Up the Wooden Hill
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About this ebook
The stories in Up the Wooden Hill are fiction, but they are based on real happenings, pieced together from the author’s experiences and those told to her by others. Even the title story, according to the author, may be considered fictionalized memoir, based as it is on fading recollections of events that occurred over seventy years ago. “One of my writing instructors told me that memoirs usually are fictionalized, since someone is sure to tell you that she remembers an incident differently,” Nancy says.
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Up the Wooden Hill - Nancy Wiedman
UP THE WOODEN HILL
A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES
NANCY WIEDMAN
Happy Jack Publishing
Copyright © June 2017
by Nancy Wiedman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and punishable by law.
Cover design by Tina Lampe
Author Photo by Kathryn Lauer
ISBN-13: 978-1-944104-14-6
ISBN-10: 1-944104-14-3
To my daughters, Kathryn Lauer, and Mary Steed
UP THE WOODEN HILL
GRAMMY LIVED ON the corner of Fifteenth and Pine Streets in a double house on the outskirts of Berwick, Pennsylvania with my Aunt Fae, her youngest daughter, who was an elementary schoolteacher. Helen and Tiny lived on the other side of the house, which my grammy inherited after Grandpa’s death in 1929. Tiny was anything but Tiny, nor was his wife. Years later, though, after World War II, when Tiny returned from the Army, I saw a picture of the couple. Between them, they must have lost over 100 pounds, and were almost unrecognizable in their transformed svelteness.
Grammy and Aunt Fae’s house had a front porch with a swing. The back porch was where the wringer washer was kept. On Saturday’s, wash days, a hose was strung through the pantry window to the faucets at the sink to be filled with water. Clothes were hung, summer and winter, outdoors on lines to dry.
As a child, and in fact until 1948, my family and I spent most Christmases at Grammy’s. I often spent two weeks or more of summer vacation there as well. I usually traveled by train with Mother from the junction of the New York Central and Lehigh Valley railroads to Wilkes Barre. Dad would join us later for a week and the trip home by car.
The first time I went to Grammy’s alone I was eight years old. My parents put me on a train, briefed me again on behavior and safety issues, handed me my shoebox lunch, and kissed me goodbye.
Before I could exit the train in Wilkes Barre, my uncle Jesse, Mother’s brother, boarded with the conductor, who asked me if I knew this man. Well of course,
I said. He’s my Uncle Jesse.
The conductor and my uncle seemed highly amused by my answer.
The summer I was twelve, after a serious bout with pneumonia, and somehow making it through seventh grade, my mother handed me money instead of the usual box lunch. This time,
she said, you will have lunch in the dining car.
What a treat and surprise this was.
The steward came through the car at noon with chimes announcing lunch time. There was a special menu for young people. I chose the grilled cheese sandwich, which came with a dill pickle and potato chips, and chocolate ice cream for dessert. I had been taught about leaving a tip, which at that time, was 10 percent.
Today, over sixty years later, I could draw a picture of Grammy’s house. There was a parlor with a hardly used sofa, French style chairs, a coffee table, lamps, desk, and piano. The front door had a letter slot, and when the postman arrived, one of a long succession of dogs, from Beauty to Penny and finally, Ginger, would retrieve the mail and carefully deliver it to Grammy’s lap, where she sat in an oak rocking chair (of a morning), in the sitting room. That room had an old couch, a library table, telephone, round oak dining table and chairs. A deer head with sad brown eyes was mounted on one wall, complete with hooves for hanging hats, and a mirror.
The kitchen was most interesting to me. I’d never seen anything like it. There was a coal stove where Grammy did all the cooking. She baked bread every week, which I didn’t really appreciate at the time. I missed good old Wonder Bread. At home, we had an electric refrigerator. Grammy had an icebox with a pan underneath it that had to be emptied as the ice melted—my job in the summer. There was an old glass front china cabinet, table and chairs, all painted apple green, which I figured was Grammy’s favorite color, since it was repeated in her bedroom furniture upstairs. The pantry had a bread box where one could usually find a stale slice of bread or sweet roll. The sink was made of tin.
At about the same time every night, Grammy would say that she was going up the wooden hill, an expression I didn’t immediately catch onto. Later, I realized that it was a pretty good metaphor for climbing stairs.
During the day, I often climbed one more flight up the wooden hill to the attic, which was filled with treasures from the past. Grandpa’s violin with its broken strings hung on the wall. There was a large doll, a cradle, high chair, table and chairs, and a child’s china tea set.
A steamer trunk held old clothing: Uncle Walter’s size 13 outdated brown oxfords, Aunt Kathryn’s starched nurse’s uniform and shoes, and curiously, a child’s beige fur coat. I was told it was to be mine someday. At first, it was too large; eventually too small, and I