Spokes
There is something about a wooden spoked wheel that always
draws me in. Whenever I see them displayed in people's yards I
never accept them as the decorative symbols they are meant to be.
My eyes wander over them and invariably get tangled up in the
spokes--in the space between the spokes--and I visualize them
doing what they were built to do, rolling along some road,
individual spokes invisible in a to-and-fro blur of motion,
spinning rims orbiting planetary hubs, all held in place by some
irrevocable Newtonian law.
I first noticed this trompe d'oeil effect of the rotating
wheel as a boy. There was still some horsedrawn traffic around
then. An old Polish man used to drive through our town in an
ancient spring wagon every couple of weeks. He'd lift a battered
old tin horn to his lips and blow some notes that signalled the
local housewives to bring their hoarded newspaper, tin cans and
remnants of cloth, for which he'd pay them a few pennies. We kids
often ran and biked beside him as he rattled along, shouting good-
natured jests in our delight. He would brandish his whip to keep
us away, afraid of running someone over.
Soon he'd disappear and the kids would forget about him until
next time--everyone but me, that is. Those whirring spokes began
to haunt me in my dreams. As well, I remembered how loud the
whole contraption was, much louder than a car--and, above all, how
it looked a lot more fun to drive.
As a schoolboy growing up in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the
beauty of the countryside where I lived was never wasted on me.
Whatever the season, I always wanted to get a window seat on the
schoolbus and gaze at the scenery passing by, gently rolling hills
covered with hardwood trees, sugar maples and hickory, white oak
and ash, with pastures and croplands checkered in, bordered by
fieldstone walls and locust-rail fences. All were interconnected
by a maze of narrow roads, a shrinking number of which were still
unpaved. The Abingtons, as these hills were called, were like a
placid lagoon in the surrounding grey sea of towering Appalachian
swells that could seem grim and threatening even on good day.
The bus carried me past many farmhouses and barns on the way
to and from school, and I never tired of gazing at them. Some of
them had been there for well over a century. But newer houses had
begun to sprout like weeds in what had been the farther fields and
pastures. These new homes were usually rectangular, modern,
soulless bungalows, irrationally called "ranch style," and
contrasted painfully with the older two story dwellings of earlier
times. The people who lived in them seemed to have a penchant for
decorating their yards with artifacts from the past, mostly pieces
of old farm machinery.
Cream separators became petunia pots. Plowshares glistened
with aluminum paint and supported mailboxes. Wagon and buggy
wheels were yanked from their rusting axles and rendered pure
white, conscripted to serve as virginal icons of the pastoral
innocence that was disappearing from America like smoke.
From my seat on the schoolbus one late October day around
1960 I noticed one old farmstead in particular. For just a few
moments as the bus rolled over the Tunkhannock Creek bridge, I
caught a glimpse of a lovely old house and barn just downstream.
They became more visible every day as the colorful autumn leaves
began to fall from the trees along the stream bank. By the end of
the month the branches were nearly bare and I could make out the
most fascinating detail of all about the place: the barnyard was
chock full of wagons and buggies.
I resolved to personally investigate the situation as soon as
possible. The next afternoon I stepped off the school bus at the
nearest stop and hurried back down the dirt road toward the
objects that were drawing my curiosity like lodestones.
It didn't take me long to meet the proprietor, Mr. Wayne
Thomas. He was a tall, gaunt old character dressed in a tattered
tweed jacket and a sweater with burn marks on the front of it from
the hot coals that spilled out of his ever present pipe. I
introduced myself and demanded to know if any of the buggies were
for sale, all in the same breath. He said they might be, to the
right person and for the right price. But he made it clear by his
somewhat stand-offish manner that there would be no quick deals.
The conversation then took a turn to the more esoteric aspects of
buggy fancying, and I began to learn the first of many arcane and
timeworn details of the horse and buggy age that Mr.
Thomas kept alive in his memory as well his barnyard.
I soon discovered that the barnyard held only the overflow
and that the really good stuff was kept inside. Through the open
door of the barn I could see spoked wheels in every corner. Some
carriages even hung from the rafters. I gaped in open-mouthed awe
but when I spotted the grille of an old MG-TC peeking out from
underneath a canvas tarp, the only automobile in sight, I couldn't
help blurting out, "Wow, what kind of a car is that?"
"Just forget you ever saw it," Mr Thomas said, and pushed the
door closed. I was dying to see more but it was not to be. He
would show me only the outside portion of his collection on this
first visit, a number of weather-worn buggies, trade carts and
milk wagons, most of which looked beyond the pale once I got a
closer look.
"This stick-seat surrey is a Studebaker," he said, walking
over to the least delapidated of the vehicles.
"How do you know?" I asked.
He snorted impatiently and pointed with his toe to a tiny
brass plate on the rear. "Always look there for the maker's
plate," he said, "if someone hasn't stolen it."
When the conversation again turned to business, I hoped that
he would recognize me as a true kindred spirit and not just some
dilletante. I was thrilled when he offered me the surrey, a
carriage that would suit my needs and taste, he said, for thirty-
five dollars--an astronomical sum, but we shook on it and I
excused myself to go and consult with my banker.
My banker, who doubled as my father, was skeptical of my
latest obsession, as well as of our old horse Prince's suitability
for the task. "That horse has never been driven, for all you
know," he reminded me.
Prince, a slender bay of indeterminate breeding, had arrived
at the local livestock auction in a truckload of horses sold off
by the Army Remount Service long before I was born. He was picked
up by Doc Stone, a local vet who wanted some company for an even
older horse he kept around his place named "Dolly." When Dolly
finally died, Doc Stone sold Prince to my parents as a companion
for me. "He's old, but he's sound and gentle as a lamb," I
remembered him saying. "You can do anything with him."
"That should include pulling a little buggy," I argued with
my dad, harping on and on.
Finally I managed to drag Dad to the Thomas farm to see the
wooden vehicle that was depriving me of my sleep. Unfortunately,
it didn't do much for him. Then, to make matters worse, Joe Troy,
who still ran a blacksmith shop in our town catering mostly to
the local gentry and their expensive show jumpers and hunters,
warned my dad off giving approval, much less financial backing to
my bold scheme.
I used to hang out at Joe's shop whenever I noticed by the
thick smoke pouring out of the chimney and the ringing of his
anvil that it was open. It was located close to the center of
town. Inside it always seemed a little short on light, possibly
due to the dirty windows. The floor was wood planks except for
the area around the forge which was built of red brick on a
flagstone hearth. Next to the forge was a coal bin heaped with
chunks of shiny black anthracite--the best in the world, Joe said-
-mined nearby in deep underground excavations like the one they
called the China vein, a quarter of a mile wide and God kows how
long. There were some tie stalls along one side and a cross-tie
in the center for the horse that was currently being shod. Dozens
of tools and hundreds of unfinished horseshoes festooned various
racks.
Joe, a wiry old man in a leather apron and a soiled cloth
cap, always seemed to have a half-smoked cigarette between his
lips. He could make up a set of shoes with anvil, forge and
hammer in what seemed like only a few minutes. Then he would fit
them hot to the horse's trimmed hooves. This procedure made
clouds of smoke that smelled like a burning mattress, but it
didn't seem to bother the horses too much. Then he quenched the
shoes and nailed them on quickly and quietly, holding the nails in
his mouth as he went from foot to foot.
"A dangerous thing, a horse and buggy," he said to my dad one
day. "They tip, the horse runs away, and you're left in a pile of
splinters. I've seen it happen many times. And just spend some
time harnessing up in the pouring rain if you want to realize what
a wonderful thing the automobile is."
That man is a traitor to his trade, I thought.
My obesession only became worse in the face of these
setbacks, but my salvation came from an unexpected quarter. Mr
Cramer, my long suffering piano teacher, noticed that I was even
more distracted from my lesson than usual and with some impatience
asked me just what in heaven's name was the matter now. I sighed
and told him that I simply needed a buggy in the worst way, and to
my utter astonishment he told me that he had one in the barn out
back, and that we could go look at it as soon as I finished my
Hanon. My enthusiasm (if not my technique) suddenly improved
noticeably and in a very few minutes I was gazing at what was to
be my first buggy, a gift from a desperate professor of music.
The thing was in far worse shape than even the rattletraps in
Mr Thomas's barnyard. The leatherette top was badly ripped, the
shaft tips were broken, and the bottom seat cushion was gone
entirely. Worst of all, pigeons had made a nest in the rafters
above and the entire thing was whitewashed with enough guano to
fertilize a small cornfield. Still, it rolled, and it was mine.
When Dad refused to help me retrieve it in his pickup truck, I
recruited a couple of friends to provide the locomotive power to
drag it the mile or so from Mr Cramer's place back to our own.
Mr Thomas continued to be helpful although I had yet to buy
one of his buggies. After one long afternoon trying
unsuccessfully to remove a wheel with a buggy wrench, I finally
made a pilgrimage to the master to seek enlightenment. I received
it, and on that day learned of the existence and purpose of the
left hand thread on a near side axle splind. "If it wasn't made
like that," said my mentor gruffly, "the damn wheel would fall off
before you made it out of the yard."
When it came time to put Prince to his new task, the dire
predictions of Joe Troy were far from my mind. Had he been there
to witness the event, he would surely have thought his worst fears
were about to be realized, as my pal Dean and I blithely proceeded
to wrap traces around shafts and tie the loose ends of some rotten
old harness to the buggy wherever they fell with generous
applications of binder twine. Old Prince, however, was apparently
as knowledgable about these things as Wayne Thomas and Joe Troy
put together, for when we clambered up into the rickety old
carriage and clucked to him, he walked quietly off and made my
dreams come true.
In a few weeks, apparently impressed with my success, my
formerly philistine father relented and kicked in fifteen bucks
for a good used harness. He even started helping me fix up the
buggy in his spare time.
"You know, Dad," I said one day, after I noticed him letting
his pleasure with the task show a bit too much, "If we bought that
two-seater Studebaker from Mr Thomas, we could all go for a ride."
"Could we really?" he replied. His tone seemed non-committal
but, knowing him as I did, I took a lot of encouragement from it.
Within a week the surrey was parked in our barn and Wayne Thomas
was thirty-five dollars richer. Dad never could resist a
Studebaker.
So, that American era of pastoral innocence was preserved a
little longer, at least in my neck of the woods. We restored and
painted both carriages, old Prince supplied all the necessary
draught power, and spinning spokes became a common sight on the roads
around our place. But eventually time caught up with me--with
Prince especially, I'm sorry to say--and my halcyon horse & buggy
days faded away.
Things began to unfold much faster after that, and in a
few years it seemed impossible that those earlier times could have
ever existed outside my imagination. I drove a car like everybody
else, dressed according to the latest collegiate trends, and saw
myself taking my appointed spot in middle class America, a place
of privilege guaranteed by my education and background.
Unfortunately there was the not-so-small matter of a debt to
Uncle Sam that had to be paid (in return for all that fun I'd had,
I guess), and the interest was rather high. When my Notice
to Report for Physical Examination came in the mail from the Draft
Board, my dad was not too encouraging. "They only want you to
stop a bullet, son," he said with a seriousness I had never seen
in him before. "Just hope you've got flat feet."
I don't remember being checked for flat feet but they looked
for just about everything else. In a large group of fellows
around my age we were herded around the examination center and
prodded like so much cattle. There was a lot of laughing and
joking but it did not conceal the shock and worry on our young
faces. The ultimate humiliation was when we were ordered to form
a rank, drop our trousers, and bend over. A ferocious top
sergeant barked out the detailed instructions. "Place one hand on
each cheek," he said, "and spread 'em. When the doctor taps you
on the back, bear down hard like you was gonna take a crap. When
he taps you again, stand up straight and put yourself back
together. You all got that?"
"All this just to stop a bullet?" I muttered.
"What's that? Somebody got a question?" thundered the
sergeant.
Apparently a bad case of piles was enough to get you sent
home right then and there. Unfortunately I didn't have any so I
started thinking about Canada instead. Later I broached the
subject with my parents. My mother was the patriotic type and she
took it hard. "We'll never be able to hold our heads up around
here again," she lamented to my Dad.
My dad's attitude was much different. He was cynical about
all wars and the current one in particular. He had preached this
idea to me since I was a boy, even taking me through a Veteran's
Hospital one time where he pointed out patients whose maimed and tortured bodies had been there
since Warld War One. "There's the glory of war," he said.
Now, as I was about to be called up, his worst fears were
to be realized. It hurt him that my mother wouldn't see it, but
he stood his ground alone. "These are bad times," he said, "and
they're going to get worse. I don't like the idea, but I'd rather
see you a live exile than a dead war hero, anytime. Go, and God
help you."
- - -
When I returned with my wife and children from Canada to my
native Pennsylvania for a visit many years later, it seemed like I
had been away for more than a lifetime. Mr Thomas was the last
person I expected to see after more than twenty years, but when I
drove down his road half expecting to find a plantation of new
condominiums occupying the site, there he was as if nothing had
changed. And nothing had, except that his carriage collection had
grown considerably. I was delighted to discover that I found it
more fascinating than ever.
We disposed of the re-introductions and pleasantries as
quickly as possible and got right down to what was still our
favorite topic of conversation. He took us on that long-postponed
tour of his collection which now included a Park Drag, a C-spring
Victoria that had belonged to the Scranton family, a Barouche with
rose-colored upholstery fit for a duchess, an Irish jaunting car,
and various other buggies, surreys, and carts, too numerous to
mention. I also learned on this occasion that Mr Thomas's old
farmhouse had been built by some of my ancestors who are buried on
the hill above the nearby village of La Plume.
He had a pair of horses there too, matched for their
easygoing temperment if not for their color. He said he would be
happy to hitch them up and take us for a ride, but for the fact
that their feet were much in need of a farrier's attention, Joe
Troy having long since passed away. I was happy to inform him
that the basic techniques of farrier science were some of the few
truly practical things I had managed to learn in the years since
we had seen each other, since I had become an exile in rural
British Columbia. He produced the necessary tools from his vast
collection of artifacts, I did the job, and it remained only to
select which of the many carriages we would ride in.
We were soon careening around his farm in a convertible buggy
that was either a Jenny Lind or a four-passenger surrey, depending
on whether or not the rear seat was folded up. Wayne's enthusiasm
as a carriage driver exceeded even that of the collector I knew,
and my white knuckles were the proof of a truly thrilling ride.
We promised to stay in touch and said so long. It was a memorable
day for all of us.
On the way home I stopped by the cemetery that Wayne had
mentioned. I remembered going there with my grandfather once or
twice many years earlier but it took me a while to find the old
family plot. I did, finally, and tried to recall what Grandpa
might have told me about my ancestors who were buried there. One
inscribed white stone with the tarnished bronze crest of the Grand
Army of the Republic caught my eye: Our Beloved Rexford, killed at
Gettysburg, July 4, 1863.
I returned to Pennsylvania again in 1985 to find Wayne Thomas
recently bereaved by the the loss of his wife who had died while
they were visiting England a few months before. It was November
and bitterly cold. I helped him split some firewood while we
discussed the ravages of time.
As we chatted, I realized that I finally felt like an adult
in his presence and not like the pesky kid I must have been that
first October afternoon so long ago. I remembered the mysterious
old MG he didn't want to discuss or let me see, and now I couldn't
resist asking him outright if he still had it.
He stopped stacking firewood and gazed off into the distance
for a moment. "Yes, it's still here," he said. After a short
silence he continued. "It belonged to my only son. I gave it to
him when he graduated from Harvard in 1960. That spring he and
some friends set sail out of Boston in a twelve metre yacht headed
for the Panama Canal. They disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle.
Never found so much as a splinter."
By the third of November, 1989, Wayne Thomas was still as
active as ever even though as old as the century. Married for the
third time, he and his new wife were on one of his many trips to
the Holy Ground of all buggy nuts, Lancaster County, Pa., where
the un-adorned and hard-working Amish people preserve horsedrawn
technology with a practical philosphy bereft of any sentiments of
smarmy nostalgia. There, in a tragic accident at a poorly marked
intersection, the ubiquitous automobile put an end to Wayne Thomas
with even greater finality than it had done to those horse and
buggy days of which he was so fond.
Wayne Thomas's horsedrawn vehicles were sold at auction.
Collectors came from all over the country to bid on everything and
anything in his vast collection, from the stagecoach that brought
forty thousand dollars to the buggy wrench that brought five. The
buyers filled the local hostelries and flooded the restaurants. I
read about it in a clipping my dad sent me. "I never seen so many
folks just chasin' after a pile of useless junk," one neighbor,
was quoted as saying.
"By the way," my dad wrote. "Do you want to sell the old
Studey? A fellow from New York has offered us three thousand
dollars for it."
"Give me some time to think about that," I wrote back, "OK?"
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