Author: Sheri

My Guest Author, my dad, grew up where the magic lives

The sky was covered with storm clouds. The January day was short without the thick clouds blanketing the afternoon light. Snow had been falling for the last two hours. Now, the wind was whipping it across the long open flat. The horses faced into it. The family huddled in the wagon.  The heavy robes, made from Angora goat hides, failed to keep out all the cold.

At times the wagon trail was wiped out. The Thompson hills had disappeared. The mountains behind them were blotted out. The team moved slowly ahead.  They knew the way even when they could not see the ground ten feet ahead. They stopped at a gate in a barbwire fence which stretched from the hills on the left to the drop off in the canyon on the right.  

One of the boys opened the gate and the team plodded through. They had three hours to go. The light was gone. 

More than the light was gone. The woman fought against a quiet despair made worse by the howling blizzard. Her husband was gone. 

The children were not gone – the wagon was full of her children. The older boys, now grown into men, took turns facing the wind while the others covered themselves the best they could.  

That was the way the day was ending. That was the way the week was ending.  If she had any tears left Guadalupe Brannin did not share them at this time. 

Her husband was dead.  He was gone.  

She had a foreboding of that when he left some weeks earlier to get to a town with some medical help.  He had on his corduroy trousers. The crown of his hat was pushed down in Texas style.  He rode old Bob. He’d been invincible, but now, the invincibility was claimed by a grave on the far side of town thirty miles back and across the river.

“Mama,” one of the boys said, “Mama, we’re in no shape to make it home tonight.” 

 The Grossfield cabin was just up ahead.

“We’d better stop.”

The team pulled off to the right where a log cabin huddled against the rolling hills. A dog barked a welcome from his nest in the barn. The door of the cabin opened. Abram Grossfield looked like an angel from heaven, and the family came in out of the storm.

They would remember that night. They would remember that there was a welcome after a storm, that there was hope after a graveyard. 

The fire was warm. The children were fed. Condolences were given. There was talk of the mountains and the news from the settlement. And the house was warm.

The next morning the storm had eased up. The wagon was loaded. The team plodded up the draw and over the hill that broke down to the Sweet Grass. By then the sky had cleared. From the top of the ridge Guadalupe Brannin looked down into the mountain valley. She saw the log house on the far side of the valley, and the root cellar that the boys had dug into the hillside just in time to hold a wagon load of potatoes for the winters supply. 

She’d been there only two years, but this was home, and home is where the magic lives. 

by my guest author, my dad, with a story from the mountains

 Sister Ellen was born on the Fourth of July. This gave her an identity with American History. In her imagination she took part in such things as the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Boston Tea Party. Oft times she said, “Let’s play the Revolutionary War.” Being born on the Fourth of July also gave Sister an heritage of independence and revolution. Like the signers of the Declaration of Independence, she fought against the British, and a British person lived at our house.

The Britisher was Grandfather Ward. He carried a lot of fire in his youth, but they let him stay in Great Britain until he was nearly sixty years old.  When he was retired, but not burned out, he came to the States to reclaim them for the British Empire. He didn’t make a success of this which made him touchy. This touched off Sister Ellen.

Grandfather and Ellen had a communication problem. My seven-year-old sister didn’t know that “heather” was a bush.  When Grandfather said, “Sookie, do you see the birds flitting in the heather?”  Sister stared at him with her mouth open. Other words caused similar problems.  She thought that “fetch” was a dog’s name.  When Grandfather said, “Sookie, fetch me that magazine,” she looked at him and growled.  If they were on a collision course through the house, he declared right of way. “Mind the way, Sookie, mind the way.” ometimes he looked at her like she was jolly well daft and said, “Mind what you’re doing, Sookie.  Mind what you’re doing.” Sookie found it difficult to mind her mother, let alone to mind her way or mind her chores.

Grandfather had been a prize fighter back in the days when the art was called fisticuffs and the fighters used bare fists and poised for Currier and Ives pictures. Grandfather used to soak his hands in salt brine to make them tough for the art of fisticuffs. In his younger days boxing matches lasted many rounds and a round didn’t end until it had a knockdown. There was none of this nonsense of ringing a bell before someone was hearing bells.  Grandfather wanted to bare‑fist‑box even though he had reformed and moved to the States.  And then he fell down and broke his leg.  Now he was laid up in the bedroom under the attic.

One afternoon, before Mother left for the garden to pick peas, she gave some last minute instructions.  “Robert,” she told me, “I expect you to mind your sister.” Then she turned to my sister.  “Ellen,” she said, “don’t wake Barbara from her nap, and don’t you children bother your grandfather.” “Oh, we won’t,” Ellen promised. This meant that she wouldn’t bother Barbara because our younger sister acted like a cat with his tail caught in the door when she first woke up. Furthermore, Ellen would be cautious about Grandfather.  However, she had a Fourth of July Spirit that kept her looking for British soldiers to battle.

The attic was strategically located above Grandfather’s bedroom. The attic floor had large cracks in it. The largest ones were over the bed. There was a huge knothole in the floor straight above Grandfather’s snoring nose. The elder Ward complained. He complained because we ate hot bread (biscuits). He griped about children knocking dirt down through cracks in the ceiling over his bed ‑ especially when he was laid up with a broken leg. He complained that he didn’t get the respect an elder was due ‑ although he had a box of apples beside the bed because someone wanted him to recover.

When Mother was in the house we couldn’t play in the attic. She didn’t want us to knock dust down on Grandfather.  Mother didn’t like to hear Grandfather scold.  But now she was outside and Sister said, “Let’s go play like the attic is Bunker Hill.”

“We better not,” I suggested.  “We’ll knock dust on Grandfather.” “He’s asleep,” Ellen replied. “We’ll get caught.” “Mother is down in the garden picking peas and changing the water.  And besides, Mama said you were supposed to mind me.  Now climb the ladder into the attic.”

We walked across the attic floor. Suddenly a voice growled from the lower regions. “Hey, you tots, what are you doing up there?” “Nothing,” came Ellen’s sweet reply. “Nothing,” I added.  “Just playing.” “Your mother wont let you do that. You’re knocking trash down on my covers.” “Let’s have a parade,” Sister suggested. We paraded. “I say, you tykes, quit that bloody tramping.” “We’re marching.” “I’ll pitch you down the stairs.  Do you want me to throw you down?” Sister Ellen whispered. “He can’t get up here. He has a broken leg.” “Watch me jump,” I said.

Then we saw the knothole. We peeked through the knothole. A Britisher eyed the little eyes peering from the ceiling. Ellen remembered what the New Englanders did at Bunker Hill. She scooped up a handful of torn paper bits and dust and handed it to me. “Don’t fire until you see the whites of his eyes,” she said. I saw the whites of his eyes.

The Britisher’s eyes closed. He blew puffs of paper off the end of his nose. “Hey, you scamps!”  he threatened, “I’ll tell your mother, and she’ll bloody well smack your bottoms.” He sounded serious and his face was red ‑ a serious color with Grandfather. Ellen looked at me. Would a Britisher tell on someone who was born on the Fourth of July?  I nodded my head.  I thought he would tell. I looked at Ellen. Would our mother make an appropriate response? “That’s the kind of woman she is,” Sister sighed.

With an ally like that, a Britisher would surely win the Second Battle of Bunker Hill. We crawled out of the attic and made a peace treaty.  When Mother came home we were playing on the front porch.  Grandfather was laying in bed with a smile on his face.  He had fought another round and won the bout.