Mountain Girl Paula "Early years at Camp"

I longed to live at this cabin for as long as I can remember. My grandparents brought at least one of their five grandchildren with them every summer and being the oldest I came up the most. When grandpa worked second trick at Harvester, grandma would shuffle us off to bed early. He would come home after work Friday and load up the car and carry us out asleep for the twelve-hour drive. Grandma would navigate and keep grandpa awake while we dosed away most of the hours of the trip. By the time we woke they didn’t have to listen to as many, “Are we there yets?”

Grandmother kept us organized. She wrote everything down. Grocery lists. To do lists. Budgets lists. She tracked it all. There weren’t as many fast food places to stop at then and looking back I am thankful. Instead, she packed breakfast and lunches. We would pull over and have the fresh sandwiches, fruit, and desert she prepared. On chilly a thermos of hot chocolate would be part of the treat. It always tasted good and she loved to see us eat her cooking. Grandpa wasn’t a man to linger in fact you were lucky to get him to stop the car at all. A point that made traveling at night easier for kids that demanded frequent potty stops.

Grandpa drove the big old Buick through the 15 miles of narrow back roads to the cabin. Half scared and half in awe we would look over the side of the car to see the dense trees, tight turns and steep drop-offs. Of course grandpa’s speed and tales of how many cars had gone over the side only increased our fears and thrills. Grandma gripped the door handle and prayed silently. The last mountain before we reached the cabin grandpa would proclaim we needed no more gas to get to the cabin still 3 miles away. He would turn off the engine (mind you before power steering and brakes) and coast all the way. He stopped at the bottom opened the gate turned the car back on to climb the driveway.

Then the true order of things began. Grandpa would unlock the cabin and set grandma’s wheelchair near the open car door. He bent over her like a human crane. She held tightly around his neck and he would lift her with one strong swing to the chair. I’d never seen my grandmother walk. She’d been a victim of the Polio epidemics in the 40’s when my mother was nine. Her body confined to a chair she commanded the operation. The battle plan: clean, clean, clean. Our reward would be her cooking when we finished.

Grandpa was the hardest, strongest, working man I know and thought the world of my grandmother. He acted like her legs following every order to the tee for the most part. Grandmother, or Ruth as her friends called her was no stranger to hard work. She had been raised a farm girl in a large family in Indiana and valued a hard work ethic. She was often outside trying to pull weeds with a pair of long wood pinchers grandpa made for her; sometimes getting the narrow tires of her wheelchair stuck in the dirt and needing our rescue. My grandmother lived long before handicap accessible became common, but lack of access never stopped her or dampened her spirit.

Grandpa’s idea of a perfect vacation was to get as many things done as possible outdoors. Grandma’s had a list of indoor projects. Idleness came only after exhaustion from a day’s work. I loved the outdoors and became my grandfather’s shadow helping him to tame the mountain. Grandpa came from a long line of Irish farmers and had particular ideas about how the land should be allowed to develop. Farmers like to clear the land. His theory: “ Conquer by mowing.” Armed with his large Gravely walk behind mower he would head out to conquer new territory.

Like any invader you must plan a rogue to cover your invasion. “Snakes liked tall grass.” He would spout as justification for his mowing; citing the time he had to kill a rattlesnake in front of the house ready to “attack” my mother’s Boston terrier. Grandpa was the mowing master and all weeds would bow to his command. The yard grew larger every year. Until, he was mowing the road back to pond and then to my grandmother’s dismay the side of the mountain. He wanted to make sure she had a good view from her kitchen window. Grandma’s view would have been happier with a few weeds instead of watching her husband try to mow five acres of near vertical terrain. Her complaints fell on deaf ears and she settled with making sure he got plenty of fluids and food to fuel his mission.

One weed evoked a deadly response from my grandfather when he saw it. He called it a dock. It stood about four to five-foot high when mature and had a green spike. Now I know it is called mullein. Turn of the century Leetonia boys used to dry its broad leaves and smoke it in place of tobacco. I think the mere height of the weed taunted him. He would climb half way up the mountain just to chop one on those offending plants down.

My grandfather also had a strange response to heat. He had one uniform, long pants, long sleeve shirts and a baseball cap. The cap was to protect the balding “landing strip” as us kids called it on top his head from the sun. He claimed people didn’t understand proper of heat protection. Since he worked daily around temperatures of thousands of degrees in the heat-treat plant who could argue. “To protect against the heat you must totally cover your body.” He would state, claiming those half naked people where just letting their skin fry. Of course my grandfather’s modesty was so notorious that if you saw him with only a t-shirt on you would be meet with an embarrassed shout and the quick slamming of a door. So we never knew whether it was modesty or truth that shrouded him with a heavy layer of clothes all year round.

The “landing strip” on my grandfather’s head was a thing of great amusement for us kids. It changed colors in response to certain things. When he worked hard it dripped with sweat beads and sometimes turned red. The best were his headstands. Just seeing a man doing a headstand on that bare skin amused us. When he arose it would always be a crimson red. We loved to tease him unmercifully.

Grandmother was the ever-ready guardian of right and wrong had an alarm that went off telling her when fun had gotten carried into hurtful attacks. Her ability to control Grandpa was feat no one else would even attempt. Grandpa had two things that turned on the grandmother alarm. Overheated political debates with my Uncle and the heavy handedness he used on all grandsons. For some reason he thought the three boys were lazy slugs and us two girls were hard working angels. I agreed with him of course. But, even I cringed at some of his attacks. The boys needed to do little to provoke him. If they walked by him at the wrong time a kick would follow. Idleness at work meant a “quick tap” as he called it with the hoe or what ever he had in his hand. None of their protests would stop him but one word from grandmother would. “Now Paul!” she would say disapprovingly and he would stop. This seemed like some sort of magic to me. How could a wheelchair bound woman weld such power over a tough, angry, Irishman? We never knew, but I know the boys were grateful for it.

My grandfather’s philosophy of animal life was very different from mine. He determined there were good animals and bad “varmints” as he called them. Good animals had nothing to fear from grandpa, but the bad ones were destroyed any chance he got. His list was obviously another hand down from farmers trying to protect livestock or poultry. I on the other hand would try to nurse and save any hurt animal wild or tame that I found. Our philosophies were at obvious odds and bound for a collision, which they did on two separate occasions.

I hiked through the woods any chance I could get. One time I found an adult red fox with an injured rear leg. I seemed to have the ability to get away with things others couldn’t. The fox let me pick him up and I carried him back to examine the wound. It was full of maggots and infection. Of course, my grandfather was less than impressed with my efforts. Much to my protest he told me I could not keep the fox. He said he had found someone who would take care of the fox. I relinquished the fox without choice. Foxes were not on my grandfather’s good animal list and though he never told me I am sure it never got the kind of help I wanted to give it.

My next run in with grandpa was over some skunks. He had killed a mother skunk not far from the house and thought he had killed all her babies. He was wrong. I went to the murder scene and found several babies alive. I scooped them up. Determined not to make the same mistake twice. I didn’t tell grandpa. Instead, I took them to my tree house to nurse them back to health. All was going well. I stole food to feed them and they seemed to be doing fine. At some point my grandfather figured out something was going on. He found the babies and callously threw them in a wood fire. I can’t explain the feeling I had seeing my orphans toasted bodies. Even at 50 thinking about it causes me grief. I would not try a rescue another animal again near grandpa.

This didn’t ruin my relationship with grandpa. We didn’t share the same views on animals and from that point on I didn’t subject any animals to his cruelty. His pride in my work made up for his other failures. Once I heard him say, “I rather have Paula work with me then six men.” I was proud to think he valued me so highly that during a time when most women weren’t valued the worth of one man let alone six. I always enjoyed working outdoors and would never let him outlast me in any chore. We had a silent competition of who would quit first. My youth punished his stubborn pride and he suffered more at the end of the day. Looking at him grandma surely thought one more project would put him in a grave. I can’t remember either of us quitting before dinner or dark; the only justifiable reasons to stop work.

Grandmother although impressed with my work ethic was not as impressed with the type of work I was choosing. When I reached puberty this concern developed into a lecture. “Girls shouldn’t do so much lifting and heavy work,” she told me. “You are young now but later you will be sorry.” Both my mother and grandmother had always wished I would show more interest in indoor chores and how I looked. I could have cared less. I could wear the same pair of jeans everyday and barely had time to brush my short hair. Other girls seemed silly wearing dresses, makeup and acting like fools around boys. I loved sports or any activity where I could excel. Acting like a Barbie doll was not one of those activities.

Try as they might neither mother or grandmother could change me and they felt a sense of accomplishment to get me to attend my high school proms wearing a dress and feeling like I couldn’t move or breathe. Not surprising my adult life has been filled with training animals, carpentry and my love of outdoors. My grandmother might be surprised to find out her granddaughter is still nailing on shingles at fifty and hates to wear dresses.

This is a reprint from an article I had published in the Pennsylvania Reader in the fall of 2002.