Blue

People say you cannot remember stuff from before you were born. Hanno remembered something he did not know how to place. It seemed like it had happened before he was born, but he knew that he could not sell such a claim. There was a light-blue uniform field full of bubbles — not bubbles of gas that drifted to the top; these were more like globules suspended in the blue entity. There was no me as an observer separate from the blue. There was no beginning, no end, no time passing, and no space traversed, just blue with the slightly illuminated globules.

If Hanno had been asked to report his earliest memory, this would have been the first. But he could not call it similar to or different from some other memory. He could not say it was before or after. It was just blue and enduring.

Homestead

After Hanno grew up, he drove back to the old place once. He could see nothing but hundreds of acres of corn divided by the familiar network of gravel roads. He turned into a narrow lane where the mailbox had been. He drove over foot-high weeds with rows of corn swiping each side of the car. In two hundred yards, the lane quit. It had been used by trucks to haul out corn and fodder at harvesttime.

Hanno got out of the car and walked across the corn rows to where the old and new houses had been. He found a small patch of rubble at the top of the slope. Fescue grass mixed with the weeds. The well and the cistern had been filled in with rubble. A broken crock stuck out of the ground. Between two rocks was a clump of exotic flowers that had once been on Grandma Celester's rock garden. Hanno returned to the car and drove away.

In the soil among these cornstalks were a thousand stories. There was the story of a man, sold into bondage as a young lad, who had the courage to run from his illegal servitude. Later he had the courage to leave a bleak but secure setting in Kentucky to take his family by canal boat into a forested wilderness in Indiana. Life was to begin anew. There was the story of an ambitious daughter-in-law and her gentle but widely respected husband who built a two-story brick colonial house in an isolated location. There was the story of social and economic collapse as corporate coal interests dominated. The Oglesby homestead became only a memory, just like the Native American village that came before. Buried among these many cornstalks was the story of Hanno himself.

We go back to 1928. Although Hanno was born in the only hospital in Linton, Indiana, his recall of self began as a child who grew up on an isolated one-hundred-acre farm. Neither public gravel road nor private driveway led up to his house. How the roadless homestead came to be is one of the many stories across the bridge of time.

Hanno learned of thrice-told tales of his heritage. His maternal great-grandfather, Richard Oglesby, discovered this magical place. He was known as the bound boy. When not yet a teenager, he was sold into bondage by his father. It was 1814, and he was in what is now West Virginia. Once sold, he lived in a hayloft with pigs down below. He had first dibs over the pigs each day for the kitchen scraps. As the weather became cold, he ran away. This was not at all surprising. But having been blindfolded and tied down in the bed of a wagon when sold, he knew not which direction was home.

He found and followed the Ohio River for a good ways. It was a wandering escape. Fearing capture while on a packet boat, he turned south into the Kentucky hill country. Eventually, he found himself in Flemings County. A gristmill family adopted him, and he grew up helping run the mill.

As the wooden linkages of the mill became old and obsolete and after his adoptive parents died, Richard removed his wife and family by canal boat to Point Commerce near Worthington, Indiana. He then went across wooded land from the White River to his chosen area on high ground.

The year was 1854. Hanno's grandfather David was four when his family crossed over from Kentucky into Indiana.

As Richard and other old settlers moved in, their efforts were at odds with the welfare of the Native Americans. Rather than living from the richness of natural growth, the settlers were clearing land and fencing off fields and pastures.

This high ground that Richard discovered had once been an Indian village. On this ground in past centuries, happy times, hopes, and fears were experienced by the Plains Indians who prospered among the cool summer breezes while hunting, gathering, and planting.

Even in Hanno's time, with each spring plowing, he and his brothers found arrowheads and other stone artifacts. Like other old settlers, Oglesby cleared part of the virgin timber for farm fields and pastures. Part of the forest he left for firewood and wildlife. It was well populated with squirrel, muskrat, opossum, skunk, beaver, and raccoon.

As the European invaders established their colonies and moved west, the style of life of the Plains Indians was threatened by the sheer numbers of people staking land claims. Until then, it had been open, sacred, and free, but the arrow could not compete with the gun. A state was named. As a feeble honor, they named it Indiana, but, amid hundreds of sad tales, the Native Americans had to leave it behind.

The land seemed flat, and you could see for miles. Richard had staked it out in a prior visit. Both he and his wife, Louisa, were excited to face their new life full of unknowns.

For the settlers of the frontier, clearing land and stumps accorded the same respect as would be gained today from serving well in public office. Both contributed to the community's well-being. After centuries of seeking happiness, the sad exit of the Native Americans coexisted with the hope of the new settlers.

Clearing the land, however, was not the first order of business. One must dig at least one well. Without the well, water had to be hauled from a nearby stream to meet livestock and family needs. Hanno's great-grandfather, like many others, hired frontier well diggers to do this in advance of the family's arrival.

The second priority was to secure proper shelter for the livestock. Their protection was more urgent for family survival than building a house.

Richard Oglesby's house was among the last of his construction projects, and it is clear that his resources were running low. The house was partly of log and partly of rough clapboard. Barn latches were used on the doors. The interior was never fully subdivided. However, it was large, strong in structure, and warm in winter.

After the Oglesbys settled in, Richard and Louisa were blessed by an influx of German immigrant farmers. They worked with each other to make a good life. They came to refer to the local community as their Gemütlichkeit. As Hanno grew up, all English sparrows were lovingly called spatzies.

The community, even without a formal organizing committee, often held ice cream socials and potluck dinners. One happy night before Thanksgiving, a potluck meal and a turkey raffle was held at Plum Branch School. Hanno was there. The families brought coal-oil farm lanterns and gasoline Coleman lanterns. Electricity was still a long time to come. People were pleased that Sam Risher had the winning ticket. He and his family were among those in hard times. Herman Bredeweg, who served as master of ceremonies, pulled a slip from the pot and read off Risher's name. The applause kept shy Sam from moving. Then Herman said, "I just talked to Sam Risher before we came inside, and he told me he did not buy a ticket. If he doesn't come up here in five seconds and get this turkey, I'm going to take it myself!"

With this, Sam Risher vaulted from his chair, knocking it down behind him, and he ran to the improvised stage. This brought laughter and more applause from the gathered families. Soon, Sam's wife let it be known that she indeed had not been told, and rightfully so. "I would have accused him of squandering. That ticket cost twenty-five cents, and I had already told him we couldn't afford that."

The Rishers would indeed not have had a Thanksgiving that year except for this bonanza. To contribute to the feast, some of the families wrapped up leftovers from the potluck in butcher paper to add to this unexpected holiday dinner.

From family to family, such warm feelings began to fade. As farms were sold off to the strip-mining company, some people were viewed as traitors. Some families quit speaking to others. The strippers and steam shovels breached the county gravel roads. This cut off their access to each other. Just as important, the blocked-off roads interfered with the time and length of mileage to get to town to do shopping and sell produce. Hanno recalled that some had to reduce the number of trips to town because of the increased amount of gasoline needed. Relations broke down within families as one brother decided to sell his farm and another brother was struggling to hang on.

An ordinance in early Indiana held that no child should walk more than one mile to a school. Thus these one-room schoolhouses were distributed every two miles, near the corner of a country square. Eventually, Plum Branch School (officially called No. 7) was gone. The road beside it and even the creek were gone too. Hanno's mother had gone there. It had burned down once. Hanno's brothers had gone there seven years earlier than Hanno.

As Hanno's great-grandfather Richard became a widower and grew old, his youngest son, David, stayed on the farm to care for him in his final years. During this time David courted and married Celester Malone, the eldest of the well-known and beautiful Malone girls of Linton. John Malone, Celester's father, had built one of the main commercial buildings along Main Street. In it he operated a highly successful haberdashery. (During Hanno's lifetime, the building was transformed into the Cozy Corner saloon.) Unfortunately John Malone died at age forty and left his widow Susan the responsibility for a household of daughters and sons. Susan lived another forty years. Every day for the rest of her life, she wore black to mourn her dead husband. The Malone daughters, Celester, Lizzie (Elizabeth), Ida, Adalia (Aunt Dale), and Louella, were the Linton equivalent of the Gabor sisters. Among Celester's sisters, Dale married a Letterman, great-grandfather of talk show host David Letterman. Ida married a Strietelmeier. Lizzie married a Davis, and Louella married a Fergas.

To raise seven children without scandal took a bit of doing. Susan Malone was an iron survivor. As a single parent with lifelong devotion to her dead husband, she took no prisoners. She ran her household with a metal fist inside a soft black kid glove.

Before the turn of the nineteenth century, after Richard had passed away, David and Celester began to build the new house. The year was 1901. Hanno's mother, Mary, was eight when her parents, Celester and David Oglesby, saw their construction completed. They moved from the old house into the new house.

Two decades later, Mary, the younger of David's two daughters, settled with her husband, Gene Buchwald, to care for David during his final years. It was 1934. Hanno Buchwald was a first-grader and six years old when Granddad David passed away.

Within five years of David's death, the homestead and the entire German farming community around it were in a state of collapse. World War I, the Great Depression, and the ominous advance of the coal-mining industry were all taking their toll.

The lyrics of a song said, "How ya' gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paris." The words had truth. Some offspring were committed to leaving regardless of the prosperity or lack of it.

The coal-mining companies eventually discovered that a vast vein of coal lay beneath the entire community. The companies were lurking.

At the Oglesby homestead, Hanno sensed that another stress had come. When David Oglesby died, Mary Oglesby Buchwald was not the only heir. All of Mary's siblings were joint heirs. None of them had resources to buy off the entire property from the others. They decided to sell the homestead and split the money. It was Christmastime 1934, and the brothers graciously decided to let Mary and her family stay on until the twins graduated from high school at Midland in 1939. The siblings were grateful to Mary for the care of their father, to which they had not contributed. In turn, Mary, Hanno's mother, was forever appreciative for their kindness.

As a final expression of dignity and community spirit, the Oglesby siblings, including Hanno's mother, Mary, decided to sell the homestead to a neighboring farmer, Rex Kopfschein, rather than to a strip-mining company. This they did as a final statement of loyalty to the community of Gemütlichkeit. However, the collapse continued. Within a year, Rex Kopfschein sold the property to the strip-mining company at a significant profit. Within another year, he also sold his own farm to the strip-mining company.

While the homestead transaction was being negotiated, Kopfschein rented it to a tenant. On a cold night, the tenant allowed the stovepipe to become red hot. The soot in the flue and chimney caught fire, and the new house burned immediately to the ground. No neighbor, even Kopfschein, who sold the land to the strip-mining company, had known of the millions of dollars of coal that lay underneath.

The tract of one hundred acres — and much more — became completely stripped of coal. Today there is a stand of hundreds of acres of corn on the reclaimed soil — no buildings, no forests. Gone are the prosperous farming society, Plum Branch, the old house, and the new house. Gone.

Hanno's World

In his early days, Hanno Buchwald engaged as much with places and things as with persons. People were few in number. They were almost always family members and neighbors, all familiar and predictable. On the rare occasions of a trip to town, the strangers he encountered frightened him. Back at home, every tree and fence corner had its place.

The word isolation appears regularly in this story of Hanno and his family. Isolation was more than living far from town. It was more than not living on a public road or street. It was more than not having a nice long lane leading up to a farmhouse. Hanno lived where, to the outsider, there was no one clear means of approach. Was there a creek to cross, mud to mire the wheels, cows to slip through the gate, or a mean bull? When you got to the house, on which door did you knock? Did you yell from outside the screened porch?

One entrance was to drive among rows of fruit trees in the neighbor's orchard. Another was through the pastures with three latched gates. Another was a footpath through the woods, across a creek, and through a gulley. From the opposite direction of Plum Branch School, one could turn in from the county gravel road and go through two pastures with latched gates to the backside of the barnyard. With these confusing options, Hanno's family had few peddlers, salesmen, or casual family visitors to speak of.

Families who were intent upon visiting would sometimes be seen walking as a group across a pasture. They were afraid of miring the car in the mud. In such cases, Mary, Hanno's mother, would yell to one of the children, "Go kill a chicken!"

Yes, it was Hanno's world, but it was still dominated by one who lived and died before Hanno was born. Hanno's grandmother, Celester Malone Oglesby, had a vision and was determined to make it real. She envisioned having the best house in Wright Township. She chose as a husband a gentle and just man, David Oglesby. He was compliant and would give her free rein. Hanno took all these things for granted. The grandmother he never saw was a heritage and a destiny. The maple tree providing shade for the back porch was one small sample of her planning.

Hanno, when out of his crib, inhabited the kitchen. This linoleum surface was his first world. Later, it expanded to the dining room and the yard and then to the barnyard, the outer pastures, the fields, and the forest. Gradually neighbors came within his perimeter.

Hanno remembers the kitchen floor as his introduction to freedom. When his mother worked in the kitchen, she placed him on the floor. There he was free to crawl around on his own. He would crawl between and among the legs of the women as they worked. Hanno would watch as relatives and friends were greeted at the door and everyone talked and no one listened. Since he could not yet walk, he was carried around and rocked and kissed. If something was not to his liking, he would cry big. Big crying was his only means of control, and it was what he remembered most.

Soon, as he continued to play on the linoleum, Hanno's father would come home from the mines and sit beside him on the kitchen floor. One day, he brought a set of wooden blocks. Letters and numbers were embossed on each surface. His father showed him how to arrange the blocks into the ABCs. Hanno's grasp of this seemed to surprise his father. He did not know why. Later on in Hanno's life, he suspected that the alphabetic play might have been his parents' first sign that Hanno was comfortably alert.