It's a helpful thing to be able to have our friends and family and future
generations be able to hear and experience. It's not the same as in person,
but you still get a sense a flavor of that. Since the dawn
of time, we've shared stories. They remind us of who we were,
who we are, and who we wish to be. Through story, our
ancestors speak to us, passing on wisdom and truth from the past, and
stories prepare us for the future if only we listen. Welcome to episode four
of Listen. My name is Daniel Foitzech and I love a good story.
To our returning listeners, thanks for coming back to hear more story, and
hello to all the new listeners. This podcast is called Listen, and it's
about one of my favorite activities and probably one of yours if you're here listening
to great stories. Today is a special episode for Mother's Day, and as
such, I'm going to dedicate this to two of the folks that really influenced
my love of story and storytelling, that being my mom Linda and my grandmother
Mary. And my mom used to read to me all the time when I
was little. She used to encourage my love of story and storytelling encouraged me
to read and learn as I was growing up, and my grandmother Mary was
a fantastic storyteller in her own right. She used to tell me stories at
bedtime about growing up on her farm in Indiana, and it was always exciting,
it was always new, there was always something interesting going on, and
it was a great way for me to experience something that I had never experienced
before growing up in the city. I learned what it was like to live
on a farm and live outdoors, and it really encouraged me to pursue that
and to want to go out into nature and to see a real farm and
to see what things are like, and to grow things, and really to
love story. So to both of those ladies, thank you very much for
what you did for me and for passing on the love of story. And
of course to all you moms out there, Happy Mother's Day. Today's teller
is Jim May and this is a fantastic story dedicated to his mom, Agnes.
It's called Agnes from Nippersink Creek. It was recorded live at the two
thousand and fifteen Three Rivers Storytelling Festival. You can find more information about that
festival at www. Dot three, RSTF dot org. If you are in
the Pittsburgh area, I do encourage you to go over to their website and
take a look at the information for the upcoming two thousand and sixteen festival,
which will be occurring this August. If you're not in Pittsburgh, seek out
story and storytelling festivals in your area. There's bound to be one. If
you like the story that you hear today. You can find Jim's work over
at jimmy storyteller dot com. There's some video on there of him telling stories.
You can also pick up his book The Boo Baby Girl Meets the Ghost
of Mabel's Gable, The Farm on Nippersink Creek. Stories from a Midwestern Childhood.
I really encourage you to head on over to his website and check out
what he has to offer. There's a ton of stuff over There's some really
great stories and storytelling. Jim is an amazing storyteller and really passes along a
lot of wisdom and knowledge through his stories. So, without further ado,
I'm going to get out of the way and let Jim tell you a story
about Agnes was February eighth, my mother's eighty eighth birthday, and I went
to visit her at the Hillcrest Nursing Home just north the Spring Grove, across
the Wisconsin state line where she was living, and I had brought her a
birthday card. And my mom always loved these what she called bought in cards,
and she would open them with a big smile and great enthusiasm, and
she would read them out loud as if they were written just for her and
reflected the exact truth of her own experience. And this one was no exception.
She got a big smile, old thank you, and she ripped it
open and she began to read it said, a mother is. Then you
opened it up and listed all the things, you know, the miracle of
birth, the long vigils alongside of a six child's bed holding that newborn baby.
Mom boy said, there's nothing sweeter than a newborn baby. And she
got together. It says, well, I don't need a card to tell
me what a mother is. I had five children now that would be considered
a big family nowadays. And she kind of laughed and put the card down
and she looked out the window. It had just snowed. It was February,
and the white snow was on the black oak tree sticky, and she
said, we used to had big snows like this in spring Grove when I
was a girl, Your uncle Paul and I we'd run out the main street
and the big snows, and we watched the farmers bringing the bob sleds along
taking their milk to the creamery because in the deep snow, you couldn't get
through with the with the with the Model A or the or the tractor head
to get the team of horses going. And uh, your uncle PAULA.
We jump on the back of the runners and we'd ride all the way to
the creamery and then we jump another bob sled on the way back. It
was really something, those snows. She had a big smile on her face.
I reminded mom that when I was a boy in that same town,
Spring Grove, we would stand up by the by the intersection by Grandpa's store
by then it was Uncle Charlie and Antiva's store, and we wait for the
cars to stop at the stop sign. That we run behind the cars and
we grab onto the bumpers and we'd hang on and we'd skid along behind the
cars. We call the flipping cars. Smile dropped off her face. She's
still mad at me that flipping those cars. Well, she said, you
get hurt flipping cars. She said, there wasn't as much to be afraid
of when I was a girl. I suppose she has a point there,
I when you think about it, her generation had seen so much technological change
when I first when I first told this story, my mother being born in
nineteen oh six, and I couldn't imagine any generation has seen so much technical
change. But now as I'm telling this story, same thing with us,
you know, Skype, iPhone, on and on and on. But then
she said, there's not so much to be afraid of anymore, and things
are just changing too fast. And I suppose that's true. In fact,
my mother used to tell a story about her elders. Martha Bowman lived up
on English Prairie north the Spring Grove, and Martha had a little egg business
with my grandpa down at the store. Martha learned to drive her Model T
when she was eighty one years old, and she would load up the eggs
in the Model T and she'd head out low gear, low throttle, out
to the gravel driveway. Then she would turn onto the gravel road heading south
to my grandpa's general store. She was so careful and afraid about driving.
She would not even take up half of her half of the road. She
would get the front driver's side wheel lined up in about the middle of her
half of the road, so that the other front wheel was on the shoulder,
just a little bit this side of the shoulder break, and she would
go down, low gear, low throttle, slow as she could. She
saw dust spoiling up in a car coming this, and she would pull off
the road completely. She'd go over the shoulder break and she'd stop, and
she'd wait till that car passed. When the car passed, she would give
him the farmer's wave, and then she would ease back on all the way
down to my grandpa's store. She'd stop right there by the store, still
heading south. She'd take the eggs in. Grandpa would barter so much eggs,
you know, for groceries, and then um Mom and Grandma would candle
the eggs in the back to make sure that in the blood spots or or
baby chicks, and then she would bring the groceries out, and she would
ask my grandpa to carry the groceries out. Grandpa would carry the groceries out
and Grandpa would put him the car, and then, according to legend,
she would say, now, mister Webber, would you please turn my car
around for me, and granp would turn the car heading north, and there
she'd be half of her half of the road, you know, going down
the road. Technology. Well, we had a story, or I have
a story that tell about my mom and technology. See, my mom never
quite adjusted to my answering machine. She was already in her seventies when I
began telling stories. And I lived in an apartment of five or six miles
away. So I got an answering machine and a business address in town,
a post office box, and I had my rural post of post a box
out in front. I figured that business address would be good. You know,
if I changed the dress, I always have the same business address.
Or if I couldn't pay the rent, I would at least have a mailbox.
I could kind of live out of that mailbox. And so I was
pretty proud when I got all those things. I had had that rural box
in front of my house, I had that post office box. I had
the answer mention. I figured every day I had three chances to get good
news. Mainly some work. So I remember coming in from that first day
of running errands and going down and I have a little cards made in prosures
and and uh those prosures back they those days. We always we had to
be cool, you know, they're always like you know, I like that
or like Anyways, I came home from the printer and by gosh, there
was that little red light on the answer machine. I thought, oh boy,
here it is. Here's a job coming in. Yes, sir,
it's gonna be all right, gonna be able to pay the rent and buy
groceries and all that stuff. This is a good story for you in your
life right now. So I rewind the tape on the news sparkly and answer
machine, and was just a short message, well, you know, just
a one job. And you know the old Chinese saying the journey of a
thousand miles starts with that first step. So one job was first step.
So that I put it on play and I heard not a job, but
my mother's voice saying this is your mother. Click. Well I figure,
well, you know, she got the answering machine, and she's no nonsense
German farm woman, hard work, and she wasn't gonna have a little chit
chat with an answering machine. So I thought, well, I should call
mom, you know, But now it's busy. It was a busy time
in my life. I'm doing this and that, I think, and I
forgot. I forgot to call her. So I was out on the next
day doing errands and doing this and that, and uh, it was it
was kind of It was unfortunate because in the beginning of the business you have
to sort of spend a lot of money without any money coming in, you
know. So I'm getting a new shirt and a couple more brochures, and
I come back and by gosh, there's that that answer machine that red leg
guns, like, well here here, it's coming in, you know,
my ships come And I played it and it was a little bit longer.
I thought, well, it's gonna be a job for sure this time,
you know. And I play it and uh it was my mother's voice,
my mother's voice, and she said, this is your mother, agness.
Make now. There was enough stridency in her voice that I realized something was
the matter. Now, maybe I had missed a family gathering, Maybe the
lawn was getting long. I she had a mother the grass, or missed
some kind of party. So I thought, I'm gonna go there tomorrow.
I'm get to straightened out face to face, not going to depend on this
machine. The next day, I never got the chance. I came in
fairly early in the morning. I've been out jogging. I used to jog
a lot in those days, because you know, I could get out there
and go out jogging and get the h endorphins going and come back, you
know, and feel pretty good about being unemployed. And sure enough there was
that red light running again, and zus a longer message. Well, here
we go, this is gonna be just fine. I know it's gonna work.
This time I played. The message was this is your mother, Agnes
may u s ob click. Only my mom did not use the letters abbreviations.
She used the full juicy words themselves. Now that my first response.
My first thought was there was something ironic about my mother calling me this.
I don't think she quite thought that through, but there was enough, you
know, in the tone of her voice. I realized, I got to
get this tink curve right. This, this is going from bad to worse
in a hurry. So I called her right then I dialed and Umber and
I called her, and she says, oh, so this is Jim.
Oh, hi Jim. You know, she seemed fine. So I haven't
heard for you in a while. I said, yeah, I'm sorry.
You know, I've been really busy. I'm getting getting organized for this new
business. And you know, I'm starting this new business. I've been going
to become a storyteller. She says, you're a storyteller. What about your
teaching job? So well, I think we've been over this, mom,
and we had. I left my teaching job. I believe with apps,
I'm not going to teach anymore. I'm gonna be a storyteller. And she
said, oh my god, who would have thought of it? Well,
I said, actually a lot of people are thinking about it, and a
few of us are actually doing it. I'm gonna try to make a living
as a storyteller. There was a long pause and she said, well,
that's okay. There's nothing wrong with being poor. I know, Mom,
you always told us that we were we were poor, but we were always
clean. I say, no, Mom, I'm clean. I'm clean right
now, and I don't know if I'm poor yet. We were so poor
that wasn't for the chickens. We would have starved to death. I said,
okay, Mom, but I don't want to hear about that right now.
I was noticing a distinct lack of chickens in my upstairs apartment, but
where I was living at the time. I said, I don't want to
talk about the chickens, or poverty or any of that right now. What
would I like to know, Mom, is why have you been calling me
and swearing at me on my answering machine. It was an even longer pause,
and she said what answering machine? Then it occurred to me, what
would have happened? Must have happened. She would dial my name, my
number. She would hear me on the tape, my voice, the voice
of the child she brought into this world, saying Hi, this says Jim.
She said, this is igness made. I can't talk to you right
now. This is your mother, and I'll call you back at my early
eskiminience. Why are you sob click can't really blame her, right, I
said, no, Mom, No, that's not a US. See,
it's just a machine with a tape recording on. I remember at the Christmas
party one of the kids brought that little tape recorder and where was going around
taping it and we were listening to each other and laughing. It's like that.
It onlys in the machine. And when you call and I'm not here
because I gotta be out working making a living of the machine knows that knows
you've called it sets itself off. It begins the tape, and that's smart.
And then it records what you say. Now when you stop talking and
shut itself off, rewinds the tape, sets it for a new person calling
in. When I get home, I rewind it. Listen to all your
messages and my messages. Hear you, I call you back. Isn't that
a wonderful machine? Mom? Another long pause, and she said, am
I talking to that? Damnag? She now, well, after we always
try to do our business, you know, face to face. But technology,
you know, technology did begin to catch up with my mom. Socrates
allegedly said that technology would become the death of memory. You know how you
feel when your computers crash and all your notes and contacts are gone. And
technology did kind of start ganging up on my mom. The first thing to
go was the propane cookstove, you know, had those dials since she would
try to turn them on and off, how a pilot light, and sometimes
she would just not quite turn all the way off, and the drafty frame
house, the wind would blow out the pilot and you would smell the leaking
propane gas, and Mom often did not know what it was. She would
think it was a dead mouse, and she started cleaning all over looking for
that dead mouse. And that she hated mice all those years in those little
farmhouses. Probably Um, in fact, that was the reason why she was
such a good cusser, I think um. When she would cust she would
cause such a blue streak. My dad would sometimes take us aside, us
kids, and say, your mother doesn't mean to talk like that. And
she would always tell the same story. She was the oldest in the family
and her mother died at the age of forty nine, and your your mother
was sixteen, and she had to take care of your uncle Paul, and
aunt Eva, and your and your grandpa, and there wasn't anyone there to
supervise her language. We thought it was kind of sweet that our dad had
to make excuses for our mother's potty mouth. In researching my book The Farm
on Nipper Saint Creek, I came up with the facts that that they were
tenant farmers, and they would move about every three years, you know,
to a new farm because the lord got upset, or he wanted to surrend
it to somebody in his family, or he raised the rent, or you
know, there's always some reason. And now can you imagine that moving a
farm every three years. You know how how much fun it is to move
an apartment or a house. Well, you've got all of that when you're
moving the farmhouse and the furniture and such. But you've also got of forty
fifty cows, three hundred chickens, eighty ducks, six goats, four horses,
all the feed for those animals, all the farm equipment, yet to
a new place that was usually kind of a rundown farmhouse, that's the kind
we usually had, and my mother would take after that. Sometimes, say
Niva would come and they would they would wall paper and repaint every single surface,
and two weeks that old rundown farmhouse would just sparkle, and the neighbors
would come and say they couldn't believe this old place took so good. So
I think it might have been all that moving and all those farmhouses that my
mother had to clean up. That might have been what made her such a
good cusser, but Dad never owned up to it. He just said there
was no one there to supervise her language. Well, you know, she'd
custom started looking for that dead mouse, you know, she'd cleaned up and
find it. But it wasn't a dead mouse. It was the gas.
And one of the neighbors would come, and one of us would come.
The kids would smell that that propan just immediately, you know, throw the
windows open and everything out and turn everything off. It was pretty frightening.
Then she started um becoming disoriented. She would uh go to Mass. She
went to Mass almost every day, two doors over Saint Peter's Catholic Church,
and Father Policea called us one time. A wonderful parish priest had been priests
for years, and he noticed that Mom was just getting up and walking right
out in the middle of the aisle, out of the church, like Mass
was over, but but at a time in the mass that a devout Catholic
would never leave. And she had been a devout Catholic all her life.
She was very proud of that. Father Crook, another assistant priest, said
that her and my aunt even were pillars of the church in Spring Grove,
and she was so proud of that. So father was concerned. In fact,
one day after Mass, he walked around two doors over walked over to
Mom's house because he was concerned about where she had gone. Came to the
back door. Friends and relatives always came to the back door. The front
door was for salesman and Jehovah witnesses came to the back door knocked, and
Mom came to the door and said, Oh, hi, father, how
are you while I'm finding this? He said, but I just wanted to
stop by and say hello and make sure you made it home all right from
from church. And she kind of dropped her smile and said, oh,
well, thank you, father, but but I've been here all morning.
And then she invited him in for some of her famous egg coffee and cinnamon
rolls. And I think he chatted and left, thinking he had done the
best he could, and he gave us a call. She became a loss
sometimes going up to the store. It was only a block up to her
sister's store where where she used to help Grampa run the store of years and
years before that. And there's one North South Street, one East West Street,
and she would come out of the store and she would take that that
that wrong street. There's only two reach and she'd take the wrong one and
she'd go round the big block and it would be about three times is long
a walk to get home, and that was particularly difficult during the wintertime.
A couple of times neighbors had stopped her when when it was snowing to give
her a ride to make sure she got home all right. So it finally
came that it was time for her to sell her house there on Main Street
and move to a nursing home, the only property she ever owned with my
dad. They bought that little house on contract on Main Street after they quit
farming. Farming was getting too hard for him. And I remember the day
that we had the closing of the house, my brothers and sisters, or
my sisters and I said around the table, and Mom was there and she
was actually had the pen in her hand, and she was about to sign
the closing document, the transference of the title, and she kind of looked
up at us and she dropped the pen and she began to cry, and
she kind of a couple of times and said, why am I selling the
houses? Again, I can't imagine what the reasons could be. And we
went around the table and we told her the reasons. You know, we
we we we hoped there were reasons enough. We hope we're doing the right
thing. He said, well, Mom, you know, um, um,
the doctor is very concerned about your health. And and uh uh you
sometimes get lost coming back from the store in the post office and uh in
the winner. That's that's very dangerous. And her father wonders where you go
sometimes you leave church in the middle of of of of the service. And
that propane, you know, that propane stove. That propane is very volatile
gas. It's very dangerous. And the doctor said, this last episode,
whether your electric lights just got all out of balance, he said, he
almost died. Mom. And the doctor thinks you should have somebody always with
you, that you should have nursing care twenty four to seven. And she
listened to us, you know, fairly intently. And then, which was
typical of her, to see the humor and something, she got this big
smile on her face and she said, oh, hell, I might blow
up the house if I'm not getting lost in Spring Grove. And then she
began to laugh because even she realized that blowing up the house was more serious
than getting lost in Spring Grove. So she landed at the Hillcrest Nursing Home
just up the road, just across the Wisconsin state line from where she had
spent all her life, and we were blessed. She was very happy there.
She got a lot of visitors. There were people who she went to
grade school with, you know, living down the hall. It was very
much of a hometown nursing home, and she got along famously with her With
her roommate Evelyn, they became fast friends. They would fret if one was
gone for more than several hours. In fact, Mom didn't like to be
away from Hillcrest, you know. We'd kind of rise the occasion and take
her to a family gathering and a wedding or a birthday party. After about
two or three hours, she started looking at her watch and started asking when
she was going home to Hillcrest and who was going to take her. And
she would ask that about every five minutes, until even the most loyal relative
or friend got a little bit insulted and a little bit wondering why they had
taken her out in the first place. Mom didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings.
She just really couldn't remember from one minute to the next what she had
heard or what she had spoken. Well, it was another February past her
birthday. It was Valentine's Day and I was up at the Hillcrest again with
two Valentines, one for Mom and one for Evelyn. And I walked into
the room and Mom and Evelyn both were both sitting at the at the end
of her bed and they were talking, and I walked in. I gave
them each Valentine, and Mom, as usual, ripped the card open and
she started reading her Valentine out loud, and Evelyn she ripped her card open
and started reading her quietly because Agnes had had a company. And when Mom
was done reading, she set hers down and Evelyn set hers down, and
I said, well, Mom, what was your day? Like I heard
one of the nurses said, you had a Valentine's Day party? Yeah,
yeah, we did. It was a party, yeah yeah. Evelyn said
it was a party. And the nurse said that there was dancing. Yeah,
yeah, there was dancing. Mom said, Elone said yeah, Agnes
danced. I said, really, you dance? Yeah, she said,
I danced. I said, well, did you dance with a man?
And Mom said, well, I hope. So I said, well that's
great. It's great, dude. Yeah it was good. It was good.
Yeah. Yeah. Everyone said, an, she's quite a dancer.
Yeah. Mom laughed, yeah, well dad was a good dancer. I
remember, yeah, I remember that. And then I said, we keep
the conversations go. I said, so, um, how was supper?
Oh? It was good. Yeah. Everyone said supper was good. And
Mom said, they cook really good here. They have good food and good
coffee too. And I said, well that's good. You know, so
what did you have? Mom looked at Evelyn. Evan looked at Mom.
Mom looked out. The window was dark, there was nothing to see out
there. Evelyn started taking her hand and started working all the wrinkles out of
this afghan that was on her bed. It was one of the beautiful afghans
that Mom had made. She crocheted these beautiful afghans. When each each of
us got married, we got to beautiful afghan, tightly, tightly crocheted.
And then when the grand when the grandkids came, they each got an afghan
beautiful, well done. Craftsmanship was wonderful. Or they'd get one in pink
or blue depending on the gender. You know, back when we color coded
our children, um, and then when the great grandkids came um um,
they got a little not so tightly crocheted afghans. And when the great great
grand dun, they got kind of a little raggy looking thay things that that
that the showed love. Well. Evone was just working that afghan just like
it needed pressing, you know, like she had an iron in her hand
and it did not need anything. She was just working it because she needed
the place for her eyes, because she was embarrassed to look at me,
embarrassed that she couldn't remember what they had had for supper. And finally Mom
looked back from the window looked back at Evan. Evan looked up at Mom,
and Mom smiled and said, oh, hell, we don't know what
it is. We just eat it. And then Mom noticed that there was
a Valentine laying there. Forgot that she had gotten to Valentine, picked it
up, thinking she had had a second Valentine, and began reading it aloud
all over again. Evelyn noticed her Valentine, thinking she had got another Valentine,
a second one, she started reading hers again. Mom got finished reading
hers before Evan did set hers down, event set hers down, saw moms
things thought she got a third Valentine picked it up a little bit of a
yelp and said she was having a pretty good day all in all. Well,
when we were done reading all the Valentines, Evan got back in her
bed. I kissed my mom on the cheek of her a pet. She
was now in her bed, and I turned and I walked to the door,
and for some reason I turned around and there was my mom and she
was sitting there in the bed alone, and she looked small to me,
and she looked good. Her hair was done. The beauty college practice on
them every Wednesday. She was it was very curly, shook a little bit
too much like Madonna, I thought. But she was sitting there, and
occurred to me that she was mostly alone because her longevity and her toughness in
a way had separated her from her generation and her contemporaries. They're mostly gone.
And I found myself back at the side of her bed and I said,
Moms, ay, everything all right? Do you need anything? I
Can I do anything for you? She said no, no, no,
she said, I'm fine. Everybody is real nice, here and the food
is good, and I don't have to work so hard anymore. I worked
hard all my life. Here all I have to do is make the bed.
And I found myself driving home from Hillcrest that night, down long blacktop
roads piled high on each side with snow, thinking to my self things we're
just about as good as they could be. That story is called Agnes from
Nippersinc. Creek. Thank you, thank you, thanks for tuning in for
episode number four of Listen What did you think? Let me know at feedback
at ninth story dot com. This episode featured a story by Jim May Agnes
from Nippersinc. Creek. If you like more information on Jim and his work,
please visit him online at Jim May storyteller dot com. Today's opening words
were from Connie Reaganblake of story window dot com. Please share your love of
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Until next time, Listen, tell and share stories, and of course,
Happy Mother's Day.