The Silver Spoon

This is another piece inspired by family and a very special place that they have kept going for four generations. 

The Silver Spoon

Anna Rohaly

    I am sitting in a sandbox with my baby cousin. All but a cornerstone is gone of that little white farm house. For over a decade, my grandfather Bill has promised us grandchildren a quarter for each piece of glass we find in the yard and throw in the trash can for him. The farms looks tremendously different. The house has been replaced by a mobile home, the woods are taller, and my great-grandparents no longer sit on the lawn and enjoy the family. Instead they lie beneath the ground resting in peaceful death. Yes, a lot has changed.

I dig my hands into the sandbox. Pamela and I are building a sandcastle. She is building the towers, I am digging the moat. As my hand slips through the finely ground stone, I hit something smooth and straight. I veer the moat to find the end of my new found treasure. Through the warm sand I see a peek of blue gray. Metal. Pushing more sand aside, I find a silver spoon, tarnished and worn from years underground.

     The silver spoon once belonged to my great grandmother Julia. It had sat in the drawer of her ever bustling and warm kitchen, reflecting her image each time she pulled out the shining silverware for dinner. As Julia grew older, she and her husband Joe spent less time at the farm house, opting instead to spend their time in the city where neighbors were close by. The silver soup spoon was only taken out and eaten with when the whole family gathered on the farm for a cookout or when the white haired Hungarian couple sat down to a quiet dinner before a long drive back to the city. Because Julia and Joe preferred life in Chicago to life on the farm, they both missed out on one of the most exciting days on the farm. The silver spoon was there for it all.

     On June 19, 1991 no one was on the farm. The sky outside the little windows, trimmed with black, was swirling gray and stormy. The rain came down in gentle waves at first but soon grew into sheets of water pummeling the small trees that covered the farm's overgrown ground. Lighting split the sky from end to end and the thunder rattled the loose metal latch on the screen door. Out on the porch, the wood was slick from rain and the noise was almost deafening as the water drummed on the roof and broke through the screen to ping against the metal cans of gasoline sitting by the wall. The lightning struck in the distance. The storm was not even close yet.

     The trees that grew on the old fence row were taller then the others and as the wind hurtled through they bent and shuddered. The ferocity of the rain and wind snapped branches which fell to the ground, edges sharp and bleeding out sap. Mixing with the rain, the sap fell to the ground unnoticed. The lightning struck again, closer.

    Through the eves of the little house, the wind moaned. The lilac bushes, preparing to blossom around the house, shook. They scrapped against the closed windows which from the inside of the house looked like stained glass under the streaming rain. Everything inside sat as if holding its breath, waiting for the storm to pass, waiting for the silence. Instead another bolt of lighting crackled, right outside.

This bolt of lightning was not just splitting the sky, it was splitting a tree in the fence line. The tree, a once strong and powerful oak, splintered and lost one of its largest branches. The branch fell from the tree, twisting through the air until it met not the ground, but the power line which ran up to Julia's little farm house. Meeting the line, there was a moments pause in the decent of the branch. It was like the calm before a storm. The calm ended with a hiss as the wire pulled loose from the pole attached to the little farm house. The branch plummeted straight down to earth and the wire followed, spraying a shower of sparks. The wire caught on the roof of the porch.

    The sparks continued to pour from the wire and as they met the rain, they sizzled and steamed. Within minutes, the roof was flickering with flames. The rain continued and smoke rose in thick clouds as the fire began to dance across and through the roof, eating any dry wood, shingles, and insulation it could find through the sodden surface. A beam of wood cracked under the attack of the fire and fell to the slick porch below. The heat of the fire fell with it and caught onto the dry wooden rockers, the small stand that held Joe's cigars and Julia's cup of coffee. It snaked across the floor and licked wickedly at the base of the tin cans which lined the wall.

    Had the house been alive, like in ghostly stories of haunted buildings, the little house would have screamed. But the little house, filled with Julia's crochet afghans, her silver spoons, and her happy memories, sat silently as the tins of gasoline ignited.

    The explosion ripped through Julia and Joe's little white farm house, trimmed in black, twisting the grand-kids' metal bunk beds, shattering the glass in the windows, and destroying their once happy home.   Glass from bottles, jars, plates, and cups flew like bullets from the house, landing in the woods over one hundred yards away. The silver spoon hit a wall, burst through the shattering house, landed twenty yards away.

    If the neighbors down the road had thought the thunder was loud, the explosion deafened them. Through the woods they could see the fireball, consuming the splintered structure of Julia and Joe's house. They called 911, but it was too late. The house was gone, all those memories, gone.

    Standing up from my seat in the sandbox, I wipe the gritty sand from the spoon's handle. It was once badly bent, as though a shovel had been sent through the dirt and hit the stem of the spoon, bending it nearly in half. I bend it back into shape. There is still a kink in the metal, but it is as spoon-like as it might once have been, sitting snugly in a drawer in my grandmother's ever bustling and warm little kitchen. No longer shiny, it still reflects her love of that kitchen, of that house where she survived the Great Depression, where she raised her children, and fed her husband dinner each night. Maybe he once ate off of this same silver spoon. Either way, the house is gone. However, maybe the memories have not yet turned to ash. Maybe they just need to be dug up.

    The idea comes quickly. I abandon the sand box and my cousin and head for the mobile home. I cross the big wooden porch to the screen door and let it slam shut behind me. Turning left I head across the ugly blue shag carpeting to the first bedroom and, entering, open the closet door.

My younger brother is in an amazing Boy Scout troop and after selling an ungodly amount of popcorn for the troop, he was awarded a metal detector. It is now in the closet of this small room, kept company only by an osculating fan and bunk beds. I open the box.

    I pull out the long, narrow piece of equipment. Holding the handle, I turn on the small screen that sticks away from the base of the pole that attaches the handle to the circular piece at the bottom. I have never used this before but figure it can not be too hard to figure out. I drag it out to the dining room and lie it on the shag carpeting.

    Crossing to the other side of the room, I open a small wooden cupboard and pull out some small flags that look like the ones used to mark buried gas mains or electrical lines. These will be my markers for anything I find. Picking up the metal detector, I head out to the remains of the old barn.

    The old barn had stood about seventy yards from the house. Long before the house was blown to bits, the barn started to lean. Julia was so nervous about the leaning walls and her grandchildren playing in the building, that she pestered Joe to tear it down. They burned it to the ground and now only the stone foundation remains, half buried in sandy earth.

    I turn on the metal detector and begin to sweep it across the ground, hitting the stems of the small yellow flowers, which makes a swishing noise. The noise is mingled with the static and occasional beeping of the metal detector. It is a noisy process. Soon my mom and aunt wander over, carrying little Pamela who had gotten sick of the sand box. They watch as I sweep the corners of the old barn. The beeping of the detector picks up and turns into a solid beep when I get about three feet from the corner. I mark the spot with a flag and keep moving. Another solid tone. Another flag. Within a short time, I have nearly a dozen flags planted.

Turning off the metal detector, I go to find a shovel and a bucket. My aunt and mom disappear and come back with my dad and uncle, who arrive with more shovels. Together, we all begin to take turns to dig up the buried treasures of the farm. The memories. I find a horse shoe from Old Nelly, Joe's plow horse, I find a plowshare. Dad finds the end of a hoe and a hammer head. Uncle Kevin digs up a screw driver and some nails. All of these objects are put in the bucket. Mom and Aunt Linda take them into the mobile home and wash them off.

    An hour later, when we are done shifting sand, we call my grandfather, Bill. I call him Opa. Opa listens to the list of items we have found. Each one conjures up a memory from the way the farm used to be. The time Julia had hacked off the head of a snake that had entered her garden with the metal hoe. The time he and Joe had climbed to the roof of the barn to fix some leaks and watched as a wall of rain covered the hot sunny day. Helping his father plow the fields and plant the acres of crops. The chores he had done, the jobs he had worked. All the memories came back, were shared, savored. We had literally dug up the memories of this place and hearing them come spilling from my Opa, showed me that I had been right. The memories were still here even if they were buried.

The Storks of Vendegi: 1911

This weeks post is another one written for my fiction class. It was inspired by my grandfather and some of the stories he had of growing up and the traditions of his Hungarian heritage. 

The Storks of Vendegi: 1911

By Anna Rohaly

“Joseph!” I turned to see my Apa hastily walking towards me. I thought I was in trouble until I saw his face. He looked worried with his wild, bushy eyebrows furrowed and his mouth turned down slightly.

“The storks, the golyak, are coming today with the new baby for your Anya and me,” He knelt down in front of me so that I could look into his fierce blue Hungarian eyes. “Can I trust you to do a very important job, Joseph?” He was very serious and I nodded quickly to show him that as his son I could be trusted even if I was only five. 

“I need you to get your older sister Anya and go to the river and watch for the golyak flying to our house with the baby,” He patted my head with his rough, calloused hand. “I am counting on you Joseph. Now, go get Anya!”

I nodded and ran to find my sister in the big field behind our house. Our house is shaped like the big letter “L” and is on the outskirts of Vendegi Hungary. It is close to the border of Slovakia and whenever my Apa and his friends talk, I hear them talking about the borders changing. I do not know what that means, but they say if there is ever a war that we might turn into Slovaks, or Szlovákok. 

I see Anya, silhouetted by the big purple mountains that surround our Hungarian valley. Her hands are full of flowers and she is singing softly to herself. Impatient, I ran to her.

“Anya!” I yelled, “The golyak are bringing the baby! Papa needs us to go down to the river and watch for them!”

Grabbing my hand, Anya begins to skip with me to where the river flows out from Vendegi's little street. Vendegi only has one street, which splits in the middle of the town for the old church with its giant white steeple. I always think that the steeple looks like the lances of old knights. Anya says though, that I should not think like that about God's house or a snake will come and catch me and take me away. I still think it looks like a lance though.

Anya points to the bank before us, lined sparingly with big trees to climb. Together we sit in the shade of one of the trees, playing with the grass. Anya makes a crown of flowers for our Anya and tries to get me to help her. That is a girl's game and soon I retreat to the banks to find rocks.

Soon I am throwing rocks into the sparkly waters and listening to the loud spah-lunk as my big rocks hit the surface. Clenching my hands into fists, I jump up and down laughing before scrambling over to another portion of the creeks bed for more rocks.

“Joseph, have you checked the sky?” Anya would call to me, sitting on the bank still decked in more and more flowers. I would turn to face the north mountains and stare into the brilliant blue sky. Nothing. Swiveling around I'd face the west mountains and glare into the bright sunshine. No golyak. No storks. I looked the south mountains and then the eastern mountains. Still no golyak.

So our day passed, me throwing rocks and splashing in the shallow waters of the creek and my sister weaving flowers, only pausing only to drink from the stream. The sun began to set and the yellow sun turned orange and made all of the grassy fields and tree leaves and mountain tops look as if someone had turned them into gold. I began to grow tired of throwing rocks and watching for the golyak as the stars began to shine and the moon peeked over the mountains.

I yawned and as I did, I heard a faint shout. Apa was calling to us.

“Joseph! Anya! Come home!” He yelled, “You did not see the golyak in the dark and your sister Maria is here! Come home!”

Anya and I stare at each other. We had missed the golyak! Together we ran again through the tall grasses to our house at the edge of Vendegi to find our new little brother Ferenc.

Years later, I hear the midwife coming up the stairs to help my own wife, Julia. As she passes, I catch sight of my son, Willy out in the front yard playing with a stick. He plays by himself, now that his older brother has died. My wife cries out from our bedroom and Willy's head looks towards the house. Walking out across the porch I go and kneel down next to him.

“Hey Willy,” He looks up at me with his big blue Hungarian eyes. “Can I trust you to do a very important job?”

Bat Man

My sophomore year of college, I took a fiction class and it has been one of the best classes of my student career. The following story is one of the pieces that I wrote in that class. It needs some work and is something I intend to edit again this year. Until then, I hope you enjoy the original!

Bat Man
By Anna Rohaly

I find I have an unusual hunger these days for bats. Stranded and alone, trapped on an island in the middle of the Pacific, I lived in a cave surrounded by the little creatures. When the turf was too rough to catch fish, I was often forced to hunt my little winged roommates. During the day they simply clung to the top of our short cave. I could catch the little bats by stunning them with light and then just plucking them off of the wall. After taking them down I would kill them, then tear their wings off and cook them over my fire for dinner. When I ate them then, I always found them leathery and chewy but now I am craving them. I will just have to go for a late afternoon walk and see if I can find any.

Leaving my house, I wander down the cement streets and past the pastel colored houses. It seems strange after living alone on that island for almost eight years to come back and see that people do exist. I know that my neighbors think I am strange. I don't like talking to people. On the island I talked and no one replied and I fell out of the rhythm of conversations. My therapist wants me to help organize a block party. I on the other hand want to blow up the block party and live alone again, so you can see that we have different ideas of how my therapy should be going. 

 

The houses are beginning to spread out now and there are more trees and grass between them. I wish I had lived out in the country before leaving for that fishing trip. I could have returned and lived in isolation instead of here, surrounded by noisy people. There are moments when I almost remember the noise, where I almost enjoy it again. On the island there were times that the absence of people's voices and noises grew so overwhelming that I would scream for hours, and covering my ears would lie curled up in a ball on the sand. I feel torn between two worlds now. 

 

I see an abandoned house sitting back in the woods away from the road. Ivy grows up the walls, covers the chimney, and in some places grows over the clouded windows. I hear a small screeching sound that is more familiar then any person's voice. The cry of a bat is hard to mistake for a voice and though people think I am insane, I find the sound comforting. 

 

I veer off of the road towards this source of comfort. Moss softens my footsteps and covers the small path that used to be a driveway. Reaching the house, I cross the rotting wooden porch, passing old rusting lawn chairs and a red wagon. A No Trespassing sign hangs in the window but I walk past it, ignoring orange and black and the little letters next to the door spelling out Robertson. I pull the door open. The lock has been unturned for so long that between the rotten door frame and the rusting bolt one small tug was all it took for the door to swing out on its hinges. I walk into the old home. 

 

It used to be lovely and in a very different way it still is. The tiled floors inside were protected from the rain and so they remain sturdy even though they are covered with dust and bat feces. The family had moved out in a hurry. Furniture is still in the rooms, some of it toppled over, some of it covered in cobwebbed sheets. I walk into the kitchen and find a wood stove, a white and red metal table, and an old fashion sink. The stained glass window over the sink is a dusty, muted green and gold. I turn the handle on the sink and watched as well water gushes out a brownish green from the faucet. 

 

The bats cry from somewhere else in the house. Leaving the kitchen, I cross the floor and walk into the living room. The couch is toppled backwards and a mouse peeks out at me from under the stripped cushions. I walk over to the chimney where the faint bat screeches were coming from. There are even pictures left behind on the mantel. An old woman smiling and holding two little kids, a beautiful young woman holding an infant, and man standing next to that young woman at the alter. Everyone smiling, everyone happy. What had happened?

I may not know what happened here but in this house I can see my own life mirrored back at me. I could almost swear that it is my own face staring back at me from those pictures. Some tragedy had struck this lovely family in this little home, a tragedy so terrible that they had been driven away by the force of those memories. Perhaps one of the children had died and they had moved away to escape all reminders of her. The young woman may have been diagnosed with cancer and the family had payed for her treatments until they had lost everything including her. Maybe the father's company had been accused of fraud and they had been left with no money after the court battles. Or maybe he too had been washed away at sea and instead of swimming to an island had been lost among the waves. What ever had happened, I felt tied to this house somehow, as though the house had been abandoned and isolated just as I had been. 

 

Tearing my eyes away from the pictures, I move the fire poker and shovel away from the wall and sit down next to the fireplace. Putting my head in my hands I allow the overwhelming feelings I've been shoving down to come out in long sobs as I listen to the soft calls of the bats. Every emotion, every second of overwhelming presence crashes down on me so that when I leave the house later with only one bat in a bag, I can barely walk.

After that first trip to the abandoned house, I began to go there more frequently. Each time after that, I took some cleaning supplies with me. I swept, mopped, and replaced the rotting wood. I sanded and fixed the plumbing so that the water ran clear. Weeds were pulled, the ivy was trimmed, and paint was bought for the trim work. The better the house the began to look, the less abandoned, the better I began to feel. The one change that I did not make however, was to chase out the bats. I let them continue living in the chimney. They always did make good roommates.

A month after I was done with the major renovations and fixings within the house, I went to the bank and bought the home for the price they had set after first evaluating the building. I convinced them not to go out for a second look. Driving my car back to the little house alone in the woods, I noticed one last change I needed to make. I went out to the edge of the road and put out a mailbox. My name, Tom Roberts, is engraved on the side. Like a life raft, the mailbox would secure me to humanity while the house will keep me from their insanity. I felt myself smile a real smile that day for the first time since I was brought home. I have found my place in the world.