East of Weldon Spring
Sunday, September 18, 2011
In which the city is explored for relics of the older days…
The day started with a groggy discussion between Collette and OLeif regarding the idea that every person, animal, plant, inanimate object, etc., were the same age… in reality…
And Puck giggling, “You’re exactly wrong! Looks like rain!”
Traced Grandma Snicketts family line one hundred years further back to 1660’s, Germany, at the kitchen counter before breakfast had concluded, while Puck dug into his blueberry yogurt. The Germans did not seem to keep very good records…
On the road past the pale green house: squash and garden-variety zinnias, just before the Louisiana Cafe.
Puck was giggling around in the back seat…
“You’re just a little parsnip, aren’t you?” OLeif asked him.
“Yup. What’s a parsnip?”
“A vegetable.”
“Yup…”
Advertisement at the Presbyterian PCUSA church on N…
Korean Full Moon Luncheon.
Puck was allowed to attend Children’s Church that morning. Afterwards, he explained that they had been learning about self-control…
“We had to look at the cookie, but we couldn’t eat it. We could only smell it.”
This was followed by the fellowship table spread in a ridiculous amount of donuts, muffins, cookies, breads, and cake-breads… Collette refrained.
Brief discussion of Collette’s great-grandfather being the worshipful master of the Free Masons… who was sometimes-mistaken for being the Veiled Prophet…
Back on the ranch…
Rose was mad at Snuggles. Wasn’t everyone those days?…
“Guess what happened to Rose at church last night,” said Carrie, smiling. “Her phone went off during the sermon. And it was Francis calling, so the ring tone was Dance of the Snow Fairies from The Nutcracker. Everyone around her was cracking up. It must’ve sounded like fairies in her purse.”
Then they teased Francis for being right handed…
“I always thought all boys were left-handed, growing up.”
“Come to think of it, they all thought you were going to be a girl at first. That explains it.”
“That’s right. They could tell you were going to be right-handed on the ultrasound, so they thought you were going to be a girl.”
Francis responded wittingly as usual, grinning with his perfect straight white teeth…
“Oh… Oh…”
And OLeif began crooning impossible tunes…
“You’re the best friend in the world… No, you’re not… I’m totally kidding…”
Rose read off the list of items needed to donate to Memorial, should anyone have them…
“What she’s really reading is a list of things she needs to move out,” said Francis with a grin.
Things were sort of moving in that direction.
This led to…
“Whoever sells my wedding dress for me gets to keep some of the profits,” said Collette.
“I’ll sell it!” Rose squawked. “I’ll sell it to the ghetto.”
“There’s no ghettos here,” said OLeif.
“Sure there is.”
“There’s even some in St. Peters,” said Francis. “Every time we drive into Puff ‘o Lump’s neighborhood now, I get that Elvis song stuck in my head.”
He then talked about the resemblance between German and Jack Bauer.
And everyone tried to convince Dad to rescue the hummingbird out of the garage.
The matter of the afternoon was about to commence. Dad and Francis were headed out to help Grandma Snicketts set up her television. Joe was almost returned from his required-rainy-weekend-canoe-float and then out with Wally to switch phones for a cheaper option. So, OLeif driving, Mom, Collette, Rose, and Puck took off in the mini-van for a genealogical treasure hunt.
Intended destinations: the homes in which Collette’s great-great-great grandparents had died, in 1911 and 1933. The first at 207 Ferry St., which was almost all industrialized, except for one last home… 206. And 4930 Thrush Avenue, which was a street of almost entirely ramshackle structures, 4930 being altogether missing. Maybe fire. But then the cemeteries and, thanks to Mom’s ability to read spidery handwriting on death certificates… the missing Hamilton link seemed to have been discovered. Further sleuthing to follow.
There was something peaceful about walking around old city cemeteries in the rain… no one else about.
“When I die, I want a crypt,” said Rose. “And you can have me paraded around in a carriage drawn by horses with big old plumes on their heads. And you can have a full-out choir if you want, singing Requiem. Depends on how rich I am. If I’m poor, a CD’s OK.”
And a drive past the homes in which Grandma Combs and Grandpa Combs had lived as children. Grandma’s house on Cedarwood, overgrown with vines alongside, whose back lawn had once been ‘covered in roses’, as Mom described it. The lace curtains would catch on fire every year from the candles on the Christmas tree… The little Lutheran church a block’s walk down where she and Grandpa had married. And there had been a tamale man on the corner…
And the boys passed the giant jaw breaker back and forth. It was slowly beginning to have the appearance of an eyeball.
Grandpa’s, and the little house just near the tracks where his father had worked the railroad. The community garden down the street where the crazy man, Mr. Elm, who invented hair dye and had invited Great-Grandpa Combs to visit England with him to promote it, and raced his horses in circles around his creepy old house until they foamed at the mouth… Velvet Freeze ice cream down the street. Great-Grandma Combs had worked at the drugstore nearby where they sold hot roasted peanuts. Grandpa Combs had driven his scooter to work…
“Well…” said Rose. “I’m glad I don’t live here. I have to picture these places in the Dr.-Dan-the-Bandage-Man days…”
But they hadn’t seen the kicker yet…
At the last cemetery, [at which Puck found an unusual seed-pod which Rose had convinced him would inspire the dreaded ‘bajoogles’ disease, inciting involuntary dancing] which was unsuccessful in nature… they decided to drive around to the back near the quiet whooshing of the Amtrak tracks.
“Whoa. What is that.”
Just through the woods up on a hill…
“Is that a castle?”
“I don’t know. Let’s go find out.”
A few twisty turns past Normandy High School later…
“What is this place?”
Beastly turn-of-the-century ramparts of a red brick monster, and green spindled towers.
“Castle Park Apartments…”
“Oh, cool! Let’s go inside and check it out.”
Collette and Rose waited in the mini van, watching the ghostly alcoves and the swing set with one baby swing strung three feet to high…
They returned:
“So what was it?”
“Marble floors. Smelled like a hospital…
“It used to be an insane asylum.”
“Wha?…”
“And…”
“Yeah?”
“The girl from the real exorcism… they brought her here.”
“Yeah, it didn’t help that Puck was running around yelling, ‘Look! Humans!’”
This mildly disturbing news send them barreling away past the abandoned brick building just outside the gate with all of its natural eyes blasted out beneath the stone cross above the entry.
On the way home, Puck had finally had enough of the everlasting gobster…
“Daddy. I do not like jaw breakers. I do not. Could we go through the car wash?”
At the house, Francis and Linnea were preparing to leave for youth group with rolls of bathroom towels in hand to play ‘Predator’ or… whatever that was…
Back home.
The occasional rumble of thunder.
Photo spreads of igloo hotel villages and the Northern Lights in Finland…
“Maybe if I win that story contest…” Collette teased.
“We’re going,” said OLeif. “Next summer.”