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First Job in Paradise: There Was An Old Lady Who Lived by a Brook

[Written February, 2017] When the fog forms in Paradise all my ghosts come out, moving like wraiths behind the mist, believing no one can see them. But I do. Everywhere in this small town in northern California in which I was a young boy and to which I have returned as an old man, I often sense that boy and those long ago moments.

This morning the fog was thick here on the ridge as I returned from an errand down on Lucky John Road; a road I had not been on for over 60 years. Even before I came over the crest of the hill and started down the far side my back brain told me there was a brook at the bottom. And sure enough, in a moment, my car passed over the brook as it flowed in a culvert from one side of the road to the other.

Today there were a number of tidy cookie-cutter contractor-built homes on either side complete with their gardens, garages, and water-features. The once forest-thick pines were thinned out to garden specs.

The little old lady’s ramshackle homemade house was long gone to landfill… as was the little old lady herself. Still, as I pulled the car over in the fog and looked around, they appeared. Ghosts moving behind today’s new morning; a kind of Balinese shadow puppet epic projected on the far side of the atmosphere by the lantern of memory.

The last time I had been to the brook I was 11 and I walked. I walked from my house on the canyon’s edge half a mile to where the brook meandered out of the pines and flowed under Lucky John Road.

I did it because my father told me to do it.

I did it because my father had decided that at 11 it was time I had “A Job.”

My father believed in boys having A Job and having one as soon as possible.

One evening shortly after my 11th December birthday he called me aside. “There’s an old lady named Miss Helen over the hill who needs help,” he told me. “She’s getting on and she has no family. She needs help chopping wood for her heat and other chores.” (“Dad, please.”) “No backtalk. I’ve already told her you’d be there tomorrow afternoon.” (“Oh come on, dad.”) “Did I mention she was going to pay you.” (“Please, dad…. Oh? How much?”) “Four bucks a week….” (“When can I start?”)

This would have been 1956 and my allowance at the time was a royal fifty cents a week which kept me in bubble gum and comic books. Barely. The sum to be paid was an expansion of my cash on hand to levels beyond the dreams of boyhood avarice. The next afternoon my Keds crunched through the thin sheets of ice that a Paradise winter always formed in the puddles next to the stream as I reported to Miss Helen driven more by greed than duty.

Thinking back Miss Helen’s place was more of a hut than a house. It had a tin roof and was very small, consisting of a small sitting area just inside the door, a kitchen behind that, and a sleeping alcove behind that with a curtain that was always closed.

The hut sat on what were probably cinder blocks on a sort of islet around which branches of the brook actually made a babbling sound over the mossed rocks. There must have been some electricity since I remember a refrigerator and a radio, but there weren’t any electric lights, only kerosene lanterns that required me to trim their wicks and clean their chimneys. Her water was drawn from the stream and stored in a large tank just on the other side of the kitchen wall with a pipe that came through the wall to a small metal tub she used as a sink. One of my primary tasks was to carry buckets of water to the tank and fill it.

This job began in the winter and the only source of heat Miss Helen had was a standard issue wood stove that she also used for cooking. The stove took a lot of wood and the old lady’s wood came from a large pile of logs on another islet behind her hut. They were far too big to fit in the stove and my main job was to take a maul, then an axe, then a hatchet, and transform the each log into a pile of kindling that the old lady could use. It wasn’t that bad a job except when it snowed or rained, which, since this was winter in Paradise was pretty much every other day when it was not a continuation of the snow and rain from the day before.

At the start it made me ache but by the end of two weeks I didn’t mind it much. I went to school. I took the bus home and at the bus stop instead of going down the dirt road to home I walked over the hill to chop wood and carry water. When I was done I would walk home. Tired.

Miss Helen was both little and very, very old. Or as old as a person in their late 60s appeared to a boy of 11 in 1956. She was small, stooped, with almost translucent hands, and as roly-poly as my paternal grandmother. She wore thick stockings and heavy shoes. It seemed to me that she wore only hand-sewn dresses that could have been fashioned from large print tablecloths. Over these she always had an apron on. These aprons always had a pocket and from that magic pocket, every Friday, she’d take a clasp-closed leather change purse and count out four silver dollars with their satisfying clack and clink.

Once I got home my father had me hand over two of the silver dollars so he could demonstrate the miracle of compound interest in a savings account he made me open.

“So,” he’d ask every week as he relieved me of half my cash flow,”how do you like going to the job?”

I’d make some kind of half-hearted response to which his response was always, “You don’t have to like the job, but a man always goes to the job.”

I’d nod and dream of all the extra Fleers bubble gum and comic books my residual two bucks were going to get me down at the Feed Store. Sometimes I’d splurge and get a nickel Coke and read my comics lying on bags of feed with their dusty burlap smell.

And so I went to the job with the little old lady who lived by the brook. For months I chopped wood and carried water for Miss Helen, and saw how even the very old and the very poor still carried on their lives with dignity even when all they had was miserable, mean nothing.

Then, one day, I came home on the school bus and found my father waiting for me at the stop. “You don’t have to go to work today. Miss Helen’s left.”

“Left? Where’d she go?”

“Away.”

“When’s she coming back?”

“She won’t be. But she left this for you.” He reached into his wallet and handed me a ten dollar bill. At the time it was the largest bill I’d ever possessed. “It’s like a two week notice. She wanted you to have it.”

I took it feeling good about having it but disappointed that Miss Helen would leave without so much as a goodbye.

But of course she didn’t leave. She just became a ghost; a ghost my father wanted to spare me. Hence, she just went away. She just went west. Until this morning when, sitting in my car near the brook on Lucky John Road, she came back.

She came back out of the fog; small, translucent, in her hand-made dress with her apron and her worn change purse fat with its silver dollars.

Which is when, after 60 years, it hit me.

Miss Helen was a very, very poor woman. In 1956 four silver dollars a week would have been a serious sum of money to her. Very serious. Unless she had some sort of secret stash of silver dollars. Which I was pretty sure she did not. In fact I’m pretty sure a secret stash of pennies would have been beyond Miss Helen’s means.

On the other hand, my father really liked silver dollars. He’d always bring a sackful back from his infrequent trips to Stateline and Reno. He always kept a jar full on his dresser and five or six in his front pants pocket. He liked to take them out and feel the heft of them in his hand, especially when he was recycling two of mine.

“You don’t have to like the job, but a man always goes to the job.”

When the fog forms in Paradise, all my ghosts come out.


 

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Dan Patterson November 12, 2018, 8:06 AM

    Oh brother do I understand that.
    Cheers to you, Gerard, and Rest in Peace to your ghosts and mine.

  • The Distributist November 12, 2018, 8:08 AM

    “Before Enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water….”

  • Phil in Englewood November 12, 2018, 8:38 AM

    I love that story. Beautiful and timeless and full of truths. Thank you again. You and your writing are a treasure.

  • ghostsniper November 12, 2018, 10:48 AM

    I think I’ve read this before, and it is perfect.

  • Larry Geiger November 12, 2018, 11:11 AM

    A man who loved his neighbor and his son.

  • George Murdock November 12, 2018, 11:36 AM

    A touching story that brings back similar memories of youth when the boy was forged into the man, and there is no shortcut from fire and hammer. I would dearly like to assist in your recovery, but PayPal will never see my money again, no matter how important and genuine the cause, please find an alternative, I can’t believe I am the only 2nd amendment believer who has this standard.

  • MMinLamesa November 12, 2018, 12:43 PM

    My father was a bookie/compulsive gambler who stole my mom’s tips from the little bank of quarters she kept on their dresser. She finally had enough when I was 5 and booted him out.

    I’ve always envied men that had real fathers and enjoy reading all the ways I would have taught my son to be a man. Of course, even when I could have started a family, buried deep in my subconscious, I realized the awesome responsibility having children entailed and rather then fuck up some poor young boy, I opted not to take that chance.

    My sister also is childless and she has been with her husband for 48 years.

  • AmericusMagnus November 12, 2018, 1:17 PM

    This one is a true work of art Gerard… childhood memories, life lessons, people who cross your path, melancholy and love… as a boy I was always envious of other boys who had real men for fathers.
    I always enjoy reading about your dad.

  • JD November 12, 2018, 2:18 PM

    Hello Gerard,

    I was introduced to you by Ann Barnhardt. You have been added to my prayer list.
    Your writing is lovely and your family sounds that way too. You have been blessed
    despite your present situation and imagine, still having your mother!

    May God continue His blessings.

    ps I loved the story about your uncle too.

  • ghostsniper November 12, 2018, 2:26 PM

    The best part is that 3rd from last sentence where a hint is revealed, telling the FULL story, and it is that point where the stories real value comes into view.

    I was a dad to our only child, our only son, and still am, and now that I’m old and he is so far away I have my memories, very similar to this story, that pacify me and reaffirm that all of that stuff in my head really did happen.

    No matter the risk or the cost the end result is worth it and I would do it all again, ‘cept maybe better.

  • JoanOfArgghh! November 12, 2018, 4:45 PM

    Are you not at times amazed, Gerard, at just how loved you have been?
    I love this story and love your heart for writing it.

  • Jewel November 12, 2018, 5:24 PM

    This is my grandson’s bedtime story tonight. Thank you for giving it to us from out of so great a loss.
    Much love to you, dear man.

  • Julie November 12, 2018, 5:34 PM

    This was beautiful the first time I read it, and utterly heartwrenching today. Thanks for sharing it again.

  • Casey Klahn November 13, 2018, 8:13 AM

    Maybe I learned something watching TV as a kid: Freddie the Freeloader was a sympathetic character. We used to have a heart for the poor. My dad loved Freddie (Red Skelton).

    God bless all of these poor squatters, and the new story of Paradise, CA has me thinking about the displaced. To tell the truth, I know a lot of them are outlaws, meth heads, junkies. But, there are valid poor. Hell, everyone is valid in God’s eyes.

    One day at a time.

  • Sam L. November 13, 2018, 9:07 AM

    I do not remember this story, but it ought to be in your annual-return posting list,

  • Gordon Scott November 14, 2018, 9:30 AM

    I remember this from the first time you posted it, and I agree it should go into the rotation. What a thing memory is! I have little revelations like this also. Moments when I remember something long past, and realize that holy cow, there was a lot more happening than I realized at the time.

  • NickSMpls November 12, 2019, 10:33 AM

    Wonderful story.

    Your father was wise indeed. The lesson he spent his silver dollars on was something that no school, anywhere, anyplace, could teach. No matter what the tuition.

  • Christina November 14, 2019, 5:15 AM

    I came for the nativity by the roadside story and stayed for Chico stories.

  • Vanderleun November 14, 2019, 6:39 AM

    And I am very glad you did.

  • Uncle Mikey November 14, 2019, 8:51 AM

    Goddamn you write beautifully.

  • Waepnedmann November 14, 2019, 9:45 PM

    I think of this story often.
    Thank you for reposting it.

  • Hoss April 5, 2021, 4:31 AM

    I have read this before and while it was wonderful reading it did not hit me like it did today. Ghosts indeed. Thank you Gerard for your continued work and insight, you have a gift.

  • jd April 5, 2021, 5:13 AM

    Hoss just said everything I would have. I hope you have
    sent this one to the Saturday Evening Post.

  • gwbnyc April 5, 2021, 5:17 PM

    @13.

    the kid across the street was 3 years older, got his driver’s license. he had a peugeot ten speed tour bike bought new, mantained well, and wanted to sell it as he became a driver. he offered it to me for ninety dollars. I asked my father that evening at dinner if he would lend me the money and I’d work it off.

    I paid the owner of the bike, took possession, and worked the summer vacation paying back the money. the lawn, the cars, the garden, dig, prune, carry, paint, saw, wash. a page from a notepad every morning on the kitchen table with a list of tasks written in his controlled cryptic hand (lists were nothing new, but these far denser). he was agreeable with my conduct throughout and never mentioned it. he did not praise his children. oddly, he never had trouble praising other people’s kids and held them aloft as better examples.

    when I got my driver’s license I gave the bike to a friend’s brother.

    what I took away from all of it was I told myself I’d never owe him money again, and I never did.

  • Roy Lofquist April 5, 2021, 5:31 PM

    I started helping my father at his gas station when I was about 8 years old. Eventually I would help in the mornings before school and then in the afternoon. The summers were vacations – I only worked about 3 hours a day 4 days a week. This continued until I enlisted in the Army at 17.

    It was the greatest thing to happen to a child – me. I had a head start on the world from the greatest father ever. Gerard and I are contemporaries. It was a different world then as he will attest. I know you can’t go home again, but I can’t help thinking that it was a bit more sane then.

  • Vanderleun April 6, 2021, 8:06 AM

    It was. We were.

    And we abide.

  • Minta Marie Morze April 6, 2021, 7:03 PM

    What everyone says, one way or another. JoanOfArgghh! said it best.

    You are loved. Deeply. Even years ago, when you disappeared for more than a week, I went back to your blog several times a day, despairing of what I might find. And then the sublime joy when the message appeared about what had happened.

    Even years ago, I would already love to go to your blog to read amazing posts and poetry. It has meant so much to me over the years.

    Thank you for being the man you are, and for sharing your gifts.

    Thank you.

  • Vanderleun April 6, 2021, 7:25 PM

    You are most welcome.

    “My mother thanks you. My father thanks you. My brothers thank you. And I thank you.” — George M. Cohan

  • Lance Some JHP June 19, 2022, 7:19 PM

    One day the world will be a better place and California will be under a mushroom cloud.

  • Ashby June 19, 2022, 9:07 PM

    Thank you so much for your blog. I have been reading it for years now and always take away something worthwhile. In years past I came to Northern CA to fish the Trinity and other streams near Shasta. I really liked the area and formed the opinion that rural oriented people (like me) are pretty similar whether it is AL or CA.

    I was in Las Vegas years ago for a convention and meet a girl from Paradise in the casino restaurant. I still remember everything about her. My courage often fails me.

    Best,

  • jiminalaska June 20, 2022, 9:11 AM

    .