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| A 1957 backyard picnic on Layton. The author is first on left. |
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It’s Memorial Day weekend, and
I’m enjoying the view on Layton.
The
lawn, thick and green with last night’s rain, awaits my Toro. Several mowers
can be heard up and down Layton. Families of wrens, robins, and chickadees have
called the Justus Symphony Orchestra to concert in the old oak, whose arms have
draped over Layton for a hundred years. The cat lies lazily in the shade of the
picnic table, swatting listlessly at low-flying bugs. The cukes, tomatoes, and beans peek through the soil of my small raised-bed garden. The
Adirondack chairs under the sprawling maple in the rear of the yard sit like
thrones, presiding regally over this small world.
It could be Memorial Day, 1957. The view from
my porch hasn’t changed much in the past fifty years.
Fifty
years ago this already-old house buzzed with picnic preparations. Memorial Day
launched the summer season when the city cousins from North Scranton trekked
“up the country.” The extended family came every weekend in the summer for
all-day backyard cookouts, to escape the city heat, and to “kibbitz” with the
family.
In those days this house, on
whose porch I sit these fifty years later, belonged to my grandmother, Nana
Evans, known as Aunt Ethel to the cousins. My mom, dad, sisters, and I lived in
the house next door to Nana here on Layton. Our two yards converged with plenty
of room for children to grow up.
Summer preparations began in
earnest for this first picnic of the season. Dad washed off the metal glider,
pulled out the aluminum yard chairs and rethreaded their frayed nylon seats. He hammered the badminton net into place,
rehung the tether ball, and filled the grill with charcoal. “Annie, where’s the
. . . ?” Dad called intermittently to my mother in the kitchen. “Annie,” a
whirling dervish in her own right, swept about the kitchen preparing her
favorite jello mold recipe and macaroni salad.
The coming of the cousins brewed
high excitement.
Nana and
her sisters, Aunt Peggy, Aunt Ruthie, and Aunt Millie, reigned as matriarchs of
the brood. Aunt Ruthie lived in Chinchilla. Aunt Peggy lived on Margaret Avenue
near her daughter Peg; her son Bill lived just a street over on Edna Avenue in
Scranton. Aunt Peggy’s other son Bob and his wife Mickey had moved after World
War II to that haven for post-war vets, Levittown, in search of a job that
didn’t involve the coal mines.
All of the men of those two
generations had put in some time in the mines: Grandpa Evans spent most his working life in the mines; Uncle Gordy, Aunt Peggy’s husband, Aunt
Ruthie’s husband Uncle Victor, and Aunt Millie’s husband Uncle Cliff had their
hands to the pick and shovel until the demise of the industry. Even my dad
earned his first paychecks from the Olyphant breaker. Summer afternoons in the
country gave them a chance to blow off the soot and breathe fresh air.
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| Summer picnics with the family on Layton, 1957. |
Aunt
Ruthie didn’t have any children, but Aunt Peggy’s children and grandchildren
made it a party. We had cousins in every age group from Peg’s three girls,
Lynn, Beth, and Lori to Bill’s children, Glenny, Phil, and Les. Sometimes Bob
and Mickey came up from Levittown. When Bob’s family came, the excitement and
activity increased with his twin sons Bob and Bill and daughters, Joan and
Gail. Our cup overflowed with cousins and a bevy of adults to supervise.
Everyone had a buddy.
The ghosts of memories dance
around the yard this Memorial Day: I see Phil hiding behind the front hedges in
our twilight hide-and-seek game. The twins clank the lids on their jars as they
corral lightning bugs. “Hey, Joey,” Sid yells to my dad as he slams the birdie
over the badminton net and into the lilac bush.
Nana and her sisters laugh and
talk simultaneously at high volume under the shade of the apple tree. Mom runs
in and out of the kitchen with tablecloths and food. “Annie, don’t forget the
ketchup. The dogs are ready!” Dad announces to the yard in general as Jiggsy,
our beagle, runs between legs, seeking what he might devour.
One year Glenny ripped open her
leg on the chicken wire around my dad’s new seedlings. The pitch of the old
aunts’ cackling went up a decibel as Glenny was rushed off to the emergency
room for stitches.
Another year Sid won our hearts
when he took all us kids horseback riding up Layton at Bill Jones’s riding
stable.
Gail, Glenny, and I would swing
on the front porch glider, sharing secrets about our parents and boys.
If there weren’t enough paper
plates, my mother, never a slave to fashion, was known to rip them and serve
the kids on half plates.
Bill’s wife, Miar, always
managed to bring the winning covered dish delight. A bit more avant-garde than
the rest, she actually searched out recipes and bedazzled our taste buds.
At the end of the picnic day,
our family stood around the yard saying good-byes, planning the next week’s
picnic, hugging, and waving the cousins off to their distant homes in Scranton.
A satisfied sense of belonging and continuity tucked me into bed although I
doubt if I could have identified the reason for my joy at that time.
Today the yard is silent except
for the clatter and spontaneity of my memories. Nana and the Aunts, Peggy and
Sid, Bill and Miar, Bob and Mickey, and Mom are all gone. I only see the
cousins now at funerals. When we cousins see each other at these last
goodbyes, it’s evident that the cousin bond was deeply forged in our
childhoods. Phil and one of the twins, Bob, reminded me at a recent funeral,
“My best childhood memories were in your yard.” Only Dad, at 91, remains of
that earlier generation.
The cousins scattered to the
wind when we began the migration to college. Most never returned to Scranton.
Lynn married a Dutchman and moved to the Netherlands; Phil had a successful
career with the FBI and then retired to Memphis; Les, an in-demand orthopedic
surgeon in Kansas City, continues to practice; the twins, still best
friend-brothers, live in Bucks County and juggle several enterprises; Gail had
a knitting business for awhile in Pittsburgh, and Glenny suffers as the
collective recipient of the family’s legendary struggle with diabetes. Most of
us are grandparents now; all of us are senior citizens.
Still, I enjoy the view from my
porch. The apple tree succumbed to lack of care. When it only produced
quarter-sized apples, it met dad’s axe. The front porch glider has seen
countless coats of paint, but it stands immovable, its steel frame too heavy
to lift. The other day my grandson and I tried to find the tether ball pipe,
implanted somewhere mid-yard, hoping to put it back in action, but it had sunk
into oblivion. The chicken wire is gone as are the aluminum chairs, but they
did have a long run through three generations, thanks to my ever-mending, ever-recycling
father. We still enjoy badminton, though a series of nets have been short-lived.
A modern propane grill eventually replaced the old red charcoal burner.
The yard is silent this Memorial
Day. One of my sons and three of my grandchildren live in Indiana. Dad sold his house next door
and moved to South Carolina. The echoes of memories resound from oak to maple.
But I . . . I continue to enjoy the view from my porch on
Layton.
