Six

 

During the sermon the following Sunday, J.K.’s mind wandered as it often did. The house seemed empty after the children and grandchildren left to resume their respective lives. Ella had expressed her relief that she did not have to cook for another crowd that large “until your next golden anniversary!”

Grandma Sevilla’s eyes were a trifle melancholic, but she, too, seemed relieved to resume her daily habits of knitting, light cooking, and gathering the chicken eggs. Her life had gotten easier a few years back when they hired a full-time farm hand. The arthritis in her hands made it difficult to do much more than the bare amount of handwork she did, and it was all she could do to carry a basket of eggs back to the house.

The events of the past week had drawn attention to the passing of time. It got J.K. to thinking again. It had been a couple of decades since his father died and he finally reached the point when his anger and embarrassment dissipated. Mostly, he did not consider his parents. He knew his oldest daughter kept in touch with her Uncle George—J.K.’s youngest sibling—and her cousins. Also, his sister-in-law Elizabeth had returned to Maryland on a visit and was full of news upon her return. Mostly, he shut out everything.

He closed his eyes, hoping that others would think he was deeply contemplating. And conjured up a vision he once had of what Ballyriggin, Ireland must have been when his father abandoned it. It surprised him how many details gathered into the crooks and crevices of his imagination from the times his father talked at family celebrations or funerals. The old-timers from Ireland got together in a circle on the lawn, and soon accents grew thicker and thicker to where they were very difficult to decipher.

Old Germans speaking English with an Irish overtone. It had been over 100 years since the ancestor Johann Heinrich Stark left his occupation of vine-dressing and husbandry in the Rhineland to venture to County Limerick. There, many households of similarly Germanic Protestants with mostly farming backgrounds settled on plots of land owned by the English gentry.

Some of the men obtained their own property and as families grew, they spread within the county and beyond so that about fifty years later, Peter Stark established himself as farmer in outlying Ballyriggin twenty-five miles distant. There, he became a patron of the Church of Ireland in Kilfinane Parish, having his own church pew built. Back then, a Methodist like Peter had to have the sacraments performed by The Established Church, and besides, no Methodist chapel had yet existed.

J.K. learned most of this from a single overheard conversation between the old men. One of them reminded his father that he had been named after his grandfather Peter and he should live up to the name. The others nodded in agreement.

“Yah, Peter. Arbeit. Work makes the man.”

“I work hard,” his father protested.

“When you actually work. No different from the Old Country. Too much time dreaming.” Another responded something like “Was Hanschen nicht lernt, lernt Hans nimmermehr.” You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, loosely.

It amazed J.K. that his ancestors could spend 120 years in Ireland and still speak German such that even after moving to America, it was still the language they often reverted to. But then, his wife Sevilla’s ancestors had been in the United States for several generations and they, too, still spoke an inordinate amount of German. Insular, they all once were.

Yet, J.K.’s father married a girl of English roots whose ancestors had long been in America. Maybe it wasn’t an act of rebellion; she, too, was Methodist and lived in his community. And perhaps all the the German-American girls were spoken for.

“Amen.”

J.K. opened his eyes and glanced around. No one seemed to have noticed anything amiss, his eyes shut long before the prayer began. He took up the hymnal and he and Sevilla and

Ella confidently sang, “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine.” He always loved the tune and often forgot the lyrics, though Ella could herself preach a sermon on the meaning she got out of all the hymns they sang on any given Sunday.

His thoughts returned to his father. He knew his father once worked in the mines, however briefly. It was always something Pa had brought up when others derided his laziness. J.K. thought staying out of the mines is practically a virtue, though coal mining was one of the largest means of employment both in Linn County and back in western Maryland. No, farming was the way to go. It eluded his understanding how his father did not see that during his own employment as a farm laborer.

J.K. made his way outside of church. He did not linger; he had seen nearly all of his fellow church members sometime in the past week as they dropped by with cakes and presents and cards. He made his way to his buggy, unhitched the horses, and helped his wife and daughter into the vehicle. He held tight to the reins as someone honked the horn on their automobile.

“Confound it! So-called progress!” Ella growled. As a 45-year-old spinster, she had little problem expressing herself.

“Ella, dear, remember the Sabbath Day.”

“Wife, she is simply saying what we all are thinking,” declared J.K. as they departed for home.

Note: I learned to read music and to play the piano the same way my father did: from this hymnal. His father was a Methodist minister and his wife, my grandmother Jennie Statk DuBois played for his churches until her children were old enough to take over. Missouri Methodist Churches were then still known as “Methodist Episcopal Church South,” after the church split over the issue of slavery decades earlier.

All Lithographs from a Book
Jennie Received for Christmas