This story came to me from my friend Tom Peterson.
His uncle Roger was a farmer in far western upstate New York. He'd lived there all his life and like most farmers, he knew everybody in the area. He knew everything that grew in the fields and the woods... well, mostly.
He was also a teller of tales. It's anybody's guess how many were true. I do know that he was a genuine character. He was in his late seventies, and had been married to a lovely lady for fifty years. When Tom took me to Uncle Roger's home and introduced us, he was sitting in a chair in his undershirt, with a TV tray of pills in front of him. He acknowledged me by pointing to the pill bottles and saying,
"This one is for my heart, and this one is for my blood pressure, and this one is for my liver, and this one is for my uterus..."
I laughed out loud, and then wondered if I had been out of line. Uncle Roger reached down beside his chair and pulled up a bottle. "Want some whiskey?"
As his very nice wife passed by his chair on the way to the kitchen, he reached out and patted her bottom. "This is my girlfriend," he said. She gave a helpless little smile and shook her head and kept walking.
He told Tom the story that one day he was out in the woods and found a mess of mushrooms. He picked them. He was pretty sure they were good to eat.
On the way home, he began to have nagging little doubts. What if he wasn't sure because he really shouldn't be sure? And how could he know if they were safe... or if they'd kill him?
As the story goes, he went back to the house and divided the mushrooms into two brown paper bags.
One he put in his own refrigerator.
The other, he gave to a neighbor.
And as the story goes, he read the newspaper every day for the next week to see if his neighbor's name appeared in the obituaries. When it didn't, he fried up his own bagful, and ate them himself. They tasted great. He ate them all.
A week or so later, he ran into his neighbor. Uncle Roger said, "Pretty good mushrooms I gave you, huh?"
The neighbor said,
"I don't know. I had them around for so long and hadn't done anything with them, so I threw the whole bag away."
© J M-K 2010
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Jan's Egg Story
Our first house was a very hungry old farmhouse out in the country in southwestern Washington. It was surrounded on three sides by woods and wild blackberries. The house teetered on the edge of a ravine; there was a path, often rain-slick, that led down to the chicken house, which was there when we bought the property.
A few months after we moved there, a bad windstorm left a friend’s chickens without shelter. He had no interest in rebuilding his chicken coop, so he telephoned us to offer them to us. We went over to his place to help him catch them. And so we acquired our first chickens, a few hens and two roosters. We ordered 18 day-old chicks from the local feed store a few months later, and soon had a productive little flock, with beautiful great-tasting brown eggs to use or give away or occasionally to sell. The chicken house was built with a chicken wire enclosed "veranda" and a roofed house. It was pretty ideal for that climate as the chickens had access to shelter and also sunlight (and insects!).
My routine was to take kitchen scraps down every day in a stainless steel bowl, and give them chicken feed and water. Then I would bring the eggs I collected back to the house in the same bowl.
A couple of days of pouring rain had kept me from going down the hill, and I was ready for work (I worked in an office, and was dressed: skirt, jacket, dress shoes) when I remembered the chickens.
I picked my way gingerly down the hill, only to find that the chickens had outdone themselves. I couldn't fit all the eggs in my bowl, and so I stacked them carefully atop the bowl, leaning back a bit to keep them balanced. As I was leaving, I discovered a few more, tucked them in my skirt pockets, and rearranged my load. I ended up carrying a few eggs in my free hand.
I made my way very slowly back up the slippery hill with my treasures. I found the back door locked, so went all the way around to the front door. I moved in slow motion. Carefully, I opened the screen door, my load teetering. Propping the screen open with my shoulder, I used a couple of fingers to turn the doorknob on the inside door and push it open. I stepped up and inside, and...
I closed the inside door with my hip.
I heard the little "crunch" in my skirt pocket.
© J M-K 2010
A few months after we moved there, a bad windstorm left a friend’s chickens without shelter. He had no interest in rebuilding his chicken coop, so he telephoned us to offer them to us. We went over to his place to help him catch them. And so we acquired our first chickens, a few hens and two roosters. We ordered 18 day-old chicks from the local feed store a few months later, and soon had a productive little flock, with beautiful great-tasting brown eggs to use or give away or occasionally to sell. The chicken house was built with a chicken wire enclosed "veranda" and a roofed house. It was pretty ideal for that climate as the chickens had access to shelter and also sunlight (and insects!).
My routine was to take kitchen scraps down every day in a stainless steel bowl, and give them chicken feed and water. Then I would bring the eggs I collected back to the house in the same bowl.
A couple of days of pouring rain had kept me from going down the hill, and I was ready for work (I worked in an office, and was dressed: skirt, jacket, dress shoes) when I remembered the chickens.
I picked my way gingerly down the hill, only to find that the chickens had outdone themselves. I couldn't fit all the eggs in my bowl, and so I stacked them carefully atop the bowl, leaning back a bit to keep them balanced. As I was leaving, I discovered a few more, tucked them in my skirt pockets, and rearranged my load. I ended up carrying a few eggs in my free hand.
I made my way very slowly back up the slippery hill with my treasures. I found the back door locked, so went all the way around to the front door. I moved in slow motion. Carefully, I opened the screen door, my load teetering. Propping the screen open with my shoulder, I used a couple of fingers to turn the doorknob on the inside door and push it open. I stepped up and inside, and...
I closed the inside door with my hip.
I heard the little "crunch" in my skirt pocket.
© J M-K 2010
Piano Lessons
When I was a very small girl, my parents acquired an old upright piano. It sat in the living room, in the corner of the room with the most windows. Shafts of sunlight, dancing with dust motes, shone upon it. I got to know the ivory and black keys—admired their beauty, and listened to the differences in sound that each key created. I played with the pedals. It was wonderful fun to sit on the edge of the bench, stretch down with my toes to the pedals, and to make sonorous noises with the lower octaves.
My job was to keep the piano clean. Never since then have I had a cleaning job I loved.
Mom asked me if I would like to take piano lessons, and, happily, I said “Yes!” I must have been five at the time.
She arranged for a piano teacher for me and my brother, who was two years older.
Mrs. Spangler was ancient, tiny and bent, with veins like blue snakes on the backs of her hands, and a million wrinkles. But it didn’t take me long to figure out that she loved two things: children, and teaching them to play the piano.
She gave me pretty songs to learn. My favorite was “Estrellita” by M. Ponce. How excited I was to see that those funny- looking markings meant something, and that they were written by a person whose name was right at the top, under the song’s name.
I learned to read music pretty easily, just as easily as I was learning to read language. Coordinating my right and left hands took a bit of trial and error, but soon I could do it without much effort.
What I didn’t do terribly well was counting—once I learned how a song was supposed to sound, I could mimic the style and sound of it. And didn’t bother counting. I probably had what amounted to a bit of showmanship. I loved the sound of the piano, and was oblivious to the need for the technical stuff. And I don’t think Mrs. Spangler cared, or at least she felt it was more important to be in love with music first, and then work on the less thrilling parts.
We worked well together for at least a couple of years. Song after pretty song. My little stack of music books and sheet music was growing thicker. Practicing was something I loved, because it let me do beautiful things. I even made up some of my own tunes and tried to figure out notes to play with my left hand. And I could almost always avoid chores, because Mom could see that I was doing something constructive.
Then, one day Mother told me that Mrs. Spangler wouldn’t be teaching me any more. She lived with her sister, and the city of Akron had bought their house to make room for the new expressway (I had no idea what that meant, only that I was losing her). Mrs. Spangler had to move to western Ohio to live with another sister. But—Mom assured me—she would find me another piano teacher right away.
And she did. Mom told me her name was Mrs. Paul, and she would be coming on the bus. I was out on the front porch long before her bus was due. It was during the leafiest part of summer, and our neighborhood was lush with shade, dappled with sunlight peeking through the leaves and the spaces between the trees. We were right between bus stops, so I could watch in both directions. The old trolley lines were recently out of use, but the bus lines kept the same routes. The overhead lines still vibrated when the heavy bus came near.
I stooped down to see the bus approaching; I saw it slow to a stop; I saw the door open; and I saw a person step down onto the concrete at the corner. Unobserved, I could watch her make her way toward the house.
Several things struck me at once: she was out of breath, she had a frizzy cloud of brilliant red hair, she was tottering along on high heels, she carried a big leather satchel, and her fleshy body seemed to be trying to escape her sleeveless black dress. Once she got closer, I could see the runs in her stockings, the sweat glistening on her forehead and upper lip. She was wearing very colorful makeup. A lot of it. Even though I loved makeup (what little girl doesn't?), and used my mom's lavishly until she made me take it off, I knew from half a block away that Mrs. Paul was wearing too much.. And I could smell her perfume, which was so strong it wasn’t pretty. Maybe it was never pretty.
I suppose she introduced herself, but I don’t remember that. I’m sure she said hello to my mother, but I don’t remember that either.
What I remember is that she wriggled her bottom into place next to me on the piano bench, asked me to show her my music. With love and pride, I showed her my stack of pretty songs. She said, “That will never do!” And with one gesture she scooped up all of my music, dropped it into her satchel, and brought out a sickly yellow book. It was all scales and exercises. No songs at all. My heart was a leaden weight that dropped to the bottom of my belly, and left an aching hole where it used to be.
Mrs. Paul counted. “A-one and two and…” Her voice had a broad and harsh quality: Donald Duck, in a too- tight dress and garish makeup. I came to dread that sound.
I was distracted for a moment when she reached to turn the pages of the music book: she revealed an enormous tuft of bright red hair under her arms. I was fascinated. I had never seen underarm hair like that before, so she seemed even more like some bizarre creature who came to my house to take my beautiful music away.
She gave me only scales and exercises: no songs. Lessons were unhappy hours. Practice was drudgery. My mother made it clear that she was giving me piano lessons because I had asked for them, so I couldn’t cry. Instead, I discovered the delaying power of hiccups. I had them often.
Eventually my mother said, “Since you’re not willing to practice like you should, I’m going to stop paying for your lessons.” She was exasperated, and meant to punish me. How could I tell her how relieved I was?
Even without lessons, I still played. When I reached adolescence, I bought sheet music of pop songs. I mastered some rather complicated ones. I had musical friends, and borrowed their music books. I learned some Haydn, some Bach, some Handel. As always, once I heard them played correctly and puzzled through the notes, I could play these pieces with flair if not metric accuracy. I took voice lessons in high school and used the piano to accompany myself—usually one-handed, but sometimes more than that.
When I went off to college, Mother gave my piano away. “To the church,” she announced. “You’re not using it, and I thought they needed it more than you did.”
Of course, it wasn’t that I wasn’t going to use it. I just couldn’t play it while I was away at school. (I did play the piano in my dormitory’s lounge, and sometimes drew a small crowd of observers).
Once I became a mom, I invited a piano into my home. My toddlers banged around on it, and both discovered that they could pick out tunes.
They did not take piano lessons. Our son wanted to learn drums, so he took lessons for awhile. Then guitar lessons for awhile. Our daughter taught herself some piano, and was technically far better than I ever was. Her loves were violin, which she played brilliantly, and then singing, with a voice both crystalline and rich. She took violin lessons from the fourth grade on. She took voice lessons from the time she was fourteen. And I heard her learning and rehearsing the gorgeous songs she chose for performances. Many times I stopped what I was doing and listened—sometimes I cried, because her violin pieces were breathtaking, her songs were beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking. I learned that I must not walk into the room, because she would stop immediately.
When she began college, she majored in music. She discovered musical theater and was in local productions and in the national tour of a major musical. I’ve had the enormous joy of seeing her and hearing her onstage and on recordings and on video.
We’re on our third piano, and when she has her own home, this piano—which really was given to her—will move out with her.
What will I do then? Although I stopped playing years ago, I can’t imagine life without a piano. But I can imagine a living room that doesn’t have to be arranged to accommodate this huge piece of furniture. There are no good substitutes for a real piano. Yes, I’ve had keyboards, and they are fine… but there are no pedals to strain for, there isn’t the bench filled with sheet music, there isn’t the friendly solidity of even the humblest of pianos.
I may do without for awhile… but I will always have a hunger: for the silky touch of the keys, the memories of pretty sounds and happy times. These are always nestled into the wood and felt and metal of an actual, real live piano.
©2010 J M-K
My job was to keep the piano clean. Never since then have I had a cleaning job I loved.
Mom asked me if I would like to take piano lessons, and, happily, I said “Yes!” I must have been five at the time.
She arranged for a piano teacher for me and my brother, who was two years older.
Mrs. Spangler was ancient, tiny and bent, with veins like blue snakes on the backs of her hands, and a million wrinkles. But it didn’t take me long to figure out that she loved two things: children, and teaching them to play the piano.
She gave me pretty songs to learn. My favorite was “Estrellita” by M. Ponce. How excited I was to see that those funny- looking markings meant something, and that they were written by a person whose name was right at the top, under the song’s name.
I learned to read music pretty easily, just as easily as I was learning to read language. Coordinating my right and left hands took a bit of trial and error, but soon I could do it without much effort.
What I didn’t do terribly well was counting—once I learned how a song was supposed to sound, I could mimic the style and sound of it. And didn’t bother counting. I probably had what amounted to a bit of showmanship. I loved the sound of the piano, and was oblivious to the need for the technical stuff. And I don’t think Mrs. Spangler cared, or at least she felt it was more important to be in love with music first, and then work on the less thrilling parts.
We worked well together for at least a couple of years. Song after pretty song. My little stack of music books and sheet music was growing thicker. Practicing was something I loved, because it let me do beautiful things. I even made up some of my own tunes and tried to figure out notes to play with my left hand. And I could almost always avoid chores, because Mom could see that I was doing something constructive.
Then, one day Mother told me that Mrs. Spangler wouldn’t be teaching me any more. She lived with her sister, and the city of Akron had bought their house to make room for the new expressway (I had no idea what that meant, only that I was losing her). Mrs. Spangler had to move to western Ohio to live with another sister. But—Mom assured me—she would find me another piano teacher right away.
And she did. Mom told me her name was Mrs. Paul, and she would be coming on the bus. I was out on the front porch long before her bus was due. It was during the leafiest part of summer, and our neighborhood was lush with shade, dappled with sunlight peeking through the leaves and the spaces between the trees. We were right between bus stops, so I could watch in both directions. The old trolley lines were recently out of use, but the bus lines kept the same routes. The overhead lines still vibrated when the heavy bus came near.
I stooped down to see the bus approaching; I saw it slow to a stop; I saw the door open; and I saw a person step down onto the concrete at the corner. Unobserved, I could watch her make her way toward the house.
Several things struck me at once: she was out of breath, she had a frizzy cloud of brilliant red hair, she was tottering along on high heels, she carried a big leather satchel, and her fleshy body seemed to be trying to escape her sleeveless black dress. Once she got closer, I could see the runs in her stockings, the sweat glistening on her forehead and upper lip. She was wearing very colorful makeup. A lot of it. Even though I loved makeup (what little girl doesn't?), and used my mom's lavishly until she made me take it off, I knew from half a block away that Mrs. Paul was wearing too much.. And I could smell her perfume, which was so strong it wasn’t pretty. Maybe it was never pretty.
I suppose she introduced herself, but I don’t remember that. I’m sure she said hello to my mother, but I don’t remember that either.
What I remember is that she wriggled her bottom into place next to me on the piano bench, asked me to show her my music. With love and pride, I showed her my stack of pretty songs. She said, “That will never do!” And with one gesture she scooped up all of my music, dropped it into her satchel, and brought out a sickly yellow book. It was all scales and exercises. No songs at all. My heart was a leaden weight that dropped to the bottom of my belly, and left an aching hole where it used to be.
Mrs. Paul counted. “A-one and two and…” Her voice had a broad and harsh quality: Donald Duck, in a too- tight dress and garish makeup. I came to dread that sound.
I was distracted for a moment when she reached to turn the pages of the music book: she revealed an enormous tuft of bright red hair under her arms. I was fascinated. I had never seen underarm hair like that before, so she seemed even more like some bizarre creature who came to my house to take my beautiful music away.
She gave me only scales and exercises: no songs. Lessons were unhappy hours. Practice was drudgery. My mother made it clear that she was giving me piano lessons because I had asked for them, so I couldn’t cry. Instead, I discovered the delaying power of hiccups. I had them often.
Eventually my mother said, “Since you’re not willing to practice like you should, I’m going to stop paying for your lessons.” She was exasperated, and meant to punish me. How could I tell her how relieved I was?
Even without lessons, I still played. When I reached adolescence, I bought sheet music of pop songs. I mastered some rather complicated ones. I had musical friends, and borrowed their music books. I learned some Haydn, some Bach, some Handel. As always, once I heard them played correctly and puzzled through the notes, I could play these pieces with flair if not metric accuracy. I took voice lessons in high school and used the piano to accompany myself—usually one-handed, but sometimes more than that.
When I went off to college, Mother gave my piano away. “To the church,” she announced. “You’re not using it, and I thought they needed it more than you did.”
Of course, it wasn’t that I wasn’t going to use it. I just couldn’t play it while I was away at school. (I did play the piano in my dormitory’s lounge, and sometimes drew a small crowd of observers).
Once I became a mom, I invited a piano into my home. My toddlers banged around on it, and both discovered that they could pick out tunes.
They did not take piano lessons. Our son wanted to learn drums, so he took lessons for awhile. Then guitar lessons for awhile. Our daughter taught herself some piano, and was technically far better than I ever was. Her loves were violin, which she played brilliantly, and then singing, with a voice both crystalline and rich. She took violin lessons from the fourth grade on. She took voice lessons from the time she was fourteen. And I heard her learning and rehearsing the gorgeous songs she chose for performances. Many times I stopped what I was doing and listened—sometimes I cried, because her violin pieces were breathtaking, her songs were beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking. I learned that I must not walk into the room, because she would stop immediately.
When she began college, she majored in music. She discovered musical theater and was in local productions and in the national tour of a major musical. I’ve had the enormous joy of seeing her and hearing her onstage and on recordings and on video.
We’re on our third piano, and when she has her own home, this piano—which really was given to her—will move out with her.
What will I do then? Although I stopped playing years ago, I can’t imagine life without a piano. But I can imagine a living room that doesn’t have to be arranged to accommodate this huge piece of furniture. There are no good substitutes for a real piano. Yes, I’ve had keyboards, and they are fine… but there are no pedals to strain for, there isn’t the bench filled with sheet music, there isn’t the friendly solidity of even the humblest of pianos.
I may do without for awhile… but I will always have a hunger: for the silky touch of the keys, the memories of pretty sounds and happy times. These are always nestled into the wood and felt and metal of an actual, real live piano.
©2010 J M-K
The Mail-Order Rhea
This story came to me years ago from my friend Nick, a lovely man who lived in a magical compound with many kinds of animals. He was near the ocean, south of San Francisco. His large walled yard was a short walk to the beach. I remember him walking at the water's edge under a summer sky with his resident goat. He had built an aviary for his many birds, including a very vocal scarlet macaw. Cats, dogs, ducks, and chickens roamed the place, many of them rescued in one way or another. A glorious cacophony of animal voices.
He'd be the last person to compare himself to St. Francis, but I could see the resemblance.
Nick’s partner worked for a pet store and learned of a well-meaning but very low- functioning woman who had acquired a rhea, a South American ostrich relative. The bird was confined to a tiny back porch. As Nick described it, with his beautiful, lilting Kentucky accent, “The poor soul had answered a magazine ad and spent her entire SSI check to buy a rhea egg.”
A rhea can grow to five feet in height and fifty pounds. An animal too large and too wild to keep cruelly constricted in a very small space.
Miraculously, she had been able to keep it warm enough to hatch and had fed the chick bags of dog food. When Nick and his partner went to see her, the rhea had become a huge bird which was imprisoned in a space about five feet square, and could not stand on her own legs. They persuaded the woman to let them take Miss Rhea and care for her.
On their way home (I picture the two of them in the front seat of their car, with the rhea in the back seat), they discussed how to make her healthy.
Their solution was elegant: they ran a long clothesline between two posts. From this, they suspended a sling attached to a pulley, which supported the rhea’s body but kept her feet barely off the ground. She was forced to reach down with her legs to take the weight off her belly. As she was able to touch the ground, they raised the sling so that she had to reach further. Her legs became stronger, soon strong enough to support her. She discovered that she could move, and in a short time, she was able to run back and forth along the length of the clothesline. As Nick described it, “She would turn her head like a ballerina, and her body would follow in that direction.” Gracefully, she ran back and forth, loving her new strong legs!
I don’t know the end of the story. Knowing Nick’s thoughtful character, I suppose they found a home for her on a nature preserve, or in the care of someone who had huge acreage up in the hills. I am simply entranced by the vision of this magnificent animal learning to escape the confines of a stunted body and becoming the huge, graceful bird that she was meant to be. I picture her running free under the California sky, without a single memory of her incarceration.
© Janice Mastin-Kamps 2010
© Janice Mastin-Kamps 2010
Miss Emma
Miss Emma
My friend Richard Edwards, a Black man who grew up in southern Ohio, told me this story.
In his little town, everybody knew everybody else. In this town lived two people who form the heart of this story: a young boy with a very cruel streak, and Miss Emma, a maiden lady of great age.
The boy was mean. He delighted in kicking in people’s garden fences, pulling flowering plants from their gardens, laughing as he ran away. He tripped other children, twisted their arms when no grownups were looking. He took their toys and broke them. People were pretty sure that he hurt animals as well. His parents couldn’t do anything about his behavior, and people pretty much agreed that they tried their best. He was mean. Just plain mean.
Miss Emma was one of those elderly ladies who always found good things to say about everybody. She undoubtedly was brought up with the admonition, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”
One day there was a terrible accident, and the boy died. I don’t know what it was, perhaps he fell from a tree, perhaps he was in the middle of some misdeed and wasn’t paying attention to his footing. Richard never told me how he died, just that it was an accident. His parents, of course, were sad, and the townspeople were sad for them, but folks were not as sad for the boy as they thought they should be.
There was a funeral in the town church, of course, and like every funeral in that town, the casket stood at the front of the church. All the townspeople lined up to walk past the casket and to look down at the boy’s body, laid out nicely inside. Everybody waited to hear what Miss Emma had to say when it was her turn to stand by the casket—because none of them could muster a kind word about him, and they knew that she, of all of them, would try her best.
The line moved slowly, and finally it was her turn. Everybody waited. Miss Emma, wearing her best dress and a little hat with a veil, holding her pocketbook with both hands in front of her, looked in at the boy, and nodded. She pressed her lips together and nodded again. And again.
Finally she turned away and began to walk forward. She said,
“He shore could whistle good.”
© Janice Mastin-Kamps 2010
My friend Richard Edwards, a Black man who grew up in southern Ohio, told me this story.
In his little town, everybody knew everybody else. In this town lived two people who form the heart of this story: a young boy with a very cruel streak, and Miss Emma, a maiden lady of great age.
The boy was mean. He delighted in kicking in people’s garden fences, pulling flowering plants from their gardens, laughing as he ran away. He tripped other children, twisted their arms when no grownups were looking. He took their toys and broke them. People were pretty sure that he hurt animals as well. His parents couldn’t do anything about his behavior, and people pretty much agreed that they tried their best. He was mean. Just plain mean.
Miss Emma was one of those elderly ladies who always found good things to say about everybody. She undoubtedly was brought up with the admonition, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”
One day there was a terrible accident, and the boy died. I don’t know what it was, perhaps he fell from a tree, perhaps he was in the middle of some misdeed and wasn’t paying attention to his footing. Richard never told me how he died, just that it was an accident. His parents, of course, were sad, and the townspeople were sad for them, but folks were not as sad for the boy as they thought they should be.
There was a funeral in the town church, of course, and like every funeral in that town, the casket stood at the front of the church. All the townspeople lined up to walk past the casket and to look down at the boy’s body, laid out nicely inside. Everybody waited to hear what Miss Emma had to say when it was her turn to stand by the casket—because none of them could muster a kind word about him, and they knew that she, of all of them, would try her best.
The line moved slowly, and finally it was her turn. Everybody waited. Miss Emma, wearing her best dress and a little hat with a veil, holding her pocketbook with both hands in front of her, looked in at the boy, and nodded. She pressed her lips together and nodded again. And again.
Finally she turned away and began to walk forward. She said,
“He shore could whistle good.”
© Janice Mastin-Kamps 2010
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