Train Times, Book Times

The Southwest is still very much train country. The photograph above shows an engine (pulling a long line of freight cars) crossing Ocotillo Avenue in Benson, Arizona. There is a passenger train that stops in Benson, also, but while it races through Willcox, it does not stop there. I wish it did.

When I was growing up, ours was very much a train family. My grandfather was a “hogger” (engine driver) on the Pennsylvania Railroad, first with a steam engine, later with diesel. Two of his brothers were conductors. After World War II, my father’s first job, with his bachelor of science in civil engineering, was as head of a survey crew for the Milwaukee Road. That explains why I was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota. 

Before my third birthday, my father took a job with the Elgin, Joliet, & Eastern Railway in Joliet, Illinois. The EJ&E ran only freight, no passenger trains, but for some reason EJ&E employees had discounts on passenger lines — 50% off for adults and children over 12, with children under 12 riding free. That was coach, of course, so we could either sleep sitting up in our seats or pay full price for private space — “roomettes,” or whatever. And we paid full price for our meals in the dining car, too.

(I am old enough to remember — this is a scary realization! tell me you can’t believe it! — one trip where we rode in one of those old sleeper cars you see in movies, with top and bottom bunk beds on either side of a center aisle and only curtains for privacy. We changed into pj’s behind the curtains. Really!) 

Recently I picked up two books written for young people. Rod’s Dog, by Jean Bailey, published in 1954, begins with twelve-year-old Rodney Colwill (who hates being called Rodney) riding a train from Chicago to Kansas to live with his uncle and aunt for a year while his mother and engineer father are away on a job his father has in South America. Rod is unhappy about leaving his friends, his “gang,” in the city, so unhappy he can’t even respond to the conductor’s friendliness or enjoy the view from the train windows.

I Am Lavina Cummings, by Susan Lowell, is a historical novel. It is 1905, and Lavina, ten years old, has grown up on a ranch in southern Arizona. Lavina loves the ranch. Being Lavina of the Bosque Ranch is her identity. But her mother has died, and her father feels she is more likely to learn to be a “lady” if raised by her aunt in Santa Cruz, California, rather growing up wild on the ranch with her father and three brothers. She is adept at working cows on her pony, Chum, and is not afraid of rattlesnakes. But once on the train, she is excited by the passing scenery and sights.

In each story, the child is traveling by train alone. (In a story set today, the child would undoubtedly be traveling by air.) Rod is going from city to country (in the middle of the 20th century), Lavina from country to city (at the dawn of the 20th century). My sympathies at first were all with Lavina. I mean, she had to leave her pony! Heartbreak! But Lavina was brave and excited and curious about what lay ahead. I am not very far into the story yet....

It took Rod much longer (I finished his story this morning) to adapt to the changes in his life. Eventually, however, he made peace with country life. What helped enormously — and here my sympathy was all with him — was a little black dog! And that certainly makes sense!

(dog story, not train story)

Neither of these is really a train story, though, and that makes me wonder just how many books there are with stories that stay right on the train. Right away I think of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, of course. Then there is Paul Theroux’s The Great Railway Bazaar; The Old Patagonian Express; and Riding the Iron Rooster, a wonderful travel book about train travel through China. Also, last year I read what has been so far my favorite book of Mexican history, with history incorporated into what is also a travel book, the marvelous Yesterday’s Train: A Rail Odyssey Through Mexican History, by Terry Pindell, with Lourdes Ramirez Mallis. There must be more fiction set on trains, though, no? Can anyone think of novels with train settings, either passenger trains or hobos riding boxcars? I do not count The Boxcar Children, because their boxcar was no longer attached to a train when they moved into it.

Here is a sweet little something in the back of the hardcover copy of Rod’s Dog that other bibliophiles and amateurs (lovers) of old books will recognize. The tiny, unobtrusive bookstore sticker tells where this book was originally purchased new. Lancaster, Pennsylvania! And somehow it found its way to Willcox, Arizona! Seeing it, my bookselling idea for today is that it may be time for independent bookstores to bring back these stickers. I’m thinking that with growing enthusiasm for indies (the personal and local experience over the impersonal, online purchase), bookstore customers might appreciate a reminder of where they had found each of their books and which bookstores they  had supported with their custom. The visibility of the bookstores themselves would last longer in memory, too.

It’s a small idea, and I am not a marketing consultant, but I wonder if other booksellers think this could catch on.

Upper Peninsula Comes South!

Ellen Airgood is coming to town, from the shores of Lake Superior, and I’m so happy and excited my toes are dancing in my boots! Here are Ivy Blake’s boots on the cover of The Education of Ivy Blake, Ellen’s latest novel for young people. Ivy is a 5^th-grader, so if you know a 5^th-grade girl who would like to meet an accomplished and very welcoming, friendly book author, bring that girl to Dog Ears Books on Wednesday for a memorable evening. Coming by yourself or with friends your own age is fine, too. You won't be sorry.

Who was the first author you met? How old were you? What do you remember of the meeting?

My photo at the top of the page shows several Airgood books. (Not all, because one anthology she appeared in seems to be no longer in print.) South of Superior was her first novel, and Prairie Evers her first novel for a younger audience. Ivy and Prairie become friends in Prairie Evers, so while it is not necessary to have read the first to enjoy the second, anyone who reads The Education of Ivy Blake first will want to go back to read Prairie Evers, too. Read or re-read, I should say. Ellen Airgood’s books are eminently re-readable – and I say this having read South of Superior all the way through four times.

The two anthologies that include Ellen Airgood pieces are excellent, as well. A couple customers just the other day were telling me how much they have been enjoying The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works, edited by Ron Riekki. Riekki also edited the new collection, Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which features work from several decades, both poetry and prose. Good stuff, all this!

Wednesday, June 17, 7 p.m., Dog Ears Books, 106 Waukazoo Street, Northport, Michigan: Ellen Airgood, reading from and signing The Education of Ivy Blake

Below is a glimpse of Ellen at a different kind of work. You'll have to ask her how she finds time to write books!

At West Bay Diner, Grand Marais, Michigan

Book Review: THE EDUCATION OF IVY BLAKE

If you read Ellen Airgood’s first YA novel, Prairie Evers, you’ve already met Ivy Blake. Going to public school for the first time after being home-schooled by her grandmother is hard for Prairie, but life gets better when she and Ivy become friends. In case you have not (yet) read Prairie Evers, I won’t tell you the secret Ivy reveals to her friend there. It’s an important part of The Education of Ivy Blake, too, but you don’t need to have read the first book to enjoy the new one. Prairie is the narrator and main character in the book that has her name as the title. In The Education of Ivy Blake, Ivy takes center stage and holds her own.

The world of 5^th-grader Ivy Blake is the real world, the modern world. Characters have cell phones, and there are no vampires. As has been the case throughout history, however, the real world can be a difficult place to grow up.

Ivy’s father is dead, killed in circumstances that would be traumatic for any child (Ivy was five years old at the time), and her mother became involved with a new man who doesn’t care for kids. As the new story opens, Ivy has come to live in her friend’s house, with Prairie and Prairie’s parents as her surrogate family. We want to see her happy. We want the new family to blend together and live, without problems, happily ever after.

But life isn’t that simple.

Ivy is a tough little girl. Not outer-tough, as in swaggering or loud or rebellious. Her toughness is a strong inner core, and she needs every bit of strength when her mother decides she should come “home” again.

Ivy Blake’s “education,” like the education of many famous characters in literary history, takes place only partly in school. The lessons she learns and the places and people who provide the lessons – Ivy herself sometimes seeking them out – form the structure of this compelling character-driven novel.

Recently I was surprised to see Betty Smith’s  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, published in 1943, called as a YA novel. It was not written or intended as such. When the book was released, in fact,  the publisher and reviewers were at some pains to assure potential adult readers that certain passages were not thrown in for gratuitous shock value, that their frankness was necessary to convey the truth of Francie’s world.

Since then, fiction for young people, like the world in which they find themselves, has fewer protections against life’s harsher realities. Ivy Blake is not subjected to physical violence, nor does the book depict overt sexual episodes, so if some reviewers find it occasionally tough sledding, they are no doubt responding to the emotional tone: Ivy has times of happiness and of hope, but she also experiences completely rational fear and despair.

Even while we worry about what will happen to her, though, we have faith in this young girl. We’re on her side, and reading her story, we feel she is someone we would like for a friend. I am confident that readers from 10 to 99 will share this feeling.

Michigan author Ellen Airgood delighted bookstore customers in Northport when she came down from the U.P. to bring us South of Superior four years ago. She will open the 2015 season of author visits at Dog Ears Books on June 17, at 7 p.m. Don’t miss her!

Were there Young Adult Novels in the Nineteen-Sixties?

Recent chatter online has suggested that young adult novels are a new phenomenon, something “we didn’t have back when I was young,” as Linda Bernstein writes in the Huffington Post. She and other writers point to Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird as YA forerunners. I take exception on both counts.

For starters, the J. D. Salinger and Harper Lee novels were not marketed to and probably not written for teens. That we read them when we were young is another matter. Back in the Sixties, in high school, we teens read Salinger surreptitiously (almost as surreptitiously as we read Peyton Place). We read Harper Lee for different reasons: because her book is an American classic and because we were ready for adult novels. Teenagers aspired to be recognized and treated as adults then and were eager  – even impatient! – to be initiated into adult life. We hungered for independence, in reading as well as in living. This hunger explains why so many young people in the Sixties lived together in groups or married young -- lingering in parental homes until age 30 for the sake of laundry facilities and technological luxuries was for later generations, not ours – but that is another story altogether....

A novel with a young protagonist is not necessarily a young adult novel. Here's where a lot of confusion seems to come in nowadays. Maggie Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, for example, opens when Francie is a very young girl going about the streets of Brooklyn with her little brother, and the focus is on the girl throughout the novel, rather than on her father, a singing waiter with an alcohol problem, or her mother, a scrubwoman for the apartment buildings in which they live (moving to a new one each time Johnny comes home drunk and causes an embarrassing disturbance). Social and political change, war, the mysteries of sex and death, are all seen by the reader through Francie’s eyes as she grows from a child into a young woman. And yet, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was not intended or thought of at the time as a book for girls teen Francie’s age (as she is later in the book). On the contrary. Many adults found episodes in it “shocking,” or “shockingly frank,” but the publisher noted on the cover of an early paperback edition that “mature readers” would understand such passages as necessary in the context of the story.

The plain fact is that most of us who remain voracious readers today were reading adult novels in our high school years. It was books we read in junior high that were shelved in the children’s section of the library and marked in the library as Y rather than J for “juvenile.” They were the bridge between children’s books and adult fiction. This is still how I think of YA literature, regardless of its content. 

So what were the young adult novels of the mid-twentieth century, books aimed at kids in 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grade? What did (or do) you read at that transitional stage of life?

My motivation was probably mixed, but I remember discovering in junior high, in anticipation of the driver’s license still four years in my future, Henry Gregor Felsen and a whole new, exciting world of cars. Books like Hot Rod were written neither for children nor adults. The content and concerns of Felson’s automotive fiction was definitely aimed at a YA audience. Today I’m intrigued by a Wikipedia entry that claims Felsen explored “the evils of drugs, sexism and racism.”  Have I forgotten that much of what I read in seventh grade?

One YA classic that’s been around since 1953 is The Light in the Forest, by Conrad Richter, in which a 15-year-old white boy who has lived for 11 years as an Indian, adopted by a great warrior, must return to his birth family and learn white ways. There were, of course, many exciting true life adventure stories and biographies aimed at the junior high audience, but I'm sticking to fiction for now.

For boys and girls, there were heaps of mystery novels, going way beyond the earlier Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, and there were also stories of children growing up in families, with a first book with young children and sequels with older children as the readers of the original grew older. The two older children of Elizabeth Enright's The Four Story Mistake thus became teenagers in The Saturdays, with all four venturing out on independent adventures in the latter book, in much the same way that Anne of Anne of Green Gables, a much earlier, turn-of-the-last-century girls’ story, grows to adulthood and begins her own family in later books in L. M. Montgomery series. Maud Hart Lovelace’s stories of three little girls in Minneapolis, beginning with Betsy-Tacy, also followed those girls as they grew to college age, launched themselves in careers, and eventually married. Montgomery's and Lovelace's books were not written in the 1960s, but they were still read then and continue to be popular today.

  

I’ve saved Sixties girls’ stories for last, because there were so many of them! Here’s a little sample, with one male protagonist thrown in, a 15-year-old country boy, so plagued all his life that he’s determined to quit school as soon as he turns 16 (legal quitting at the time). I still vividly remember certain scenes in The Pink Dress, but not all YA girls’ novels were about popularity in the suburbs. Another I recall had an immigrant family living in a New York apartment house. The girl, Magda (?), wore old, unfashionable clothes and spoke with a strong European accent. (Does anyone recognize the story from my description? I’d love to read this book again.) Maureen Daly’s story of teenage love, Seventeenth Summer, originally published in 1942, because of the protagonist's struggles over propriety and depictions of underage smoking and drinking, is claimed by some (according to a Wikipedia contributor) to have kicked off the YA phenomenon – but I’ve already argued that it began longer ago. Then there are the ones that came later, such as the books of Mildred D. Taylor; because she  wasn’t publishing until the 1970s, I was an adult before I discovered her work.

Death was not unknown to YA novels of the Sixties. We had books whose main characters were orphans and foster children and immigrant kids and kids struggling with physical handicaps, serious illness, and minority status. Poverty or reverses of fortune made appearances, too. I wish I had a list of all the books I read between the ages of 11 and 14, but really, it almost seems the phrase ‘problem fiction’ is redundant, doesn’t it? I mean, where is the story unless the main character faces a serious challenge or conflict? Isn’t junior high itself an enormous and difficult challenge?

One theme very important in decades leading up to the Sixties and through that decade that doesn’t seem as strong today is that of young people striving for financial independence. First jobs were landmarks in life and occasions of great pride. Perhaps the absence of focus on wage-earning in today’s YA literature is the other side of the dystopic coin, a despair seeming to dictate that only larger-than-life characters can rise above as they take on global forces of evil. Or maybe it’s as simple as economic reality, with the current YA audience realizing it will never achieve the material abundance of its grandparents.

(One mother told me there was no point in college kids working part-time jobs any more, since they would still not be able to afford daily lattes. Lattes? What happened to vending machine instant? That’s what we drank in our dorm late at night! Ah, yes, and my “poor grandfather,” as he told me with a big fake sigh and a twinkle in his eye, “had to ride a pony to school!” I’d sure have chosen a pony over a daily caffe latte, but that’s just me, I guess.)

I wonder. Adolescence has always been a difficult time of life. The transition from childhood to adulthood is confusing -- no less confusing as teenagers begin to realize that adults are often confused, too, and we all need heroic characters once in a while. Dystopic novels, though, paint an awfully grim and unappealing picture of “adult” life. If it’s that bad, what can one do other than rebel? And after rebellion, then what? Wading full-tilt into adult ambiguity, dealing with well-meaning individuals who disagree on means to an end, sorting out the well-meaning from the deceptively self-serving – this is the reality that awaits young people with the courage to engage with the world as it is. It sure isn’t easy – but then, it never has been, for anyone, at any time in history.

YA novels can be so compellingly written that they find a large adult audience, in addition to younger readers. Some are realistic, others fantastic. Can they be divided into escape and thought-provoking along the same lines? Probably not.

Do you read new YA fiction? What are your favorites? Or if you’re older, what were your favorites when you were a preteen and/or young teen?

Whatever your age, from ten to 100, the good news for my readers is that a new YA novel by Ellen Airgood, The Education of Ivy Blake, a sequel to her delightful Prairie Evers, is due for release in early June 2015. Chances look good, too, for a bookstore visit from our favorite U.P. author, so if you haven't read Prairie yet, do that this winter to increase your anticipation for Ivy, a worthy successor.

We're Gonna go NUTS!

Lynne Rae & Bill Perkins, December 2013

No, we are not planning a winter holiday party (yet); the photo above is just a fun one of author Lynne Rae Perkins and her husband, furniture maker Bill Perkins, taken at Dog Ears Books last year at Glenn Wolff's book signing. Note gently mischievous grin. Anyone who knows Lynne Rae Perkins or reads her blog knows how much fun this creative artist/author is. She’s also Leelanau County’s only Newbery Medal winner, having received the award in 2006 for her YA novel Criss Cross, which you can read about here.

In 2012 Lynne Rae did something new for her, illustrating a book written by another author, and we had a big book party to introduce Esme Raji Codell’s Seed by Seed: The Legend and Legacy of John “Appleseed” Chapman, a party complete with heritage apples, apple-decorated cupcakes, apple cider, and a real live apple tree that a lucky customer took home, along with signed book purchase.

Lynne Rae’s recently released new book, in my opinion, deserves an award all its own. The Newbery committee chair said the last time around, of Criss Cross, that “Perkins writes an orderly, innovative, and risk-taking book in which nothing happens and everything happens.” While it isn’t true that “nothing happens” in Nuts to You—which has lots of action and suspense and many surprises—there’s a lot more “happening” besides a  plot with many twists and turns.

Chapters and pictures both

“What age would appreciate the story best?” a friend asked. I’d looked into the book enough to realize it’s what kids nowadays call a “chapter book,” and yet it also has illustrations throughout, so, based on that, I guessed middle elementary. A quick online search told me that, yes, the book is recommended for ages 8-10.

Then I started reading it.

You know how sometimes a book can be just too good for only a certain age level or even only for children? The kind of book that little kids and grownups adore equally and you feel sorry for those preteens and adolescents who will miss it because they think it isn’t grownup enough for them? That’s Nuts to You. I can already hear a little boy delighting in saying to his parents and older siblings, “Nuts to you!” and then explaining that he means it in a good way, a squirrel way! I also anticipate many adults who will begin reading the “Author’s Note,” as I did, expecting a straightforward how-I-got-the-idea-for-this-story story, and then find themselves hooting out loud with laughter at the author’s meeting with a talking squirrel—and at having a sense of fellow feeling for the squirrel.

“What I love most about peanut butter,” he said, “is how it transports me to my youth. The first taste always takes me back to the very first time I had it. For an instant, I am young again, and strong. And probably foolish.”

I didn’t care for peanut butter as a girl, but for all of us there are certain tastes that carry us back to childhood, and so the adult reader is hooked then and there.

Someone I love was slightly dubious. “You’re not an ordinary grownup,” he said (not for the first time; he says it to me often). But the next day he walked into the bookstore while I was reading a page of Nuts to You to two or three friends my age, and he laughed with delight along with them. “Is that the squirrel book you were talking about?!”

But I don’t want to quote a lot from the book or say too much about what happens in the story because every reader deserves the joy of surprise that comes with turning from one page to the next. I'll tell you that there are serious, weighty issues here, below the surface, but Perkins never lets issues overtake story: when she does turn “didactic” for a brief moment, even resorting to what would formally constitute a footnote, she does it with a gentle wink:

If someone, your teacher maybe, ever asks what “irony” or “being ironic” means, you can say it’s when a squirrel says, “our friend, the hawk,” and you will be right.

Adults who read this story to young children will take a tip, I hope, from the author and not go off on a tangent and start preaching to the kids about moral equality, fair play, race relations, natural habitat destruction, immigration, and so on. Stick with the story. It's a story of adventure and friendship. Little kids will want to hear it (and older kids read it) again and again. (Grownups, too.) The lessons will come through on their own. So will the humor.

Nuts to us all!

Book party with Lynne Rae Perkins is scheduled for Friday, September 19, from 5 to 7 p.m. If you can’t be with us that day, I’ll be happy to take your prepaid order and ship a signed book to you in the mail.

Warning: There will probably be nuts and peanuts and peanut and nut products at the party. I’m hoping Lynne Rae is not planning to bring any live squirrels. An apple tree was great; a squirrel, indoors -- maybe not. Anyone wanting to pretend to be a squirrel, however, is free to do so. 

Fiction: "Childhood Playmates"

[The piece of fiction here, which may or may not work as a short story, is the result of the joining of two different chapters in a YA novel I worked on a few winters back and never finished. The girl in the story, Nora, is living temporarily with her grandfather because her father has lost his job, and he and her mother are traveling to different parts of the country looking for new employment. This is not the summer Nora had looked forward to, and she experiences a lot of frustration, boredom, and confusion at first. In this section, however, she is beginning to make peace with her new situation.]

*   *   *   *   *

Childhood Playmates

       Nora pestered her grandfather all week to take her to the nursing home.  It was funny, really, because she wasn’t even sure she wanted to go.  The place would probably be depressing, full of old, sick people in wheelchairs, like in that movie she’d watched back home, with her brother Kevin, on TV one night.  In the movie the old people got some kind of drug and came back to life, and everyone was happy for a while, but then the drug stopped working, and they went back to being zombies. 

Maybe Grandma will be a zombie, Nora thought. When she tried to picture her grandmother living in a place she had only seen from the outside, Nora had no idea what it might be like inside, and she just needed to know.  Even if it was bad, knowing would be better than imagining the worst.

“She probably won’t know you,” her grandfather said over and over.  “She won’t recognize you, and you’ll be disappointed.  Wouldn’t you rather remember her the way she was?”

“Does she know you?” was Nora’s challenge.

“Not always,” he admitted.

“But you go, anyway, right?  She’s my grandma, and I want to visit her, too.” 

Would she be in a coma, all hooked up to tubes and wires and machines?  How would she feel, seeing her grandmother like that?  Nora didn’t know, but she kept after her grandfather to take her to the nursing home.

Finally one Sunday morning he gave in. 

Nora decided to go all out and wear a dress, a pink and white checked gingham sundress she had promised herself, when her mother brought it home for her, that she would never wear in public.  She certainly wouldn’t wear it anywhere except the nursing home!  I look like a cartoon character, she thought, gazing at herself in the mirror, but Grandma likes dresses.  She put on a pair of white sandals instead of her usual rubber flip-flops, and a white lace headband to hold her hair back from her face, the way her grandmother liked it.

Okay, she said to herself grimly, you’re finally getting something you said you wanted.

Did she want this visit?  Too late now to tell her grandfather she had changed her mind!

When she appeared in the kitchen all dressed up, her grandfather looked at her with surprise but didn’t say anything about the difference in her clothes.  He was wearing his usual blue plaid shirt.  Maybe he had more than one blue plaid shirt, but if he did, they were all the same.  It was blue and black plaid, actually, with a pocket that held reading glasses and a pencil stub. 

“You all ready?  You sure you want to go?” he asked.  He didn’t look sure himself.

Nora nodded, hoping her nervousness didn’t snow. “Is Sport coming?” she asked to change the subject.

“Is the pope Catholic?” he countered.  That was one of his old-fashioned sayings.  It meant she had asked a dumb question.

Leading the way to his old pickup truck, carrying his dog in his arms, he did not say “Hop in, princess,” as her father would have said, just, “Open the door for me.”  When he spoke, she noticed that he sounded a little out of breath.

“Does Sport have to come with us?  Can’t she stay home just this once?”

       “She could stay home, but she doesn’t have to.  Sport goes where I go.  Now open that door before I drop her!” 

       Nora did as she was told, opening the passenger-side door, and her grandfather arranged the dog on a ragged woven rug in the middle of the long, worn bench seat. Her grandfather slammed the door behind her, and she wedged her rear end as closely as possible into the corner made by the door and the seat back, as far as she could get from the old beagle.

Smelly old dog!  Bad breath, body odor and gas!  Nora breathed in through barely parted lips and out through her nose, right elbow out the window, hand over mouth and nostrils.

       “Does Sport ever get a bath?” she finally venture to ask.  By this time they were out on the dirt road, her grandfather concentrating (or so it seemed) on hitting every bump and chuckhole, and he didn’t answer her question.  Maybe he hadn’t heard it.  She wasn’t sure sometimes if he heard everything she said.

       Grandpa’s dog s-s-s-s-s-sTINKS! she shouted in the secret freedom of her mind.  It would be a mean thing to say out loud, but it couldn’t hurt his feelings if she only thought it.  She turned to look out the window, to breathe in the fresh evening air, to feel on her face the welcome breeze of movement, to drink in the passing scene of jungly green woods and fields, at the same time mentally repeating over and over the mean word describing Sport, her mind’s voice drawing out the long hiss, then biting off the T, making the single syllable into a satisfying woosh and chop inside her head. 

S-s-s-s-s-sTINKS!  Woosh-sh…CHOP!

 “Ready for blast-off,” her grandfather remarked as he turned the key in the ignition.  That was another one of his corny sayings.

She had been with her grandfather for almost two weeks now, and the roads to town were starting to feel as familiar as the house itself.  First was the dirt road, full of holes and bumps, dusty on dry days, muddy in the rain.  At this time of year it was lined with big clumps of bright yellow flowers that looked something like daisies except for their color.  There was one real farm with a dozen young calves, black and white.  Nora had called them “cows” the first time she saw them, but her grandfather corrected her, explaining that they were something called “feeder calves” and that they were raised for beef.  They’re clueless, Nora thought each time they drove by and she looked at the calves enjoying themselves outdoors.  They don’t know they’re going to be someone’s dinner.  Right now they were frisky and cute, like pets would be.

Most of the scenery on the dirt road was fields and old woods, and only the calf pasture had good fences.  All the other fence posts were either leaning or rotten, sometimes both, and old barbwire was sagging where it wasn’t totally missing.

“I remember Grandma’s cow,” Nora heard herself say suddenly.

“You do?  You remember Beulah?  You were just a little thing then,” her grandfather answered.  “What else do you remember?”

“I remember when I was real little, Grandma had chickens.  Black chickens.  In my storybooks, all the chickens were white, but Grandma’s were black.”

“Well, chickens come in different colors, just like people.  Yes, those were pretty birds.  Your grandma wasn’t raised on a farm, you know.  She wanted chickens, but she wanted them for their looks as much as for their eggs.  Those were black Minorcas.”  He added, “That breed came originally from Spain.”

“By themselves?”  The words popped out before she thought.

He looked over at her, startled.  “Are you pulling my leg?  Is that a joke?”

“No!  I’m just making conversation!”

“Well, chickens can’t fly across an ocean!  No, they were brought here from Europe.”

They turned now onto the paved road.  It was kind of a highway, Nora supposed, because it had a number instead of a name, but it was only wide enough for one lane of cars to go in each direction.  On both sides of the road from here to the edge of town were old ranch houses, some wood and some brick.  There were also three really old, big, two-story-with-attic houses.  These had barns in back and separate garages.  The ranch houses had attached garages and only garden sheds in their backyards.  One of the big houses, red brick with a huge front porch, had chickens that walked around the yard, anywhere they wanted to.  They were white chickens. 

“Were the Min-, minna—?“

“The Minorcas?”

“The Minorcas.  Were they kind of like slaves?”

“What?”

“They were brought here, you said,” Nora reminded him. 

“All kinds of poultry and livestock and trees and vegetables were brought here!  Animals and plants didn’t just decide to come of their own accord!  But—slaves?  Where do you get your ideas, Nora?”

She didn’t know where her ideas came from.  She saw something, or someone said something, and the sights and words connected to something else, and out popped a new thought.  Also, right now she just wanted to keep her grandfather’s mind jumping around so it couldn’t have time to get worried.  She didn’t want her own mind to have time to get worried, either.  She continued, “Well, what about people?  Everyone came here from somewhere else, right?  And some were brought here, and the people brought here were slaves, right?”

Her grandfather’s hands on the steering wheel were firm and sure as he guided the truck around the only curve in the road.  They were almost there.

“First of all, Nora, there were people here in the Americas for a long, long time before anyone else came or was brought over.  Remember?  Native Americans.  And then, yes, I’m sure you remember the Pilgrims from England.  And later people from Africa were brought over as slaves.  You know all this!  You study history in school, don’t you?”

She wanted to keep him talking but didn’t want to look like a fool.  “Yes, Grandpa, we had all that in history.  But what about the black chickens?”

“Chickens aren’t people!”  He paused, shaking his head, then asked, “Do you know where your ancestors came from?”

“Yes.  Your family came from Poland, and my dad’s family came from Ireland.”

“And your great-grandmother Darga, my father’s mother, was brought to America by her parents, but as a child, not as a slave.  If she had been brought as a slave, though, it wouldn’t have been her fault, would it?”

Fault?  Well, of course not!  “Who said anything about anyone’s fault?  Grandpa, where do you get your ideas?”

Both of them were nervous, and the nervousness was making them sound silly, Nora thought.

Here they were at the edge of Everett, and her grandfather slowed the truck to the village speed limit and signaled his turn into the nursing home parking lot.  There was a row of cedar trees planted on the south side of the parking lot, and that was where he liked to leave the truck, so the tall trees would be shade for Sport.  To make double-sure the dog wouldn’t get too hot, he backed the truck into the row of spaces, facing the front away from the direction of the sun.

When she met him around the front of the truck, the nursing home in front of them, Nora looked up at her grandfather, and he took her hand.

“Nora, I’m not used to having a little girl around.  Sometimes I tell you things you already know.  But I don’t know what you know!  So bear with me, okay?  I’m doing the best I can.”

“You’re doing fine,” she assured him, and they turned toward the building, Nora’s heart thumping.

Her grandmother’s room turned out to be sunny and cheerful.  There were flowers and a birdcage in the window.  There was a parakeet in the cage.  There were two narrow beds, two dressers, a small table and four armchairs.  Her grandmother sat in one of the armchairs, wearing light cotton drawstring pants, a sweater, and socks and tennis shoes on her feet.  Not a dress, Nora noticed.  But her hair was grey and curly, and her eyes still blue, just as Nora remembered.

“Grandma?” Nora said, approaching slowly, as her grandfather had told her to do.

A worried look came into the old lady’s face.  “Who are you?” she asked.  “You look familiar.”

“I’m Nora,” Nora said.

“Did we used to play together?”

“Yes, we played together a lot,” Nora answered. That was the truth.  Her grandmother had always played with her a lot.

“Who’s that man?  Is he your father?”

“He’s my grandfather.”  This was weird but so far not as awful as what she had imagined.

“Is it okay if we sit down with you?” her grandfather asked her grandmother, politely. 

“Yes, of course!  Where are my manners?”  They sounded like two strangers talking, but her grandmother smiled brightly all of a sudden.  “It’s nice to have some company,” she said.  “Now tell me,” she said to Nora, “did you and I play with those Kirby girls?  What did we play?  I like to remember, but sometimes I need help.”

Nora’s palms felt clammy, and she swallowed hard past the lump in her throat, looking at her grandfather for help.

“Jump rope?” he suggested.

Yes, Nora remembered.  Grandma always said she had played lots of jump rope games as a girl!  That helped Nora remember something else.  “Hopscotch?” she suggested.

“Oh, yes, I remember!”  The old lady’s smile was big now, and she tipped her head back as if to laugh.  “And sometimes we sneaked into the boys’ tree house when they weren’t around!”

“Sounds like those were good times,” Nora’s grandfather suggested.

The woman nodded.  “I’ve had a wonderful life,” she agreed.  “I just wish I could remember more of it.”  She stood up then, carefully, holding onto the table with one hand.  “Well, I do thank you both for coming to visit.  Maybe you’ll come again sometime.”

Nora was taken by surprise.  They had just arrived!  But her grandfather was already on his feet, shaking hands with his own wife and assuring her that he would bring Nora back to visit again! 

As they walked back down the hall to the reception desk and the exit, he gripped Nora’s hand tightly, and neither one of them said anything at all. Then outside in the sunlight, he stopped and turned to her. 

“Thank you for insisting on this, Nora.  It was a wonderful idea!  Your grandma was very glad to see you.”