AN AMERICAN SCRAPBOOK by Robert Michael Morris
Copyright @ 2007 by Robert Michael Morris All rights reserved, except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Argüeso & Garzón Editores Bogotá - San Juan Visit our Web site at www.AGeditores.com First Edition: June 2007 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in Colombia ISBN- 978-958-44-1717-6 Design by eKon7 Design Studio www.ekon7.com Printed by LEGIS Información & Soluciones Bogotá – Colombia Sponsored by the INCARNATE WORDS FOUNDATION www.incarnatewordsfoundation org San Juan – Bogotá
AN AMERICAN SCRAPBOOK
by Robert Michael Morris
TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 Prologue 6 Maureen Haloran 8 Judson Smeltzer 10 Stanford Danforth 12 Annabelle Watkins 14 James Benjamine Grieme 16 Helen Krienburg 18 Aaron Krienburg 20 Wilson Young 22 Meg Whiskup Young 24 Samantha Peters 26 Bernice Stroup 28 John Allgood 30 Bishop Clarence Keough 32 Bogumil Dawison
34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60
Darnell Ficke Eleanor Waits Mrs. Anna Macgruder Peter Frecking Alan Frecking Wallace Ethan Shields Wilfred Bullock Aimee Bullock Netty Martin Lloyd Katherman Douglas O’brIen Martha Rush Jenny Tuppe Mrs. George Lemker
62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86 87
Oscar Siebert Barbara Jonathan Goodbody Davidson Arnold Dr. Nathaniel Brewster Tom And Bill Harrison Ester Moss And Greta Shoup Luttebelle Johnson Joseph Kraus Louisa Mae And Shelby Hoskins Walter Hausefeld Jude-Mary-Lewis Dankers Epilogue Robert Michael Morris
PROLOGUE Are you listening? Do you hear the voices of the past telling us what our history was like? Speaking with the gentle insistent urging of a parent or a lover? There in your hands, between your finger and thumb from the photographs forgotten. Listen with your eyes and heart as they bumped and jostled each other in Strondsburg. Small Pennsylvania town. Their names were all known one to the other, some more than others, but they were woven together hard as new silk into each other. They shared the same life the same air, water, sky, sun, hopes and dreams.
They shared the same town its homey and homespun shirts, ramshackle and rambling stores. All drew strength from the history they were forging for themselves. Making themselves part of a long narrative even as they sang the awful songs of commonplace which they unknowingly thought was the psalmody of their own lives. And in their sameness they found the key. In their uniqueness they found their common humanity. No man comes but once into life. No footprints are ever the same. Or trees, or animals or plants. For they are all born in history. As cities are born in history— everything leaves its own special mark on a never to come again moment of time called life. Are you listening? Are you hearing?
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AN AMERICAN SCRAPBOOK is an odyssey through an old photo album. It is set in Strondsburg, Pennsylvania in the late 1800’s. It attempts to follow the lives of Strondsburg’s people, giving an idea of why the photos were taken, what they meant, what was going on in the minds of those posing, and what significance they might have to relatives and friends. They cross refer and interconnect causing new insights and understandings.
DEDICATION This book is dedicated to my mother’s family the wonderful Rohan women: Margaret, Jeanne, Jayne, Annelle and Betty who taught me to talk, to sing, and to dream. And to my brothers: Donald Gene, John Lyn, Terry Paul and their families, who let me talk and sing and dream even when they didn’t know what I was saying.
MAUREEN HALORAN Her favorite color was wine; her mood hubris. Christened Maureen Haloran, she was known as Sis, being the only female in a house of men. Her eyes were her best feature she always thought, they were the only thing really feminine about her. She was ashamed of her hands, they were as large and boney as Frank’s or Jack’s or Leo’s; the same for her ears, set wide apart below a field of forehead.
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“Sis is a handsome woman” neighbors were heard to say never “delicate” or “feminine”... although she did have “a way about her”. Sis learned to brood early and made it as near to an art as possible. It wasn’t caused by an unrequited love God knows her mother, rest her soul, would have preferred it or an injury to a delicate ego. No. Sis was just a woman who decided early on she had no special thing to do in this world and settled back to await her ultimate disillusion.
Sis didn’t take to her house or her bed. She took to nothing, that was the whole problem. Strangers knew her as kindly, neighbors knew her as compassionate – the first one at the wake and the last to leave. She was a regular on Sundays and the first one to volunteer for the Thanksgiving and Christmas basket drive. But there was no joy. Not even when she smiled.
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Out of her deep, dark eyes a brooding look, her large hands helpless on a table coverlet or in her lap turned over and folded in, trying to make them look smaller, making instead two tanned paws against her dress. She went to S. B. Hoffmeier in the Jones Building only because her father said she must. He was going away for A year and wanted a picture of his Maureen to go with him stuck between Deuteronomy and the Song of Songs.
JUDSON SMELTZER Music was his life, that’s for sure. It was all he had, or, more precisely, all he cared to have. Judson Smeltzer had long fingers. Even as a baby, his mother smiled as they wrapped around hers; her Judson would make music. Dark rivers of melody played always around him, it seemed. His mama´s singing, strange foreign phrases as she moved around the kitchen, her long white apron covering her dress. His father playing gravely on the melodian. Yes, Judson would make music. Christmas time. Twelve years old. The miracle.
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A violin from Mother and Father. Lessons from Doctor Mr. Phifster. Alsacian, balding, bearded, patient. It came slowly for him at first so few strings to make so many lovely sounds. It didn’t seem possible. At first he couldn’t believe how entangled and knotted his fingers could become. He learned to swear under his breath. He learned to cry at nights— fighting the urge to beat his hands against the wall because they wouldn’t do what he wanted them to; to break his violin with one snap because it made music difficult. Ten years— twelve years and the swearing and bitter night battles ceased. Judson made the music he sought to make.
He looked one day into the mirror. There was no child now, but a man, generous of nose (but noble) sleek ready to begin life. Doctor Mr. Phifster was a vague but fond memory. Mother and Father at home, miles away. Judson played through clear and stormy nights through the overcast and dappled days Christmas eve of his 25th year he dressed in his good brown suit played his favourite piece turned the flames on the lamps out the gas up and lay down on his rented bed still hearing the dark rivers of music moving around him.
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ANNABELLE WATKINS Miss Annabelle Watkins ttook one Saturday afternoon to ((her nights were busy) (h to o visit W. H. Broad aand an n have her picture took. It wasn’t her idea at all. I. R. Sabin and a few of the other regulars o including iin n them that tr r travelled a lot ssaid they wanted to sa b be able to remember her when they couldn’t make it into town. w “Why not?”, she thought. “W So she did. S She wore her new bonnet S Sh brought in from St. Louis by a friend for b ffriendship’s fr r ffavors. fa a Belle liked the way it set B the tth h millinery roses and layers of grograin ribbon o made her hair shine a bit more m than tth h it normally did.
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And with it she’d have to wear the grey watered silk with the applique across the bodice. George´s jade pendant earrings and Chinese beads would finish it. It would be a nice memento to stick in a waistcoat pocket or hide somewheres where some nosy wife or curious fiancee couldn’t catch a glimpse of it. “Their business, not mine”. None of the women in the town spoke to Annabelle Watkins and few of the men— in public at least; in private they said plenty some were even known to weep. But Belle kept living until she died. And there were many pictures torn up that day.
Her will was read in the public square— a strange request the catty ones thought in keeping with her kind of person, but Notary Allgood said it was legal. Everyone showed up, of course. Annabelle left all her money to the Wayside Foundling Home (several of whose members were supplied by the girls that worked for Belle - she believed in life and wouldn’t let the babies be “interrupted”) . To the mayor, Tom Peters, she left one set of bed linen in memory of … And the banker, old Cyrus Franks, the bedspread he admired so much, And on and on she left her linens until each man in the town had received his bequest. Not a few eyebrows were raised when the pastor was left Belle´s well worn bible – though no one could admit it, their hearts turned cold at some hidden and vicious implication. Now all that is left are a few fading prints of smilingly-haunted Annabelle Watkins.
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WILFRED BULLOCK He was as punctual as dawn, carefully running the ticking of his existence with the churning of the Erie Lackawana. Wilfred dreamt of wearing a conductor’s cap round, hard shiny on the brim, the brass elipse of the Erie screwed into the invisible gommetted hole above the band. He knew he could swing a lantern better than anyone, and when he practiced his “All Aboard” it came from his knees. He started as a youngster, coveralls mostly, a coupler in the yard, worked his way up to a freight man. One evening, way into dusk, he threw his lantern carefully up to Tad Harris who was already on top.
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Nig Clark, further down the tracks and two nips into his flask already started telling everyone how Wilfred had flatfooted it right up to the top of the car without dropping his lantern. They all had a good laugh at Nig. Wilfred didn’t make conductor though. He was station master, mainly because he could read, write and had a natural gift for organization. He resented it. But Aimee, his common sense conscience of a wife, told him it was a lot easier for both of them, him being so close to home he could come home each night. That was one of the reasons Wilfred wished he could conduct.
Little by little he began to see though, that he was, at least prestigious and it gave him an air not a kind of dignity, but an exaggerated sense of importance. He practiced looking commanding while standing on the planked platform. Often times it simply looked as if he were smelling something foul. But it had the desired effect. People always began, “Pardon me!� And that, never with the conductors. It was as if he held all the power. Imperious. a Caesar of the crossroads.
Without Wilfred there would be no baggage moved on or off and Lady, get that child away from there, no signal from him close the heavy gold watch slowly and with confidence, to the flagman and the rush of steam, the bells, whistles grinding of metal on metal, the slaughter shrill of horses being fired into the furnace. It all ran over him when he saw Tim O’Brien hanging like some magic moment fused into the moving train...a conductor...magically moving away. Ascension Thursday all the time.
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OSCAR SIEBERT He was a gaunt man. Pared down to the bone more by nature than by any kind of personal discipline. Oscar Siebert lived in the basement of Llewllen Dramond’s home. He took his dinner in the kitchen and would sometimes talk to Neva the black cook, who had her own room on the other side of the pantry. Oscar sat hunched over his plate looking more like some skinny scavenger bird than a man. He had a hare lip, an affliction easily hidden by his ragged walrus moustache. But he could never speak plainly and his silent shame was often mistaken for a sullen distain.
In truth, he was a little slow. He hadn’t gone past the second grade because of the laughter when he tried to say three (it always came out twee). He hauled trash with his father, a grizzled widower who wanted Oscar in school to keep him out of his hair. By the time he was ten he was able to hold the reins and move the dray steadily ahead of his father who would pitch the trash on the back. Old man Siebert had a stroke sitting behind the reins and Oscar was left alone. There wasn’t any money and Oscar cried over the plain coffin as it was lowered into the charity plot of the Methodist cemetery.
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Mr. and Mrs. Drammond took him in. Oscar didn’t know what else to do so he continued to work the trash. Oscar knew a lot about the citizens of Stroundsburg. He was able to piece together a party or a fight by the residue he hauled away. Mrs. Drammond, childless, felt something more than sympathy for the wretched seventeen year old and tried to inculcate some “social amenities.” She cleaned his basement room and taught him how to make his bed. She sewed his clothes, even though Mr. Drammond argued that she was getting too attached. And the years passed with Oscar crying himself to sleep every night.
He didn’t seem to notice the children— following him home singing: “Nagh! Nagh! Nagh! Nagh!” His heart was so full. Later that night he sat alone on the back porch staring at the stars. From inside he heard the rising voices of an argument. He felt a sinking inside. And for no reason remembered lowering his father’s coffin into the charity plot of the Methodist cemetery. Wildly. He knew he had done something wrong.
He didn’t know why, he was sure it was because he was happy. He saved his money until he had twenty dollars. He took five, bought himself a poorly fitting black suit with satin piping, a silk tie and a white shirt you had to button up the frontwith the collar attached; slicked back his hair and had a photo made for Mrs. Drammond. He also bought a box of chocolates, a pipe for the mister, and a red satin shawl for Neva. For once Oscar didn’t mind the snickers or the stares he received from the sales people.
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JUDEMARYLEWIS DANKERS Jude and Mary Dankers bound their lives in with security and routine. Jude believed in order, a right living, and a reward the other side of the veil. Mary, a simple woman, did not bother ever to formulate any special philosophy or way of life. She believed in Jude. Their marriage, though unexciting, was (it seemed) solid. They made love regularly – upon agreement– with the lights off. That is, until he turned forty. He said twenty years should be enough for anyone. This arrangement had resulted in several pregnancies: four stillborn daughters, a son, who didn’t survive a breech delivery, and Lewis, who came scattered somewhere amid the other acceptable calamities. Mary did not take pregnancies well.
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They would draw her. She would lose weight in her face – making her eyes more cavernous than they were; then the bulbous breasts and that heavy, life stirring mound in front of her. Even after the second or third miscarriage— it became so easy to lose count – she insisted on following her daily routine and would not take to her bed. She aged rapidly. Lewis, the sole survivor of the original ordeal, was as spoiled as was possible. He was, in fact, too indulged. He knew better, as he grew, not to throw any temper fits or bank on boyish petulance or pranks. Jude had little tolerance and no sense of humor.
Consequently Lewis learned early that a neat room, a polite “Sir” or “Mam” could get him much further than a snit. He was an ugly youth. He played the game well. Jude was a deacon at Calvary Baptist serving as Porter and Bell Ringer. He loved his Bible and when his fingers put it down it was akin to an amputation. He loved Leviticus, adored Deuteronomy, and memorized the first six books of the Pentateuch. Meanwhile, Lewis, who had excused himself somewhere in the Book of Kings, was out plowing any girl he could find. Mary content to sit, listen to Jude read from the Holy Book, crochet, and let her mind wander back to the time before Jude. The carefree childhood years before her parents had arranged the match. The laughter. She missed the laughter most. She looked at him reading away, lost in the deep rivers of faith.
Just her eyes glancing up and down – the needle never changing tempo. He was never a handsome man. No. He had never excited her. No. Now he was doughy....even ashen. No. How frightened she had been that first night. Only eighteen. Virgin. Not knowing really what to expect. Having the whole thing explained to her in terms of duties, and rights by her mother. The cautious undressing. Slipping tentatively onto her side of the bed. Seeing Jude for the first time. Such an ugly thing. Watching it swell. Gripping the sheet under her with both hands. The pain. A white hot pain that shot through her, bringing her knees up, blurring into red. Her eyes closed tightly. Why was he moving the pain so steadily? And afterwards the weeping and the lies all tied up with duties and rights. She was glad when Jude said enough was enough.
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Mary put down the doily work and walked to the back yard. The tall poplars were silver and green jade fluttering in the night air. fluttering ancient fans. They were Mary’s one simple passion— those poplar trees. Jude began to call for his evening tea. Lewis came in just as the water became too cold. Mary reheated it without request. Lewis smiled politely and lied about where he had been. Mary was not even listening. She got as much from Lewis as she did from Jude. She never really labelled it, but Lewis was a dead issue too. They sat silently drinking their tea. Mother. Father. Son. Each one escaping Strondsburg in their own way. Each one running…running down alleyways of poplars or scriptures or sex.
EPILOGUE These were all lives that were lived, some better, some worse some just apparently just passed— idled away— lost. But nothing is ever lost. Lives cannot just be somewhere. There are always connections with someone else. Everyone has a mother. Each man has a father. That’s just the way it is. And each birth, each new baby-life changes the world forever. And everyone in it. Oh, it’s easy to overlook-there’s millions and millions of new lives every day.
Change is such a constant thing it’s barely even noticed anymore. And then, every day, each sunrise each sunset each breath we take roots us more firmly connects us so inexorably to the world that should we last but a few eternal moments, our passing creates a void behind us. And our hidden secret sins our private joys our numberless human follies collect like sands upon the beach. We can string them out in eternity, they tell us, so all can see.
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We’ll have to wait for that! But I do know what love does. I do know what emptiness feels like. I can speak with understanding and compassion about how unordinary very life is. How special. How unique. How wonderful. It’s all there in what is left behind. All we have to do is learn to listen. We can hear the living that went on.
ROBERT MICHAEL MORRIS to his fifth grade teacher. Sister Catherine David returned it to him covered in red ink with the only comment that he had misspelled angel all the way through it. He didn’t write again for a long time.
When he was in the fifth grade, Michael wrote his first short story. He called it Two Little Angels. It was inspired by the constantly adoring plaster angels on either side of the tabernacle at his church. Filled with wonder and awe that those words could come out of him, he showed it with pride
Words – language - was always a part of his life. His mother’s family is Irish and entertained each other with stories and gossip and the lilt and cadence of wonderful words. Two of his aunts were band singers, and there was always the wonderful melodies and words of the Gershwins swirling around him.
An American Scrapbook was inspired by an antique album picked up at a roadside flea market in Virginia. Loaded with the faces in this book, the book began to vibrate in his imagination; the long dead people wanted their stories to be told, much like the great Edgar Lee Masters did in his Spoon River Anthology. The poems grew from the minds of the photographs: what were they thinking, what were they wearing, why were they getting a photo taken? These questions resulted in this book. Little by little the stories began to interconnect and create the life of a small town.
Poetry comes easily to his lips because it came easily into his life. He is, by education, a playwright, and playwrights used to be considered poets of the human condition. When he writes, he writes dramatically, with an emphasis on the visual, the tactile, but always the human.
Through it all, Michael was and still is amazed at how words have the power to move, to touch emotions, to create something out of nothing. It is as if the words rule him, make him something more than he thinks he is or ever could be. And, they have, in spite of Sister Catherine David, made him a writer.
Argüeso & Garzon is the publishing arm of the Incarnate Words Foundation, a nonprofit organization created to facilitate literary and philanthropic legacies. Robert Michael Morris’ writings are certainly his literary legacy, but only as coded symbols of the powerful words he has incarnated with his very life. Luis R. Gonzalez-Argüeso September 1, 2007