FREEDOM

On both of our auto trips west we visited New Orleans going out. The first trip, in early 1988, we stayed of course with Ellie's mother, and it was the last time we saw her; she died that October, soon after we moved to S.C. (I had been very disposed to look for a home in California, but Ellie would not hear of it, largely because her mother was still living at the time. In retrospect I am glad things worked out like they did; life is very expensive on the West Coast, and it is hard to imagine being happier than we were in the years ahead.

Mrs. Babylon had had an attack of congestive heart failure a couple of years before. The doctors wanted to do by-pass surgery, but she declined; I can't say that I blame her. She continued to live a fairly normal life until she got back in the hospital, and the doctors managed to kill her.

In 1988, and again in 1990, we stopped at Houston on our way west. The Clayton Memorial Library has genealogical resources second only to those at the LDS library in Salt Lake City. All the census rolls for example and extensive local records of various sorts. It is a dreamy place to do research, and we'd certainly be tempted to stay for a good while except that the town is so difficult. (Some time after 1990 I became acquainted, through correspondence, with cousin Jim Sullivan, who invited us to stay with him next time we come through.)

On the second trip west we stopped at Salt Lake City for research. Another dreamy place, but unfriendly. So often under those circumstances I will knock myself out for a couple of days, until I reach the point where I can't stand the sight of another record. That happened on this occasion; we turned north, went through miles and miles of desolate country and eventually got to Longview, WA, where Auntie lived.

It seems like 1990 was one of the years Duke won the national basketball championship. It was being played while we were heading toward Longview. Auntie, knowing of our interest, watched the game. What a boost to the moral of everyone associated with the school when such a thing happens.

I have never had terribly positive feelings about Duke, primarily because my years there were not happy ones at all. I know of course that I got a quality education there, and the reputation of the school has continued to grow. Academically there is none better. The alumni association has solicited funds for the past 45 years without success in my case. I reserve my charity for those who need the money more. Nevertheless Ellie and I always root for the Duke basketball team and closely follow its fortunes. Coach K to me is a superman.

Through the years Auntie has been one of our primary family blessings. She visited us a number of times in Winston-Salem and in Arlington. When she lost her home in Glendale, we strongly encouraged her to make her home with us. I think she might have considered it, but she couldn't quite bring herself to such a drastic step. After her adventure as a companion for Marion (the Altzheimer's victim) she found a place in a Lutheran home for elderly in Longview, near her daughter-in-law and grandchildren, and great grandchildren. Over the years she got to be quite a minister to the many needy old people who were her neighbors.

The times we visited her there were an unalloyed pleasure. We stayed in a national forest campground nearby and spent several days with her. Of course she continued to decline physically, but not mentally. She has always been my very favorite relative. She had a hard life and always showed the most complete grace. She and mother were very close as children, and she loved her dearly.

When mother went out to California after Dad died, Auntie was living alone, and I think mother hoped to live with her. However Auntie had just been through years and years of looking after invalids: first her husband and then her mother, who gave her a particularly hard time, dying in her nineties. Auntie undoubtedly needed some space at that point. It was too bad.

Looking for a Retirement Home

We spent about a month on the western trip in 1988, then returned across the upper western states. We had planned to visit Yellowstone, but when we got to the doorstep, the weatherman was predicting a three day snow storm, so we skedaddled east. Fierce winds all the way, generally tailwinds; they saved us considerable gas. We were flying in the face of a storm and managed to stay in front of it until we got to Maryland.

I was still uptight and wanted to get out of the Washington area 'cuanto antes'. We set out for the south looking for a house to buy. We had seriously considered Florida, but Ellie thought it would be too hot, probably rightly so. We had in fact seen a dreamy house near the lighthouse and tennis courts at St. Augustine Beach, the Holiday House, owned by a Mrs. Holiday. She wanted a bit more than we wanted to pay. Nevertheless St. Augustine remains one of our favorite places, and we usually manage to spend a day there each winter.

At that point we had in mind somewhere just south of the mountains. Virginia and NC were out. We focused on North Georgia for a week or so, saw lots of nice houses, but none quite caught our fancy. There was one really lovely house in a county seat town north of I-85, but with mobiles homes next door, and in a town that turned out to have extra severe winters (just west of a large mountain).

Finally we came around to Oconee County. A couple of years before I had expressed a subjective approval of Walhalla--mainly because it had straight streets, unlike so many of the mountain towns where you are always going 'around the mountain'. We called on a real estate firm in Walhalla and were assigned a fleshy middle aged woman named Frances. Frances showed us a lot of houses: two at Mountain Rest about half way between Walhalla and Highlands, quite close to the Chatuga River and Georgia as well as NC. One of them had 15 acres of mountain land, a nice old rambling house, but it was a bit too high. The other would have suited Ellie, but I found it too conventional.

We looked at a number of houses over in the northeastern corner of the county. One Saturday we were driving up Jocassee Lake Road to see a house on a small lake. We passed the house we were later to buy. I especially liked the spacious openness of the grounds. The owner, a Seventh Day Adventist, would not show the house on a Saturday. So we came out again the following day and saw it.

I liked the large open rooms, but Ellie was not terribly impressed with either of the things I liked. Then we went down into the woods--and Ellie was impressed. We were now faced with the three Oconee County houses and decided to make an offer for one of them. The house we picked was Ellie's third choice, I believe, but my first. She decided to go with my choice, and I don't think that either of us has ever regretted the step we took.

At this time we knew nothing about the proximity to Clemson, which proved to be one of the sterling assets. One factor loomed large in my mind--the relative isolation of the Mountain Rest location--very scenic, next door to the national forest, but so far from any civilization! I'm sure we would have felt it keenly had we settled there, and our lifestyle would have been quite different from what it became. Altogether the Salem house was a happy choice!

I had always secretly wanted to own land, although at a conscious level I might have denied it. And it was a wonderful feeling to own land: I told a few friends to 'just call me squire'. More important than the conceit of being a landowner was the freedom to do things to the land---especially to plant trees. We planted about 2000 trees on that 15 acres the first four years we were there.

And azaleas! We used to plant 50 azaleas every year. The mountain laurel down at the creek was a special boon, as was the mature oak across the creek and the oodles of dogwood trees in the woods. We had about 50 species of trees. Not too many wildflowers, except a great abundance of ladyslippers.

And the house was so comfortable--much larger than two old people really need. It led to a strong desire to entertain. We were miles and miles from friends, but we managed to entertain a good bit during our years at Salem. We called it Beulah! The antechamber to Heaven! We loved it and enjoyed it in many ways through the years. Ellie produced an abundance of strawberries. We planted fruit trees, ornamental cherries, Japanese magnolias, lots of other species. We took a great interest in our trees and spent a lot of time watching them grow.

Our philosophy has always been to cultivate things that grow most easily. Joe Petree brought me some grape vines, and one of them, the only one I really took care of, yielded abundantly. I greatly enjoyed serving our own grape juice to guests in season. Two species of trees were especially abundant in our yard at Clemson, but virtually absent at Beulah: the ash trees were very readily introduced; the black locust was harder to get started, in spite of the fact that it grows so abundantly a few miles north.

The beech trees came on strong. There were only two or three large ones on the place, but many smaller ones and they grew rapidly. I planted hundreds of acorns and gradually our pine woods were becoming oak woods. Our very favorite is the hemlock. There might have been 2 or 3 very small hemlocks in the woods, but we planted a good fifty of them here and there. Of course there are three good sized ones in the yard--ornamentals. All these trees and plants added interest and meaning to the lives of two rather isolated old people.

January 5, 1991 

 

The years since retirement I today feel to be the best of my life. Our friends Judith and Paul Larsen were or pretended to be perplexed. Actually Judith was powerfully drawn to what we were doing and Paul non-plussed. He said, half jokingly, "You can't save the world in South Carolina." Judith asked me what I meant to do. I replied "please myself." The backdrop of that rejoinder was that I felt like I had been doing things out of necessity for long enough. I still feel that the appropriate meaning of retirement for those who are not blessed with completely fulfilling employment is to stop working and start playing.

Many of my friends are such Puritans, so devoted to the work ethic that they believe man's life is defined by what he achieves. Not so, man's life is defined by what he becomes. There's a big difference. Ideally there would be no work, only play. Work as I define it in this sense is the unpleasant tedium and drudgery to which we were condemned by Adam's sin - by the sweat of our brow shall we eat our daily bread. But Jesus brought the bread of life back to us. Now the fortunate may be allowed to play all their lives, and by that I mean to do work that is meaningful and fulfilling to them, that nurtures their lives and helps them become. And a larger number of us may be privileged at retirement to lay down uncreative activities (the sweat of our brow) and virtually return to the Garden where life consists in the delight of dressing the trees.

Ellie and I dressed trees, and it was a delight. We've now planted something over 1500 of them--500 each year from the State nursery. Each 500 represented about a week of moderate activity. Then for the next year and beyond we watched them, and delighted in them. The hemlocks are the best, though we have to buy them one by one. We've planted about 40 and I often make a daily round from one to the other to see how they're doing, and to encourage them. Growing trees is much easier and less frustrating than trying to help people.

Social Life in South Carolina

For a long time it wasn't in SC; it was in NC, although we lived in SC. I had hoped and expected to rejoin the rural southern culture which I left when I was 14; no doubt that was an unrealistic expectation. At any rate it didn't happen; after six years at Salem we knew virtually no one at Salem aside from our immediate neighbors.

Our social life became almost synonymous with our religious activities. We went to Salem Methodist Church a couple of times, and it immediately seemed hopeless. The people seemed to be only half alive, wanted a formal ritual including sleepy preaching every Sunday and then to go back home. We couldn't see much hope of developing satisfying relationships there.

We knew about the Brevard Friends' Meeting 40 miles away, and thought at first that we might alternate between the two religious communities. On our first visit to the Brevard Meeting, which took place in a Pisgah National Forest picnic ground called Sycamore Flats, we were accepted so extravagantly that there was little question thereafter that we would make the trip about once a week; and so we did in the years ahead.

That first meeting we were sitting around in lawn chairs--in a circle of course, and as usual at the meeting my eyes were open and wandering. There were one or two middle aged people and children, and otherwise I counted six old couples. I thought immediately that I just couldn't deal with that. I thought a while longer and realized that with us there were seven old couples. And when the silent meeting was over and we began socializing, I completely forgot about the peoples' ages. They were just people--warm, friendly people who obviously had the same interests and values that we have. And wonder of wonders, two former Methodist ministers and their wives were in the group.

It was a potluck - to which we were of course invited, and which we thoroughly enjoyed, and at the end of the meeting I felt well acquainted and very positive about quite a few of the people whom I had met. Surely we went back---Sunday after Sunday. That became in fact virtually our complete social life!

Incidentally this made the third time I had enjoyed such a hyperbolic experience going to a strange religious community: first at the Church of the Saviour in 1972, then going to Langley in 1983, and now at Brevard in 1988. I have always felt perfectly comfortable in any house of the Lord, regardless of what reception I might get from the other worshippers, but in these three cases the reception was extravagantly warm. For years I used to say that I had never seen a church as friendly as it ought to be, and if there ever was one, it would soon include the whole world. I still believe it!

So we started attending the Brevard meeting in Oct. 1988, and continued for the time we lived at Salem. Ellie had tried to get involved with the WSCS at Salem, but soon gave it up. The people at Brevard became our special friends.

We invited them down to our place and were amazed that so many came (40 miles and more). Ellie and I structured the conversation asking everyone to share his spiritual journey. Most of them had little to say, but a former minister named Bob Cox gave a detailed confession of his experiences: a sudden, bitter disappointment and discharge from the religious agency he had headed in New York, accompanied by the breakup of his marriage. He felt that Ellie Cox had rescued him from that. It was kind of amazing how his voice changed, became metallic and grim, as he began to tell that story. In retrospect I was also amazed that we passed it over with so little response. It seemed that probably everyone was a bit embarrassed, and no one had any concept of trying to respond to the pain he had shown in that confession. If we had been around the group a bit longer, I'm sure we would have ministered to him at a deeper level. Life is thus a long catalog of missed opportunities!

We got in the habit of having the Brevard people over each spring and fall. They seemed to enjoy the trip and the time with us. When we started going to Brevard, they seemed to be in the habit of going to one another's homes fairly regularly, but gradually they seemed to give that up. The meeting had become larger, and most of them were reticent about inviting the group to their home. Like other groups! Too bad! However we did visit the homes of quite a few of them during those years.

Jesse and Dorothy Mock became special friends. He was from Winston-Salem and had been a good Moravian. When the war came along, he became a CO (and I think he felt that his church had not supported him in that decision). During his alternative service he had many experiences in various camps around the country. These experiences, as a young man, seemed to have formed Jesse's character to a large degree. He is one of the men I have a great deal of respect for.

He has a refreshing perspective on authority, which I think he received as a significant gift through his alternative service. He maintains a respectful and positive attitude toward everyone, but he sticks to his convictions. The various humiliations he went through as a CO did not embitter him; they inspired him to the healthiest attitude toward authority that I've encountered.

(Several years after we met Jesse we encountered another such type--only briefly--, who came through as an even greater hero. This man, a Quaker from Iowa, dropped in one Sunday evening at our meeting in Greenville and gave us a thumbnail autobiography. He had been the son of the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, and became 18 during the war. Unlike the recognized CO's he simply refused to register. This was a much more radical protest than the usual CO, and he paid for his non-conformity with some time in prison. But he didn't look like an ex-convict; he looked like the most well together person you ever saw. I concluded that the prison had not hurt him: he paid heavily for his ideals, and was well rewarded for his faithfulness; praise the Lord.)

The Mocks became special friends through a strange set of circumstances. Although Jesse is a very laid back and non-directive sort, he used unusual insistence in his request that I go with him to a Bible study conference at Philadelphia. Ellie and I decided to decline, but I could not refuse in the face of his insistence. The four of us eventually made the trip in the van, and it was very pleasant. Ellie stopped in Northern Virginia (Rob was still at Falls Church at that time). Jesse, Dorothy, and I continued on to Philadelphia. Chuck Fager was one of the primary organizers of this conference; he had actually sounded me out about being a resource person. I would have been happy to, but he apparently found enough leaders without me.

The conference was at Arch Street Meeting House, which may be as close to denominational headquarters as the unprogrammed Friends have. Across the street is a Holiday Inn at which the Mocks had a room. I had requested hospitality and was assigned to a sort of counter-cultural group home some distance away. I went over to check it out and found they were scheduled for a gay conference at the same time. I decided I would find other accommodations. I believe I slept in the van that night. Jesse and Dorothy invited me to share their room the following night, which I did. I went to bed early, woke up early, and got out of there before they were awake.

After five years as a Quaker I had concluded that Quakers were more than usually illiterate as far as the Bible is concerned. At this conference I was pleasantly disappointed: there were quite a few people at it who read the Bible and had various creative approaches to its study, all rather impressive. (I still find Quakers in general about as ignorant of the Bible as the average layman.)

After that trip to Washington the Claytons and the Mocks became very close. In fact we became fairly close to everyone at the meeting within a year. Our closest friend at the meeting eventually became Alfred Ames. With three homes Alfred and Nell often absented themselves from the Brevard meeting. In addition Alfred pretty habitually cast himself in the role of the outsider; he seemed to thrive on rejection.

However he was perfectly willing to be friendly with anyone who might go out to him.

We had not been at Brevard long when Alfred made some comment about the excellent Sunday School teacher whose class he attended at Brevard UMC before the meeting. I told him that we'd like to explore it, and he invited us to come as his guest. We came to the Sunday School class, found it fairly conventional, and then enjoyed a meal with the Ames at Maid Marion, across the road from Sherwood Forest, where they lived. (My purpose all the time had been to get acquainted with the Ames couple, and when I showed an interest in his class, Alfred became very hospitable.)

We spent a number of pleasant days with the Ames. Then Nell fell in the bathroom with a broken hip, beginning a protracted decline that ended with her death two years later. Ellie started taking meals to them on Sunday, and we became intimate friends.

Alfred and Nell spent their winters at Sanibel Island, where they had an apartment, and their summers near Hastings England, where they had a flat, and fall and spring at Sherwood Forest near Brevard. The summer after her fall they made their last trip to England. She continued to decline, and her mind was deteriorating: she could pass for normal, but she sometimes didn't know where she was.

Alfred adored Nell, a lovely Englishwoman with a spirit on a par with Miriam Goebels. He nursed her faithfully through the two last years of her life; she declined to the point where she needed pretty continuous care. They went to Sanibel Island late in 1991; we visited them for the last time. We took them around the Wildlife Refuge; Nell was sitting in the front seat. Her lovely spirit was as evident as ever, but she could hear or see or comprehend very little of what was going on.

They came back to Brevard the next spring, and soon Nell died. We went up to Alfred at once. We were sitting in his living room while the phone rang, and he responded to calls of concern from various friends. What he said to them will live in my mind forever: "It's sad, but it's not bad!" He had beautiful poise; he was actually relieved that their common ordeal was over. (I don't think he could have lasted much longer in the strenuous role he had taken.) They had a good life, and she had a good death. We had a beautiful memorial service at the chapel of the Methodist church in Brevard, and Alfred took her ashes back to England, where they were interred in the Anglican church yard.

Through the faithful ministry that Ellie showed in Nell's illness, and through visiting them at Sanibel Ellie and I became faithful and intimate friends of Alfred Ames. It turned out that his life was similar in many ways to mine: he was the son of a Congregationalist minister who had little time for him. He was much closer to his mother, and when he went off to college his mother left her husband and thereafter lived with Alfred. He was much more of a mother's son than I was; he married fairly late, and his mother continued to live with him and gave Nell a pretty hard time. But Nell was such a saint that she got them all through it in good order.

Alfred got his PhD in English literature about the time of the war. He probably planned to go CO, but was declared 4F instead. A most peculiar circumstance: Alfred's pacificism led to a terrible situation at the Friend's meeting he was attending in Urbana. He was asked to leave and told that if he didn't leave they would disband and reform at a secret place without him. Weird!

He taught a few years around Chicago and went to work as one of the editorial staff of the Chicago Tribune. Certainly one of the most conservative papers in the country, the Tribune employed Alfred for 30 years as a flaming liberal. Weird! He considered himself a professional controversialist and seemed most comfortable when he was crossed up with someone.

Within a year of Nell's death Alfred married Vi, a long term widow who lived at Shell Point, where Alfred had retreated in anticipation of Nell's illness. Vi is another lovely old lady, although of extremely different political views than Alfred. She got him into the CMA church where they live and probably restricted his time at Brevard. He brought her to meet us shortly after their marriage, and then we visited them at Shell Point (near Fort Myers) in January of 1994. A few months before we had borrowed their apartment at Brevard when we found ourselves with appointments on consecutive days up there. It began to seem likely that he might dispose of his holding there and give up his third home. She had more established roots at Shell Point.

Many other lovely friends at Brevard would bear describing. For three years they were our primary and almost sole social life in the area. The only exception was the Great Books Discussion Group at Seneca. We began attending its monthly meetings shortly after we moved into the area. Most of the members of the group lived at Keowee Keys, an affluent retirement development attached to the Salem Post Office. The residents at Keowee Keys come largely from the upper midwest, especially Michigan and the auto industry. In the course of time it turned out that we had more in common with these folks than we did with the natives.

In Oconee County two entirely different cultures co-exist with limited intercourse. We belonged to neither, but through the Great Books we had more relationships with the Yankee retirees than with the locals. The group had functioned for perhaps a year when we joined it. At first we seemed most exotic in the group: it appeared that most of them held very conventional and conservative social, political and other views. But gradually through the years we became more and more accepted and valued members of the group; we came to realize that many of the other participants had closet liberal views of various kinds. Over a period of five years the group became more like a community than it had been originally. We always focused on one of the books, but we actually spent a major part of our time together discussing values. It was stimulating and gave us almost our only non-religious social interaction in those years.