A
good girl, 25 cents, a well-thrown baseball, the best of intentions, a
heartfelt apology, & my boyish charm: things that’ll go jus’ so far, &
no further! Anyway that’s the way it was back in
the fifties when I was a kid. By way of
introduction, my name is Shannon Thomas Casebeer, really! And I was born in the
Sierra Nevada foothills of northern California and raised on a little piece of
paradise on Reservoir Hill, where my family had lived since the 1850’s. Idyllic childhoods
are mighty few and mighty far between, and I didn’t deserve one, but some of us
just get lucky.
For
what, if anything, its worth; my earliest childhood memories are of toilet
training. Believe it or not, when I was a kid there was no such thing as
disposable diapers and, desperate to reduce her laundry chores, Mom was mighty
anxious to acquaint me with the use of a commode! My Uncle Asa built my
first little potty chair. My little throne was just the right
size for a pint-size beginner, and its proper employment incorporated
the use of a green plastic bowl that was placed beneath the seat to capture and
contain the results of my early practice. The little green bowl
served nicely in this role and when not engaged in this purpose, it served
equally well as a dandy container for toads and tadpoles. In this capacity it
provided habitat for all varieties of flora and fauna, which I liberated from a
marshy area down in the meadow and studied on the windowsill that served as my
laboratory.
I
quickly advanced from my little throne to a wooden seat that Mom called my
ducky. Placed directly on the toilet seat, my
ducky provided security, encouragement, and a welcome diversion during long dry
spells, by the extension of a carved and painted ducks neck and head that
protruded up like a saddle horn in the front, fortuitously producing an
essential splashguard.
Finally
I was provided with a little footstool, which, with practice, allowed me to
utilize the adult facilities at will. This advanced method initially
represented a bit of a challenge to the novice, and I remember well an
unpleasant episode, which resulted when my cousin Reggie, in a fit of
independence, took the initiative to acquaint himself with these facilities
without adult supervision.
Cautiously
mounting my footstool and stretching on tiptoe, little Reggie was able to
achieve adequate elevation as to allow his little appendage to rest trembling
on the cold porcelain rim of the toilet, thus relieving himself like the big
boys. Unfortunately, on this lamentable occasion, the lid, being in a state of
precarious balance, lunged forward unexpectedly, slamming shut with a
resounding smack!
Rubber
bumpers mounted beneath the seat afforded some margin of safety, but poor
little Reggie was sufficiently endowed that this meager allowance was
insufficient to avoid calamity. As a result, Cousin
Reggie’s apparatus was horribly concussed, causing it to assume an
extraordinary shade of hemorrhoid blue and sulk for several days. It was several months
before I was able to utilize the porcelain perpetrator myself without a good
deal of trepidation.
As
long as we've broached this subject, another tale of toiletry gone
terribly wrong took place during the summer of ’56. At the ripe ol’ age
of five, I found myself engaged to be wed. Lynn, my intended,
lived across the street, and was the towheaded little sister of my best friend
Gary. Lynn was remarkably mature, for four,
but it was essential that great care be taken so as not to tickle, tantalize or
incite her in any way, as the slightest provocation inevitably resulted in
extravagant spasms of gut wrenching giggling and excruciating jocularity. Wet pants invariably
ensued! In those good old days, we youngsters
were free to range the neighborhood at will, frequently pursuing our diversions
some distance from our residences. And Lynn’s
involuntary wettings invariably necessitated a time out from our current
adventure and an inconvenient trip home for fresh garments.
The
old neighborhood was dissected west to east by Meadow Lane, a pine lined dirt
boulevard marking the perimeter of my family’s forty acres, and meandering into
the rolling foothills and intermittent orchards of apples and Bartlett pears,
before crossing a meadow at the old Skinner place, and descending eventually
into a yawning canyon, at the bottom of which ran the renowned south fork of
the American River, an enticing landscape of gorges, petered out mines,
uninhabited woodlands, and of course the renown waterway itself.
A
short distance down this lane, straddling a mosquito infested cistern in the
crotch of a ravine and shaded by a canopy of oaks, squatted the time ravaged
frame house which served for several memorable years as home to my other best friend
Stephen. Stephens’ family consisted of his mom and dad, and a bakers’ dozen of
siblings, ranging in age from young adults to occasionally diaper clad infants.
Stephen’s family was destitute, but by all appearances happily reconciled to
their lot in life. The father was disabled and spent a good deal of time at
home, and endeared himself to me by his frequent invitations to accompany him
bear hunting. The matriarch of the family also won my
young heart, as she was most always elbow deep in food preparation at the
family’s wood range and was rarely satisfied until she had enticed me to have a
piece of chicken or a biscuit. They were poor as
church mice and hard pressed to feed their own family, but despite their
poverty, they were always ready and willing to ply me with groceries. For a number of years
during my youth Stephen and his family were a favorite and blissful haven of
adventure.
Suffice
it to say, their home was very sparsely furnished. Their only means of
heating or cooking was their ancient wood range, and the toilet facilities
consisted of a ramshackle old outhouse some distance away from the weathered
back porch. The porch itself served as a center for enforced juvenile hygiene,
and housed the old galvanized wash tub, where those youngsters who could be
corralled were subjected to their semimonthly bathing ritual; often to the
tremendous delight of a giggling audience of us juveniles who observed the
ceremony with semi stifled exuberance from the cover of a nearby brier patch.
Of
all the siblings, my favorites were Stephen and his sisters Paula who was
around my age, and Lizzy who was older than I. Lizzy derived
tremendous pleasure from scaring the daylights out of the rest of us kids with
all variety of imaginative ghost stories guaranteed to raise Goosebumps on a
wooden Indian! Additional intrigue arose from the fact that despite my pending
nuptials with Lynn, I suffered from a debilitating crush on Paula.
On
the afternoon in question Stephen, Paula, Lizzy and I, after being plied with
chicken and corn on the cob, emerged from the old home, licking our fingers and
sleeve grooming our noses. Blinking as we walked
out into the bright sunshine of a brilliant autumn day, we laughed and visited
as we sauntered off down the hill in search of an afternoon’s diversion.
At
the bottom of the ravine is an immense blackberry patch, decorated
intermittently with abandoned automobiles from decades past, and an assortment
of barrels, bed-springs, can piles and Coke coolers. The tangled thicket
achieved six to eight feet in height and sprawled for sixty feet across the
gully and as far as the eye can see up and down the ravine. A wet weather stream
meandered through the middle, and here and there Ponderosa pines pierced the
dense canopy of briers competing for the sunshine and littering the ravine
floor with a luxurious carpet of dry needles. Several of the
evergreens sported tree-forts assembled from lumber that we kids had salvaged
from the wreckage of an abandoned barn. A network of paths
and tunnels connected the forts with each other and the outer banks.
The
balmy fall afternoon was almost summer-like, and between the sounds of children
at play, frogs sang from the creek bank and a pair of mourning doves cooed a
melancholy refrain in the distance. A well-traveled trail
formed several switchbacks during its’ decent down the steep bank and ended
abruptly at a small clearing just inside the thicket.
From
this point on, we four would have to crawl on our hands and knees. Earlier in the
season, our efforts might have been rewarded with a bounty of juicy blackberries. The berries were long
gone, but the sharp thorns remained, camouflaged by the thick purple foliage of
an extended Indian summer. Despite our best
efforts, the thorns snatched at our clothes, and periodically resulted in a
“youch!” and a grimace, as a determined thorn found it’s mark and pierced
somebody’s hide.
As
we approached one of the pine trees, a half-dozen of the neighborhood kids
paused and observed our approach with, first suspicion, and then delight. At the ripe ol’ age
of ten, Lizzy was a little too old and much too busy to devote much time to
child’s play. The youngsters considered this
intrusion of adolescents a real treat and several little ones latched onto
Lizzy’s skirt as we entered their hideout. “Tell us a story Lizzy.
Please! Please!” “Tell us about the ghosts.” “Not now!” said Lizzy
feigning annoyance but obviously pleased by the attention. The kids continued
their clamor, eventually weakening the elder sibling’s resolve. “Alright! Alright!”
Lizzy acquiesced, collapsing into a bed of needles at the base of a towering
Spruce.
“Once
upon a time there was a spooky ol’ ghost dressed all in black.” That’s as far as she
got! Several of the youngsters had a
question. “If ghosts are just spirit” one asked
musingly, “why do they need clothes at all?” “Good question”
admitted Lizzy contemplatively. This line of thought
piqued the children’s curiosity, resulting in several additional
questions. “If ghosts wear clothes,” asked
another, “do they have to warsh ‘em? Do ghosts get ring
around the collar?” This resulted in an outburst of exuberant laughter,
exacerbated by youthful enthusiasm. Stephen perked up and
his face shone with recognition of his opportunity to participate. “I wonder,” he said,
grinning with anticipation, “If ghosts get lint in their
belly-buttons.” “Ghosts don’t have bellybuttons silly!”
chimed the twins in unison, and the entire hollow rang with squeals of
laughter.
In
the middle of this jocularity, the briars rustled and in stepped two more
youngsters. Another neighborhood clan had overheard
the ruckus from across the hollow and come to investigate the cause of all the
merriment. Gene seemed to sense the jovial mood of
the assembly almost immediately. He sprawled on the
ground, rested his chin on his hands, and offered a yarn of his own. “You
should have seen what happened at our house! There’s a big ol’
alligator turtle in our pond. The ol’ Jersey cow was standin’ belly deep,
coolin’ off the other day, when that ol’ snapper swum up and bit the end right
out o’ one o’ her spickets!” The kids all groaned and grabbed their
chests. The response was spontaneous and only
served to encourage the storyteller. “‘Fore we could get a
tourniquet on her,” he continued, “that ol’ cow leaked out three buckets o’
buttermilk!”
“Oh,
go on!” said Lizzy. “That’s nothin’!” announced Stephen.
“We had a big ol’ wolf trap set at our pond, tryin’ to catch a darned ol’
coon. One o’ them big snappers got caught by
the neck. ‘Fore we could drag him out and give
‘im what fore, that rascal chewed his head off and got clean away! A couple o’ days
later he come draggin’ up the hill, fit as a fiddle and carryin’ his head in
his mouth!”
At
that moment a distant “Helluuu” echoed from the hill in the direction of the
Pettit place. “Skedaddle!” whispered Stephen. “That’s Ralph.” Gene’s clan vanished
into the thicket as muffled voices became audible at the edge of the hollow.
Lizzy and the other youngsters made tracks for higher ground too! Ralph was
around ten, and he and a gang of other area roughnecks ran roughshod over the
entire neighborhood. “That’s Ralph and those other
ruffians,” said Stephen. “We don’t want ‘em to see us
either.” “Come on.” Whispered Paula and she
headed up the trail toward home.
We
were still a hundred yards from the top of the hill, when we rounded a bend and
the trail forked. “This way” panted Stephen as he took
the right fork. Seconds later the three of us stood
humped over and gasping for breath at the door of a ramshackle ol’ outhouse. At the sound of
hurried footsteps close behind, we crowded into the tiny refuge and Stephen
bolted the door. It was pitch black inside, the
atmosphere was close and stifling, and the odor was exceedingly
unpleasant! I desperately wanted to hold my breath
but we were all breathing too heavily for that. I stepped up onto the
business seat to help ease the crowding, and Stephen braced himself and leaned
against the door.
As
I stood up on the bench my head hit a rafter. The heat was oppressive. I was
all but smothered in a veil of cobwebs, and an indignant wasp began buzzing
threateningly around my ears. I started to speak to
Paula, but she laid her finger against my lips and said “shhhh!” Her finger was only
against my lips for an instant, but somehow her touch left me warm all
over!
As
I stood straddling that outhouse seat and crouching to avoid that pesky wasp my
face was just inches from the top of Paula’s head. I could feel the
warmth from her body and smell her long lustrous hair. I pretended to lose
my balance as an excuse to lay my hand on her shoulder. She glanced up at me
very briefly and then ever so gently she laid her hand on mine. I held my breath; my
pulse quickened, and Ralph and the band of ruffians arrived outside the door.
There were muffled voices and stifled chuckling, and then in unison they
counted “one, two, three,” and leaned heavily into the side of that board and
batten john. Our fragile refuge listed dangerously
to starboard. That ornery wasp planted his rapier-like stinger deep into the
lobe of my ear, and both my feet, new boots and all, slipped into that big
black hole!
Seconds
later Stephen threw open the outhouse door, Ralph and the ruffians let out with
war whoops as they disappeared down the path and the blinding light of day
rushed in on a sad and sorry spectacle. That dreadful abyss
had engulfed me right up to the armpits; my rib-cage was stuck tight
as a cork in its’ terrible jaws and a powerful aroma brought evidence I was
stuck knee-deep in that holes’ contents. Abandon hope all ye
who enter here! The bowels of the beast made a hideous sucking sound as Stephen
and Paula laboriously extricated me from my predicament. My clenched
toes clung desperately to my left boot, and that godless pit claimed the other!
Suffice
it to say, mother was not pleased when I arrived home! Speaking of home and
Mom, near the top of Reservoir Hill, at the opposite end of my family’s forty
acres, on the banks of an irrigation ditch and overlooking
the snow-capped Sierras to the north, the coastal range to the west,
the Sacramento Valley to the south, and Millers’ orchard
of Bartlett pears to the east, were the homes of my mom’s parents and
my granddad’s mom, Meda Eliza Camp Daniels. My granddad’s maternal grandpa, Asa
Steven Camp, had first arrived in the Sierras with his dad, Clark back in 1850,
during the gold rush, and Granddad’s Daniels ancestor had arrived at the
Massachusetts Bay Colony from England in 1636. Ancestors in each of
these lines, as well as my fathers’, had served during the Revolutionary and
Civil Wars.
My
granddad’s dad, Asa Wilder Daniels, had passed away when my mother was young,
but my great grandma Daniels still lived in the old home on Reservoir Hill,
across the driveway from my grandparents. Among the tantalizing
treasurers in my great grandma’s home was a gun cabinet full of ancient
artillery, beaded buckskin jackets, and Indians artifacts that had been gifts
to my granddad’s granddad from our country’s Native Americans back in the
1870s, when Doctor Jared Waldo Daniels was appointed by the President, and assigned
responsibility for inspecting all of the Indian agencies west of the
Mississippi. Throughout my youth, I was steeped in this rich heritage and my
appreciation for that heritage deepened accordingly.
I
have many fond memories of walking the lane from my home on Mosquito Road, up
the hill, past my great grandma’s old home and on to the home of my grandma and
granddad. Passing Great Grandma’s window, I was
occasionally flagged down and invited inside to warm myself by the wood range
and snack on the candied figs that Great Grandma dried, steamed and coated with
sugar. On a few occasions I recall sitting on
her lap, in the rocker, by the stove, and having her read poems to me from the
little muslin book that had been my granddads when he was a child. I remember
still the rhyme on the little book’s cover: “All my other books are worn, and
all the pages badly torn, but my muslin book, I’ve found, is just as good as
newly bound.”
Time
with Granddad was always a special treat, and rarely did a summer pass without
Granddad insisting on a series of camping trips high in the Sierras, where
Granddad had camped with his family as a child. All variety of kith & kin
joined us on these camping expeditions, including granddad’s brother Asa, his
sister Myrle, and, until she was ninety-three, Granddad’s mother, Meda Eliza,
who did much of our cooking over a crackling fire. As a little girl, her mom,
Laura Ellen Oldfield Camp, had crossed the plains by covered wagon, making the
trek from Wisconsin to the goldfields of northern California back in 1854, when
the road west consisted of a series of wagon ruts and Native Americans still
thrived on vast herds of migrating buffalo. Camping was in our
blood. We slept on cots in old canvas tents,
and a huge block of ice kept our groceries cold in an old oak icebox. Granddad
had built red racks for his 1941 Chevy, so the old pickup afforded plenty of
space for all the gear, and the bed of the old Chevy doubled as sleeping quarters
for my grandparents.
I
remember well crawling out of my own sleeping bag at first light, in order to
join my grandparents in their cozy quarters in the back of the ’41. I remember Granddad’s
big grin and his mass of disheveled, gray hair as he peeked out from under the
covers. I remember how warm it seemed crawling under their down filled
comforter after kicking off my slippers on the tailgate, the sound of the
canvas cover rustling in the wind, and the stars blinking through the
silhouetted pines. And I remember how Granddad cherished every minute.
Once
the morning fire was going, Sis and I would dress quickly and join the rest of
the family, warming our backsides at the campfire and anticipating the smell of
coffee brewing in the gray granite-ware coffeepot and the almost
debilitating aroma of frying bacon and golden brown hotcakes that would soon be
sizzling on Great Grandma’s griddle.
The
Stellar blue jays called from the canopy of old growth pines; the sun cascaded
down through the evergreen bows; off in the distance Rainbow trout began to
take May flies from the still, cobalt blue surface of the mist covered lake,
and my mind envisioned my granddad’s granddad, crossing the country by covered
wagon, long ago, when Indians roamed these hills.
Such
were the days of my childhood, when life seemed simple, summer was perennial,
and childlike faith assured tomorrows joys. Treasure your
memories, keep them fresh, and never take them for granted; even our memories
can fade with the harsh glare of time.
Thanks for your patience; thanks for your time, thanks for your kind attention. Cordially,
Shannon Thomas Casebeer
December 5, 2012
www.shannoncasebeer.com
stcasebeer@gmail.com
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