When I was young, I had walked through these headstones to visit Grandpa’s grave on Memorial Day many times with my grandma. We would wear our handmade, red tissue paper poppies from the local VFW, and she would buy a red and white, plastic flower wreath to leave. This was our yearly tradition to honor my grandfather’s WWII service. Today’s visit, however, was my own private memorial to honor Grandma.
Having missed her funeral for health reasons, this was the first and only time I would be able to come home and visit the cemetery. Once again, I was walking through the rows of smooth granite stones, trying to find our kinfolk’s plot. I recognized so many of the family names I passed and guessed this was to be expected in a small community. When I located my grandparents’ stone and read her chiseled name next to Grandpa’s, the shock of Grandma being gone finally hit me.
As I laid my fresh flowers down, I focused my grief on anger at seeing the weeds around her headstone. Didn’t we pay for it to be maintained? Wrapping my hand around the noxious intruders, I started to pull them when I was hit with nostalgia of Grandma’s yard in summertime. I would love running through the grass on a sunny summer afternoon, collecting a spray of these pretty flowers before the mower came and chopped them up. It was even more fun when their white puffballs had appeared. If I picked one of those, I would blow on it and send all the petal’s seeds floating away on a gust of air before making a wish. The little, yellow blooms in my hand, had unexpectedly unearthed a bushel of buried memories with Grandma.
What instantly came to mind was planting a garden with her. I grew up in the same rural country house she had, so the sizeable yard was her old stomping ground. From the patch of bamboo Grandma had planted as a girl so she could always cut her own fishing pole, to the designated gardening plot that she had used with her mother; my grandma had left her mark on every inch.
The vegetable planting parcel was nestled between the back shed and the poisonous, scarlet berry bushes and was guarded by a row of evergreens hiding a yellow water hydrant specifically for the garden. Grandma may have moved down the road when she got married, but she continued to garden here with her mother. Every year, Dad would spend an afternoon breaking up this overgrown patch for us using the old red push tiller, and he knew exactly how many brown, trenches to carve. He had been in-charge of digging these channels with a hoe when he was a boy, and Grandma’s layout had never changed. That consistency may be why I could still remember her preferred order perfectly to this day.
The various tomatoes always started the arrangement on the right. My palate was beginning to water as I reminisced on popping a plump, sweet cherry tomato into my mouth straight from the vine. That was a taste synonymous with summer. As the tomato plants had grown taller, I would help Grandma wrap them in chicken wire to help them stand straight and protect the delicate tomatoes.
Broccoli seedlings would be planted in the next row followed by lettuce. This would eventually have expansive green leaves that tickled my bare legs as I walked past. The cool, soft dirt squished between my fingers as I helped plant each area. Back then, I didn’t care if I got dirt underneath my fingernails or a sticker in my hand, so garden gloves were never considered. Especially since a wriggly, slick earthworm or a small, delicate roly-poly could only be fully appreciated with bare fingers.
Grandma always put a line of onions straight down the middle of her garden, so the pungent odor could work as a natural insecticide. Young green bean plants, which would be droopy and full of pods in a few weeks, were next. Followed by the root veg, carrots and potatoes, rounding out the final two vertical rows. I would unearth these too early every year because I became impatient not being able to see their growth progression underground.
One of my most hated jobs every summer was checking the leaves of potato plants for the decimating potato beetles and crushing them. The sickening smell emitted when I smashed their hard, black and yellow striped shell was nauseating. However, the pest would devour the leaves and kill a potato plant in a matter of days, so this disgusting job had to be done. I just wished it wasn’t by me.
Grandma liked to save room behind these orderly lines for the lofty, pink stalks of rhubarb she would later mix with strawberries to make my favorite pie. There was also space for tangled vines of juicy cantaloupes and ruby watermelons to spread out and thrive. After we had everything planted, she would slice open a bale of golden straw and have me mulch around all our baby plants. I preferred protecting my garden in this manner, but straw bales were hard to find after I left the farm to become a city dweller.
I had been away for over two decades, but I had no problem recalling the hours spent down the road at Grandma’s house. She lived a quarter mile from us on a white, gravel road that passed a field, a pasture, and the one-room schoolhouse that Dad attended as a boy. On my ’69 Schwinn that I inherited from Mom, I had no problems biking there as long as I remembered to gain enough speed to get up the last, steep hill. More times than not, though, I would get distracted and forget which resulted in me walking in her driveway pushing my bike.
For some reason, Grandma wanted to feed me whenever I came over, so many of my memories revolved around her fluorescently lighted kitchen. Like her cooking staples, I didn’t think her kitchen had ever needed upgrading. Her favorite cutlery tool to chop, peel, or skin anything with, and the only one I ever saw her use, was a honed, black handled paring knife that she wielded like a five-star chef with a Wusthof knife. She could strip a potato bare and form a single curling cable of skin in mere seconds. If I ever attempted that, I would have fewer fingers than a high school shop teacher.
All meals were cooked in a heavy, cast iron skillet which had been seasoning since my dad was a boy, and only lard had ever been allowed to touch it. An old soup can on the stove kept any leftover fat drippings, so every artery clogging bit could be used. Try as I may, I wasn’t able to recall a hot meal that didn’t include at least one item fried. However, there was always a bowl of green beans or black-eyed peas to put on your plate next to your golden, fried potatoes and chicken fried steak to make it look healthier.
One of my favorite meals was when Grandma made her famous homemade beef noodles for dinner. After she flattened out the soft dough on a white dusted counter, she would roll it into a tight log, and cut it into half inch pieces. If I had been good that day, she would let me flour my hands and unwind the sticky spirals. The plump noodles would be cooked in the beef gravy made from the flavorful brown bits left stuck to the bottom of the skillet after cooking the meal. No relative had ever been able to duplicate this family favorite recipe. I think the years of cast iron seasoning and her magical paring knife added something that could not be replicated.
Since she never knew when she would get to town again, Grandma stockpiled enough food for the apocalypse in three full sized freezers on her porch. One summer while defrosting one, my brother regretfully found out Grandma used her ice boxes to preserve more than fixin’s for dinner. As a bulky package he thought at first was a sirloin thawed, pink gums and white molars started to appear. She was so thrilled that had he found her spare set of teeth; he was so thrilled he hadn’t found Grandpa. He did find, however, a 3 Musketeers bar from the year he was born- 1982.
With my bare thighs stuck to Grandma’s vinyl kitchen chairs, I grew up listening to the sweet crooning of Kenny Rogers and R.E.O. Speedwagon on the radio that continually played faintly in the background. This was where I got hooked on the obscure tales and tidbits provided by Paul Harvey’s ‘The Rest of the Story’. It was considered required listening after we finished watching ‘The Young and the Restless’. Today, if I was lucky enough to catch a rerun of Paul Harvey on NPR, I would have a flashback to drinking Tang with dinner at Grandma’s Formica table.
Besides the radio, the other persistent sound in Grandma’s kitchen was the random squawk of activities announced over the police scanner. A simple black box on the counter with scrolling yellow numbers kept her apprised of all things in surrounding counties requiring law enforcement. It was her polite way of keeping tabs on her neighbors without being labeled a nosy gossip. I never paid attention to the police scanner while I was younger, but when I turned fourteen and started driving, that mechanical announcer of infractions became my arch nemesis.
I would be the first to admit that during my teenage years I loved to play hard and drive fast. Blue and red flashing lights were in my rearview more than once. This should not have been a problem seeing as I never drove off with more than a verbal chastisement, so no one needed to or should have known my transgressions. Nonetheless, when I got home, regardless of the time, I would be met at the door and promptly asked to surrender my keys for a week due to my indiscretion. Grandma’s box had squealed on me, so she had needed to call and promptly inform Dad. A hunk of plastic and a busybody octogenarian had sold me out.
When I last had a chance to visit Grandma five years ago, it warmed my heart to see the time capsule of my youth and my dad’s before me had not been opened or disturbed. The home she had built over sixty years would be the American Picker’s dream discovery, but the generations of buried finds were solely proprietary. Old farm machinery and pickup trucks parked in the field. A silver, antique hand crank cistern by Grandma’s front door. Rare glass powerline insulators now displayed on the top of wooden fence poles. Each was a portion of my grandma’s history that belonged with her and not with a swap-meet collector.
Dropping by in mid-June, Grandma’s yard was in bloom with the bouquet of colors I held captured on countless Polaroids in my mind. The lavender and yellow irises played against a backdrop of orange and fuchsia gladiolas in the front while the white and pink peony bushes supplied supporting roles along the sides. The intoxicating, floral fragrances suspended in the air could not be transferred to the pictures, so I just had to let them soak into every pore while I was visiting. When I had bought my first house, I planted all these gorgeous perennials in my garden, so I could recreate this snapshot and aroma.
There had been many furry additions in her yard, however, that appeared in none of my memories. Dozens upon dozens of cats were strolling around the premises. Grandma had always had a stray barn cat or two which resulted in the occasional litter of kittens, but this population put the most feverish cat ladies to shame. Big tabbies and pure black kittens to mangled tomcats and sherbet mousers, there was no discrimination in their variety. When I inquired about her new pets, I had to harness all my self-control to keep a straight face as Grandma relayed her tale of woe.
A few months prior, one or two cats wandered in followed shortly thereafter by a few more stragglers. She didn’t want the damn things but couldn’t get them to leave. They kept multiplying by both new arrivals and procreation. Now, there were so many, she was going through almost fifty pounds of cat food a week. Turns out, Grandma had been feeding the wandering kitties from day one, and they had decided to stay for the free food and had invited their friends to the ‘no reservations required’ table.
As if this could not have gotten more fantastical, she had also informed me of trying to stealthily thin the herd. My eighty-five-year-old grandma was making midnight runs five miles down the road to leave bags of felines on her neighbor’s doorstep. I had inadvertently found the explanation for the mysterious parcel of cats our longtime family friends had received and spoken of when I visited them earlier. Grandma had become a reverse cat burglar!
Eliciting these treasured memories of my feisty, salt of the earth grandma brought me a reassuring peace, and I locked them tightly away in my heart. Lovingly tracing the fresh carvings on her headstone, I thought the rough-edged letters with a cool, smooth interior perfectly symbolized my grandma. Whispering a final goodbye and placing a kiss gently by her name with my salty fingertips, I stood up to leave this hallowed ground knowing I would not be back.
Walking to my car, I realized the morning of nostalgic memories had filled me with a desire to visit our family farm and see my childhood home. As I drove out of the cemetery onto the white, chalk road, a wheat truck lumbered by reminding me again everyone would be preoccupied with the harvest. Kids out here were driving their family’s gold-filled trucks to the grain elevators as soon as they could tap their toes on the peddles, which was usually by the age of ten. When I thought of my nephews doing this in a few years, I laughed. My sister would never allow it, and I would strongly discourage the boys from asking but would love a fly’s seat if they tried.
Reminiscing on harvests when I was young, I remembered the first-time Dad let me ride on his lap in the cabin of the combine. I was riveted watching the waving, golden stalks of wheat get sucked up then sheared down by the spinning head out front. If I turned and peered out the back window, I saw a stream of reddish-brown kernels continuously gushing into a grain bin. Behind the combine, we were leaving a trail of stripped chaff and discarded wheat stalks that would later be turned into straw bales. The whole process fascinated me.
As fun as this was to see from the cockpit, I would barely last an hour in the combine underneath the scorching Kansas sun. It was blistering hot, and I melted faster than a marshmallow at a campfire. We didn’t have one of the fancy machines with all the perks like a radio and an air conditioner. No, I was pretty sure this was a first edition model that Dad had kept fixing after his granddad retired the scythe. Since it got the job done, that was all that mattered.
Dad was born with MacGyver skills in his blood and could repair anything using a screwdriver and a welding gun. If those didn’t work, there was always duct tape. He would keep his equipment running as long as he could before it was discarded in a machinery graveyard in the back pasture. Our poor, ancient combine should have been granted this benefit years ago, but it had been denied the honor.
A Custom Cutting Crew had helped with our harvest for a few summers. Like a cloud of locusts that traveled across the country leaving a trail of stubbled fields behind them, one day I saw the campers and RVs pull into the drive filled with wives and kids followed by flatbed trailers carrying the best combines on the market. A small city moved into our backyard, and I had new gypsy friends to play with for a week.
When tornadoes started dropping around us one year, everyone had to move from their motorhomes into our house for shelter. As they ran indoors, a worker’s hat was blown off, and I, being a fearless six-year-old, ran into the screaming, swirling wind to retrieve it. Right as my pudgy little fingers were about to grab the visor, someone felt the need to seize me and drag me back to the house for a public dressing down. If that story was told at a family gathering today, I would still stand by my decision to save the hat.
After a few years, Dad chose not to invite the crew back, but he knew he would still need extra help. His options had been his seventy-year-old mom, five-year-old son, or his wife. As I thought about his choices now, I believed whole heartedly Grandma would have enjoyed being in a hot, dusty combine more than being left at home babysitting sweaty, stinky kids. However, Dad decided to put my terrified mom on a cutter. This was something she never wanted to add to ‘SKILLS’ on her resume, but it has since provided a great conversation starter at parties.
Without a doubt, my favorite part of harvest had always been when Grandma brought us home at twilight, and Dad was there with a truck full of fresh cut wheat. He would let us climb up the wood slat side and play in the berries still warm from the sun. I would pick up a handful and watch the cascading waterfall of kernels slide through my fingers before chewing on a few until they were the consistency of gum. It never bothered me that I was getting coated in dust or that wheat was stuck in my hair, seeing as I would be forced to take a shower that night regardless.
Snapping out of my memory super highway, I realized I was about to drive past my old, white Quaker church. I could be found here every Sunday morning when I was young, freezing in the drafty basement for Sunday School and then fidgeting on a hard, wooden pew during the sermon. This was the time of year for camp meeting at the dilapidated tabernacle down the road where we would watch mice run across the stage behind the preacher and had the joy of timeworn, wood outhouses. Mom had taught the Vacation Bible School there, and I learned how to tie-dye, wheat weave, and play red-rover-red-rover. She still had her wheat art from that time.
Turning down the long road that led to our farm’s driveway, I rolled down the window and let the warm summertime air engulf me. The pure, unadulterated smells of the country slowly drifted into the car. Ahhh… pure, warm cow pasture with a hint of wildflowers couldn’t be replicated. I rested my arm on the car window to work on my farmer’s tan, took a deep breath in, and knew I had officially come home.
Both sides of the road were lined with rusted, barbed wire fences to corral the roaming cattle. Red Herefords and their spring calves on the left while herds of black angus mixed with a spattering of white Charolaise cows chewing their cuds on the right. Mixed in-between the weathered, wood fence posts were the occasional wild, black current bush or windblown tumbleweed. Glancing in the rearview, I saw the white cloud of dust I was kicking up behind me and knew I would need to hit a carwash before returning the car.
As I was turning down our gravel drive, I tried to remember the last time I was here. Grandma was alive, I lived in a dryer state, and I didn’t have these strands of grey hair, so a lifetime ago. This place had been unoccupied for years, so I knew I wouldn’t be bothered. Reaching the three-way split in the road, I elected to take the left roundabout which passed the little, yellow two-bedroom house my family of five had shared. Driving past the towering pine tree Mom had planted as a willowy sapling when we first moved here, I remembered it had been no taller than me at the time. She had nurtured us both and helped us plant solid roots, but the pine had inherited Grandpa’s height genes.
I pulled in-between the irises and mature apricot tree and stepped back into my childhood. The dark, blue irises had already started to bloom and unroll their petals to show the furry, white caterpillar stripe, and they filled the air with an earthy and spicy scent Although the apricot tree no longer produced fruit, I drooled a little thinking of how juicy and delicious the delicate, fuzz covered bounty was it generated every summer while I was young. A farmer’s market or roadside stand could not compare to what’s picked straight from the tree.
I began walking toward the three front cement steps when I had a change of heart. There was nothing I wanted to see within the cramped four-walls standing behind that aluminum screen door. Instead, I veered to the right, towards the ancient storm cellar facing the house. The air was filled with the sweet nectar emanating from the line of peonies along its side. They were full of round buds ready to burst into pink and white flowers.
Making my way to the backyard, I had visions of chasing the blinking, yellow firefly bottoms in my underwear on a sweltering summer evening, as my siblings and I tried to see who could catch one first. Gathered around the victor’s cupped hands, we would watch the bulb flip on and off before letting our prize fly free again. We found this more entertaining at that age than most Saturday morning cartoons.
By retracing my steps, I passed my car and crossed the main driveway to our broke down, red and yellow striped playset. The little slide, that I loved sending our unsuspecting barn cats slipping down, was lopsided and barely hanging onto the side frame. One swing had succumbed to gravity and was dangling by a single chain, while the other’s plastic seat was cracked and almost split in two. I used to think if I pumped my pint-sized legs real hard, I could get high enough to flip the swing over the top bar. Sadly, I wasn’t committed enough to succeed.
Standing a few feet away, our mulberry tree had shrunk considerably over time. The tree was stocky enough, I had liked to climb out on the sturdy limbs to reach every delectable, dark purple berry. The nursery rhythm said the monkey went around the mulberry bush, well this monkey went up one. By the time I finally returned to the house, I had tree scrapes on my bare arms and legs and magenta berry juice stains on my clothes, mouth, hands, fa…pretty much everywhere. As I recalled, Mom had not been amused.
Glancing across the road at the rickety, weather-worn, red barn, I thought of the day Dad brought my cherished pony, Brown Sugar, home. When he had led her out of the cow trailer, I squealed and ran right up to stroke her downy, soft nose and bristly whiskers. Hot breath snorted on my hand as she sniffed me and huffed my scent. Inhaling the musky fragrance of horse, hay, and droppings, I had committed the smell to memory and could still recall it after all these years.
Brown Sugar stood about four feet tall or twelve hands in horse and had a soft, reddish-brown coat with a coarse, black mane. Brushing her coat after a long, dusty trail ride or combing her mane to get the sandburs and tangles out was as enjoyable for me as calming for her. We had many good rides and marshmallow fluff sandwiches before I graduated to my mother’s light brown quarter horse, Mitze, and Brown Sugar got to begin grazing her way through the green grass of retirement.
Mitze was a foot taller, fifteen hands, and became my 4-H show horse. I had learned to ride on Brown Sugar, but Mitze and I mastered barrel and pole racing and competition riding. When I slackened my grip on the leather reins and metal bit and kicked my spinning spurs into her soft belly, she knew it was time to kick-up dust and start galloping towards the first barrel. I kept the bit in her mouth loose, held onto the saddle horn, and leaned against her swaying, bouncing neck as we tore across the dirt arena. Wind whipping my face, Mitze snorting and her iron shod hooves hitting the ground, our rocking rhythm-we were one unstoppable machine. I had loved that feeling of unbridled freedom.
Looking at my watch, I realized I had to leave now if I was going to make my last stop by sunset. Walking back to my car, I took one last look around before getting in, returning to the driveway, and subsequently the main road. Mom had painted the main road from our mailboxes as well as Mitze and Brown Sugar for me, so two of my fondest memories, returning home and my horses, were hanging on my living room wall. Regardless of where I landed, two watercolors of my childhood on a farm in Kansas hitchhiked.
Driving past the little green, one-room schoolhouse, I saw old machinery from one of Grandpa’s graveyards decorating the playground. I was still amazed that Dad and Uncle Bill had started school here with three other local farm boys. It was closed when he was in grade school, and he had to transfer to the same itty-bitty school in Natoma that I would later attend. At least Dad would have had an easy commute; the schoolhouse was right across the road from Grandma’s.
With the intention of coming back another day, I drove past her house to Dad’s big, cream-colored machinery shed. He would be in the field till he wasn’t burnin’ daylight, so it was deserted. Parking alongside the gigantic sliding doors, I had to go in the side entrance to unlock the bolts and glide them open. As my eyes adjusted, they instantly latched on to the antique black Chevy in the corner.
I had loved pretending to drive this truck, with its snazzy red interior, like a race truck at Daytona. What I never knew back then was how it had gotten the hole through its floorboard. Recently, Dad shared that Grandma created the hole when she had moved Grandpa’s gun without making sure the safety was locked. I also found out what I thought was original speckled, onyx paint was actually black with white paint flecks. My grandparents had been standing in the truck bed trying to spray paint something white, when a gust of wind blew paint back on its pristine, black exterior. All the abuse my black beauty had suffered in silence, and I never knew.
Finding Dad’s blue four-wheeler, I was able to get it started with just enough time to make the overlook by sunset If I hurried. Pulling out onto the shifty, loose rocks, I had to remind myself how to use the throttle and clutch so I wouldn’t spinout. Soon, I was zipping up the road to the far north pasture with the hilltop lookout, and the best vantage point to observe and absorb all the beauty emitted from our land. The view was especially gorgeous during a summer twilight.
After turning into the bare milo field, I followed the fence line down the far side. If I had continued straight, I could have crossed the creek bed and circled back to Grandma’s house. She would bring us down here to scrounge around in the dirt for flint arrowhead fragments that were buried throughout our land. My family’s homestead was in the Kill Creek township which was named for an Indian massacre that occurred there in the 1860’s. I couldn’t take a step in these hills without absorbing generations of history’s blood and carnage through my soles.
Pulling up to the gate, I quickly unhooked the barbed wire loop, opened the fence, and drove in the pasture. I had to be extra cautious that I returned to refasten each gate behind me, so the cows couldn’t take a holiday trip into the neighbor’s field. Driving across the open grasslands, I repeated the process two more times, gaining elevation as I crossed the pastures. Cows were grazing in the distance, and calves were frolicking before they stopped to find their mom’s teat for dinner.
Reaching the last meadow, I parked and walked the final hundred feet to the rocky ledge, so I could pick some wildflowers along the way. A handful of mustard-yellow, thin Goldenrods started my bundle followed by a grouping of violet petalled Asters with sunshine-yellow middles. Rounding out my pack were pinkish coneflowers and easily recognizable Black-Eyed Susans. With its dark brown eye surrounded by bright yellow petals, Blacked-Eyed Susans could be picked out of any crowd. The variety in my bouquet formed a fragrant wildflower melody. Blooms in hand, I took a seat on the edge of the sheer limestone drop-off and waited for the setting sun’s radiance.
From here, I had a panoramic, aerial view. Grandma’s house and barn, Dad’s shed and schoolhouse, and if I squinted hard enough, my childhood home. Wheat fields that were still golden but would be reduced to stubble by the end of the week. There was the creek I had just passed twisting and turning, slicing a line through the land. Below me, where the limestone met the water, was one of the best ways to keep a child entertained…a shale hill.
This slope was composed of loose, black shale rock that stopped right at the edge of the freezing, cold water. My siblings and I would scoot out on a slippery ledge that years of erosion had cut into the limestone wall at the top of the shale. It was wide enough for me to sit and push off, so I could skid all the way to the bottom on the unattached, ebony slivers. I had to stop myself before I slid into a frigid bath, which happened more than once resulting in a black, sludgy mess.
The real challenge came when I had tried to climb back up this steep, shifty mountain. When I had almost reached the top, the loose pieces would move under my feet sending me sliding. By the time I was finally able to reach the ledge, I would be covered head-to-toe in black, chalky dust and ready for my next turn. I never tired of this endless merry-go-round.
Before I could locate any other familiar landmarks, crickets began chirping, a low moo called a little one home to bed, and night started rolling in. The yellow of day began transforming into oranges and reds on the western horizon and flung a glow of dusk across the land. Watching as the light faded to mauve and cast a light, pink blush over the landscape. I could see the faint outline of the moon and north star becoming visible in the night sky.
Standing, I said a prayer, threw my flowers over the side in honor of Grandma, and walked back to the four-wheeler. What started as a sad day had ended in a peaceful reflection and tribute.
Author: Katie Yusuf
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