That title isn’t a mispelling. See if you can figure it out. I bet Stu will.

Several years ago, while going through an intense Nietzsche phase (from which I still haven’t fully recovered) the thought occurred to me to go back and reread the Bible with more open eyes than those I employed in my earlier readings when I considered myself a devout Christian. I never acted on that impulse, but it recurred to me (how Nietzschesque) as I recently read H.G. Wells’ The Outline of History. By now, my religiously-inclined readers are probably grunting in disapproval of my perspective, but bear with me. After finishing Wells’ somewhat outdated but still worthy Outline, I nearly picked up my Oxford Annotated RSV — but having read through the Bible several times already I knew what a large project that is (1189 chapters plus Apocrypha), and I wanted to read some other things on my shelf, so I put it off.

My son John, who is now teaching English in Korea, corresponds with me by email. Not knowing of my half-baked intentions, he suggested out of the blue that we read the Bible together. John recently discovered a more meaningful connection with Christianity, and if that were all I knew about John I probably would have politely declined. But I also know that John has explored Buddhism and other alternatives, and that he’s intelligent and has a great sense of humor. I enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to spend more time conversing with my son, as well as to revisit an old passion of mine with someone who is likely to contribute to a most interesting discussion.

I don’t think that either of us intends to convert the other. We’re probably both expecting that the text itself will do that. It will be interesting to observe the results. Although I take a critical perspective on the text and I’m a tenacious agnostic, I don’t rule out the idea that I can be changed by this experience. In fact, I embrace it. If Fitzgerald and Henry James can transform me, then it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I might find some personal benefit in the collection of human insights and inspirations known as the Bible as well.

John chose the New Internation Version for his reading. That’s a fine translation, despite it’s somewhat conservative associations — two of my college professors contributed to it. But I chose to use the Oxford Annotated RSV instead, because unlike the NIV I’ve never read through the entire RSV, and I appreciate the notes in the Oxford Annotated volume. Besides, I always think it’s a good idea to compare translations, if for no other reason than to avoid projecting too much into the translator’s choice of specific English words. The RSV is a more literal translation than the NIV, but the latter often conveys the original sense better — so comparing and contrasting them yields food for thought.

Additionally, I dug up my Hebrew text of the Old Testament and my Hebrew lexicon so I could dig deeper whenever questions arose about the text.

John and I began corresponding, and so far our discussion has not disappointed me — although I’ve probably been doing too much of the talking. John has a busy life, so we’ve had to take it very slowly. We’re just through chapter 14 of Genesis now (a fascinating chapter, that). But I don’t mind taking my time. In fact, I decided (after catching myself in a couple of mistaken assumptions about the Hebrew text) to use the opportunity afforded by John’s preferred pace to fulfill a desire from more than thirty years ago: I will simultaneously read the entire Hebrew text in parallel with the RSV.

Last night it occurred to me that while I’m at it I might as well also make use of another volume that’s been collecting dust on my shelf for the last thirty years. As the oldest known translation of the Old Testament into any other language, and because of its influence on the New Testament and later Christianity, I will also read the Septuagint in Greek at the same time. I have already observed many interesting details of this translation — both extremes of cases in which the Greek has been bent into a literalist Hebraism on the one hand, and cases in which the Greek obliterates the Hebrew meaning on the other.

For an example of the former, in Genesis 2 when Yahweh (or Kurios in Greek) instructs Adam not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge for “on the day you eat it, you shall surely die,” the Hebrew for “surely die” is mot tamut, literally “die by dying” — the reiteration is for intensive effect. The Greek translates this literally as thanato apothaneisthe.

On the other hand, the word play of that same chapter becomes lost in the Greek. “Adam” is Hebrew for man, so the term is used interchangeably in the chapter as a name and as a noun. The Greek chooses to render it as “anthropos” exclusively until the injunction against eating the fruit, in which it is translated as “Adam,” then switches between the two afterwards. The whole pun on dust (adamah in Hebrew) is also lost in the Greek chous.

Even more striking, and rather funny, is the phrase “she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.” In Hebrew, woman is ishah and man is ish. The -ah suffix can be used for a feminine as it is here, or it can mean “towards” or “from” — thus the pun. It almost works in English, if you can invent some suitable meaning for “wo-” (it actually comes from the Old English wif “wife, or woman”), but the Greek murders it: she shall be called gune because she was taken out of andros. That must have left a lot of Greek readers scratching their heads.

By reading the Greek also, I’ll make a smooth transition into the New Testament when we get there. At the rate we’re going, that should be in about the year 2017.

Yesterday, my son John graduated with his Bachelor’s degree from the Metropolitan State College of Denver. He is the first of my four offspring to reach this milestone, and he did it almost entirely on his own.

John started his college career at Lewis and Clark, to which I mailed not unsubstantial monthly checks. That ended when John dropped out, however. When he later attended MSCD, he didn’t ask me for help. He worked his way through instead. For that, he can be proud — he has already demonstrated an ability to get along in the world, and I’m sure that will serve him well.

I had really hoped to attend John’s graduation, but circumstances got in the way — as they often have in our relationship, I’m sad to say.

Congratulations, John!

Watch out, world!

My Dad, Sterling W. Camden III, always cultivated a reputation for being a bad-ass, even when he was a 125-pound nineteen-year-old Airman Third Class stationed in Germany.  He got into so many fights that his commanding officer decided to teach him a lesson by making him room with Walter Dale Goss – a hulking six-foot four-inch Cherokee who hardly spoke to anyone and spent most of his spare time lying on his bunk staring at the ceiling.

Airman Camden discovered Goss in that pose when he burst through the door, dropped his duffel bag, and took out a piece of chalk.  He drew a line across the floor between their bunks, up the wall, across the ceiling, and down the opposite wall.

“All right, you big mother-fucking Indian,” says Camden.  “You cross that line and I’ll kill your ass.”

Goss turned his gaze from the point on the ceiling towards the scrawny but vehement form that stared death and destruction back in his direction.  He laughed.  “C’mon, I’ll buy you a beer,” Goss said.  And therewith began a lifelong friendship.  Camden found his new giant friend extremely useful, and Goss was happy to have a companion who believed that he possessed “potential.”  They became blood brothers, Camden making much of the fact that he, too, could claim Native American ancestry.

Goss was pretty disappointed to lose his roommate when Camden married my future mother while on leave in the States.   Not long afterwards, Goss left the Air Force to join the Hells Angels, vowing to my father that “you’ll never see me again.”

One evening a couple of years later, Dad was outside our student housing at Syracuse (where the Air Force had him taking Intermediate Russian).  My playpen had been left outside and Dad was struggling to disassemble it in the deepening darkness.  Suddenly a blinding light engulfed him, and behind the flashlight he could just make out a looming figure, from whom boomed a deep but familiar voice: “What the hell are you doing with a playpen, you idiot.”  It was Goss.  He had re-enlisted, and the Air Force had sent him to Syracuse in the Intermediate Russian class right behind Dad’s.

Ever afterwards he became the roving member of our family.  We called him Wally, though he was variously known by others as “Walt” or “Dale”.  He’d visit once a year or so, always with some new adventure under his belt.  Once he had driven to Alaska and back in his Austin-Healey convertible.  His idea of trip-planning was to draw a line across the map from his point of departure to his destination, using a ruler, and then follow it as closely as possible.  The Healey was covered with mud, and Dad asked, “Don’t you ever wash that thing?”  Wally replied, “I let God wash it.”

Dad wanted to drive the Austin-Healey.  Wally got in the passenger seat, and they took off down the Pittsville Road.  When they neared the sharp left curve at Jack Mason’s Garage, Dad glanced down at the speedometer: 80.  He cut to the inside of the turn just as a ‘57 Ford popped into view from the other direction.  Dad cut back to the outside, sliding through the gravel of Jack’s parking lot (sending Jack running for cover).  He skidded back onto the road and continued as if nothing had happened, except for the adrenalin shakes that kicked in along the next straightaway.  And for as long as Wally owned the Healey, it bore the imprint of Wally’s ten fingers in the passenger side of its padded dashboard.

When I was five, Wally visited on leave from the Viet Nam War.  He brought us gifts from Thailand.  Mine was a real Siamese sword with a blade almost two feet long.  Wally handed it to me and said, “Here, kid – go get your sister.”  So I unsheathed it and ran after Roanna, who screamed through the house while Dad and Wally lay on the ground laughing as hard as they could.  My mother finally stopped me.  I still have that sword.  I keep it in my office in case of Ninja attack.

My sister Roanna, who was four, had a crush on Wally.  She informed him that she would marry him one day.  “Forget it, kid.” he replied.  “By the time you’re grown, I’ll be old, fat, and bald.”  “But Wally,” said my sister, “you’re already old, fat, and bald” — at which point my father spewed his beer across the room.

One Thanksgiving, Wally arrived with a huge turkey.  Naturally, Dad made all the appropriate wisecracks about the Indian joining us pale-faces for Thanksgiving.  We had a huge feast, and for dessert Mom offered pie.  “Is it homemade?” asked Wally enthusiastically.  “Why, Yes!” responded Mom, as she began to cut a large slice for him.  “Oh, I don’t want any then” said Wally.  We all laughed, but Mom made sure that he didn’t get any.

I believe Wally was there the Christmas that Dad shot Santa.  Wally introduced me to Heinlein, his motorcycle, and his .357 magnum.  Dad always said there were two things about Wally that were never adequately explained: why the Air Force had always allowed him to carry that .357, and why they allowed him to fly while wearing contact lenses when he was legally blind in a number of states.

Dad and I drove to Texas to visit Wally when he became an officer.  It was a trip I’ll never forget.

Wally met his second wife in Crete – Geraldine Andrews, who is full-blooded Irish from Dublin.  She instantly became another member of our family.  She accompanied my mother and us kids to church once –Geraldine had never been to a Methodist church before (she being Catholic, of course), but she was warmly greeted by a congregation that was about 80% Andrews – many of their ancestors having emigrated from Scotland and Ireland centuries before.

I lost contact with Wally and Geraldine when I went to college, and didn’t see Wally again until my father died.  The next day, as my sister Roanna and I drove to the airport to pick up my sons for the funeral, Roanna suddenly asked me if I maybe thought that…

“.. that Wally helped Dad out?” I interrupted.

“Yes!” said Roanna.  “He didn’t tell me so, but you know that the agency trained them how to do it so you couldn’t tell.’”

“Last night Wally told me that he had come close to killing Dad back in 1972” (That was when Dad had set himself down to drink himself to death).  “I wondered at the time why he volunteered that information.  Well, if he did it, then I’m thankful.”

I never asked Wally about that.  We’ve corresponded by email over the years, but I’ve never seen him in person again since Dad’s funeral – and I never will.  I received a message this morning that Wally passed away.  He went peacefully, I heard – and for that, I’m thankful.

The dogs and I took a detour from our usual morning walk to visit a neighbor’s new cows – two Dexter heifers intended for milking.  The Dexters aren’t much bigger than our two Labradors, and they viewed Harry and Halley suspiciously from the safety of their fenced pasture.  For some reason, the dogs didn’t seem interested in chasing them – apparently they identified them more with sheep than with deer.

On our way back, I spotted the neighborhood’s Pileated Woodpecker.  We often hear his rapid drumming on the many dead trees in the surrounding forest, but we rarely get a good look at him. This time he drifted across the road about two feet over the pavement and landed on a cedar in the lowlands on the north side.  When I heard the familiar drumming coming from the south, I turned and saw his double!  It’s the first time I’ve ever seen two woodpeckers together.  I didn’t know then how to determine their sex, so I don’t know if they were mates or competitors.  But thinking about woodpecker sex reminded me of one of my great-grandfather’s favorite rhymes:

Woodpecker pecked on the woodhouse door
He pecked and he pecked ‘til his pecker got sore

My great-grandfather was not known for coarse humor – or any humor, really.  But my Dad said he would always laugh heartily after reciting that one.

Speaking of avian identification – now that the robins are out in full force, we’ve noticed a few smaller birds among them that look like mini-robins, except that the head and back are black rather than gray, and they have little white spots on their shoulders and a large white spot on the breast.  After searching whatbird.com, I believe these to be Spotted Towhees.

Both of our dogs are now on medication.  Halley takes Benadryl for her allergies, and Harry is on Melatonin to treat Alopecia.  He has two strangely identical regions of hair loss on either side, between his ribs and his hips.  The vet conducted a blood panel to rule out various diseases, and suggested we give Melatonin therapy a try.  Fortunately, Melatonin is relatively inexpensive, and it’s a simple matter to get a Labrador to swallow anything smaller than a softball.  Labradors put the “omni” in “omnivore”.

Food is a long-standing common bond between humans and their canine companions, and dogs never feel more useful than when they can help us to acquire a meal.  Once when I was a wee lad, my grandparents’ hound dog (whom we called Laddie, but my aunt called Hamlet) brought a freshly killed rabbit up to the house.  My sister and I cried over the poor thing, but my grandparents skinned him and cooked him for dinner.  I had to admit that he was pretty tasty, whatever his relationship to Peter Cottontail or the Easter Bunny.

Not that we were unused to our place in the food chain.  My sister and I often named and loved the calves that we eventually saw loaded into the pickup truck to be taken to the slaughterhouse, and we were well aware that the beef we later consumed came from their flesh.  I’m reminded of the bear rituals of the indigenous Northern cultures, in which a bear that has been raised as a member of the family is finally slaughtered for its meat, often with apologies to the bear.

Once when I was about five years old, I ran into my grandparents’ house after being chased by a large Leghorn rooster.  Those things can get pretty mean – they’ve been known to peck the eyes out of small dogs.  When I told my grandfather about my encounter, he said not a word (he hardly ever did).  But we had chicken for dinner that night, and I’ve never enjoyed more my status as a carnivore.

February 12.  I meant to write about the simultaneous 200th birthdays of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln.  But not even the fact that it was also Halley’s fourth birthday could drag me away from work long enough to hum a few bars of The Birthday Song.

February 13.  I could have written more about my grandmother, who would have turned 106 that day.  Or I could have explored the subject of triskaidekaphobia, especially since it was a Friday.  Somehow I never got around to either one — perhaps posting on that day felt unlucky.

February 14.  For Valentine’s Day I considered an essay on the subject of love, which brought to mind Ambrose Bierce’s definition:  “A temporary insanity curable by marriage”  (Some patients have reported side-effects such as children and other contractual obligations).  Actually, I did write something for that day — a sonnet for my wife:

Westward towards the setting sun they sailed
Your mother’s parents, and your father too
From Sicily and Hungary they hailed
Two families joined in Jersey to make you

Westward towards the setting sun we two
Each drove to California all alone
What we’d find there, neither of us knew
Reaching for a new life on our own

And now the western sun has brightly shone
Upon us fourteen times on Valentine’s
As together our two lives in love have grown
And within our children beautifully combined

They’ll bear our love to generations yet
To shine beyond the time our sun has set

February 15.  The birth of Wirth – who is now 75 years old.  Not to mention the birthdays of Douglas Hofstadter, Galileo, Praetorius (who also died on February 15), Susan B. Anthony, Cyrus McCormick, Ernest Shackleton, Matt Groening, Chris Farley, and YouTube.  I didn’t even have time to post clip-art of a birthday cake, because we were too busy rearranging my daughter’s room, breaking furniture, and shouting.

February 16.  President’s Day (or Presidents Day, or Presidents’ Day, depending on what or whom you’re celebrating).  Originally a celebration of Washington’s birthday, now that it’s established on the third Monday in February it can never fall on that great man’s actual date of birth (February 22).  How fitting, since subsequent presidents haven’t quite reached his magnitude.  Taken as a celebration of all US presidents, all I have to say is: good luck to anyone who finds their butt in that hot seat!

I could sit and stare at a fire for hours, watching the tongues of flame slowly lick away layers from the log, forming fissures here and there, narrowing the center while leaving the ends almost intact.  Then suddenly the weight of one chunk overcomes its attachment to the main log — a thin, blackened core snaps into ashes, leaving the flames to seek fuel in the newly exposed sections of the remaining pieces.  On and on, until they are all nothing but dust.  Then new logs are added, and it begins all over again. 

My pyromania began when I was less than two years old.  We lived with my mother’s family in a big farmhouse on 98 acres while my Dad was stationed in Shemya, Alaska for a year.  My crib was by the window in the dining room.  Early in the morning I would crawl over the railing, let myself down to the floor, and quietly push open the heavy, red spring-loaded door into the kitchen.  I would see my grandmother’s back as she prepared breakfast for the family:  cantaloupe, eggs, bacon, toast with real butter, and coffee with chicory.  It smelled heavenly, and mixed deliciously with the more infernal odor of the fireplace on which one or two logs were burning, heating the stone hearth and my small self crouched thereon, while I stared into the brightness that simultaneously blinded and hypnotized me.

“Ye gods!  Oh, you scared me child,” were the inevitable words that broke my reverie, as my grandmother would suddenly become aware of my presence when she turned from the cookstove to place something on the table.  Then she would wipe her hands and give me a big hug, wish me good morning and ask how I slept and how I managed to get into the kitchen without her noticing and how long had I been sitting there before the fire, anyway?  None of which I was able to answer satisfactorily.  But she was pleased with me nonetheless — she laughed, and hugged me, and swore that she could eat me up.

We called her “Gaga”.  Earlier in our young lives, my mother had tried to get my sister and I to say “Grandma”, a name my grandmother did not appreciate.  One of us tripped over it and said “Gaga!”  She was so enchanted with this that she proclaimed, “Gaga shall be my name, and from now on I’ll not answer to another!”  And so it was, for the rest of her life.

She was born in Indiana in 1903 to a red-headed railroad man and his beautiful young bride, both originally from the hills of Craig County, Virginia.  Her first name was Leona, but they called her by her middle name: Pearl.  When Pearl was only three months old, her mother contracted typhoid fever and died.  Since her father was a railroad engineer, he couldn’t care for her by himself — so he left Pearl with her mother’s family, back in Virginia.  Her father was only able to manage a yearly visit — which I believe profoundly shaped her longing for family togetherness.

Nothing made her face light up more than news of an upcoming visit from family or friends.  But often, even before they arrived, she would begin to cry over the thought that they’d have to leave soon thereafter.  This was especially true when her only son was coming home, and never more so than when he flew reconnaissance missions over Viet Nam.  She was scared to death that she would lose him in that conflict.  I often wonder whether he reacted against her fears by being even more daring than need be.  But he made it through nevertheless, unscathed and with honors.

She endured the heartache of having her second child, a daughter, diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young adult.  Rather than being institutionalized, my aunt continued to live with the family — and we all accommodated her strange and sometimes frightening behaviors.

Pearl was one of the few women of her day to obtain a college education.  She put off marriage until she was nearly 30 years old so she could “grow up” first — which was almost unheard of in those days.  She finally wrote a letter to the one person who had won her heart, a very quiet but steady man who had waited patiently for her for seven years, to ask if she could still accept his proposal.  He wrote back immediately, “Yes! Yes, yes, yes to everything!”

Pearl expected her oldest daughter, my mother, to exercise the same caution in choosing a mate — and to finish her college degree before getting married.  She was nearly hysterical, therefore, when my father asked for my mother’s hand when she was only 19.  But her husband liked something he saw in my father, and he sided with his daughter.  I was born a little over a year later.

Pearl did see my mother finish her degree years later and become an English teacher, just as she had done.  The two of them have been quiet heroes in the lives of many struggling young people — helping them to discover meaning through literature and the unaccustomed use of their brains.

Every Sunday after church, my mother and we three children (my father did not attend) would go over to our grandparents’ for Sunday dinner.  Gaga would always prepare a sumptuous feast of fried chicken (made in her own special way), potatoes, peas, corn, pickled peaches, and her famous dinner rolls — all homemade, of course.  For dessert she would make some sort of cake — Angelfood was her specialty.  Then during the afternoon, we might go for a long walk around the farm or a swim in the creek.  But we’d often end up around the kitchen table, each with a cup of coffee, telling family stories and talking about literature.  The two subjects were so frequently mixed that I almost came to think of Charles Dickens as a member of the family.  Shakespeare and Keats were more like household gods.

Gaga was forced to retire from teaching after she reached her seventies – though she was still just as energetic as ever.  When walking with her in town, I often had trouble keeping up.  She had an almost uncontrollable sense of humor.  Sometimes she would start laughing at herself and be unable to stop.

During her retirement, she took a grand tour of Ireland and England, of which she spoke often.  She visited Avon, naturally — but she said that the highlight of her trip was the hospitality of an Irish family with whom she and her companions stayed for a while — they seemed just like her people from Craig County (who were, after all, mostly a Scotch-Irish mix).

But having had her teaching vocation stripped from her was too much to bear, and she soon developed heart trouble.  After her first attack, she lost her rapid walk along with about half her weight — but the laughter remained in her eyes.

During that time, I spent many nights at her house — just in case.  I’d drive over there after I’d finished work and spend a few hours with her over dinner before driving to Chatham where I was involved in a community theatre.  Then I’d return for the night, and have breakfast with her in the morning before going to school.  She still insisted on making that same large breakfast, even though it was harder for her to get around.  We had many conversations between just the two of us — some things I hadn’t heard from her before, and many that confirmed stories I remembered.  One of the latter concerned stories she heard as a child.  I’ll quote my mother’s version:

The most exciting stories were those her Grandfather Reynolds told about the Civil War. He had enlisted early in the war and marched with Stonewall Jackson. He told her stories of campfires, of forced marches, of victorious battles. He told her of brave comrades and valorous, sacrificing women and children. He told her of the nobility of men like General Lee.

Therefore, when Pearl’s teacher announced that the War Between the States would be their topic, Pearl was thrilled. The teacher began by summarizing briefly and then said, “The South fought for a cause it believed in, but that cause was doomed. The victory belonged to the North.”

Little Pearl could not believe her ears. “No!” she said with complete certainty. “No! You’ve got it backwards. The South got the victory! My Grandpa was there, and he has told me everything!”

The teacher tried to explain to her, but Pearl would not listen. Finally, the teacher said, “Go home tonight and ask your Grandpa how it ended.”

Pearl ran home, tears streaming. Grandpa was sitting on the porch playing his fiddle.

“Grandpa, Grandpa!” Pearl cried. When she could get the words out, she said, “Grandpa, my teacher said the South lost the war. It’s not true, not true at all, is it?”

“Oh, Little Pearl,” Grandpa said with tears in his eyes. “We won all those battles I told you about – but in the end, we lost the war!”

One day when I was working at the store, Gaga called me.  “I think you’d better come take me to the hospital,” she said.  It was a busy day at the counter, but I excused myself to Roger and left him to fend for himself.  I was a little annoyed, because I had taken her in once before and she had been alright — but I knew my duty, and I drove as swiftly as I could the five miles to her house.  When I arrived, she met me at the door.  She seemed perfectly fine, but I greeted her with concern and helped her into the car.  On the way, I asked her how she was feeling.  She apologetically said that she felt a little better, that it was probably nothing, and that she was sorry she had called me away from work.  “It’s no trouble,” I said, “better be safe than sorry.”

We arrived at the hospital, and I got her settled in her room.  Then I said, “Well, I’d better be going now — Roger’s waiting for me.”  We hugged, and she thanked me again for bringing her.  As I walked out, I said, “Goodbye, Gaga — see you soon.”  I was out of sight when I heard her respond, “Goodbye, Son.”

I was immediately struck with the conviction that that would be the last time I heard her voice.  I thought of turning back to kiss her and say goodbye one more time, but then I shook it off as a superstitious fear that would only be communicated to the patient if I did.  How many times since that moment have I wished to stop there in the hallway, turn around, and return to her voice.

It isn’t often, but sometimes she’ll return in my dreams.  It’s always the same — she has been alive all this time, and I didn’t know it!

Now it’s been more than 31 years since her death.  But whenever I gaze into a fire, I find myself expecting any minute to hear her surprised voice, and smell breakfast on her soft apron as she snatches me up and holds me close — oh, so close.

Our 10-year-old son greeted our daughter on the morning of her 12th birthday with, “Congratulations on having a birthday that divides by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12!”  That’s my boy.

Later he asked her, “What does I.L.Y. stand for?”

Thinking that he was being nice to her on her birthday, she replied, “I Love You?”

“I’m Loving Yak,” he corrected.

We went out for birthday lunch at our daughter’s favorite Chinese restaurant and stuffed ourselves with MSG-laden delectables.  Afterwards, my wife asked the rhetorical question, “What have we done?”

Our son replied, “We’ve done something beautiful!“

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It makes you feel old when you realize that someone you knew and loved would be 130 years old now if they were still alive. Yesterday was my great-grandfather’s 130th birthday, and I knew him until he died at age 87 when I was not quite six years old. We kids called him “Gee Gee”, but my Dad always called him “Grandpa”.He was the first of five Sterling Wyatt Camdens so far (I’m number four), named after his uncle Sterling and his grandfather Wyatt. He usually went by his middle name. He didn’t go to school much (a total of 18 months, I think), but he read a lot and taught himself most everything he knew. He eventually became an accountant — a profession which buoyed his family through the Depression.

He was an ad-hoc inventor — creating something like a tractor for his own use before any such thing was ever marketed. But like all of his contraptions, he never sought a patent for it. I remember a butter churn he made for my great-grandmother. You flipped a switch on the wall, and an electric motor turned a small pulley with a huge belt running to a larger pulley that turned a bevel gear that turned the churn’s paddles. I’ve always wondered why the motor wasn’t attached directly to the paddles, but maybe he geared it down by using different sized pulleys.

His father, Voltaire, was a disabled veteran of the War Between the States who according to my father was given to heavy drinking and abuse of his wife and children. My great-grandfather, on the other hand, never drank alcohol except for one shot of whiskey before bed each night. I was told, however, that he underwent one of the earliest appendectomies, with nothing but whiskey for an anaesthetic.

Though he didn’t follow his father’s tastes in liquor, he did in lickin’. My great-grandmother confided to my mother that when she saw how badly her husband treated their first two children, she “steeled herself” so that they wouldn’t have any more. They always had separate bedrooms.

So it certainly spelled trouble for my father and his brothers when they were left with their grandparents following their parents’ divorce (something quite unusual in those days). They had only occasional visits from their parents from then on, so my great-grandmother’s plan to prevent the further abuse of children was thwarted. My Dad told me that even in his sixties my great-grandfather was strong enough to lop down small trees with one swing of an axe, and he demanded hard work from the three boys — though he expected them to be lazy and good-for-nothing, like all boys. After school he would ask them something like, “So did you screw your teacher today?” And when they answered “no sir” they’d be met with “And why not?!” But they dare not answer in the affirmative, either. My Dad remembered one of his younger brothers being so dead tired at the end of a long day’s work after school that by the time they sat down to dinner at 10PM his head would just collapse into his dish.

By the time I met my great-grandfather he was in his eighties and had gentled down some. In our earliest encounter that I can remember, he pretended to try to steal my mother’s purse. I was outraged, and told him he better not bother my Mommy! He thought that was grand, and we always got along afterwards. He used to walk with my sister and me out to the railroad and around the little farm they had.

He stayed strong all his life, though he required a cane in his later years. One night at about 2AM my father heard banging over at their house (which was across the highway and about a half mile from ours), so he went over to investigate. My great-grandfather, at age 87, was out mending fences while his wife held the flashlight.

The next morning, my mother, sister and I accompanied my great-grandparents into town. My great-grandmother drove, with my great-grandfather in the passenger seat. I was in the middle of the back seat, with my mother on my right and my sister on my left. As we approached the main intersection of the town (which at that time had no traffic signal) my mother called out, “Grandma, look out!” The next thing I knew, something was holding my head like a padded vise.

A drunk driver had turned left immediately in front of my great-grandparent’s old Plymouth. It was a two-door, and the two halves of the front bench seat folded forward to allow access to the back seat. They didn’t put seatbelts in autos back then, so on the impact we all flew forward along with the two front seat-backs, which then whipped back and caught me by the neck. A Virginia State Trooper who was a friend of my Dad’s had witnessed the accident and helped me out. I was relatively unharmed, and my mother and sister were OK. My great-grandparents, on the other hand, had encountered the steering wheel and windshield. They were both taken to the hospital.

My great-grandmother soon recovered. In his hospital bed, my great-grandfather told my Dad, “I think I’ll cash in on this one.” Dad told him that no, for sure he would be back mending fences before the next time the cow got out. But a few days later, he succumbed to pneumonia that he had developed while he was lying in the hospital.

On the night after the funeral, my father was standing on the front porch of my great-grandparents’ house, along with his Aunt Ellie. A terrible storm sent lightning shooting through the swiftly moving clouds, accompanied by frequent, booming thunder. Dad said, “I guess Grandpa made it after all.”

When I was about ten years old, we moved across US Highway 29 and into the house that had belonged to my great-grandparents.  My father and his brothers had built that house for their grandparents back in the late 50′s.  It clung tentatively to a steep bank just above an even steeper drop-off down to White Thorn Creek.  To this day nobody really knows why my great-grandfather decided to build it there rather than on the top of the hill, which also lay within his property.

Perhaps it was the availability of water.  An ancient and apparently natural spring bubbled silently among surrounding small trees just below the chosen site.  Its waters, filtered down through the massive hillside, were extremely clear and ice-cold, even in summer.  They rose in a little pool about three feet wide and a couple of feet deep, and ran off the downhill edge through a tiny rivulet down to the creek far below.

To bring this delicious water into the house, my great-grandfather put in a well about twenty feet downhill from the spring.  No sooner had it started pumping than the spring went dry, and dry it stayed.  My father tried digging it out deeper hoping to find more water, but to no avail.  Finally he concluded that even if he were to reach water, it would be so deep down in the ground that they would have nothing more than a second well — not the beautiful little spring that once graced this grove with its silent, almost sacred pool.

By the time we moved there after my great-grandparents died, a dozen years or so had passed and the hollow shell of the spring had become overgrown and almost impossible to find.  My father often told us children about how beautiful it had once been, and maybe once or twice he might have stretched the original story just a bit to add that he had warned his grandfather not to drill the well so near the spring.  Anyway, we weren’t about to try to move the well, and even if we did there wasn’t any way to know whether the spring would come back or not after all that time.

One day my sister and I were exploring a different piece of property: our grandparents’ 90-some acre farm (on which Uncle Dan’s cabin was located).  Near the road, we suddenly discovered something we had never seen before: an old spring, with beautiful, clear water.  Obviously we were not the first to discover this font, because it had a concrete structure around it — but we were excited nonetheless.  We thought we had known everything about that farm.  So we ran back to the big farmhouse with the news of our discovery.

“Oh yes, that’s where we used to draw our water, before the well,” said our grandmother.

Naturally this led my sister and I to relate, in minute detail, the story of the spring and the well on our property.

“… and Daddy says that the spring will never run again,”  we concluded.

Our aunt (our mother’s sister) had been listening.  She was a diagnosed schizophrenic who was known for sudden outbursts of nonsense, art, religion, and nudity.

“I’ll get you some crawdads — they’ll find the water,” she said.  “Next time you come, I’ll give ‘em to you.”

We wrote this off as another one of her wild ideas and empty promises, but the next week when we were over to visit she produced a bucket — within which were two of the biggest, blackest crayfish I have ever imagined.  I had seen plenty of crawdads before, but none even close to these– they looked more like big, black lobsters.  I would have thought of the movie Alien if it had been produced by then, but it wasn’t.

We took these monsters home and rushed in to show our Dad.  “Ann says they’ll find the water in the spring,” we excitedly told him.  “We’ll go put them in it and see!”

“Don’t listen to your crazy aunt,” he replied without looking up from his book, “All you’re gonna do is kill them damn crawdads.  The water’s nowhere near the surface.  Better off to boil them things up for dinner instead.”

That took the stiffness out of my exoskeleton – Dad was usually right about such things.  But my sister was determined to give it a try.  So down we ventured, through the thick foliage, until we found the spot where the undergrowth dipped down into a little cup in the earth — the skeleton of the ancient spring.  We dumped the two crayfish right in the middle.  Immediately, they began to dig — within 30 seconds they were nowhere to be seen.  My sister cheered them on, but I secretly bade them goodbye.

The next morning my sister shook me awake, “C’mon Chip!  Let’s go check the spring!”

“Oh, go away!  They’re not going to find it, and even if they did it would be too deep for us to see.”

But she persisted until I had to go along anyway.  I reluctantly followed her down to the site.  She slowly parted the bushes and weeds, then said in a low voice, “Chip, you’re not going to believe this.”

I looked in over her shoulder, and I knew she was right — I didn’t believe it.  The old pool was full to the brim with clear, cold water running out the rivulet and all the way down to the creek.  The crawdads had brought the spring back.

When my father saw it, he said, “Well I’ll be damned” and grinned.  He set about clearing away just enough of the underbrush to make it easier to get to the spring.  Then he whittled a wooden ladle to drink from, attached a piece of rawhide to it, and hung it on a tree branch by the pool.  For the rest of our years there, we enjoyed an icy cold drink of mineral-laden water on hot summer days.  And every time I took a sip, I thought about those crawdads and how our “crazy aunt”, who couldn’t even be trusted with the care of her own body, had known better about that.