Crossing Paths

Crossing Paths

Tom gripped a handle bar swinging his shoe hard against the kick stand and then over the long bike seat grabbing the other handle to pedal out on his journey. Two legs of his trip skirted the turkey farm along the railroad tracks and 62nd street. Grown-ups on their way to places followed these paths. Tom rode their narrow shoulders. He reached the stores along the last leg. Tom dismounted looking over at the farm. Several weathered coops in clusters edged the tracks. Chicken wire kept varmints out. The rumble of trains greeted hatching poultry. The hatchlings’ mouths would open as they gazed up at the sky and drowned during rain storms. Turkeys were stupid. Didn’t matter, this was an egg farm. A few peahens strutted among the turkeys. Peahens were different. They had peacocks as mates, with those blue, green, and bronzy-brown tail feathers. Turkeys had each other.

Tom leaned his bike against a wall. Two boys scrambled out the door of a shop. They ran from under the store awning to a station wagon. Tom caught the shop door before it closed and held it for their dad. He went inside. No kids were inside. No one but the barber was there. Tom got a Hot Rod magazine and sat down to flip through its pages. It spoke of a different life. Not a boy’s life. Tom knew a neighbor kid working on a Chevy in his garage and another boy up the street who raced go-karts. Here were ladies in photos holding auto parts. Ladies posing against cars. That was their job. The door opened. Tom squinted. His dad entered. The barber spun the chair, turned to his dad, and said, “Tom, hop up. Same as usual, Bill?” Tom tossed the magazine at the table. It slipped off. Tom leaned to pick it up. He stopped and instead went over to the barber chair. Tom looked at his dad who looked back. “Do what you can, Gene.” said his dad, “Would you pluck some off the inside too?” Gene smiled, tucked Tom’s collar down, and draped a brown apron across him. He pulled scissors out of a jar filled with blue water and began to groom. He lifted tufts of Tom’s hair between two fingers and then snipped, again and again. At times, the barber tilted Tom’s head to the side. “You got a pimple.” said the barber, “Want me to get it?” The barber pushed Tom’s head into his neck and dug in. Then he razored peach fuzz off Tom’s shoulders. At length, he shook talcum into a brush and dusted away the trimmings. He spun Tom to face the mirror. Dad approved. Haircuts messed with Tom. Haircuts were childish, and then not.

Some mornings, before heading to the bus stop, Tom would sneak a look at his dad shaving. His dad took a thick handled brush and stirred it around a soap bar into rich foam which he lathered on his stubble. He wet his double edge razor, wiped the steam off the mirror, and began to shave - first the neck, then the cheeks and chin, and finally from nose to lip. He splashed water on his face, patted with a white towel, and dabbed on aftershave. Tom saw that and wanted to see more. Barbers groomed men. They sized up a customer. They clipped what wasn’t needed and in that cutting revealed the man. Men went there to get the ear of other men. Tom wanted to go there, alone. His dad followed. Afterwards Tom would ride over to see friends. His dad would head back home. They left the shop together. Tom saw his dad lift his hand above his eyes as he got in the car. He was blocking out the sun to get a look.

Tom heard a commotion over by the turkey coops. A strident choir of gobbles diminished into raucous laughter. He saw two kids emerge from a coop with eggs. As he rode over, Tom heard the low whistle of an approaching train. The kids got set to egg the train. He had to see this. He lifted the rod of the gate and entered the farm. Across the way sharp, cracking sounds echoed as the kids struck their mark. As the train passed, a stodgy conductor waved frantically from the caboose. As Tom reached the kids, he saw Brenda walking along 62nd Street. Her brother delivered the paper in the morning. His throat tightened. Brenda was pretty. He liked to sit behind her on the school bus. He raised his hand high toward her. He saw Brenda quickly point back at him. Tom suddenly felt a sharp pain in his thigh as he tumbled hard. One of the kids had clipped him. The other moved in pinning Tom to the ground, straddling his stomach. The kid gripped Tom’s wrists. Tom looked up and saw the kid’s mouth open to dangle a thick drop of spit down at him. The kid slurped the rubbery liquid back into his mouth and then let it drool it out again. Tom felt his blue jeans slip down his tail bone. The other kid was pulling Tom’s pants off. Things were going terribly wrong. Spit landed on his cheeks and edged down his chin. As Tom grimaced a hand appeared over the kid’s scalp. The hand grabbed hair and yanked the kid aside. Then a foot piled into a shoulder of the other kid.

Brenda savaged them. The kids scattered. Brenda shrugged. She swept her long brown hair behind one ear revealing a lovely jaw. She turned as Tom got up and tucked his shirt back into his pants. He found his comb and swept it quickly through his hair. “Hey, McSoley’s Pharmacy is right over there. I was just headed there. Let's go.” Brenda said, “They have great stuff.” “Sure, thanks." said Tom. “Sorry they messed with you,” replied Brenda. Silently, they left the farm. Brenda closed the gate and joined up with Tom at his bike. His legs quivered on either side of his bike as Brenda hopped on behind. They set out, Brenda’s shoes scraping the road along the way. Tom stood up on the pedals and pushed hard over to the drug store. That was his job.

Note to Arriving Pioneers

Note to Arriving Pioneers

Your farm wagon bustles with keepsakes. Its fabric canopy protects you. Remember, the relics it stows connect you with the rest of the nation. At stops, brew ginseng tea from roots you buy at a Connecticut market. Have in mind bartering your wife’s calico dress for passage along the Lancaster Turnpike. Be proud of resistance to the British coastal blockade in 1812 for inspiring this overland road and many others. Be grateful of learning patience from miles of rough travel up and down the Appalachians and across Ohio streams. Appreciate the curved bottom of your wagon. It keeps vestiges of your Yankee life from tipping against the tailgate.

Be thankful this journey is behind you. Celebrate your migration, and that of thousands of farm families, leaving New England in promise of better conditions. Reminisce about the spectacular yellow tinged sunsets as you travel west along the origins of the National Road. Do not fuss over missing the tie between these gleaming twilights and the summer frosts and snowfalls killing hardy crops across New England. Unknown to you, some thirty years earlier, Ben Franklin draws a connection between a severe winter in Europe and volcanic eruptions in Iceland. Think that it is better, on balance, that your Old Farmer’s Almanac does not forecast this Year Without a Summer - with volcanos erupting in 1815 on a scale last seen when the western world plummeted into the dark ages. Waiting for disaster is unbearable. Forgive its publisher for lack of remedies to ameliorate conditions as the northeast dims in spring and summer under a persistent sulfate veil. Admit that you, a farmer, face hunger and illness even as the eastern seaboard offers a wide range of food and comfort shipped from the south. Hold fast to the notion of an unyielding land stripping you of farming’s bounty, but not of your traditions. Do not be sorry for those staying behind in these times, for sufficient food is available in markets once enough folks leave.

Regret that there is suffering and loss along your path. Honor your survival. Be reticent. Consider that fate often wrongly rewards. Plow ahead. Accept that you are living your life. There is ample time for forgetfulness to do its work. Understand that your descendants romanticize your journey as they, and future generations across this nation, trace maps with thick lines of common routes westward as though interstates with internet connections.

In the New Purchase, your know-how with crops, livestock, and timber is useful. Your familiarity with merchants in stopovers along your land and river routes west helps as you ship your products back east in exchange for factory made building materials. Your ingenuity keeps you from isolating yourself from the rest of the country. Hold on to names of towns where you camp. Towns like Mansfield, Lucas, Perrysville, and Loudonville where you savor the sour apples in orchards of a generation earlier thanks to Johnny Appleseed. Oblige yourself to bring order to this wilderness. Even as nature decays your efforts, take pride in your work.

Nightly, gather with fellow travelers around campfires. Listen to blacksmiths, tanners, and wagon makers in taverns and stores along the way. Think of settling where there is a grist mill, a saw mill, and a distillery. Hear tales of Indiana with its towering forests and fertile valleys thick with game. Embrace the prospect of land with soil so rich that you need to coat your corn seed in axle grease or the plants will burn themselves up shooting out of the ground. Think of it as a sacred spot. Decide opportunity lies in the land of Indians. Try to see that to the Indians you are the barbarian.

For those of us to follow will surely sketch pictures of you blazing trails through a vast wilderness and raising log homes with nothing more than the axe over your shoulder. Politicians living in fancy homes win elections with that image. Draw lessons from those living in hasty round-log shelters as well. Have in mind a hewn-log house with clapboard siding, glass-pane windows, cast iron hardware, and plastered and painted surfaces. Covet items in the ads in the Indiana Gazette. Link yourself to the factory system. It changes your folkways, but births the consumer.

Decide to follow Brookville Road out of Cincinnati toward a new state capital instead of floating down the Ohio. Wander along a small creek flowing to the White River, where in 1819 Ute Perkins crafts the first round-log cabin in what is now Indianapolis. Take heed that Perkins abandons this shelter during the cold winter out of loneliness and high-tails it for more settled parts. Hear that in the following spring, George Pogue and his family find the cabin and claim it as their own. Be wary, as a year later, shortly after Delaware Indians take Pogue’s horses, a fierce Wyandotte Indian named John, who lives in a hollow sycamore log, stops in at Pogue’s cabin to spend the night. Concur that Pogue thinks it best not to refuse him. Savor the hearth cooked meal and indulge Wyandotte John as he tips off Pogue of his stay at a Delaware tribes’ Buck Creek camp and describes seeing Pogue's horses there. See courage in Pogue as he vows to his family to head east to Buck Creek to take back his horses. See practicality in Wyandotte John as he leaves early the next morning and heads west to the McCormick settlement along White River. Watch as Pogue puts on his broad brim, black wool hat and his drab overcoat with several capes as he too leaves the cabin. Follow Pogue follow the Wyandotte west for a while to allay his fears that the tale of Pogue’s horses at Buck Creek is not a ruse for luring him into the woods. Be sad upon learning that after a while George Pogue turns east and is never heard from again. Pay your respects as the creek flowing by his cabin becomes Pogue’s Run.

Be there during the following October, as lots within the donation lands sell through the Indianapolis Land Office run by Commissioner Christopher Harrison. Hear gossip that Harrison is a long-time hermit. Wonder as he once proclaims himself as governor of Indiana. Be leery that Harrison hires Benjamin Blythe as clerk. Feel grand that crowds are large and business is brisk. Be cheerful as patrons assemble each night around hearths at four taverns hashing out the sale before retiring to camps. Have relief that although the woods fill with moneyed people, there is no fear of robbery. Celebrate that three hundred and fourteen lots sell. Regret that more than half of these that sell are later relinquished. See the town grow slowly. Help families erect hewn log cabins on stumpy lots leaving piles of limbs and logs. Curse the thick clusters of hazel, spice brush, and pawpaw making it hard to go from place to place. Brood silently about the lack of commerce. Persist in spite of the town’s reputation for sickness. Struggle in hope of better conditions.

Face scandal arising in efforts to close out sale of the remaining donation lands. Be stunned of no audit of the books of the Indianapolis Land Office for a dozen years. Figure out Blythe’s extensive concerns with other respectable gentlemen in opportunities in relinquished lots. Commiserate with fellow purchasers putting down twenty percent and undertaking the rest in installments. Size up that many of the purchasers are speculators looking to resell to you and other families hobbling in from New England. Read the fine print as only with the last installment, do you receive a patent from the land agent to take to the county recorder for a deed. Fear that if installments are not made, your land can be taken away by the land agent and resold. Question that enterprising gentlemen are taking funds from the Land Office till, lending these funds to struggling families like you, and taking a lien upon your tracts at fifty per cent interest. Be furious as these gentlemen pay Blythe a stipend as they file applications for relinquishment of your land. Be angry, as only after receiving applications do families find they are in default, and not the other way around. Be suspicious, as defaults arise in time for lots to resell to the next arriving pioneers. Watch enterprising merchants scramble, before the end of each quarter, to gather up all the money they can for a few days, to balance the books the Land Office needs to present to federal offices in Cincinnati. Reflect that Hoosier woods are the least place to fear.

See that plight and opportunity stir desire to look hard at what has gone before. Assemble around the hearths of farmhouse, campfires, taverns, and homes to share passions and interests. When problems arise be willing to break off, struggle, and emerge in some new place. Be a part of the new order taking shape around the whole. What you hold dearest rests on a curving platform. Keep your eye out for the tipping points. Take a hard look at uncomfortable things. Opportunity is shrouded. You are almost always better off arriving as a pioneer. Reach into your trousers feeling for the fresh Indiana ginseng root in your pocket. See many of your roots resting in bins in New England markets. Hold on for another twenty years as the railroads are coming your way.