From
Linda Lee Greene, Author/Artist
Dad
was in the garage,
Working
on a car.
One
of his,
Or
one of his brothers’,
Or
one of my mother’s brothers’.
It
didn’t matter
‘Cause
Dad liked working on cars.
Dad
removed his greasy shoes and grimy socks before coming in the kitchen,
And
as always before and again that time,
I
noticed his feet –
So
much like mine,
And
I took the photo of his shoes to remind me,
And
hoped I would be more like him in other ways with time.
©Linda
Lee Greene, 2007
My father’s given name was
Leland Edward Greene, but he preferred the shorter Lee Edward Greene. The briefer
version won out and was his name for the entirety of his 89 years of life. I am
named for Dad. The distinction is mine among the four offspring of my parents
due to the order of my birth: I am the firstborn and because of that accident
of chronology, by tradition the name was given to me. As time passed, however,
it seemed meant to be, because among my three siblings and me, I resemble my
father in appearance most closely. The jury is still out on whether or not I
take after him in other, more crucial ways. But I try! I try!
For the past several years, I have
been asked to write the eulogies of members of my family whom have died during
that time. The assignments began with the passing of my father on March 29,
2014. In tribute to him on this Father’s Day, I am including the opening
paragraph of the eulogy I wrote for him, as well as an excerpt about him in GUARDIANS
AND OTHER ANGELS http://goo.gl/imUwKO, my book in which the
momentous historical events of the twentieth century, from World War I, the
Great Depression, World War II, and beyond form the backdrop and my family
holds center stage. My
father’s grit is the quality that comes across most prominently in these
passages, I think.
(Excerpt
of Eulogy)
“Lee Edward Greene, 89, beloved
son, brother, husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather, and cherished
friend was one of the last of the Greatest
Generation, a loving and dedicated family man who was a joyful and
steadfast breadwinner. He was a man good with his hands whether the task was to
fix a leaky faucet, to make a car purr, or to build a house. But essentially he
was a simple man – he held no public office, never attained fame nor amassed a
fortune, but within the small circle that comprised his life, he was the center
that always held, the rock upon whom everyone depended, the flint against which
everyone struck on his/her passage to adulthood. We aren’t likely to see his
kind again any time soon…”
***
(Revised
excerpt
of GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS http://goo.gl/imUwKO)
“The
one-room, Cedar Fork schoolhouse across the holler from the little log cabin on
the near side of Peach Mountain, which nestled among the northern foothills of
the Appalachians, was a tolerable two-mile walk in mild weather. It was an
enjoyable walk actually, if one had time to swing from a grapevine on top of a
high cliff and drop into Cedar Fork Creek for a lazy dip, or to stop by the
Workman’s place for a quick smoke of corn-silk tobacco. But in snowdrifts as
tall as thirteen-year-old Lee Greene, in threadbare clothes, thin hand-me-down
coat, and barely covered feet in holey socks flopping in an old pair of
secondhand shoes that were too big for him, the walk that frigid, Great
Depression morning was worse than pure misery.
Lee’s chronically aching stomach was
hollow and rumbling. His meager breakfast of cornmeal mush and sugar water was
quickly wearing thin, but he had more important things than his stomach to
worry about that morning. He was stewing about the small amount of milk he had
drawn from their cow tethered in the yard just beyond the lean-to kitchen at
the back of his family’s tiny log cabin. The two-story structure, built by Lee.
his older brother, and their father only five months before, comprised a
common, or front room on the main level, a primitive lean-to kitchen at the
back, and a bedroom where his parents slept, housing the only closet in the
place. A rough-hewn timber ladder gained access to the upper deck, where, in an
open-to-the-front loft, all of the many children slept on crude cots, or thin
pads on the floor. A large ceiling-to-floor fireplace of indigenous stones in
the common room on the first floor was the only source of heat in the place.
Felled tree trunks supporting its roof, a porch spanned the width of the front
of the log cabin.
The soil where they lived on Cedar Fork—thin,
hard, and dry, a crusty layer of sediment topping a bedrock of limestone,
dolomite and shale—made for poor farming and gardening, posing a formidable
challenge for growing adequate food. Squirrels, rabbits, opossums and birds,
hunted and brought in by Lee, the insufficient supply of milk from the cow, and
scant eggs supplied by their paltry flock of scrawny chickens in the yard, were
the only sources of protein for the family. In season, a large vegetable garden
and a stand of corn were coddled into fruition in the poor soil, but only if
they were favored with enough rain.
His nose and eyes crusty from yet
another head cold, gloveless hands thrust into the pockets of his thin coat,
and his feet turning to blocks of ice, Lee trudged on to school, his
white-blond head under his hat hunkered into his shoulders. Despite the fact
that he might not make it through the perpetual hardships of his life, much
less that cold, windy, and snowbound morning, his soul was full of dreams, his
mind of intention, his body of vigor and endurance, and on the strength of pure
power of will alone, and maybe some help from the man upstairs, Lee was
determined that if he ever got out of his childhood alive, nothing would ever
encumber him again.
The one-room schoolhouse was dark and
frigid, and Lee, by design, was the first to arrive. The door was unlocked, as
always, and Lee, halting for a few minutes to give his blood a chance to
circulate again in his frozen limbs and digits, sat down on one of the benches.
He would have wept if he had allowed himself to seriously consider his
unfortunate circumstances—but not Lee! No, not Lee! Not the boy/man who would one
day be my father. He had a chance to earn fifty cents that week and every week
for weeks to come, fifty cents for building a fire in the “Warm Morning” wood-burning,
heating-stove each morning before school. And By Gum!!! That was exactly what he
was going to do…”©
#Father’sDay,
#CedarForkCreek, #AppalachianLife, #AppalachianMountains, #Southern Ohio,
#PeachMountain, #WarmMorningStove, #GuardiansandOtherAngels, #LindaLeeGreene
