Daniel Powers • Illustrator • Author • Instructor

Buh Tukrey Buzzud an de Rain

2012-01-07T18:04:00.001-05:00

Buh Tukrey Buzzud, him yent hab no sense no how.

You watch um. Wen de rain duh po down, eh set on de fench an eh squinch up isself. Eh draw in he neck, an eh try fur hide he head, an he look dat pittyful you rale sorry for um. Eh duh half cry, an eh say to isself, “Nummine, wen dis rain ober me guine buil house right off. Me yent guine leh dis rain lick me dis way no mo.”

Wen de rain done gone, an de win blow, an de sun shine, wuh Buh Tukrey Buzzud do? Eh set on de top er de dead pine tree way de sun kin wam um, an eh tretch out eh wing, an eh tun roun an roun so de win kin dry eh fedder, an eh laugh to isself, an eh say, “Dis rain done ober. Eh yent guine rain no mo. No use fur me fuh buil house now.”

Caless man dis like Buh Tukrey Buzzud.

(Joel Chandler Harris transliterated dozens of Gullah tales from the Georgia coast in the late 1800s, among them this witty fable involving — what else? — vultures. If you have a hard time reading the Gullah text, this might help:

Bro' Turkey Buzzard, he has no sense, nohow!

You watch him. When the rain pours down, he sits on the fence and squishes himself up. He draws in his neck, and he tries to hide his head, and he looks so pitiful you're really sorry for him. He nearly cries, and he says to himself, "Never mind — when this rain is over I'm gonna build a house right away. I'm not gonna let this rain lick me like this any more."

When the rain is gone and the wind blows and the sun shines, what's Bro' Turkey Buzzard do? He sits on the top of the dead pine tree where the sun can warm him, and he stretches out his wings, and he turns 'round and 'round so the wind can dry his feathers, and he laughs and says to himself, "This rain is over. It's not gonna rain any more. No use in me building a house now."

'Tis a careless man like Bro' Turkey Buzzard.)

Playing with Vultures

2012-01-02T17:15:00.000-05:00

My sister sent me a sketchbook for Christmas she picked up on a recent trip to China. It's a wonderful little book -- just the right size to carry in my computer bag -- and it's beautiful the way it's decorated and bound. Its cover will challenge me to fill it with jewels as lovely as the cover itself.

When I moved to coastal Georgia, I was amazed at the number of black vultures here. They have such great silhouettes! I'm fascinated with them. Naturally, this is the first thing I put in my new sketchbook:

When sketching though, I couldn't help but think that the shape of the vulture resembles a hunch-backed woman with a huge bustled skirt:

I began wondering what she might look like if she were fleshed out a bit more, so played around a bit with my watercolors:

One of the tricks for me when illustrating is making sure my work stays fresh, and I think my watercolor is a little overworked -- it lacks the spontaneous quality of the sketch that I like so much. I'll have to revisit this, and will keep posting.

It's great getting such wonderful Christmas presents. You never know where they'll take you, or who they'll introduce you to!

Sean O'Halloran: More Color Details

2011-04-10T11:18:00.000-04:00

Part of my delay in regularly posting this process work is that I have no time to paint! My posts are coming along as fast as my painting! Here are more details from the couple of hours I carved out yesterday to paint.

Close-up of Sean O'Halloran

Close-up of Sean O'Halloran (again)

Faeries in front of the cross

Close-up of O'Halloran's wife (but does she have a name?)

O'Halloran reaching for his wife

Sean O'Halloran: Color Details

2011-04-09T14:23:00.001-04:00

(I should start this post, faithful followers, by saying that I apologize for taking so long to upload a follow-up to my previous post. It's been the start of yet another busy quarter at school, and I find that my blog has once again fallen by the wayside. Thanks for hanging in there, all! Sorry, Andrew, that your watercolor surface has cracked, and dried, and turned to dust, and blown away while you've been patiently awaiting this follow-up.)

Here are a few details from my previous process. If you recall, I used primarily a medium to light wash of Payne's grey throughout the piece, warming the foreground with the addition of burn sienna. I added more saturated washes to areas where I needed deeper values. As these washes began to dry, the pigment migrated across the surface of the paper, and any irregularities of pigment distribution resolved themselves; the result was very even gradations of value and color. But before the surface was entirely dry, when the surface of the paper was barely glistening, I dropped in areas of clear water to create blossoms, which give the faeries and the enchanted characters a luminous quality.

This is a detail of one of the faeries in the foreground, which is indicated by the hint of burnt sienna bleeding in from the lower edge of the shot; the blossom was achieved by simply applying clear water to a nearly dry surface already covered with a medium wash. The relative differences in viscosities allow the clear water to push the pigment aside, resulting in a radial build-up of Payne's grey as the clear water moves away from the point at which it was applied to the paper.

Here you can see a similar treatment of the face of Sean O'Halloran.

This is a detail of O'Halloran's enchanted wife,
who was abducted by faeries, as Sean tries to rescue her.

This is a long shot of nearly the entire image.

Here you can see some of the detail I've added to the faeries,
who, according to the text, are rather ferocious. (I can't help but think about Barrie's Tinker Bell versus Disney's; Barrie's is so much more loveable, precisely because she is so spiteful [and human]!)

Sean O'Halloran: Initial Wash

2011-03-21T09:53:00.000-04:00

Once I have completed the drawing, I begin laying in color. Initially I wet the entire surface of my paper, then apply color using broad swaths of Prussian blue and Payne's gray. While I want this wash to be relatively dark, I am careful not to get particular details too dark. I carefully manipulate the fluid quality of the watercolor, creating blossoms and bleeds very deliberately at this early stage of the painting.

Sean O'Halloran: One Mark at a Time

2011-02-22T01:00:00.001-05:00

After blacking the back of my enlarged, digital drawing with a piece of 6B graphite, I tape the enlarged image to my stretched sheet of Arches, making sure that the piece is appropriately positioned and that there is plenty of white space around the image area.

I use a colored pencil (green, in this case) to draw over the enlarged image, pressing hard enough to transfer the soft graphite from the back of the sheet to the front of the watercolor paper, but not pressing so hard as to emboss the surface of the paper. I use colored pencil so I can see what I have retraced versus what still remains. (Using a normal graphite pencil would certainly do the same job, but it's impossible to see what's been transferred.)

I've taped together a four-piece digital output of my revised sketch,
blackened its reverse side with 6B graphite, and taped
the resulting "transfer sheet" to my stretched watercolor paper.

This image demonstrates how I revise my sketches using Photoshop.
I build the sketch in layers: Sean O'Halloran on one layer,
his wife and horse on another, fairies on a third. This way
I can manipulate the individual characters independently
of one another. You saw in a previous post how I enlarged
Sean O'Halloran in relation to his surroundings.

The resulting transfer is typically very light, as you can see—or almost see—here.

The transferred graphite line in barely perceptible
on the watercolor paper; you can just make out the cross
on the left, and the horse head in the upper center of the image.

Depending on the look I have in mind for the finished artwork, I might begin painting immediately after transferring the drawing, or I might work up the drawing with more detail than in the original. In this case, I used an HB pencil to complete details not present in my original sketches. (Working with watercolor, it's a good idea for me to have a pretty complete drawing in place before I begin painting.)

I redraw the transferred image using an HB pencil, adding detail
not present in the original sketch.

Here you can see Sean O'Halloran fumbling for his wife,
whom he is not able to see.

This is a detail from above.

Here is the nearly complete pencil rendering
on my stretched watercolor paper.

Sean O'Halloran: Getting Started

2011-02-19T20:11:00.002-05:00

The first step for me when beginning a new painting is to stretch my paper. I work pretty exclusively on 140# Arches cold press. I'm a process person, which translates into my enjoying the process of stretching paper. (When I teach, a vast majority of my students groan when I tell them to stretch their paper; they prefer buying 400# stock to avoid having to stretch it. Me? I get a lot of satisfaction from it.)

I first start by cutting down a 22 x 30" sheet to 22 x 15". I make sure to mark the backs of the cut-down sheets, so I know which side is front and which is back. The side from which you can read the watermark is the front. With the exception of Hahn papers, every watermark has verbiage of some sort, which allows you to know which side is the front; Hahn has an image of a rooster with no verbiage, so when I work with their papers, I have to log onto their website to see which direction the rooster needs to face in order to determine which side is the front. But I digress.

I then fill the bathtub with six inches of tepid water. (I make sure that the tub's free of any sort of soap residue, since soap will adversely affect how my washes will lay on the surface. [I also need to make sure there aren't any stray pet hairs in the tub.])

I place the sheet into the water, right-side-up, and carefully submerge it, making certain all of the air bubbles are removed from the underside of the sheet, and that the piece has been completely submerged. (Trapped air pockets will cause irregularities in the sizing that remains in the paper, and this, too, will adversely affect the way my washes lay on the surface.) I let the paper float in the water for fifteen to twenty minutes.

While the paper's soaking up the water and expanding, I collect a piece of 24 x 36" particle board and a staple gun, and return to the tub.

I lay the particle board on the counter, and carefully remove the limp sheet from the tub, picking it up by one corner, removing it from the water on a diagonal, allowing the water to run off easily, all the while supporting it from another corner, preventing the wet, fragile sheet from folding over on itself. (Good watercolor sheets with high rag content can take a lot of tear, but I'm still very careful not to bend or mar the paper, especially while it's this wet.)

I lay the wet sheet on the particle board, grab my staple gun, and attack! I shoot staples into the sheet, all the way around, every 1-1/2 to 2", about 3/8" from the paper's edge.

The cat and dog both hate the racket of the staple gun, and high-tail it out of the house.

When I've finished stapling, I place the board on a flat surface and let it dry. Any wrinkles in the wet paper will flatten out as the surface dries and shrinks. When we lived in New Mexico, the drying process took about ten seconds; here in Savannah, it takes a little longer.

When the paper is dry, I have a beautifully flat sheet of Arches, ready for the deluge of washes I'm about to apply.

In the photo, situated above the stretched sheet are four digital printouts of my revised sketch. I enlarged the image using Photoshop, and output it to letter-sized paper, which I subsequently tape together into a single image. After the taping is complete, I use a stick of 6B graphite to blacken the back of the pieced-together sketch. Then I'm ready to transfer the drawing to the watercolor paper.

Revised Sketch for Sean O'Halloran

2011-02-14T06:30:00.004-05:00

This is the original sketch I had done for the painting in the previous post. You can see that my final watercolors resemble the original sketch down to the smallest detail. I love drawing and enjoy the sketching part of the process. And while I was learning watercolor, a rather unforgiving medium to the uninitiated, I learned early on that it's good to have a solid sketch, replete with values, before putting paint to paper.

Below is the revised sketch. I have used (quite literally) bits and pieces of the original drawing, which I put together, montage style, into a revised sketch. If the sketch looks pieced together, it is. And while I like the drawing of the horse and O'Halloran's wife better in this revised sketch, I've pulled back too far and there's no strong focal point. So it's back to the drawing board.

Here's the revised sketch (below). I know. I know. You're saying to yourself, "It's the same thing. There's no difference between the two." Remember the backs of the Jack and Jill magazines from when we were kids, and there were two illustrations that on the surface appeared to be the same, but there were differences? Well, there are differences here, too, but not many. I made Sean O'Halloran larger, and changed the shape of his wife's cape in the revised sketch. This provides a stronger focal point, something the original revision was lacking. And this revised revision (!) will serve as the roadmap for my painting.

Sean O'Halloran and the Faerie Lord

2011-02-13T12:42:00.003-05:00

Early last year I did a series of illustrations for an original folktale called "Sean O'Halloran and the Faerie Lord" for Cricket Magazine. It was a wonderful tale and I was happy with the way the illustrations came out. The story was about a young mother who was kidnapped by fairies; she was enchanted and became enslaved as the wet nurse for the offspring of the Faerie Lord; her husband was left to fend for his children on his own, continually trying to find his missing wife; ultimately, he was able to capture his bewitched wife when the fairies led her on horseback by the cross on the road.

These are a couple of the images I created for the story. This first one is Sean O'Halloran's wife as she sits, entranced, at the foot of the bed in which the Faerie Queen has just given birth. The midwife is about to hand over the newborn.

The next image is where Sean O'Halloran, having heard that his wife would be led across the countryside by the fairies at nighttime, is flailing about, trying to locate and capture his invisible wife as she passes by. (The bells on the horses have given them away.)

For whatever reason, after the work was done, I wasn't entirely happy with this second image. The composition was forced in a way that, after the piece had gone to press, didn't please me entirely. So I'm going to rework the piece. And I'll post my process here.

Until now, this blog has been where I've posted family stories accompanied by graphite drawings I've done. With this post, the direction of this blog will change. While it will continue to feature my illustration work, it won't necessarily have to do only with family stories.

Enjoy!

Personal Horn Blowing

2010-12-25T13:14:00.006-05:00

I'm happy to report that many of the images I have been posting on this blog were recently featured in 3 x 3 Illustration Annual No. 7. If you're not familiar with 3 x 3 Magazine of Contemporary Illustration, check it out. I'm excited to be recognized by such a prestigious international publication.

Historic Note

2010-10-24T06:00:00.010-04:00

Between 1860 and 1899 more than five million Prussians sailed to America, the largest group of immigrants to this country before 1900. They left because of economic hardship and political unrest, hoping for better lives in America.

When August was young, Germany was not a unified country as it is today. It was made up of many small kingdoms, of which Prussia was one. Today the kingdom of Prussia no longer exists. People of the German Empire included Austrians, Belgians, Czechs, Danes, Dutch, French, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Luxembourgers, Poles, Russians, Slavs, Swiss and, of course, Germans.

Kaiser Wilhelm ruled the Empire but Otto von Bismarck was chancellor. He tried to unify these diverse groups into a single German nation. He declared Protestantism the state religion and closed Catholic churches. He persecuted anyone who spoke a language other than German.

Like most rural Prussians, August’s father was a day-laborer. He received meager wages for odd jobs performed for wealthy landlords. He managed to save enough to send Berta to America as a mail-order bride, a practice common among Prussians wishing to relocate their large families to the States. However, it would be four long years before the family was reunited in Michigan. During that time, Berta and August wrote to one another. And mail took ten to twelve weeks to cross the Atlantic.

When August’s family left, the government forced Johann to remain in Prussia to complete his army duty. However, once August reached Parisville he mailed his emigration papers back to Johann who fled using August’s identity. Once reunited in Michigan, August’s mother, Franziska, changed her name to Frances, Johann changed his to John, and Karl changed his to Charles. Berta became known as Bertha and August simply went by Gus. He and his siblings learned English quickly; however, his mother never mastered the new language. Strangely, August and Berta continued speaking German while Johann, Karl and Anna spoke Polish. The German-Polish split in their family mirrored the German-Polish split in Parisville. Interestingly, a similar division occurred later in their village of Kniewon-Samosten: when a new border between Germany and Poland was established after World War I, the village was cut in two — Kniewon became part of Germany while Samosten became part of Poland.

Parisville is believed to be the oldest Polish settlement in the United States, established around 1852. And Parisville is where my grandmother, Martha Abraham, was born. Grandma was August’s daughter. August my great-grandfather. Following her father’s example, Grandma spoke to me in German as well as English. “Was ist mit Dir los?” she asked if I were upset — “What’s the matter?” “Ach, Du Lieber!” she exclaimed — “Oh, dear!” At Christmas she baked Lebkuchen — spicy gingerbread men. She taught me prayers in German — Gelobet seist Du, Jesu Christ. And whenever she saw me, she gave me große Umarmungen und Küßchen — big hugs and kisses — which are exactly the same in German or in English!

Letter Dated 3 May 1882, Bremerhaven, Bremen

2010-10-17T06:00:00.001-04:00

Dear Bertha,

Mama had me sell the cow! All we own we carry in bundles and bags. But Johann is not with us! He had to remain in Prussia to finish his army service. He said we had to go to Michigan without him and that he will join us as soon as he can.

In the morning we board the S.S. Ohio for Baltimore. We will arrive in Parisville by mid-June! I cannot wait!

Aside from learning a few words of English (did you notice?), I have learned some Beethoven duets for us. But am hoping you will teach me some Stephen Foster songs instead. What do you think?

Your soon-to-be-American brother,
Gus

Letter Dated 8 September 1881, Parisville, Michigan

2010-10-10T06:00:00.004-04:00

Lieber August,

Tuesday morning the nuns were here collecting for the poor. The sky looked shadowy and opaque. Our chickens had vanished. The horses were skittish. Then we smelled smoke.

August, it happened so fast! The forest to our west was burning! Wind carried sparks through the treetops, setting everything around us ablaze. Flames surrounded our hotel. There was no escape.

We fixed an icon of Our Lady to the front porch and raced back inside. We prayed.

Four hours the fire roared! Timbers creaked. Windows cracked. Heat blasted.

An unsettling silence followed. We opened the door and crept out past Our Lady. There was not a blister or burn on her. Yet the fire had consumed everything. Charred bodies of man and beast littered the landscape. The air reeked of soot and singed hide.

Miraculously the hotel was spared. It was the single structure left standing in the vast wasteland that was once Parisville.

We are grateful to be alive and to have lost nothing. But at times like this I wonder why I ever left home. First Papa. Now this. I need you more than ever. August, come to us!

We have been setting aside money for an emergency such as this. I have enclosed a draft on the American Exchange Bank for $350. At last you all can sail to America. Let me know when to expect you. Until then, I bless you all with the Holy Cross.

Deine Schwester,
Berta

Letter Dated 15 October 1880, Kniewon-Samosten, Prussia

2010-10-03T06:00:00.003-04:00

Liebe Berta,

I cannot believe that I am an uncle! But Mama says she feels like a grandma.

Since spring the rain has not stopped. Standing water fills the fields. Rye rots on the stalks. We harvest what we can. With Papa gone Johann has returned from the army, but his strong arms and sturdy back are not enough. Mama takes in laundry. Anna cooks for day-workers. And it rains.

We had so little money that Mama was forced to sell my violin to pay the rent. I asked if she could sell the cow instead. Things are so bleak that I fear I may never meet my new niece. Berta, what if we never see one another again?

Dein Bruder,
August

Letter Dated 13 August 1879, Parisville, Michigan

2010-09-26T06:00:00.003-04:00

Lieber August,

My heart breaks when I think of dear Papa. He worked tirelessly to send me to America so you all could follow. Now he will never see this New World himself. It makes no sense.

But Father Gratza assures us that God has a plan, that life is a mystery. And this must be true, for I write you now with glad news:

I have had a baby! Little Agnes looks like you and drools the way you used to! I wish you were here to be her godfather. William intends to make her a fiddle when she is older. He says we will have two musicians in the family. While a duo with Agnes will be wonderful, a trio with you would be better still. If only we could play together! And if only Papa could see his first grandchild — and an American grandchild at that! He would be so proud.

Deine Schwester,
Berta

Letter Dated 27 February 1879, Kniewon-Samosten, Prussia

2010-09-19T06:00:00.003-04:00

Liebe Berta,

Terrible news: Papa is dead. He was out logging when a runaway sledge knocked him unconscious. Lumbermen carried him home. We sent for the doctor, but he could do nothing. Papa never awoke. We buried him yesterday.

Mama is beside herself. I remind her, “Where fear is the greatest, God’s help is the nearest,” but she takes no comfort in these words. To think that we will never see him again! Sister, what will we do without Papa?

Dein Bruder,
August

Letter Dated 16 December 1878, Parisville, Michigan

2010-09-12T06:00:00.003-04:00

Lieber August,

The third star approaches, the Holy Night draws near. As we divide our Christmas wafer, we think of you; and the wish we make is to be reunited soon. Next year, God willing, we will play carols together again. But this year, you and your sweet strings are sorely missed.

Happy Christmas!

Deine Schwester,
Berta

Letter Dated 30 October 1878, Kniewon-Samosten, Prussia

2010-09-05T06:00:00.003-04:00

Liebe Berta,

You will not believe what happened!

Chancellor Bismarck closed our church! To think that you now have two churches there while we have none! Father Brill says Bismarck will force us all to become Protestant! What’s more, the chancellor has forbidden us to speak Polish or Kashubian. We must speak only German! Sister, you cannot imagine the awful changes we face since you left.

The storks have begun their migration south, warning us of the grim winter ahead. Already cold rains have started.

I truly miss you!

Dein Bruder,
August

Letter Dated 15 March 1878, Parisville, Michigan

2010-08-29T06:00:00.006-04:00

Lieber August,

By the time you receive this letter, I am certain your arm will have healed and that you are once again playing violin. Keep practicing. I will do the same. And we will think of one another.

Most settlers here come from Prussia. They are so eager to be entirely American that they break ties with European ways. For example, people here call me Bertha! Imagine! They say it sounds more American than Berta. So to fit in I am learning English, but it is not necessary. People here rarely speak it! They speak Polish or German, just like back home. And while we are all Prussians trying to fit in, there is one old habit that we will never reject: Germans and Poles here are as suspicious of one another as they are in Prussia. This discord is so blatant that the Parisville church is strictly Polish while just a mile down the road there is a German church. Unbelievable! Two churches to serve so few people! At least the economy in Parisville is better than in Prussia! It’s doing so well, in fact, that William and I are building a hotel. Papa was right — things are better here in America!

Deine Schwester,
Berta

Letter Dated 13 August 1877, Kniewon-Samosten, Prussia

2010-08-22T06:00:00.003-04:00

Liebe Berta,

We have moved. Papa says that with you in America and Johann in the army, we could no longer afford such a house.

After our move we had a fire. I was getting up from the table when I banged my head against the petroleum lamp. It fell on me and flames covered my arm. Mama snatched up the porridge and poured it over me. Papa rolled me in a blanket.

My arm is still tender but healing. Until it is better, I cannot play my violin. Since I sound so horrid without you, little is lost.

Tell brother William hello from me. Papa boxed my ears when I said William looks like Chancellor Bismarck!

Dein Bruder,
August

Letter Dated 7 July 1877, Parisville, Michigan

2010-08-15T06:00:00.004-04:00

Lieber August,

We are married! Enclosed is a photo we took after Mass. I cannot wait for you to meet your new brother-in-law!

And another surprise: William and I are building a hotel! Parisville is growing. More people pass our way each day — lumbermen heading north, trappers and fur-traders — and they all seek lodging. The railroad will come soon, bringing still more people. This hotel is such opportunity! And when you arrive, we can perform duets for guests. A respectable hotel needs beautiful music, right?

Deine Schwester,
Berta

Letter Dated 13 January 1877, Gohra, Prussia

2010-08-08T06:00:00.006-04:00

Liebe Berta,

Do you remember the polkas we played together? And the mazurkas? You on piano, me on violin?

Well, I cannot play them since you left! When I do, it sounds like weasels fighting. My attempts send Papa outdoors and make Karl shriek!

Mama says it could be years before we come to Parisville. Until then, she says, I must find my own beautiful voice as a solo violinist. We all hope that day comes soon.

Dein Bruder,
August

Letter Dated 23 September 1876, Parisville, Michigan

2010-08-01T06:00:00.004-04:00

Lieber August,

My journey was long. Hundreds of Prussians leave Bremen each day sailing for America. Like Papa, they find little work for low pay. And like Mama, they say that Bismarck is wrong — things are not improving in Prussia. So we all seek better lives in America. After six weeks of travel I am glad, if not a little nervous, to finally be here in Michigan.

August, I am sorry to have left. But I am sixteen now. Papa found a nice boy for me here in Parisville. He was waiting for me. His name is William Susalla and he is also from Prussia. He is hard working and watches over me in this country where so much is new and strange. As soon as you join me here, you will meet him yourselves.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about you, Mama and Papa, Johann, Anna and little Karl.

Deine Schwester,
Berta

Letter Dated 4 August 1876, Gohra, Prussia

2010-07-25T06:00:00.009-04:00

Liebe Berta,

Everything is changed since you left.

The house is so quiet. Mama is impatient. Papa is sad. And Johann is gone — called up for the army. Anna has stopped singing. And little Karl — what a baby! — he whines like the wind without you.

Mama says you are smart to leave now. And Papa says you will prosper. “Opportunity abounds in America,” he says.

Still, no one will say why you left when you did. What is a mail-order bride anyway? Because I am only eight, no one tells me a thing.

I wish you had never gone.

Dein Bruder,
August

And So It Began...

2010-07-24T06:00:00.006-04:00

Back Up

2010-07-20T10:20:00.000-04:00

ONE RAINY AFTERNOON, after we’d eaten our fill of cookies on the back stairs, Katie-Ann and I crept farther up. Gramma didn’t like us there. I guess it was ‘cuz she couldn’t see what we were up to. But it was a rainy day in Detroit, so what else were two cousins to do?

On the left side, at the top of the stairs, was an immense, deep ledge. We passed it every night on our way up to bed, and again every morning on our way back down. It was stacked to the ceiling with boxes, folded Afghans, pillows, lamp shades, a dressmaker’s dummy, an army helmet, hat boxes, a brass-and-marble pedestal ashtray with a greyhound-shaped handle, tattered paintings, a battered steamer trunk, a lumpy green duffel; and that was just what we could see from the stairs. Katie-Ann and I wondered what else was stashed there, and why we’d never thought to have a look before. But we hadn’t. Until now.

The first boxes we opened were filled with useless oddities: rubber nipples from baby bottles, tops from Mason jars, clothes pins. We laid these boxes aside. The next box contained a blue metal airplane with military decals on its fold-up wings. I yanked it from the box and flew it around the landing, vrooming away as I banked and dipped. Katie-Ann found a beat-up doll that she tossed aside and lunged for my plane.

“Lemme have it!” she said, grabbing hold.

I gave her a push as I snatched the plane back, not noticing that I had shoved her toward the stairs.

But the crash got my attention!

I whipped around and found Katie-Ann sprawled out on the ledge where boxes and blankets used to be. Piles of paraphernalia disappeared down the steps.

The kitchen door squeaked opened and Gramma called up, “You kids upstairs? Was macht Ihr? Are you all right?”

Our eyes fixed on one another as we heard her feet treading up the stairs.

“What is all this? What’re you kids doing? Are you all right?”

The look on Gramma’s face as she rounded the corner said everything we needed to know.

“Sorry, Gramma,” I said.

“Sorry,” echoed Katie-Ann. “We’ll clean it up.”

“What were ya doin’? You’re not supposed t’ be up here,” she said as she gathered up a couple of displaced pillows.

“I see ya found Uncle Max’s airplane," she said to me. "He loved playin’ with that when he was your age.”

I had a hard time imagining crotchety Uncle Max ever playing with anything, and wondered whether, at my age, he already had wiry hairs poking out of his nose and ears.

“Papa’s letters!” sighed Gramma. She bent over to collect the yellowed envelopes strewn about the stairs. A photo slipped from one and fluttered toward the kitchen.

Katie-Ann raced to get it.

“Who're these people?” she asked, handing the photo to Gramma.

“That’s my Pa and his sister Berta. I'm named after her,” she said, smiling at the happy pair who smiled back at her. “He was your great-grandpa and she was your great-grand-aunt. And these are letters they wrote to each other when they were just a little older than you two.”

There were lots of letters. How many could two kids write?

Gramma sat on the top step and began ordering them. She became very quiet, like she was thinking about something else. She smiled.

“Why would they write letters to each other?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Katie-Ann. “They lived in the same house, didn’t they?”

“Ach, Ihr Liebe! You don’t know about Papa and Tante Berta, do you?” she asked, pulling a letter from its envelope. She unfolded the delicate old paper and began reading it to us...

Hands Off!

2010-07-05T16:05:00.006-04:00

AS A BOY, there were things that I simply could not resist: stealing cookies from the jar on Gramma’s back stairs, sneaking a swim in the Horn’s pool, or secretly reading the diary Annie kept hidden beneath her mattress.

I read her private journal, cover to cover, in a single sitting. Pizza parties. Dances. Boys. Making out. It was actually pretty boring stuff. Disappointing really. But it was exciting to read because I knew I shouldn’t be doing it! Once I finished making mischief, I slid the diary back under the mattress, making certain the bedspread and pillows were properly in place.

The next morning before church, Annie looked at me strangely and asked, “Have you been in my room?”

“No,” I said, a bit too quickly. “Why? It was probably Jay-bird.”
 “Somebody’s been gettin’ into my things,” she said, studying my reaction. I squirmed a bit. “Ya don’t know anything about it, do ya?”

“No,” I repeated. “Leave me alone. We gotta go t’ church.”

Did she know? She stared at me with that look!

“Ya know what happens to little brothers who snoop around their sisters’ room, don’tcha?” she asked.

I couldn’t answer. I just looked at her, wondering whether she had found me out. But she said nothing more. She just cocked her head slightly and stared at me through those squinty eyes she had when she suspected me of something.

If Annie knew I had read her diary, she would make me pay!

A few days passed and Annie said nothing more about it. So I decided I was in the clear. Unable to resist, I slunk back to her room to catch up on Annie’s latest antics.

But when I reached under Annie’s mattress, the diary wasn’t there. What’s more, Cynthia was sitting on Annie’s pillow, no longer hanging in the closet where she was supposed to be. That creepy puppet stared at me like it could actually see! Its eyes were glued on me like it was keeping watch! I raced out of the room.

In bed that night I wondered what Annie was going to do to me. I knew she knew. And I knew she would do something to get back at me. I tossed from one side to the other, imagining the worst. In the twilight between wake and sleep, a thought hit me: maybe Annie had described her revenge in her diary! I could have a quick read to find out what she had in store for me!

The next thing I knew I was sneaking into Annie’s room. I heard her in the den watching TV with the rest of the family. I wondering whether she had put the diary back under her mattress. Cynthia sat stiffly on Annie’s pillow. I slid my arm under the mattress, careful to keep my face away from Cynthia who was suddenly way too close to me. But the diary wasn’t there. And I couldn’t pull my arm out from under the mattress! I was stuck! It had me!

And to my horror, Cynthia was growing larger and larger. Her unusually huge wooden foot flopped off the bed while her wiry hair scratched the ceiling. Her lacy wedding dress brushed my face making me pull away in revulsion. She lumbered up off of the bed, her long arms swinging apelike from her marionette body. Cynthia opened her mouth and her sharp, pearly teeth flashed. A voice hissed loudly from Cynthia’s mouth:

Fiddle-faddle-flit-and-flutter,
I smell the lie of her little brother,
If I catch him near her bed
I’ll pluck his eyes and stomp his head!

It took every ounce of strength I had to pull my arm free from the mattresses. I ran from the room, my heart drumming in my chest.

The house shook as Cynthia’s couch-sized feet thundered after me. I was too afraid to look back, but I could hear her skirts brushing along the walls, growing ever closer. I knew she was gaining on me.

“Fee-fi-fo-fum,” she bellowed. “FEE-FI-FO-FUM!”

Her immense hand closed tightly around my body and hoisted me into the air. She held me so fast that I was helpless. I was entirely immobile in the marionette’s death grip. All I could do was close my eyes. I felt her cold, dry fingernail stroking my forehead, inscribing it with her signature of doom.

Her hot breath crawled into my ear and down my neck as she whispered:

Feeble-fible-fabble-fubble
I smell one’s been making trouble,
Naughty boys I like the most,
Nicely broiled AND SERVED ON TOAST!

I opened my eyes just in time to see her unlatch the door of her blazing oven, ready to shove me in.

My screams woke me up. Moonlight streamed through my window. The TV blared in the den. Strangely, I still couldn’t move. To my confusion, I found myself rigidly wrapped in my bed sheet, and tied ‘round and ‘round with Annie’s old jump rope.

Annie!

I scooted to the edge of the bed, jumped out, and wiggled and wriggled my way out of the cocoon Annie had fashioned for me. I flipped on the light and squinted back its sudden brightness.

When I looked in the mirror, there was heavy black writing on my forehead, scrawled in the garbled language of giants. It read:

!FFO SDNAH

Springtime on the Pulaski II

2010-06-27T15:42:00.013-04:00

…The raft tottered and spun as we lurched away from the dam. The Pulaski whipped us downstream at a horrifying speed. My bent arms were rigidly fused to my chest, my fists frozen around the raft’s single line. Jay-Bird and Jude rode the raft like the bronco it had become, whooping and hollering above the roar of the whitewater, slicing the paddles through the waves. I had a hard time sharing their enthusiasm.

From its shore the Pulaski was a turbulent, swollen serpent. From the center of the stream, it was an endless series of exploding peaks and deep valleys, coffee-colored moguls that rendered the paddles useless. It tossed us, up and down, port and starboard. Our rubber craft ricocheted from rocks and was sucked into eddies. Trees and cliff-tops sped past us. Instantly a boulder confronted us. Just as quickly the torrent slung us down a series of rapids. I was suddenly submerged. Bubbles danced away from me in a muddy expanse of yellow-brown. I burst into the sunlight, gasping, my hands still tightly gripping the line, my spotted glasses sitting lopsided on my face.

But I was alone in the raft!

“Jay!” I screamed, looking about wildly. “Jay-Bird! Jude!”

Cresting a wave, I barely caught sight of Jay’s white-blond head upstream before I was swept around an outcropping of rock. Off I sailed, spinning this way and that. Another wave tossed me up and I was able to glimpse Jude waving crazily from a boulder far behind me.

Overhead the bridge soared past.

My hands trembled as they clamped the line. I fought back tears. How could I get to shore? How could I get out of the river? How could I get home?

My mind raced as I flew downstream, but I could come up with no reasonable way out of my predicament. Without paddles, the only thing I could do to save myself was jump overboard and swim for shore.

The bridge disappeared behind me — I had never been this far downriver. Ahead of me towered the old brick hydro plant we passed on the way to town. Dad had explained to me how the force of the river drove turbines — giant corkscrews — to make electricity. But I had never seen the old power plant from this perspective before. Its vast intakes rose out of the river and I has headed straight toward them. I needed to jump! Now!

But I couldn’t move.

In an instant a turbine maw sucked me in. I shut my eyes and felt my raft lurch off to the left. The roar of the river suddenly ceased. I opened my eyes and was surprised to find that I was calmly floating inside a colossal brick-and-plaster fortress whose top opened to a dazzling blue sky. To my left was a grassy knoll and to my right were the turbine openings through which the Pulaski rumbled past.

I took a breath and jumped out of the raft. Still clinging to the line, I swam to the bank and slogged ashore. My knees were shaking and I collapsed into the lush spring grass. I rolled onto my back and a sound burst out of me. A sob! A laugh! A chuckle! I laughed until tears rolled down my cheek, until my sides ached!

I deflated the raft, rolled it up, and tucked it under my arm. I pulled away the corner of a corrugated sheet covering a giant doorway and squeezed through. I raced home, eager to meet up with Jude and Jay-Bird and to see whether they managed to hang onto the paddles for our next rafting adventure.

Springtime on the Pulaski

2010-04-25T16:36:00.006-04:00

FENNVILLE REEKED OF MUD when the Pulaski swelled and swirled during the spring thaw. Slabs of ice clogged the river above the dam, while below it the river became a roiling torrent. Roads along the river flooded to the point of being impassible. The farmland above the dam became veritable inlets, causing our school bus (or any other vehicle) to seek alternate routes.

This annual transformation marked the transition from the long, dark winter to a bright, blossoming spring. It was a time of promise and potential, a certain indicator that vacation was just around the corner. We knew that when the Pulaski’s water returned to her normal level, Ma would let us set out with cane poles and bait, and that we’d return with the biggest, most beautiful pickerel in all Ohio.

But until the water receded, the river was off limits. It was a dangerous place during spring floods. Anyone foolish enough to test her angry banks ended up drowning, their bodies rushed downstream to the bay, to be dragged out by the authorities days later, their limbs torn and bruised by rocks, their eyes picked out by fish.

So we watched the swirling water from the safety of the cliffs.

“Looket the water,” exclaimed Jude, pointing to the far side of the river where the ruins of a mill normally stood. “Ya can’t even see the old foundation.”

“It looks like chocolate milk being stirred around by a crazy lady,” I said.

“The Pooh-laski,” Jude chortled, “looks like chocolate, smells like poop!” (That was only part of the reason we called him Rude Dude Jude.)

“I’ve never seen the river this wild before,” I added.

“Wouldn’t it be cool to raft down it?” asked Jude.

What? Jay-Bird and I gaped at one another.

“Ya’re crazy,” Jay-Bird replied. “Go rafting on the river? When it’s like this?”

“Ya’re yella-bellies!” Jude taunted. “I’m gonna do it! I have nine dollars and I’m gonna buy me a raft. Just fifteen dollars down at Krevsky’s!”

“Where ya gonna get the rest of the money? Ya still need six dollars,” Jay pointed out.

“You guys can chip in,” Jude declared. “We can be co-owners. We can all go down the river together.”

Jay-Bird and I looked at each other quizzically. We looked at Jude. His eyes sparkled.

The die was cast!

WE COLLECTED FIFTEEN DOLLARS for the raft, plus another five for oars, plus enough extra cash for tax. Our legs were pistons as we peddled to Krevsky’s. We made our purchases from a plump cashier with a furrowed brow.

“You boys aren’t thinking ‘bout takin’ that out on the river, are ya?” she asked.

We shook our heads vehemently before plucking up our goods and high-tailing it out of the store.

It was a tricky ride home with the awkward paddles and the slick raft. But we made it back in record time.

We took turns blowing life into the large, yellow doughnut.

“Cool,” Jay muttered, wide-eyed.

“Let’s go!” Jude yelled, snatching the raft and racing toward the river. Jay-Bird and I each grabbed a paddle and took off after Jude.

THE GULLY LEADING DOWN to the river was slimy. A careless footstep landed me with a crash at the bottom of the ravine. Jude and Jay followed suit. We huddled together at the foot of the dam.

A cold, muddy mist rolled off the thundering wall of water, the roar of which swallowed up all other sounds.

Jude waved us to the water’s edge where he launched the raft. He motioned for me to hold onto its line. I grabbed the nylon cord, which strained under the force of the river. I was surprised to discover that my arms were shaking. Jude leapt in and was barely situated when Jay-Bird followed. The raft lurched. Jude’s mouth was moving but I heard no words over the blast of the dam.

“Get in!” he mouthed.

“Get in!” mimicked Jay.

My knees were suddenly shaking. I sucked in a deep breath, hoping to still the fluttering in my stomach, and jumped in.

Away we went.

Gramma's Stairs

2010-03-31T08:01:00.008-04:00

WHENEVER WE VISITED GRAMMA AND GRAMPA, there were always a lot of aunts, uncles and cousins visiting as well. The place was a hive of activity, both inside and outside.

The kitchen was a hub of flurry.

My uncles and Grampa monopolized the kitchen table with their card games. Smoke hung in the kitchen the way it hung in the dreary Detroit sky. Shot glasses and ashtrays littered the table.

My aunts and Gramma busied themselves cooking, baking and doing dishes. Skillets sputtered on the stove. Oven doors screeched. Fridge doors thumped. Pots and cookie sheets clattered in the sink. The back door banged shut regularly enough that Gramma gave up yelling, “Keep that door locked!” The banter between the men and the women was nonstop, ranging from barely audible whispers to ear-spitting guffaws. What a cacophony!

Gramma’s back stairs was always a major draw to my cousins and me. We were not allowed to be on them. If we were caught nearing them, we were shooed away. They were situated in the rear corner of the kitchen between the stove and the back door.

The attraction wasn’t the stairs themselves, but what Gramma stored on the third step up: a large jar of her cookies. The trick for us became making it through the bustle of the kitchen unnoticed, then sneaking through the door that separated the stairs from the kitchen. When there was a lot happening, this was a fairly easy task. But when it was only Gramma and Grampa in the kitchen and things were quiet, this short trek was nearly impossible. They always caught us heading toward the cookies.

“Danny,” called Gramma as I neared the stairs, “Was machst Du? Why don’t you go play in the front room. You don’t need to be in the kitchen.” Grampa held back a chuckle.

Deflated but undaunted, I left the kitchen. I headed for the front room but kept going. I ran out the front door, around the house, and tested the back kitchen door. Surprisingly, it was unlocked! I raced back around to the front room to fetch Katie-Ann, my soon-to-be partner-in-crime.

“The back door’s unlocked?” she asked, as astonished as I was that Gramma would have left it unlocked.

We raced round the house and up the back steps, quietly opened the back door and slid inside. We stealthily moved toward the stairs, keeping out of sight.

“Ma,” called Grampa over his newspaper, “did you hear that? Sounded like the back door.”

“Can’t be, Pa,” she answered. “It’s locked. But I’ll check it. Can’t be too safe.”

Our eyes nearly bugged out of our heads. As fast as we could we slipped undetected into the stairwell. Katie-Ann and I congratulated ourselves with cookie after cookie.

In the kitchen, Gramma and Grampa smiled at one another as they mentally contrived new cookie barriers for future visits.

A Hole of My Own

2010-03-17T17:12:00.006-04:00

WHEN MA DIED, I went underground. I needed to be by myself. I needed to sort things out. So I dug a hole and crawled inside.

I couldn’t stand all the somber people and their empty words.

“Oh, Danny. I’m so sorry.”

“How are you doin’?”

“You help your dad now.”

I didn’t even know these well-intended swarms. Before the funeral they infested the house — ladies cooking and cleaning, men gathering in the den smoking and drinking. Lots of whispers and sidelong glances. I was suddenly a stranger in my own home, moving through a bad dream I couldn’t wake from.

The day of the funeral Lu came home from New Jersey. Aunts and uncles and cousins came. Grandma and Grandpa came, too. I was glad to finally see familiar faces with sincere smiles, to find some warm arms to lose myself in. But they all left as soon as we buried Ma.

The days following the funeral were silent. No one talked. Not a word. Since Dad broke the news, Jay-bird became my shadow. He wouldn’t leave my side. He was as lost as I was.

But I didn’t care. I needed to be by myself.

Not even Jay-bird was paying attention when I grabbed the shovel and raced to the river. There was a spot high on the cliffs where I liked to sit and sketch. I could see the dam to my left and the bridge to my right. Below, the rapids foamed white in the fast-moving, muddy-brown water. This was where I started to dig.

I dug and I dug. I dug until my back hurt and my arms ached. Then I dug some more. When I ran into roots too big to slice through, I snuck home and got the saw to cut them out.

Down, down I dug.

My hole became a tunnel. My tunnel, a hide-away. My hide-away, a sanctuary — dark, damp and earthy smelling. I spent the night there with Reuben, and no one noticed — not Dad, not Annie, not Paddy or Bull. Not even Jay-bird. After we buried Ma, nothing was ever the same again.

A Classroom Visitation

2010-03-07T09:58:00.007-05:00

“Good morning, girls and boys,” said the delicate, snowy-haired lady. She traversed the front of the classroom, fading in and out of the morning sunlight that punctuated the long blackboard.

“My name is Mrs. Artemisia Blount Walton and I’m visiting from Sheperd, Michigan, where I lived for 73 years,” she said. “I am 97 years old and am the oldest pioneer in the county. Sheperd lies in Isabella County, smack dab in the middle of the Michigan mitten.”

She raised her left hand, palm facing away from the students, and with her right, pointed to the spot just above her left hand’s middle knuckle, the place where Shepherd would be.

“When I was twenty-four years old I married John Billings Walton. He was a strapping young man with a furious head of auburn hair and a woolly beard to match. He had recently acquired 160 acres of land for $80.00 in the wilderness of Isabella County. So, as a young bride, Billings moved me from my parents’ home in Troy into the wildernss. We set out in a wagon pulled by oxen, over tortuous trails, and arrived nearly two weeks later at the log cabin he had built for me.”

“Maybe she’s related to Abraham Lincoln,” heckled a boy in the back.

But she continued, oblivious of the comment.

“The cabin was in the middle of a great forest; it had one room, a large stone fireplace, and a simple dirt floor. Our nearest neighbors were miles away and hard to reach. The closest post office was in St. Johns, a day’s journey to the south. There were many bears, wolves and Indians in the woods. We hauled our water from the nearby Salt River.”

Mrs. Walton stepped from a bright ray, disappearing momentarily into the classroom’s dark shadows.

“With our oxen, we began clearing land,” she continued. “Little by little, the level patch surrounding our cabin grew larger and larger. Within three years we had cleared enough land to build a one-room schoolhouse. Pupils came from far and wide, walking miles on Indian trails to attend. I earned $1.50 a week for teaching back then.

“In 1863 Billings entered the service during the Rebellion. I had two little children at that time, but managed to maintain the farmstead as well as teach while Billings was off fighting. In June the following year, Billings survived the Battle of the Wilderness only to be shot in his left hand at the battle of Petersburg. He was taken to Harwood Hospital in our nation’s capitol, but was transferred to Haddington in Philadelphia where his little finger was amputated. Billings was luckier than most other soldiers — he returned home after the war with only a finger missing.

“We had four more children after that. Our youngest son, Willard, was the great-granddad of your own classmate, Danny Powers.”

Everyone’s heads turned to look at me in disbelief as she continued.

“Billings died in 1879 and is buried in Salt River Cemetery,” she said wistfully. “I’m buried right next to him.”

Heads shot back around to the front of the class just in time to see Mrs. Walton fade from sight as she stepped out of the bright morning sunshine.

Life Savers

2010-02-28T14:25:00.002-05:00

WHEN THERE WAS NO OTHER SOLUTION, I went fishin'.

Connections Upstairs

2010-02-21T20:39:00.006-05:00

SISTER JO JO WAS MY AUNT. Her real name was Sister Marie André, OP. (OP meant Outstandingly Pious.) Her actual real name was Joan, which is why we called her Sister Jo Jo. She was my favorite. She was a nun, but not like the nuns at school. She was just like us. We roller-skated and went fishing together. She brought presents when she visited — scapulars, medals, statues of Mary or St Joseph, holy water fonts for our bedrooms. (I couldn’t imagine Mother Mary Paul giving me any of these things without me having earned them.) Sister Jo Jo really wasn’t like most nuns. Ma even said that Sister Jo Jo nearly burnt down the motherhouse when the cigarette she was smoking in the basement caught the sisters’ laundry on fire.

When she visited in the summer, Sister Jo Jo raced us to the field for a baseball game. She had an arm on her and could slam the ball right into the river (an automatic home run), and when bat met ball, she blasted off of home plate, a flurry of black and white. We fought over whose team she’d play on because she had Connections Upstairs that guaranteed a win. She was even better at baseball than Lenny Walczak, and he was the best. She taught me how to hit and to pitch and to break in my new mitt.

When Sister Jo Jo visited, Dad lit the grill and Ma loaded the metal tub with ice and filled it with pop and beer, then put it out on the grass. We pulled the folding chairs from of the garage and situated them in the front lawn. The Walczaks and the Dornwalds came over with badminton, hula-hoops and Jarts. We got out our stilts and the big tire. We played and ate hot dogs and turned our lips purple with grape Nehi. After we ate, the lightening bugs came out and so did the peach tin. We played kick-the-can until it was time for bed.

Sister Jo Jo always tucked me in. She knelt with me at the foot of the bed to say our Angel-of-God together. It always ended with, “and God bless Ma and Dad and Sister Jo Jo.” But before closing with an Amen, I’d fling myself into Sister Jo Jo’s arms, wrapping mine around her waist, adding, “I love you T-T-T-H-H-H-I-I-I-I-S-S-S much,” squeezing with all my might.

I sunk my head into her habit. After a day of running and jumping and skipping and hopping and slamming and blasting and laughing and talking, her crisp, cool linen smelt like a summer night and her strong, patient hands felt like sunshine on my back. We stayed this way for a moment, quiet for the first time that day.

I climbed into bed and she tucked the covers up around my neck, kissing me on the forehead.

“Good night,” she said.

“Sleep tight,” I answered.

“And don’t you let those bedbugs bite,” she ordered, turning off the light.

I didn’t want the day to end and she was about to close the door. So as fast as I could, I blurted out, “andiftheydojusttakeyourshoeandhiththemtillthey’reblackandblue!”

“Good night!”

She quietly closed the door and I lay in the dark, listening to the crickets chirping over the laughter of the grown-ups as she silently walked down the hall.

I fell asleep wondering what sorts of games we’d play when I woke.

Observational Inquiry

2010-02-14T10:51:00.006-05:00

THE NARROW PASSAGE BETWEEN THE GRADE SCHOOL AND THE HIGH SCHOOL WAS A PECULIAR PLACE. It stood in continual shadow except for the noon hour when the sun aligned itself to brighten this dark alley. Whispers echoed off the canyon-like walls and allowed us to play telephone at recess without the use of tin cans and strings. Darkness gobbled up color between the two old buildings — even the spring-colored Easter banner we carried to Mass took on drab hues as we processed through this walkway. The wind blasted furiously between the two schools, causing rain and snow to defy gravity and fall upward.

It was this gravity-defying character of the passageway that gave me hope of discovering the continually debated question of whether Mother Mary Paul had red hair. (Her temper indicated as much.) When the wind was right, this brick chasm did to the Sisters’ black veils what the subway vent did to Marilyn’s white dress in The Seven Year Itch. I figured if I followed behind Mother Mary Paul at a discrete but calculated distance, I might catch an improper glimpse of her hair from beneath her airborne veil.

Alas, the only thing I caught was heck when Mother Paul discovered me sidling up behind her, my neck craned and my face contorted, trying desperately to discern whether she had any hair at all. My observational inquiry earned me one detention and one very long Boston Cooler (and I’m not talking about the fountain drink). Curiosity killed this cat. After that botched attempt, I kept to my place at the front of the line and decided to leave the sleuthing to someone else. For now.

'Twixt Earth and Air

2010-02-07T07:57:00.007-05:00

SAILING THROUGH THE AIR wasn’t something that came naturally to me, like it did to other kids. While Jay-Bird was agile and flew through the air (as his name suggested), I was clumsy (so he called me Bo-Bo). Stretching or bending or moving like other kids was impossible for me. I was a rock. A Bo-Bo. Whenever I tried to reach the heights, I invariably toppled through the air, landing with catastrophic consequences.

I was embarrassed that local ER nurses knew me by name.

To my credit, I wasn’t stupid. I learned not to climb up into things that I could tumble out of, or to lean over gaping expanses that I could spill out into.

But the tree house that Jay-Bird and Stover built was too much. Their treetop fortress tempted me as I sat drawing on the forest floor far below. What did they do up there? What was all their laughing about?

I’d seen them climb the tree a million times, so I knew how. They started by stepping onto a cement block then jumped up to grasp the lowest branch. Then they pulled themselves up using only their arms and swung their legs sideways, up into adjacent branches. For a moment they hung upside-down before pulling themselves upright into the tree where branches spread out to create a vast network of ladders and stair-steps. They made it look so easy.

But even the first steps of ascending the tree eluded me. When I jumped up from the cement block to grab the lowest branch, my belly collided with the tree trunk, ricocheting me backward to the ground. If I did manage to reach the lowest branch, it was all I could do to simply hang there — I found it impossible to swing my legs up to yet a higher branch. I couldn’t even keep hold of the branch — slowly, its barky roughness slipped through my fingers and I landed with a thump.

“Hey, you guys! I wanna come up, too!”

Their heads popped out from the tree house and disappeared again. Laughter ensued.

“Stover! Jay! I wanna come up. I need help!”

“We don’t wantcha up here!”

“C’mon! I’ll buy you guys some pop and chips!” I pleaded.

I could hear conferring whispers before Jay called down, “Okay. Butcha gotta get ‘em now.”

It was a deal. So off I raced to the corner store to secure my bribes.

I returned, as breathless as I was penniless, with two Hires and two bags of Ballreich’s. Jay-Bird and Stover were slinging a rope over the tree’s upper branches.

“Whaddaya, whaddaya doin’?” I asked between gasps.

“We’re gonna getcha up the tree,” Jay announced.

“Whaddaya mean? You just need to give me a boost up.”

“That wouldn’t be any fun,” Jay said as he cinched the rope around my waist. Then Stover gave the other end of the rope a firm tug, and I was airborne!

“Help me hoist him up,” Stover grunted. “He’s heavy!”

As Jay-Bird and Stover strained with the rope, I rose higher and higher. I felt like Peter Pan. Or like Sandy Duncan playing Peter Pan.

“Tie it off,” Jay commanded.

And as suddenly as my ascent started, it stopped.

I hung there like a lifeless yo-yo. Yo-yo. Bo-Bo.

Stover and Jay-Bird clatter back up into the tree house with their pop and chips. I swirled about, neither in the tree nor on the ground. But I wasn’t on the ground. And I wouldn’t fall. (Jay was a good knot-tier.) So I lurched myself forward. Then back. Then forward. Then back. As chip crumbs landed on my head, I swung around under the tree house, laughing giddily and getting dizzy.

“I wanna try!” shouted Stover, starting down the tree.

“Me next,” yelled Jay.

We spent the rest of the day hauling one another up into the air. Jay-Bird and Stover eventually got me up into their tree house. It wasn’t long before I learned to make it all the way up, unassisted. Unfortunately, I never outgrew my clumsiness. But that’s another story…

The Barn

2010-01-31T10:23:00.011-05:00

WHILE I HAD A BIG FAMILY, MA'S WAS HUGE. We had six kids in our house, but she had nine in hers, which meant that I had lots of aunts, lots of uncles, and more cousins than I could name. Even if I could name them, I never knew which cousin belonged to which aunt and uncle. Except with Aunt Kittie and her family.

She and my uncle had a small farm, just across the border, where Uncle OJ and Jerry raised hogs and planted wheat, corn and soybeans. Ida and Katie-Ann tended the chickens. Little Walty even had a job — he kept the barn cats fed. (“But not too well fed,” quipped Uncle OJ, “or they won’t want to eat the mice.”)

Jay-Bird and I spent summers on the farm where we melded seamlessly into Aunt Kittie’s family. It was a fun change for us to get up before dawn to slop the hogs and feed chickens, to water and weed the vegetable patch, to collect eggs. While there were plenty of chores to do, once they were done, there was plenty of time to play.

The barn was our favorite spot for hide-n-seek. It had zillions of places to hide — horse stalls, pigsties, the pump room, the tool shed, and haylofts. We could climb into cubbies, lay flat on roof rafters, or bury ourselves beneath bails. We played hide-n-seek from morning chores until evening chores, and, after dinner, we played some more.

One afternoon in the late summer our hide-n-seek game took a turn.

Uncle OJ and Jerry had harvested the wheat, so freshly mown bails rose high in the haylofts, reaching the roof. That same day they brought in twenty acres of soybeans and had taken them to Morenci to the grain elevator. But storms were rolling in at the end of the day and Uncle OJ didn’t want to risk getting them wet, so he stowed the final gravity box of beans in the barn.

Maybe it’s because the barn looked so different that day, with its new mountains of straw, and the gravity box standing where the combine normally did. But something caused Jay-Bird, who was hiding, quiet as a mouse in the hayloft, to change the game. Without warning he jumped out of hiding and grabbed the heavy rope that hung from the rafters. He screamed, Tarzan-like, and swung through the barn’s gaping rafters, sailing over the gravity box, flinging himself feet-first into the hay on the other side of the barn, where he landed, cackling with glee!

“Did you see that?” cried Ida, stepping out from behind the rusted corn shucker.

“I’m next,” shouted Katie-Ann, her head popping up from behind the horse trough. “C’mon, Danny. You, too, Ida. We all getta try!”

My cousins clattered up into the hayloft. But I stayed next to the gravity box, weighing my options. I wasn’t sure I even liked Tarzan. What if I couldn’t keep my grip on the rope? What if I fell through the air rather than fly through it?

“C’mon, Danny,” goaded Jay-Bird. He was a year and a half younger than me and had his training wheels off his bike long before I did. “Are ya chicken? Beeee-yaaawwk! Bee-awk, bee-awk!” he mocked, flapping his arms about like a headless banty. My cousins doubled over laughing.

That did it.

I started up the ladder, not daring to look down, but determined to show them that I was no yellow-belly. Nearing the top, I heard another Tarzan scream as Katie-Ann sailed through the cavernous barn, landing on the other side. She flung the rope back to Ida, but Jay stole it from her and catapulted himself back across the void, landing next to Katie-Ann.

“Not fair,” cried Ida. “I’m gonna tell!”

“Baby,” yelled Jay, as he flung the rope back to her.

Rope firmly in hand, Ida let loose and streamed through the dusty barn toward the others, yodeling for joy. She pitched the rope back to me, but I missed it, not wanting to lean too far over the edge.

“I’ll get it,” called Katie-Ann. (She was my age and my favorite cousin. We were going to be married someday and live happily ever after.)

“I wanna do it,” demanded Walty as Katie-Ann returned with the rope.

“Nope. You’re too little,” countered his sister.

“I am not,” he protested, snatching the rope from Katie-Ann. He hurled himself out of the hayloft. But the rope went in one direction and Walty went in another.

“Walty!” screamed Katie-Ann.

Four mouths gaped as little Walty plummeted toward the barn floor. Our hearts stopped. We couldn’t breathe.

There was a Walty-sized thump. Time froze. Then hysterical chortling rose up from the gravity box. Walty landed, unharmed, in the soybeans.

“I’m next!” exclaimed Katie-Ann, relieved. She launched herself toward Walty and the beans.

“These people are nuts,” I thought, my fists clamped firmly round the rope, my legs like rubber.

“C’mon, Danny! You can do it,” shouted Katie-Ann.

“Chicken!” mocked Jay-Bird.

I filled my lungs with air and held it, checked my grip, then shot myself across the barn, exhilarated, leaving my fear behind. (Well, most of it anyway.)

Dispensations

2010-01-23T22:23:00.007-05:00

GROWING UP CATHOLIC meant big families and fish on Fridays. Both were fine by me. We lived on the Pulaski River where my brothers, sisters and I spent tireless hours horsing around, swimming and fishing.

Thursday evenings in the summer we strode barefoot through dewy grass, armed with flashlights and tins cans that we filled with unsuspecting night crawlers. The next day we fished until we ran out of worms. We always had fabulous feasts on Fridays — catfish, pickerel, perch or bass.

Our arrangement worked well until winter when the temps dropped and the river froze. This seasonal dilemma plagued everyone in the diocese, and for families as large as ours, obtaining fish on Fridays became a hardship.

One snowy Friday evening while Ma and Lu were making dinner, I heard Ma say that the bishop had given us a dispensation and we wouldn’t have to eat fish on Fridays in the winter.

A dispensation? I was excited!

Since the bishop was a good man, it followed that a dispensation must be a good thing even though I had no idea what one was or even what one tasted like. My mouth swam with possibilities!

When Ma called, “Dinner,” I couldn’t get to my place fast enough. Ma was carrying a weighty plate to the table but I wasn’t able to see what it contained. What was a dispensation? Was it like chicken? Like hot dogs? I craned my neck but couldn’t see. Ma sauntered around Jay’s highchair and set the steaming platter on the table.

“What is this?” asked Annie. Bull’s eyebrows arched. Paddy grinned. Ma smirked.

“It’s a dispensation,” I announced. Everybody laughed.

“It’s muskrat,” Lu announced, “and we have the good bishop to thank for it!”

The Annunciation

2010-01-17T17:07:00.012-05:00

ART WAS MY FAVORITE CLASS and we had it every Friday. One such class changed my life forever.

Sister Mary Alma Rose presented me with a picture of the Annunciation to copy. I had seen it before in my prayer book, depicting the first joyful mystery. Mary was sitting on her back porch, arms folded across her chest, while Angel Gabriel told her his big surprise.

Armed with a 64-pack of Crayolas (sharpener included) and a sheet of Manila paper, I meticulously duplicated each color of each feather in Gabriel’s glorious wings. I labored over every blade of grass and each flower in Mary’s back yard, and I included all the nails in her fence. The folds in Mary’s and Gabriel’s dresses were hard to draw, but I did those, too. As finishing touches I added all the cracks in Mary’s porch.

My picture was really good! Sister Alma Rose thought so, too, and hung it in the front of the classroom.

When I came to school the following Monday, Sister asked whether I wanted to draw more pictures instead of doing spelling. I couldn’t believe my ears! Art on Monday!

She pulled my desk to the front of the class and gave me a pile of paper and a stack of holy cards to copy. I riffled through them to see whether there were any I didn’t already have. (We Catholics swapped holy cards the way normal kids traded baseball cards.) There was one of St. Theresa of Ávila I’d never seen before, and since I was born on her feast day, I started with her.

“I will give your pictures to the other sisters as gifts,” Sister noted as she checked my progress. I beamed inwardly learning the fate of my pictures.

I worked my way through the stack of holy cards. As it shrunk, my pile of drawings grew. When the final bell rang, my hand was tired and my middle finger hurt, and I was proud of all of the pictures I’d drawn. Maybe school wasn’t so bad after all.

As the week wore on, I continued drawing saints in the front of the room. I never knew there were so many — saints with names like Ignatius, Pancratius, Polycarp and Caius. By the final bell on Friday, I had drawn them all.

When Ma checked my hands at lunch on Saturday, she gasped, “What happened to your finger?”

I tried to hide it. But it was too late. The inside of my middle finger had grown a hard, purple-green knot where I held my crayon. I told Ma what I got to do at school that week, and she marched straight to the telephone and dialed the convent. (She knew the number because I had older brothers.)

The following Monday my desk was back in its usual spot. I expected Sister to pull it back to the front where I would resume drawing, but instead she asked us all to turn to page 34 in our readers. Sullenly, I pulled out my book, realizing my burgeoning career was over — at least for the time being. For now it was back to reading, writing and ‘rithmatic. And to this scholarly repertoire I had added a personal fourth R: rendering. Thanks to Sister Alma Rose (and Fra Angelico), I’ve been enthusiastically drawing ever since.

Cynthia

2010-01-10T13:21:00.018-05:00

CYNTHIA WAS MY SISTER'S MARIONETTE. She was a beaming bride. With tight, blond curls under a wiry white veil, Cynthia was fitted out in a satin gown. Her fixed, glass eyes stared squarely ahead, unblinking and immobile, yet were disturbingly realistic and crazily alive. She wore hard, white shoes and had a mouth that hinged open to reveal an astonishing number of teeny pearl teeth.

Cynthia terrified me. When she hung in Annie’s closet, she was little more than a mass of strings, fabric and plaster. But when she sauntered about the house (with Annie’s help), barely touching the ground, floating-dancing-twitching, simultaneously graceful and monstrous, she became a real person, haplessly bewitched and fettered with cords. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

Cynthia hated me. She ran after me, her pointy shoes clattering across the wooden floors, then kicking out at me from beneath her wedding dress, her minuscule incisors flashing in her snapping jaws. I ran out of Annie’s room howling.

Despite my growing fear of Cynthia, I wanted to see her move about, to interact with Annie’s dolls and stuffed animals, to play with me. I wanted to see her dance around the room and see her spasmodic pliées. I wanted to be scared — though just a little. But it never stayed “just a little.” Every time Annie animated Cynthia, what began as gleeful entertainment invariably ended with Cynthia chasing after me, teeth gnashing and feet kicking. It ended with me crying. And I was too big to let Ma or Dad see me crying.

So after weeks of torment from the diminutive bride, I decided to get even. I couldn’t do anything to Cynthia — I was forbidden to touch her. But Annie had plenty of other dolls, and, unlike Cynthia, they weren’t off-limits to me. So I concocted a plan and carried it out when I knew Annie would be gone from the house.

When she returned home and entered her bedroom the house sounded with horrified shrieks.

“Maaaa!” wailed Annie, racing to the kitchen. “Come see what Danny’s done!”

From my hiding place behind my bed I could see Ma’s brow furrow as she surveyed Annie’s dolls. I knew by the purse of her lips that I was in trouble. Again.

Five Doors Down

2010-01-01T18:38:00.006-05:00

THE HORNS LIVED FIVE DOORS DOWN FROM US. They were the first on our street to have a colored television. Lorna was a year younger than me, and relished (just a little too much) describing Dorothy Gale’s ruby-red slippers, or portraying Casper the Friendly Ghost as being a “lovely light pink.” The Horns were the only family to have a two-storied house or a built-in pool (which Lorna referred to as their “pooh” — as in, “you can’t swim in my pooh”). Mr. Horn sold insurance and bought a new car every year while Mrs. Horn gave piano lessons and hosted bridge parties.

At Christmas the Horns decorated their house with alternating blue and green lights, unlike everyone else on the street who decorated with every color at their disposal. Ma said Mrs. Horn had told her that their house looked very elegant and subtle, while the rest of the street was lit up like circus tents. No house on our street boasted as many Christmas lights as the Horns’. “Subtle” was how Ma referred to their blue and green lights as we’d drive by, but she said it in a way that made me wonder what she meant.

The Horns were the only family to have an outdoor nativity. We all had crib sets in our homes, but only the Horns had one outside, just like a church. Its thigh-high figures were comprised of silhouetted shepherds, kings, and the Holy Family, all cut from plywood, painted black, placed in front of a white stable, and situated beneath their immense spruce. Two glaring floodlights illuminated the sacred scene.

This tableau of light and shadow captivated me completely. Lifeless cutouts cast shimmering shadows that moved independently of one another as headlights traveled up and down our street. It was unearthly the way these spectral forms interacted; they made it easy for me to imagine Mary’s outpouring of love for her newborn, and Joseph’s concern at having landed them in a dusty stable. I empathized with the shepherds and kings as they paid homage to Baby Jesus. This glorious scene transported me from Fennville directly to Bethlehem. So moved was I that I dropped to my knees to offer up an eight-year-old’s prayer. Making the sign of the cross like the good Catholic boy that I was, my reverie was shattered by an unexpected bam, bam, bam from the Horn’s front window.

“Danny Powers! You get outta my yard!” came Lorna’s muffled cry from inside their front window. “Ma! Danny is prayin’ to our crib set again!”

I jumped up and raced home as fast as the knee-deep snow allowed. I flew down our basement steps to rid myself of wet boots, wet coat, wet leggings, wet hat, wet mittens and scarf. By the time I got up to the kitchen, my glasses had fogged over and I could barely make out Ma as she hung up the phone. Despite my clouded lenses, I could tell that she had just gotten off the phone with Mrs. Horn. Again.