Time Everlasting

{Prompt: What do you remember of your relatives?}

My Aunts and Uncles

As I grew up, around age four or five, I became aware that my mother had two brothers and a sister, and I had numerous cousins. They just didn’t live nearby. Her brothers were Bill and Frank (Whitesell). Her sister was Mary Lou (Minyard).

Uncle Bill and Aunt Corinne lived in Yellow Springs, Ohio, with their children. They were “The Whitesells”. Aunt Corinne had two children from a previous marriage who were adopted by Uncle Bill when they married. They were part of the family. But Aunt Corinne also lived a long time in Anchorage, Alaska, without Uncle Bill, for reasons unknown. That was just the arrangement.

Uncle Bill was a physics professor at Antioch College for years upon years, and he was an avid runner, even running up forest roads into the mountains from my grandparents’ farm in the Shenandoah Valley. Uncle Bill was a boy scout (probably an Eagle scout) as a kid, and I’ve seen pictures of him with a violin. It seems like he was good at everything he did. He was probably the pride of the family.

Uncle Jim and Aunt Mary Lou lived in Starkville, Mississippi with their family. They were “The Minyards”. Uncle Jim was a chemistry professor at Mississippi State University. Uncle Jim was probably a Baptist, judging by his fervor for the Bible and his zeal for spreading the Word. Aunt Mary Lou became his wife, and the mother of five children. She must have been a wonderful mother, judging from the happy disposition and affection of her children. Whether Uncle Jim was a wonderful father or not, I can’t say for sure. Uncle Jim had strong opinions and seemed to see the world in terms of right and wrong. I felt like his expectations might have been hard to live up to — a feeling that was confirmed at his funeral, when my cousin Tommy said as much.

Uncle Frank lived in another part of Mississippi. He lived in Hattiesburg, where he was an Economics professor. Although he was married to a woman named Dixie, they were divorced after 7 years, and he never married again. I don’t know why. If he had other relationships down in Mississippi, they were never discussed.

The few times that we met, he always had a gentle smile, treating me with kindness, and treating me as if I was an adult. Possibly he had learned how to treat young men with kindness and ease, from his experience as a college instructor. He had no children, and left all of his retirement savings to his sister — my mother, Margaret — when he passed away. He died from cancer in 2017.

Frank, Margaret, Mary Lou, and Bill - circa 1990.

My Cousins

My cousins, the Whitesells of Ohio, included David, Selwa, Betty, Janet, and Danny. My cousins, the Minyards of Mississippi, included Susan, Tom, Barbara, Carol, and Billy. I always think of my cousins as the children that they were in the ’70s, because that’s when we saw each other the most—wandering around the farmhouse (“The Farm”) in the Shenandoah Valley, near Stanley, Virginia.

David and Selwa Whitesell were the oldest, and were sometimes absent at family get-togethers (possibly doing things with their mother, Corinne, or possibly doing things that older children would enjoy.) When they did show up for a get-together, I had to be reminded that they were my cousins. They just didn’t hang out with us much. I thought they were already all grown up, but in reality, they were only six or seven years older than me and my brother.

Susan and Tommy Minyard were only a little bit older than my brother, Mike (three and one year older, respectively), and they were naturally expected to come up with fun things to do whenever there was nothing to do. And that was most of the time, since the adults were usually engaged in boring conversation, and we never had access to a TV at the farm.

Betty Whitesell and Barbara Minyard (the middle children) were closer to Mike’s age (maybe just a little bit younger), but I think that he spent more time hanging out with Tommy. He and Tommy were both little mischief-makers, looking for ways to get themselves in trouble, and then trying to keep word of the mischief from reaching our dads, who might very well have given them a whuppin’ if they felt it was justified.

Janet Whitesell and Carol Minyard were just about the same age as I was. I had never had a sister; so when I met a female relative — a cousin — that was my age, in my family, I studied them with a great deal of curiosity, as if they were extraterrestrials or body snatchers.

Danny Whitesell was about my age, and Billy Minyard was just a little bit younger. Now they call themselves, Daniel and Bill, respectively, but back in the 70s, they were still Danny and Billy. They were along for the ride. And so was I, most of the time.

Most of us at my grandparents’ 50th anniversary – July 1976

The Farm

Most of the time, we met each other at the farm in the summer, or sometimes, at Thanksgiving. I think that once we met for Christmas at my grandparents’ first home, in Columbia, South Carolina. I vividly remember a small decorative sculpted metal tree with colorful jellied gumdrops at Christmas time, and a rendition of O Little Town of Bethlehem, by Uncle Jim, at bedtime, in an unabashedly mellifluous, baritone singing-voice.

Christmas in Columbia, South Carolina with the Minyards

And once we went to Hattiesburg, because I remember going to the Mississippi State University student center and playing some improvised game (without pool sticks) at a pool table. That might have been the same time that I went exploring with somebody near my age in the belly of a church, behind or under the altar, and I got a reprimand from my mother, because the congregation could hear us screaming in glee while we were playing hide and seek, or tag, or some other ad hoc children’s game.

But every other time, we were at the farm, the historic farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley that had been built around 1830 by my ancestors. It was built in pioneer times. Now it is listed as the Locust Grove property in Page County, by the National Register of Historic Places, but once it was simply known as the Old Jacob Brubaker house.

“The Farm” in Page County in the Shenandoah Valley

Most of the time, while we were at the farm, we were exploring. We would go back, past the lawn of the backyard… and down, into the cow pasture, dodging Frisbee-sized cow-patties, and avoiding thorny thistle plants that were as tall as a rake.

We would wander down the two ruts of the dirt road that led to the cow barn, and look into the big barn doors, opening on their rusty hinges — looking at the bits of hay suspended in the air above the upper floor where there was a hay loft. Or we would wander a little further down, to the lower floor where the mud was impressively deep, having once been gouged into deep hoof prints by cattle during the rainy season.

We wandered sometimes all the way to the creek at the bottom of the sloping pasture, and we would attempt some feat of hydraulic engineering with whatever objects we could find to use as building materials (mostly big rocks and mud).

Usually I was distracted by dragonflies, with their metallic sheen and iridescent bodies, perching imperiously on a blade of tall grass… or hovering over the water in a perfect state of suspended animation… or gliding through the air in lines as straight as vectors… completely unlike the circuitous paths of the houseflies, moths, and butterflies.

On one occasion, we walked down to the creek by way of the country road, the one that headed north towards Ida and Luray. At the bottom of the hill, where the road crossed the creek, we turned onto a flat metal, grated structure, sort of like a pier, that extended away from the road about 10 feet out over the brook. I have no idea what it was for.

As we went out onto this lookout point, we stirred up a nest of bees or hornets. I think it might have been Tommy, Mike, me, and Billy. There was a lot of screaming as one of us got stung, and the prospects of more stinging seemed assured as a small swarm of buzzing vespids started flying all around us, chasing us up - at least halfway up - the hill, back to the farmhouse. I think that Billy suffered several stings. I ran the fastest, when the alarm was raised, and came away mostly unscathed.

We also explored the crawl space and the basement underneath the house. But they were cold and dank compared to the area beneath the porch. The back porch of the old farmhouse was covered by lattice, and the space beneath was relatively cool and comfortable on a summer day. We could stay hidden beneath the back porch for hours. I rarely ventured farther back into the darkened basement beneath the house. I only learned later that there were rooms and cots under the house that had once belonged to domestic servants or slaves.

We loved to go down to the pump house where a 3 or 4 foot tall, heavy hunter green, cast-iron water pump stood, right above a trough, where the water from the well could be pumped into the cow pasture. On the antique pump there was a long curving pump handle that with the proper ministrations — a long sweep of up-and-down pushing and pulling — could be persuaded to suck water up from far below, and send it gurgling out of the sizable spigot. That was the best mechanical creation I had ever played with!

The Pump House on “The Farm” (without the pump)

There was also a large farm bell placed atop a 4x4 post, right outside the back door to the kitchen. There were no cattle and no farm hands at the farm in my lifetime, but the bell was still there, and once or twice it was used to beckon us children back to the house. I thank grandma let us use it once to call grandpa in from his woodshed.

The woodshed — in the back, off to one side — was the place where granddad crafted his black walnut stools, side tables, picture frames, and weather vanes. It was a thinly clad wooden structure with a very small, open crawlspace — a crawlspace only big enough for cats and vermin to crawl beneath — too small even for preschoolers. On the stoop, at the door to the shop, I recall the smell of varnish and the swirl of sawdust in the air — the interior mostly hidden in shadow. Children were not generally welcomed amongst the cutting tools or the finished wooden projects, which were waiting for the glue and varnish to dry.

There was also an ancient graveyard on a small hill between the farmhouse and the mountains. It contained the graves of a few of the Brubaker ancestors that once lived on the farm — some of them, infants. The graves were out past the outhouse — well past — at the edge of the yard, where the woods began.

The outhouse itself was at the end of a flagstone path that ran beneath an arbor of grapes. Night and day the rickety wooden door was secured by a swiveling wooden latch, which could easily be dislodged, allowing the door to accidentally open. Someone had added a cabin hook on the inside, allowing the occupant to keep the door closed more securely — a small concession to privacy. Still, there was little comfort in using the outhouse, as the stench of it was certainly far greater than a modern bathroom — more nearly in line with the overwhelming odor of urine and feces in a Porta John.

The Outhouse on the Farm.

The House

We also spent many summer hours enjoying the cool interior of the old farmhouse. The best part of it all (inside or out) was the wide banister rail of the grand flight of hallway stairs in the middle of the house. The rail was at least six inches wide, securely fastened, and as slippery-smooth as a water slide. A child with even the least amount of balance could easily slide five to ten feet down the banister rail, slip off to the side, and land on their feet. If there were any fear of sliding across the curlicue of the rail at the bottom of the stairs, one could make an easier slide above the turn in the stairs, at the landing near the top.

In the attic could be found vintage toys from a bygone era — dilapidated editions of The Marvelous Land of Oz, wooden spelling toys, and toys loosely associated with the old TV Batman series. “Wham! Pow!”

In the kitchen, there were other vestiges of life in the past. Water from the outdoor pump was brought to the kitchen and ladled into a basin, and there we would wash our hands for dinner. A tank-sized antique oven had been decommissioned, and now adorned the corner of the dining room — replaced in the kitchen by a less primitive version from the ‘60s or ‘70s.

Next to the kitchen, there was a small screen porch with dozens of shelves holding pickled vegetables and canned fruits. Sometimes, not far from the canning room, we would assist the elders in shucking the corn (they preferred white corn), snapping green beans, or peeling potatoes. Granddaddy kept a vegetable garden with ten to twenty rows of produce off to one side of the front yard, between the carport and the grape arbor. Sometimes we would see him out in the garden, working away.

Grandmother confined her preparations to the kitchen, and, when she was ready, she had a tiny silver bell to summon family to the dining room in the farmhouse addition. When the bell began to tinkle, lazy readers and napping cousins, from all over the house, began to assemble around the boardroom-size table, filling up the the entire dining room, and then some.

We found seats or stools all around the table, sometimes a baker’s dozen, or more of us, drawn up elbow to elbow. Platters and bowls of steaming food sat, equally crowded, across the table, from end to end.

We gave thanks for our blessings, hands cupped in prayer, or we peeked out at the relatives, heads reverently bowed. Then we began to pick and choose, from the bountiful options, what buttery-delicious cooked vegetables to consume, whether to take a biscuit or a roll, and how much meat to fork over.

Slowly the food was passed around — sometimes getting more distant, sometimes closing in. When the meal was finished, we asked to be excused, or we waited for dessert.

Time Slips By

When we went to the farm, we took a step back in time, and time seemed to lose its meaning — the magic of a simple life.

Talking… playing… gathering… eating… sleeping. We communed with the family — doing all things together.

We communed with our ancestors — sepia portraits on the walls and ghosts in the graveyard.

We communed with the valley:

—Dragonflies whizzing over the brook and the field at midday.

—Fireflies twinkling across the lawn at dusk.

—Crickets chirping at night.

Time slid by seamlessly, as life on the farm moved from season to season, and the people came and went.

Comings and Goings

My family — my father, Gerry; my mother, Meg; my brother, Mike, and I — went to the farm many times, driving up from North Carolina and across the mountains of Virginia so often — once on the way up, and again on the way back — that I know every gap in the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Sometimes we went to see a Civil War battlefield. Sometimes we went to see the historic Natural Bridge. Several times we saw the Caverns in Luray, or the Johnny Appleseed Restaurant in New Market.

We also swam at the Hawksbill pool, when the asphalt on the roads was hot enough to fry an egg. We attended service at Stanley United Methodist Church, crowding into a small partitioned annex for the Sunday School lesson. We drove along the narrow roller coaster roads of the back country, bouncing out of our seats when the car hit a dip or a hump in the road.

I’ve seen my cousins as adults since then, visiting Barbara (and Ron) in Maryland for a lobster boil, visiting Tom (and Liz) in Golden, Colorado before hiking in the Rocky Mountains, visiting Carol (and Jim) in Petaluma, California, before touring the wine country.

And I’ve seen them at weddings and anniversaries and funerals. Betty (and Mark) came, wearing full Roaring ‘20s attire, to Mike’s costume wedding. The entire Whitesell clan was in attendance for the 50th anniversary of Bill and Corinne. (Selwa showed us the quirky shops of Yellow Springs, a progressive enclave, overflowing with arts and crafts.) ‘Most everyone was there, that could be there, at Graves Chapel, to sing The Old Rugged Cross when Granddad passed away in 1991, and when Grandma died, about two years later.

Whitesells (clockwise) - Selwa, David, Bill, Betty, husband Mark

The Farm has been sold once or twice since then, passing out of the family, and into the caring hands of other members of the community.

The water pump has been removed and the well has been covered.

The woodshed is empty of sawdust and varnish. The pantry, empty of pickles and jam.

The graves on the hillside are hidden by brambles and overgrowth.

The children that played capture the flag around the venerable house have all grown up, and have children (and grand-children) of their own.

Still….

The dragonflies hover and whizz.

The crickets’ wings twitch and chirp.

The fireflies twinkle and glow.

Time stands still.