June 19, 2008 01:19 pm
—
Jim Atwell
You know the truism: You
really can’t lay claim to your
own house till you’ve owned
it at least a half century.
That’s how it is in the country
— not just around here,
but in any rural area. If
you’ve only owned a place for
20 or thirty years, others will
still call it by the former owners’
name.
I do it myself. If I’m trying
to explain where Anne and I
live, I can joke and say we’re
at the dead end of Cemetery
Road. But if I want to clinch
the matter, I have only to
say, “We’re in Stanley Stucin’s
place.”
“Oh, sure,” people will
say. “Nice people, Stan and
Frances.”
I’m sure they were. Frances,
we’re told, was a warm,
energetic woman who raised
chickens and a big garden,
and pretty much kept up the
place herself.
Stan evidently lived life
at a more measured pace.
About my present age when I
met him, he was a lonely
widower anxious to get out
from under “Stone Mill
Acres” and carry on with the
rest of his years. These, it
turned out, were sadly few.
Anyway, if Anne and I
manage to hang on here for a
few more decades, the eventual
new owners will get
more than house, deed, and
Anne’s richly composted garden
plot. They’ll get the need
to explain that they’re living
in “the old Atwell place.” I
like that.
Meanwhile, we two are
making a move to establish a
permanent place in Fly
Creek. We’re planting our
flag, as it were, by buying a
plot in the graveyard that’s
in sight from our driveway.
That seems apt, too.
Judy Cook, superintendent
of The Fly Creek Valley
Cemetery, is searching the
maps for us, looking for a vacant
single plot up in the old
section, beneath the big evergreens
and hemlocks. (We
both plan to be cremated, so
a single plot will do just
fine.)
“I’ll turn up a nice one,”
said Judy, “dry, and without
a lot of roots.” For no rational
reason, I like the idea of
“dry,” but a root-free plot
seems more of an advantage
to the hole-digger. Maybe
that’s what Judy was thinking,
too.
I first explored that
sprawling old cemetery in
1977, just after my late first
wife Gwen and I struck a
deal with old Stanley for his
house. One autumn morning
I was wandering around far
back among the graves when,
emerging from the mists, appeared
a big granite stone
inscribed ATWELL. I looked
closer and saw similar inscriptions.
A whole passel of
Atwells lay resting there. I
went back to the house and
told Gwen we’d picked the
right place to buy. We were
expected.
I asked Judy Cook to look
for a plot at least a little distance
from those Atwells to
avoid confusing any future
genealogists.
A Maryland Atwell, I’m
separated from the local distant
kin by at least six generations.
I found that out
with Mabel Atwell, who
taught a couple of Cooperstown
generations herself,
drilling in the old subject
complements and subjunctive
clauses. (Mabel, bless
her, is part of that passel
herself now.) We researched
it together in census rosters.
It was the redoubtable
Mabel who made the definitive
judgment. She clapped
shut the book of rosters,
planted her fist on it, and declared
me a shirttail cousin
to her late husband. And
that was that.
If Judy can swing it, I
wouldn’t mind a plot near
one of Fly Creek’s Civil War
casualties, since a couple of
them actually died in my native
state.
A tall obilisque just above
the winter vault records a
young man killed at Sharpsburg.
Another has a Fly
Creeker dying right four
miles from my own home. In
an exchange of ill prisoners,
he’d been brought by steamboat
up the Chesapeake to
recover at Annapolis before
being shipped north to home.
But he worsened and died.
In my boyhood, that place
was still called “Camp Parole.”
The most moving Civil
War markers, though, are on
the graves of two brothers,
killed in battle within a year
of each other.
Side by side, the stones
can bring tears almost a century
and a half later, for their
carvings must have been
chosen by a desolate father.
On the earlier stone, a hand
extends down, holding the
handle of a hook. From the
hook dangles a single link,
for a second link had broken
free from the first and is falling
away.
On the later stone, the
second link has also broken
free; the hook hangs empty.
The second link has fallen to
the earth. It lies rejoined to
the first.
I hope our old house
stands for another 200 years.
I hope eight or nine more human
generations shelter under
its sturdy roof.
Lots more, I hope, will feel
pride of ownership, though,
like us, they’ll really only
have a short-term lease. But
meanwhile, Anne and I have
made plans to stay in Fly
Creek, just up the road, under
those handsome tall
trees.
This hamlet is home and
always will be.
Find out about Jim Atwell’s
book, “From Fly Creek
— Celebrating Life in Leatherstocking
Country” at www.
JimAtwell.com.
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