Edna Ferber's Great Son

Ferber is one of my favorite authors and I meant to honor her birthday on August 15th with a post but it seems like nothing goes according to plan anymore. Isn't that strange? I mean, here I am with all this supposedly extra time at home and yet I have once again been absent from my blogs. Daily I go to Instagram and lose 45 minutes or more even though I don't even post there. 

I've done a lot of reading lately, lots of cooking, and yes, lots of Netflix at night. Otherwise, my time is lost to the dailyness of life.

 

 

Great Son is a slim book, a quick read published in 1944 about a fictional founding family of Seattle, Washington. Ferber makes the city sound fascinating and exciting but I'll narrow down my quotes here to two women in the protagonist's life.

Vaughan Melendy, a white haired giant of a man, is Seattle, heart, soul, and mind. He is a son of Seattle, as are his son and his grandson but it exasperates him just how different the two younger men are, the same way it exasperates him that his city is changing.

The three women in his life are his wife Emmy, his aging mother Exact Melendy who lives in a house up the hill from his and Emmy's, and another woman, Pansy, who lives in another house on his property. Pansy is the mother of his son who he and Emmy adopted and raised as their own. While I admired his mother for her past frontier life and her stubborn old lady ways, it is the other two women I want to give you a glimpse of.

 Emmy was a good woman and a wonderful housekeeper and a crashing bore. She sat now at her breakfast table, and everything she wore was fresh and in perfect order, and everything on the breakfast table was shining and exquisite, and Vaughan knew that the orange juice would be cold and the eggs would be hot...A neat and fussy housekeeper, completely feminine, and abysmally dull, as are all completely feminine women...Emmy ate almost no breakfast, drank her coffee black, had a way of making a hearty breakfaster feel guilty.

 After listening to his wife pick apart their daughter-in-law, Vaughan stands up, throws his napkin on the table, and leaves. After his daily visit to his mother, almost as exacting as is Madam Exact Melendy herself, he rewards himself by stopping by Pansy's house before leaving for work. Pansy is painting the kitchen wood trim, paint smear on her cheek, breakfast dishes piled in the sink. She says:

"Don't you love blue in a kitchen! Not all blue, but pieces of it, like this. The baseboards, and these three panels. Gay. The painters said they had never heard of such a thing, so I'm doing it myself. Painting's wonderful. Makes you feel so talented."

 

She never talked loudly; if you wanted to hear what she had to say you had to listen; there was nothing strident or sharp about her. Not like his womenfolk, not like Emmy's querulous whimpering or Exact's trumpetings.

 

 Pansy, in a bright pink apron and her "touched up" hair sometimes admits, "I haven't got a mite of style. Put a thousand-dollar dress on me and it looks like a bungalow apron."

 

Pansy's house was like her clothes--good and clean but careless...Sometimes the dishes were washed at once, sometimes they piled up for three meals, four...A natural cook, there always was good food in Pansy's house--a cold chicken in the icebox, a heel of succulent ham, beef for a midnight sandwich. She ate heartily as a man, liked her food without fripperies...

Emmy liked the recipes you saw illustrated in the women's magazines; in her cuisine mayonnaise mingled with pineapple slices and whipped cream and chopped nuts; maraschino cherries mated with lettuce.

 

I could go on and on but this should give you the picture. This great son of Seattle, Vaughan Melendy, is old Seattle, one of many men who made their fortunes in the Alaska Gold Rush. But times are changing, a world war looms, and life is sometimes a balancing act with three generations of Melendys.

And then there is Pansy, living near. The wife in me wants to stand up for Emmy and shun Pansy. But I can't and I don't think  you could could either.

 I adored Edna Ferber's So Big, Giant, Ice Palaces, Showboat, and other novels. I admire what this author of novels and short stories and Broadway plays wrote, especially knowing that she was the victim of frightening anti-Semitism in her childhood. And if you ever find a copy of Great Son, a quick read, I think you'll like it too.

 

 

Edna Ferber

August 15, 1885 - April 16, 1968

 

 

Beach Read, Matriarchs, and Cheez-Its

Summer House by Nancy Thayer (2009)

Unlike most beach read paperbacks that I donate when through reading them, this old book is one I've kept. 

It was a pleasant read one night recently when I could only handle a beach read kind of book. I've also held onto another of Thayer's very early books, 1981's Three Women at the Water's Edge that was beautifully layered, about two sisters and their mother as their lives change dramatically. 

In Summer House, the family gathers at their Nantucket home to celebrate Nona's 90th birthday. I love summer books that take place on Nantucket and on Cape Cod, even more than beach reads of the Lowcountry authors of South Carolina, although I've read and enjoyed many of them in years past. 

Rather than talk about the multi-layered family generations in Summer House, I'll only focus on Nona who I connected with when reading this.

Something rather strange had been happening to Nona over the past few years, and it worried her...The older she grew, the more she seemed to love people in general.

I find that to be so true of myself, especially before this cursed Pandemic was unleashed upon the world. I had to watch myself when out in public--now a thing of the past. I would see children with their parents in stores and want so badly to talk to them. 

But I didn't want to be the weird old lady smiling like a lovesick goose at all of them and gushing, "Oh, they're so cute! Y'all are so lucky and I hope you know these are some of the best years of your life!"

I never did for fear of the parents suddenly moving their children away from the crazy lady. But it wasn't just the children. I had the notion that people were pretty wonderful, even with their quirks and idiosyncrasies, ordinary people who just wanted the best for their loved ones.

I am drawn to a matriarch like Nona in Summer House, but then I'm particularly drawn to books where there is at least one grand dame, an older woman with a certain amount of sass and independent spirit. Even when caregivers are necessary.

And if I reach Nona's age, I hope I will have someone as kind as Nona's caregiver, Glorious. She understands that sometimes older people don't necessarily need a balanced meal, they just need something to tempt their appetite.

While Nona's daughter who is visiting there is now set on mothering her aging mother, pushing healthy meals on her, it is Glorious who adds "a china bowl filled with Cheez-Its" to the tray. "About all Mrs. Nona will eat in the morning."

Before her 90th birthday party, when Nona's daughter-in-law suggests a pot of tea and a cheese sandwich for her, thinking it will be late in the party before she will be able to eat supper, Nona counters with, "How about a nice big Scotch and some Cheez-Its. I'm old. They settle my stomach."

 Cheez-It's are verboten in our house now, an item I can't resist. When I called RH to ask him to pick up some Cheez-It's on the way home so I could use them in my pictures, he mistakenly brought home Cheetos, a product that is even more verboten! 

The next day he brought home original Cheez-It's, as I did not think Nona would want the hot and spicy ones, and at last my pictures were taken.

Isn't the little crab dish holding them cute? 

And even though I would prefer a ginger ale with my Cheez-It's if my stomach is queasy, who knows, if I'm Nona's age someday I might just want a Scotch. 

The other books shown above are old Cape Cod books that I hope to review in a post at Dewena's Window soon. What about you, dear reader, what kind of book is gentle on your mind during these days of a hopefully never to be repeated Summer of blasted Pandemic? And would you tell me what snack is verboten around your house now?

Note: after reading Melanie's comment below, I realized I didn't clarify my question about your own verboten foods. I'm curious about what food do you not dare bring home because you know you can't resist it. And if you say that you have perfect self-control and willpower over every tempting food, then I have to say that I admire you but I doubt we could be friends!  😀


 




  

An Eternal Optimist Struggles

In Jan Karon's In This Mountain, Timothy's first bishop tells him...

"Timothy, stop this nonsense of preparing

for the worst 

and spend your time preparing for the best!"

Like Timothy, I am "seldom able to follow it" but as an eternal optimist I believe in its wisdom.  

I wonder, if In This Mountain took place during a Pandemic, would Timothy have had a chance in Halifax? 

On a beautiful July morning I can almost forget there is danger lurking. How could such a normal summer morning hold anything other than good things? 

And then I turn on the news and it all comes back, the danger that is obviously lurking everywhere. I turn off the news and get busy with my day to keep the monster of worry at bay.

As long as I lose myself in what is around me, meals to prepare, laundry to be done, pets to take care of, watching a movie with RH that we both enjoy (there are some!), reading a good take-to-bed book at night, I can honestly say that life is good in my little pocket of the world--if my big family are all okay, that's a given requirement, but then it always has been.

There still come those 2 a.m. thoughts occasionally--you know, those thoughts that overwhelm the mind like the Dementors in Harry Potter that suck every good thing from your mind. A few Bible verses quoted at them usually makes them vanish.

And now while I've been writing this post here I've received texts from a daughter-in-law giving me lots of encouragement and healthy advice. I'm making a list and checking it twice! And you know what holiday that makes me think of. 

I'm going to take the bishop's advice and prepare for the best but also use common sense and try to prevent the worse, as much as I am capable of doing. 

When I sat down to compose this post I was going to stop with Halifax. The rest just kind of came from nowhere so please forgive me for any incoherent ramblings.

I wonder if I have struck any chords with you? Am I the only one with these thoughts on a beautiful July day?

  

Nelia Gardner White's The Merry Month of May

Whew! I'm barely squeezing this book review in before May ends. 

On the flyleaf of Nelia Gardner White's The Merry Month of May published in 1952, I wrote the following many years ago:

This book is the heart of women, or at least it's me. Scary how much it is me. Are many women thinking these same things? I thought I was alone but now know I'm not as odd (as I thought). 

Nelia Gardner White is my favorite woman United States writer of the 1940s and 50s. The Merry Month of May is actually three short novels, the first and last one hauntingly beautiful and masterfully written in the piercing and sometimes acerbic manner that White does so well without being the least depressing. 

The first novel in it, The Doctor's Wife, stunned me because I identified so completely with the main character that I realized for the first time that there were other women like me, had to be. Maybe sometime I'll find enough courage to review that novel, but today I'm writing about the novel the book takes its name from, The Merry Month of May.

I felt such compassion for Ann Bogan in this novel. Her days are spent trying to keep a nice house for her family, her penniless but brilliant artist husband Mort whose few paintings rarely sell, and her young adult daughter Hitty who is falling in love with a man not worthy of her--in her mother's eyes. 


Ann also takes care almost single-handedly of her bedridden father-in-law Hillary, an irascible and irreverent man who seems to delight in making her thankless job impossible. Ann has good intentions every morning not to let the old man ruin her day. 

One morning when she has finished changing his sheets and given him his breakfast on a tray while enduring his taunts, she escapes outside to take down the storm windows on a spring day when the sun finally shines. 

She came to the old man's bedroom...At the bottom of the storm windows were little round holes, three to a window, to let in air. She bent and peered through one, straight into the old man's good eye.

"Peekaboo!" she said.

It was a triumph of nonsense, of spring. The astonishment in Hilary Bogan's eye stayed with her all morning, making laughter run around under her skin, making the job of lugging the widows to the barn nothing at all, making everything shimmer with light, making her strong as a lion. Why, he was just a sick old man, just a sick old man--you couldn't think of him as accountable. Lots of women had to wash sheets and carry trays.

Ann desperately wants to be a better housekeeper, desperately wants to bring beauty into her house. Not that her artist husband would notice, lost in the imagination of his mind and his current large painting, never really present when in the middle of a painting.

He would be drunk on light, drunk at this hour of the morning..."If I knew how, I might get drunk on housekeeping," Ann said. "Some women know how."

That article--she had torn it into small bits, so angry that she was cold. It was all about women being the great artistic solvent that made humdrum tasks beautiful. Tripe. Pap to keep women contented with their lot.

Ann badly wants to be close to her daughter Hitty, as close as they had been when Hitty was a child. What had gone wrong? Only that morning Hitty had been cheerful but she couldn't respond in kind.

She heard Hitty moving about in her room above. She felt far away from Hitty, though a fraction less than yesterday. "I was horrible to you in the rain," she said to the sound of Hitty. "You wouldn't gray down to match. I'm as bad as Mort."

She wore raspberry-colored sweaters, tied ribbons around her hair, called out "Hi, Gramp!" as if she loved the hideous old man.

But Spring was here and again Ann determins to be better, even to once again invite a friend to supper as used to be her habit in days long past, to do her part to mend the strained relationship with her husband.

So she moved about the house, through birdsong and sun, through clean air, planning to rake away the leaves, fix the wire on which the wren house hung crookedly, planning to be sparing on eggs for a little and buy Hitty a really good round-necked blouse, planning to ask Mort about his pictures, to let him talk and talk till he was dry of talk instead of turning from him coldly when he started off, planning supper for Keturah Crumb, supper with candles and the best yellow mats and yellow sprigged dishes and Mort being lively and full of laughter as in the days before the old man had his stroke and fastened himself on them like a limpet. 

This novel is not a Pollyanna story and Ann struggles to the end, but Spring does bring new hope and better communication in the family. Ann even learns more about her father-in-law's story that brings some compassion towards him.

The end of the book is just right for this story.

She put the flowers into a bowl, walked with it through the rooms to that room, set the bowl down. "Hi," she said, "isn't it a wonderful morning?"

"What's wonderful about it?" said Hilary Bogan. 

Our merry month of May during the time of Pandemic ends soon. There have been good days and not-so-good days but they were all days--and I think that is a thought that has come to me from all the years I've read dear Gladys Taber's books. I still want to be Gladys when I grow up and hope to always let her mentor me. 

So I will remember the good things about May and the end of winter and give you a picture from yesterday when the sky here was as glorious as a van Gogh painting. 

Best wishes and a happy weekend from our house to yours,
Dewena

View from Our Front Porch

 

 

 

 

May Is Galloping By

And I don't want it to!

I never do since May is a favorite month but even more so now when time has taken on new importance.

The calendar above is one my daughter Christy has given me for years, its easel refilled for the coming year as an annual Christmas gift. It is by Karen Adams and each month is an artistic jewel.

This month a white mouse is the jockey on a happy dog, standing in, I think, for the Kentucky Derby in May. 

Postponed: the race, the hats, mint juleps, My Old Kentucky Home.

Later on in my pretty calendar there is an illustration featuring the Olympics.

Postponed 

Just as so many other events are being postponed or greatly altered. Mother's Day dinners...

 Beautiful flowers and cards still came...

 And even a lovely and careful visit. 

But as I turn to other months in the calendar I see a month of mermaids, newly sharpened pencils, jack-o'-lanterns...

And so 2020 speeds by.

Do I want it to? In hopes that better news is ahead?

Or am I afraid for it to? 

Regardless, each month has a way of galloping by. 

What do I do with it, the time that is ahead in this month, in June, July, August?

Surely it ought to be different than it was in 2019... or 1961.

I can't just kill time until a better day comes. 

Whenever I hear people say "This will help pass the time away," I wonder at them. We all have just so much time and just "passing it away" is rather like throwing jewels down a well.

Gladys Taber

The Stillmeadow Road

What jewels will I not throw down the well, even in the months of a pandemic? And I confess I threw hours down mindlessly during the first fearful weeks.

Dear friends who visit here, what jewels are the most important to you now? Have they changed since our world slowed down (or is it speeding up)?

Are you anything like me, full of vim and vigor and determination one day, fed up to the ears another, bursting out sobbing when you least expect it? 

Do you ever get tired of hearing "we're all in this together"? Has it ceased to be comforting? Are you mad or sad or both, all within 20 minutes? 

That's all of my venting. I think.  

 

Exit Driveway; Turn Right

Does anyone take Sunday drives anymore?

I was a part of the generation that grew up taking Sunday afternoon drives. First church then home for either a fried chicken or roast beef Sunday dinner. Dishes done and Sunday paper read and maybe a short nap in their chairs for our parents, then there was often time for a drive.

Drives through the country were a big part of RH and my marriage--even when we moved to the country in 1990. And we explored the surrounding country roads when we moved here three years ago.

But we had never turned Right out our driveway since we moved here. Always it has been Left turn, towards the small suburb outside Nashville where we do all our shopping. 

After I had stayed home the first month of this time of pandemic, only taking walks around our 2 1/2 acres and down to the pond, I was desperate to Go somewhere and asked RH to turn Right out of our driveway to see some of our neighbors' houses.

Want to go along with us? Hop in the backseat!

Here are our neighbors.

Pretty soon we come to a house that catches my notice.

If you know me, you know that I love Red!
And I love quirkiness. This house has both and I feel they surely must be kindred spirits. Even their garage is red.

 
We're seeing many horse and cattle farms and lots of fencing on our long road.

 But it is always the touches of Red that I snap pictures of. 

Slow Down, RH!

 I would love to stop and visit these neighbors. Should we knock on the door?

Better not, they might be napping.

We have miles like this between houses so we are surely in the country now.

I always wanted donkeys but could never talk RH into them or llamas or sheep or the Toggenburg goats I badly wanted. Now that goat cheese is the only cheese he can eat, maybe he should have listened to me.

We're seeing miles and miles of fencing.

Aha! Now we know where our train sounds come from at night when we have windows open. Don't you love the sound of a 🚆 at night?

Another cattle farm. Black Angus?

Now our road circles around to the tiny hamlet near us, high in the hills, where Nashvillians built summer homes at the turn of the 20th century. We'll save that little village for another day and continue our drive on a country road that I often take when I'm coming home from shopping (in pre-Corona days) to avoid traffic on the state highway. 

This house is much older than it's style looks.

I dearly love this style of flat log house and the pale gray color with white.

Here's a rounded log cabin and more power to them if they still want Santa Claus and Frosty on their front porch. Maybe there's a story there, as Dolly Parton's character said in Steel Magnolias; I hope it's not a sad one.

 Okay, I have to show you a stone post that I would absolutely love to have in our yard. Don't you love this?

 
 Here's a nice old farmhouse that's been fixed up but it's the other building in their yard that I want to show you.

 
 How would you like to have your own personal Country Store? If we see someone out in the yard we should ask them if it's open to the public.

 
 Want to see where RH and I vote? It's in this sweet little country ⛪!

Now we have to pull back out on on the state highway our road runs off of. I wrote here about our new neighbor across the street from us who lives high on a hill in this gated neighborhood. 

 
It's much more charming than these first ones built, I think. 

This next one is way too imposing for our neck of the woods.

 I mean, do 50 people live there?

We turn Left by it onto our street and soon are home again, to where two people and two dachshunds fit very comfortably in a 1935 cottage that was the farmhouse for what was once only farmland.

 Our drive through the country did me so much good. I hope you enjoyed riding in the back seat!

When was the last time you took a Sunday afternoon drive?