Patchwork: A Story of 'The Plain People'

by Anna Balmer Myers

The charming stamp of its antiquity is revealed in its great old trees; its wide Market Square from which narrower streets branch to the east, west, north and south; its numerous houses of the plain, substantial type of several generations ago; its occasional little, low houses which have withstood the march of modern building and stand squarely beside houses of more elaborate and later design; but chiefly in its old-fashioned gardens. All the old-time flowers are favorites there and refuse to be displaced by any newcomer. Sweet alyssum and candytuft spread carpets of bloom along the neat garden walks, hollyhocks and dahlias look boldly out to the streets, while the old-fashioned sweet-scented roses grow on great bushes which have been undisturbed for three or more generations.

To Phœbe Metz, Greenwald, with its two thousand inhabitants, its several churches, post-office and numerous stores, seemed a veritable city. She delighted in walking on its brick sidewalks, looking at its different houses and entering its stores. How many attractions these stores held for the little country girl! There was the big one on the Square which had in one of its windows a great lemon tree on which grew real lemons. Another store had a large Santa Claus in its window every Christmas—not that Phœbe Metz had ever been taught to believe in that patron saint of the children—oh, no! Maria Metz would have considered it foolish, even sinful, to lie to a child about any mythical Santa Claus coming down the chimney Christmas Eve! Nevertheless, the smiling, rotund face of the red-habited Santa in the store window seemed so real and so emanative of cheer that Phœbe delighted in him each year and felt sure there must be a Santa Claus somewhere in the world, even though Aunt Maria knew nothing about him.

Most little towns can boast of one or more persons like Granny Hogendobler, well-nigh community owned, certainly community appropriated. Did any one need a helper in garden or kitchen or sewing room, Granny Hogendobler was glad to serve. Did a housewife remember that a rose geranium leaf imparts to apple jelly a delicious flavor, Granny Hogendobler was able and willing to furnish the leaf. Did a lover of flowers covet a new phlox or dahlia or other old-fashioned flower, Granny Hogendobler was ready to give of her stock. Should a young wife desire a recipe for crullers, shoo-fly pie, or other delectable dish, Granny had a wealth of reliable recipes at her tongue's end. This admirable desire to serve found ample opportunities for exercise in the constant demands from her friends and neighbors. But Granny's greatest joy lay in the fond ministrations for her husband, Old Aaron, as the town people called him, half pityingly, half accusingly. For some said Old Aaron was plain shiftless, had always been so, would remain so forever, so long as he had Granny to do for him. Others averred that the Confederate bullets that had shattered his leg into splinters and necessitated its amputation must have gone astray and struck his liver—leastways, that was the kindest explanation they could give for his laziness.

Granny stoutly refuted all these charges—gossip travels in circles in small towns and sooner or later reaches those most concerned—"Aaron lazy! I-to-goodness no! Why, he's old and what for should he go out and work every day, I wonder. He helps me with the garden and so, and when I go out to help somebody for a day or two he gets his own meals and tends the chickens still. Some people thought a few years ago that he might get work in the foundry, but I said I want him at home with me. He gets a pension and we can live good on what we have without him slaving his last years away, and him with one leg lost at Gettysburg!" she ended proudly.

So Old Aaron continued to live his life as pleased his mate and himself. He pottered about the house and garden and spent long hours musing under the grape arbor. But there was one day in every year when Old Aaron came into his own. Every Memorial Day he dressed in his venerated blue uniform and carried the flag down the dusty streets of Greenwald, out to the dustier road to a spot a mile from the heart of the town, where, on a sunny hilltop, some of his comrades rested in the Silent City.

Only the infirm and the ill of the town failed to run to look as the little procession passed down the street. There were boys in khaki, the town band playing its best, volunteer firemen clad in vivid red shirts, a low, hand-drawn wagon filled with flowers, an old cannon, also hand-drawn, whose shots over the graves of the dead veterans would thrill as they thrilled every May thirtieth—all received attention and admiration from the watchers of the procession. But the real honors of the day were accorded the "thin blue line of heroes," and Old Aaron was one of these. To Granny Hogendobler, who walked with the crowd of cheering children and adults and kept step on the sidewalk with the step of the marchers on the street, it was evident that the standard bearer was growing old. The steep climb near the cemetery entrance left him breathless and flushed and each year Granny thought, "It's getting too much for him to carry that flag." But each returning year she would have spurned as earnestly as he any suggestion that another one be chosen to carry that flag. And so every three hundred and sixty-fifth day the lean straight figure of Old Aaron marched directly under the fluttering folds of Old Glory and the soldier became a subject worthy of veneration, then with customary nonchalance the little town forgot him again or spoke of him as Old Aaron, a little lazy, a little shiftless, a little childish, and Granny Hogendobler became the more important figure of that household.

Granny was fifteen years younger than her husband and was undeniably rotund of hips and face, the former rotundity increased by her full skirts, the latter accentuated by her style of wearing her hair combed back into a tight knot near the top of her head and held in place by a huge black back-comb.

From this style of hair dressing it is evident that Granny was not a member of any plain sect. She was, as she said, "An Evangelical, one of the old kind yet. I can say Amen to the preacher's sermon and stand up in prayer-meeting and tell how the Lord has blessed me."

There were some who doubted the rich blessing of which Granny spoke. "I wouldn't think the Lord blessed me so much," whispered one, "if I had a man like Old Aaron, though I guess he's good enough to her. And that boy of theirs never comes home; he must have a funny streak in him too." "But think of this," one would answer, "how the Lord keeps her cheerful, kind and faithful through all her troubles."

Granny's was a wonderful garden. She and Old Aaron lived in a little gray cube of a house that had its front face set straight to the edge of Charlotte Street. However, the north side of the cube looked into a great green yard where tall spruce trees, overrun with trumpet vines and woodbine, shaded long beds of flowers that love semi-shady places. The rear of the house overlooked an old-fashioned garden enclosed with a white-washed picket fence. Always were there flowers at Granny's house. In the cold days of winter blooming masses of geraniums, primroses and gloxinias crowded against the little square panes of the windows and looked defiantly out at the snow; while all the old favorites grew in the garden, from the first March snowdrop to the late November chrysanthemum. In June, therefore, the garden was a "Lovesome spot" indeed.