Wild Flowers In A Mason Jar
January of ’55 we rode a Greyhound bus through the Georgia midnight
Grandpa was sleeping and the winter sky was clear
We hit a bump and his head jerked back a little and he mumbled something
He woke up smiling, but his eyes were bright with tears
He said I dreamed I was back on the farm
Twenty years, boy, and the memory still warms me.
Yes. Yes, it does. Of course, my memory isn’t of a one room cabin in Kentucky, like the memory of the grandfather in John Denver’s song. No. Mine is of a big, rambling old house on a small town side street, a house that was, as a kid, the center of my world, and, as a preschooler, just about my entire world.
It was the only place I’d ever known as “home”, as I’d been only two years old when we moved in, my memories of living at the house I’d come home from the hospital to live in non-existent. And, in those days before school, what a world it was!
There was a big yard with a huge pear tree that created too much shade for grass to grow in nice-sized area beneath it. The result? Dirt. And, as preschoolers, what could be better than dirt to play in. Once, when I was four or five, I’d told Dad that it was fortunate he’d decided to buy “our” house, since it had such a big “dirt pile”. He smiled and said, jokingly, though, as a four-or-five year old, I had no idea he was joking, “That’s why I bought it. Because it had a big dirt pile.”
But, it wasn’t just the dirt. There was plenty of grass, several trees, and sidewalks to ride our tricycles on. Oh, it was awesome, and we spent as much time out in that fenced in yard as we could. But, this being Western PA, there were lots of times when being outside wasn’t possible. But, that was OK. Because, there was room inside, too.
Not plenty of room, mind. Because, to paraphrase Mom, we were always “running around like wild animals”. But, there was room. Not so much on the second floor, which was made up of three rooms and a bath built out of the old attic, but on the main floor.
The rooms were big and airy. The kitchen was huge with plenty of room to do some serious playing and “running around”. Now, often efforts to do so were cut short by Mom, who, you know, was out there doing productive things like cooking meals and didn’t need us underfoot, especially when, as usual, “running around” was a big part of whatever we were playing. But, at times, if we were doing more sedentary activities, like playing a game or doing a puzzle or playing with “army men”, then Mom would allow us to sit on the floor while she did whatever needed done in the kitchen.
Our rooms, of course, were where we played the most, and, by the time we’d started school, those were on the first floor on the opposite side of the house as the kitchen. Both rooms were big, and mine was set up perfectly for “wild animal running”, with the bed nestled in a corner and a ton of wide empty floor between the door leading into La Soeur’s room and the one leading into what we called the “sun porch”, a small closed in porch that would later be used, mostly, as a closet.
All that space was prime for running, so prime that, eventually, I set up Nerf basketball hoops above the doors and was known to “run around like a crazy person” playing one-on-none basketball on a winter day. But, as often as our rooms were used for running around, they were used for that more sedentary play we sometimes did in the kitchen.
The fourth room on the first floor was the living room, and it was huge, so big that, in later years, there were seasonal set ups. Usually, the big sofa sat against the north wall with a chair on east wall and a love seat on the west wall. The TV sat in front of the sofa on the south wall, leaving the walkway in front of the sofa. But, in the winter months, Mom would move the sofa off the wall and closer to the center of the room and get the love seat off its wall and place it next to the sofa. For the winter, the walkway was behind the sofa. (The moving back of the sofa and love seat and the disappearance of the ever-present afghans we used to cover up while watching TV in the winter were sure signs that the warmer weather had arrived.)
But, no matter the configuration, there was lots of room in the living room, and, we spent more waking time there than in any other room of the house, including our respective bedrooms, and not just because the TV was there. The living room could also be used for that sedentary play and, briefly for “wild animal running”…but only briefly, before Mom would tell us to “settle down” or “go play in your rooms”. Sometimes, we did the former, especially if the “running” was happening during a commercial while we were watching one of “our” shows. Fearing being “banished from the living room” (a Dad phrase…and, of course, as little kids, we had no idea what “banished” meant, but we did know that being banished would get in the way of our TV watching), we’d settle down and watch…usually until the next commercial break. So, add the playing and the TV, and, yes. The living room was where we did the most “living”.
The fifth room on the first floor would later be called “The Front Room”. Initially the ‘rents’ bedroom, it eventually became like a second living room when La Souer and I moved to upstairs bedrooms and the ‘rents moved into La Soeur’s old room. The best feature was a huge picture window Dad had put in when he had several rooms remodeled. There was plenty of space in “The Front Room”, but, by the time it became “The Front Room”, we’d just about left elementary school and weren’t doing any “animal running” in the house anymore. Even without a TV or the need to run, however, that room got plenty of use.
When La Soeur and I moved upstairs, the ‘rents sold the move to smaller rooms as “having the whole upstairs to yourselves”. And, as we were approaching our teen years, well. We were buying. Besides, being beyond the “running in the house” phase, we didn’t need as much room. We each had a bedroom to do quiet stuff like read and the third upstairs room, the largest, was turned into a sort of family room for the two of us, complete with a small black and white TV and the huge sleeper sofa we discussed in an earlier missive. Even the bathroom was ours, as the ‘rents and the ‘bro used the one in the basement. (Yeah, we’re getting there.) There weren’t a lot of drawbacks to having, basically, our own space in our home space, but cleaning was one of them.
We’ve discussed before that, when we got old enough, say, six or seven, to straighten up our respective rooms, doing so became our respective jobs. Mom did the heavy stuff, but we needed to pick up our own toys and put our other things in their place. In my case, this took about 15 minutes. In La Soeur’s case, it took…a backhoe. But, I digress. Cleaning.
When we moved upstairs, the ‘rents explained that we were old enough to clean up our own rooms now, and that we’d also have the rest of the upstairs as our responsibility. So, yeah, we’d need to sweep the hall, clean the bathroom, and clean the family room. Guess how this went? Exactly the same as things had gone downstairs.
In case you’ve missed that little entry, this is what happened every single week. Mom would tell us to clean our rooms. I’d get started and be done quickly and then be cajoled into helping La Soeur use the backhoe. Well. Upstairs, my room, the hall and the bathroom were my job. La Soeur had her room and the family room. I’d knock my room out, again, in fifteen, sweep the hall, and go in and start scrubbing the tub, sink and toilet. When that was done, I’d be ready to enjoy the rest of my Saturday, only to hear La Soeur shout from the family room, “If you’re done…” Yeah. Come operate the backhoe. It was enough to make me want to go hide in the basement. Not a bad segue, right?
The basement was huge, so big that it was broken into several big rooms. At the bottom of the steps, you faced a big door. Open that and it led to what we called “The Dirt Floor Cellar”. Because, unlike the rest of the basement, this particular room had, yeah, a dirt floor. It also had a full wall of shelving that Dad used to store all sorts of things. And, it was one of the few rooms of the house we never played in, because, you know, dirt floor, and we found enough ways to get dirty. To your left at the bottom of those stairs was a long hall.
Head down that and, on your left, you’d pass a nice-sized alcove in which the ‘rents kept a steamer trunk. Years after I noticed the afghans disappearing every year when the weather got warmer, I found out where they went. Yeah. Into that steamer trunk where Mom kept all sorts of blankets and such. Keep walking and, to your right, you’d find another door, this one leading down a step into a room that, initially, had a wood floor. It also had a set of stairs that led…nowhere. (I told you this place was old and rambling…)
Of course, the stairs, which ended at the ceiling of the room, had once led somewhere. We got varying explanations from the ‘rents as to where that would have been, but, from the location, I deduced they had once gone to the bottom of the stairs that led from the first floor to the second. But, despite the fact that, by the time we moved in, they led nowhere, we still played on them and loved climbing to the top and sitting with our backs against the ceiling. The steps and the wood floor eventually went, however, as the latter was getting soft and dangerous. So, Dad had the whole thing pulled out and replaced with concrete. Mom then installed a chest freezer that she used to keep extras of just about everything you could freeze.
The room with the chest freezer had a door that led outside. It also had the all-important shutoff valve for the hose we mentioned in a previous missive. But, there was a second door in the basement leading to the outside. It was right at the end of that hall, and, when you reached the end, if you looked left, well, there was the full bath. But, that wasn’t all there was to the basement.
Turn right at the bottom of those steps and you’d enter the biggest of all the rooms, what we called “The Furnace Cellar”, because, yeah, it had the furnace in it. It also had kitchen cabinets in it. Because, when we’d been very small, the kitchen didn’t have built in cabinets. It had movable units that Mom had painted green. She’d also covered the counter surfaces and the doors with contact paper with a green and white pattern. And, when Uncle Bud returned from Vietnam, he took one look at them and said, “Christ, Mary Ann, those remind me of camouflaged army jeeps!” Eventually, during the remodeling, new built-in cabinets were installed and the old ones were moved to “The Furnace Cellar”.
There, the cabinets served two purposes. The first was containing overflow from Mom’s new cabinets. And, the great part was that said overflow pretty much consisted of all the stuff she used to make…Christmas cookies! So, yeah, the jimmies and all of the decorating material that didn’t need refrigerated sat down in those cabinets during the offseason, to be brought upstairs to the kitchen when the season was upon us. And, the second purpose meshed very nicely with that one. Because, at times, when it was very, very hot, and nobody was around to play ball, I’d sneak down into the basement, where it was much cooler, and read or do something with my baseball or football cards using that green camouflaged counter and one of several old kitchen chairs we kept down there. And, it wasn’t long before, on that July or August day, I’d reach up and open the cabinets and stare at all the Christmas stuff. And think about our favorite time of year.
But, that’s still not the whole basement. There was one more room. A small one. A door off “The Furnace Cellar” led into it. We called it “The Paint Cellar”, because it contained a shelving unit that covered one wall, and Dad used this for paint cans and brushes and the like. There was also a big old cabinet on the far wall that, pretty much, wasn’t used for anything and still had old junk in it that, to my knowledge, had been there when we moved in. The rest of the small room was filled with other stuff Dad stored down there. Rakes and hoes and other outside stuff during the offseason. And, there was a door that led from “The Paint Cellar” to the “Dirt Floor Cellar”, taking us right back to the bottom of the steps where we started.
By the time we were, say, eight or nine, every inch of the big house was familiar, and, with a few exceptions, bathrooms, the ‘rents’ bedroom, the dirt floor cellar, we played in every inch of it. Because it was “home”, in every single sense of that word.
Now, back to Mr. Denver, who was a fantastic songwriter. I always say it’s unfortunate that his most-remembered song is “Thank God I’m A Country Boy”, one of his four number one hits, because said tune is the worst of the fourteen singles he put on the charts, and doesn’t compare at all to his best stuff, stuff like “Wild Flowers in a Mason Jar”. Because Denver at his best was a poet in every sense of that word (He was poet laureate of Colorado, so, yeah.)
And, like all good poets and all good songwriters, Denver understood symbolism, and some of that comes out in the song’s final stanza with the line “I started drifting off and grandpa tucked his coat around me.” Because, that’s what home is, gang, isn’t it? Home and family? It’s about someone tucking that symbolic coat around you, keeping you warm and safe in what can be a cold, cruel world. The grandpa in the song had that, warmth and safety, in his one-room Kentucky cabin and I had it in that big, rambling house on a small town street.
“And I dreamed I was with him on the farm. Grandpa, I can hear the evening wind out in the corn.” Yeah. I dream I’m back there with them sometimes, and I wake up with my eyes wet just like grandpa. We’ve all done it. We all do it. In your sleep, your subconscious takes you to a time and place, because you need to go there. The conscious mind, though. It’s far less active, but it’s still there. And it knows, on some level, that you aren’t there, as much as you’d like to be, and that you won’t ever be again. And, there’s the last bit of symbolism in the Denver song. “Wild flowers in a mason jar and the bus rolling through the night.” The wild flowers in the dream. The bus in the reality. But, like much of Denver’s stuff, it goes even deeper.
Few things in this world are more fragile and short-lived than flowers. They come and we enjoy them for a brief time. And, then, they’re gone. I can’t think of a better symbol for, well, just about everything in life than flowers. How brief and fragile it all is. Someday it ends. And, you can never go back again, except in your dreams.
I’ve always liked John Denver, and I know a bunch of his stuff. But, surprisingly, I’d never heard “Wild Flowers in a Mason Jar”…until Wednesday, April 13, 2022. Wednesday, April 13, 2022 would have been Mom’s 83rd birthday. It was the first April 13th in my entire life that I didn’t hear her voice. “Twenty years, boy, and the memory still warms me.” Twenty. Thirty. Forty. How many ever I have left. The memory will still warm me.
Things Amic Thinks About 