Return to Summers Run

CHAPTER 1

The Dream’s in Sight

At age thirteen, my cousin, child actor Nathean Hale Summers, emerged as the lead of a national television series, Children of the Oregon Trail .

Nathe played pioneer Jacob Hogan and became a household word in the late 1950s. When the highly acclaimed and authentic (but expensive) series was cancelled, one mother wrote: How sad we are. To lose our Jacob is like a family member leaving home.

The series aired every other Saturday morning, and six special three-hour presentations were shown in evening prime time. During its two seasons, Trail garnered eight Emmys and though twice nominated, Nathean never placed its statue on his mantle. One of the final episodes—The Dream’s in Sight—contains a scene I’ve planted in the deepest crevice of memory.

It shows Jacob dropping his load of kindling, then climbing up the crest of a hill.

He’s summoned there by one of the men of the wagon train. It is twilight and a Pacific sunset blesses a glistening river and a golden prairie dotted with cedars. Mr. Gamisch, a member of the council leading the settlers, is shown working his way across the slope, picking his pathway with care and looking off-screen occasionally. He stops abruptly and cups his hands to shout, Come, Jacob, you need to see this.

My cousin Nathe arrives abreast of the man who asks, Jake, . . . do you know what that is out there?

Well, sir, if I were to guess . . . you called me up here to see Oregon. Mr. Gamisch smacks his hands, then gestures broadly, ecstatic over reaching the train’s final destination.

Oregon, Jacob, what we’ve been working toward and dreaming of, son. As the camera pans across the compelling scene, Mr. Gamisch is heard by a voice over:

There she is, bright as a new gold piece. I’m goin’ down and get Molly and the girls. They need to see where we’re headin’ tomorrow. You bet, there’ll be a dance in camp tonight—they’ll hear us whoopin’ and hollarin’ clear to the Peecific Ocean.

Mr. Gamisch leaves the scene and Jacob sits down slowly and rests his elbows on his knees. He wipes at his eye and speaks to us in a voice-over:

Oregon. Finally. Within a day, we’d find a crossing and then file across the river toward the new lives awaiting us . . . .

When we left Ohio, folks told us it was folly, purest folly to venture all this way, chasin’ some hare-brained dream that would turn out to be foolish as well as foolhardy . . . . All those weeks on the trail, not knowing what dangers tomorrow might bring . . . .

Well, I for one, I’m glad we set out, me and the folks. If only they were here right now, beside me, the five of us. It’s now my lot to soldier on for them, make sure the dream comes true for Belle an’ li’l Dickens . . . and for myself.

Folly, I’ve decided, fills a place in our lives. I first arrived at this revelation in my thirteenth year, October, 1993, the same age as Jacob Hogan, the pioneer depicted by my cousin. Jacob had been orphaned by the perils of the trail. I lost my father to war. We were kin.

By age thirteen, I’d sown my very own garden where dreams grew tangled with the realities of life I had experienced thus far. As I reflect upon that year and the birthdays I’ve passed through since, I remain unmoved from my conviction. Dreams, whether folly or attainable, plow the soil of effort, achievement, and purpose.

My Grandmother Beatrice once told me: Well, dear, we all need our dreams. They give us endurance and wisdom, whether they’re possible or . . . they elude us.

For those my age surrounding me, we all entertained our private dreams. My friends and teammates dared not voice them aloud for such would invite mortification. Yet, dreams took on substance in the quiet hours of our nights where the ceilings above displayed our foggy notions of grandeur. As we slipped into sleep, they were projected across the board fences of our backyards, the lilac hedges, the fields and farmsteads of our worlds.

We were only country boys, farm kids for the most part, who decided we would gather together, form a baseball team, call ourselves the Pickett Township Panthers. We would live out our hopes (and those of our parents and supporters) on a field we fashioned from an old diamond first built for the big guys in the 1950s, a place known as Summers Run Farm and Field. There once played the heroes of that locality, guys who bore the nicknames of Lefty, Shorty, Junior, Kid, Bud, Red, Scoop, and Mac.

We Panthers earned nicknames as well: Benjamin Air Rifle Andrews, Ryan Bearcat Gamoski, Tim Halfway Hathaway, the twins Gus and Jump Alphonse, Aaron Scoop Oarcaster, Trent The Trenster Smythe, Luther Cool Hand Lute Ludlow, Carmine Big Cat Catalino, Kevin Long Ball Wingate.

One balmy and bug-filled evening in June, on our home field, we were introduced by our nicknames, a gesture from Uncle Albert Summers who announced our home games over the new p.a. system. It pleased the crowd, some of whom even shouted our nicks as we took the mound, the field, or came to the plate.

I blushed, I know, as mine was Claude Clemente Kinkade. I wanted to please and honor my coach, Mister Mac McIntyre, a Pirates fan who held fond memories of the famous and fallen right fielder from Puerto Rico. As I too played right field, it seemed appropriate. Such became my excuse and the challenge I tacked up high and well above my present abilities back then. At that point in my baseball career, I hadn’t been assigned a nick by my teammates. Flaunting tradition, I simply . . . assumed one. One evening, while watching the setting sun fan its rays through the giant firs surrounding Shadeland, my home, I pledged I would live up to my nickname’s reputation.

Albert Summers is the owner of the earth we play upon and father and first baseman of the original Summers Run team, the Red Hots. Now in his seventies, he can still loft towering fly balls to us outfielders which are a thrill to track and good practice as they fly well beyond anything we might see in actual play. Pinheads in the skies, Uncle Albert’s flies.

At his age, does Uncle Albert still hold fast to some unfulfilled longing? Does he await the day when his dream, though tattered and faded, shall finally wave in the breeze above the islands of reality? Not long ago, he confided:

I was about your age, Claude, . . . when I told Uncle Neff (an esteemed relative and successful attorney) of my desire to make a career of baseball and play in the majors. He scoffed and said: ‘Play for living? Why, Albert, I’m disappointed in you. You don’t want to play for a living. Might as well climb Everest. Such folly. Give it up, m’boy. Use that head on your shoulders for something useful, not useless.’

So Albert Summers became an accountant for the railroad, then periodically for the film industry when Nathean was actively making motion pictures.

A few years after Uncle Neff scolded me, Albert said, the great Branch Rickey asked me once to try out for the Cardinals, but I was so haunted by my uncle’s chiding, I couldn’t shed the notion he planted. Plus . . . truth of the matter, I suspected Mister Rickey told every boy who showed some promise to try out. Then there came a war, a wife and family and little time for ‘playing.’ My story’s been told a thousand times over. Yes, ten thousand times.

The story I wanted to write also orbited a baseball.

Oh, I muddled about with other pursuits and sorted through any number of interests and diversions to be certain. Yet, no one dismissed my dreams as folly. Yes, arriving at the majors might be a fanciful idea, but aren’t we all challenged to dream big, think big? You’re only as small, as limited as you think you are. As I entered my teens, I fancied becoming a great right fielder, a feared pitcher, a befuddling knuckleballer, as uppermost toward emerging as a household name.

Perhaps, I told myself, if I fulfill even some of my dreams, I’ll help Uncle Albert live his.

The month is October of 1993. I lie upon my back and watch the morning sun sweep the gauzy fog aside.

We are enjoying an Indian Summer, when autumn in Pennsylvania allows us a backward glance, after the killing frost and before the leaves flutter back to the earth and the snow blankets their former glory.

A Cessna glides overhead, passing beyond my vantage point, windmilling its way toward Port Chapmann and its hangar. The plane rocks its wings and I cringe: Have they spotted me?

I slink back into what cover my perch provides. I feel sure the Cessna is not Mister Mac’s 182 Skylane, November 863 Charlie Poppa. The pilot applies throttle and I debate whether he’ll touch and go or stay airborne on such a rare and rainbowed day.

From where I survey the scene below me, it seems the trees are stretching their limbs, marveling at each other, clad in colors too robust to be real.

From up here, I can locate the oaks by their russet, copper, or cinnamon statements. Maples and gums display the most startling scarlets, the eye-catching tangerines, subtle peaches, the well-flavored mustards or amber members. Beeches and birches share shades of canary with the black and honey locusts. Or they remain green yet hinting of fringes yellowing by the hours. Here and there, decisive hickories flare as golden as a campfire’s flame.

From my post, I see a few I guess as ash clothed in mauve or bronze. On the lawns of Shadeland, one can distinguish hues of rose offered by the sassafras, daffodil yellow presented by the sycamore, while the dogwood serves up goblets as red as wine.

Firs around the farmstead and hemlocks in the ravines provide a somber backdrop for the hardwoods displaying their autumn plumage. These evergreens will have their day, when groaning, cloaked in snow as pillowy as a new comforter of goose down.

From where I hide, I watch my cousin Wren and his little charge and tagalong, Samara, trudge back to the house, damaged kite in tow.

Wren, at age eight, remains devoted to flying kites in the skies of any season. Should you drive past Shadeland on a high and breezy afternoon, it’s likely you shall see two or more swooping and fluttering above the meadows. Their repair is as much about tape, tools, and wire as aerodynamics and weight and balance.

Wren is not shy about sharing his dreams, broaching the subject with: "Someday, I’m going to design a rocket this or when I get big, I’ll become a space that." Aunt Marguerite will welcome Wren to the table and spare a few minutes to help repair the wounded kite.

My Aunt Marguerite plays a transverse flute, and once she told me how marvelous it would be to solo on a grand stage. Doing something by Mozart, Delius, Copland in Cleveland or up at Chautauqua. Wearing a lovely gown, taking bows. Hmmm. She smiles my way and then at the tablecloth she’s ironing, lost in an old dream dearly held.

Finally, I ponder Nathean Summers, the child actor, now my anchor and my helm. Perhaps his dreams and mine will cross paths. He’s lived a few of his to fruition or far enough to find some tarnished and undeserving. His dreams brought both acclaim and frustration. Not many of us will enjoy such celebrity. He can advise me about this: he was thirteen once and famous to boot.

Then, I wonder, what does it mean when dreams come true? Do dreams become false? When what is wished for, prayed over, sought after, and subjected to the holiest of yearnings proves unworthy. Then what? Do we chide ourselves, chagrined we ever held such folly close to our breast? Do we vow to never dream again? Or find totally new dreams to cherish?

Or do we build our dreams into bigger, grander, more majestic trophies once we start climbing the plateaus to accomplishment and celebrity? Like Nathean’s quest for stardom, perhaps. Or do we throttle our ambitious, shining pies-in-the-sky to more modest, achievable slices? While my Little League teammates and I might dream of mighty stadiums and vast grassy domains, perhaps a scholarship and our picture in the yearbook will become the best we can attain.

Nonetheless and thus far, from the age of thirteen until the day of this writing twenty years later, I observe this: Whether feasible or folly, whether fleeting or enduring, dreams become the footprints we leave across the face of time and the inky trails we weave for those to read after we’re gone.

Such are my thoughts one fine autumn morning, 1993. A morning lifting my spirits beyond the highest vantage I can find. One cradling the musings of a mere boy, sending them drifting over the palette displayed around me and across the landscapes of fields and farms below.

CHAPTER 2

Flavors from the Earth

I had toted my new binoculars to my lofty hideout. Through their lenses, I isolated the cupola of the sap house. Across the community of Summers Run, sap houses bustled with life in late winter when the boiling of maple syrup came into season.

Wren—my frequent companion—and I experienced our first adventure together a year earlier, in late July, 1992, at the family’s sap house. There was nothing sweet about it.

Both of us were transplants, new to the farm, new to each other. We were beginning the book we would write together, turning the opening pages of our journal. I would soon be twelve years of age; he would turn seven come fall.

I felt rather foolish about it, this partnership between Wren and me. Yet, boys traipsin’ about as country boys should is a heavenly bestowed right. For Wren, though, our excursions into the woods of my father and his family became expeditions on the order of Lewis and Clark’s survey of the Columbia, Hayden’s confirmation of the wonders of Yellowstone, or Boone’s venture through the Cumberland Gap. I had to smile.

And search for my dead father’s memories and compare them to the ones I was making this afternoon. Perhaps these woods of my father also inspired his military heroics and the leadership that eventually claimed his life.

Did he pass by this thicket, climb this wall of stone, drink from this pool? Was I tracing his faded footsteps of forty years ago? Does his shadow follow mine across the fields and woodlands he trod as a boy my age?

Wren’s imagination became contagious and even I—though nearly twice his age—found myself committed to the trek, skulking about the grouse thickets, slipping through the hemlocks sheltering a dozing fawn, scaling the monument rocks, or making faces in our reflections where Summers Run rested in its quiet pools. Odd it seems to me now, but Wren was my guide back then, rather than the reverse. I wouldn’t admit such to my Panther teammates, of course, but I discovered our local adventures approached the pleasure I derived from baseball and Little League. Once, we met the amateur naturalist of our neighborhood, P. M. Murphy, and the three of us spent a pleasant hour harvesting wild raspberries and digging for grubs.

Surprisingly, should you ever become stranded, boys, you might find more sustenance underground than above. So said P. M., and both Wren and I regarded his word, after that afternoon, as gospel in such matters. We became grub-a-holics, digging under mulch beds or around the grassy margins nestled against the cool foundations of the farmsteads’ outbuildings. There we might dislodge a glistening grub or perturbed beetle from its lair. As a budding bug-ologist, Wren packed a magnifying glass the size of a Big Ben alarm clock. He and I fashioned a holster for it from an old leather tool belt.

He’d been cautioned to not set any fires with his glass, though I looked aside when there arose the temptation to coax some moldering leaves, a clump of dry pasture glass, or gray tipi of twigs into flaring up. It’s a good technique to know, Wren said of it with authority. ’Course you need a bright sky. Can’t do it after dark.

When I reminded him of the dangers of fire, he assured me: I’ll remember. One of my aspirations is to be a fireman someday, maybe out west, like a smoke jumper. I saw a movie about it once. When trekking with Wren, one discussed aspirations along with the discoveries at hand.

A quiet sap shack (or sugar house or barn) presented a boy magnet. We stepped in as if entering a sanctuary. Someone had nailed a rough plank between the studs, displaying the family motto painted in John Deere green: Industry, Providence, Husbandry.

Fragrant chunks of oak, hickory, or elm racked and ready for next season sheltered a colony of chipmunks scurrying over the crown of the woodpile or tunneling back and forth through the crevices. Kettles the size of bass drums hung from the rafters. Spiles—those metal tubes that tapped the sap—were ricked waiting to be installed in the trunks of sugar, red, silver, or black maples come next February. Under canvas lay the evaporators and other apparati needed to sugar off, a time and process I had yet to experience in the summer of 1992.

Shelves were laden with a regiment of buckets unique to the trade. About the size of a coffee pot, they were capped with that signature peaked lid. Such lids shed any debris loosened by storms plodding their way through The Days of Sugarin’ Off. Overall, a boy’s delight laced with a wonderful potpourri of earthiness, split hardwood, moldering boards, planks, timbers, and the unmistakable essence that something fine and pure took place here.

A family of swallows had built a nest in a cupola above us. No self-respecting sap house would stand inspection without a decent cupola. When production was in full flurry, it served to draw the smoke and vapors upward. Then we’re really cooking, Claude, and the cupola looks like Noah’s ark in the mist, said Uncle Albert.

I pointed out the muddy thatch of a swallow’s nest secured below the cupola’s vanes, and when Wren asked to borrow my binoculars for a gander, it was then I noticed. There arose another scent, an odor fearful to country folk.

Skunk! I shouted. I grabbed the binoculars, Wren by the belt, and began treading air, hopefully high enough to launch us out the opening and out of range. Hopping on all fours, the skunk bounced its agitated way toward us like a soccer ball tripping down your cellar stairs. Complications arose.

Said skunk had entered the sap house by the same door we did. Wren and I leaped over it and the threshold, then the two of us took a header into the mud. Churning our way across the clearing, I looked back. No mist arose, floating the cupola off toward Noah’s endless sea. No tawny lions, humpbacked camels, or hooded cobras emerged from the darkened doorway. Just a solitary skunk bobbing its way toward a future meal in some rotted log, our discomfort of no concern.

Now what? Wren choked, watching the skunk amble into the brush surrounding the sap house clearing. We stink, he said, his lip curled in loathing. I stink, I think. Do you stink?

Not sure, I said. Likely. I’m sorry, frien’, that I couldn’t get you out the door. He had us trapped.

Wren fumbled with his clothing, the magnifier, his composure. How we gonna go home like this? It’ll be too embarrassing.

Yes, a dilemma. Neither wanted to face the females of Shadeland, fussing over our odor, and demanding our clothes before we set foot in the door.

Well . . . here’s an idea, Wren. We’re not that far from Uncle Albert’s and Nathe’s. I’m . . . I’m a-thinking those guys had a brush with a skunk back in the olden days. Wren nodded soberly and reached for my hand. I took it awkwardly and then he just as awkwardly, withdrew it.

All right. Bet they’ll know what to do.

As it turned out, they did.

CHAPTER 3

Into Every Boy’s Life

Off we went down the two-track woods road leading to Summers Run Farm. Two chastened warriors. The older searching any humor in it; the younger, sorting it through his bright but troubled little head.

We emerged into the backyard where we found Uncle Albert taking his mid-morning doze on the chaise lounge. From under the brim of his panama hat, he cocked one eye our direction, then sat up slapping his hands on each knee. We shuffled up to him, Wren on the verge of tears and me, trying to smile but abashed over our intrusion. Uncle Albert read the air.

Hmm . . . I see. He straightened, looked us over, and said, Survivors in our midst.

Sorry, Uncle Albert, for bargin’ in on y’, but Wren and me . . . we’ve got a little prob—

Not to worry, my friends. We welcome travelers in distress. Master Wren, said Uncle Albert ceremoniously, I pronounce you a Woodsman of the First Order. He stood and wagged a gnarly finger in the boy’s face. No one can call himself a true explorer of our woodlands without encountering a skunk now and then.

Uncle Albert then motioned us to follow. Well enough. We’ll attend to this matter in no uncertain terms. Come along.

We entered the boot hall and Wren volunteered he might stink up your house. It’s pretty bad, kinda pukey.

No problem, Wren. A nice and breezy day. We’ll open up and it’ll be fresh as a daisy. Wren visibly relaxed as Uncle Albert pawed through a cabinet’s upper shelf.

We . . . are . . . blessed . . . as P. M. Murphy has formulated . . . a special skunk soap. He was given this remedy by an old descendant of Cornplanter himself . . . added some lavender and who knows what all, but . . . . He paused and unwrapped a brown cake the size of a deck of cards and too ugly for words. Uncle Albert sniffed the bar and let us do the same. It oozed authoritative cleanliness.

It doesn’t make much suds, I’m told, but it does scrub like a block of sandpaper. Supposed to be mild but effective. He pulled his folding knife from his watch pocket and cut it in two.

Here, Wren . . . is yours. Claude, you needing a bath?

Well, sir, I’m not sure. I answered.

I got the worst of it, I think, said Wren.

Over the head of my younger cousin, Uncle Albert gave me the sign, nodding, pursing his lips and winking under that scraggly eyebrow. I caught it. Ah . . . yessir—sprayed us both.

Most likely. Uncle Albert fished out some paper bags from the closet. You can put your duds in these, boys, and we’ll put ’em through the warsh on the ‘Ultra Clean’ cycle. I’ll get you each . . . a couple old shirts you can wear after you shower or bathe. I’d suggest a bath . . . . Might need to soak for a spell. Two or three times perhaps. Even P. M.’s soap might need a little extra time to work its magic. Wren took the utility room’s bath and I climbed the stairs to one of the guest suites. My journal entry might need an extra page tonight.

Bodies soaked, scrubbed twice, clothes in the dryer, we were restored.

Don’t know about the hats, boys. I’ve scrubbed them both, and your boots, Claude, may need more attention. Wren’s tennis shoes are drying on the line.

During our ordeal, my cousin Nathean was moving cattle up the lane to their next pasture.

Unlike the Shorthorns of Shadeland, the Summers Run cowherd consisted of a duke’s mixture of breeds and sources. All had been transferred to the farm and their new home, gathered from P.A., eastern Ohio, and southern New York by Uncle Albert in a quest most would label foolish. Nonetheless, his goal continued: assemble a colony of forgotten American cattle, those breeds that once dotted the country’s pastures a century ago.

Even the horse Nathe rode bareback toward us was a relic, rescued from neglect, abandoned by an owner who’d let the bank foreclose on his aspiring horse farm.

‘Blue Roan’ is a Shire, Claude. When Nathe and I brought him home, he would tuck his nose under our arm—he was so defeated and chagrined. Hair coat like a doormat, parasites, mane and tail matted up, hooves untrimmed. Now, he’s thriving in greener pastures. A sight dear to my heart. I heard the catch in his voice.

As Nathe and Blue Roan approached with the herd, I stepped out on the porch to watch them and the ladies parade by. Nathe looked our way, puzzled with my appearance. I waved a floppy sleeve of the nightshirt I wore and Uncle Albert shouted, skunk. My cousin nodded and turned his attention back to the drive.

Taller grass around the corner, girls. Let’s stay together. As the cattle passed by our viewing stand, Uncle Albert recited their names and background.

Dolly Madison and Gretel are the Belted Galloways there—those with the big white stripes across their middle—as are Amber Wave and Petunia . . . . Hyacinth is a Red Poll as are Ma Kettle and Beulah and Lady Liberty and her daughter, there, is Molly Pitcher. Those white and blue roans are Randalls. We drove clear to Connecticut to get a pair—Merry Dare and her calf-at-side, Rose of Sharon—very rare today. They’re multi-purpose stock. Back in colonial times, they provided milk, meat, and pulled your plow as oxen. There’s ‘Well’ an’ ‘Dandy’. They’re taking to the yoke just like your granddad’s did years ago, Claude.

I’d never seen Nathe a-horseback before. He rode bareback, with a loose rein, as he and Blue Roan cantered past us.

Feel the ground shake? That’s what you call a ‘rocking chair lope,’ Claude, said Uncle Albert.

Blue Roan . . . standing tall today . . . about seventeen hands and holds his head like that granite stature in the park. Weighs a ton, I’m a-guessin’. He’s a roan and not favored by breed standards, don’t y’ know. They prefer blacks and bays and grays. So . . . he’s a bit of an outcast . . . plus abused to boot and down on himself. Now, he trots about, on guard, fully in command of the cows and the sheep, the pastures, and tells us every day how grateful he is to be here. So am I.

When Nathe rode back for lunch, he turned Blue Roan loose in the yard, came in through the patio, and assured us, Into every boy’s life, guys, there must one day come a skunk.

Agreed, said Uncle Albert. He’s the poorer for it should it never happen.

Once . . . we had . . . Nathe said, setting our table, "an episode on Oregon Trail where a skunk showed up at the wedding. Folks loved it—got a lot of fan mail over that one. We’ll just keep this story under our hats, boys, agreed? Skunk yarns are just for us menfolk." Wren and I nodded and his well-scrubbed apple cheeks glistened in the shiny platter before him. Recovered, he relaxed now in the company of country gents of understanding and goodwill. He liked being one of the menfolk, I could see, something I’ve never forgotten.

We refueled on Nathe’s man-made bread and a pitcher of lime lemonade while the skunk stories of Summers Run began to surface.

Pop, you remember the rabid skunk scare.

Oh, vividly, said Albert. Rabies was described for Wren, who’d never heard of the affliction.

Nine-ten years ago, Uncle Albert told us, "I was on my morning stroll when up ahead, there goes this black and white streak darting across the path. Very peculiar, it was, as skunks usually just shuffle along, travelin’ in low gear sniffing the ground, listening for clues an’ such.

"So, I pause and wonder if it might be one crazy with rabies. There’d been talk of such and sightings.

So, I decide, I’d better hike up the old apple tree for a gander and get out of his way. You know the one, don’t y’, Nathe? That old Yellow Pippin?

Down in the swale?

Yes, the very one.

Like the partridge in a pear tree, then.

"Perxactly. So there I am up the tree and looking about for Mister Skunk. Finally, thinks says I, ‘Albert, you old duckling, you’re gonna look pretty silly up here—like some Johnny Appleseed—should someone happen along.’

"So, I climb down and make a beeline across the meadow on a shortcut home, hoping Old Man Skunk hadn’t decided to double back and ambush me along the trail.

"Next day . . . the Tribune ran a piece by our game warden an’ for folks to be on the lookout for rabid skunks and such and to call him or the county sheriff if they spot anything."

Someone did get bit, didn’t they?

Yes . . . some girl over on the Cussewago, coming out of the henhouse. Poor child. Back then, one was treated by a series of shots, a dozen or so in the abdomen. Quite painful, of course. Nothing to trifle with, boys.

By the time we re-assembled ourselves, it had turned into mid-afternoon. We plodded our way toward Shadeland and found the Yellow Pippin Uncle Albert climbed for refuge. It was still producing, the ground around it covered with the June drop.

What’s ‘June drop’? Wren asked me.

"It’s when the tree decides it’s making too many apples, and it drops some and saves the