To My Grandfather on His Birthday

Winter is a cerebral season for me. There isn’t much to occupy my body, so I survive by keeping my brain busy. I’ve been busy daydreaming and devising plans for this year’s gardens. Last week once again I poured through all my catalogs. They are all full of highlights and notations. I’ve made a preliminary list of the seeds and plants I will buy. I’ve also started a list of the projects I will undertake when the warm weather returns. Replacing the rotten picket fence, building new raised beds in the vegetable garden, and building more shelves in the cellar are on the list so far. There will be more added to the list as the winter drags on. All these ideas and plans keep me going. They give me hope. To satisfy my gardening urges in the meantime, I devote time and attention to my houseplants. And my attentions have been amply rewarded. My hoya vine is blooming and has more flower clusters right now than it has ever had before. My amaryllis is getting ready to bloom for the third time in six months. And my faithful geraniums brighten my life every day with their brilliant flowers. I love flowers in the winter.

One cluster of hoya flowers.

Some of my houseplants.

Speaking of the cellar, the big event last week was our new well pump and water tank. They were installed on Tuesday. It is so nice not to have to worry about any of that anymore. The water pressure in the house is great. I hope this pump lasts 40 years like the last one did.

The pump and water tank.

This coming week we will see the end of January at last. It has seemed like an especially long month. Our New Years celebration seems like it happened ages ago, not a mere four weeks. Now we will have to endure February, whose 28 days seem even longer. February is a tedious month. We usually get our worst winter weather in February. Even Valentines Day and the February birthdays (Rachel’s on the 7th and mine on the 11th) don’t do much to make the month move faster. But this year we have family and friends coming to visit – Sarah and Tosh, the Thayns, and our dear friends the Herreras will all be here the weekend after next – that will make the month a lot happier.

Today is my grandfather’s birthday. Lawrence Evered Howe was born 124 years ago in 1894 in Genesee, just nine miles from here. I don’t know where exactly he was born, if it was right in town or in an outlying area. I don’t know if the house he was born in is still standing. I do know that when he was young his father, Theodorus Howe, bought a hundred acres of land and built a house and a barn half way between Genesee and Gold in a place called Keech.

My grandfather at 8 months.

Papa with his sister Sarah.

I know where Keech is (was) even though it is no longer marked on maps. At one time there were several farms there and a schoolhouse that was also the post office. The old schoolhouse is still there. It was made into a house and someone lives in it. The Howe farm is gone now. The house burned long ago. The barn, the last thing left standing, was there until almost 2000. On every visit we made to Potter County when I was young, my great aunts made sure to point that barn out to me and tell me “This is Keech.” Not many people know where Keech was or that it even existed. My grandfather loved Keech. I’ve heard the stories of his happy childhood there. But not from him. Or if I did, I don’t remember.

The Howe farm at Keech.

The Genesee High School basketball team. Papa is in front on the right.

Papa in World War I.

My grandfather died in 1960 at the age of 66 when I was just two years old. Oddly, there are no photographs of Papa and me together. I wish there was. I have a letter he wrote the day I was born. He and my grandmother were vacationing in Florida at the time. He wrote: “I dreamed about you folks last night so we are expecting news of the blessed event. Hope and pray that everything is right.” I was the blessed event. I have no real memory of him, but there is a feeling that wells up in my mind when I try to remember him. I think the feeling is love. I know that he loved me. I’ve heard stories all my life from my parents about how much Papa loved me. Those stories and that feeling of love have shaped my life in many ways.

My grandparents, Nana and Papa, were both chiropractors and although they both grew up in and loved Potter County, during the Great Depression they struggled to keep their practice here going. They lived here in Gold for a while, in this very house, and had an office here – in this room where I am sitting right now. They also lived for a time in Galeton and in Westfield over in Tioga County. They also had offices in both those places. In the 1930's they moved downstate to New Cumberland, just across the river from Harrisburg. That’s where they raised their family – my father and his two sisters, my aunts Joyce and Sally. Eventually they settled at 431 Bridge Street in a big old house. My grandparents’ chiropractic office was on the first floor. They lived on the second floor. When my father grew up, he became a chiropractor too, and when his parents retired, he took over their practice and moved into that house where he raised his family, my family, for a while. That’s where I lived for the first ten years of my life.

Papa at Chiropractic college. He's on the left with the skull.

My grandfather was raised on a farm and he remained a farm boy all his life. Everywhere he lived he planted a garden. I grew up in the ruins of his garden at 431 Bridge Street. His love of gardens and farm life were passed on to me. Everywhere I’ve lived, in Ohio, in Illinois, in California, I too have planted gardens. Now I live in a place where he once lived and I have gardens where he once planted gardens too. It is in my gardens that I have always felt closest to him. I felt it as a child in New Cumberland as I watched the flowers that he planted come up each spring. I feel it here as I tend my flower beds, vegetable gardens, and orchard. One of the nicest compliments I ever received was from Papa’s sister, my Great Aunt Eleanor. After we moved here, we would often visit her in the retirement home where she lived. In the summer I’d take her vegetables from my garden. One time as we sat and talked of family and gardens she said to me, “You remind me so much of Lawrence. You’re like him in so many ways.” It makes me happy to think of it.

Papa with his sunflowers.

 My grandfather, Lawrence Evered Howe.