O Shenandoah! The Line Cellar for June
By JOHN WAYBRIGHT
My wife is a practical sort of a woman. She's a nurse, you know. And she grew up on a farm where reality flourishes right beside the corn and wheat and cows and hogs.Questions? Comments? Email waybrite@shentel.net .Yes, she's practical and down to earth. Except when it comes to children. At first, she comes across as a strict disciplinarian. "If you don't eat all your vegetables," she will admonish one of the grandchildren, "you will sit there at the table for the remainder of the day and you will have no dessert." Of course, she soon relents and brings out the chocolate pudding.
And, every now and then, her practical nature is completely overwhelmed by some absurdly sentimental idea.
Thus it was with The Secret Garden.
Our granddaughter, Ashley, watched the video of "The Secret Garden" until the tape would no longer run through the VCR. The film depicts a tale of a young girl whose life is transformed by visits to a hidden bower of remarkable and mysterious beauty. It's a Victorian fantasy of unblinking sentimentality.
"I'd like to have a secret garden," Ashley said to her grandmother one day, somewhat offhandedly.
That was all it took for my wife to embark on one of her uncharacteristic flights of fancy.
My daughter and son-in-law live with their three children in a nice subdivision on a sizable lot featuring a large fenced-in swimming pool and a narrow yard on the outside perimeter. At the far back of the lot they had built a large dog pen to restrain the gigantic Alaskan malamute they once owned. That pet departed a few years ago to an area more suited to his personality -- Antarctica, I think.
But the dog pen remained -- a 12-by-12 enclosure of wire fencing eight feet high. Honeysuckle had grown up on one side to give the place a sort of abandoned appearance -- a perfect site, my wife deduced, for The Secret Garden.
She set out with shovels, rakes, hoes, digging irons and miscellaneous other utensils to dig up the entire plot, which was covered with stubborn weeds, including poison oak, and the saplings of myriad trees. She even enlisted my reluctant help, which consisted mostly in advising her that it would never work, the ground was too hard, the site too distant from watering facilities, the planting too difficult, the cost for plants too high.
Despite those negative comments and other hardships, she persisted. With a rented garden tiller and many bags of topsoil, she managed to prepare the unpromising ground into a reasonable garden plot. Plants were transferred from the extensive botanical display at our house and from the flower gardens created by her sister, a home horticulturist of some reputation.
An inexpensive birdbath, attractive despite its lightweight plastic construction, became a central feature to the garden. Also added were some plastic ducks, a replica of a tiny deer fawn, a wind chime and seats created from discarded grocery crates.
Now The Secret Garden is fully abloom -- tall yellow lilies dominate a riot of color created by zinnias, impatiens, daisies and marigolds. Hostas and green shrubs fill in the shadier areas. Some vegetables -- tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots -- grow along the outside, demonstrating that the creator of this ethereal dreamscape has not lost all her utilitarian marbles.
Ashley loves the place and her mother merely moans: "Why didn't I have a secret garden when I was a little girl?"
June 21, 1996 --"The Heat" has taken over from "The Rain" as the main topic at the post office and the drugstore, I notice.
Some are wishing they could bottle this torrid spell and keep it until next winter. Others say, "I'm not complaining, mind you. I remember how much I wished for this when the temperature went down to zero last winter."
I say, thank goodness for air conditioning. What did we ever do without it?
Actually, when I recall those days in the 1950s and even 1960s when most places around here had no such thing as cooling systems, we were pretty innovative. The one exception to no air conditioning was the local movie theater. We spent a lot of hot Saturday afternoons watching the same movie twice just to avoid going back out into the heat before the cooler nighttime breezes swept in.
And we devised other techniques to keep from really burning up. There was the old swimming hole in the creek or river, which we didn't know was horribly polluted (or even care, for that matter). My mother was the exception -- she thought any place containing water outside of a washing machine, sink or bathtub was automatically filthy and filled with the vermin that caused polio. "You may go swimming,'' she would often say, "But don't go near the water." To this day, I believe she originated that old joke.
Ice was a precious commodity back in the postwar days. We had electric refrigerators, but they were not designed to create many ice cubes. So the best place to go for chilling potions was Mr. Woods' soda fountain. Not only could you obtain a cherry coke brimming with shaved ice for just a nickel, but you could browse through some of the comic books and magazines -- if you did it so that Mr. Woods couldn't see you. One of us would usually distract the elderly proprietor with small talk while the others perused the latest periodicals without paying for them.
On oppressively hot nights, my siblings and I had the option of sleeping on a screened-in sun porch. We just had to get comfortable on the wooden floor with only a blanket or comfort for a mattress. Ah, but that was better than suffocating indoors and we could talk and laugh until very late without being shushed by our elders.
And we went on sort of an alternative diet during the hottest days of summer. We had lots of salads, ranging from "scalded" dandelion greens to sliced cucumbers and onions swimming in an icy sauce made of vinegar, cream, water, salt and pepper. There were great watermelon feasts supplemented sometimes with juicy cantaloupes. And, when the heat wave was at its worst, out came the old hand-cranked ice cream machine and we would devise delicious fruit flavors from fresh strawberries or peaches.
We still complained about the heat, just like we do today. But somehow it seems like more fun from the perspective of four decades later when we can stay cool with just the flip of a switch.
June 14, 1996 --Perhaps I should introduce myself. Then again, perhaps not.
I will say simply that I'm a retired newspaper editor and former columnist who was bred, born, raised, educated, married and, no doubt, will die in the Shenandoah Valley. I LOVE this place.
My visits outside the area -- travels from Maine to Florida, a poor man's jaunt to Europe, a two-week visit to California -- have not impressed me enough to make me want to move to any of those exotic places. However, each one of them has certain things to recommend them. To paraphrase Will Rogers, I never met a place I didn't like.
Unlike some of the folks who count their time in the Valley in multiple generations, I don't hesitate to take advantage of the tremendous resources of our area -- its history, politics, natural beauty, rural culture and intriguing mix of people.
Just last weekend, for instance, my wife and I took off with our three grandkids to experience some of the attractions in the area. First, we went by Luray Caverns where on this particular Saturday they offered a parking lot display of antique vehicles -- an exhibition large and varied enough to interest even three-year-old Logan.
Our next stop was the Luray Reptile Center and Dinosaur Park, where the ever-smiling owner, Jim Martin, is usually around to offer the latest on his impressive menagerie. The animals range from rare poisonous snakes to common chickens. Alligators laze in a murky pool. A donkey, a llama, two antlered deer and a herd of tiny, hungry goats keep the kids busy offering bits of food provided for a small charge by the proprietors.
We almost ran out of time to get to the top of the Massanutten Mountain for one of our favorite spots to take the kids -- the handicapped-accessible nature trail off the road leading north from U.S. 211 at New Market Gap. The easy trail, which accommodates a wheelchair nicely, leads past interesting markers relating the geological history of the mountain and the valley below. At the trail's end, hikers, young and old, are rewarded with a spectacular view of the Page Valley featuring the South Fork of the Shenandoah River winding through the ever-changing landscape, bright with summer green and the golden light of sunset on this late afternoon.
Since our babysitting duties carried over into Sunday, we continued our explorations with a between-the-showers trek to Lake Arrowhead, the town of Luray's recreation site a few miles to the east near the Blue Ridge. All three youngsters found something to pique their curiosity on the well-marked trails surrounding the glistening, fish-filled lake.
Ashley, 7, found a huge and perfect sycamore leaf and a wonderful stick to take home with her. Grady, who isn't quite two yet, loved scrambling his stubby legs over the bridges along the trail, some of them still askew from early spring flood damage. And the active and ebullient Logan couldn't resist splashing in any spots of water he could find as he ran ahead of his shouting grandparents.
Chased into the car by the usual afternoon thunderstorm, we headed back toward the west on U.S. 211 to Leaksville Road and out to the farm where my wife was raised. There the youngsters watched the dairy cows being milked, helped to feed a young calf and chased after the numerous dogs and cats that populate the place.
And that was enough excitement for one weekend. Next we may tackle something far away, like Dark Hollow Falls in Shenandoah National Park or the Page County Heritage Association's museum at Hamburg.
Vintage Lines © John D. Waybright, 1996. All rights reserved.