Episode Eleven
POTLUCK
Following the baptism, The Kinney’s, the Camps, and several dozen other kith & kin, assembled at the Kinney place for potluck. Everyone had come well stocked, and there was sufficient food for two or three times the crowd that assembled. Mrs. Kinney and the girls had made preparations as best they could with what few chairs and tables were available. It wasn’t near enough. Several buckboards were unhitched, backed into the yard, and utilized as makeshift buffet tables. A number of folks had brought along their musical instruments, just in case, you know how musicians are, and Lidge amazed everyone with his aptitude for the concertina. The air was filled with Irish jigs, the young and young at heart danced like dervishes, and the festivities continued until well after dark.
Mom and Mrs. Kinney hit it off first thing. Mrs. Kinney had been a teacher back in Ireland, and even though her abilities weren’t quite up to snuff in English, she was clearly a teacher at heart. After some discussion, it was decided that her abilities would be a tremendous help back at Camp House. The entire Kinney tribe would attend, and something would be worked out in regard to a suitable salary. Father offered his services and those of Uncle Gus for the purposes of a workday at Patty Creek Church. The offer was well received and greatly appreciated, particularly by a number of the church’s regular members, who demonstrated their gratitude by offering their own support to the enterprise and insisting on providing all the materials necessary to spruce up and spit shine the entire facility.
Just before sunset, Christoph and Laura approached Mariah and me, suggesting a walk to the top of the hill. It would give us some time to get better acquainted, and after the hustle and bustle of a long exhausting day, it would be an opportunity to enjoy some peace and quiet. The excitement and emotion of the long day had thoroughly worn me out. Christoph read my hesitance and slipped me an imploring glance communicating the urgency of the situation. He was in desperate straits for an opportunity for time alone with Laura, and he knew quite well that this enterprise would be better received if Mariah and I acquiesced and went along.
The sun was just a sliver of crimson as we reached the top of the hill. We were about a quarter mile from the gaggle of ramshackle frame homes, which meander along the ravine and make up the Irish community. To the west, an impenetrable stand of firs was silhouetted against the lavender dusk, and the sounds of fellowship, fiddles, and Lidge’s concertina, were barely audible from the happy gathering below. In the distance a whippoorwill called, crickets sang, and the air carried the faint scent of hickory smoke, as the little community lit their stoves against the cool night air.
Christoph and Laura paused to admire the sunset, and Mariah and I found a seat on a log at a distance sufficient to afford a degree of privacy. We admired the pastels as the sun slipped peacefully away, soaked up the serenity, and reflected on the day’s events. Darkness crept in silently around us and not a word was spoken. Eventually the silence was broken as Mariah shivered, moved ever so slightly closer, and pulled her sweater snugly around her neck. This was my opportunity. I slid over close beside her, wrapped my arms around her, and waited for her response. After a moment Mariah reached out hesitantly and awkwardly placed her arm around my waist. My heart raced furiously, and as I listened to her quickened breath, I fought to calm the quickness of my own.
Eventually, noting my hopeful gaze, she glanced up apprehensively, licked her lips expectantly, closed her eyes and eagerly puckered up! This prospect, enticing and long anticipated though it was, had the immediate effect of sucking all the breath from my lungs and simultaneously paralyzing my tongue! Fighting for wind and desperately struggling to moisten my own mouth, I took my queue and pressed my lips to hers. We held that kiss for the longest time, both unwilling to let that moment end, and then, as our lips parted, we held on passionately in a long, lingering hug. For as long as I live, I’ll remember that embrace. Then the twilight faded to velvet black, and our palms caressed as I walked Mariah home.
OBIE
Episode Twelve
THE CALLING
The next several years were some of the most happy, idyllic, and frustrating of my life. I felt entirely certain that Mariah and I were meant to be together, but at twelve years old I sure had no clue how. Most any old sailor will tell you; this old world is a mighty stormy sea. On the starboard side you’ve got everything that’s right, and to port you’re drawn to everything that’s left. Keep your eye on the sun and steer a course that’s true. Most times we steered a mighty steady course. Sometimes high seas would drive us hard to port. We faced temptation every day and rode a crest between our desires and what we believed the Lord we love could bless. Everyone has a cross to bear. Desire is a fool’s master and every Christian’s cross.
As the years passed at Camp house, the entire family was blessed with health, happiness, and prosperity, almost beyond belief. With the addition of the Kinney kids to all the little Camps already in attendance, our educational pursuits became an undertaking of biblical proportions. The memories of those school days at Camp House are an endless source of joy and satisfaction. Oh, there were long, tedious hours of study mingled with the joy, and Mother force-fed us grammar and vocabulary till our little minds were distended, but the romance, adventures, and lifelong friendships that those years provided, would prove to be a stabilizing force for me to the very end of my days. It seemed to me as though God himself put the rest of the world on hold, in order to devout every waking hour to us.
Father’s health improved day by day, and he and Uncle Gus became increasingly inseparable. Their joy and enthusiasm for life was an endless source of encouragement to each one of us, and their boundless energy and optimism provided an example that I strived for all my life and seldom matched. The shoe shop prospered, and Christoph became almost as talented a cobbler as Klouse. The salvage business became increasingly lucrative, and through the expert, if exasperating, tutelage of Cousin Irving, Lidge and I became well known far and wide as muleskinners par excel lance.
Season by season the years sped away; long, extravagant summers of picnics at the boathouse, excursions on the river, and fishing trips with Dad and Gus that resulted in tall tales I’d be embarrassed to relate; exhilarating autumns with breathtaking foliage, horseback rides through the hills, and air so fresh it made your spirit soar; winter, with its’ blowing snow, ice sickles long as me, and the whole family sharing cocoa by the fire; and spring.
The spring of 1849 hit me like a ton of bricks. I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly was different. I was only fourteen, but somehow, though I couldn’t begin to explain it, when the pond ice melted and those frogs began to sing, way down deep inside of me, I was different. Somehow, in the spring of ’49, as the days lengthened and the plaintive calls of northbound geese filled the sky, their primordial cries pierced my very soul and called to me.
OBIE
Episode Thirteen
A PLACE FOR ME!
One cool, blustery day in early March, we were busying ourselves with our usual mule grooming chores. Lidge was checking out an old mule’s teeth, and I was around back fixin’ to curry out her tail. Dad had just outfitted the old gal with a shiny new set of steel shoes. All at once her ears came down, her hind end kind of bunched up, and a hind foot came snatching out and rang my shinbone like a bell! I collapsed to the ground, frantically rubbing my throbbing ankle and desperately fighting my inclination to besmirch that mule’s pedigree, and Lidge grinned at me like I was just off the boat! “I figured you knowed better than that,” he says, with his lips flaired and his molars catching sunlight. “When an ol’ mule’s hind end puckers up that a way, you best drop and roll.” “I thought that’s what ya done in case of fire,” I responded, dusting my drawers and struggling to find my feet. “When an ol’ mule behaves that a way” Lidge chuckled, offering me a hand up, “you can reckon she’s fixin’ to fire!”
I cautiously resumed my enterprise, keeping an eye peeled for any further sign of insubordination, and flinching with every twitch, and it wasn’t but twenty minutes later when all at once Lidge dropped his currycomb to the ground, sank onto a nail keg, hung his head in despair, and sighed a sigh well beyond his years. His sudden collapse into despair caught me off guard, and I stood there staring for a moment, perplexed and speechless. Lidge had been a little down in the dumps for several days, but I’d just shrugged it off as spring fever. It seemed evident now; this was more than just youthful melancholy.
“What’s wrong pard,” I asked, dropping my own brush and kneeling at his side. “Everything,” he replied, wiping his sweaty brow with his sleeve and staring at the ground. “Well,” I said, would you like to talk about it?” “Obadiah,” he said, looking up solemnly, “have you ever been really poor?” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Well,” he said, “my family and I risked what little we had in Ireland and sailed thousands of hard, hazardous miles to this country, in search of what that old piece of parchment calls, Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now Pa’s dead, Ma’s ill, we’re poor as church mice, and even though we’ve been blessed with a fine church family, and we’re doubly blessed by our friendship with you folks, we’re not actually blessed with much happiness. As far as liberty, is a person really free when they’re enslaved to poverty to the point that without the compassion of folks like you it’s likely that we’d starve?”
Well, I was at a loss to answer that. Life’s experiences had rendered me old for my years, but not near that old. We stood there in an uneasy silence for a time, and then Irving careened up to the stable door like a cyclone, on that barn sour gray. “Hang it up boys,” He hollered. “Let’s call it a day.”
I lay restless in my bunk for a long time that evening, tossing, turning, and trying desperately to sleep. It just wouldn’t happen. My buddy’s comments lay smoldering in my mind. Lidge and I had much in common, but my family had been marvelously blessed since arriving in America, and Lidge and his family had faced poverty, deprivation, and despair. I’d been raised a Christian all my life. My parents taught me to seek the Lord’s Will always, to exercise hope, faith, and charity in all things, and to promote justice tempered with mercy. I believed that an all-seeing, all-knowing God distinguished the sin from the sinner, that he hated one and loved the other, and that, through God, justice and mercy would prevail. Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to reconcile these beliefs to my friend’s situation. Where was justice and mercy now? Where was charity and love? Where was the hand of a loving God in this?
The following day was Saturday. I attended an estate sale with Klouse and Irving, had a long, leisurely lunch at an open-air restaurant on the wharf, and spent the remainder of the afternoon tending ill-tempered, unreasonable, cantankerous, old mules. That evening I enjoyed family time, devotions, and cobbler, and then retired to bed early, contented and luxuriously stuffed. I devoted a great deal of thought and long hours of prayer to Lidge’s situation, and even though I’d not found a solution, I arrived at church Sunday morning expecting to find Lidge in that same state of depression and prepared to be a sympathetic friend. I was clearly not prepared for what I found.
Lidge was at the side door as I started up the front stairs of the church. He was clearly exuberant, uncharacteristically animated, and desperately anxious to share his news. In his hand was a crumpled notice; similar to many I’d seen posted at the pier, and in his tone was an excitement and enthusiasm that took me completely by surprise. “Look here!” he whispered in a tone, which feigned quiet but was anything but. He pulled me to one side, hastily waving the dog-eared document in my face. “Alright, alright!” I responded. “What is it?” He was trembling with anticipation, and I steadied his hand as he began to read:
CALIFORNIA GOLD the notice read, and
NOTICE OF INTENT. HEAR YE! HEAR YE!
NOW HIRING FOR MANY POSITIONS,
GALLEY HELP NEEDED; NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY.
PHILLIDELPHIA TO SAN FRANCISCO IN FIVE MONTHS.
DEPARTING MARCH 17TH,
IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 18 & 49
Lidge’s face was flushed and his eyes danced with excitement. “I’ve already hired on!” he announced triumphantly, “And the captain has promised to save a place for you!”
OBIE
Episode Fourteen
GEORGE WARSHINGTON HISSELF!
Dear God, why me? I’m not certain what part my prayers have played in this new turn of events. When I was praying for new opportunities for Lidge, I hadn’t figured on the Lord being quite so prompt! It usually takes longer than that! I sure hadn’t counted on anything quite like this! From now on when I pray, I’m gonna be way more specific!
The more Lidge laid out the details of this little jaunt, the more I grimaced and shook my head. The ship is a barnacle covered old schooner that has been sitting at anchor and slated for salvage for years. They scraped her down and scrubbed her up just for this occasion. Part of the crew is made up of old salts that have been retired since Noah’s time, who shook off their mothballs when they heard the word GOLD! The rest of the crew is made up of landlubbers such as Lidge and me, who’ve been commandeered mainly because we’re old enough to be weaned, and a tad too young to exercise better judgment.
My voyage from Germany had been enough to worry the feathers off a wooden Indian, and this overoptimistic little endeavor makes that trip look like a weekend excursion on a millpond! One of the highlights, should we even get that far, will be rounding Cape Horn at the southernmost tip of South America. Well, I don’t know what you’ve heard about the Horn, but it’s one of the most infamous passages anywhere in the world. Why, the very mention of THE HORN, is sufficient to cause the saltiest ol’ seaman to drop his pipe and wet hisself!
They’re calling for stops at Rio de Janeiro and Valparaiso, and arrival at San Francisco in about five months. Well, if that ancient scow even floats, and if they manage to keep her afloat till they round the horn, and if they don’t all die of the cholera along the way, depending on conditions and prevailing winds, it could easily take as long as eight months to reach California, and then what? According to the barrage of wild tales that have been circulating for a couple of months now, some poor old codger out on the west coast was trying to run a sawmill, and had the misfortune of having some unthinking scallywag discover gold in his millrace. Well, before you know it, word is out and the whole place runs amuck!
The word is that folks are pouring into the California foothills from all over the world. They reckon that this year alone, they’ll have fifty thousand crazed men swarming in from the states, and fifty thousand more from around the Horn. Can you even imagine, in your wildest dreams, what kind of horrendous mess that will be? Why, there ain’t gold enough in all creation to draw a sane man into a sinkhole like that! Why, I wouldn’t run a risk like that, if George Warshington hisself was backing the whole affair!
Lidge and I talked the whole unholy spectacle over pretty thorough, top to bottom, and I told him pretty certain, in no uncertain terms, that he was crazier than a pet coon if he’d be drug into a campaign like this, and there wasn’t nothing in this world, that would ever make me change my mind and go!
To be continued
Shannon Thomas Casebeer
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