As Lambs to His Fold, Page 6

CHAPTER FIVE

  Our Mountain Home So Dear....

  Memorial Day arrived with soft sunshine and gentle winds — just as it should for the honoring of our dead. We called it “Decoration Day” and observed it by laying sheaves of flowers on the graves of our ancestors.

  As with most of our celebrations, it was a family affair. With flowers gathered from all our gardens, we met at Grandpa’s. The flowers, in buckets of water to keep them fresh, were stowed in the rumble seat of Uncle Jack’s car.

  We made a caravan of three cars to the Welcome Cemetery south of town.

  There, among the weeping willows, Grandma placed some small, pink roses on the tiny grave of her first child, little Emily, who had died at six months of diphtheria. As Grandma wiped away tears, Grandpa hugged her, sharing the loss even after forty-eight years.

  A sheaf of purple iris — we called them “flags” — was laid on the resting place of Great-Grandfather and Great-Grandmother Willing — Grandpa’s parents.

  Out on the highway, we headed north from Welcome. Grandma rode with Uncle Jack. Daddy drove our car with Mamma beside him. In the back sat Grandpa, with Leatrice and me each hugging one of his sides.

  Aunt Francie and Roger had gone to Salt Lake to visit Roger’s family; but they would meet us later.

  At a certain point, the cars separated. Uncle Roland and Aunt Mabel, with Dorajean and Irene in the back seat, continued north toward Springville, to visit the graves of his relatives. They, too, would meet us later at the designated place for our family picnic.

  Watching Uncle Roland drive away, I asked Daddy, “Do you ever go visit the graves of your relatives?’

  “In Saint George? Yes, when I can. but I have some relatives who generally take care of it.”

  We headed for Mount Pleasant, Grandma’s hometown. There were quite a few Dodson ancestors buried in the cemetery there. While each grave received its gift of peonies and lilacs from the hands of Mamma and Grandma, Leatrice and I wandered around. Some of the graves had little flags on them, indicating, we knew, that the occupants were war veterans.

  We saw that while many graves had flowers either laid upon them or in vases at their head, some were bare of any remembrance — particularly the ones with older dates.

  “It’s like somebody gave a party an’ they weren’t invited,” Leatrice observed.

  In the far, back corner of the cemetery, we found an old grave with moss and dirt covering the inscription. We spit on our hands and rubbed off the accumulation of years. Finally we made out a name and date:

  Alzina Aarens

  1855-1877

  Poor Alzina hadn’t been invited to the party, either. What could we do to cheer her up?

  On the other side of the fence we spied a field of grass and wild flowers. Climbing through the fence, we got busy and gathered armfuls of the flowers — lupines, and Queen Ann’s lace, and Indian paint brush.

  Squirming back through the fence, we piled our offering on Alzina’s grave. Then, having done all we felt we could to cheer her up, we walked backwards, waving, and saying, “Have a nice time.”

  Our two cars headed east toward what Leatrice and I considered our most important destination — Blossom. There, Grandpa would take us on a tour, as he always did, of the old town. There we would have our picnic; and there we would pull up the weeds in the cemetery and find the Surprise. We had no doubt it would be there. Wasn’t it always?

  The tarred road gave way to gravel, and then to dust. We passed farms and little humps of hills, with sheep scattered over them like woolly nubbins on tan quilts.

  Leatrice and I began a game of dotting white horses. Since there are very few white horses to be seen anymore, that game has disappeared like a great many other childhood pleasures. This is the way it was played: The first one to see a white horse called out, “White horse!” and then “dotted” it by licking the right thumb, pressing it into the left palm, and then stamping it with one’s right fist. Nobody else could claim your horse. But, if it was seen on a subsequent trip, it could be dotted again. Gray did not count, but dirty white did.

  When you had dotted one hundred white horses, you were entitled to a gift from the White Horse Fairy. You put a good-size rock out on the front porch, then loudly announced to anyone within earshot that you had now counted one hundred white horses, you had put a rock on the porch, and you expected a gift from the White Horse Fairy.

  It worked; I knew it did. On the one occasion when I managed to dot one hundred white horses, I set out a rock, and hey! the next morning there was a beautiful book of paper dolls under it.

  Grandpa joined us in the game; at first, he pointed out white horses to us. But then, he began dotting them himself. Since he sat higher than we did, he saw more white horses, and soon he had passed us.

  “Grandpa,” I said wistfully, “are you gonna keep all those white horses for yourself?”

  I couldn’t visualize Grandpa putting out a rock for the White Horse Fairy. After all, he was old. What could he possibly wish for?

  He smiled and said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll divide my horses between the two of you.”

  That was eminently satisfactory to us.

  It was a long way to Blossom. The road became a weed-shrouded track. I could smell the fried chicken in the trunk of the car. My stomach began to complain of being empty. Also, it was hot in the car. I dozed.

  I came awoke when Grandpa announced, “Here we are!”

  There it was — Blossom, the little town where Grandpa was born, now nothing but a ghost town with slowly disintegrating log and adobe houses.

  “Why did they call it Blossom?” I once asked Grandpa, with a shake of my head.

  “Well, I guess when folks first settled here, they hoped it would “blossom as the rose,” as the scripture says. But, it didn’t live up to its name.”

  As we climbed out of the car and walked toward the sad-looking little town, Grandpa continued. “Oh, I know it looks like about the second day of creation now; but when my folks and others first came here, they had high hopes — for one, that the railroad would come this way so they’d have ties to other communities. But that didn’t come true.

  “You see,” Grandpa continued, “the homes are placed in three-quarters of a square, all of them touching one another. There used to be a high fence along the front, with a sturdy, wooden gate — necessary during the Indian troubles. But, after the last of Blossom’s inhabitants left, the gate and the fence were taken for somebody’s woodpile.”

  We walked around the little town, with Grandpa calling up from his memory the different uses for the buildings.

  “That was the blacksmith shop; and this was our home — only two rooms, but it was precious to me. One of the rooms was both kitchen and parlor, and the other was Mother’s and Father’s bedroom. I slept in the loft.

  “Seven children,” Grandpa mused, “and I was the only one who survived. It was a hard, hard life.”

  “Why were you so poor, Grandpa?” I asked.

  “Well, you have to remember that Blossom was built only a dozen or so years after the Saints came into Salt Lake Valley; and the Lord didn’t temper the elements for us. The summers were as hot and the winters as cold as we could endure. And then, there were the crickets that ate our crops.”

  “Didn’t the sea gulls come an’ help you?” I asked, remembering the story about how the Saints in the Salt Lake Valley had been saved by heavenly intervention.

  “No. We didn’t see any sea gulls coming to our rescue to eat up the crickets. Oh, my, how we fought those pests! They’d come like a black swarm out of the sky — big, ugly, black things. People would joke that they were a cross between a grasshopper and an elephant. But it was no joking matter. They’d light on our fields and just destroy everything in their path.

  “We tried everything — burning them, drowning them, walking along with brooms to brush them off the plants, then stepping on them. But, still more came. Oh, we prayed, but it just seemed to do no goo
d.

  “Then, suddenly, they were gone. We surveyed the damage. Those crickets had gone over our fields like an army. It appeared that everything we’d struggled for had been destroyed. How would we live through the winter?”

  We knew the answer, but we liked to hear Grandpa tell it.

  “Then, to our surprise, we found that the crickets had left one crop — green peas. Didn’t like ‘em, for some reason. So we were saved by those peas. We gathered them, and dried them, and used the vines for silage for our animals. Oh, how that silage smelled!” Grandpa chuckled.

  “Well, when the crickets came the next year, we were ready for them. All we’d planted was peas. And the crickets left them alone. Peas were our yearly crop for several years until, finally, the crickets quit coming. Got discouraged, I guess, when they didn’t find a banquet waiting.

  “Well, it wasn’t quite like the sea gulls coming and eating the crickets; but we never doubted that it was the work of our Heavenly Father that saved us from starvation. But, oh! how I learned to hate peas! Can’t look a pea in the eye to this day.

  “We tried to practice the Law of Consecration for a while,” Grandpa continued thoughtfully, “with everything share-and-share alike — and it would have worked, except some people got selfish and didn’t want to share. Then some folks went where they could get better wages mining coal; and, as the young folk grew up, they headed for greener pastures. Finally, little Blossom just dried up and sort of blew away.

  “Now, there,” declared Grandpa, pointing to another of the sad-looking little houses, “was our school. Education was important, the settlers felt, and so they found a teacher and scrabbled around for some supplies. The teacher was Sister Hardesty, and for a desk she used the seat from a wagon. We youngsters sat on benches made of half logs with pegs for legs. “Oh,” Grandpa gave a mock shiver, “it was cold in that school! No stove for heat. The lucky youngsters would bring heated stones from home to put their feet on. But, Sister Hardesty wasn’t so lucky. She had to stand up and teach us. I remember she would wear a shawl and her heavy coat all day.”

  “Did you have books and stuff?”

  “A few books that we passed around — a Bible and a spelling book, I remember; and several readers. Paper was very scarce. Instead, we used slabs of thin slate stone and wrote on them with charred sticks, then rubbed our slates clean with our sleeves.

  “That school was a beginning. It instilled in a lot of us a desire to get more education. By the time I was in my teens, the Church was establishing what were called academies — the equivalent of high schools. It was quite a distance to the nearest academy, but I went — either on foot or riding a horse.

  “Then, I went up to Brigham Young Academy — part high school and part higher education then. It’s Brigham Young University now. It was there I met your grandmother.”

  He took her hand and squeezed it. “After we were married, I studied nights to pass the law exam. And now, well — here we are.”

  And here we were. We had passed out of the little town and now stood before the small cemetery on a hillside south of Blossom.

  It would have been easy to pass right by the Blossom Cemetery and not realize it was there — except for the stone wall that surrounded it, a wall erected to keep out animals. The headstones were difficult to see, they were so overlaid with foxglove and June grass.

  It’d be nice, I thought, if some animals could just jump over that wall and eat the weeds. But, animals of any kind, except little scurrying things, were long departed from Blossom. The weeding was our task, rendered yearly. Leatrice and I did it willingly because we knew there was a wonderful surprise at the end.

  We attacked the weeds with determination, throwing them over the wall as we pulled them up. Mamma worked beside us. Daddy and Uncle Jack went after the bigger, sturdier weeds with shovels. Gradually, the wooden headstones appeared.

  Grandma and Grandpa were absolutely forbidden to do anything but sit and look on.

  Grandpa, however, continued with his chosen task as narrator of Blossom’s past. “When I rode away to get married, knowing I wouldn’t be coming back to Blossom, I felt sad for my parents. I could see, even then, that this little town was about on its last legs. I promised myself that Mother and Father wouldn’t die here.

  “So, after Annie and I had built our house, we got Mother and Father to come and live with us. Then, when the time came, they were each buried in the Welcome cemetery.

  “The life here was especially hard on women. Many of them had left nice homes and pleasant surroundings. But they adjusted, knowing it was the Lord’s work they were doing — most of them that is. One woman who just couldn’t get used to the life was Sister Leeds.

  “She and her husband came from the Midlands of England, where he had been a gardener on a wealthy estate. They brought cuttings of roses and other choice flowers, expecting, I guess, that they would grow in this climate as well as they had in England.

  “What brought them to Blossom, I don’t know — unless it was the name. They just weren’t prepared for the harsh winters, and hot summers, and lack of water.

  “Now, if you’re a farmer, you don’t build your house on the good land, you save that for your crops. So, Blossom was built where the soil wasn’t so good, and our fields were planted out yonder where the soil was richer and they were closer to water. I was a teen-age youngster, and I remember when Sister Leeds planted those roses in front of her house and how she would go back and forth, many times a day, to bring buckets of water from the creek to pour over ‘em and try to keep ‘em alive.

  “All the other women would have liked grass, and trees, and flowers around their homes, but they understood that first things had to come first. But, not Sister Leeds. She toiled over those flowers all summer; most of ‘em died, but a few made it through until winter. But, then, the frost nipped them, and they died, too.

  “When that happened, something just died in Sister Leeds, I guess. She sat huddled in her house all winter, not stirring much. By springtime, she’d gotten to such a state that she sat in her nightgown all day, not even combing her hair. The other women visited her and tried to cheer her up, but it was no use.

  “One day, Brother Leeds came home from the fields and found that she had died, just sitting in her chair. All of us felt bad, but Brother Leeds was grief-stricken. He had really loved her, and I guess he felt to blame for having brought her here.”

  Leatrice and I were working away, uncovering the tombstones. We knew what was coming, and we worked to orchestrate it at just the right moment.

  “After the funeral and burial of his wife, Brother Leeds one day rode out of town without saying where he was going. Had to get away and nurse his grief, I guess. He was gone for about a week, and when he came back he was carrying something wrapped in a damp cloth — his shirt.

  “Well, it seemed that he had been riding through a town one day, and he came upon a house with a picket fence. Growing over that fence was a profusion of yellow roses. Having been a gardener, Brother Leeds knew roses. This was a different kind from what he was accustomed to seeing. These roses were single-petaled, and here they were, growing gloriously in this arid climate.

  “He dismounted from his horse and went up to the door. When he knocked, a woman came to the door. He asked her if he might have a cutting from her rose bush. She very kindly said yes. And so, he got his cutting and brought it home wrapped in his damp shirt.

  “He planted that rose out by his wife’s grave. And it took hold and grew.

  “Brother Leeds didn’t live much longer than his wife. Within six months, he had died, too. The people of Blossom dug a grave for him beside his wife, with the rose bush between them.

  “That rose bush seemed like a symbol of their love. The people determined to keep it alive, if they could. A teen-age boy was designated to take care of the rose. I was that boy; and I got intimately acquainted with it as I watered it, and fertilized it, and pruned it. That rose put down roots and grew so well
that by the time I left Blossom, it covered both graves.”

  Knowing that the climax was coming, Leatrice and I were working furiously.

  “And now...” said Grandpa.

  “Here it is!” we shouted and jumped back grinning, our arms extended as though we had orchestrated the whole thing.

  And, there it was, the yellow rose bush, spreading its perfume and spilling gloriously over the two graves — after more than fifty years without weeding, or water, or food, or pruning — except for the once-a-year care we gave it.

  “It’s always seemed like a miracle to me,” Grandpa observed, as he got busy pruning back the dead shoots, “an emblem of eternal love.”

  Uncle Jack went down to the stream and brought back a bucket of water to pour over the roots of the rose bush.

  “When we got married,” Grandpa went on, “I remembered the hardships Sister Leeds and the other women went through. I vowed that if it was at all possible, I wouldn’t put my bride through that. And so, one of the first things I did after we built our house was to see that the yard was planted with trees and flowers. Like this rose bush, that was my testament to love.”

  He broke off one of the fragrant, yellow blooms and handed it to Grandma. She smiled and clasped it in her hands as she said, “Oh, Albert, I’ve always known and appreciated that! Thank you.”

  And she kissed him.

  “Well,” Grandpa finished, “it helped a lot when the canal went past our place.”

  Uncle Roland, Aunt Mabel, and our sisters arrived. Soon after them, Aunt Francie and Roger drove up. We took our picnic down by the stream: Mamma’s fried chicken, Aunt Mabel’s potato salad, and Grandma’s applesauce cake.

  When we were ready to leave, the buckets that had held the flowers were stowed in the various car trunks. Leatrice and I climbed joyfully into the rumble seat of Uncle Jack’s car. We didn’t care how the wind whipped our hair.

  “This flivver is almost out of gas,” said Uncle Jack. “D’you think we can get home on angel fumes?”

  “Sure!” we chorused. After a day filled with the presence of angels, how could we doubt it?

  And our faith was rewarded.