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Vine and Fig Tree: Salt River County Chronicles by Goldena Roland Howard 348 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0470; ISBN 1-55369-657-3; US$28.00, C$32.15, EUR23.00, £16.00 The human stories behind the newspaper clippings of a hometown newspaper come alive. The stories span eighty years of rural Missouri history.
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About the Book
Country newspaper editor and publisher Hector Matthews is intrigued by the people of his community. There was a story in every person, every rock and tree, a multitude of little stories coming to the surface and going under again like threads in a tapestry, yet each had a separate denouement. Hector told such stories over and over. Little events. Little news items. Commonplace happenings of interest to his readers. Most of them could be repeated without a blush. Except in the minds of the readers, the stories had no life. Each reader, familiar with the faults, problems and virtues of his neighbours, scanned each line with interest, reconstructing as he or she read, the flesh and blood adventure behind the printed page.
Author Goldena Howard has created a time capsule of people, mores, culture and language from 1880 - 1960. Set in the fictional communities of Salt River County, Missouri, the stories capture a time and place that exist only in the memory of some. The characters are saintly and less-than saintly; they love and hate, scheme and plan. Themes of honesty, love and wholesomeness run throughout the stories.
Human relationships are at the heart of all the stories. The cast of characters that surrounds Hector is engaging, as each reveals his or her unique quirkiness. Some characters appear in several stories; some regale us just once. But all are connected through the places and supporting characters of their stories. Children and grandchildren of the stories' characters have their own stories.
Subtly humorous, historically accurate, and heartwarming, the stories will evoke reminiscences of an endearing time and place and of similar beloved characters whom the reader knows.
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About the Author
Goldena Howard grew up hearing stories of the early settlement of northeast Missouri and her ancestors' experiences. She was part of a family with a strong oral tradition. Her relatives honed - and continue to hone - their art of storytelling. As a teen, Howard began taking notes on everything around her, on stories she heard, on people she met or heard about. At sixteen she earned her first pay as a journalist and continued writing until the last years of her life.
Howard and her husband Oliver were an extricable part of the culture of which she wrote. They were keen historians, contributing written records, articles and books to the preservation of the times and places they knew so well.
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Reviews
Goldena Roland Howard has created a time capsule of people, mores, culture, and language from 1880-1960. Set in the fictional communities of Salt River County, Missouri, the stories capture a time and place that exist only in memory for some. Howard and her husband Oliver were inextricably part of the culture of which she wrote. They were keen historians, contributing written records, articles and books to the preservation of the "home" and people they loved so well.
- Review from the ANTELOPE VALLEY UPDATE: Acton/Agua Dulce News, Lake L.A. News, Rosamond News
RCHE Publisher's Note: By the way, if you can, you really should get a copy of Goldena Howard's book Vine and Fig Tree - Salt River County Chronicles.
I have just finished it and find it one of the most delightful collection[s] of short stories I have read in a long time. The stories are both funny and sad and show us a time when life was simpler and not so rushed as we are today.
If you can't find a copy in the area, it is available through Trafford Publishing, Suite 6E - 2333 Government Street, Victoria, B.C. Canada V8T 4P4. Toll free phone is 1-866-752-6820 or order on line at http://www.trafford.com/robots/02-0470.html.
- Review by Judith Statler, Ralls County Herald Enterprise, New London, MO 63459
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Excerpts
Chapter 10
Climax
July 8, 1958. If the weather holds, farmers will be ready to combine wheat right away. Harvest is the climax of the farmers' year. Indications are for record yields and bumper crops this year. We join our farm neighbors in keeping a weather eye on the sky and hope they get the wheat harvested before fall rains set in.
Molly Quimby, age 88, let The Sun slide from her hand as she read those lines. She rose, moved to the edge of the porch and scanned the skies.
Cleve and Sam planned to combine tomorrow. She could see both the boys' combines poised, ready to move out.
...
Threshing time had been a good time, when she and Jeff were young and doughty, and their boys were growing up.
There had been more to it than the excitement of the clanking, snorting, smoking and tooting of the steam engine and separator... When threshing started, each year, men and women were stricken with a tense fever that pressed until the run was over and all crops were safe.
...
Jeff was always relieved when his own crop was safe in the granary, but his neighbors' anxiety was his burden. No man rested until the threshing was done for all with whom he traded hands and wagons.
...
It was 1913. She'd better follow Jeff to bed. She'd have to get up early in the morning. She wouldn't want the crew to say Jeff's wife didn't set as good a table as any woman on the run.
She could sleep easy, facing Jeff on the bolsters and pillows filled with goose down plucked from her own flock. Everything was done that could be done. That red and yellow sky meant threshing for sure, tomorrow.
She was ready to start right in getting ready as soon as she got up just before sunrise tomorrow. She was ready to put the big pot in the little one. The beans were snapped and covered with cold water, out on the cistern curb. Her cakes were made. The caramel didn't go to suit her on the fourth one, but at least it was the thickest. Folks said her caramel beat them all at the ice cream suppers. The hams had been boiled, out of doors in the iron kettles. Now they were on the cave floor, in big pots, set to firm in their own juices. Tomorrow they would fall before the knife in rosy, pearl-rimmed slices.
The boys had carried up the large stone jars of sausage from the cave to the porch. The sausages had been fried down in January and sealed in their own lard. By morning the grease would have softened so the cakes could be dug out, melted and browned in the big iron skillets.
Fresh butter was hanging in the well right now. The boys had drunk all the buttermilk for supper last night.
The Albrights always got up early, about three o'clock, and butchered a mutton to serve fresh meat. But Jeff didn't go for that. He'd get his rifle from over the door after breakfast and shoot a half dozen fryers for her to dress. Maybe more. The chicken would go good with the cured meat, and any of it would be all right for supper. If anyone left a scrap.
...
They'd probably get the men all served in two tables, tomorrow. There'd be plenty of folks around to help, tomorrow, but Molly had taken time to stretch the table and lay the cloth tonight.
She'd lain things out, too, and washed and shined all the casters--on account of Posie Lunn.
Posie always got any place first, as soon as her men got off. And if things weren't out, Posie snooped in every drawer in the house, pretending she didn't know the cloths and napkins and towels were right in the shelves in the dining room press. Posie would put out all of a person's second-best, too, if she got a chance.
...
Jeff's younger half-sister Bessie Martin would come out from Cider City tomorrow. Better put her to cut coleslaw and open pickled beets, and peel turnips, and season cottage cheese, and such, out on the screened porch. Since Bessie was newly married and lived in town now, one didn't rightly know whether she was still work-brittle or not. She complained a lot, in hot weather. Jeff always told her a creaking door hung on the hinges the longest, but Molly wasn't going to risk one of Bessie's heat prostrations. There'd be no time to fan her. Any older women that came would have enough fanning to do-keeping the flies out of the house and away from the table.
Minnie Albright would get over in time to make the pies. Sixteen ought to be enough this year. Minnie knew where everything was, and she'd get them done and out in time to get the chickens on to fry. Minnie's younguns could carry in wood, and carry out slop, and keep the water pails full.
Molly would make the bread herself, and put it in the warming closet to raise. It could go in the oven as soon as Minnie got the pies out. No man wanted to do a day's work on store bread. There wasn't any strength in it. It didn't stay with you.
Jeff said there would be forty men and forty horses to feed, at least. This year he had asked for fourteen bundle wagons, five grain wagons, eight pitchers, three men at the granary, and there would be the water hauler, engineer, separator man, cleanup man, feeder, two band cutters, some sackers and others. Their own little Sam was going to be water boy this year. Jeff was awful proud of him. He was going to give him fifty cents, which was fifteen cents more than he would have had to pay any other boy.
...
There would be as many women and children as there were men to be fed. But most of them would help, and everything would go right along fine. The single girls would make the tea and coffee, and bring up the butter and milk at the last, and wait tables. It would probably be the fifth or sixth table before Molly sat down to eat, if she sat down at all. Someone would probably bring her a plate and set it on the warming closet, like she did at other houses when she helped.
...
Molly felt sorry for Jeff and the boys in threshing time, although they didn't complain. They toiled to the point of exhaustion. All of it was hot work, dirty work, and hard work. There wasn't any easy job following the machine.
The thresher was exciting, and a work saver, but this annual visit of such a machine was like an invasion of something from another world on their quiet farm. The rig was awesome, its great maw demanding fuel, belching smoke and sparks. It gave forth greedy guttural sounds, like the Moloch pictured in Molly's illustrated Bible, demanding the flesh and sinews of men.
Jeff laughed at her fear of the monster. The men seemed to like it. But they admitted to being tired at nightfall.
The sun burned them, right through their blue chambray shirts, all the way in under their galluses. A threshing machine was surely no place for a worker to bare his hide. All hands had best be fully clothed, with bandannas around their necks to keep out chaff and catch the sweat that coursed down from their hatbands.
The men's shirts were dark with sweat before the first layer of bundles covered the wagon frames. Each night Molly checked to be sure her menfolk had plenty of clothes for the morning, washing out some if necessary, so Jeff and the boys could carry an extra clean shirt hanging from their wagon, to wear in to dinner. No woman could ever say she found a line of grease and dirt along the edge of the cloth where Molly's men sat.
...
First man in the door took first seat, with no nonsense about protocol. They fell to in earnest silence. There wasn't much talk until the flowered designs began to show above the remnants of food in the serving bowls, and the girls made sparing refills. The bowls would be filled to the brim again for the second table.
By the time the preserve stands were uncapped and contents sampled, and the pies and cakes were passed, all relaxed. There was raillery and bandying of words. There were sly thrusts at the man who had dumped his load when the wagon axle grazed the gate post, at the one who had loaded it, and at the man who had failed to keep pace and lost his place in the line moving back to the separator.
The bachelors vied in drinking tea, so the pretty girls would reach around their shoulders to fill their glasses. The girls, laughing and flushed, played no favorites, except to avoid a messy eater. A man who smeared gravy on his glass had to hold it for them and ask for service.
The tempo was different in the afternoon. Horses and men had reached their peak of energy. The day was more than half over, the sky was clear, the crop would be in and the rig could move on.
The women and children ate their dinner. Towers of dishes were washed. The farm pets argued over the heaps of scraps dumped in the chicken yard. The tablespread was brought out and placed over the leftover food. Four or five tall preserve stands held it off the dishes beneath it.
The girls rode the bundle wagons with their favorite beaux. Children squealed and jumped in the granary, thrilling as the warm clean grain soothed the potato bug blisters, chigger bites and stubble scratches on the bare feet and legs which plunged deep into the golden heaps.
The women fanned and cooled on the porch before departure. Suppers in all their houses would be set-out meals tonight, with some fresh tea and new skimmed milk.
...
Molly stirred in her chair. The hand she extended toward Jeff's chair did not meet the well-remembered clasp of past years. She was alone.
She rocked a while, reluctant to go inside. The linoleum gleamed. There was no one to make a stir or muss.
Tomorrow the boys would combine.
Cleve would eat at Sam's house. It was club day for their wives. The girls would arrange stuff from the freezer, ready for the boys to eat at noon.
Molly rose. She'd make a couple of pies and go over and eat with them. She would see that the timer turned on their coffee pot on time and that the things were thawed.
Her pies would be no better than those the girls set out, but the boys would pretend they liked fresh baked ones best. They were good boys. They would understand her wanting to be part of the harvest.
Catalogue Information
