CONNECTIVITY

CONNECTIVITY


“I know the answer this time Uncle Frank. I finally figured it out.”
“But Joey, there are no wrong answers or any one right answer.”
“That’s not true. Tell the story again, and I’ll give you the right answer this time. I’m sure of it.”
With a faint smile, Frank Richards melted down in the blue Lazy Boy chair ready to repeat what had become a warm ritual connection with his nephew. He would tell the story about getting the silver 1957 Chevrolet again and ask the question one more time. Joey was ready to identify em-bellishments, lies, and deceptions--Frank always added a thing or three to the familiar story every time--and, second, he was ready to answer the question. Frank began in the usual way.

About eight miles east of Jefferson City, Missouri, the Osage and the Missouri Rivers come to within one mile of each other. They flow east together for five miles with the larger Missouri on top. The Osage then joins its older brother headed east to the Mississippi River. The land between the rivers is called Dodds Island; five miles long, one mile wide—not a true island, but close enough. The earth there is rich, flat, and fertile, perfect to run a small herd of cattle and grow a few vegetables. Perfect, that is, until it floods. Since 1835, three families and one single man had lived on Dodds Island. None stayed more than five years.
Jim Henson was disgusted with New York City, tired of the noise, tired of the people, and sick of being a polite tailor to rich and rude customers. June 3, 1890 was Jim Henson’s Independ-ence Day. Joining his savings with that received from selling the little tailor shop, he bought a run-down house on Dodds Island in Northeastern Missouri. With it came a dull-red barn out back, two stories high and leaning strong to the right with a rickety wagon inside apparently used to haul fire wood. He saw it in a magazine. The price was too low to believe. He was warned by everyone in-cluding the land agent: “You’ll be flooded out within five years;” “You can’t live out there man. It ain’t fit;” “It’s cheap because it’s no good;” and “Don’t be a fool man, stay in town on solid ground.” Against all advice, he moved in.
There was some small flooding each year as predicted, but never enough to destroy the crops or damage any structure beyond minor repair. Jim was happy. But then, on October 22, 1896, both the Missouri and the Osage rivers spilled over Dodds Island drowning it with five feet of water. He was wiped out in a matter of days--crops destroyed and cattle washed away. His friends in town, the people for whom he had mended shirts and altered pants at no charge, scraped up enough for a one-way train ride to San Francisco. Jim had enough money for meals and planned to start over again as a tailor. With promises to pay them back, off he went. While sitting in the dinning car that evening totally involved with his beefsteak and potato dinner, the train headed into Brown’s Creek curve. Each car in turn would wobble a bit and give a little lurch while rounding the creek.
As the dinning car entered the curve, three events tumbled together. Jims’ knife bounced off the table into the aisle, the porter bent down in stride intending to scoop it up with his white-gloved hand thinking, “If I use this, they’ll think it was him who done it,” and just as the car lurched he pitched forward, thumped his head on the edge of the next table, and was out before crumpled on the floor.
Rolling through West Virginia three days ago, that same porter lost big in a crap game, way to big to pay. He pleaded for a few days grace before paying his gambling debt to Mr. Charles McNight, a large man with lamb-chop sideburns, slicked down brown hair, and a cigar sticking out from under an oversized mustache. The porter and he had agreed to meet this night at 9 P.M. be-tween the last car and the caboose to settle the debt. “Just jam it in his gut and push ‘em off the train is all I got to do,” the frightened porter thought just a split second before passing out.
Waking from sleep is different than climbing out of unconsciousness. The bright light, muf-fled voices, intensely throbbing head, a rhythmic clickity-clack sound, nausea . . . none of these an-swered the porter’s two main questions: “Where am I?” and “What happened?” While gently press-ing a cold, damp rag to his forehead, a steady voice said, “You tripped and hit your head. You passed out.” He then realized that he was in his own room lying down. The voice said “Drink this. It will help you sleep,” putting a cup of laudanum to his lips. Not long after, the porter floated away on a warm breeze.

“That part is new,” Joey thought. “It won’t change my answer though.”

At 10:30 P.M. a very disappointed Mr. McNight sadly returned to his berth and bed not knowing how close he came to losing his life. He was going to buy a small cigar shop in Denver with the money he won throwing dice with the porter and relax away the rest of his life in comfort. Charles McNight still got off in Denver profoundly despondent and went immediately into the first tavern he saw where he lost consciousness three hours later. Three days later, Sam Kennedy, the owner/operator of the Dearly Beloved funeral parlor on 2nd and Ellsworth--it’s motto being “You are Never Gone if you are Beloved”--was working on a stranger slain by unknowns at the First Stop tav-ern near the train station. While not enough to turn things around, the money from the town of Den-ver to pay for Mr. McNight’s funeral would keep Sam afloat for another week or two. It would also allow him to continue his study of horticulture. (Days come; days go. Time passes, and twenty years later, in the spring of 1916, a florist shop would open in Denver, a very successful shop spe-cializing in funeral arrangements.)

Five A.M. came too soon for Efram, the grounds keeper/grave digger at the Dearly Beloved funeral parlor. He was just too sick to go out in the cold and rain. He hated having to do it, but he called the only person he knew who would dig a grave in foul weather for a bottle of whiskey: Jim Roberts.
Coughing and hacking in a foul mood half the night, Jim Roberts stared out the dark window in the living room at 3:30 A.M. neither awake nor fully asleep. “I’d have a better time of it if it wasn’t for that God-damned woman yakkin’ at me all the time with her ‘you ain’t no good,’ and ‘I ought to walk out on you,' crap,” he snarled. His wife Susan got up at six, soon realized that Jim had passed out in the chair again, and jumped into an all out rage. With a kick to the outside of his an-kle, she yelled, “Damnit Jim, get your lazy butt out and make some money for a change.” Just as he started to yell, “You bitch!” Mrs. Efram Smith knocked on the door. Although invited in, she stood in the hallway and told Susan that Efram needed Jim to do a dig that day. Jim practically bellowed, “You tell ‘em I’ll do it by God, and I’ll do it damn good too by God for the usual price.”
November 12, 1896 was Susan Roberts Independence Day. She had been waiting forever. Her bag was packed and hidden in Mrs. Smith’s closet. Years of pilfering a dime here, a nickel there, from whatever grocery money Jim gave her and the small amount she earned taking in laundry had become enough for a train ticket to Seattle. Her sister lived on Capital Hill in an apartment overlooking Lake Union. More than a safe place to stay, she was promised employment at a laun-dromat with twelve-hour days at 20 cents per day. Arriving a few days later on a rainy day in Seat-tle, Susan felt a renewed sense of hope, a feeling she gave up on years ago.
Rarely does a life run smooth for too long a time, but the remainder of Mrs. Roberts’s life did. She never divorced, never remarried, nor heard from Jim again. She did, however, live out her life with a wonderful man she met in 1905 from back east. He had worked for the railroad and was now part owner of Seattle’s ninth finest restaurant. Other than an occasional nightmare about a big man with a cigar who cut pieces of his flesh off that then turned in $1000 dollar bills, he and Mrs. Roberts were very happy. Together, they had a lovely, sweet, kind daughter named Francine Mary Roberts who became a nurse, and moved to Dallas, Texas, in 1925. Francine hated the heat so she migrated up to New England and worked in a small, country hospital in Beecher Falls, Vermont, un-til retiring in 1960.

That Francine moved first to Dallas and then to Vermont was new, but no information in that addition to the story would change his answer. He wished he had a few details about her stay in Dal-las that could possibly change the outcome, but, still, Joey just knew he was right this time. He also knew that he had to listen close for any new clues that may pop up.

Francine Mary Roberts cannot say how many patients she cared for during her career. When asked if she remembered a few special ones, she would look up and to the right, tilt her head slightly, rub her chin with her right index finger, and say, “Why yes. There was this one young man--Brad Cummings--good-looking with thick black hair. He got his leg run over by a tractor ten years before the war. We almost had to amputate. Anyway, he and I would sit for hours talking about his painting. He loved to paint with oil. Well, his leg did heal, and as he left the hospital, I gave him a vase I once used for fresh flowers whenever possible. Since he couldn’t pay his entire bill, I told him to pick some nice spring primroses and crocuses, put them in the vase, paint them, and send me the picture, which he did that first spring after he healed up.” That painting, titled “Spring Flowers,” hung in the lobby of that small hospital just a step or two south of Canada until 1964 when it was remodeled into an elementary school.

Mark and Barbara Cummings drove up the quarter-mile driveway resting under four inches of packed snow and parked in front of a brown two-story house with green shutters. Smoke floated up from the chimney. They would spend the postcard Christmas of 1962 with her parents in Am-herst, Massachusetts. The traditional feast was capped with a round of eggnog for all. Brad Cum-mings stood up and lifted his glass to toast his daughter: “To Barbara for being the best daughter a man could have and for setting up my first art exhibition in Boston.” (All she did was talk to her friend who owned a tiny gallery in Boston.) Everyone laughed and smiled, drank eggnog around the fire, and was happy.
In Barbara’s pile of the usual presents--mainly clothes with receipts for anticipated returns--was one small, nondescript, clear glass vase. It was not an antique; it was not once owned by royalty in Europe; it was not a rare, one of a kind design. It was just a clear glass vase that Brad Cummings used in his first recognized painting “Spring Flowers.” After his first showing in Boston the follow-ing June, he became a known artist in Massachusetts. He still needed to drive buss for the school district to make a living. Most of his paintings hung in local diners and bowling alleys where they sold for thirty to sixty dollars apiece. He did sell a few paintings for up to two thousand dollars, and his most famous work, “Spring Flowers,” went for five thousand at a charity auction to help pay for a new hospital up in northern Vermont.

Joey knew the story was coming to a close unless Uncle Frank threw in a few more modifica-tions. He was certain that he had the answer. Nothing so far had changed his mind and no embel-lishment from here on in would change his answer. His uncle continued.

I was eleven years old at the time and didn’t notice or really care what my mom got for Christmas. I was already playing with my new game called “Mousetrap.” ‘It's fun to build this comical wonder, but woe to the mouse who gets caught under' was the game’s catchphrase.
Anyway, the vase meant nothing to me until the fall of 1967 when I turned sixteen and was able to drive. The vase used in my grandfather’s most famous painting had become an interesting collector’s item by then. It was not worth a fortune, but it did sell for a few hundred dollars at a flea market in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Meanwhile, I had carefully saved what I thought was enough money to buy my first car. Everywhere I went, I kept my eye out for signs that read “Automobile for Sale.” I asked my mom or dad to drive extra slow past all the used car lots, but in the two weeks I had been searching I found nothing, nothing I could afford that is. So hearing about the trip to the Northampton flea market to talk with a collector about the vase, I jumped right in the 1962 blue and white two-tone Chevrolet Impala hardtop with my parents and brother to continue my search. I found a cool transistor radio at the flea market but saw no car for sale on the way in. We headed for home at three P.M. I was very depressed.
At two-thirty P.M. that day, a big old shaggy, mutt of a dog named Ralph tore after a squirrel down the block and across 33rd street north running not more than five feet in front of old Mr. Robertson at the wheel of his red 1948 Ford pickup that pulled to the right. He jammed the brakes and threw his hands up in front of his face while the truck jerked right into a packed car. With the police and fire department on the scene, my dad was forced to take an alternate route out of the city, a route which led past a house with a silver, two-door, 1957 Chevrolet parked in the front yard; and yes, there was a for-sale sign in the window.
Dad stopped. We looked at the car, test drove it, and dad asked if I wanted it. I said, “Yes, I do.” So he talked some more with the man when we got back, they shook hands, and dad gave him some money. The man returned, gave dad the title, shook his hand and then mine, and said goodbye. I followed mom, dad, and my brother home that day in the first car I ever owned, a ’57 Chevy.

“OK Joey,” Frank said. “What caused me to get my first car?”
“It was the man who sold the shoes to the guy who delivered one of the needles that Jim Henson used to repair shirts and mend trousers for his friends in Jefferson City, Missouri,” Joey said with pride and certainty.
Frank Richards laughed and said, “Good answer.”