In the memories the Plum Tree was a tree that was dying the whole time mama was knowing Grandma Pearl before they lived together.
Mama would go to visit the farm from Sterling where she lived with her mama and step-father and two sisters, Gail and Paula...and there would only be a few fruits up in the plum tree.
And the next summer after that even less than a few if you didn't count the ones too way up high to reach and would probably rot up there.
Mama was worried that by the time she got grown up and could drive to the farm to see Pearl whenever she wanted, all the plums would be gone forever.
One time she even lit out on foot and was walking down the busy road determined to get to Grandme Pearl and Grandpa Jesse’s farm ON HER OWN. She was only little, like maybe nine or ten.
Fortunately for succeeding generations, one of her neighbors was driving down the road when he spotted little mama. She got a good scolding because by this time the country was GETTING BUSY with people just driving around, driving through, and driving by! A little girl could get snatched up and disappeared FOREVER!
Mama argued that she would NEVER get into a car with a stranger, but the neighbor explained to little mama that GOING ANYWHERE without either her mother Betty June or Grandma Pearl WAS DANGEROUS. It was the times in little mama's life when there were getting to be differences between BOYS AND GIRLS. Little mama remembers some serious talks about safety during these times of her life. But she still couldn’t wait to sink her lips into those plums, in the BIG DRY HOT sun of the summer, fruit was an oasis!
Maybe that's why the memory is so clear about that summer when she finally got to MOVE. She got to go and stay with Grandma and Chud (her nickname for Grandpa Jesse). That's HOW Sherry became the West Branch Sister although as she herself will tell you, her personal roots went way back in West Branch. She'd been born to Betty June and Grover Candy when they were first married! And Grover and Betty June stayed in a little cabin right near Grandpa Jesse Bohlinger's big barn!
Sherry Candy Lane tells her daughter Lara Lynn Lane the whole story and Lara puts it into our digital Quilt. That's HOW we keep making this Quilt bigger and BIGGER.
It's little mama who remembers that Grandma Pearl had these awful scary socks...STOCKINGS.
"They were awful," mama says.
"Why?" Lara asks.
"They were just..." Sherry searches for the right words to explain so much sentiment for her Grandma Pearl.
The memory of those stockings on Grandma Pearl's tall, tall legs that could help reach up to the plums and the relationship between girls and our worldly things ALL rolls up into what made them stockings awful. Plus, as an emotional time period, every photographic memory is colored by not only mama's feelings about people and events but by the reality of those OTHER PEOPLE.
The stockings were...They were dark, not really a color. They had pills or lint or something sticking on them like little balls. Holes got sewn up and sewn up, mostly. And Pearl would need to constantly pull those stockings up in a roll-up-spot above her knees before she could just run and do anything like go play or GET PLUMS. Pearl used one of Chud's armbands or some loose butcher string to hold up each stocking as the elastic wore out.
"But what about the plums?"
"By the time I got to go live there," mama tells, "There were only two or three in the summer before and now it was down to ONE plum."
Grandma Pearl and mama watched everyday to see if it was ready to eat. They did other stuff too.
Problem was when it was getting around time for it to be ready, there was so much stuff to do, they barely remembered to check on it.
Any old bird could've swallowed that plum up in one bite.
When they decided it was almost time, 'nother problem came up.
It was just out of reach!
Mama starts chuckling when she remembers now but gets a tear in her eyes because she LOVED Grandma Pearl and Grandpa Jesse SO MUCH for being the kind of old birds that ALWAYS went out of their way to SHARE whatever they had with little mama.
Pearl tried to demonstrate how they would reach it when they were sure it was going to be ready. But Grandma Pearl wasn't tall enough. And the the spatula wasn't tall enough, not even when mama jumped as high as she could with the spatula.
Pearl couldn't be jumping up and down with a spatula on account of the stockings.
No deal, that day.
The ladies giggled when they were NOT going to tell Chud about it, their plan, to use a combination of TALL ENOUGH furniture and various things from around inside the kitchen to get that ONE PLUM.
"That old plum?" Jess guessed right flat out.
"We'll share it!" Little mama swore.
"What would I need with one little old plum when I've got plenty of plums out there in them trees way out in MY FIELDS?"
"You do????" Sherry's eyebrows went up and she might've been ready to sneak out in the early, early morning light to see if that was true.
But she didn't have to because Chud showed her he was winking at Pearl when he "laid that egg."
As she fell asleep that night, mama wondered about things like how they'd get that plum out of the tree before it fell on the ground and got eaten by a pig or stepped on by a cow, or eaten by a bird. She wanted to check on it but outside was SOOOOOOOOOOO dark she couldn’t even see the barn from the kitchen. And, she decided, even if there came a night when she HAD to make it all the way to the outhouse to go to the bathroom, she’d have to run really, really fast and wouldn’t be able to check on the plum. The worries of life on the farm were immediately HUGER than living in modern Sterling.
I can see these things in my mindheart as my mother remembers stuff and tells me about it. That's how I can write things down and tell the stories of my mother's time on the farm. In this narrative space I've taken the liberty of putting quotes around some imagined conversation, but that's not how we do documentary work. For that we record/preserve exactly what people say and then ONLY use quotes around snippets of the conversation or monologue. Sherry Candy Lane gave me this license to write some family stories in this way because whenever we're together and talk about the past it's an active state of re-memembering. She often launches from our shared platform of material into writing poetry, while I prefer to be more journalistic than poetic. Although BOTH of us have the ability to write in a variety of forms and styles. We were very excited to find out that there was another author in our family on the Candy side. Eliza Hitchcock Candee wrote family history, often with a poetic touch in her lyrics. Some of her pieces were incorporated into anthologies of local and American history as "biographical sketches." In our contemporary family, my brother Edward Lane, Jr. once wrote a biographical sketch of our mother Sherry Candy Lane. He wrote it so well that it helped make the case that OUR MOTHER deserved an award recognizing what an outstanding alumna of Northwood Insititute she is. When mama went out to Northwood to receive her award she also visited Sterling and had a reunion with her sisters. Boy, was she surprised to find out that her little school in Sterling had gone to the cows! Literally! It had reverted to barn status and was sheltering cattle. We've got that documentary photograph somewhere too. Quilt's still GROWING.
--Lara Lynn Lane, 2012
