Sophie Was Worried About the Farm

Sophie (seated to the right) was worried about the farm. The men in the field never seemed to accomplish much and the crops were coming in weedy and wilted. It wasn’t just the ill-effects of a long, dry summer; it was the men’s fault. If times were different, she and her sisters could send the men away and tend to the farm themselves. She could plow a field, sow the seeds, and reap the crops just fine without anyone’s (likely inept) help. But sadly, they lived in the wrong era for that kind of nerve and independence. Maybe someday the suffragette movement would secure a woman’s right to vote and a woman’s right to own property, but Sophie knew that day would come long after the men had blown it and let the farm go to hell.

Like her sister Sophie, Mildred (seated to the left) believed she was as capable, if not more, than most men she knew. However, Mildred’s strength was her intellect. Mildred was an avid reader and had educated herself well over her lifetime. Thanks to Godey’s Lady’s Book, she knew about poetry and literature as well as sewing and women’s arts. Mildred knew that idle hands are the devil’s workshop so she let the men have their run of the farm. It didn't matter that they didn't do it well; it kept them out of trouble. It was a bonus that it also kept them out of her way. On her best days, without anyone wandering through the house wondering what time supper was being served, Mildred could turn out three or four doilies and still have time for reading. Of course, now that her hair was turning gray her hands were less dexterous with her tatting and her eyes often grew weary from hours of reading, but her work kept her busy and kept her mind off trifles such as men.

Eunice, the mother of the girls (seated in the middle) didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Give her a good pipe and a warm blanket, and she had all she needed. She knew where the men hid their corn liquor and she didn’t care. In fact, she might even sneak out to that old barn and have a nip herself when they weren’t looking. Let them have their fun, and she would have hers. The crops would take care of themselves.

But Inez (standing) had other ideas. She had dreamed once about a very large horse. In her dream she was riding the horse bareback and she was wearing trousers and she rode the horse western style. The horse ran fast and she could feel its muscles rippling beneath her legs, and its power felt good. Although she never wore her hair down loose in public, in her dream her hair flowed in the wind behind her and she felt free. Inez was pretty sure that the dream had something to do with getting out of Illinois. Maybe after this damn photographer was finished she would tell her mother she was moving out West. And maybe Carl, the hired hand, might want to go with her.

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photo: I don't recall their names, but the old woman in the middle is my grandmother's great grandmother. The women with her are her daughters. They were all God-fearing women who never dreamed about horses or running the farm on their own.

Stephen and John

My father, Stephen, was a painter. He died when I was three years old. By all accounts he was handsome and charming in the way young men were in the 1960’s. He had just finished grad school where he obtained a master’s degree as a landscape architect and was an up-and-coming artist, beginning to gain recognition on a large scale. He was twenty-eight and even though he had a wife and two young daughters, he was what most 60s artists were: adventurous and walking that fine line between forcing and coaxing his inspiration.

My mother speculated that my father was driven by a sense of competition with his own father, John. John wasn’t the type of father to encourage with praise. John was moody and somehow managed to be both self-loathing and an egomaniac. One of my early memories of John is of him sitting in the living room at the large round coffee table. On the table was a small black-and-white TV, a pitcher of gin martinis, a jar of pickled onions, a box of Saltine crackers, and a small jar of caviar, with all the appropriate accoutrements. Later, I realized he also had a small brown bottle of Valium in his shirt pocket. He left no nerve untouched. John stayed in front of the TV all afternoon, only moving to change stations to the next sporting event when an ad would come on.

Even though Stephen’s paintings were garnering critical praise in the national modern art community, John had never acknowledged to him that his work was good. My mother later said my father was put in the position of having to prove to John that he was good at things. They had become competitive, and Stephen would eventually win. Stephen painted as well as his father, he earned a similar academic standing, and he abused as harsh substances as his father. It was almost ironic that Stephen died when he did and silenced the competition once and for all – proving himself as a more effective substance abuser than his father ever was. John spent his entire 75 years trying to kill himself, but never actually succeeded on his own. Stephen never consciously tried to kill himself, but succeeded nonetheless while chasing a 60s pop culture muse of hepatitis-infused heroin. He died in July 1968.

Many years later, I suspect my mother had no qualms about phoning the Hemlock Society on John’s behalf. It did occur to me that she might not have had completely altruistic intentions where John’s life was concerned, but in the years since then I have come to think of her phone call as the ultimate act of mercy. She provided John with the information he needed to end the chronic pain of the cancers that were slowly destroying his body. And maybe more importantly, she finally gave him his answer. He would finally understand which steps he had overlooked all those other times when he had tried and failed at what Stephen so effectively accidentally accomplished nearly 20 years previously.

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top: "Lightning Express" (1968)
bottom: "Chocolate Landscape and Boxwork's Dream" (1968).

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footnote: check out Grandpa John in "U.S.A. vs. Tokyo Rose" now showing on the Documentary Channel. There he is: disgruntled grand juror and one of two hold-outs against the prosecution. Although he has less than a minute of airtime, it is classic John. No one says "God-damned" quite the way he did.

hoof-in-mouth

I used to work for a small software company in San Francisco. My desk was in Engineering -- basically a small room with ten or so desks at right angles to each other, and absolutely no privacy.

One day Dave, a practical joker in our IT department, came running into the room shouting something about winning the lottery. We all knew that he had a punchline ready and was just waiting for one of us to give some sort of benign response so he could blurt it out. So, I obliged. "HOLY COW!" I said in mock surprise. It was only then that I realized I was only one of two people in engineering not originally from India.

Fortunately, after a few seconds of very uncomfortable silence, everyone laughed. Unfortunately, we never got to hear Dave's punchline.