The Search for Grandma Sparkle

by Darlene Miller

  A few minutes later she saw a doe and fawn under a cottonwood tree. “Oh, Oh, Oh.” Jessica squealed as she ran toward the fawn. “Don’t touch it,” Opal cautioned. “Mother animals don’t like it when people get too close to their babies. The mommy deer might hurt you.”

  They returned to the shack for more peanut butter and crackers and water, leaving the door open.

  Jessica lay down for a nap and was soon fast asleep.

  A gust of wind caught the door and banged it against the house waking Jessica.

  Jessica called “Mommy, Mommy.”

  “Come to Granny.”

  Opal opened her arms to hold the child. “Sh- sh- shush.”

  Opal opened the door again and pointed to a cottonwood tree at the edge of a clearing. A tom turkey gobbled. Sure enough, there he was with three hens and several baby chicks. Jessica wanted to go chase after the chicks but Opal shook her head negatively to indicate no. They watched the turkey family scratch in the dirt.

  “Do you hear the daddy turkey saying gobble, gobble? He is warning the chicks to stay away from you.”

  “But it would be good to have a baby to take home. I’d take care of it.” Jessica protested. . . .

  “How do you know that it is the daddy turkey and not the mommies who are making noise?”

  “Because mother turkeys don’t say gobble, gobble,” her great grandmother answered.

  “You say that mommy animals don’t like anyone taking their babies, I bet that my mommy is sad because we are here.”

  I’m sure she misses you.” Opal answered. She opened her arms to hold the child. “Sh- sh- shush.”

  The child quieted down in her arms but now her arms were stinging or “going to sleep” as Mark used to say. “Jessica, help me get the chalkboard piece on the table and I’ll show you how to make a picture. We need the box in the drawer too.”

  The little girl climbed down from her great-grandmother’s lap and got the items Opal had asked her to bring. She placed the little girls left hand on the chalkboard and drew around it with her fingers spread out. Then Opal added a circle for a head on top of her thumb print and added two eyes and a beak.

  “Granny, you made a turkey.” Jessica said. “I want to make more.”

  “Okay.” Opal answered.

  Listening carefully through the open door, Opal heard a gurgling of water racing down a creek or river. If she was still in Marion County, it was probably either the English Creek or one of the Cedar Creeks. It wasn’t wide enough for the Des Moines River. In the distance she could see brush that seemed to cover rocky slag piles where even weeds didn’t grow. That confirmed that she was probably somewhere near an old coal mine. This cottage was built too well to be the shacks the miners lived in since it had its own pump for water. Probably it was the foreman’s home that later was used as a hunting cabin or maybe since it had a chalk board, it was a one room school house.

  Opal remembered that some of the mines, like the Mammoth #5, were cut sideways into the hill and then went down underground about 40 feet where an eight to sixteen foot vein of coal had run. Other coal mines were surface mines. If it had been an underground mine, there may be a giant hole from ground collapse over it as time disintegrated the timbers used as coal pillars. Stories were told when she was young about cows and horses falling into these holes and disappearing for a time. Sometimes broken glass and cans were thrown into the pit, using it as a place to dispose of someone’s trash and thus filling it in. So it would not be safe to explore outdoors especially with a three-and-a-half-year-old, even if her foot healed enough to walk on.

  Since she and Jessica had to survive in conditions similar to the miners and farming families; Opal thought back to the stories her mother used to tell her about miners. Her parents were farmers. Her mom used to tell stories about the one room school she attended with the miners children. Sometimes she envied the miners’ children because when times were good, the miners’ children had new clothes and the girls had ribbons for their hair while pa spent most of their money on “improvements to the farm.” Of course, the farmers owned their land and the miners didn’t own anything but an old car and the meager contents of their homes. They also owed money to the company store.

  The Mammoth Vein Mine # 5 was gone when Opal was a child but she still attended the one room school called Shiloh, until she was in the sixth grade. Opal remembered the smell of chalk dust as she helped the teacher by hitting the erasers together to clean them. Arie loved to make the blackboard screech as he used a rock on the blackboard when the teacher wasn’t looking. Miss Hall had tossed oily wood shavings onto the hardwood floor before she used a dust mop to shine it. It smelled good to Opal. Opal thought that when she was grown up, she would be a school teacher like Miss Hall.

  Why do I have these Pollyanna thoughts of long ago but can’t remember what happened a few days ago? These thoughts of long ago are not helpful in my present circumstances. Or were they? Focusing on the good, the true and the beautiful as I have done all my life brings light to my world. Without my faith in God and Jesus, I’d be more afraid of my circumstances. Yes, someone could come back and hurt us but fear won’t help us now. I need to focus on how to keep Jessica from becoming traumatized. God and His angels will take care of us.

  She looked at the child drawing on the chalkboard and her thoughts returned to the present; the best thing was to stay put and wait for others to find them. Then she would have ex-rays to check if her foot or her ankle was broken.

  They washed up in cold water since it was a hot and humid day. It felt good to be in their own clothes again. After they shared another can of soup, Jessica asked Opal for a story about animals.

  “Grandpa and I went on a trip to Alaska a long time ago. We saw a lot of different animals. Do you want to hear the poem that I wrote about them?”

  “Yes.”

  “I called it

  Never Pet a Porcupine.

  Do you know that it is true

  Mom’s get angry when their young are new?

  Even though they may be wrong

  They feel their baby is not strong.

  They don’t know what you will do when their baby is so new.

  Even if you think it’s best

  Don’t get too close to an eagle’s nest. Don’t make a habit

  To chase a rabbit.

  Although you think you’ll be just fine Never pet a porcupine!”

  “What’s a porcupine?”

  “It’s an animal that has needles called quills on it’s back instead of fur or mixed with the fur.”

  “I got a shot when I when to the doctor. It hurt. Are they needles like that?”

  “Something like that. They hurt.”

  “I won’t hurt baby animals or pet a porcupine!”

  Grandma Sparkle’s foot was very painful so she laid down on the bed with the pillow under her foot to elevate it and reached for Jessica to cuddle her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Opal was half asleep as she thought about their trips. She tried to remember what had happened to bring her here to this cabin but she soon dozed off, dreaming of Mark and the trips they used to make.

  At first she wasn’t sure which trip she and Mark were on. Where were they going?

  Usually we went to see family in Illinois or Michigan. We did take a trip, sometime in the 1980’s, across the western US until we traveled to Alaska in a borrowed RV the Klooster family had loaned us. Mark took countless numbers of photos and slides of Mary everywhere and of George in uniform after they reached his base in Anchorage.

  When we returned home, Mark would show slides of our trips to friends and neighbors. He included all the names of roads by referring to his maps as he inundated them with details such as when we made our way west on Interstate 90 to the Wall Drug store, the Corn Palace and Mount Rushmore. Then we made a slight detour to Yellowstone National Park, before we followed Glacier Peace Park into Canada on 95 to the British Columbia Highway 1, to Cache Creek and then on
another provincial highway called 97, to Prince George. At Kitwanga, we took the mostly gravel road, Number 37, also called the Cassiar Highway, to the Northwest Territories and the Yukon before arriving at Tok, Alaska. He showed slides of Mary and me, grinning in front of all the vacation spots, plus every river and lake. He even took photos of the jelly donuts that he bought from the bakeries with coffee for us and milk for Mary. He reminded everyone that it was a low cost way of eating lunch.

  Mark referred to his diary for a list of the animals we saw as we traveled but not too many photos of them because they were usually gone by the time we got the RV stopped and the camera in position. One day we saw four bear, a fox, two moose and a rabbit. I had the camera ready when I saw a baby bear peeping out from a bush. I told Mark to stop the car just as he ran across the street in front of us.

  We smelled skunk but fortunately didn’t meet it. We saw where beaver had cut trees down to the pyramid shapes on the stumps but didn’t see the elusive animals. We saw snow topped glaciers on the mountain peaks which melted into waterfalls with milky white silt moving into the creeks, rivers and lakes. We saw five caribou by the Continental Divide and a black bear by Johnson Corners. Twelve mountain sheep, called Stone Sheep, were licking the salt off the highway by Kluane Lake.

  At first our friends, neighbors and church members were glad to be invited for cake and coffee and marathon slide-viewing but after the information overload, people tuned him out. Mark had absolutely no sense about how long hapless people would endure his lectures. He felt that he was entertaining and educating them. This continued until one couple actually went to sleep during one of his slide shows. I enjoyed it but felt sorry for our guests. No group of photos did justice to the wide panorama of the mountains, rivers and glaciers. You had to be there to appreciate it.

  Oh, Mark, I wish you were here. You would help me or maybe I wouldn’t even be in this predicament.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Jessica awakened. With a scowl on her face, she went to the pot to void. “Why do people live in a house like this with no bathroom?” She asked.

  “That’s just the way the houses were made back then.”

  Opal thought back on the outhouse in the back yard of the first house that she remembered living in as a small child in the 40’s and early 50’s. At least it was better than on most farms because her mother had white washed the outside and the inside walls of the building. Lime was sprinkled on top of all droppings to absorb any odor. Then her mother had cut out pictures of puppies and kittens and flowers and hung them on the walls. There were magazines for her to read and use as tissue paper.

  On Saturday night, Dad carried the round metal tub into the kitchen and filled it with hot water. Mother took a bath first, then the oldest girl and my sisters, then the boys, starting with the youngest to the oldest, then my dad. Mom didn’t fix potatoes, meat and vegetables for supper like she usually did. We ate rice with raisins and milk for Saturday night supper. That way Mother could spend her time getting ready for church. She curled the girls’ hair by putting rags in their hair and using bobby pins to hold it together. Our shoes were polished and placed in a row by the door. That way everyone could find their shoes on Sunday morning. Mine were always saddle shoes, either black or brown. Twice a year we got new shoes for church. Then our old Sunday shoes were used for everyday.

  A slop bucket was in her bedroom to use for voiding both at night and when there was bad weather. A metal wash tub was filled with warm water for baths every Saturday night and sometimes more often if the weather was hot. She washed her hair in the kitchen sink.

  She remembered the cold water from the pump that was heated for washing dishes.

  Her friend Hannah had it worse. Hannah lived in a mining town in a house owned by the mining company. The company house wasn’t nearly as nice as Opal’s home. There was an outhouse for every four houses and one outdoor pump for the four families. With lots of kids in each family, sometimes you had to wait a long time.

  In the 50’s Opal’s father put faucets in the kitchen sink. Before the drains were put in, they had a large milk can from the barn to contain the sink water. She was never to pull the plug and let it drain because she might cause the can to overflow and cause a mess.

  Sometimes she got to play at Hannah’s house. Her father brought several miners kids to church and Sunday school. When he dropped them off at home after church, her father would drop her off too so she could play with Hannah.

  It was time to eat some more soup thinned with water and then lie down to elevate her foot again. Why did it hurt so much? Why was it easier to remember back to her childhood than what happened in the accident causing her head to throb and her foot and ankle to hurt and swell?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Mark. Mark, help me” Opal murmured.

  “Who is Mark?” a little voice inquired.

  Opal woke up then. “Oh, I was dreaming. Mark was my husband and one of your grandpas, she answered. . . .

  “I was trying to remember how we got here and how my foot and ankle were hurt.”

  “Charlie dropped you.” Jessica answered matter of factly.

  “Charlie who?”

  “I don’t know the other name but it was the Charlie who fixed your tire.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “You were taking me to play on the swings and slide in Bussey.”

  Opal vaguely remembered that Saturday, she had told Jessica that she would take her to Bussey to play on the park swings. She had left Van Buren to go on Highway 5 and then gone on G-71 toward Bussey; did she go to Johnny Cake Road as she sometimes did to go to Bussey when she returned from Ruth’s house? No, she went on what was Route 526 but now called G-71.

  “The car had a flat tire,” Jessica said.

  Now she remembered that she called the garage in Lovilla to see if someone would come and change her tire. When the guy said that he had already gone to Knoxville to eat and then to work hauling off wrecked Sprint cars at the races, she went to the trunk and got the jack out. She thought to herself that she really couldn’t do this when a battered white Ford pickup with huge tires, drove up. A young man got out of the pickup. He didn’t look too presentable but since the wrecker she had called was already at the races, she sighed and decided to accept the help. Clearly she wasn’t going to be able to fix it herself.

  “Jessica, please stay in the car and be quiet, she whispered.”

  The young man jumped out and approached her. “Would you like help changing your tire?”

  She answered, “Yes, I need help. I’m Opal Spoolstra.”

  He said, “I’m Charlie. Would $20 be okay with you? Normally I wouldn’t ask for money to help someone but I need gas money.” Charlie looked down at the ground when he spoke.

  Opal remembered nodding her head in agreement but wasn’t sure if Charlie saw her so she said.

  “That’s fine.”

  Spying a pair of gloves in the trunk, he quickly put them on. Deftly, the spare tire was removed and replaced the tire which was very flat.

  Opal opened her purse displaying many $20 bills. She noticed that his eyes widened before he put his head down and tried not to show any change of facial impression.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I forgot to put your gloves back.” As Opal returned to the drivers door of the car, she heard the trunk opened again and the gloves replaced.

  Just as she was pulling out onto the highway, she noticed Charlie waving at her to stop. “I think that you had better go to Knoxville to get the tire fixed. Your spare looked a little soft too. I’ll follow you to see that you get to town all right.”

  “Yes, that’s a good idea. Thanks again.” Opal turned around and headed for Knoxville.

  That’s all she remembered until she woke up in the shack.

  “So, how did we get here?” she asked Jessica.

  “Charlie drove us here in his truck. Then Charlie helped you get out but you fell and hurt you foot.”. . .


  “You were sleeping,” Jessica added matter of factly.

  “Did Charlie come back?”

  “Just to carry me and put me in bed by you.”

  Opal wondered what else had happened. Why would she sleep through this?

  Then she remembered that at the bottom of English Creek hill, she had felt that the tire was flat again or was it the other rear tire? She was afraid that she would have to get all the tires replaced. She pulled over to the shoulder as Charlie pulled up beside her and told her, “Your tire needs to be removed and taken for repair in Knoxville along with the flat in the trunk. Just get in the truck and I’ll take you.”

  Opal noticed that Charlie seemed surprised by the car seat with the little girl in it. She thought, He is probably wondering what an old woman was doing with a young kid?

  “I don’t think the car seat will fit in the front seat. You will have to hold her.” the young man said.

  Opal’s first thought was that it not using a car seat for Jessica was illegal. Then she thought of safety. Opal didn’t like leaving the car seat but what was she to do? She couldn’t leave Jessica alone in the car. Besides, she never had car seats for her youngsters and none of them ever suffered for it.

  Opal had trouble climbing into the truck since it seemed to her that it had wheels that were larger than standard and there wasn’t a running board. She put Jessica on the ground and told her, “Charlie will lift you to put you in my lap.” On the second try she managed to climb into the truck by holding on to a handle in the inside. Charlie made no comment but lifted the little girl and put her on Opal’s lap.

  Charlie drove the pickup truck into town to a fuel station that also fixed tires. . . . Opal jumped out of the truck to negotiate the tire repair. She noted that it was easier to jump out of the pickup than to climb into the truck. Jessica sat still looking at Charlie but never said a word. Opal returned to the pickup and announced that it would take from half an hour to forty-five minutes to fix the tires. She suggested that they drive to McDonalds and get some hamburgers.