Confessions to Mr. Roosevelt Read online

  The woman suddenly stopped her commentary. “Oh, dear, I didn’t ask if the porch would suit you. Maybe you’d rather go into the living room.”

  Ellen assured her that the porch was just fine and followed the woman to the wicker chairs arranged on either side of a small table. As both women settled themselves, Ivy waved toward the backyard. “We had seven good years in this place, and then Wheat up and died. Out there in the garden. He just keeled over in the lettuce. I’ve never been so mad at anybody in my life. Leaving me alone like that.”

  Ellen stopped rummaging in her satchel for paper and pencil. “I had an aunt who said the same thing when her husband passed on. For weeks, she’d stand in the kitchen, throw back her head, and shout as if he were hovering over the house and could hear every word.”

  Ivy laughed. “That’s the way I felt. And it’s too bad he’s not here to tell his story.”

  Ellen got her pad and pencil ready. “Well, tell me. I’ll include it with yours, if you like.”

  Ivy liked the idea. “Wheaton Jefferson Hamilton was his full name, but nobody called him anything but Wheat. He had so many experiences. He was born on a ranch in Texas but left home when he was just fourteen. You see, his mother died and the father married a widow lady with two boys who made Wheat’s life a misery. The father never stood up for Wheat. Afraid of losing the wife, I suppose. One day, Wheat just up and left. He got a job at one place, and then another. Three years or so later, he was working for an outfit driving cattle from Texas to Kansas. It was hard work, but he liked it. Some of the tales he told were beyond belief. Sometimes, I teased him that half of them were too wild to be true.”

  Ellen nodded and jotted down the woman’s words in the shorthand she learned in high school and perfected while working on the college newspaper.

  “Let’s talk about you, Mrs. Hamilton.”

  “I think you’re going to get to know me well enough to call me Ivy, or Miss Ivy.”

  “All right, Miss Ivy, and you call me Ellen.”

  The two women nodded to each other as if making a pact.

  Ivy sat back, looking like a student who had been asked to recite a lesson. “I came to Kansas from Illinois in 1868. I arrived with my Uncle Nate—he was my mother’s younger brother—and Nate’s wife, Clara. I was seventeen years of age, full of excitement at the adventure I was on. I wasn’t in the least bit frightened.” She laughed. “If I had any sense, I would have been scared out of my shoes.”

  Glancing at Ellen, she asked, “Is this what you want to hear?”

  Ellen looked up. A tentative smile played around her mouth. “You’re doing fine. I’m the one who’s nervous. You’re my first interview.”

  “Well, don’t worry; we’ll get along fine. I could talk about all the changes I’ve seen in my lifetime. Young people today can’t imagine not having talking pictures or telephones or automobiles, but I can recall when people rode in horse-drawn carriages and lit their houses with candles and oil lamps.”

  Ellen scribbled in her notebook. “I like that. Now, maybe you could tell me more about how you and your relatives decided to settle in Kansas.”

  Ivy nodded, reaching for a pair of glasses on the table. Then she rummaged through a cloth bag on the floor beside her, finally pulling out a child’s dress. “I have to do something with my hands. I never could just sit. So, while I talk, I’ll work on this dress hem. Some of us ladies at the Methodist Church started a clothing bank in the basement. Anybody who needs things for themselves or their children can pick up donated clothes we’ve repaired or the things some of us made from scratch.”

  “That’s wonderful! I’m sure people really appreciate it.”

  Ivy nodded as she threaded a needle. “It does my heart good, too. There was this one family I’ll never forget. The boy of about eight or nine didn’t have one thing to wear but a sister’s hand-me-down dress. Oh, my, the look on his face when he got a pair of overalls just made you want to cry.”

  The story pulled at Ellen’s heart, but there was a job to do. She steered Mrs. Hamilton toward it. “You were going to begin with how your settlement came about.”

  “Well, I guess you could say I ended up in Kansas because of the Battle of Shiloh during the Civil War. My father, Herbert Williams, was in the 18th Illinois and wounded on the battle’s first day. One minié ball ripped across his left shoulder. Another grazed his scalp and tore off part of an ear. He was knocked unconscious. When he awoke during the night, he could hear the horrible sounds of the wounded and dying all around him. As he later told it, he thought he would die there, too, but a Mr. Graham from his company came out early the next morning, found Father, and carried him back to a field hospital. That may be too grand of a way to describe it. I heard Father once tell our hired hand it was the closest thing to hell he ever hoped to see.

  “Now you’re wondering how this led to Kansas.” Ivy looked up, her face crinkled in a smile. “Getting to that. Father recovered from his wounds, but after he returned home, he kept thinking about Mr. Graham, who came back from the war, packed up his family, and headed to Kansas to homestead. He wrote letters encouraging Father to do the same. And he might have done just that, but Mother wouldn’t hear of it.

  “You see, ours was a prosperous farm. Father didn’t have to go into the army. He could have paid someone to take his place. That was allowed, but he felt compelled to go. I don’t think Mother ever forgave him for that, and she certainly had no intention of uprooting the family and leaving a comfortable home to start all over again.”

  When Ivy stopped to find another spool of thread, Ellen asked, “What about Uncle Nate?”

  Ivy smiled. “Ah, Nate. You couldn’t find a kinder man. He went off to fight near the end of the war, but mostly it was over before he saw or did anything. He felt like he’d been cheated, but he wasn’t going to miss out on the adventure of going west. By that time, Father had read every book and pamphlet he could find on Kansas, passing them on to Nate, who was wild to homestead. So was his wife, Clara. She was a tiny thing, but absolutely fearless. Homesteading was like a fever. Father had it. Then, Nate and Clara. Their friends, Caleb and Hannah Henson, caught it, and finally me.

  “Nate and Clara were agreeable to me coming along. They knew it would take a lot of work to build up a homestead, so another pair of hands was welcome. I had the idea, too, that I could help out by making money as a seamstress. I was just a girl when my grandmother and mother began teaching me embroidery and handstitching. I learned to operate a sewing machine when Mother bought one after the war.

  “Whether I sewed by hand or with that machine, I had a talent I’ve never been able to explain. Just like some people can hear a piece of music and then play it note for note, I can look at a picture of a skirt or cape or shirtwaist, and I know how it is constructed and what fabrics work best.”

  Ellen kept writing, her squiggles and swirls of shorthand filling up page after page. Without looking up she said, “It sounds as if your father, aunt, and uncle agreed to you going along. Your mother, too?”

  Ivy put down the dress. “If I tell you this, you can’t write it down. When Mrs. Hewitt set up these interviews, she told us some of the stories might be printed in the county newspaper, and I surely don’t want people knowing my mother only agreed to my leaving because she thought I’d find a husband.”

  “No!”

  Ivy nodded as she pushed herself out the chair. “Let’s get some iced tea.” She led Ellen into the kitchen, where Ivy got glasses from a shelf, directing Ellen to a pitcher of tea sitting in the icebox.

  After they returned to the porch with their drinks, Ivy began. “My mother’s goal in life was to marry her two daughters off to well-bred professional men. Toward that end, after the war, she enrolled me and my sister, Violet, in a nearby female academy. Mother did not care if we learned Latin, the sonnets of Shakespeare, or how to properly serve tea. She believed young men of a certain caliber looked for such cultivated backgrounds when they chose their wives.<
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  “Violet was very accomplished in all the social niceties, and, without any instruction, she just naturally seemed to have perfected the art of attracting suitors. She had a way of smiling at a young man and making him think everything he said, no matter how idiotic, was the most interesting thing she’d ever heard. It was no surprise when Violet married a young lawyer who had just been elected to the state legislature.”

  Ivy sipped her tea before continuing. “As you might imagine, Mother was thrilled with Violet’s marriage. Then, she would look at me and sigh. I could never master the manners of flirtation. And truth to tell, I didn’t make a great effort. To make matters worse, at least in my mother’s eyes, I had this appalling habit of saying what I thought. Young ladies, even those better educated than most, were not encouraged to openly express their opinions regarding issues of the day or important events. I was considered attractive, but . . .” Ivy stopped mid-sentence, considering Ellen. “You know, I’d say your pretty brown hair is very much like the color of my own, before this gray settled in.”

  Ellen was pleased with the compliment. She’d always thought her hair was a nice shade of brown, although few ever commented on it.

  “Anyway,” Ivy returned to her story, “that’s why she allowed me to leave. She’d heard the men outnumbered women in the West. Surely, she thought, I could find a bachelor homesteader to marry.”

  Ellen choked on her tea as she tried to stifle a laugh. “Miss Ivy,” she sputtered, “I apologize. I’m certainly not laughing at you, but your mother and mine must have been taken from the same mold. My mother is constantly trying to play matchmaker. The last one was a mortician.”

  Ivy’s laugh rolled across the porch and through the screens. “Oh, you should have seen what came courting me. Mother was right about all the spare men. We hadn’t been on the homestead but about two weeks when this boy about my age showed up. He stood out in the yard, kicking at clumps of dirt with his bare feet and digging into an ear with his pinky finger. Later, I heard that the boy’s dad sent him over to propose before somebody else grabbed me up. Then, there was a man who’d just lost his wife and needed a new mother extra quick to look after his three little children.”

  Ivy shook her head at the memory. “Oh, there were one or two others.” For a fraction of a second, her eyes narrowed before the sparkle returned. “But I just couldn’t be interested.”

  “Until Wheat?”

  Ivy nodded. “The first time I saw him, he was being chased by a cyclone. It was a Sunday afternoon in the spring of ’69. We were visiting Caleb and Hannah Henson, who took a homestead adjacent to Nate’s. The day was hot and sultry. You just knew from the feel of the air a storm was brewing. We kept glancing toward the southwest where clouds were building and starting to roll in our direction. The sky took on a dark-greenish hue. The wind rose to a howl. We took shelter in the soddie, the children wailing. Hannah’s little boy was not quite two, and by that time, Clara had her own little boy. Hannah and I delivered that child, and let me tell you, it made me wonder about going through that myself. Then, I went and had two of my own.

  “But I’m getting away from the story. There we were, with the wind blowing and the children crying. Just as Caleb started to push the door closed, Hannah shouted there was a rider coming our way. As it turned out, that was Wheat, riding like the devil was on his heels. He barely got his horse under the lean-to and himself into the house before the storm hit with such force I thought it would carry us all away.”

  Ivy smiled, remembering. “That was the first time I saw Wheat. He looked like he’d been whipped around every which way. His hair stood in clumps. His clothes were bedraggled. The man was long and lanky, and he had the silliest lopsided grin you ever saw.”

  She sat back. “While we waited out the storm, Clara got the children quieted, and Hannah plied Wheat with food and coffee. I just happened to look up as I was cutting off a wedge of pie, and he was staring at me. I almost had a heart attack. That man had the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, and they were looking straight at me.

  “My goodness, I was flustered. When I put the slice of pie down in front of him, he nodded his thanks, but his attention was on what Nate and Caleb were saying about finding a good place to start a farm. Wheat told them he was finished with riding the range, herding cattle. He wanted to settle and put down roots. When he left that day, he didn’t put any more meaning into saying goodbye to me than he did the others, and I wondered if I would ever see him again.”

  “But you did.”

  “At the town’s Fourth of July picnic.” Ivy pointed at Ellen’s notebook. “You might want to record how we celebrated back then. It was really something. Patriotic speeches were given from the courthouse steps in the morning. Then people would load themselves, with huge baskets of food, into carriages and wagons, and we’d all ride south out of town, like a big parade, to the river. Lots of the vehicles were decorated with flags and bunting. The town band rode in a farm wagon, playing the whole way. There were lots of trees and shade along the river, but it became customary to hold the annual picnic in one particular spot among the cottonwoods.

  “That Fourth of July with Wheat stands out in my memory. I wore a sky-blue dress with puffy half-sleeves. I’d seen the design in a Godey’s Lady’s Book illustration, and I was a little proud of myself for looking so fashionable. Wheat wasn’t any fashion plate, but anyone could see that his clothes were brushed and his boots cleaned.”

  Ivy motioned for Ellen to stop writing. “I don’t know if I’d want people to know about the details of our courtship. When Wheat spied us in the picnic crowd, he came right over, shook Nate’s hand and then Caleb’s. His grin was as lopsided as I remembered. He’d found a place to settle in the northern part of the county and thanked the men for their advice.

  “Then, looking straight at me, but speaking to Nate, he asked for permission to escort me to the table where lemonade and cool water were being served. I couldn’t have been more surprised, but Nate didn’t blink an eye. Permission was granted, and I was walking beside Wheat, not caring one whit if we ever reached the lemonade.

  “Our conversation was not what you would call romantic. He asked what I thought of cattle ranches, and I replied that since I had never seen one, I could not express an opinion other than to say it seemed risky to put all your eggs in one basket. It seemed to me a man would do well to also plant grain. Maybe not corn, because it didn’t seem to do so as well in Kansas as it did in Illinois. Maybe wheat was a good crop to have.

  “That stopped Wheat Hamilton in his tracks. He gave me a long look, that grin playing around his mouth, and asked what I knew about such things. I talked right back, letting him know I had grown up on a farm, and even if I didn’t pay attention to lots of things, I had learned quite a bit listening to Nate and Caleb. He looked surprised, and I wanted to kick myself for spouting off. Just once, I thought, couldn’t I have heeded my mother’s advice to ‘govern my tongue’?

  “Then, the most extraordinary thing happened. Wheat laughed in that quiet, almost embarrassed, way I came to know so well. As it turned out, he didn’t mind a woman that spoke her mind, and heaven knows he heard lots from me over the years. But there was more to it than that. From the very first, we felt comfortable with one another. That was the beginning of our courtship, although it wasn’t the romantic sort you read about in books.”

  Ellen leaned forward. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, for one thing, Wheat never said flowery words to me.” Ivy paused. “Thank goodness!”

  Ellen laughed along with Ivy.

  “And we didn’t go out on long buggy rides or to many town entertainments. In fact, we didn’t see each other for stretches of time. He was busy getting his farm organized. There were fences to build, land to plow, and cattle to buy. And he was building a long, low ranch house of limestone that resembled a place he’d seen and admired in Texas.

  “When he could, Wheat visited me out at the soddie, chaperoned by Nate an
d Clara. We might go to the country church that stood near Hannah and Caleb’s place, and a few times we rode to his farm. Wheat was anxious that I approve his ideas for the house. Ours was a very quiet courtship. We married in May of ’70.”

  Ivy took off her glasses, rubbing the bridge of her nose before putting them back in place.

  Ellen picked up her notebook. “Maybe, you could tell me about what it was like at the very first when you and Nate and Clara were just starting out.”

  “Nate and Caleb came out ahead of us to locate claims and break the ground for early planting. They drove out wagons filled with our worldly goods. Two milk cows were tethered behind. We ladies made the trip two months later. Father took us in a wagon to the ferry that crossed the Mississippi River to St. Louis. From that city, which was so alive with people and sounds I didn’t know which way to look, we took a boat up the Missouri River to Kansas. The river trip was so wonderful I could understand how some people want to live their whole lives on the water. But we were going to be prairie folks. Once back on firm ground in Kansas, we boarded a train to Opal’s Grove.

  “At times our travel was tedious. Sometimes it was difficult. Hannah’s little boy was only a babe, and Clara was in the early stages of pregnancy. Still, we never despaired. Never once did I regret leaving Illinois. When we arrived here and saw the men waiting for us at the train depot, we cheered.”

  “On that first day in Opal’s Grove—before you went to the claim—was there anything that stood out in your mind about the town?”

  Ivy shook her head. “Not the town, no. I didn’t really see it because the depot is south of the square. From the depot, we took the road south toward the river and then west to the claim. But at the depot there was one thing that struck us all.” Ivy paused, as if considering her words.

  “Yes?” Ellen prompted.

  “I don’t know if I should say, but you might as well write this down, because I’ve no doubt it will be mentioned in someone else’s interview. It was a common occurrence for Nettie Vine to meet trains arriving from the East. Of course, we didn’t know that at the time. On the day of our arrival, I saw this girl, no older than me, standing on the platform. She waved wildly, like she was trying to get our attention, and she shouted greetings to everyone coming off the train. It was an odd spectacle, and I remember Clara giggling at the sight of a near-grown girl carrying on in such a way.”