Once in awhile, I come across something that first brings tears and then smiles and then a wistfulness that I'd really known this woman who wrote the following stories. My Mother had a habit of buying journals that look like ordinary books on the bookshelf. So every once in awhile, I'll pull one off looking for a good read and discover that instead of a novel, it is pages and pages of diary-like handwritten entries covering almost ninety years. The following entries are from one of the journals I discovered just yesterday. For context: the writer was born in 1910 and died last August 2004. I miss her great mind very much.
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Entry 6/12/1990 "Lucie's Journal":
When Rusty and I were touring Alaska in 1977, we happened on a restored, tiny, miner's cabin. I think this was in Whitehorse, the Yukon; a little sign said "the original cabin of Sam McGee."
No one else was around; our eyes met and at once, in a suitably declamatory voice, we began to recite the bits and pieces that we could dredge up of the once well-known poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee."
My mind whirled backwards about 56 years and showed me a young crippled doughboy, reciting this poem, on the small stage at Big Basin Camp, CA. Wasn't that the night I ran away?
The Runaway (1920)
A muffled gasp awakened Lucie, her eyes flew open, but she kept the rough Army-Navy-store blanket over her eyes in case there was something she'd rather not see.
"Oh mercy, mercy me" her mother murmurred. There, at the edge of the campsite were three puttee-wrapped legs. Lucie stared, and then caught on; the Great War had been over nearly two years, but small groups of wounded soldiers sometimes camped at Big Basin to get away from hospitals.
The child popped into the tent to dress and came out to find her mother putting togethr the contraption of pans and cookie sheets that served as her oven over an open fire. "I thought you and the boys would like biscuits this morning," her mother said. But they both knew that she meant the still-unseen soldiers would like biscuits.
As the dough was mixed, one by one the wooden legs disappeared and she could hear whistling and laughter in the next campsite. Finally a fresh-faced, neatly uniformed young man, barely limping, came around the "leg-tree."
"Mornin' ma'am, I'm Joe. My two buddies and I made camp late last night, hope we didn't disturb you."
"Not in the least. I'm Sadie L'Hommedieu. This is my daughter, Lucie; my two boys seem to be still asleep. Have you had breakfast?"
After breakfast, Lucie was reminded to write something in the mid-weekly letter to her Dad. Alfred and Billy had already drawn pictures of minnows they had caught, so she thought up a poem "O to be out in the open, and thru the fields go lopen."
"Lopen?" said her mother.
"Its' a real word, I know it is." But Lucie was rattled and didn't add any more to the poem.
She walked down the road to where a new friend, Jane Park, was camped. Jane was from San Francisco and, perhaps because she was a little older than Lucie's almost-eleven, she hinted at knowing mysterious things that made Lucie feel uncomfortable. Yesterday, when she had told her mother that Jane had an allowance of $10.00 a month, and that her real whole name was Jane Yosemite Park, her mother had laughed and said, "silly, don't believe everything you hear."
The two girls played jacks for awhile until Lucie said, "well, I have to go now." She wandered off on one of the trails, deep among the tall timeless Sequoia Sempervirons that she loved so much that it made her eyes shine.
A couple of visitors came along the trail and Lucie asked if they would like to see the Chimney Tree and the Siamese Tree and Old Big-Big."Sure, if it won't take too long," they said, and, after admiring the wonders, "you're a good guide, how much do we owe you?"
"No, no," she said, but they pressed 10 cents on her.
That made about 60 cents already earned as a guide that summer. Lucie was proud to earn money, but she hadn't gotten around to mentioning it to her parents yet.
That afternoon, Lucie sat with her little brothers on a a log while she cut one of the chocolate bars, bought at the park store with her 10 cents into three pieces, and continued the endless saga of the Magic Gold Automobile. She could make up this story as she went along, with just half her mind, and the boys were happy so long as the auto was in motion and she could dream up new magic gadgets on it.
Today, they drove thru the desert getting very thirsty, and here, almost hidden behind the door handle was a tiny gold spigot! All they had to do was turn it to the right to get lovely cold water, to the left to get lovely cold lemonade.
Afterwhile, something that didn't involve sitting still caught the boys' attention, and Lucie knew it was time for the Mirror.
The camp wash-house had the only decent mirror, and the little building was usually empty in the late afternoon. One could see the whole top half of oneself in the mirror. What Lucie saw was a medium-sized little girl, all in khaki. Middy, bloomers and brimmed hat, all khaki. She set the hat at a more rakish angle over straight brown, bobbed hair. She considered her grey eyes to be good, and, thinking of a character in a book, wondered if she too had a "sensitive" mouth.
Lucie wasn't here to admire herself. She knew all the pretty girls in her school, and she wasn't one of them. She needed the mirror to see who she was, she seemed to sometimes sort of disappear, and it took so little to make her lose the sense of herself. "Lopen" was on her mind - was it a real word?
The girl in the mirror nodded. She looked pretty good, right for her.
After dinner, Lucie's mother took the boys and left early for the circles of sawed-off logs and a little stage that were the site of Evening Program. Sadie L'Hommedieu was accompanianist for community singing and for any campers who sang or played an instrument and who had signed up to perform that night; sometimes she was Emcee too.
Lucie started down the road feeling a perverse moodiness. The Mirror hadn't quite done its trick. Everything felt a little off-center. Her mother would make biscuits for "oh-mercy" strangers, but not for her; the boys only wanted her chocolate. Did Jane look down on her? The soldiers had "seen" her mother all right, but hadn't really seen her.
Instead of turning in where the people were gathering, she just kept walking ahead, along the road, and soon campsites were left behind. There was just a little girl, gathering darkness, and a curving road, getting harder to find. Where was her flashlight? And sweater? No cars at all came along.
The child kept going at a fast marching rythem, saying half-aloud "one-two, one-two, lo-pen, lo-pen," partly to drown out the night forest-sounds.
After what seemed miles and hours the thought came "the park rangers must be looking for me! Is my mother sorry?"
Then her feet just seemed to turn themselves around. She set her lips and wouldn't cry; she had no one but herself to blame that she was so far from safe places and safe people. And lights. The stars were coming out bright and sparkling, here not obscured by the tall trees on each side of the curving road, but they weren't at all warm and friendly.
Then, ahead, there was a kerosene lantern, a campsite! Then the blessed sound of the piano, the strains of the wartime song, "Long Long Trail."
"Gosh," thought Lucie "all I've been through and the Program is still on. No one probably knows I've been gone! Nobody cared or missed me."
She wove through the rows of log seats, and, answering a beckon from her mother, slipped in beside her on the piano bench. The Emcee was just saying, "Now, one of our country's brave heroes will honor us with a recitation of 'The Cremation of Sam McGee,' by Robert W. Service."
It was Joe, wooden leg in place but leaning on one crutch, and the audience loved him, and loved the long poem. Many of them sang out with him at the climax, "Since I've left [something something] Tennessee, its the first time I've been warm."
While the clapping went on, Sadie said, "Joe was looking for you. He was nervous about reciting and wanted to sit with you. He worried. I told him you were a pretty sensible girl, he shouldn't worry, that sometimes you just like to be alone."
As the campers sang a few old favorites to end the program, Lucie collected her little brothers and headed back to their campsite. Billy said he had wanted lemonade ever since the story, could she make some, please? Lucie was hugging a special thought close to her, but it would be safe in the secret part of her mind. So, "Sure," she said, "we can fix enough for the soldiers too, if they come back in time." The family's brand of lemonade was a cinnamon-candy stick, inserted into a half-lemon. "You'll have to teach them how to keep sucking until the sweet juice comes up through the candy," she added. As the boys undressed and she cut lemons with her camp-knife, Lucie let the thoughts come forward:
She was a "sensible girl," not a dummy who would run off without a flashlight; she just needed to be alone sometimes. "Why didn't I know that before," she wondered. Somehow it made her feel more a "self." Billy had remembered the lemonade. Who cares about probably-a-liar Jane? And Joe - Joe had "seen" her after all, had even worried about her.
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