sign that piece of paper,” she would have said. “Now get on back to the café or somewhere and stop this foolishness.”
Vidalia was one of my regulars at the library. I think she might have been the smartest woman I ever met. I always thought it a shame she never went to college. It was easy for me to picture her teaching history at a university.
But college wasn’t in the cards for Vidalia. “It was hard enough for a black woman to finish high school,” she told me once over tea and sugar cookies. “And colleges didn’t take many colored folk back then either.”
So, Vidalia self-educated herself, reading everything she could get her hands on that pertained to American history. The teachers at the high school even considered her an expert on the Civil War, and every year, when the subject was taught, students lined up, waiting to pick her brain for facts to include in their essays.
She spoke with a slight Southern accent, having been born in Georgia. She could tell stories about the War Between the States like an actress on a stage and breathe life into history that excited the children. I only asked her once about why she moved to Bright's Pond. She smiled at my question a moment, patted my hand, and said, “Griselda, there are some stones better left unturned.”
I never asked her again. It wasn’t important. What really mattered was the way Vidalia and her husband Drayton dovetailed into our community in the early sixties. While the rest of the world burned down cities and marched for racial equality, Bright's Pond had managed to put it into practice. Drayton passed on just a few years after they moved to town and left her to raise their daughter alone. She married and moved away. Although she offered, Vidalia said she would never leave Bright's Pond. She turned her home into a boarding house, often giving a room to visiting relatives and on rare occasions perfect strangers.
And so she did for Hezekiah. She gave him the room in the front—a large, sunny bedroom with flowered wallpaper and its own bathroom. She only charged him ten dollars a week, but always left a list of chores for him on Saturday morning.
By Groundhog Day Hezekiah had shoveled our walk ten times, patched the roof well enough to stop the occasional waterfall in one of the upstairs bedrooms, replaced the pipes under three sinks, and told Agnes that when spring came he would build us a new garage. I guessed he planned on putting down roots in Bright's Pond.
Every Groundhog Day folks gathered at the Full Moon to watch the early morning festivities at Gobbler's Knob in western Pennsylvania. Zeb brought in a small TV and sat it on the counter and we all gathered around waiting for the official groundhog decree to be read.
It was my father's favorite holiday, believe it or not. “Six more weeks to spring: just about halfway through,” he’d say whether good old Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow or not. I only remember Phil not seeing his shadow maybe one or two times. But in the mountains you can rest assured that winter would have her icy claws dug deep for at least another six and probably eight weeks no matter what Phil predicted. The spring thaw was important to my father because some winters were so cold and the ground so hard, bodies had to be kept until spring before the cemetery could bury them. Some years they were stacked three or four high in a garage at the cemetery. Imagine that, having to wait weeks before you could bury your loved one, knowing he or she was stacked like cordwood in a garage all the while.
Hezekiah joined us that year at the café. At first he didn’t understand what all the hoopla was about. I was standing near the counter with Vidalia and Ruth Knickerbocker when Hezekiah pushed his way through the crowd to take a seat at the counter like he was some kind of dignitary invited for the occasion. Ruth was one of my best friends even though she was more than a decade older than me. We enjoyed eachother's
Vidalia was one of my regulars at the library. I think she might have been the smartest woman I ever met. I always thought it a shame she never went to college. It was easy for me to picture her teaching history at a university.
But college wasn’t in the cards for Vidalia. “It was hard enough for a black woman to finish high school,” she told me once over tea and sugar cookies. “And colleges didn’t take many colored folk back then either.”
So, Vidalia self-educated herself, reading everything she could get her hands on that pertained to American history. The teachers at the high school even considered her an expert on the Civil War, and every year, when the subject was taught, students lined up, waiting to pick her brain for facts to include in their essays.
She spoke with a slight Southern accent, having been born in Georgia. She could tell stories about the War Between the States like an actress on a stage and breathe life into history that excited the children. I only asked her once about why she moved to Bright's Pond. She smiled at my question a moment, patted my hand, and said, “Griselda, there are some stones better left unturned.”
I never asked her again. It wasn’t important. What really mattered was the way Vidalia and her husband Drayton dovetailed into our community in the early sixties. While the rest of the world burned down cities and marched for racial equality, Bright's Pond had managed to put it into practice. Drayton passed on just a few years after they moved to town and left her to raise their daughter alone. She married and moved away. Although she offered, Vidalia said she would never leave Bright's Pond. She turned her home into a boarding house, often giving a room to visiting relatives and on rare occasions perfect strangers.
And so she did for Hezekiah. She gave him the room in the front—a large, sunny bedroom with flowered wallpaper and its own bathroom. She only charged him ten dollars a week, but always left a list of chores for him on Saturday morning.
By Groundhog Day Hezekiah had shoveled our walk ten times, patched the roof well enough to stop the occasional waterfall in one of the upstairs bedrooms, replaced the pipes under three sinks, and told Agnes that when spring came he would build us a new garage. I guessed he planned on putting down roots in Bright's Pond.
Every Groundhog Day folks gathered at the Full Moon to watch the early morning festivities at Gobbler's Knob in western Pennsylvania. Zeb brought in a small TV and sat it on the counter and we all gathered around waiting for the official groundhog decree to be read.
It was my father's favorite holiday, believe it or not. “Six more weeks to spring: just about halfway through,” he’d say whether good old Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow or not. I only remember Phil not seeing his shadow maybe one or two times. But in the mountains you can rest assured that winter would have her icy claws dug deep for at least another six and probably eight weeks no matter what Phil predicted. The spring thaw was important to my father because some winters were so cold and the ground so hard, bodies had to be kept until spring before the cemetery could bury them. Some years they were stacked three or four high in a garage at the cemetery. Imagine that, having to wait weeks before you could bury your loved one, knowing he or she was stacked like cordwood in a garage all the while.
Hezekiah joined us that year at the café. At first he didn’t understand what all the hoopla was about. I was standing near the counter with Vidalia and Ruth Knickerbocker when Hezekiah pushed his way through the crowd to take a seat at the counter like he was some kind of dignitary invited for the occasion. Ruth was one of my best friends even though she was more than a decade older than me. We enjoyed eachother's
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