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There are yet plenty of days in October that will offer patio reading time. Morning coffee is taken before the pan fire in sweats and flannel shirt, while waiting for the desired temperature increase prompting the return to shorts and tee.
Dazzling Hoosier leaf paint, an October spectacle, has washed over Angelkeep. Brightest and at its peak of color is the poison ivy that vines two stories upward into a woods oak tree. It’s visible from the patio, reflected on the pond, and emphasized due to the dark oak leaf green, a complementary color, yet serving as a background. Even poison ivy has its day.
I set aside my reading, watch the Wells County leaf version of the Northern Lights, and remember a poem, “Leaf Use”, written by a Hoosier lady. Jessamyn West is the author.
“Leaves are wind’s lips full of wind’s saying. Leaves are green strips full of wind’s swaying. Tree they abhor, old earthly anchor. Wind they were made for, for him they hanker.”
Those words seem made for today’s leaf rain. Angelkeep’s falling leaves sometimes look like a rainbow downpour. West also had words for the pesky fly who has decided my writing hand is the perfect perch for the day.
“Dear God please let me see just once before I die—some ointment that is clear, completely free of fly.” I say, “Amen,” to Jessamyn’s “Modest Prayer.”
The wind’s settled again and I return to my original book. It’s more Hoosier ladies’ words. It’s a pair of books—found on eBay. It’s a collection of memories from Indiana homemakers published over 20 years ago. I’m enjoying finding some stories from people with Wells County ties. I wonder if Barbara Elliott remembers sharing this.
“My father used to, if you burned your finger, he used to go around in a circle and say some secret words. It was supposed to take out the fire. Grandmother did it too. As I was always laughing at it, he would never tell me what it was.”
I burned my finger once, and I ran in circles and said some secret words too. (Me, not Barbara, mind.) In my case, in necessitated asking forgiveness after the “fire” cooled.
Judi Merkel shared about her school’s hot lunch program. They had “wonderful meals” complete with “homemade doughnuts and, oh, the peach cobbler, and homemade chili.” Sounds like fall. Probably those cooks used tomatoes from their own gardens, which happened in several Wells County school kitchens.
Autumn means school—always has. Birdena Day remembered and shared that she “started school when I was four. They didn’t have a law about it. I had a best buddy who was starting and I wanted to start, too. I did know my letters and my numbers, so my mother did allow me to go.”
I never knew Ruth Grover of Wells County but I did experience what she shared from her youth about having running water. “We had running water. You pumped water in a bucket and then you run with it.” My own experience was on a farm east of Uniondale in the 1950’s.
It seems amazing that Fred’s story of local horse rustling is included in a book with 325 ladies. But then Fred Park was an amazing person and accomplished things others could not. He told of the “Africa (south Liberty area) Detective Association. There are stories of rustlers driving horses into centralized areas; painting the blazes off the face; or painting white feet off; then driving them into Ohio and selling them. One of the rallying points was supposedly down in Jackson Twp.” I crave more from Mr. Park.
Barbara Elliot “was fascinated with the gypsies. They had wagons then. They would stay there—we lived out along the river—for a couple of weeks and camp down there and fish in the river. My mother would say, ‘Never go down there,’ and as soon as she said it, I was gone. They would talk in broken English and I was fascinated. They used to have a banjo or a guitar they used to play, and they would sing.”
Patio pan fire smoke puffs at me as I read of gypsies stealing chickens from Barbara’s farm. I add a log. Plenty more to read, and the leaf colors have joyously turned sunshine brighter.
It’s a perfect October day at Angelkeep. And Hoosier ladies are filling my literary need. I just may find something in my Marion author (Betty Wason) cookbook and surprise Gwen with a patio-pan campfire cooked dinner. “There, on page 48, Hamburgers Hollandaise. What’s Hollandaise? Maybe I should substitute jalapeños for Hollandaise. I can always ask forgiveness, again, after the ‘fire’ cools.”
Mr. Daugherty is a Wells County resident who, along with his wife Gwen, enjoy their back yard and have named it “Angelkeep.”
by ALAN DAUGHERTY
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