NEWS FROM THE HILLS
Summer still holds sway in the hills, but there are subtle signs of coming autumn. Katydids have been sounding their plaintive dirge for the past couple of weeks or more, an early warning of frosty days that lie ahead.
Goldenrod is blooming along the road banks, spears of summer sunshine that linger until late autumn. The Joe-Pye weed rears its fuzzy pink head above the other weeds, flowers that will grow gray with age. According to folklore, an Indian named “Joe Pye” used this plant to cure fevers, and the early American colonists did use it to treat an outbreak of typhus.
Boneset is blooming now with its flat-topped cluster of dull-white flowers. The stem of this plant seems to grow right through the leaf, and it was believed by early herb doctors that it would be useful in setting bones. They wrapped the leaves, along with bandages, around the splints.
In the old days, a fever that caused severe body aches was called “breakbone fever.” Boneset was used extensively during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a cough, cold, and fever medicine. Contemporary scientists say that it is a plant with an interesting past, but it simply doesn’t work. So don’t use it.
Summer heat is taking its toll on the gardens also, as the peak of the growing season has past and most of the crops are beginning to dwindle. Housewives breathe a sigh of relief as cellar shelves are filling up with summer’s bounty. Potatoes are being dug and put away for winter, while cords of firewood are stacked in preparation also.
Just when one season begins to pall, there is another season ready to take its place. Children will soon be leaving their warm weather activities, deserting their swimming pools and late morning sleep-ins to start back to school.
They all agree that this has been a short summer vacation indeed. Molly Ann, great-granddaughter who is seven, declares that this summer was much shorter than last. She tells us seriously, “I just can’t understand it! Last summer lasted so long, and this year, it went so fast!” I hate to tell her that the older we get, the faster time goes.
Glenn Samples sent a poem that was in one of the old McGuffey Reader’s to my cousin Evelyne, and she was kind enough to send it on to me. I’d like to share it.
FORTY YEARS AGO
“I’ve wandered to the village, Tom,
I’ve sat beneath the tree,
Upon the schoolhouse playground
That sheltered you and me.
But none was left to greet me, Tom
And few are left to know
Who played with us upon the green.
Just forty years ago.
The grass was just as green, Tom
Barefooted boys at play,
Were sporting, just as we did then
With spirits just a gay.
But the Master sleeps upon the hill
Which coated o’er with snow
Afforded us a sliding place
Just forty years ago.
The old school house is altered some,
The benches are replaced
By new ones very much the same,
Our jack knives had defaced.
But the same old bricks are in the wall,
The bell swings to and fro
Its music’s just the same, dear Tom,
‘Twas forty years ago.
The spring that bubbled ‘neath the hill
Close by the spreading beech
Is very low, ’twas once so high
That we could almost reach.
And kneeling down to take a drink,
Dear Tom, I started so
To think how very much I’ve changed
Since forty years ago.
Near by that spring, upon the elm,
You know I cut your name.
Your sweetheart’s just beneath it, Tom
And you did mine the same.
Some heartless wretch has peeled the bark,
‘Twas dying, sure but slow
Just as that one whose name you cut
Died forty years ago.
My lids have long been dry, Tom,
But tears came in my eyes
I thought of her I loved so well,
Those early broken ties.
I visited the old church yard
And took some flowers to strew
Upon the graves of those we loved,
Just forty years ago.
Some are in the church yard laid,
Some sleep beneath the sea
And none are left of our old class,
Excepting you and me.
And when our time shall come, Tom,
And we are called to go, I hope we meet with those we loved
Some forty years ago.”
Our old school house is gone, and the hill where it sat there is a residence built. In my mind I see the old white two-room school, with the flagpole in front and the steep steps leading to the porch. There was no spring, but a well and a pitcher pump where we made cups out of notebook paper and drank the cold water.
Giant beech trees grew near the pump, with huge beech nuts that grew ripe and fell. We would gather them in paper cups also, and snack on them during classes. I can see the playground, pounded bare of grass by many running feet, and see the game of Longtown that we played during noon hour.
Down over the bank is the old rock, where we girls once sat and traded secrets, and daydreamed about the future. It is almost covered up now with weeds and vines, a sad memento of girlish secrets and dreams.
Bittersweet memories linger, and to visit the graves of those schoolmates who have passed on brings many tears to the eyes. Yet time goes on, faster and faster, and we who are still here can reminisce about “forty or fifty or sixty” years ago.
We have an opportunity to meet again with the old schoolmates, neighbors and friends at the 17th annual Hagar School reunion on Saturday, September 2. It will be at the Ovapa Bethel Methodist Church, right below where the old school house was located.
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