [his] life except for that one." Atheen wasn't much for poetry by his own admission, but he reckoned he liked this one.

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Kentucky Funeral

Atheen, my cousin,
    his face unlined yet worn for all his thirty-five years in the hills,
stood in the door of his cabin - shack - home
and waved us goodbye
    before returning to the mourners inside.

These past two days he had made
    twenty or more trips up the side of the Nelson hill,
digging the grave out for great Uncle Bill in the cold March air,
    using blasting caps when the thin soil gave out
    and only bedrock was left.
As family trickled in from all parts of the country,
    the men folk all made the trek up
    and pitched in to help bury their dead.

After the funeral, sparse and commercial,
    and the twisted drive from Greenup to our land,
contingents of neighborhood men waited upside the hill -
spaced at neat intervals to relay the coffin up the slick mud path.
    Me and Burl raced up after
    being two of the first people to the top
following the valley pallbearers, coveralled and hunting clothed.
Waiting for the rest to join us
(the minister and fat little funeral director
puffing and picking their ways up more slowly),
I examined my ancestors' final plots, Iven and Minnie,
    my Nelson great grandparents.
They say this little hilltop graveyard was one of two,
    my more ancient forbearers being one hill over.
    Burl pointed out towards another rise
where we'd someday make a similar climb to lower my
other clan great grandmother, wrinkled and bent,
into the selfsame wooden vault and hear,
    as they were now doing with Bill,
the mud and rocks thud back down upon her.

Atheen joined us briefly,
    grinning like a small boy,
and held up some old terrapin that had braved the cold and rush of humans,
only to be captured by this Kentucky hills man.

Angels at Death

I recently discovered Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx and spent an hour last week touring it online. The site is filled with beautiful, evocative photos of statuary that reminded me yet again how close death always is, and how different our responses to it are through the eras.

We forget, in our modern, technology-driven society, that death in America prior to the mid-twentieth century was a very real and immediate event. People died young back then. People died at home. Women died in childbirth, children died of diseases we have now largely banished, people died of infections and illnesses that have become distant medical memories.

We tend, in these modern times, not to talk or think too much about death, because it is "depressing." In these modern times, death is something that doesn't happen to most of us (or so we think) until we are old. We have conquered many common illnesses; we have even miraculously turned many incurable cancers into "manageable" diseases instead of imminently terminal ones.

But it wasn't always like that.

Woodlawn Cemetery reminded me how close death always has been. In the nineteenth century, death was personal. Death was someone who lived not in a far away country, but right next door or, all too often, right there in the house.

The statuary reflects the intimacy of death.

There are angels, but I am not certain I have ever seen angels with such piercing glances.

All photos are from the Woodlawn Cemetery website, www.thewoodlawncemetery.org

Angels who seem deep in thought about why they have been called to earth and captured in stone.

Angels who seem troubled that there is so much sorrow.

The writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh, one of my favorites, was no stranger to death. Her firstborn child was murdered; her older sister Elisabeth died in her thirties of heart disease. In her journals, Anne wrote movingly of her losses. Trying to make sense of her son's killing, she saw death as "a little door" for such a little child. When Elisabeth died, Anne wrote that it was

a week of false hopes, and false dreams; all kinds of plans and schemes that now seems irrelevant - because Elisabeth died. Roads that set out and never got anywhere, half-finished sentences, half-drawn sketches of the future - and the whole thing insubstantial pasteboard to be knocked down in one breath.

Death is always just that close, just that little door away, just an angel's wing beat away.

While traveling last weekend, we received word that the adult daughter of very dear friends of ours had died suddenly. We got back in time to attend the memorial service.

Gail had struggled with alcoholism and mental health problems for many years. Someone found her body at home last week, just days short of her 57th birthday. It was a sudden, blunt end to a life that had come unraveled piece by piece over the years, despite the love and intervention and help of her family and friends.

The memorial service was spare and simple. The minister made us all laugh, recalling the brighter times and moods that were Gail. She then spoke quietly and plainly about the horrific illnesses that, ultimately, Gail could not conquer.

The homily was based on the first two Beatitudes

                    Blessed are the poor in spirit,
                    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
                    Blessed are those who mourn,
                    for they will be comforted.

The minister spoke of Gail as being poor in spirit, not as a chastisement, but as a reflection of the painful emptiness that alcoholism had carved out in her life. She spoke of Gail being now in the kingdom of heaven, her spirit renewed and whole. 

Surely any angel alighting on Gail's grave would resemble one of the Woodlawn angels, with a fierce, troubled gaze.

Our town was emerging from an ice storm that had paralyzed the area, but the church was full. The mourners had braved the ice and the cold to attend; the mourners had braved the hurt and the pain to assemble. Afterwards, we all gathered with the family to exchange memories and tears and laughter and hugs. There was an outpouring of love and support, from the teammates of the teenage son Gail left behind to her friends and the friends of her parents.

There was comfort for those that mourned.

A Walk With Dad

My friend WP, who blogs at I am the working poor., recently wrote beautifully and movingly about her father, who is dying of cancer. She reflected on his burial, which she knows is inevitably soon:

One of the things my dad did when my mom passed was take her ashes to the private family burial ground. He reconnected with her relatives and they welcomed him. The burial site is on top of a mountain in a long gone coal mining community. Her father died, crushed in a mining collapse when she was just three months old. Long story short she had a rough life and longed to know her real father. My dad buried her ashes and the old coal mining lantern that her father had on his hat when he was crushed which she had kept on display all her life.

This mountain top next to his wife is where my dad wants to be buried. He has the names and numbers ready for me when it is my time to reconnect with the relatives. He said they would be real glad to meet me. He said I would have to walk the remaining mile or two up the mountain because there wasn't a safe road anymore. So I am reminded that my next trip will be to a remote mountaintop where I will walk a long way, a shovel for a walking stick, my last trip with my father.

WP didn't identify in which state that family cemetery is located, but I'm guessing West Virginia or Kentucky, based on her description. Coal mining and family cemeteries - gotta be somewhere in or around those two states.

WP's post was very powerful and brought back strong memories of my own.

My dad was born in Greenup County, Kentucky, which is not quite mining country, but darn close. Greenup County hugs the Ohio River just across and down a ways from Portsmouth, Ohio. It is a land of hollers (hollows) and steep mountainside farms. The regional author Jesse Stuart spent his life in Greenup County, the last few decades of it in a log cabin he bought from my great-aunt Nora Jane and had moved across W Hollow Road, on which they both lived, to his farm, which is now a state nature preserve. Although his reputation is now dim outside of Kentucky, Stuart captured well the look and feel of that land in his stories, poetry, and memoirs.

My dad's parents moved north to Ohio in 1936, fleeing the devastation the Great Depression wreaked on an already impoverished area. All the same, they kept strong, deep ties to those family members who stayed on in Greenup County. My childhood and youth were well-laced with trips back and forth between here and there.

We - my dad's family - have two family cemeteries up on hills in Greenup County. One is the Gullet cemetery, which is my dad's mother's family. My great-grandfather Gullet died of black lung when my dad was a little boy, but my great-grandmother lived to be almost 100 and was a fixture of my childhood. The other is the Nelson cemetery, which is my dad's father's side of the family.

It has been decades since I have attended a family funeral down home, but I remember it clearly. Dad's Uncle Bill had died and was to be buried in the Nelson cemetery. Some of the men in the family went up the day before to dig the grave; no backhoe could navigate the hilly terrain. The grave digging was hampered by it being March and the ground being still partially frozen, so midway through, some of them went down and came back up with dynamite to blow out the frozen soil and rocks.

After the funeral in Greenup, the hearse drove to the foot of the Nelson cemetery hill. The house at the bottom of the hill and the hill itself were owned by others than members of the family, but the gate to the path to the top was open. The pallbearers unloaded the coffin and then handed it off to the first of two or three teams of local men - those who lived up and down the holler - waiting in stages up the hillside. Dressed in hunting clothes and coveralls, they relayed the coffin to the top while the rest of us picked our way up the slick clay path.

Up on top, Cousin Athene pointed out another hill, a few hilltops over. "That there's the Gullet cemetery where your great-grandma will be buried someday."

When great-grandma Gullet died, I was out west in law school and lacked the funds to make it back to her funeral. I have yet to see the Gullet cemetery. I haven't been back to the Nelson cemetery since 1976. When my dad dies, he will be buried in a small cemetery here in Delaware County, next to the high school he attended but never graduated from. His parents are both there, as is the baby girl, Heather, that he and mom lost 55 years ago. Mom will either already be waiting for him or will join him later.

Dad is 77 this summer. Despite having had diabetes for almost a quarter of a century now, he is in very good health. He has already outlived his mother, a diabetic who ignored her disease until too late, and at some point will start closing in on his dad's mark. All the same, Dad knows that his time on this earth is growing finitely short. By all appearances, he is still going strong, but I am increasingly aware, and he is too, that he is starting to slow down physically.

It has weighed on my mind for some time now that before too much more time passes, Dad and I need to drive down to Kentucky and visit the family cemeteries while we can still explore them together. As I write these words, it occurs to me that this is a trip I should not put off much longer. The month of April was Jesse Stuart's favorite one, and he often wrote about the wild beauty of spring unleashed in his beloved hollers and hills. I'm thinking April might be a good month to head south.

WP's heartfelt post about her last trip with her father was a powerful and poignant reminder to me that I need to take a walk with my father, and soon, up two hillsides down in the hollers of Greenup County.

Doughboy

When I was growing up, there were two sepia photographs of soldiers in my grandmother's bookcase. One was a photograph of her husband, my grandfather. The other was a photograph of a wistful looking young man who was always referred to as "Uncle Art."

Uncle Art was my grandfather's younger brother. Both were in the army during World War I.

My grandfather was mustered out quickly as he was blind in one eye from a carpentry accident. Uncle Art, however, served from 1917 until 1918, when he was killed in France.

The family story was that Uncle Art "got his head blown off" in battle. He was buried in a small country cemetery a little ways outside of town here, next to his parents.

Growing up, that was about all I ever knew about Uncle Art. Neither of my grandparents ever mentioned him.

Even without his being mentioned, it always seemed to me that World War I had a profound impact on my grandmother. Although all four of her sons served in World War II, World War I seemed the more immediate and more personal war in the household. There were the photos of the young soldiers, of course. And in the living room was a framed copy of the quintessential poem of that war, McCrae's "In Flanders Field:"

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

My grandmother would often recite that poem, especially on November 11th. It was one of the earliest poems I committed to memory as a result. To the end of her days, she always referred to November 11 as "Armistice Day," and made sure the flag flew from sunrise to sundown. Sometimes she would intone "on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" in referring to the significance of the day.

In recent years, I did a little bit of research and discovered a little bit more about Uncle Art. He entered the Army in 1917, a member of Company K, 166th Infantry, which was a part of the 42nd Division, known as the Rainbow Division. In all likelihood Uncle Art trained at Camp Mills, located on Long Island.

After training, Uncle Art shipped to France. I don't know whether he came back to Delaware before shipping out or went straight on by troopship to Europe. He made the rank of corporal.

The 42nd Division saw a great deal of action during World War I. Its first engagement was the Champagne-Marne offensive, which was the last great thrust of the German Army. The Germans were unsuccessful, in large part due to the influx of American troops to bolster the French army.

2058 soldiers of the 42nd Division died in that battle, which only lasted three days. Uncle Art fell on July 15, 1918, the first day of the engagement. There was a small death announcement in the local newspaper.

Uncle Art was buried in France initially. His body did not come home until three years later, when a number of bodies of American soldiers were exhumed and returned by ship to the United States for reburial.

Uncle Art came home on the SS Cantigny. The Cantigny, a troopship that wasn't built until after the end of World War I, primarily saw duty repatriating the doughboys after the war ended. After transporting the ones who survived, the Cantigny apparently repatriated those who did not. Its active military use ended in September, 1921, which was the same month that Uncle Art returned. He may have been on the last military voyage of that ship.

Uncle Art was buried in a small country cemetery about two miles outside of town. Looking at the little cemetery, I cannot fathom why his father picked a cemetery that at time would have been a fair drive from town. It was not a "new" cemetery even then, and my grandparents had no affiliation with the little church that operated it.

I went out there two days ago to visit the graves. There is Uncle Art alongside his mother and father. My grandfather, who was his brother, and my grandmother are close by. It is a quiet, mossy cemetery, ankle deep in leaves in the fall.

The War to End All Wars ended 91 year ago today on the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month." Uncle Art came home three years later. Alice, my great-grandmother, died a year after that. I have wondered whether her son's homecoming was the strain that killed her or the relief that released her?

No one is left to answer that question. No one is left who knew my great-grandmother. No one is left who can tell what her reaction was when her doughboy came home from France at long last.

Decoration Day

Monday is Memorial Day and Warren and I, like many others around here, will observe it in part by visiting area cemeteries in which his and my family members are buried.

Memorial Day grew out of Decoration Day, a direct result of the Civil War. That war touched every town in every state east of the Mississippi River (and some beyond). Small wonder: almost 10% of the nation served in the respective armies of the North and South. Some 20% of the soldiers serving, 2% of the nation's population, died in that war. Decoration Day began officially in 1868 to commemorate the war dead, and it still officially honors all those who died in wartime in service to this country.

In this part of the country, central Ohio, many families still observe Memorial Day, although we tend to treat it as a family holiday rather than a military remembrance. It is a time to head to the cemeteries, clean the graves, talk about the family buried there, and put out bunches of flowers. Boy scouts and veterans groups will beat many of us there to make sure fresh flags are in the war markers of the veterans.(Local history being what it is, local markers go all the way back to the Revolutionary War.)

We will arrive bearing flowers and trowels and, in some cases, statuary or balloons for the graves. In some ways, Memorial Day is as close as we, mainstream white Ohioans that we are, come to observing Dia de los Muertos. We do not feast at the cemetery, but we celebrate our deceased family members by remembering them at this time of year.

Decorating the family graves is a tradition my mother, father, and I observe together and one in which Warren has joined. One of the cemeteries we will visit is a large, open cemetery a ways from town, where my sister and my dad's parents are buried, and where someday my parents will be too.

At that cemetery, my parents and I have lots of friends, both dead and alive. Although that cemetery dates back to the late 1800s, a large section of it has been opened and used since 1950. My parents bought a plot there in 1955, when they had to bury their baby daughter, and bought their own plots at the same time. My dad's parents bought the plots next to them.

Over the years you get to know who's there in a cemetery and who their family is. Nearby is John Link, a close friend of my dad's, who died of cancer in his early 20s. My friend Laurie's dad is buried in the next section over; Laurie and her mother have probably already been out there this weekend. Denny and Marlene Schultz, whose friendship with my parents started back in high school, are just around the corner. Denny died a number of years ago; Marlene just a month ago. There is a little feeling of Our Town in that cemetery sometimes and I wonder how Marlene, who had a wonderful, bubbling, giggling laugh, would do in the setting that Thornton Wilder imagined.

We visited this cemetery a lot as I was growing up; it was on the route to or from my grandparents' farm out on Hogback Road. Although I didn't realize it then, I can appreciate now how much my mother must have missed her baby, who had died suddenly at three months. While my parents took the time to clean the headstone or just stand silently, arms around each other, we kids would use the time as opportunities to explore the nearby graves. Visiting the cemetery was not a macabre experience but a natural part of the rhythm of my childhood.

One of my favorite grave markers of all time is in that cemetery. I must have read it a hundred times as a kid and still always stop and read it every time I am out there. I will read it Monday, in fact. It is the stone for Alfred Livingston, who died in 1911 at the age of 70. Alfred Livingston was a sergeant with Company D, 121st regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and his stone proudly notes that he fought at Chickamauga, marched with Sherman to the sea, and marched in the Grand Review of the Armies in D.C. at war's end. The 121st was organized in Delaware, so I suspect that he was a local farm boy who went away to war.

I have often wondered what stories Alfred must have had to tell when he returned at the war's end. I wonder whether he participated in any of the veterans reunions, and whose memories he marked every year on Decoration Day. I like that his marker notes what must have been the greatest adventure of his life.

This weekend, the cemeteries all around here are full of family members pulling weeds and planting flowers. Some of the small towns in the area will hold Memorial Day parades and observances in the local cemetery. All of those ceremonies will include a recitation of the Gettysburg Address, because that is what you do on Memorial Day around here.

Monday, Warren and I will visit his parents' grave and make sure the flags are in good order. They both served in World War II: Art in the Army and Ellen in the Red Cross. Later in the day, I will clip Ellen's peonies, which are in full bloom right now, and we will join my parents, with their own bunches of peonies, and decorate the family graves in other cemeteries.

Decoration Day has taken on some different meanings since its official start in 1868, but here we are, 141 years later, still carrying our flowers and our memories to the cemetery on Memorial Day, and still looking after our dead. I think Alfred Livingston would approve.