at us as if we were yesterday’s garbage. I couldn’t figure that out at all. I mean, my mother was nice to look at, and she held herself straight and tall, and both of us were clean, our clothes well-mended. Besides that, our family’s roots went deeper than most anybody else’s in Brandywine country, even if we did have to live out in the boonies while everyone else got to live in town, and even if we were poor while they were not as poor, and even if we were in “investments” and taking it in the shorts, while they were shopkeepers who hadn’t completely lost their livelihoods, everyone still needing coffee and sugar, flour and seeds, rope and whatnot.
Mother introduced me to Aidan Madsen and I’d extended my hand as I’d been taught, shaking firmly as a gentleman should, but Mr. Madsen held onto my hand when I started to withdraw it. He had a gray-flecked mustache, and wore gold wire-rimmed glasses, and I remember this so clearly; his eyes were somber, as if he were … well, tortured sounds so exaggerated, but it’s really the best word. He asked me some questions, none of which I remember, and while Mother talked up a storm, he kept staring at me. I was dumbfounded by Mr. Madsen treating us so nice, as if he’d yet to hear we Graysons weren’t regular people. But—and this is the next strange part—Mother remained juiced up after seeing Aidan Madsen that day, and I say “strange,” because enthusiasm was not Mother’s style, not unless she was running a number on Lothian, one of my aunts. The whole way home, pale eyes sparkling, Mother chattered on about Mr. Madsen, how he’d come to teach at East Chester the year she’d been born, in 1900; how he’d started his band, and then Festival—which, the way she described Festival, was like the Fourth of July and Mardi Gras rolled up into one—and how, for years, Aidan Madsen lived in the Washington’s Headquarters house in Chadds Ford, where he’d created a museum celebrating America’s battle for freedom. Chadds Ford was the tiny crossroads village on the Brandywine (ten miles north of Wilmington, Delaware), in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, while Grayson House, where we lived, was just to the south, in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
“A very doable walk from Chadds Ford to Grayson House,” Mother said. “A mile or so.”
I knew that. Everybody knew where Chadds Ford was because everybody knew where the Brandywine was—and that’s because the Brandywine is everywhere, and so, of course, everybody knows all the Brandywine’s crossings. Starting with two branches uniting in one stream above the circular boundary line dividing Delaware County from the state of Delaware, the Brandywine is typically a creek, but sometimes it’s more like a river, especially in winter. In the old days, Mother told me, the creek banks were steep and lined with a dense growth of trees, and to accommodate travel, roads were graded down to access shallow places. The ford most used, the one on the direct road to Philadelphia, was called Chadds Ford. It was there, at Chadds Ford, on September 11th, 1777, that George Washington and his troops had tried stopping the advance of the British on Philadelphia. That battle, Mother said, was Aidan Madsen’s passion, one he lectured on at any opportunity. But there were three well-mentioned reasons for this battle being so memorable. The Battle of Brandywine was the bloodiest battle of the American Revolution; it was where Lafayette had been wounded; and it was the very first time an American flag had flown from an official headquarters.
Oh, and another reason for the Battle of Brandywine being so famous, the one most people didn’t mention, because it was such a terrible cliché? We lost the battle.
But we won the war for independence from the British.
He remembered. “Francis Grayson,” Aidan Madsen intoned. He towered over me, hands in his pockets, stance casual, almost lazy.
I swallowed. “Yessir.”
He touched my
Mother introduced me to Aidan Madsen and I’d extended my hand as I’d been taught, shaking firmly as a gentleman should, but Mr. Madsen held onto my hand when I started to withdraw it. He had a gray-flecked mustache, and wore gold wire-rimmed glasses, and I remember this so clearly; his eyes were somber, as if he were … well, tortured sounds so exaggerated, but it’s really the best word. He asked me some questions, none of which I remember, and while Mother talked up a storm, he kept staring at me. I was dumbfounded by Mr. Madsen treating us so nice, as if he’d yet to hear we Graysons weren’t regular people. But—and this is the next strange part—Mother remained juiced up after seeing Aidan Madsen that day, and I say “strange,” because enthusiasm was not Mother’s style, not unless she was running a number on Lothian, one of my aunts. The whole way home, pale eyes sparkling, Mother chattered on about Mr. Madsen, how he’d come to teach at East Chester the year she’d been born, in 1900; how he’d started his band, and then Festival—which, the way she described Festival, was like the Fourth of July and Mardi Gras rolled up into one—and how, for years, Aidan Madsen lived in the Washington’s Headquarters house in Chadds Ford, where he’d created a museum celebrating America’s battle for freedom. Chadds Ford was the tiny crossroads village on the Brandywine (ten miles north of Wilmington, Delaware), in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, while Grayson House, where we lived, was just to the south, in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
“A very doable walk from Chadds Ford to Grayson House,” Mother said. “A mile or so.”
I knew that. Everybody knew where Chadds Ford was because everybody knew where the Brandywine was—and that’s because the Brandywine is everywhere, and so, of course, everybody knows all the Brandywine’s crossings. Starting with two branches uniting in one stream above the circular boundary line dividing Delaware County from the state of Delaware, the Brandywine is typically a creek, but sometimes it’s more like a river, especially in winter. In the old days, Mother told me, the creek banks were steep and lined with a dense growth of trees, and to accommodate travel, roads were graded down to access shallow places. The ford most used, the one on the direct road to Philadelphia, was called Chadds Ford. It was there, at Chadds Ford, on September 11th, 1777, that George Washington and his troops had tried stopping the advance of the British on Philadelphia. That battle, Mother said, was Aidan Madsen’s passion, one he lectured on at any opportunity. But there were three well-mentioned reasons for this battle being so memorable. The Battle of Brandywine was the bloodiest battle of the American Revolution; it was where Lafayette had been wounded; and it was the very first time an American flag had flown from an official headquarters.
Oh, and another reason for the Battle of Brandywine being so famous, the one most people didn’t mention, because it was such a terrible cliché? We lost the battle.
But we won the war for independence from the British.
He remembered. “Francis Grayson,” Aidan Madsen intoned. He towered over me, hands in his pockets, stance casual, almost lazy.
I swallowed. “Yessir.”
He touched my
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