A Final Visit
Lowell L. Getz
I was born in 1931 near a small village, Chesterfield, in SouthCentral Illinois, into an extended family that included members of the
surrounding community. Our family was close--grandparents, uncle,
great aunts and uncles, their families, and other more distant relatives.
Much of our entertainment during those Depression years consisted of
visiting family and friends in the evenings and for Sunday meals. No
need for an invitation, just show up. Special holidays---Easter,
“Decoration Day”, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and
birthdays---often involved friends as well as family.
Because Chesterfield was small, population 250, I knew everyone
in town and on the surrounding farms. We interacted at any number of
community events---snacks after PTA meetings (think home-made pies
provided by the students’ mothers), Saturday night movies in the town
“Square”, square dances on an outdoor wooden platform moved around
to various farms in the summer and in the Grade School gym in winter,
shopping in town, hanging out on the bench between two large black
locust trees in front of Mr. Holmes tavern while drinking Dr. Pepper and
eating Babe Ruth candy bars, listening to the juke box and playing cards
at the Shell station, Chesterfield annual fish-fries, attending touring
circuses that came to town, or simply lounging in the Square on lazy
summer Sunday afternoons. I knew their mannerisms, favorite pasttimes, pet peeves, and idiosyncrasies. And, they knew everything about
me, “warts” and all. We were “family.” That was my life for 17 years.
Eventually, I left Chesterfield. After graduating from high school I
went away to college and upon graduating, married a girl from another
town and moved to Massachusetts for my Army duty. After two years
active duty, came graduate school at the University of Michigan,
followed by a move back to New England for my first academic position
at the University of Connecticut. During these years, time and distance,
limited the frequency and duration of my trips back home. As a result, I
slowly lost touch of my friends.
After starting a family and becoming engrossed in establishing a
career, opportunities to return home were even more rare. Although
we eventually moved closer home, to the University of Illinois, because
of academic and research preoccupations, our visits back home
remained few and far between. Those rare times I went back, there
normally was time only to see immediate relatives, leaving little
opportunity to visit those with whom I had been so close as I grew up.
As time passed, friends from my early years began departing.
Eventually, all were gone. By the time I retired, allowing me time to
return home for longer stays, it was too late. Those with whom I grew
up and remembered so fondly no longer were there. Then came the
regrets of not having tried harder to make time for them. If only I could
turn back the years and once again visit with each of them. To
reminisce over the old days and catch up on what we had missed while I
was gone. That, of course, is not possible.
If I cannot not visit in person the friends from my past, I at least
can go to where they now “reside” to relive my times with them. We
could share our memories. Perhaps, after all, they might hear me. Most
of the friends from my early years now reside in four cemeteries, all
within three miles of Chesterfield—Gelder, Loomis, Keller, and KirbySmith (Chesterfield). Join me as I make an excursion back in time.
Space will not allow me to share the memories with everyone I knew.
We will move amongst the tombstones, stopping to reminiscence with
those I knew best or of whom I have some special memory that has
stayed with me all these years.
Gelder Cemetery
Our first stop will be at Gelder Cemetery. We turn west off Illinois
State Route 111 a half a mile south of Chesterfield and drive three
quarters of a mile on the gravel road, down and up the valleys formed
by two small streams the road crosses. Nearing the cemetery we pass a
modern house on the north side of the road. When I was a kid, there
were two large brick houses here. In one, then in serious disrepair,
Lincoln was said to have stayed overnight at least once while trying
cases in the nearby county courthouse in Carlinville. Who knows for
sure? Unsubstantiated local lore? Gelder Cemetery is home to many of
my family who died before I was born. These I knew only from family
accounts told on Decoration Day picnics. The stories about them were
told so often, however, I felt I knew them personally.
We park on the south side of the cemetery, get out of the car and
begin wandering among the tombstones. We pass both sets of my great
grandparents on my mother’s side of the family (James and Carrie
Rigsby, James and Hannah Dowland), long dead before I was born.
These are graves we visited on Decoration Day. On the northwest side
of the tract, we see the broken tombstone of James Thornton, my
grandfather’s uncle, who was killed in the Battle of Parker’s Cross Roads
during the Civil War. We continue walking. Over there are John and
Sarah Catherall, distant relatives who died while I was very young. On
our family room shelf sits an inlaid tea box, one of their wedding gifts
brought over from England when they immigrated here in the late
1800s. Before she died, Mrs. Catherall gave the tea box to my Mom. It
sat atop our china cabinet when I was growing up. After my Mom died I
kept it, along with a feather from a pet pigeon my Mom had when a kid
and a photo of the Catheralls she kept in the box.
Here are the graves of Robert and Azzalee Rigsby (“Uncle Bob”
and “Aunt Lee”), my Mom’s great uncle and aunt. Uncle Bob allowed my
Dad and Mom to take over his farm, to live there and farm on the halves,
when he retired from farming in 1930. My Mom and Dad had been
married for only four years and my Dad was working as a day farm
hand. Had Uncle Bob not given them that chance at the beginning of the
Great Depression, it is difficult to know what their lives, and in turn
mine, would have been like. Aunt Lee had what we now call
Alzheimer’s. Back then we simply said she had “lost her mind.” Aunt
Lee mostly babbled about “the little babies” (she lost all 16 of her
children through miscarriages or within their first year of life) and the
“the little animals”--neighborhood dogs and cats, which she fed table
scraps. Aunt Lee was a kindly soul with an unintentional sense of
humor. One Sunday morning when we were at their house for dinner
(we often went there on Sundays to give Uncle Bob a break from
cooking), Aunt Lee came out of the bedroom with two halves of a sheet.
She said to us, “Bob kept pulling and pulling the covers last night, so I
just tore them in two and gave him his half.”
A couple graves over is Ross Rigsby. Ross had lost an eye before
he moved to Chesterfield. As a young man he had sex with a 15 year-old
girl in Kentucky. The girl’s father took objection to the event and shot
Ross point-plank with a small gauge shotgun. Ross took most of the
shot in the forearm, but part of the charge hit him in the side of his face,
taking out his left eye. His sunken face made him look just like the
cartoon character, Popeye. He smoked a pipe, making him even more in
character. For years after first arriving in Illinois, Ross lived in a small
cabin hidden away on the forested banks of the nearby Macoupin Creek.
He was afraid the father would try to locate him and finish the job.
Eventually he moved into a small run-down house on Depot Street,
surrounded by scrubby bushes and trees. We kids were scared of going
near his place, Ross and the house were so spooky.
We walk up to Ella Hewitt’s grave, stop and look down. Ella was
one of the stalwarts of the community as I grew up and mother of one of
my friends, Eddie. Ella was widowed soon after giving birth to Eddie,
the last of her six children. Eddie’s dad worked on the railroad and
called Eddie his “Caboose”, the end of additions to the family. This was
early in the Depression when times were hard financially. By working
odd jobs around town, Ella in some way or other managed to hold the
family together, all of whom went on to successful careers. Even with
all these responsibilities, Ella was the person the Church and
community turned to for organizing social events and in helping those
in need. In spite of all she had to cope with, Ella was always there for
anyone in trouble.
And, here is Ally Scott. He lived on a small farm (“The Old Scott
Place”, to the locals even to this day) bordering on the southwest side of
my grandparents’ farm, adjacent to thirty acres of former pasture-land
my wife and I still own. My lasting image of Ally, is his large robust
figure clothed in narrow blue and white vertical-striped overalls,
standing in my grandparents’ horse lot. In the summer of 1936, while
replacing the roof on his house, Ally fell off, breaking his hip. Within
days he was dead of pneumonia, the almost certain consequence of a
broken hip in the days before anti-biotics. When my wife and I walked
around the deteriorated old Scott home site in 1976, the partially
opened bundle of shingles was still on a table in the fallen-in storage
shed next to the long abandoned house. The house has since burned to
the ground.
There are others I remember in Gelder cemetery--Val Gahr, a
neighbor who lived a quarter mile from our house. A few days after we
had been fishing in Macoupin Creek, Val committed suicide with a
shotgun, after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. That was a scary
event for a small boy. Also here are Grover and Ethel Doughty, whose
small farm (“The Old Doughty Place”) is adjacent to the land we still
own. They rented their small three-room house to my Mom and Dad for
a couple years after they were first married. We pass by Bill Stigall,
recluse bachelor who lived in two large adjacent houses in Chesterfield,
near the Grade School. The houses were in general disrepair and
surrounded by a picket fence, forming sort of a “compound.” Bill once
got drunk and bought several goats, which he kept within the
compound. Because his houses were so rundown and Bill was so
mysterious, we kids did not tarry as we passed by on the way to school.
There are a few more here that I knew, but it is time to move on.
Loomis Cemetery
We return to the car and drive back down the gravel road, turn
north on Rt 111 for a quarter of a mile and proceed east a mile to
Loomis Cemetery. We get out and look around. Only a few of the old
timers I knew reside here. We come up to Paddy Atyelo, a red-faced
grizzly-bearded late 1880’s immigrant from England who lived a few
miles south of my grandparents’ house. Paddy did not own a car. He
drove a team of horses to a wagon when he went to town. I have never
seen anyone who let the tongue of the wagon hang so low. The image of
Paddy’s ruddy face as he rode past the house, with the wagon tongue
barely clearing the ground, is still vivid in my mind. When Patty first
arrived in Chesterfield, he went to the dining room in the local hotel
(there was actually a hotel in Chesterfield back then) and asked for a
glass of ale. When told they did not serve alcoholic beverages, he
exclaimed “What, a Hinn and no Hale?”
Over here is Stanley Pointer. Stan and my uncle, who had recently
returned from World War II, frequently hunted raccoons at night during
my sophomore year in high school. I went along a lot of the nights.
There are vivid memories of those nights with Stan and my uncle. We
followed the dogs as they trailed and treed the “coons” through some of
the most God-awful tangled brushy briars until well after midnight,
often in a cold rain. Then, I had to get up and go to school the next
morning. But, we thought it was “fun”--for us, not the raccoons.
Myron, “Midnight” Nixon is here, too. He got the name “Midnight”
from his early days of delivering the newspaper, for obvious reasons.
Midnight was one of the first of the local men to be sent overseas and
into combat in World War II. He was badly wounded while fighting on
Bougainville and given a medical discharge. He eventually became the
rural mailman for the Chesterfield area. Midnight delivered the US mail
promptly and on time. After he had put his kids through college, they
insisted he take his turn in getting a college degree. This, he did.
Midnight and I spent a lot of time together while hunting. A very good
friend.
Ruth Sawtell, one of my distant relatives, who was a part of our
every day lives, lies over there. Ruth was the “family historian”, the one
to whom we turned for information regarding my grandfather’s side of
the family. We visited her every week or so. She never married. Most
of the others who are buried here are from farther east of town, those
with whom I did not interact very closely. Just knew who they were
when I met them.
Keller Cemetery
We get back in the car, drive into Chesterfield, turn onto the
Rockbridge road and drive west for about three miles to Keller
Cemetery. Many of those I knew best now reside here. The first stone
we see is that of Hayden and Ella Duckles. Hayden fought in France
during World War I. He told me his greatest fear was being hit in the
back, suggesting he had been running away from the front. His fears
came true during an artillery attack, when a shell “hung up” in a tree (hit
a limb and exploded) right above him as he lie flat on the ground,
throwing shrapnel into his buttocks. He was patched up at an aid
station and sent to a hospital well behind the lines for further treatment.
Hayden had to walk for a couple of days to reach the hospital. A newly
captured German soldier was sent with him, no gun to guard him, just
Hayden and the German walking together, as if friends. The day before
they had been trying to kill each other. The two soldiers slept during
the night in the hayloft of a French farmer’s barn. Ella contracted throat
cancer requiring a tracheotomy to remove. She, spent several years
being able to talk only by whispering as she put a finger over the hole in
her throat. Hayden became very depressed after Ella died. I made it a
point to visit him on even my most brief trips back home. For the first
half hour of my visit, he would be very quiet and gloomy. Eventually,
Hayden would lighten up, giggling his high-pitched “Hee-Hee-Hee” as he
told me stories about life in the trenches and going “over the top.”
Funny to him as he related the stories, but not at the time.
Nearby are the graves of my “Uncle Ted and Aunt Eva.” Uncle
Ted’s real name was “Edgar”, my grandfather’s brother. Not sure from
where the “Ted” came from. We were very close as I grew up. My Mom
and Dad and I visited them almost every week. We did so even more
frequently after my Grandfather died. Over there are Amos and Delia
Fenton. Several times each summer my Grandfather, Uncle and I went
“logging” (catching fish with our hands) in Macoupin Creek where it ran
through Amos’ farm. We always came home with half a dozen or more
large carp and catfish for a “fish fry” that evening. Two memories of the
“Old Fenton Place” remain imbedded in my mind, the charivai (or
“shivaree”, as it often was often spelled in those days), of their daughter,
Hannah, in 1940 and their son, Nelson, a year or so later. I remember
Hannah’s husband telling some of the men that he had enlisted in the
army to start his one-year service, as was the term of the enlistment at
that time. Said he might as well “go now and get the year over with” so
he and Hannah could get on with their lives. It was 1946 before they
were able to do so. Aunt Eva played the piano for the dancing that night.
Nelson married shortly afterwards, to a girl from another town. A
group of musicians from her town played for the shivaree. One piece
they played over and over for the “round dances”, in between the square
dance sets, was the newly popular Glenn Miller’s “Elmer’s Tune.” Less
than a year later, Nelson and his wife were using gasoline to clean a hen
house, as they settled into the farm where they were starting “keeping
house.” A spark of some sort caused an explosion, burning them both
badly. His wife died a few days later and Nelson was badly scarred and
had other injuries that prevented him from serving in World War II. To
this day when Mary Ruth and I are dancing and Elmer’s Tune is played, I
cannot shake the memory of that long ago enjoyable night and Nelson’s
marriage that so soon turned into a tragedy.
We wander among the graves. Here is Wilma Keele. When I was
in the fourth grade, Wilma (“Miss Followell” back then) was hired to
teach our class ancient history. We went into a large unused classroom
every afternoon for her class. Forty-seven years later I finally was able
to visit Rome and view all the ruins she had told us about. I called
Wilma, who was then dying of cancer, to tell her the Roman ruins looked
just as she had described them to us. We pass Truman and Fay Stone,
our neighbors back on the farm. My Mom and Dad visited them
frequently in the evenings to play cards and we “went places” together
on Saturday nights and on weekend drives. Fay’s daughter, Della, was in
my class at school. We visited and played cards by ourselves while “the
old folks” were playing cards. We had good times together. Della was
attractive, but we never dated. Not sure why. Maybe she gave me no
“signal” of encouragement. Della married Jimmy Guess, a year ahead of
us in school.
Over there is Bill Followell, Wilma’s Dad.
He was my
Grandmother’s grade school teacher when he was young. She described
him as being a tyrant, an exceptionally harsh disciplinarian. The
students were afraid to go to school because of him. I knew “Mr.
Followell” as the manager of the Chesterfield grain elevator. I still sense
the musty paper odor of his cluttered office. I remember most vividly
the tin ice water cooler, from which I drank on sweltering July days
when riding with the wheat wagon to the elevator during threshing
time.
Here is Edgar Lockyer. He was the owner of one of the grocery
stores in Chesterfield. The big thrill each spring was buying all my new
fishing gear for the summer from the side room of his grocery store—
eagle claw hooks, lead “sinker” weights, line, red painted cork bobbers,
and a few new assembled fishing lines, with long thin bobbers, wound
on a small red ladder-like frame. Each spring I also bought a new bright
red baseball cap, one that was sized to fit, not the one-size-fits-all caps
with plastic sizing tabs, as are worn now. And I wore them with the bills
in front.
We pass Grant and Martha (Dowland) Wilson, my Mom’s cousin
and best friend (Uncle Ted and Aunt Eva’s daughter) while growing up.
Until she died, in her 90’s, Martha was my “Chesterfield reference”
whenever I needed to know something from the olden times, events and
people.
Here is Kenny Trill. Kenny, two years older than I, was rather
rotund, to say the least. He attended the one-room Keller Country Grade
School, which used to stand on the east side of the cemetery. One day
the school was practicing escaping from the adjacent “storm cellar”
should a tornado throw a tree over the exit door. Kenny was trying to
force his way through the small emergency window, but could not get
his chest through. The teacher told him to “pull it in.” Kenny’s response
was, “If I pull it in up here, it only pushes out down there.” Fortunately,
the closest tornado missed Keller School by half a mile. Kenny’s passion
was playing the piano, by ear. When in high school, he and Gloria
Fletcher often would play the piano in the upstairs study hall during the
noon hour. Gloria was formally trained and played from music. One
could distinguish immediately who was playing upon coming through
the downstairs outside door. If Gloria, the music was quiet and
melodious. When Kenny was playing, the entire building seemed to be
bouncing. Kenny was offered a job playing for a St. Louis radio station,
but could not accept owing to a severe asthma condition, from which he
died when only 40 years old.
There are dozens more here in Keller Cemetery that I knew well,
far too many to stop and visit in the brief time we have. Just seeing their
names on the tombstones as we walked by brings back a flood of
memories of my times with them.
Kirby-Smith Cemetery
We get in the car, turn around and head back to Chesterfield and
to our final stop in my visit with those who were my friends so many
years ago. In Chesterfield, we turn left and drive a mile northeast on Ill
Rt. 111 to the Kirby-Smith Cemetery. Upon reaching the cemetery, we
turn right into the lane that runs through the western part of the
cemetery, go along the sunken road in back (being hidden from the
highway, a favorite “make-out” place for the local kids back then) and
then loop through the middle of the cemetery. We stop just before
coming back to the highway, right in front of our family plot. Here lie
my Dad, Mom, Step-father, Grandparents, Uncle, and his two wives. Our
own tombstone is already in place, for when Mary Ruth and I join them.
On the other side of the road we see the graves of Roland and
Luella Smith, “Aunt Lou and Uncle Rolly”, my great aunt and uncle.
When Uncle Rolly died, he left their money and house in town to my
Mom because she looked after him after Aunt Lou had died, a little over
two years earlier. My Dad was dying of cancer at the time, with less
than five months to live. Because we did not own the farm on which we
lived, this gave my Mom a place of her own after my Dad was gone.
Without the house, I’m not sure how she would have survived. A few
rows over are the graves of another of my Mom’s uncles and aunts,
“Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Leola.” Aunt Leola was a short rotund
woman, always with a big smile and hearty laugh. She was as close to a
“beach ball” as a human body can be. Tragically, she “fell” and broke her
hip while on her hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor. Seems
impossible that she could have done so, as would have seemed more
likely simply to have rolled over rather than fallen. But, she did and
died of pneumonia a few days later.
We stop at Floyd and Laura Rands’ graves. Their son, Buddy, was
my best friend from the first grade up to through my sophomore year in
high school, when we went to separate high schools. We fished, swam,
camped, and in general “bummed” around as if brothers. We stayed
over at each others’ house almost every week. His Dad drove a truck
and took us with him on any number of trips as he took grain to Alton.
His Mom was like a second Mother to me, as was my Mom to Buddy.
After I left Chesterfield, Buddy moved to the west coast. We saw each
other only three or four times afterwards. He is still alive somewhere.
Here is “Old” Jim Brooks. Jim and a couple others stopped by our
house one autumn noontime in 1945, while hunting rabbits in our
pasture. My Mom asked them to stay for lunch, which they did. I
remember sitting across the table looking at Jim as he ate. His wife had
died the year before and I idly wondered how much longer he would
live. An hour later as they were hunting, Jim dropped dead of a heart
attack. That really shook me, as if I had perceived he was going to die.
Near him is his son, “Young” Jim. As a hired hand, Jim lived with us for
two years before the war. Jim was heavily engaged in jungle combat in
the South Pacific from early in the war all the way through to the end.
He was not even allowed a leave before being shipped out. Although his
unit experienced extremely high casualties, Jim came through without
any physical wounds, only lingering psychological injuries. Both his
Mom and Dad died while he was away, his Dad dying while Jim was en
route home. He did not learn his Dad was dead until the night he
arrived. One of the men who saw Jim get off the bus chased him down
to tell him before he arrived at an empty house. During the Vietnam
War, I was home for a visit and stopped by the local tavern to talk to Jim.
At the time his son was in combat in Vietnam. I can still see the hollow
worried look in his eyes, understanding what his son was going through.
He returned safely.
As we wander amongst the graves, we see those of Vera Bramley
and Virginia Mathias. The two of them stayed with my Mom the last
month she was at home, while bedfast from terminal spinal cancer. One
would stay with her from 8:00 AM until 8:00 PM, the other for the next
12 hours. I would drive down to watch after my Mom for 12 hours on
Saturdays to give them a break. Virginia was my “first love.” I was in
the second grade and Virginia in the third. When we had our school
pictures taken, I asked our teacher, Mrs. Wheeler, if she would ask
Virginia if I could have one of her photographs (heaven forbid a boy
would ask a girl for her picture in those days). She did and Virginia gave
me her picture. I kept it for years. I still remember the dress Virginia
was wearing for the photograph, a light brown dress with dark brown
brocade patterns on the front. When I reminded Virginia, she did not
remember the picture or her dress. When she agreed to stay with my
Mom, I gave Virginia the hug I was unable to give her back in 1939.
Nearby are my Grandmother’s brother and his wife, Uncle Ed and
Aunt Ethel. They lived several miles from Chesterfield so we were not
as close to them as we were to the other Great Uncles and Aunts. My
lasting image of Uncle Ed, is of his ruddy complexion and long stiff neck,
all the world appearing as a Rhode Island Red rooster that had just seen
a snake. Now we pass Jesse and Eva Talkington. Jesse helped paint our
house when I was about three years old. I distinctly remember him
slapping white paint on the broken nose of my little wooden horse as I
rode by his ladder one afternoon. For decades Eva played the piano for
the Chesterfield United Church Sunday services. My Aunt Eva did not
think much of her prowess with the piano.
One time,
uncharacteristically catty of her, she told me “Eva Talkington could not
play even the Doxology, if she did not have the music in front of her.”
Aunt Eva played by ear.
“We pass numerous other friends of old—Ruby Wiggins, my
Mom’s best friend from school days. She died in childbirth when fairly
young. Charity Fletcher (Gloria’s mother), who played piano for our
grade school’s Tuesday morning singing and marching time in the gym.
I still sense marching around the gym to “Marching Through Georgia”,
as we ended the morning program. Here is Charley Reynolds, best man
at my wedding. I spent innumerable days and nights with Charley as we
did chemistry experiments and built all sorts of gadgets. Jimmy and
Della Guess are here. And, here is Judy Bond. Judy was a year behind
me in school. Although she was attractive and we were together a lot
while growing up, it was not until she moved away that we tried to date.
I visited her and stayed over night with her one weekend, but the 40mile separation was just too much. Sadly, I did not learn that Judy
wanted to get back in touch until a few days after she had died.
The Visit Is Over
We arrive back at the car. It is time to return home. The final visit
with my old friends has come to an end. It has been an emotional
journey. As we stopped and looked down upon the grass above each
those resting below, so many memories came surging back. I saw their
faces. I heard the sound of their voices. I remembered the things we
used to talk about. I remembered their favorite soda or beer, the
baseball team the rooted for. As if only yesterday. These were the
people who had been a vital part of my every-day life as a kid growing
up. They wove the fabric of what I have become. The adage has been
used so many times it has become trite, but the “village” really did raise
me. They were there when I needed encouragement and when I needed
dressing down. They were pleased with my accomplishments and
chuckled over my transgressions, of which there were many. They
would have continued to support me had I remained among them. It
was I who moved away. I broke the bonds between us. I was not even
here when they departed.
Time has passed so rapidly. It seems that I simply have been
away a short time and they should still be here. But, they are all gone.
The town and farms have changed. Chesterfield is a shadow of what it
used to be. There are only empty spaces where there used to be
bustling business buildings. Many of the homes in which my friends
lived are gone. Those houses still standing are now occupied by new
families who since have moved into town. It seems surreal that my old
friends are not living in them.
Even when reading the names on the tombstones, it really does
not register in my brain that they are gone. It feels that, if I went to their
old houses, they would open the door to welcome me in. Will I ever see
them again? Will we talk as we used to? Will we catch each other up on
what we have done since the time I left Chesterfield? Questions I cannot
answer. Soon I will know. Irrespective of what the future holds, at least
we have had this final visit.