I walk through Clark Furniture in Wysox, on a mission to find a recliner, but am sidetracked by shiny new dining room tables. Their highly polished surfaces enhance the distinctive and rich wood grains of oak, maple, hickory, and walnut. For a moment, I’m tempted, but instead return to my recliner search and spend the rest of my time there thinking back to our old kitchen table on the Sugar Hill farm when I was a kid
My Grandfather Lewis Potter’s friend, his identity long lost, handcrafted the kitchen table in the 1920s. Made mainly of oak, with a bit of maple too, it stood solid for 40-some years, hosting daily family meals, holiday dinners, birthday cakes, hungry silo-fillers, homework papers, pancake and deer steak suppers, sewing projects, and my father’s pink Motorola radio whenever his beloved Phillies played night games.
In the mid ‘60s, my father purchased a newfangled Formica-topped model and banished the old table to storage in the granary. It shared the granary with mice and squirrel families for several years until Gary and I rescued it in 1978. We sent it out to be stripped and refinished, but despite the refurbishing, it still carries the scars from the past – a couple of black rings from long-ago too-hot pots, dark bloodstains from multiple November deer processing sessions, an unidentifiable red splotch probably from a school art project, and other imperfections accumulated over six generations of living.
Today, after spending years with Gary and me, our kids, and now grandkids in Powell, North Towanda, and Lime Hill, the old table finds itself at home again on the Sugar Hill farm in our new house overlooking the granary. A tablecloth usually covers the evidence of its long hard history of service, but I smile each time I see the battered surface. As it enters its second century, I’m hopeful that someday one of our sons or a grandchild will continue to add new family memories and think of those who gathered round it for the first hundred years.
When I passed the little white Methodist Church in downtown Hollenback yesterday, I began to think back on Vacation Bible School in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. My brother and our friends gathered there each summer to read short stories of Jonah’s whale, Daniel’s lion, David’s slingshot, and Mary’s Miracle. We worked on art projects and took a snack break each day – my favorite was Oreo cookies dunked in grape Kool-Aid. And, we sang church-appropriate songs like “Jesus Loves Me” and “Jesus Loves the Little Children.”
As I drove, another song we sang came to mind, one we learned from Mrs. Stone that seems a bit unusual for such a setting. I sang it out loud as I drove past the old Wilmot grange building:
In a cabin in the woods At the door an old man stood Saw a rabbit passing by Knocking at the door Help me! Help me! Help me, he said Or that hunter will shoot me dead Little rabbit come inside Safely to abide
As soon as that last word was sung, I shouted, “BAM!” just as that roomful of kids did so many years ago. I smiled at the memory of us sending that poor rabbit straight to the supper table as pan-fried rabbit next to boiled potatoes, baked beans, and homemade applesauce! We were the young sons and daughters of hunters, most with at least one shotgun propped up in a corner of the kitchen or living room, just in case …
Back home from Dushore, the song kept ringing through my head, so I Googled the first couple of lines and was pleased to find at least five cartoon videos. I watched the first one and listened as the rabbit cried, “Help me!” and was surprised and a bit irritated to hear him then say, “for it’s cold and I might freeze.” The video showed a hunter with a gun, but the words had been changed. The second video was even more troubling. The line in the song was changed to “Fore the farmer bops my head.” The cartoon figure was a wild-haired farmer with menacing eyes carrying a 2X4, apparently appropriate for bopping bunnies on the head.
I grumbled about it for a couple of minutes to Gary, imagining myself with a 2X4 going after whoever felt the need to mess with my childhood memories. If it hadn’t been so late I’d have gone to town for some Oreos and grape Kool-Aid. At least some things haven’t changed.
I owe thanks to the Soviet Union for my introduction to Mr. Burke. In October 1957, they launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite into outer space. Sputnik sent out radio signals for 22 days, until its batteries died, and then burned up ten weeks later as it fell from orbit and reentered the earth’s atmosphere. Shocked by this achievement, the U.S. government plowed money into new mathematics and scientific educational programs in a concerted effort to “catch up with” this Cold War adversary. New Math came to life, and by 1962 it found its way to the small, rural elementary school in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania.
Progressive for a rural school at the time, Wyalusing adopted a trial program of this new-fangled math and also chose a radical approach to teaching it. Twelve of my fifth-grade classmates and I moved into a classroom with an equal number of sixth graders. Gone were hard-backed math textbooks with countless numbered problems at the end of each chapter; replaced with softbound workbooks with write-in-the-book-as-you-go problems. Those of us who already loved old-time arithmetic soon embraced set theory, non-base-10 systems, commutative property, and other parent-frustrating concepts – New Math of the 1960s.
Chosen to teach in this unconventional setting, Mr. Burke rose to the task. When school started in the fall of 1962, John Glenn had already claimed a page in history after his shot into space earlier in the year. As the first American to orbit the earth, he flew 17,500 miles per hour as he circled earth three times. Mr. Burke brought the excitement of this new space age into our classroom. We built our own rockets in class and one sunny school day, walked down the hill to the town park and shot them off into space, future astronauts in the making!
Not every day was as unconventional. We began each class day with the salute to the flag and a silent moment of prayer, not knowing or perhaps just not yet responding to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1962 ruling making mandatory prayer in school unconstitutional. Each morning we also practiced handwriting, forming our OOOOOOs and lllllllls, learning to write our letters the “correct way”. I often think of this as I scribble my name on a credit card payment, with my D and S as the only two legible letters. Mr. Burke would be sad.
He’d probably also be concerned about the problems facing our country and the world today. In our school days, he led us in discussions of current events, encouraging us to read (Weekly Readers included, of course!) and watch the news at night. The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 caused fear and uncertainty for a few scary days, and we practiced huddling in the hallways in case of a nuclear attack by the Soviets. The following year, Martin Luther King gave his “I’ve Got a Dream” speech, and while I don’t specifically remember learning about the speech at the time, we did discuss racial unrest happening across the country (foreign news to our all-white rural community) and talked about Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights Act the following year.
Every Friday was art project time, and on the afternoon of November 22,1963, we were using an electric drill to spin colored crepe paper into strings to wrap around bottles for Christmas presents for our parents. Sometime after two o’clock an announcement came over the loudspeaker that President Kennedy had been shot and killed. Mr. Burke helped us get through the next few minutes, and Walter Cronkite helped us get through the next few days. I still get chills.
Other events in the country from 62-64 failed to make much of an impression on us until later years. The U.S stuck its toes a little bit deeper into Vietnam, with the first U.S. casualties reported. The very first Wal-Mart store opened in Arkansas and the first Ford Mustang roared to life. Zip codes arrived, along with the new TV show, Jeopardy, and the first federal pronouncement was made that smokers might want to reconsider lighting up. We did watch the Beatles make their noisy U.S. debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, but I’m pretty sure none of my friends swooned or fainted!
Back in the classroom, Mr. Burke shared his passion for the local history of the Delaware and Iroquois tribes who lived on and roamed the lands along the Susquehanna so long ago. He also talked us through the triumphs and tragedies of our country’s fight for independence and later of the battle of Gettysburg. Between battles, we diagrammed sentences, played games of logic, and listened to Mr. Burke’s impromptu stories and lessons about hard work, respect for others and citizenship.
For years, my mother kidded me about the two years when almost every sentence I spoke started with, “Mr. Burke says … ”. Recently, several of my classmates shared stories of those days, and they laughed and echoed the same memory of their “Mr. Burke says ,,,” phase. All these years later we may not recall many specific Mr. Burke quotes, but what we do recall is a man who encouraged our curiosity, inspired us to learn, challenged us to excel, and provided a role model of decency; a kind and compassionate man. While his specific words may have faded, his life’s lessons live on within us, a lasting tribute to a good man. Thank you, Mr. Burke.
Mr. Gerald F. Burke was born in rural Wilmot Township, Bradford County, Pennsylvania in 1916. He taught for 41 years in the local area schools, including one-room schools – Oak Hill, Farr, Golden Hill and elementary schools in Camptown, Laceyville, and Wyalusing. His teaching career culminated in the well-deserved honor of Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year in 1978.
Diane C. Seymour writes stories of rural Pennsylvania from her home on the Potter Century Farm in Sugar Run, PA. www.homebeckons.com
The barn is empty now and the cows exist only in my memories, but oh my, what good memories they are …
“Maddie’ Photo by Marji Beach on Flickr
“It’s time to go get the cows,” my mother said, reminding my brother Lanny and me to get moving as she set the supper table. We grumbled a bit, but out the door we went.
Pasture land on our Sugar Hill dairy farm was limited, competing with woods and cropland so our walk to find the cows took us up the dirt road about 100 yards past an open field to a wooden gate leading into a small pasture. Once in a while, the cows were right there where their day after the morning milking had started. Usually though, they were nowhere in sight, so we lowered the poles to the gate and continued our search.
Sometimes, we stopped just inside the gate at a big white salt block mounted on a stick. We searched for the cleanest spots on the block and took a couple of good licks. Only as an adult did it hit me that the cleanest spots most likely were where they’d been licked “clean” by a giant Holstein tongue!
In the springtime, we passed by beautiful pink blossoms of the mountain laurel bushes, pausing just long enough to pick a few blossoms for my mother. As our Pennsylvania state flower, I felt proud as a kid to have these on our land. I’ve since learned that the branches, leaves, flowers and all parts of the bush are toxic to most animals. Fortunately, they must have tasted badly or our cows somehow knew not to eat them since they never complained of bellyaches!
After passing the mountain laurels, we walked through woods for another quarter mile to the main pasture next to the swamp. If we were lucky, they’d be there after a long lazy day, most lying down dozing off, while a few might still be ripping at the grass getting their last bites in before supper in the barn. Lanny and I were happy that we’d guessed right when we left the gate about where they’d be. Otherwise, we’d be backtracking a quarter mile along the swamp to find them.
We didn’t need big sticks or loud voices to get them started. Cows know when it’s dinnertime, so when the lead boss cow saw us, she made the first move toward home and the others followed. They lumbered along, weaving their ways around the trees, their full bags a sure sign it was time for milking. Some days, as they moved ahead of us, we stopped long enough to find a just-right, not-too-wet and not-too-crusty cow manure pile to carve our initials into with sticks. Then, we ran ahead to catch up with the cows, determined to check on our solidified artwork the next day!
Home at last after their half-mile trek, the cows walked single file into the barn and found their designated spots, putting their heads through the stanchion openings. My father rolled the feed bin down the center aisle, scooping out the right amount for each cow. Those long cow tongues came in handy for swiping feed from a neighbor’s portion! Lanny and I fed the weaned calves, and as every belly in the barn was getting full, my father, brother, and I set off to the house to fill our own. Home for supper again.
Bob Pond passed away on September 10th, age 93. I read his obituary and felt a surprising sense of loss for a man who I hadn’t seen since the mid-sixties and who I barely knew at all. The write up said that he had worked for 44 years for Northeastern Breeders Association, now Sire Power, as an artificial inseminator. He was the first person in the northeast to breed over a hundred thousand cows on the first service. That’s a whole lot of calves!
I crossed paths with Bob Pond several times as a kid on our farm on Sugar Hill when he came to do his magic with our cows. I’m not sure how my father decided which bull’s “stuff” to pick for the job, but my brother and I leafed through the Holstein bull book from time to time and claimed our favorites. After all these years, I remember my pick – Big Rock Burke Teddy. I even named one of our bull calves as though he would follow in Big Rock’s prolific footsteps – Billy Bobby Bradford Bull, named after two Sugar Hill kids and our county name.
Unfortunately, my bull calf faced the same fate as all bull calves born on our farm – a quick trip to the sale barn most likely to be fattened up for eventual hamburger. My father didn’t keep a bull among our cows. I never asked why, but it may have been the risk of losing his investment; my neighbor just had to put his good bull down after it broke its leg. Or, maybe my father chose not to deal with the possible orneriness of many bulls. My Aunt Marie knew about that first-hand, facing Billy Bruton Bull in her front yard, losing the stand off and ending up with a gored rear end!
My cousin Suky and I shared a fun memory last night talking about Bob Pond’s visits so long ago. As she said, “What young kid wouldn’t gawk at a man putting on long rubber gloves and sticking his arm up a cow’s rear clear up to his elbow?” We were mesmerized. Yes, Bob Pond visits were memorable, rivaled only by another visitor to the farm, Doc Abell, who might show up about nine months after Bob if a cow was having difficulty calving. Then we’d get to see the second act to Bob’s first – the birth.
So, rest in peace, Bob Pond. I’m guessing there are a whole lot of former farm kids out there thinking back on good memories of your life’s work and of our slightly skewed lessons about the birds and the bees!
My cousin Tracy is fifty days older than me, so he should have known better, but …
The crab apple tree stood in the front yard of our farmhouse on Sugar Hill and threw off gobs of yellowish-red apples not much bigger than golf balls. Every year without fail, my brother Lanny and I would take a bite of one, convinced that somehow it would taste better than the year before. But no, sour and bitter, they only proved their worth on toast as my mother’s crab apple jelly.
Well actually, the tree and apples did play other important roles in our lives. The tree stood right in line between the house and barn, and every evening on their way to milk cows, my father and cousin Terry would stop for a quick competition. They’d fling crab apples across the dirt road at the Surge Milker sign nailed on the side of the tractor shed. The losing pitcher had to wash the milkers that night – a really high-stakes game!
One of the tree’s sturdy limbs held a rope swing for my brother and me and any cousins or other kids who came to visit. It eventually lost its job to a new-fangled metal swing set. The same limb though came into use every late November or early December during deer season. Which brings me back to cousin Tracy, from maybe sixty years ago. The deer hung head down from that crab apple tree limb. And so he said,
“I dare you to lick its tongue!” I did and he did too. Kids!
That crab apple tree is long gone, you don’t see many deer hanging in trees anymore, and I’m guessing that there’s not much crab apple jelly being made either. But, if you head out Foote Road, you can still find that rusted old Surge sign hanging on the tractor shed patiently waiting for another apple to fly its way. Memories …
I picked up the greasy old frying pan, blackened all over and beyond help from years of hot bacon and butter. Dropping it on the counter, the pan careened in two full three-sixties before coming to a wobbly stop like a child’s toy top. Curious, I picked it up again and held it at eye level and smiled, spotting the one-inch center circle of that nine-inch battered pan that actually made contact with the electric burner as my father cooked his every-other day eggs and bacon. In my mind, I heard his voice saying, “It’s good enough!”
Maybe it’s the pandemic that has me thinking more often of my dad’s frying pan and of him. One winter, when he was in the Wuesthoff Hospital in Rockledge, Florida for heart surgery, I went to his Motel 6 room to pack up the two little suitcases he’d brought for a two-month stay. I suddenly realized that he had spent six weeks there sitting in the middle of the room each night in a hard, straight-backed chair, using his cooler for a footrest, the better to see his 19” TV. Then, after looking through his shirts, I went to Wal-Mart and bought a few new ones. I put his rattiest old shirts in the bottom of his suitcase, with a note on top of them suggesting that they never see the light of day again except for the day he burned them!
The next year, Gary and I took a recliner and a 37” TV to Motel 6 for him. Just like with the new shirts, he was grateful, but my sense was and is that it didn’t matter too much to him. The “things’” in his life were good enough. What did matter? Sitting on his porch on Sugar Hill looking out at Round Top Mountain; a generous piece of Allyson’s apple pie; the 30-06 in his car every November; deer steak and pan cakes at Suky’s; a mostly friendly game of Phase 10 with his sisters; a card or call from his grandson, Tyler; Christmas Eve at our house.
Simple pleasures. While I’ll never lead the Spartan life of my father’s (I like my pans flat and my shirts stain-free!), I’ve spent these crazy stay-at-home days of 2020 sorting out what really matters to me and what my good enoughs are – life’s lesson learned from an old frying pan and a wise old man.
At any moment, I expect a Publix employee to approach and ask me to kindly move on or at least to ask if there’s a problem. Ten minutes and twenty customers have passed since I stopped in front of the shelves overloaded with a dizzying array of olive oil bottles. Five times I’ve placed a different bottle in my cart only to put it back on the shelf, finding it difficult to choose.
Choices! As a kid, our choices came in twos – Cheerios or Shredded Wheat, Sears or Montgomery Ward, Channel 12 or 22, Ford or Chevy, butter or margarine. Today’s Cheerios let’s you choose from the original, maple, oat crunch, peach, honey nut, multi grain, apple cinnamon, chocolate, fruity, banana nut, protein cinnamon almond, protein oats and honey, chocolate peanut butter, medley crunch, pumpkin spice, very berry, and yes, Cheerios with ancient grains. How did we ever survive without those ancient grains?
At least with Cheerios, my eyes track immediately to that bright yellow box, only occasionally scanning quickly to find the familiar fall-foliage gold color of the Honey Nut Cheerios that call out to my sweet tooth. The other fifteen flavors are wasted shelf space and fail to suck me into the same confusing conundrum I now face in Aisle 5.
Glass or plastic? Instinctively, I rule out plastic, but that barely narrows the choices. Clear or dark glass? Some distant memory tells me dark glass, but, again, the choices loom large. Virgin or extra virgin? My mind imagines Mother Mary, but I quickly put that thought out of mind and decide that in today’s world, “extra” usually means “better.” Think extra strength, extra pickles, extra cash, extra options. Extra may not make sense for olive oil, but at this point I’m going with whatever it takes to get me home before dark.
I remember when we added channels 16 and 28 to our TV viewing, doubling our choice of stations. No color, no remote, no HD, and no DVR, but, hey, we had choices – twice as many arguments about what to watch! Fifty-some years later, like the Cheerio shelves, I’ve learned to find Gunsmoke, The Big Bang Theory, The Tennis Channel, and a few more and ignore the other four hundred and ninety-one channels. Maybe someday my olive-oil-picking will become that well-honed, but for now…
Cold pressed? Stone milled? First pressed? Hand crafted? Organic? U.S.? International? Mild? Medium? Robust? By now, I’m thinking about doing a Google search or calling my olive-oil literate son, but remind myself that IT DOESN’T REALLY MATTER TO ME! My last olive oil bottle lasted three years, two years longer than my son’s fiancée who gave it to me!
So, I decide to use my wine-bottle-choosing method – bottle shape and attractive label. Two more minutes and the Colavita Extra Virgin, First Cold Pressed from Italy sits in my cart next to the original Ritz crackers. I round the corner into Aisle 6 and smile when a familiar bright yellow box easily catches my eye.
That night, I sautéed squash and zucchini in the new olive oil. My untrained palette failed to notice any difference between the new oil and the 3-year old stuff, but that’s OK since I have more important choices to make. Today I started researching SUV models. Did you know that there are forty-seven different SUVs available in the U.S. today? I’ll take the one in the big yellow box? If only …
Every few seconds, I ducked as the green balls thudded down around me, thrown off by the two towering black walnut trees on our farm in Sugar Run. As they bounced with varying velocity down the hill, I wondered why no one ever picked them up. Maybe I’ll make a black walnut cake, just like Aunt Marie used to do, I thought. And, just like that, my adventure began.
With bucket in hand, I once again braved the falling missiles, ready to gather enough nuts for several cakes. In flash backs to childhood, I saw black walnuts lying in the two tire tracks of our dirt driveway, waiting for the car to run over them. I chose a more immediate hull-removal method, stepping on older blackened balls and twisting my foot until the hulls broke loose from the nuts. In a little over an hour, two buckets of hulled, wet nuts sat on the front porch to dry. I could almost smell black walnut cake.
A few days later, ready to start cracking, I found two bucketfuls of molded nuts! Disappointed, but determined, I gathered and hulled again. This time, I washed and scrubbed each nut individually, taking off pieces of hull clinging to the hard, jagged shell. Not taking any chances, I laid each nut on a drying rack making sure they didn’t touch each other, the better to dry properly. With blisters on both thumbs, four hours into the process, and black hands that lasted for days, memories of Aunt Marie urged me on.
Time to crack! With the first whack of the hammer, the uncracked nut flew left out of reach. Another whack, and the second uncracked nut popped equidistant to the right. There must be a better way, I thought, holding a nut with pliers this time. Whack! Whack! Whack! WHACK! Finally, my first nut cracked open, but not like those wonderfully easy to open English walnuts we crack at Christmas time – first try, in two perfectly shaped halves ready to pop out of the shell. Apparently, black walnuts are the Fort Knox of nuts, nearly impossible to get into and equally impossible to get precious goods out!
If the nut cracked into two halves, tiny, intricate labyrinths clung tightly to the nutmeat making it difficult to pick out pieces any bigger than a baby aspirin. Cracking the half again smashed the meat, leaving black walnut crumbs. I moved inside, watching videos of two people and one squirrel, desperate to learn from experts. All three made it look easy; it wasn’t.
(Squirrel Image by rachidH)
So, for the next two hours, I whacked, whacked, whacked, picked, over and over and over, only driven forward by a promise to honor the memory of my aunt. With sweat pouring down my back, heart pounding like I’d run a five minute mile, and teeth clenched in desperate defiance of defeat, I finally swirled the tiny nuggets of black walnut gold around in the dish, and laid my hammer down. After seven total hours of effort, I had gathered enough black walnut pieces to make my cake. I was triumphant!
The day before baking “The Cake”, I visited with Aunt Marie’s sister and two daughters. Launching into my woes of black walnut harvesting, I proudly proclaimed my reason for persevering: “Because Aunt Marie always made black walnut cakes that way.” Total silence followed until they each laughed in unison, “She never made black walnut cakes, she made hickory nut cakes!”
I never made the cake. I did make delicious black walnut cookies that could only be shared with my husband and very close friends, who were warned to bite lightly to avoid pieces of whacked shell impossible to see before baking. With free material and minimum wage, my nuts cost a whopping $106 per pound compared to a ridiculously reasonable price of $15 per pound at Amazon. I flung my remaining uncracked nuts into the woods where they belonged – with all those squirrel experts who know what they’re doing.
Aunt Marie made hickory nut cakes? Maybe next year I’ll …
My suntan fades away with each rain-drenched day
Days meant for baked beans, boat rides, and ball games
But swept away with muddy waters under dark grey skies.
Swollen creeks cough up their excess goods to the lowlands
While the mighty Susquehanna rises, rises, rises, rises
Paying no attention to the prayers lifted up for it to fall.
There may be summer days left for beans, boats, and balls
But those laid low by the raging waters will always remember
With sadness, awe and anger, like Hazel, Agnes, and Lee,
The Rains of August
