M Stevens-David
Mother
By Martha Stevens-David
Sep 10, 2008 - 10:00:57 AM

Mother, most of all was a true survivor. There wasn't anything, if she put her mind to it, she couldn't do. She cooked, knit, wallpapered, painted, sawed, sanded and sewed. She tore old clothes apart and made new ones for us out of them. If there were any scraps leftover, she'd use the remnants to make patchwork blankets. She never threw anything away.

Our old house didn't have running water or a bathroom as we know it today. We had to walk about five hundred feet down a trodden dirt path through an overgrown hay field to the Newell Smith barn to find the nearest pump. How many pails of water Mother carried over the thirty-odd years that she lived there, only God knows. All of the water that she needed for our baths, dishes and washings had to be carried from that well, be it spring, summer, fall or winter. The only reprieve that she ever got from that awful, thankless job was when it rained and she was able to save some wash water in an old potato barrel.

The old farmhouse had five uninsulated rooms and it was nothing more than a camp for day laborers and farm workers before we moved in. The first floor had a fairly large kitchen, a small living room and Mother's bedroom. It had two large bedrooms upstairs with a walk-in attic that extended the length and width of the kitchen.  There was a small hand-dug root cellar at the far end of the living room that Mother used for winter vegetable storage and to hide Christmas presents in when she'd managed to set aside a little money.

Ever year, whether she could afford it or not, Mother would wash and paint all the ceilings and woodwork and repaper the kitchen and living rooms.

She was a demon about being clean and she always boiled the water that she used to rinse our dishes. She and Dad often had long "discussions" regarding the merits of using Lestoil as opposed to using hot water and soap. Dad absolutely hated the smell of Lestoil and bleach. And Mother used these in abundance.

There was a long, enclosed porch that ran across the entire front of the house, which opened into another shorter porch that was not enclosed. At the end of the second porch was a shed where Dad stored his wood and other junk and part of this structure included the outhouse.

Mother could make anything grow too. She was a "naturalist" and she enjoyed a challenge. Every year she'd gather all the new seed catalogues and pour through them until she found the seeds that she felt would grow best in the short growing season of Aroostook County. It didn't matter that we didn't have running water, the standing joke for our family was, "Oh sure we've got running water, we just have to run down the road to the pump to get it that's all."

But lack of water didn't deter her. If the growing season was unusually dry, she'd make numerous trips back and forth from the pump to the garden to make sure the seedlings were watered. Or, if Uncle Hal's sprayer hole had any water left, she'd send us kids up there to get water for the garden. We weren't really religious but as kids, we did an awful lot of praying for rain. She was determined that after having spent money, which we really couldn't afford on seeds, she just couldn't stand by and let the tiny plants die from lack of water. When the garden had prospered, then began the back breaking work of picking, cleaning, pickling and canning anything she could preserve to carry us through for the long, cold winter months ahead.

She was one of the first to grow a plant that she called a "Parlor Maple" in our neck of the woods. She would send us down to Aunt Cassie's for seasoned manure and she'd mix this with dirt until she had the mixture just right and then she'd tenderly pat the seeds into the dirt for her precious plants. Folks for miles around would come to see her Parlor Maples and buy or beg a slip or two from her.

She also loved geraniums and she'd have numerous plants growing in coffee tins all over the house, year round. She had white, red, pink and purple variegated geraniums on every available windowsill. Sometimes, Dad would complain that they "stunk" but he could never pry them from her. She loved them and that was all there was to it. There wasn't any thing that grew in nature that she didn't love.

Not only did Mother know every edible berry that had ever grown in northern Maine but she had also committed to memory exactly where each one grew too. It was a very common sight to see little blonde and red headed Stevens' kids heading off through the tall field grasses, lard pails clutched in hand, to pick every berry for miles around. Blueberries, Strawberries, Raspberries and Blackberries, if they were berries, we picked them. We'd gather our bounty and hurry home with our treasures and Mother would immediately turn them into the most delectable, delicious deserts in the world.

Mother's wonderful cooking spoiled us for life. She was famous for her breads, jelly rolls, pies, date-filled cookies, and doughnuts. On each and every birthday, she made a "Steven's Special" cake. It was a home-made double layer chocolate cake covered with a white seven minute frosting. After frosting the cake, she'd drizzle melted semi-sweet chocolate over the top of the white confection and it was done. This was truly a dessert to die for. With eight kids and Dad, she baked nine or ten cakes a year and hundreds over the ensuing years as we were growing up.

Mother was the total disciplinarian in our family. Dad was always up and gone long before we awoke for the day and he usually went to bed as soon as he'd eaten his supper. When we'd head up the stairs for the night, Dad would usually allow us about half an hour of "fooling" around time and then he'd come to the foot of the stairs and quietly say, "Settle down up there." That was all we needed to hear. Not another word was said. We would have died of shame if he'd had to raise his voice to us.

Mother, on the other hand, didn't care if she killed you! If we misbehaved, she'd grab whatever there was that was handy, an old hardwood chair rung, a broom handle or a switch. It really didn't make any difference to her. This was how she'd been brought up and this was the only way she knew of for maintaining control. Tears, yelling and promising didn't deter her. If your rear end needed a good "warmin" that's what you got and she didn't wait till Dad got home either! We all knew that when the deed was done, we were going to be punished and that was that.

I remember the time Uncle Hal taught me how to throw a flat rock and make it skip across the water of the sprayer hole. I practiced all day until I had finally mastered it and I rushed home to show my newly learned trick to Mother.

It was a wonderful, sunny summer's afternoon and she was gathering her washing from the clothesline that was attached to the end of our shed. My then youngest sister, Shirley, was hanging on to her skirt and whining. "Look Mother." I said to her. "Look what Uncle Hal showed me!" I picked up a small, flat stone and threw it under my leg just like he'd taught me. The stone flew straight and true but it didn't have any water to skim over like it was supposed to. It hit my little sister right between the eyes. Blood spurted and Mother let out a yell. She quickly undid her apron, wrapped it around my sister's head and then she took out after me. I'd have been dead for sure if my little legs hadn't taken on a life of their own.

I flew through the tall grass down the path to the pump with Mother right behind me. Need-less-to-say, that was the end of my stone skipping career. To this day, I still feel guilty every time I look at my sister and see the tiny, silver scar that sits right there between her pretty blue eyes.

It was a hard life, growing up in Aroostook County. It was terrible, brutal work raising eight kids with so little money, no vehicle and no running water.

Back then, we really didn't realize that we were poor because all our relatives and neighbors lived pretty much the same way we did. Mother was very conscious of the fact that we may have been poor but we were clean! One of her favorite sayings was "Soap is cheap!" or "We may be poor but we're clean!"

One time Mother received a letter that made her so mad that she nearly had a stroke. We lived on the Goding Road which was a rural, country dirt road and the mail wasn't delivered down our road. If we had any mail, it always went to Grampy Colbath's house which was located across the swamp on the Masardis Road and we always had to go there to pick it up.

The letter was from the Ashland Town Manager saying that because we had so many mouths to feed, we qualified for free food from the government.

These government handouts consisted of canned pork, butter, peanut butter, cheese, powdered eggs and powdered milk and we certainly could have used each and every one of them.

Mother read and reread the letter for a couple of days and she fumed and bitched about it. She was beside herself! If we'd had a phone, that town manager would certainly have heard an earful! After seething and swearing for the better part of a week, she finally sat down and wrote him a terse little note. It said, "Dear Mr. Hayward. Thank you very much for the offer of free food. To my knowledge, there ain't nothin free and we ain't that poor!" But if she was offered any of these surplus goods that some of our other relatives had managed to obtain from the town office, she quickly accepted them. She knew we could easily use any of the food but she just didn't want the town or the town manager to know our business that's all.

Mother only went to school until the ninth grade and she wanted us all to be well-educated. She didn't put up with any nonsense when it came to schooling either. If any of us got into trouble at school, no matter what the reason, we knew that it was going to be doubled when we got home. In Mother's book, the teacher was always right!

I remember the time that Jake came home and told Mother a dirty story. She gave him a look that would have withered a dandelion right down to its roots and then she said, "Is that what I'm sending you to school for?" Jake's tanned and freckled face turned about three shades of red and he mumbled something and took off out the kitchen door. Mother waited until he had rounded the corner of the porch before she collapsed laughing onto her rocker.

Of all the accomplishments that Mother achieved, and there were many, she was to find defeat in only one thing that she ever attempted. She never learned to drive. They'd scrimped and saved for years until around nineteen fifty-five Dad could finally afford to buy an old, green Ford pickup. It was the first vehicle that he'd ever owned and it was his pride and joy.

At that time, Dad was working for his relative, Newell Smith, and Raymond Davenport or one of his other work mates usually picked him up everyday so he didn't have to drive to work. He'd leave the old pickup parked in its special spot off to the right of the driveway on the grass in front of the porch.

Dad had an eagle eye and he'd have known in an instant if any of us kids had touched that truck. And every night when he'd get home, even before saying hello to us kids or Mother, as soon as he'd slammed the door to the pick-up who'd brought him home, his blue eyes would immediately slide over to his old pick-up to check it out.

My older brothers, Walt and Jake, were known to steal it every now and then and take it for a wild, fast ride down our dirt road to the Hafford place and back. They only dared to do this if Dad was work for the day up to the Masardis potato house and Mother had gone to visit her parents for the day. This little theft was really more work than it was worth because our dirt road was then unpaved and the dark green pick-up would be covered, inside and out, with a heavy layer of dust. They would have to spend the remainder of the day, wiping the dust out of the inside and off the rest of the truck. Usually, if either Walt or Jake had any money, they'd bribe the rest of us kids to do the work for them.

It was on a fine spring morning when Mother finally got the overwhelming urge to learn to drive. Seeing the sunlight dance off that little green truck sitting in her driveway day after day, must have been more than she could bare. She withdrew her wet, hands out of another dishpan full of dishes, slung her old faded apron over a kitchen chair and marched herself out to the pickup. She wrenched open the door and drew herself up into the tattered leather seat. She sat there a couple of minutes until her breathing returned to normal and then she reached down and turned the key. The old engine roared to life, struggled for a few seconds and then died. She pumped the gas pedal a couple of times just like she'd seen Dad do so many times and tried again. This time the engine roared and stayed running. Blue; gas flooded smoke rolled out from under the truck and up around the hood.

Mother gripped the steering wheel until the fingers of her brown, work worn hands turned white. She pushed the clutch in with her left foot and with the other foot, gave it a little more gas. She smiled a tight little smile and as she'd seen Dad do so many times before, carefully thrust the gearshift into what she thought was first gear.

The pickup lurched backward across the sloping driveway with Mother hanging onto the steering wheel for dear life. The truck rolled across the lawn and off the end of the culvert down into the ditch on the other side, leaving the front end, with the wheels still spinning, sticking up in the air.

Mother's mind shutdown and she sat where she was for a couple of minutes. Then she finally gathered enough courage to turn the engine off and she ever so carefully opened the door and let herself fall to the ground. She scrambled up the bank and headed for the house as fast as her old legs could carry her.

The pickup was still in the same spot when Dad got home that night. Dad, shocked by seeing his precious vehicle up-ended in the ditch, stood in the middle of the dirt road with his black lunch pail in one hand and his hat in the other. Walt and Jake came dancing off the porch, in a hurry to let Dad know that for once, they were not the guilty party. Even before Dad could ask, Jake sidled up to him and with a quick jerk of his head and a slid of his blue eyes towards the house, said. "You won't believe who did this Dad! And it wasn't me or Walt neither!" Dad looked at his second oldest son and again Jake slid his eyes towards the house.

Dad shook his head in disbelief at the sight. After he, Raymond Davenport and the boys had finally pushed the old truck up out of the ditch and into the driveway; he headed for the house with the rest of us kids right behind him.

When he came through the door, a feast of the finest sort awaited him. There was a pile of three-inch high biscuits with golden tops on a plate in the center of the table. A huge bowl of fluffy mashed potatoes with a stream of yellow cow's butter running down the side was next to that. Fresh ears of sweet yellow corn was on another plate. Mother was in the process of cooking deer steak that she had sautéed in crispy, fried onions. There was a large pot of steaming black tea and the piece-de-resistance was a huge strawberry shortcake for dessert. Dad didn't have to ask who'd been driving his truck. He later joked that he hoped Mother would take up driving every day!

Mother never did learn to drive and she left this earthly place on April 17, 1999. Her days of drudgery, toil and strife are over and done with and I hope that she will look down on me from time to time and think that I didn't turn out half bad after all.

Postscript: Just before Mother passed away, she called me one day and after a rather convoluted, for her, talk, she finally got to the reason about why she'd called. "I hear that you're writing a book," she queried. "Yes, I am Mum," I answered. "What's it about?" she asked. "Well, it's about life in a small Maine town." "Is it about our family?" she asked. "Well yes, some of the stories are." I replied. "Are you worried about something, Mum?" I asked her. "Well," she said. "I was just wantin to know if you'd ever read the "Beans of Egypt Maine?" I laughed and then I knew what she was trying to ask. "Yes, I have read the "Beans of Egypt Maine and no Mum, my book isn't at all like that." "That's good!" She said. "There's no need spreadin stories all over to hell and gone about our family now is there?" "No Mum, I guess there isn't," I laughed.

Copyright (1st Rights) retained by the author, Martha Stevens-David. She can be reached at lmdmsd@megalink.net.