The Early Years
The Early Years
By Ellen Gross
View from the Back Yard
We had a back yard. A lot of living took place back there. We had a lawn in front of the house, where the pump island had stood. Not much of anything happened there; once a week in the summer I mowed the grass.
The back yard wasn’t lawn; it was mostly weeds. Dandelions grew in mass profusion, providing bouquets for the important women in my life.
Three pines stood in a row, like sentinels, running parallel with the house. Uncle Jiggs had brought them home for me. I wasn’t quite two years old at the time. He’d told mom I needed trees to grow with me. They were three feet tall. Their root balls were wrapped in gunny sacks. Jiggs flattened six metal oil cans, and put two in the bottom of each hole.
Pines must like metal cans: by the time I was in high school the trees were twenty-five feet tall. Jiggs named them: Breakfast, Dinner, and Supper, because, he reasoned, during the summer mom could dump the dishpan on the respective trees after each meal. Pine trees obviously like soapy dish water.
Two outhouses stood at the back of the yard. A play house was between them. The outhouses were labeled Men and Women, for use with the station. We used them too.
Emil, next door, had built a seven foot high picket fence on the north side of the yard. The Supper tree’s branches poked between its boards as time went by. The fence was to keep Gene and me from running across Emil’s driveway, just in case he might be backing out of his garage.
That was a hazard, as Emil rode the clutch of his old green Studebaker. He’d rev the engine to a screaming whine, and then slowly let out the clutch. About half way down the driveway, the transmission would grab. Emil would fly back out onto the highway. Dad repaired the clutch and transmission regularly. He kept parts on hand.
Emil shouldn’t have worried about us. We would gleefully watch, waiting for the clutch to grab. The look of terror on Emil’s face as he rocketed backwards entertained us way too much to venture close enough to encounter his mayhem.
A big box wire fence marked the east border of the yard, separating us from Liz Novy’s hay field. The hay field provided the highlight of my early summers. Old Gus would drive his work horse team to town to do the hay. Dan and Clyde patiently cut, raked and then pulled a hay wagon, to harvest their own feed for the winter.
This happened two or three times a summer. I’d watch the grass grow, mentally measuring when it would be time for Dan and Clyde to come.
Mom knew as long as the hay was down and raked, I wouldn’t go anywhere. The team was due at any moment, and the hay ride would begin.
Gus would fork the hay by hand. The small field yielded one wagon full each cutting. With hay piled high Gus would lift Gene and I on board. The farm was two and half miles east of the two churches.
I’d sit at the front in order to watch the horse’s every step. Their heads nodded slightly, muscles rippling across their hind quarters. They moved effortlessly with athletic grace.
Mom would wait two hours, and then drive out to the farm. We would be watching Gus unload hay. Dan and Clyde quickly pulled the hay sling, tossing their winter lunch into the hay mow.
We’d go in the house for lemonade and cake. Gus’s wife knew we’d be thirsty after our long day.
October 4, 1957
Russia launched Sputnik 1. Dad watched the clock, Dewey Bergquist, the weather man, had announced that we could see Sputnik go overhead every 96 minutes.
Dad made sure we’d be on time. He lined up the lawn chairs next to our newly planted Elm tree at the center of the yard.
“We can’t actually see Sputnik,” Dad announced. “What we’ll be seeing is the casing of the booster rocket as it tumbles behind.”
“Where did you get that?” Mom asked.
“Wally’s been listening on his shortwave radio. Lots of chatter out there.” Dad paused, like a master teacher, “Sputnik means traveling companion.”
“It’s traveling with a rocket casing?” I mused.
“I think it’s more like a new companion, along with the moon.” Mom offered, “We should have something up there” she pouted.
Dad pointed north. “There, see that blinking light.”
We watched, amazed that a Russian machine was flying over us, in outer space.
“I don’t like it”, mom concluded.
Dad chuckled softly. “Russia doesn’t even have a telephone system; we’ll get up there in a better way. “Well, don’t expect them to call and congratulate us!” Mom folded her chair and went inside the house.
“What can it do besides go very fast?” I asked.
“Not much, yet.” Dad was folding his chair, “Someday those satellites, that’s what we call them, will bounce radio and television signals, maybe even telephone.”
I laughed, “Russia doesn’t have too many of those things.”
He looked grim. “Their army has it, that’s a problem.”
I stayed out long after dark watching the stars, northern lights played overhead. That small blinking light was terribly small compared to the whole sky. I put my chair away, having decided to file this evening in my memory; this little beginning would someday be a big deal.
April 1961
Yuri Gagarin blasted to fame. Russia sent up a Cosmonaut, the first man to circle the earth from such a high orbit. I sat under the Elm; this time there wasn’t any blinking light to see.
It was common for airplanes to fly over Alice, but this just seemed so uncommon. Gagarin landed, laughing that he hadn’t seen God out there.
I looked up at the stars. Having grown up in the Moravian Church, I laughed. “Silly little man, the earth is His footstool, if you can’t see his footprints here, you certainly wouldn’t recognize Him out there.” A wise preacher later said, “If Gagarin had stepped out of his capsule, he’d have seen God up close.”
May 5, 1961
1 twirled around the Elm tree. We’d watched Alan Shepard launch into outer space.
Unlike the Russian launch, we were able to see liftoff. Shepard actually flew his capsule, maneuvering it into orbit. Gagarin was only a passenger, the capsule was programmed and controlled from the ground, and he had no controls.
Television was finding its mark, broadcasting these daring ventures. The whole nation felt a part of the accomplishment. Besides the space race, we had a news race. Russia didn’t even try to enter that one. It was too big of a risk. What if something would go wrong, then everyone would know.
February 20, 1962
John Glenn blasted off and made three orbits. We watched the whole thing in Study Hall. Cape Canaveral, a nothing Air Force test site, was now known the world over. After several delays, the 10, 9, 8, 7 countdown was echoed around the hall.
We could see the huge fire maelstrom engulf the rocket. The camera quivered as the ground shook. It took forever for the slow release. No one breathed. In slow motion Friendship 7 rose from its tethers.
After a gasp for air, pandemonium erupted, as we shouted, screamed and cried. The whole world cheered. Television made this moment a world event.
I sat under the Elm tree. Glenn was safely back, it was time to breath. I looked at my green transistor radio. It was chattering about the day’s accomplishments. I turned the dial, catching a dozen stations. “You were born out of Cape Canaveral,” I whispered. “The whole marketplace is full of stuff spun off all the science we display so freely.”
July 1969
Nixon was president; we were mired in Viet Nam; July 18, that year, Mary Joe Kopechne left a party at midnight on Chappaquiddick.
July 20, 1969
I was married with a one year old daughter named Laura. I had to go home, in Alice, that night. Mom and dad were in the living room. I entered the door, as the Eagle landed. We sat together on the old brown and orange flowered davenport.
Blackie, the current Labrador, was sleeping in the corner. Mom held the orange Tom Cat, and I had Laura. We heard those words, “One small step----” And man walked on the moon.
I left Laura with Grandma. Dad and I set the chairs up under the Elm tree.
We didn’t say anything; we just sat looking at the nearly half moon.
Gus had died years ago. Dad owned the hayfield and Mom had turned it into a garden. Grandma Maruska, widowed, lived in a trailer behind the outhouses.
It was all so familiar, yet felt old and strange. How could I have seen so much in this small square yard?