prayed for salvation. Several went over. The house tuned up, roaring with the thunder of a westerly wind. For a little while, we were both battened down and battered down.
There are always two stages of any disturbance in the countryâthe stage when the lights and the phone are still going, the stage when these are lost. We were in the second stage. In front of the house, a large branch of the biggest balm-of-Gilead tree snapped and crashed down across the driveway, closing it off. On the north side, an apple tree split clean up the middle. And for half an hour or so Edna held us in her full embrace.
It did not seem long. Compared to the endless hours of the radio vigil, it seemed like nothing at all. By ten oâclock, the wind was moderating. We lighted the dog up to her bed by holding a flashlight along the stairs, so she could see where to leap. When we looked out of a north bedroom, there in the beautiful sky was a rainbow lit by the moon.
It was Taylor Grant, earlier in the evening, who pretty well summed things up for radio. âThe weather bureau estimates that almost forty-six million persons along the east coast have felt some degree of concern over the movement of the storm,â said Mr. Grant. âNever before has a hurricane had that large an audience.â As one member of this vast audience, I myself felt a twinge of belated concern the next morning when I went over to the spring to fetch a pail of water. There in the woods, its great trunk square across the path, its roots in the air, lay a big hackmatack.
I never did get to hear the wrap-up.
Coon Tree
A LLEN C OVE , J UNE 14, 1956
The temperature this morning, here in the East, is 68 degrees. The relative humidity is 64 percent. Barometer 30.02, rising. Carol Reed is nowhere in sight. A light easterly breeze ruffles the water of the cove, where a seine boat lies at anchor, her dories strung out behind like ducklings. Apple blossoms are showing, two weeks behind schedule, and the bees are at workâall six of them. (A bee is almost as rare a sight these days as a team of horses.) The goldfinch is on the dandelion, the goose is on the pond, the black fly is on the trout brook, the Northeast Airliner is on course for Rockland. As I write these notes, the raccoon is nursing one of her hangovers on the branch outside the hole where her kittens are.
My doctor has ordered me to put my head in traction for ten minutes twice a day. (Nobody can figure out what to do with my head, so now they are going to give it a good pull, like an exasperated mechanic who hauls off and gives his problem a smart jolt with the hammer.) I have rigged a delightful traction center in the barn, using a canvas halter, a length of clothesline, two galvanized pulleys, a twelve-pound boat anchor, a milking stool, and a barn swallow. I set everything up so I could work the swallow into the deal, because I knew he would enjoy it, and he does. While his bride sits on the eggs and I sit on the milking stool, he sits on a harness peg a few feet away, giggling at me throughout the ten-minute period and giving his mate a play-by-play account of manâs fantastic battle with himself, which in my case must look like suicide by hanging.
I think this is the fourth spring the coon has occupied the big tree in front of the house, but I have lost count, so smoothly do the years run together. She is like a member of our family. She has her kittens in a hole in the tree about thirty-five feet above the ground, which places her bedchamber a few feet from my bedchamber but at a slightly greater elevation. It strikes me as odd (and quite satisfactory) that I should go to sleep every night so close to a litter of raccoons. The motherâs comings and goings are as much a part of my life at this season of the year as my morning shave and my evening drink. Being a coon, she is, of course, a creature of the night; I am essentially a creature of the day, so we Cox and Box it very nicely.
There are always two stages of any disturbance in the countryâthe stage when the lights and the phone are still going, the stage when these are lost. We were in the second stage. In front of the house, a large branch of the biggest balm-of-Gilead tree snapped and crashed down across the driveway, closing it off. On the north side, an apple tree split clean up the middle. And for half an hour or so Edna held us in her full embrace.
It did not seem long. Compared to the endless hours of the radio vigil, it seemed like nothing at all. By ten oâclock, the wind was moderating. We lighted the dog up to her bed by holding a flashlight along the stairs, so she could see where to leap. When we looked out of a north bedroom, there in the beautiful sky was a rainbow lit by the moon.
It was Taylor Grant, earlier in the evening, who pretty well summed things up for radio. âThe weather bureau estimates that almost forty-six million persons along the east coast have felt some degree of concern over the movement of the storm,â said Mr. Grant. âNever before has a hurricane had that large an audience.â As one member of this vast audience, I myself felt a twinge of belated concern the next morning when I went over to the spring to fetch a pail of water. There in the woods, its great trunk square across the path, its roots in the air, lay a big hackmatack.
I never did get to hear the wrap-up.
Coon Tree
A LLEN C OVE , J UNE 14, 1956
The temperature this morning, here in the East, is 68 degrees. The relative humidity is 64 percent. Barometer 30.02, rising. Carol Reed is nowhere in sight. A light easterly breeze ruffles the water of the cove, where a seine boat lies at anchor, her dories strung out behind like ducklings. Apple blossoms are showing, two weeks behind schedule, and the bees are at workâall six of them. (A bee is almost as rare a sight these days as a team of horses.) The goldfinch is on the dandelion, the goose is on the pond, the black fly is on the trout brook, the Northeast Airliner is on course for Rockland. As I write these notes, the raccoon is nursing one of her hangovers on the branch outside the hole where her kittens are.
My doctor has ordered me to put my head in traction for ten minutes twice a day. (Nobody can figure out what to do with my head, so now they are going to give it a good pull, like an exasperated mechanic who hauls off and gives his problem a smart jolt with the hammer.) I have rigged a delightful traction center in the barn, using a canvas halter, a length of clothesline, two galvanized pulleys, a twelve-pound boat anchor, a milking stool, and a barn swallow. I set everything up so I could work the swallow into the deal, because I knew he would enjoy it, and he does. While his bride sits on the eggs and I sit on the milking stool, he sits on a harness peg a few feet away, giggling at me throughout the ten-minute period and giving his mate a play-by-play account of manâs fantastic battle with himself, which in my case must look like suicide by hanging.
I think this is the fourth spring the coon has occupied the big tree in front of the house, but I have lost count, so smoothly do the years run together. She is like a member of our family. She has her kittens in a hole in the tree about thirty-five feet above the ground, which places her bedchamber a few feet from my bedchamber but at a slightly greater elevation. It strikes me as odd (and quite satisfactory) that I should go to sleep every night so close to a litter of raccoons. The motherâs comings and goings are as much a part of my life at this season of the year as my morning shave and my evening drink. Being a coon, she is, of course, a creature of the night; I am essentially a creature of the day, so we Cox and Box it very nicely.
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