Shelter from the Storm

Rain down, you heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness.*

James King stood on his front porch watching the water that overflowed from the gutters form a v-shaped canal in the earth below. It had been raining continuously for two days. This was no ordinary rain. It fell from the sky with an intensity James had never seen before. He knew this on good authority because he was a farmer and farmers are always attuned to the weather. The weather governs everything for a farmer. It is his salvation and his downfall. If it is too hot and dry during the growing season, his crops will wither in the fields. If it is too wet, planting season will be delayed because he can’t plow his fields or the rain will wash away the seed already in the ground. Weather is his master and must be granted the respect it demands.

James had seen wet springs but this one was different. The volume of water driven by powerful winds defied description. The preacher at the Presbyterian Church, where he was a deacon, had used it to illustrate Noah’s reluctance to obey God’s commands. Even Old Man Burns, as everyone affectionately referred to him, said he’d never seen such rains in his ninety- four years living in Marion County, Ohio.

Neighbors who had managed to get home on the water-logged roads from town before all the bridges had been washed away, said the local newspaper, the Marion Star, was reporting that there was massive flooding from Vermont to Illinois. Some people were even wondering if this was Armageddon or the second inundation of the earth to punish humans for their unrepentant wickedness.

James stood there and looked out toward where his barn should be but all he could see beyond the first few feet opaquely lit by his porch light was a black sheet of liquid obscuring everything beyond it. He had been to the barn an hour or so earlier because the cows had to be milked. They didn’t stop producing milk just because it was raining. If you had milk cows, nature demanded obedience to their needs. It was the ancient inviolable bargain that had been struck between bovine and man.

James worried what he would do with today’s milk. The milk wagon was supposed to come tomorrow. From what he heard at church, this would probably not happen. The milk would only last three days in the springhouse where it was always several degrees cooler than the outside temperature. Maybe Pearl could churn some butter from the cream. She could cook some custard or some tapioca with the unpasteurized milk. If there is no pick up tomorrow, he’ll probably feed it to the pigs.

The wind-driven rain had thoroughly soaked him walking to and from the barn. The slicker and galoshes he normally wore were no match for the volume and intensity of this rain. As soon as he got inside the back porch, Pearl took one look at him and ordered him out of his clothes.

“Hurry and get out of those things before you catch your death of a cold. Here’s some dry things. As soon as you’re dressed come into the kitchen. I have some hot coffee boiling on the stove. I’ll hang your clothes up but it’s going to be a long time before anything dries with all this dampness creeping into the house”

Sometimes James thought his wife was a little too bossy but in this instance he obeyed without complaint. Aside from knowing that he couldn’t risk a cold, or worse, pneumonia, due to his chronic asthma, he understood Pearl said this because she loved him. They weren’t a lovey-dovey couple but they did understand that on a farm each other’s health was linked to the family’s survival. It was another one of the inviolable bargains farmers made with nature.

The other reason he was in a hurry to get into dry clothes was the prospect of a hot cup of coffee. James loved coffee. He liked it strong and black the way Pearl made it. She would grind whole beans in the grinder his Uncle Bill had given them for a wedding present and then measure it into the boiling coffee pot. After it had boiled just the right amount of time to get the full flavor from the grounds, Pearl would drop in some egg shells to settle the grounds to the bottom of the pot.

It was a cup of this coffee that James was holding as he stood on the front porch. He turned around and looked through the window. Pearl wasn’t there. She was probably hanging up his wet clothes. Georgie and Lucille were on the floor. Lucille was playing with her doll, Lucy. She was talking to it and pointing at a book in front of her. She was probably teaching Lucy how to read. Since first grade, Lucille had declared she was going to be a teacher when she grew up. Her teacher, Miss Rice, had been teaching for about as long as anyone could remember. She had been his teacher in the one room school just down the road where King Pike intersected with Salt Rock Road. That school house was now a storage shed for his neighbor. The township trustees had finally raised enough money to build a proper school in nearby Meeker, with classrooms for every grade. Next year they were going to build a basketball gymnasium and hopefully have a team to play neighboring schools.

Miss Rice was a teacher to be feared and loved. In her classroom you knew exactly what was and wasn’t acceptable. At the start of the school year, you entered her classroom fearful and at the end of the year you walked out knowing you had learned something. This was the case for Lucille as well. She loved learning because Miss Rice taught her how to learn.

Georgie, who was two years younger, was on his belly asleep. Lying beside him was Peaches, his English Bulldog. He and Peaches were inseparable. The love between them was mutual. Georgie never went anywhere without Peaches at his heels. Georgie had been playing with his toy soldiers until he couldn’t keep his eyes open. An incomplete battle was spread out before him. There were still enough soldiers standing on each side that a clear winner couldn’t be determined.

Pearl came into the room, being careful not to step on any soldiers or the sleeping forms of boy and dog. James waved to her and she made a motion for him to come inside. He took a sip of coffee but it had grown cold, He tossed it off the porch and into the water falling from the over-burdened gutters. It was instantly driven to the ground and disappeared colorlessly in the churning runoff.

When James stepped inside, the warmth of the room quickly drove away the humidity that had accumulated around him like a personalized fog. He closed the door quietly so as to not wake Georgie. Lucille looked up at him. She raised her arms as she had since she was a baby, signaling that she wanted him to pick her up. He bent down and scooped her into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck and giggled because his scratchy whiskers tickled her.

He then went to the much smaller Georgie and hoisted him up into the crook of his other arm.

“James, those kids are getting too big to both be carried, you’ll hurt your back,” Pearl said.

“Naw, they’ll never get too heavy for me”, James said, though he knew that it wouldn’t be much longer before that would be true. He loved this moment when he had both of his children pressed against him and didn’t want to think about a time when he couldn’t carry them.

James headed toward the stairs with a sleeping Georgie and Lucille who was pretending to be asleep. Peaches trotted behind him. Pearl was in the living room picking up toy soldiers so no one would step on them and gathering up doll Lucy’s “lessons”.

By the time she got to the top of the stairs, James had placed each child into their beds and taken off the bathrobes they had been wearing over their flannel pajamas. James turned around when she entered the room. He looked at her and smiled, then said something that seemed out of place but didn’t really surprise her.

“If this rain doesn’t stop soon, this is going to be a bad year for our crops.”

Pearl knew what he meant. It would be a year of going without some of things they had hoped to buy. Money was always a questionable resource for a farm family. They’d have a big garden and there were the chickens and possibly a hog to butcher. They wouldn’t starve. They just wouldn’t have more that the basic necessities.

Pearl smiled at him. It was the smile he fell in love with when he first met her at the farm store in Marion where her dad was buying some horse dewormer for their plow horse that had somehow pickup up a parasite. It was an inside joke between them that worms were the reason they got married.

“You know we’ll manage, Jimmy, we always have”.

James looked at her. He didn’t say anything but just nodded his head yes.

Forty years after what became known as, “The Great Flood of 1913”**, James lay in bed in Marion County General Hospital. He had been shoveling snow that had come from a late March storm. He’d already had one heart attack ten years before while his son was in the army fighting in the Pacific. Georgie had come home on emergency leave fearing he wouldn’t get there before his father died. James did survive then.

This time, though, the doctors held out no hope. The damage to the heart was too great. His chronic asthma and a bout of scarlet fever when he was a child had weakened his heart. He lay there, probably with the most time on his hands in his whole adult life. He had lived a farmer’s life where even if you weren’t doing something, you were always thinking about what you could do. “There’s no rest for the wicked or farmers”, his grandfather, who was also James, would say and then chuckle at his silly witticism.

Outside, rain slapped against the hospital windows, whipped into a frenzy by March winds. The snow he had been shoveling just two days ago was flushed away by the rains that followed. “What difference a day can make in the life of a farmer,” he thought to himself. It was then that he remembered that night on his porch holding a cup of Pearl’s thick hot coffee and looking through the window at his children playing. As he remembered it, more details came to him: Lucille’s doll, Lucy; Peaches, Georgie’s bulldog; toy soldiers; the warmth of the room. He could see himself reaching down to Lucille’s outstretched arms. He heard her giggle. He felt himself picking up little Georgie and shifting both children into the crook of his neck.

James could feel the increased weight on his chest, making it harder to breathe. He could hear Pearl playfully scolding him for carrying both children and reminding him that he wouldn’t be able to do that much longer. He saw himself carrying them up the stairs and putting them in their beds. As he did, he began to feel lighter and lighter. His breathing became slower. He heard Pearl say, “ You know we’ll manage.” He knew she was right.

Time stopped for James King, farmer, husband, father. The sky poured down righteousness and the rain washed away all worry.

__________________________________________________________________

*Isaiah 45: 7-8

**”The Great Flood of 1913 occurred between March 23 and March 26, after major rivers in the central and eastern United States flooded from several days of heavy rains. More than a quarter of a million people were left

homeless. Between 432 and 470 people died in Ohio alone. The Ohio Conservancy Act, which was signed by the governor of Ohio in 1914, became a model for other states to follow. The act allowed for the establishment of conservancy districts with the authority to implement flood control projects. Further information can be found on Wikipedia by searching: Great Flood of 1913.

Thank you for being one of my readers. This was a very personal piece for me as it recounts events from my family history. I have taken poetic license to add dialog and other details to carry the story line. This is a piece that one would normally associate with Father’s Day, however, the influences to write this story came recently in the form of a treasure trove of photographs sent from a relative of my Grandmother Pearl.

These photos came at a propitious time. I had grown weary of discussing current events. With the pandemic, the attempt to overturn a legitimate election, the constant lies and vitriol coming from a past President who should know better but apparently doesn’t. I needed to feel connected to something tangible to be reminded that there are good men in the world who love their families and their mates, men who would never participate in an attempted coup or boast about grabbing women by their genitalia. For me, this was remembering the good men who have proceeded me. My father, his father and my great-grandfather were far from perfect but were good men and believed in the ideals of Democracy.

Seeing these photos from over 100 years ago of my father, George, my Aunt Lucille and my grandparents on the family farm and various places around Marion County, Salt Rock Township, created a longing in me to connect with them. There were also photographs taken by my grandfather of the Great Flood. He was a skilled amateur photographer who sold copies of his photographs to friends and local businesses which he printed on penny postcards.

I encourage you to remember the good men in your lives whoever they are. They are an important source of courage and righteousness to draw on when we have to deal with those who try to tell us what books we can and can’t read. When they try to control who can and can’t legitimately vote. When they try to say whose religion is superior or whose race is superior.

Please encourage your friends and colleagues to subscribe to my newsletter. It is free. You give me the courage to keep trying to create good essays.

I welcome my two newest readers: CW and hiprovence.

Love the one’s you are with and the one’s you wish you could be with whether separated by time or distance. Life is short even when there isn’t a pandemic.