Posted on

Leaving the Homestead

You may know that I live on a road named for my family and in a house that was built by my grandfather and that both I and my father grew up in. Every so often, I meet someone who is like me: stubborn, lacking in creativity, or otherwise inclined to remain sessile in a country where no one lives in the same place for long. All has changed. This spring, I left that motley clutch.

My wife Rebecca and I decided early this year that it was time for us to leave the Waschke homestead. The property has been in my family for well over a century, passed on from my grandfather, to my father, and finally to me. We have a deed tucked in a safe that has Ulysses S. Grant’s signature at the bottom, although I understand those deed signatures were all copies.

The decision was difficult and part of me still disagrees vehemently. Sadly, I am no farmer. I was raised on the farm, but my interests have ranged from mathematics, to classical Chinese history, developing and writing about computer systems, libraries, and writing mystery novels. Although I stayed on Waschke Road and the homestead my entire life, I never wanted to farm. Too much experience has dulled my appreciation for the work on the farm that many find renewing and fulfilling. In recent years, a congenital heart condition and diabetes have made maintaining the farm more difficult and my wife Rebecca had her third back surgery last summer. My city wife is the gardener on our team, but what she enjoyed and I dreaded as stoop labor, is now impossible for her. Our children are not interested in the farm. The inescapable conclusion was that we would live longer and happier if we relinquished the homestead.

We decided to sell the old place. Our first step was to buy a house in town, Ferndale where I went to high school. I move, but not far. Although we remodeled the old farmhouse ten years ago, we both much prefer this smaller and more easily maintained new house. I am happy to spend my days researching and writing instead of fretting over the aches and fatigue that almost put me to bed after a few hours on the tractor or maintaining the farm. We still live from packing boxes—the effort of moving from a house and grounds in which three generations lived without ever moving out was tremendous. We are sorting three generations of accumulation. We found a pair of trunks, which we think traveled to America from Germany when my great grandparents emigrated. One of the trunks contained the chrome plated name plaques from the coffins of my two aunts who died shortly after birth on the homestead before my father was born. The trunks now sit in our new foyer. We’ve cleaned them up and are thinking about whether to let the years show or to restore them.

The homestead is now on the market, waiting for the right buyer. I don’t expect the place to sell quickly. It is not for everyone. Only a certain person in the right circumstances will appreciate it. You can see pictures here.

From Prussia to Minnesota

My great grandfather, Gottlieb Waschke, was an orphan. His parents died when he was twelve, leaving him and his younger brother to fend for themselves. As orphans, Gottlieb and his brother John trained as a builders and craftsmen in the public vocational school system established by Otto Von Bismarck in 19th century in Prussia. He built sugar mills, which boomed in northern Europe after the American civil war interrupted the supply of sugar from the Gulf of Mexico. My great grandfather emigrated from Germany, I believe entering the U.S. through New Orleans. He went up the Mississippi and used his training and experience to become a railroad car builder in Detroit and later Stevens Point, Wisconsin, near Green Bay. Later, he brought his younger brother from Germany, who was also a craftsman. The younger brother was soon recruited to Whatcom County to help with the late 19th century Bellingham Bay real estate boom.

Arrival in Whatcom County

My great grandfather Gottlieb saved enough in the car yards to buy farm land near Wells, Minnesota. He apparently did well, but the frigid winters and broiling summers of the upper Midwest were not to his taste. His brother wrote about the mild climate and opportunities in Whatcom County. My great grandfather decided Washington would be a more hospitable to a family farming operation and made the move to Washington state.

Gottlieb leased a railroad stock car, loaded it with machinery and livestock and sent it to Bellingham with his two oldest sons riding along, tending the cattle, horses, and a few chickens. The railroad allowed only one rider to tend the livestock. My grandfather, only thirteen or fourteen, hid in the cattle bedding when the railroad officials came around. Gottlieb, his wife, daughters, and younger sons rode on a passenger train. On arrival, my great-grandfather bought a quarter section of land on the northeast corner of Aldrich and Smith roads in south east corner of Ferndale township.

The Matzkes, my grandmother’s family, were from Pomerania, near Prussia. They were also mill builders and had ties to my great-grandfather’s family. They also emigrated from Germany to Whatcom County, arriving a few years after my great-grandfather and settled on the west side of Aldrich Road close to my great-grandfather. Romance soon blossomed between my grandfather and grandmother. They married and planned to start their own family.

Buying the homestead

With the help of their parents, my grandparents, Gustave and Agnes Waschke, purchased forty logged acres in 1906. This plot became the Waschke homestead. Gus was born in Minnesota, but working on his father’s farm, he soon learned enough about Whatcom county to decide exactly the kind of land he wanted. The loggers who harvested the Nooksack plains in the late 19th and early 20th centuries took only prime timber— mostly Douglas Fir and Red Cedar—leaving behind brush and trees they considered trash like Big Leaf Maple, Alder, and Birch, and, perhaps surprisingly, a few firs and cedars too big to cut by hand. Gus’s father’s farm was part peat bog, plagued with bog iron, and uneven, which made cultivation difficult.

Gus looked for a parcel that was flat with rich, neither waterlogged nor, dry soil. Not too many cedars—that signaled wet ground that could not be planted until late in a wet year like his father’s bog ground. And not too few cedars either—that meant dry ground that would not yield a good crop in a dry year. He also looked for big fir stumps, tough to clear with a team of horses, but a sign of fertility that would yield abundant crops. He found the mellow loam he wanted on the high ground on the verge Silver and Deer Creek watersheds and north of the skid road that paralleled the Smith Road. In those days, oxen still trudged the skid road pulling strings of logs cut on the Deer and Silver Creeks to the Nooksack river at Ferndale.

Gus and Agnes built a one room cedar shack in the northeast corner of the property, close to Agnes’ parents’ house on the Aldrich Road, where they lived for their first ten years together. Early in their marriage, a dry August northeast wind blew a brush and forest fire through the area. Gus and Agnes defended their home, beating out the flames with wet burlap sacks and shovels. Agnes recalled that they fought the flames until dark. Then they went to bed. She shook her head when she told this story, wondering that they survived, but they were young and life was an adventure.

I plan to write more about the homestead and its history in later blogs.

Posted on

The Dying of the Light

Dylan Thomas said “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Ben Frerichs did not rage, he kept the light burning.

Ben died Thursday, February 8, 2018. Ben was the third friend who died during the past twelve months. Reach an age and these events get more frequent. The scramble to stay connected intensifies and life goes on.

Our last conversation was less than a week before he died. Ben’s voice was weaker than it was a few weeks before, he slumped more in his wheel chair, and his face was paler. We talked for two hours. His color improved and his voice became stronger as we talked, but he tired, his nurses became impatient, the afternoon rush on I-5 began, and the conversation ended.

Ben talked about Raymond Chandler and Michael Connelly and a piece of mine that he had read for me. He was thankful that someone had given him an assignment to finish. His world was constricting around him. His sprawling body got visibly smaller, he could do less and less for himself, but inside the shrinking perimeter, Ben did not decline, his thoughts were not frail. He talked about community and corporate discussions. How often people with good intention don’t understand the simple mechanics of coming together to accomplish a goal.

Dying men fight against their chains. And chains, Ben had. A plastic connector protruding from his chest, a bed pan to be changed, well he should have roared, scratched, and bit. Ben said he needed less help than most of his fellows in the nursing center and therefore the attendants were not prepared for him. Ben conceived of a course to certify caregivers. The only examination would be oral. The questions would be easy, but the candidate’s mouths would be gently sealed with duct tape.

I met Ben in a writing class. A few students formed a writing group to carry on when the class ended. That was close to ten years ago. Ben was the guiding spirit of the group, finding a meeting place, making sure that everyone knew of the next meeting, and who was up for critique. Over the years the group became less formal, but it still exists, although Ben has not been a participant since he was hospitalized over a year ago.

Until he suddenly collapsed, he was vital. Many friends, offering rides, conducting a session on writing groups at the Chuckanut Writer’s Conference, active in the Bellingham writing community, and talking, discussing, curious, out-going. His life changed dramatically when his respiratory system gave way and he was permanently attached to medical equipment, but Ben himself did not change, and now, he is beyond change.

Posted on

A Man, a Cigar, and a Plymouth

A pear tree planted by Gottlieb Waschke.

I posted this item almost ten years ago and has been one of the most read items in the Vine Maple Studio. I edited it lightly for this repost. I should note that this story is constructed entirely from hazy memories that have passed through several hands. I would not take it as entirely historical.

My great grandfather, Gottlieb Waschke, like most men in the  early 20th century, smoked cigars, but he was not good at driving automobiles.

He had a nickel silver match case with a cigar end clipper and an engraving of a stag on the front. My grandmother said he brought the case from Germany.

After he married off six daughters and more or less established four sons, he bought a Plymouth and drove it around some, but he never learned to drive well. A man with six married daughters was under no  compulsion to drive any better than he felt like, and the state had not gotten around to traffic laws or requiring driving licenses. In photographs, Great Grandpa resembled his fellow Prussian, Otto von Bismarck. My father remembered him as stubborn with unshakable self-confidence, even arrogance. Those traits could not have been mellowed by his success with managing family affairs.

Dad rode with Grossvater in his Plymouth a few times. He overheard the old man muttering “Recht, recht,” and “Links, links” (German for “right, right” and “left, left”) when he wanted the car to turn, as if he were driving his German speaking team of horses. Dad, who was not more than six or seven at the time, said he wanted to laugh, but did not dare.

John Schaefer, a family friend whom I have mentioned before, told me a story about my great grandfather’s driving. One sunny September Friday, when the farmers were in Bellingham shopping, paying bills and selling things, Great Grandpa decided to drive in to town. John Schaefer saw him in his Plymouth on the corner of State (then called Elk) and Holly, a busy spot in town. In its way, as busy as any intersection anywhere. Great Grandpa was stopped waiting for traffic. When traffic started, he popped the clutch and killed the engine. Horns started honking, and one driver, probably having just left one of the taverns that were everywhere before and after 1919, shook a fist menacingly.

John Schaefer was a self-professed no-good at that time, probably just out of one of the taverns himself, was watching from a safe vantage on a bench on the sidewalk, smoking a scant teaspoon of Bull Durham tobacco wrapped in wheat straw paper. John said Gottlieb gave his harassers less attention than he paid to the manure in his barn, took a six-married-daughters stretch, and searched his pockets for a cigar, which he eventually found. With great care, he used his nickel silver match case trimmer on the end of the cigar. The crowd gathered and more drunks got word that something was up. They began to creep out onto the street as Gottlieb trimmed his cigar exactly as he liked it, stopping to test the draw and admire his work.

John began to fix himself another smoke as Gottlieb lit a match. The first match blew out in the breeze before Gottlieb got it up to his cigar. In those days, before the landfills and regrades had leveled and tamed the marshy geography, Elk street was closer to the water than it is now and John said there were a few oysters to be picked up right in town. On a tough day, you could go out on the tide flats and gather a meal, and Jake at the Waterfront Tavern would let you eat it at the bar if you could afford one of Jake’s watery and short nickel beers.

All the old settlers, Gottlieb included, learned to go to the water when food was short, to treat the sulfurous stench of the tide flats as a comfort that could be relied on in hard times. Gottlieb no doubt smelled the tide flats of Bellingham Bay and took comfort as he calmly lit his cigar and took a few fragrant puffs, feeling satisfied that September afternoon.

The horns honked and a few more fists were raised, but John Schaefer pointed out that Gottlieb Waschke was known to have four sons and six sons-in-law, three or four of whom were always ready and eager to take offense, possessed fists like stones, and arms as hard and tough as a vine maple trunk. This thought kept the crowd in check as Gottlieb got a fire burning nicely in his cigar, started his Plymouth, and drove on.