Monday, December 29, 2014


 

                                                                              

 ROOTS

Ariele M. Huff Published in July 2003

This is an example of love of a parent.


            I have always wanted to see Iowa.  Not because of the cornfields…or the song about it from The Music Man.  Webster City, Iowa was my father’s hometown until he was twelve years old. 

            He wasn’t much of a storyteller, my dad.  My sister and I were never regaled with how it was when he was a kid – not in Iowa or in Washington.  We didn’t hear tales of adventurous doings, big celebrations, or even harsh punishments.  A few facts filtered to us through our aunt and confessions made to my mother in private.  His mother, my paternal grandmother, died when Dad was in high school, and his father was the same kind of tight-lipped guy.

            We had heard some of the family lore: a caravan of Sweazeys had crossed the country all at once, hoping for a better economy and less “dustbowl” conditions.  As they snaked over a mountain pass, a truck had careened into the lead car, killing the parents and a baby, but leaving the backseat daughters injured for life.  This was the kind of story we did hear about my father’s life.

            When my husband and I decided to do a “Midwest trip,” Iowa was immediately on my mind.  I wanted to touch and see the things my father had known during his early years.  I wanted to connect with swimming holes, dusty old school corridors, a malt shop, where the theater had stood, the house he’d lived in.

            I also wanted to track back on the high school annual passed down from his mother…her life and friends.

            When we got to Iowa, the scenery changed.  Even though our journey had taken us through Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, South Dakota, and Minnesota, I hadn’t been prepared for how abruptly the landscape changes at the state line.  Suddenly, those green fields – those ubiquitous cornfields – were around us. 

            It was eerily like being transported into that place I’d thought of as being my father’s native soil.  He hadn’t described it, but I’d seen pictures and read stories and seen movies. 

            Eagerly, we sought out spots mentioned in letters and the annual, places that had become part of general family lore.  We were prepared for change and we were prepared for utter failure…it had been sixty years, after all.

            What we hadn’t really been prepared for was the level of success we had.  One old stone building after another yielded up nooks and crannies, class photos, family names engraved, places still recognizable from scrapbook photos.  There were relatives left behind and descendants of friends who remembered my father’s dark curly hair and his older sister’s charming smile.  There were farms my grandfather had helped to build and a store where the family had shopped.

            Almost as meaningful were the era things preserved or left unchanged, at least:   the restaurant with 1920’s crockery in a glass case, the 30’s style dresses decorating a store window, the 35’ jalopy rescued from a field and on display.  Probably, my father and his family hadn’t used any of these…or seen them, but I found myself gazing at them sentimentally as though they had. 

            Then, I realized I wasn’t only looking at these things for myself.  My dad hadn’t been back to Iowa since the move out.  Somehow, I was looking at them for him too.  And then I remembered the poem I’d written right after he died.

HAPPY RETURNS

 

My father died with Iowa

in his eyes.

 

The whole family came West by station wagon

to escape the dust bowl.

 

Webster City was home,

But Seattle was food on the table.

 

He never spoke of Iowa:

At 12, wherever you are is home.

 

But he still twanged on

“sirrup” instead of “syrup,”

And he still remembered hard times.

 

Fifty-six years later,

He peacefully retraced his steps

and died

with Iowa in his eyes.

           


             My father and mother on a date.