GROWING UP AMERICAN: A Collection of Childhood Tales Read online

  GROWING UP AMERICAN

  A collection of childhood tales

  By Paula Liddle-Beem

  I would like to dedicate this collection of childhood tales to my parents; Pete and Mary Liddle who gave me the best childhood they could and to my husband John for believing I can do anything I set my mind to. Last but not least to Paolo who encouraged me to just go for it and helped every step of the way.

  The Rocker

  Just about my earliest memory is of being rocked in the old platform rocker in the corner of our living room. As the chair moved back and forth squeaking out its own unique rhythm and the bookshelves swayed in and out of view my mother sang to me. I still love the squeak of a rocker. There was always music in our home; it permeated our lives. Mom's gospels records, and show tunes, old hymns sung while hanging out the wash, dad's ballads, and the blue grass tones of the family playing at the farm. Music still lifts me when I'm blue, and soothes my weary soul. I find solace in all those old hymns and I can still trace it back to my mother singing “My Grandfather’s Clock" in a squeaky old rocker. And yes I can see the whole thing in my head. The rocker had bare wood arms and was upholstered in white. It sat in the far corner of the living room with its back toward the bookshelves.

  Meeting Missy

  There is something about an old friendship that is as warm and soft as a summer breeze. I still remember that September day when the green of summer was fading into the gold of fall. I was standing in the shadow of the trailer that sat on the far side of the Gerard School parking lot, watching the other children running and screaming across the playing field with all of the exuberance that only the word recess can impart. The shadow protecting me from the warm sun was cast by the building that housed my first introduction to formal education: kindergarten.

  I don't remember some of the things my parents tell me I did at that age, but I can clearly picture the white walls, the alphabet strip carefully hung above the black board, the cardboard shoe with the bright yellow laces that I never seemed to learn to tie and even the round table where we ate our cookies and milk before nap time. I also remember Bobby S. stealing my Oreo. There were cardboard bricks for building and probably a little kitchen and dolls. I have no idea what I learned in those half-day sessions but I can see that particular day as if it had just been flashed on a photographer’s camera. I stood there in the shadows of the big tin den watching with wonder the running and jumping of children turn out on grass. Then I looked to my left up the hillside to the tree line. I walked to the hill that wrapped the field like natural bleachers and started up. She was sitting her knees drawn up looking out over the still green grass below.

  The sun burnished her brown hair, glinting off the gold highlights around her face and lighting her blue eyes. Dark hair hung over her shoulder spilling across her red and white-checkered shirt. I stepped up, blocking the late morning sun from her face and did the only thing I knew to do. “I like horses." I stated boldly “Do you?" I'm not sure what she said but that was the beginning of my 40 plus year friendship with Missy. There have been ups and downs, sadness and joy. We've been close together and far apart but no matter what she always takes me just the way I am.

  School House Trail

  It's funny how as kids we don't really understand what we see. I must have been 7 or 8 when my long lanky father decided suddenly that we needed some real trails through the woods surrounding our home. So one warm summer's day, with most of the neighborhood kid enthusiastically in tow, he procured a machete and began hacking away, vines and branches. He somehow managed to produce a somewhat windy but relatively level path from our home to the little creek just below the local school. Within days the little looping trail was hard packed by merry little feet racing along it to splash happily in the stream or build dams.

  We raced our bikes back and forth and hauled them up the steep embankment to the Goshen Elementary School Yard. We were only allowed to be at the school by ourselves until it started to get dark and then we would race back home along black earthen trail. One evening late in the summer dad decided he would take us to the school and let us play until the stars came out. He then walked us all home along the now familiar trail... we scrambled along chattering and trying to see how well we knew the trail even the heavy gloom of night. Watching carefully for the dull shine of reflected moonlight to avoid the 'wet place when suddenly we heard a loud "Whack" and muffled curse. Unobserved by us in the darkness my 6-foot-tall father had encountered the bower - a young sapling that had begun to arch across the trail far below our little heads.

  I don't remember if we laughed but now looking back on it I realize that the sudden urge to blaze trails through the woods had nothing to do with a driving desire for the outdoors but ensure a safe path to and from school for his youngest child. I never in those early years at Goshen felt the violent swoosh of a massive coal truck roaring past at 60 mph. To me it was a wonderful trail, for my pony, or my bike, the green bowers and snowy covered curves a place of imagination and a venture. To my dad it was a trail to safety.

  Riding Bear

  One of the special perks of horseback riding is that the native wildlife can only detect the smell of horse.

  This can be both a blessing and a curse.

  It was late summer and the weather was getting cool. Fruit bearing trees and bushes were packed with their last fare. Low lying blue berry bushes bubbled with deep purple black bulbs, the wild crab apples drooped under, bitter, waxy, red and yellow rock like fruit and the wild black berry bushes swayed their arched limbs toward the earth studded with sweet, and sticky, beads.

  I was finally riding the Colt as Tanner was known at the time and had turned the young and in experienced horse toward the mountain trail that winded its way to Missy's. Generally this path involved scrambling up croft hill and past the old coal tipple, then cut directly across the power line through the valley between two steep mountains. You then simply climbed the dirt mound and up my secret watercourse to Lee Condon road.

  I had just started up the valley and paused to let Tanner examine the dirt mound when he suddenly snapped his head to the left and tensed. Having learned the special rider/horse language I knew there must be a wild animal nearby. I looked to my left and let my eyes work their way up the vine and bush strewn hill on the other side of the stream until the rested on the rotund form of a large bull black bear who had until moments ago been gorging himself on wild black berries.

  The big bull turned his head into the wind, wrinkled his nose and rose slightly up on his hind legs to look across the quickly shrinking gulley and snort his indignation at me. To my absolute horror my young and inexperienced horse snorted back. Thinking fast I put heels to the shiny gold beast and disappeared over the ridge, not stopping until I reached houses.

  Cubs

  Everyone knows that bear cubs are adorable. They are small, round, fuzzy, and bright eyed. Pennsylvania is bear country so it is not uncommon in rural areas to see cubs.

  In the spring if you want to ride in the mountains you need to be aware of what is going on around you. Spring is a new beginning and new life will quiet literally pop up right underneath your horse’s hooves. Most riders have had that heart stopping moment when a tiny speckled fawn with bounce straight out of the grass under your horse nearly tossing both of you.

  On this particular spring day the wind was brisk as I rode up the hill behind Michaels’s home. I came around a gently path lined with sturdy ever greens, when Tanner tensed, ear swiveling forward, and stopped. Observing my horse’s pricked ears, and flared nostrils I looked carefully all around but saw nothing. Clucking g
ently I urged Tanner forward. He took two or three steps and stopped again. Again I looked carefully around me, gazing in the direction my mount indicated but still saw nothing.

  Again I urged the big horse forward and again he took another few steps forward before stopping. That's when I heard the shale on my right rattle and looking down the steep slope watched two black bear cubs sliding down the hill on their fuzzy bottoms. It might have been a sweet scene if the hair on the back of my neck hadn't stood straight up just like the momma bear rising out of the big blue spruce just 10 feet in front of me.

  At the same moment my legs gripped his ribs, tanner spun on his haunches and removed us from the area in a heartbeat.

  Blair

  Blair S. was a wizened old man who lived on the top tier of the last road at the very top of Croft Village proper and right across the creek from me. I became good friends with Blair because of my pony, Flame. Blair had been a coal miner and worked the last of the ponies in the deep mine at the root of the mountain.

  I'm not sure of exactly when I first met the little man who wore stripped suspenders and stood approximately 5 foot nothing but we became true friends through our mutual love of horses and the midnight visit my wild red pony insisted on paying the old man. I was nine when I got Flame and up until that point I slept relatively peacefully in my bed every night with little or no disturbances.

  That all changed one night in the middle of a crashing thunderstorm! The phone rang in the depths of the blustery night and dad came to get me. "Get up," he said gently "we have to get the pony." Be wildered I rolled out of bed pulled on jeans and sneakers and bleary-eyed staggered to the barn. Cold rain pelted my head, as I reached blindly into the shed Flame called home and grabbed up his bridle then crawled already dripping into the station wagon dad backed up as close as he could get to where I stood. Shifting gears, dad turned the wheel and headed down the steep drive to route 189 and turned left, swished a few hundred yards, then turned left again and up the one paved hill road of Croft. Wiring and spinning to the top of the slope, he turned left once more and pulled up the dirt road and around the little white house that was Blair’s' home. As he made the final turn the headlights picked up the reflective orbs of my fierce little ponies eyes. He stood head high rain water streaming down his neck and across his glimmering back in front of the little red barn that housed Blair’s’ precious little mare. Flame had come calling only to find himself locked out of his lady loves affections.

  Blair stepped out into the storm rain hat pulled snuggly over his ears and helped my bridle my hoofed companion and without even a frown helped my throw a sopping leg over a soaking back and turned me for home. Dad followed my slow progress all the way home and helped me lock a dejected Flame snuggly in his stall before we could finally go back to bed. Over the years and through the many horses, Blair was always a final stop in my ride home. We could chat and he would tell me stories or give me sound horse advice. One thing that he said early in my friendship has always stuck with me. One day, with a work worn hand resting on the sleek hide of an equine friend he said, “once you own a horse, your life never seems quite complete without one." I made it a point to visit Blair as many times and as often as I could all through the years and even now that he has gone on. I'm sure he's wrangling horses somewhere in heaven.

  Left by the Road

  There is nothing quite as bewildering at the age of 14 as being left standing in pink pumps, frilly blouse, and stripey skirt along a winding mountain road.

  It was a typical day in my childhood. Dad and Granddad had taken the station wagon and gone fishing so I was told to take the Goshen bus home from school and get off at the farm. Back then no one worried too much if you took a different bus. I had only been at Grandma's house for a short while, when Jonathan, who was working at McDonald’s, called needing us to pick him up. Since dad had our car, Mom, Grandma, and I got into Granddad’s dark green Aspen and started along the winding path toward town. I was contentedly reading my Louis L'Amour in the back seat when mom thought she was getting a flat tire. We had just reached the bottom of Kaufler's run so she pulled off the road onto one of the cleared spaces where everyone parked to fish in the cold, clear stream as it raced between the two mountains. "Paula, get out and see if we have a flat." Mom commanded so I opened the door got out and looked at the back tire, which was fine, I then squeezed around the open door and examined the front tire. "Nope everything looks fine," I shouted over the sound of the engine and noise of the brook. "Well check the other side then," Mom called back. So shoving the door closed I walked around to the other side of the car to check out the tires.

  At this point I should mention that a Good Samaritan had pulled his black pickup truck onto the clear space across the road from us. It is to be assumed that seeing three helpless women in distress along the roadside that he kindly decided to stop and assist. Standing just to the back of the rear passenger door I looked carefully at both tires and called out, “everything looks fine here." Where in reply my mother promptly put the car in drive and sped off across the bridge and around the bend. The good Samaritan by this point had gotten his driver’s door opened and his feet almost on to the ground, only to observe mom leaving and me standing, pink shoed, roughly bloused, stripey skirted, gaping like a dead fish at the taillights of the little green car. I never did find out who this kind soul might have been because at that point he collapsed full length along his bench seat, laughing hysterically, knees jerking, horn spasmodically beeping as he writhed in sheer hilarity at what he had just seen. Fortunately for me a friend of my cousin Mark stopped in a bright orange Ford Bronco and offered me a lift. When I got to Mark and Kitty's place at the top of the hill, he was giving the boys a snack. I quickly called Jonathan at McDonald’s and told him the whole story and had him promise to get me at Mark's house. When I hung up the phone Mark was laughing so hard he spilled the milk. The best or maybe the worst part of this tale I was not privy too, but apparently neither Mom nor Grandmarealized I wasn't in the car until they got to the restaurant and told me to go get Jonathan.

  Ronda And Speedy War

  Speedy had her own ideas about things and was pretty well determined to have her own way. She had the whole household trained to get up and open the back door for her when she jumped up in the living room window; even dad though he'll never admit it. She was also particular about her breakfast and loved the opportunity to sneak attack anyone and everyone who was careless enough not to watch for her. It was not uncommon to hear any of us cry out in surprise as a set of perfectly cleaned paws darted out to grab us from under a bed, or sofa. No one was safe but I especially think she loved to torment guests.

  This became evident when Ronda would sleep over. Several times Speedy darted away, an expression of delighted glee, on her feline face after she had silently crept up on Ronda who was peacefully reading a book. Speedy would simply walk in and pounce right onto the book without any warning at all. The best however was when Ronda woke up screaming with a Calico face inches from her own.

  Pet Graveyard

  Since I am on the subject of pets tonight I think I should mention the pet graveyard. I know that many people have a beloved pet buried in their back yard, and that some people even pay for a special resting place for their animal companions. We simply had a rock strew corner of the woods where we buried our pets. It was an unpleasant reality that we lived near a busy highway, and inevitably animals would stray onto the road and meet their untimely demise.

  As a child it was always heart breaking to deal with this situation but one comfort was that we always had our dad. He would go with us to collect the deceased, bringing with him a cardboard box or a blanket, or a shovel depending which one was needed and gently lift the poor creature from the road and then he would walk us to the 'grave yard and dig the hole. He always found a kind word for the dearly departed and then would place a stone at the animals head and we would all go back down the hill and home. I remember being in high school and bein
g told we had to read “The Red Pony" by Steinbeck. I didn't say it at the time but I refused to read that story.

  Finally in ninth grade I asked the English teacher why we had to read such sad stories. She sweetly replied, “Children need to learn about death and that bad things happen." I looked her in the eye and stated as calmly as I could “That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I know all about things dying we just scraped my sisters cat off the road with a snow shovel. Reading should be something to enjoy." I'm afraid I left her a bit pale and speechless. She avoided me for days after that. Somehow I still don't feel ashamed of that day and I have a better answer for my students when we read stupid stories in school than the one she offered me that day. Spooky in school

  School and Pets

  School and pets, two topics that on the surface don't seem at all compatible but we seemed to manage to combine them more often than you would think. One of the amazing things to me is that my parents never seemed to blink an eye at the ideas we came up with like when we took Ronda's pony to class. We were doing demonstration speeches that year and for some reason Ronda felt, and I agreed, that the right way to groom a pony would be the way to go. We got permission to take Spooky to school and our folks said go right ahead. I'm sure it didn't take three of us to get a pony a mile to school, but three of us there were. The classroom was prepped with reams of plastic on the floor and with Kim and I beside her Ronda rode Spooky right into Clearfield High.

  Too Much Grace

  Good food was just a fact of life for us. Everyone cooked and everyone cooked well. Anytime anything was going on, a wedding, a birth, a barn raising, everyone would turn up at the farm and along with the good music, and the visiting, we would eat.