Front Porch Tales

by Philip Gulley

  There’s a heap of people pulling for that young lady. Lot of folks who stop Ray on the street to ask how she’s doing. When she went to Ohio, she carried a passel of expectation with her. If she fails, the entire town will lose its will to live. Other than that, I don’t think she’s under much pressure.

  Some people would crumble under her heavy weight of expectation. But what would crush others seems only to enliven her. What I’m betting is that ten years from now she’ll be charging a doctor’s kid two hundred dollars a session to help get his head on straight. He’ll moan about how his parents expected too much, and she’ll tell him to grow up and get a life—in a therapeutic way, of course, and with appropriate sensitivity. Then the next time she sees her dear old parents, she’ll give them a hug and whisper, “Thanks for believing in me.”

  She’s learning early on what takes most of us a whole lifetime to uncover—that expectation is a blessing, not a curse. It’s a beautiful thing when people expect something decent of you. It means you’ve given them reason for confidence. Like when John the Baptist was born and his father sang a beautiful song about all the things his boy would do. Then his boy went out and did them.

  Many a powerful life has its start in expectation.

  Doc Foster

  I once visited a friend in New York City. We drove around the city, taking in the sights. It was a grand place and, though I wouldn’t want to live there, I am the richer for my brief stay. A most impressive thing happened the evening I slept at my friend’s apartment. His wife asked him to take out the garbage. He invited me to watch him. Having carried out trash myself, I wasn’t all that excited at the prospect but went along for the sake of politeness.

  He took the trash to the end of his hallway, opened a little door, and dropped the trash in. There was a whooshing sound and the trash was gone, just like that. He explained how a vacuum system sucked up all the trash and carried it away. Remarkable.

  When I was growing up in Danville, our trash-removal system was not as flashy, but it was just as reliable. His name was Doc Foster, and for a dollar a week he pulled up at our curb in his pickup truck, climbed out, threw our trash in the back, and drove away. If we forgot to set our trash out, he’d drive back to our barn and get it himself. When he had a truck full he’d drive out to the town dump on Twin Bridges Road, unload, wet his finger, and put it in the air; if the wind wasn’t blowing toward town, he’d commence to burning.

  Doc Foster was black, the only black man in our town. He lived just south of the lumberyard across the railroad tracks all by himself. I hate to think his skin color dictated where he lived, though I suspect it did, and am to my core ashamed that the first thing we noticed about Doc was his color.

  In other ways, our town rose to splendid heights when it came to Doc. On his seventy-seventh birthday, we held a surprise party for him in the rotunda of the courthouse. That had never been done before, at least in my memory, and hasn’t been done since. Except when President Reagan came to town and we had a big celebration for him. Personally, I think Doc Foster did a whole lot more for Danville than any president ever did.

  Back in the 1930s, during the Depression days, we had a teachers college in our town. Doc would often pass along a little extra tuition money to struggling students, and in this way helped supply our town with a fresh crop of teachers.

  In addition to hauling trash and being a friend to man, Doc made himself available for a whole host of tasks, from raking leaves to mowing lawns. His truck bristled with brooms and rakes of all sizes and shapes. When out-of-town visitors would compliment us on our town’s cleanliness, we would swell with pride as if we ourselves had swept up the trash the dogs had scattered. Doc did what all good people do—made the rest of us look better than we really were.

  Doc Foster died in the winter of ’89. The day of the funeral it was snowing and not many people showed up to pay their respects. My father went and is to this very day saddened that more folks didn’t make their way through a little snow to honor a man who never let foul weather keep him from his appointed rounds. I prefer to remember how a town gathered in a courthouse rotunda and celebrated a man’s contribution while he was still alive to enjoy their praise.

  On the back wall at our Quaker meetinghouse hangs a banner listing the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. When I try to think of what that looks like, my mind returns to a man who found dignity in hauling trash and sweeping gutters. What a gift his memory is to me.

  I didn’t tell this to my New York friend. What I told him was how remarkable his trash-collection system was and how lucky he was to have it. Though I knew the finer blessing was mine.

  The Paper Route

  If you want to learn about life, you can go to college and study psychology, or you can take a paper route. I did the latter while in the fourth grade for the princely sum of seven dollars a week. As paper routes go, mine was small with only twenty-six customers. My friend Bill Eddy had upwards of eighty customers and three times the income, though he was so frazzled, the larger wage seemed hardly worth the struggle. Bill needed the extra money to finance his pinball playing at Danner’s Five and Dime.

  Having a limited clientele allowed me to learn the peculiarities of each.

  Mr. Willard wanted his paper under the brick on the front porch chair so the wind wouldn’t scatter it. He got home late and didn’t want to have to chase his paper down Washington Street.

  The lawyer Vandivier wanted me to hand the paper to his secretary, Miss Dillow. She was so nice and pretty, I didn’t mind a bit. When I grew old enough to start dating girls, I compared every one to Miss Dillow but became discouraged when few could match her charms.

  Mrs. Carter was a widow with two “slow” children. She worked as a waitress at the Coffee Cup and always had a hard time paying her bill. One day I went to collect and she had moved away owing more than four dollars, more than half my week’s pay. That’s when I learned that not paying your bills causes somebody somewhere hardship.

  The Blakes were some of the poorest people on my paper route. They were also the most generous and would often give extravagant tips—fifty cents and more. They depended on tips to get by in their jobs and thus were sensitive to the working class. I would like to banish tips altogether and pay higher prices so folks can enjoy a living wage. It’s terrible to have to provide for your family with a job that relies so heavily upon a fickle thing like human generosity. Anyone who works forty hours a week shouldn’t have to depend on tips to fill their children’s stomachs.

  Miss Myna Towells wanted me to ring her doorbell and hand the paper to her, which I would do. She would thank me and close the door. Every Christmas she tipped precisely one dollar. She pinched her hair up in a tight, black bun. She never married, though I kept hoping some man in a red convertible would spirit her away and bring vigor to her stale life. When I later read that single people don’t live as long as married people, I thought of Miss Towells and wasn’t surprised.

  One of my customers was an elderly man who came to the door wearing women’s dresses. He never offered an explanation, and I never asked for one. Small towns aren’t always the bastions of conformity we think they are.

  Mr. Day was a chain smoker and would sit on his porch in a swirl of blue smoke. You could hear him cough a block away. He was fifty years old when I started delivering his paper. He told me how he began smoking when he was fourteen and how it never hurt him. The next year he came down with emphysema and traded in his cigarettes for an oxygen tank and hospital bed.

  If I had had eighty customers, I would never have gotten to know all these people and their idiosyncrasies. I would have been consigned to a bicycle, flinging papers at porches as I whizzed by. Instead, I climbed off my bike and shook hands and learned of a wider world.

  It established a pattern for living which I’ve tried diligently to maintain—bigger isn’t always better, more money means more worries, and kno
wing people beats knowing about them.

  Streams in the Desert

  Went over to my folks’ house one spring day to celebrate my nephew’s first birthday. Took a walk and saw people out working in their yards, folks I hadn’t seen for years. I saw Mr. Amos Welty down on the corner, raking up the winter deadfall from his yard. Getting the place ready for six months of flowers, starting with the crocuses and ending with the mums. His crocuses were up. I stopped to look at them. He came over to talk, which made me nervous, since we had parted enemies twenty years before.

  Mr. Welty had been a sour man, a mean man, truth be told. Once, he even threw a shovel at me for walking on his grass. I upped the ante the next day by nailing him with a water balloon. He was pulling weeds, stood to stretch, and I caught him amidships—POW!

  He called the town police officer, Charlie Morelock, who put out an all-points bulletin on me. Officer Morelock found me in my front yard. He stopped his cruiser, climbed out, and walked toward me with his hand on his gun. He drew near, reached out, laid his heavy hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said, “Good shot.” He didn’t like Mr. Welty either.

  So I hadn’t talked with Mr. Welty since that time, but it was on my mind when he walked toward me that early spring day. He extended his hand and we shook, which disarmed me. Then we talked about crocuses and other harbingers of spring.

  Twenty years ago, he was corroded with anger; now he was gentleness personified. He had changed. Amos Welty had metamorphosed. I talked with my dad about it. He said Mr. Welty has been nice ever since his mother died. She was all he had, then she died and he was alone. It occurred to him that instead of throwing shovels at children, he should invite them to his porch for bubble gum and cookies. Now his yard has bare spots where grass once grew, but it seems a far lovelier place.

  Read a book that said one’s personality and character are pretty well formed by the age of five. By then folks can tell whether someone will be sipping Ripple in an alleyway or inventing a cure for cancer. At least that’s what the author of this book said—get it right in five years or start saving for bail money.

  I pitched the book. First, because I didn’t need the pressure. I have two children and a spastic colon, so I already don’t sleep nights. But I also pitched it because I know too many Mr. Weltys—folks who changed horses midway across life’s stream. Got tired of the nag of hate they were riding and traded up to charity and grace.

  The prophet Isaiah talks about God making streams in the desert. Talks about how God puts things where they’ve never been before, like love where hate once reigned. Streams in the desert, Isaiah calls it.

  I’m here to tell you these streams are real, for early one spring, when the crocuses bloomed, I waded into one.

  My Grandma, the Saint

  I want to confess my prejudice right up front by declaring unequivocally that my Grandma Norma was the sweetest lady who ever lived. I didn’t realize this until she had passed away, which explains why I drove by her house sometimes without stopping to visit.

  She was past ninety when she died. Stumbled off the back porch, broke her hip, and died four days after the operation that was supposed to make her as good as new. I suspect she overheard the doctor say “nursing home” and simply willed herself to die. Technically, her heart gave out, which makes sense, knowing how much she used it.

  Grandma was the family antidote to the both-parents-working-and-too-tired-to-talk syndrome. Since this isn’t an essay about how we have to work so much because we want so much, I won’t dwell on that. I’ll only say that Grandma decided early on that being there for children was more important than working to buy them stuff they didn’t need in the first place.

  Psychiatrists have the couch, but Grandma had the porch swing and the kitchen table and a certain way of listening as if you were the only one in God’s world worth hearing. Lot of talk these days about the formation of self-esteem and helping children feeling valued, but we want the schools to do it. I remember when an hour with Grandma left you feeling like royalty.

  Given her prospects, I understood her wanting to cross heaven’s threshold. Only thing is, she stepped over before we were done needing her. I wanted my sons to do some swing time with her. Wanted them to hear how there was no one quite like them, and how special they were and handsome and smart. The kind of things Grandma told me. Now I guess it falls to my mom. I wonder if she knows that, or if I’ll have to tell her. I suspect she knows, being Grandma’s daughter.

  I call my grandmother a saint because she’s the only person I ever met who prayed her rosary twice a day. Those were the only times she wasn’t available to us, when she was in her bedroom lifting up her “Hail Marys” and “Our Fathers.” As a child, I resented the notion that talking with God was more important than talking with me. In retrospect, I understand that time she spent in prayer helped her be all the more present for others. Maybe the reason we don’t have time for one another anymore isn’t because we work too much, but because we pray too little. How else can God reorder our priorities?

  At her funeral, the priest said it was a day of celebration. That’s the kind of thing we ministers learn to say in seminary. And it holds up until someone like Grandma dies, then no amount of heaven-talk eases the pain. The graveyard sees a hurt the classroom never knows.

  In the Bible it tell us not to worry, that in God’s house are found mansions aplenty. I don’t think Grandma would like a mansion. Too much dusting. Just give her a porch swing and a child needing love. And throw in a breeze that blows in from the old days, when an hour with a saint made all the world right.

  My Grandpa, the Enigma

  My grandpa was born in 1904 in the Belgian village of Gosselies. His name is Henry, which is where I got my middle name. People call him Hank. Sometimes we call him Hank the Crank. That’s because he can be grouchy. He can also be loving and gentle. Which is why I call him an enigma.

  Grandpa moved to America when he was a little kid. He and his family came through Ellis Island. They moved to West Virginia, and his father worked in the glass factories. Grandpa started school in West Virginia. Like most immigrant families, Grandpa’s family was intensely proud. Never admit you need help with anything. They sent Grandpa to school even though he couldn’t speak a word of English. Today he speaks as well as you or I, though sometimes I catch a trace of Gosselies village in his voice.

  Grandpa was the oldest son in his family. Sometimes his parents weren’t all that gentle—quicker with a swat than a hug. When he was ready to enter the sixth grade, his father said the books cost too much. So he pulled Grandpa out of school, took him to the foreman down at the glass factory, and signed a paper saying Grandpa was sixteen. Grandpa went to work fulltime. He was thirteen years old. He gave his paychecks to his parents. The week before he and Grandma were married, his parents let him keep his paycheck. That’s what families from Gosselies did back then.

  They had three girls. My mother was one of them, along with my Aunt Cathy and Aunt Mary. When Mom was six, she had her tonsils taken out. Grandpa showed up at the hospital with a catcher’s mitt for her. He also gave her a BB gun. He never said so, but sometimes I think he wanted a son.

  When World War II came along, he sold the car and bought all the family brand-new bicycles since gasoline was hard to come by. Mom has a picture of them sitting on their new bikes. Considering a war was on, they looked happy. They rode the bikes everywhere—to Knowles Market and to church. Grandpa walked to work. He still worked at the glass factory, just like his father.

  When he was in his early fifties, the glass factory closed down. They didn’t need people to cut glass anymore, since machines could do it. Grandpa got a job working with an architect. He’d taken drafting classes at night. He designed school additions. Then he got a job selling school equipment and traveled all over southern Indiana. After working in a factory since the age of thirteen, he enjoyed getting out and meeting people.

  When I was growing up, we’d go visit Grandpa.
The first thing he’d say when he saw us was, “Hello, good to see you. When you going home?” Then he’d take me out to his workshop and teach me how to work with wood. Whenever I made a mistake, he’d get impatient and take the tool away. But when we went back in the house he’d tell Mom and Dad I did just fine.

  After sixty-seven years of marriage, Grandma died. Grandpa lives with a little dog named Babe. Babe still goes to Grandma’s bedroom every morning to see if she’s come home from wherever it is she went. I go visit Grandpa, but not as often as I’d like. The last time I went, he took me out to his workshop to show me his new table saw. He told me it’ll last ten or fifteen years. He’s ninety-one. I hope it goes before he does.

  Ruby and the Rain Crow

  My mother-in-law, Ruby Apple, lives on a farm in southern Indiana. She’s lived there since before World War II, in a house whose two front rooms used to be a grain crib. A man with a tractor pulled the grain crib over from Grandpa Linus’ home place. She and her husband, Howard, bought some dairy cows and chickens and sold milk and eggs to the dairy. Ruby remembers lying in bed at night and listening to the eggs crack after her wood stove lost its battle with the winter cold.

  Ruby and Howard had three boys, waited eleven years, then had two girls. Howard used to say they were the best crop they ever raised. The boys went to a one-room school. Poor, disadvantaged things. No swimming pool during gym class, no teacher fretting over their self-esteem. Not knowing any better, the boys went off to college, got degrees, and made something of themselves. Then danged if those two girls didn’t go and do the same.