- Stilts were all the rage
that summer. Everyone
in the neighborhood under ten
wanted them, so my father
drove us to the workshop
just north of the tracks on Route 60,
where my grandfather’s company
built refrigerated truck bodies.
We stepped into a snow globe
of sawdust.
- And here I’m desperate
for you to smell
the pungent sawdust
coating every surface
of the workshop –
floor, benches, windowsills.
Motes floated in streaming sunlight,
lined our nostrils with a damp,
concentrated spice.
We inhaled wood
and left with two well-built stilts.
- The workshop exists now
only in the memory of a few people
and on a box of letterhead
my father saved in his desk.
After my grandfather retired
and the workshop closed,
a sign still hung from a pole –
light blue script on peeling white –
SAMCO
Schmidt and Markworth Company.
At some point that disappeared, too.
- But in 1962 that workshop
helped support the unplanned family
my parents found themselves heading.
They bought a single-entry ledger,
crimson spine, pebbled black cover
and, two days after the wedding,
began to count every penny in
and out for the next fifteen months.
Ribbon at Ben Franklin, 51 cents.
Laundry, $1.00. Meat, $1.40.
Carton of cigarettes, $2.49.
Rent, $75. Teacher’s paycheck, $149.
On the 19th of every month,
they paid my grandfather $26.98
on their loan. They bought a TV
in installments, wedding money
the down payment. And
when school wasn’t in session,
my father worked at SAMCO,
adding anywhere from $8 to $78
to the ledger.
- My friend the psychic
has said twice that she senses
my grandfather around me,
a supportive, protective presence.
I’m surprised because I didn’t think
of us as close but then remember:
he introduced me
to the books of Edgar Cayce,
the idea of reincarnation,
astral travel, Atlantis, Lemuria.
A fifth grader, I sped through
his library, changed by
what I’d read: accepting a world
of spirits, mysteries, miracles.
- Again now
I read his brittle paperbacks
to remind me of other
realities – the mother’s ghost
I saw pressing against
her son’s shoulders, the “No!”
I heard to warn me away, the
dream that mapped my 40s.
Imagine my grandfather,
faithful Lutheran born in 1909,
father of six, school board member –
blue uniform covered in sawdust –
contemplating reincarnation
as he fed wood into the saw.
Just beautiful, Laurie. Loved it!!