Your dad was fearless, my uncle said to me as we stood at the funeral parlor for my dad’s wake. Dad was an extraordinary man. He only stood 5’10" and averaged around 175 pounds, but in that small frame lived a daunting spirit of fire and fortitude. He could call up amazing strength when necessary.

One Sunday late in October our family left in the morning to go to church. After church we went to my grandfather’s house for dinner. It was around 3:00 p.m. when we drove back to our farm. The Holstein milk cows along with the bull had broken through the fence of the barn yard and were standing under the mulberry tree near the corn crib.

Take the kids and get in the house, Dad ordered Mother. The bull watched and bawled when he saw us hurry across the yard and into the house. From the window we watched Dad wave his arms at the cattle and yell, "Get back in there!" The cows dutifully obeyed, swinging their bulky bodies around and returning to the barnyard. But the bull remained, looking at Dad. Dad didn’t retreat, but stood still as the bull walked toward him letting out a loud bellow. The 2000 lb. bull was challenging my dad to a fight; he had yet to meet Dad’s strength.

It was the season for corn picking in Iowa, and the corn elevator was set up in the yard, its long neck reaching to the opening of the corn crib’s roof. The bottom of the grain elevator was anchored with four three-foot-long steel pipes driven into the ground, much like tent stakes.

The bull approached Dad; he bellowed and pawed the ground with his right front foot. He swung his massive head low to the ground and with a snort sent little clouds of dust up from his nostrils. As he approached Dad, he put his head near the ground then lifted it high in the air and let out a loud and terrible roar.

Dad reached down and pulled one of the steel stakes from the ground at the base of the elevator. Using both arms, he raised the stake high in the air and brought it down with all his strength on top of the bull’s big head. The bull’s legs wobbled , gave way, and he collapsed. He recovered in a few minutes, rose, wheeled around and headed to the barn. Dad never again had trouble from that bull. "I’d a killed him if I had to," Dad said later. "It was him or me."

I don’t know what my uncle had in mind that night at the funeral parlor when he said my dad was fearless, but this was the memory that came to me.

The grass snaps brittle and black beneath her feet.
On the ground lies a large rectangle of ashes
gray white as the winter’s sky.
A thin trail of smoke rises from the center.
A gas line snakes through, unconnected.
A charred stove toward the edge reminds her of the kitchen.
A metal chair frame stands near;
There is nothing else.

The animals are curious.
Splay-footed chickens step close,
crane their necks and blink.
Red, the coon hound, lies under the truck.
His head rests low on his outstretched paws;
his eyes follow her.
White-faced Herefords watch from the barnyard.
The pigs nudge one another
and continue eating.

She shovels through the ashes,
stops,
continues
searching for a token of life
as it was yesterday.
There is nothing.

Sometimes when I put a load of laundry in my automatic washer in my laundry room, close the door and walk away, I think of wash day when I was a small child on the plains of Iowa. You could always tell if it was Monday morning when you drove through the farmland where I grew up. You could drive down any country gravel road and see dazzling white sheets billowing in the wind from the clothes lines on the grassy yards. It was wash day and almost nothing stopped it from happening.

Wash days affected the whole household, but doing the wash was definitely woman’s work. The Farmer’s Wife magazine had recipes for wash day. They were casseroles or stews that would be considered a complete meal, put into the oven, and left to cook unattended for a long period of time.

Wash day preparations in my house began on Sunday night when my brothers and I carried baskets of corn cobs and wood from the wood shed to fill the box beside the cook stove. Mother carried in the oval, copper boiler in from its nail on the porch wall and placed it on the wood range.

Around 5:00 on Monday morning, Mother started the fire in the range. On its big black top sat the huge, oval copper boiler. She carried in buckets of cold water pumped from the well outside the kitchen door. Trip after trip she made, leaning to the side as she carried them, hoisting them to the stove top, and pouring the water into the big boiler. While it heated she cut slivers from a big bar of lye soap she had made the year before. Next she cooked up starch and set it on the back of the stove to use later when the white shirts and blouses were washed.

Mother rolled the wringer washing machine into the kitchen from the back porch. Then she gathered the dirty clothes from all the rooms in the house. She sorted them into piles: sheets, Sunday shirts, underwear, bath towels and washcloths, colored clothes, blue work shirts, blue denim jeans and bib overalls. And there was always a large pile of rags. Next to the washer on narrow wooden stands mother placed two big, round, galvanized tubs and filled them with cold water. That was the rinse water.

Mother lifted the boiler lid and a great cloud of steam rose to the kitchen ceiling. "It’s boiling," she’d say and with a bucket she dipped the scalding water from the boiler on the stove and filled the washing machine. Beads of water skipped and skittered along the hot surface of the stove top. "Stand back," she’d say as she lifted the hot water from the boiler and poured it into the washer, the steam rising to cloud her face. Then she added the slivers of soap and with a push of a lever she put the machine into gear. Back and forth went the agitator and white foamy suds rose high.

The sheets were the first things to be washed. After the sheets had washed for ten minutes or so, mother pulled the gear lever back to stop the agitating and the water fell silent. She used a wash stick to fish the first sheet out of the scalding water. (A wash stick is a stick the shape of a broom handle, about 18 inches long.) Then she took the corner of a sheet and guided it into the fat, rubber wringers. She quickly turned the lever that set them rolling. She carefully guided the big sheet through, being careful not to get her fingers close to the heavy wringers. With quick fingers she felt for it to come out on the other side. She guided and pulled it gently so it would not wrap itself around the wringer. She often warned me of the dangers of the wringer. She knew a lady who had gotten her head scarf caught in it and was choked to death before she could untie the knot under her chin. As mother fed the sheet though the wringer I’d watch it balloon out with a pouch of air on one side, and come out on the other side flattened and tight with steam rising from it. Slowly it dropped into the first rinse water tub. After all the sheets were in the rinse water, Mother swished them around with her wash stick. She turned the wringer 90 degrees and repeated the rinsing process one more time. This time they dropped into a waiting bushel basket lined with a blue-flowered oil cloth.

Mother hoisted the heavy basket filled with sheets to her left hip and carried it to the yard and the clothes lines. There at the far end of the yard she pinned the white sheets to the line. By the time several sheets were hung they almost touched the grass. So mother took a long pole with a groove carved into the end of it and placed the groove end under the clothes line, and raised the line high into the air, the official flag of wash day! She stuck the bottom end of the pole firmly into the ground. The sheets could now blow and snap in the wind without touching the ground and getting grass stains on them. After the sheets were on the line, mother always looked north across to the Schmidt farm. If there were no sheets waving on that line, Mother announced, "Looks, like I beat Etta today." If she saw the neighbor’s sheets she’d declare, "We’re late! Etta’s already got her sheets on the line."

Load after load was washed. The Sunday white shirts and blouses, the dish towels, the underwear and white socks, the towels and washcloths, the work shirts, the jeans and overalls, the throw rugs, and rags. While the overalls were washing, there was time to sit down and eat the noon meal. By 2:00 in the afternoon the last load was hung to dry. The water in the washer was gray and had lost most of its suds. Then mother unscrewed a small knob near the bottom of the washer to drain the dirty water. Bucket by bucket she carried it outdoors, across the yard and threw it into a shallow ravine under a big cottonwood tree.

The last bucket of wash water was always used to scrub the wooden boards of the back porch and the steps. Mother dumped some water on the rough boards and swept back and forth over the wide boards with an old straw broom. When she was finished she turned the broom upside down against the wood shed to dry in the sun. With clean soapy water she washed the gray bowl of the washing machine and rolled it back to the porch until next Monday morning.

By then the sheets and the other early loads were ready to be brought in, folded and put away or stacked up for Tuesday’s ironing. The sun was setting by the time the last load was dry. The beef stew that had cooked in the oven was now a welcome meal for the end of wash day.

I was honored to be invited by Takeko Minami, Professor in the Foreign Language Department at West Virginia University, to observe the traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony. This ceremony is not usually a public event but an activity carried out among close friends in Japan. Professor Takeko invited us to observe this time-honored Japanese tradition to help us understand the traditional Japanese society.

The ceremony is based on tradition going back many hundreds of years. Every motion is precise and has to be performed the same every time. Objects in the room should be a certain distance from each other so the amount of footsteps can be a certain distance.

The Japanese use the Tea Ceremony for many reasons. It can be formal, a get to know you event, a ceremony to bond people together or a ceremony between husband an wife. In Japan the masters of the art are usually men (Japan is a male dominate society). However, the women are usually the ones to carry on the tradition.

What I observed was a graceful ceremony on the order of a ballet. The incense gave the house a tea house atmosphere. The women did not speak but each knew exactly what to do. I felt as if I was swept back hundreds of years. It was very interesting to observe the dress of the participants. The kimonos were very beautiful. The tea was very bad. It was like drinking tea made from grass! The mood was the selling point. The tea or the cookies would not be the big sellers of this activity.

The Appalachian stereotype is the one of the last stereotypes people still make fun of and get away with it. For many years I have fought this in my classroom and I hope I have made some positive headway to get rid of it!

Out of my classroom success has been short but sweet. Ten years ago during Mountaineer week on the WVU campus our football team was being featured on television nationwide. This was one of the first nationwide games for us so first impressions were very important. However there was a problem: in the 50’s the band started to dress up as hillbillies during their performance at halftime during Mountaineer Week. This practice was started A. James Manchin. It might have been cute in the 1950’s but not on nationwide TV! Something had to be done to stop this terrible stereotype form being displayed nationwide. At this time I was working with one of the football coaches’ wives who was not a West Virginian and did not know about this "tradition." When I mentioned this stupid act and how this would look on TV a big discussion followed. We finally agreed that something had to be done to stop this show. We made some phone calls to the governor and the President of WVU and all agreed this would be an idiotic show for the nation to watch. The tradition stopped that year and has never been done again! Yes, sometimes it only takes a phone call or two to make a difference- that is, if the calls go to the right people!

For this writing I chose to talk with a fellow teacher at South Middle School. Elizabeth teaches French three class periods a day and usually has lunch with my lunch crew. Elizabeth is from France and educated at the Sorbonne. Being a half-time teacher the principals did not give her much attention. They did not show her where the French material left over from the last teacher was located. I ran into these materials and showed her where they were located. I also tried to help her out when she could not figure out the students’ behavior. We have had many conversations about the differences in French and American society. Here are some highlights of our conversations:

Cities and Suburbs:

In most American cities the inner cities have been going downhill for many decades. This has been contributed to the automobile and the wish of many white people to move to the suburbs. What we have left is the abandonment of the cities to the minorities. Richer people live around the cities in the suburbs and the cities have been "given" to the lower economic groups. Elizabeth says that the French cities this is completely opposite. The rich have held on the cities and the lower economic groups live in the area around the cities we call the suburbs. Why? The cities have been taken care of in France and not let to deteriorate. The people like to live in the cities and have kept up the rental costs. I asked her if transportation had anything to do with it and she said no. She said the transportation system is very good. It is a fact people like to live in the cities with all the history.

Homes and Groceries:

In America it is common to go to the food store and stock up for a week or more. In Paris the people prefer to go to the marketplace everyday. Since most people live tin the city going to the market involves just going outside your front door. People also like to socialize with each other during this time. Elizabeth said there are supermarkets in France but there are small specialty stores in the cities.

Segregation by Race:

Elizabeth noted the society in France seems to be more tolerant in absorbing other races. Having a longer history than the U.S. seems to be the main reason for this.