Also by Dawn Potter poetry Boy Land & Other Poems How the Crimes Happened Same Old Story memoir Tracing Paradise: Two Years in Harmony with John Milton The Vagabond’s Bookshelf ant hol o g ie s & t eac hing t ext s A Poet’s Sourcebook: Writings about Poetry, from the Ancient World to the Present The Conversation: Learning to Be a Poet
Chestnut Ridge poems
Dawn Potter
deer br o ok edi t ions
pub li s he d by Deerbrook Editions P.O. Box 542 Cumberland, ME 04021 www.deerbrookeditions.com www.issuu.com/deerbrookeditions f i r s t e di t i o n Š 2019 by Dawn Potter All rights reserved ISBN: 978-0-96200293-5-8 Book design by Jeffrey Haste
Contents Preface
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Statement of My Creative Interests 3 Backcountry 5 Wartime Prosperity 6 The Quartermaster 7 Incident at Jacobs Creek 8 Missionaries 9 The Old General’s Equipage Trunk 11 Laurel Caverns 12 An Elephant in Greensburg 13 Genuine Church Music 14 From the Travel Notes of a Celebrated Novelist 15 Fragment from a Ladies’ Book 16 The Testimony of Various Witnesses 17 Letter from the 142nd Pennsylvania Infantry 21 Whist Drive at the Fishing Club 22 Flood 23 As a Thief in the Night 24 Local Death 25 Advice from the Emperor of Steel 26 Purchased on the Thirtieth Anniversary of the King of Coke’s First Million Dollars 27 Instructions for Foreigners 28 Standards of the Pennsylvania State Board of Censors 29 Daily Courier 31 The Miner Who Loved Dante 33 Week in Review 34 The Historian’s Wife Describes the Appalachian Plateau 35 Future Site of Fallingwater 36 Advertising 37 October 39 The Band from the Beer Garden 40 What the Photographer Saw 41 Mill Hunky 42 Coal Act 43 Vocation 45 Abandoned Country Song 46 The Land of Spices 47 Mama Cooks Dinner and Remembers Lebanon 49 Gołąbki 50 Basic Training 51 Incident at Jacobs Creek 53 Burning Questions 54
Saturday Night Granny Has a Vision The Husbands Take the Donegal Exit Company Town The End of the Season
55 56 57 58 59 61
Notes & Acknowledgments
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Preface The Chestnut Ridge region of southwestern Pennsylvania—also known as the Laurel Highlands or the Connellsville seam—stretches alongside the Allegheny Mountains from Latrobe down to Uniontown, near the West Virginia border. When I was a child visiting there in the 1970s, I thought of it as The Land Where Nothing Has Ever Happened or Ever Will. But in truth, the region has, over a span of 250 years, undergone an extraordinary metamorphosis, shifting from dense wilderness to chaotic industrial hell before collapsing into the exhausted Rust Belt desolation I knew so well. As a gateway to the Mississippi, the Allegheny region was, for early travelers, a primary river and land route south into the Appalachians and north into Canada. Thus, it has long attracted wanderers, pioneers, missionaries, immigrants, and schemers; and its strategic importance made it a major battlefield during the French and Indian War. Young George Washington, who suffered a spectacular defeat there during the first battle of his career, returned to the ridge as an aging ex-president, hoping to recoup what he’d lost in unprofitable land speculation. In the 1840s, writing in his travel journal, Charles Dickens mused over the cabins he saw clinging to the hillsides, wondering who might live in this lovely, remote, alluring, mysterious place. Humans have had an incalculable influence on every inch of our planet, but their impact on the Chestnut Ridge has been particularly brutal. The impetus behind the region’s rapid shift from frontier to furnace was coal—not the hard, relatively cleanburning anthracite coal of northeastern Pennsylvania and the western states but the smoky, soft, polluting, bituminous coal that was the fundamental ingredient in coke, fuel of choice for making steel. The coal beneath Chestnut Ridge was key to the wealth not only of Henry Clay Frick, who controlled most of the area’s coking operations, but also of Andrew Carnegie, who built U.S. Steel on the back of Connellsville coke, as well as financiers such as Andrew Mellon and Charles Schwab and transportation magnates such as the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Thomas Scott. Meanwhile, the coke ovens burned. The miners carried their lunch buckets down the shafts, into darkness. Children were born, and old men died. In Scottdale—my mother’s hometown, and also Frick’s, a hamlet once known as Fountain Mills but renamed in honor of Scott the Railroad King—I whiled away the summer climbing hay bales and pitching bottles into the quarry and listening to my grandfather try to cough up the coal dust trapped in his lungs. Meanwhile, Frick’s coke ovens, cold and empty, crumbled into the roadside weeds. One might say that the land was reasserting its claim to itself. But the scars—in stone, in flesh: even then I knew they would remain.
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Chestnut Ridge
Statement of My Creative Interests Death, by which I mean the sudden death of snuff bottles and weeping willow trees, undiagnosed roads littered with sorrows, and postal clerks languishing along the canals. And Sex, of course. That goes without saying. The insatiable queen; the pale and ruminating heifer; the snails, incompatible on a blue plate. (You see how the links begin to accrue.) To a certain degree Love, but with a teaspoon of Despair— star-crossed bats, an aging incognito ragdoll, three Polacks stumbling into a bar. Not Hate so much as Grudging Defeat, as when day breaks on time or the sparrow scorns her basin of chickweed while the furnace belches rank and artless air. Although Wonder, without a doubt. Those curious prosthetics, those animalia with their clever hums and coos, those quivering visions of Albion. And Yearning, always Yearning: the one-eyed child leaning out of the highchair, the lord protector pacing his damp yew walk as the Calydonian hunter straggles after the boar.
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Backcountry
1635 You rose from the coastal plain, snaked through ridges and valleys, and rolled down to the western rivers.
The Monongahela Culture.
You were a grand deciduous forest. Oak, hickory, and chestnut, mingled, on your mountaintops, with birch, evergreens, and maple. Mist shimmered in your hollows. Sunlight dappled the undergrowth— dogwood, mountain laurel, rhododendron, trailing arbutus. Your falling waters and mountain springs never ran dry.
The Mingo Tribes.
The Iroquois Nation.
The Delaware Nation. The Shawnee Nation. A trapper. A missionary. A soldier.
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Wartime Prosperity
1744
Fr the Beaver-pelt The French-man payd 1 Bullit Whch the Shawnee-man Returnd
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The Quartermaster
1753
At night the Wolves and Owls of the Ohio Lands make a Great Noise, and the Forest abounds with Turkeys. To hunt these Curious Fowl, one must travel by Moonlight, approaching with Stealth the Branchy Trees on which they roost. One commonly detects Four Score or more of these Slumbering Giants in a single Oak. Hitherto soundless, the Hunter now fires a Shot, and five Turkeys tumble from the Boughs. Wakened, their Brethren do not fail to Scream— forthwith, the Hunter stills his Anxious breath till they relapse into their customary Doze. Then again he shoots, and again falls Silent, and shoots again, to the end that all are Killed. At length his men gather the Corpses. Staggering beneath their Unexpected Weight, they bear them to the Canoe and, with weary Dispatch, proceed Down-river to the Fort. All the while, unseen among the shades, Owls consign their vasty Wailings to the Air. Twice or thrice, a Trembled Wing brushes a Paddler’s face, and he Flinches: for there is, in this Boat laden with Relics, a general Consensus of Fear: as if, adrift, a Phantom hath risen from the Slain beneath our Boots and now delivers to us a Message.
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Incident at Jacobs Creek
1755 Down by the crick the Dogs again are barking Trouble I fear John Thank God has ceased Dragging Stumps from the far Patch he names A Meadow how I long To see Home. Clover grows thick in the Bottom the girls Have gone to pick for Stone-Coal it burns hot In the Winter months we hear. Down by the crick The Dogs bark and Bark. John sallies from the lean-to with his Gun And Were I not slowed by this eight-months Burden I would Run to him Run O my girls Have gone away to pick for Stone-Coal. The Dogs are barking barking the Dogs Howl now Yelp Yelp John grips his Gun. The Dogs fall silent. Clover in Flower pink And white. The girls did walk by the Crick. A hush. Bees mutter in the Garden. Then In says John. In says he and Bar the door. The Trees Cut out the Sun My girls My Two girls. I Fear the Worst.
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Missionaries
1758 We started early, took our Horses And climbed upon a steep Hill, Until Thomas’s beast tumbled on the Rocks, Rolling down and down like a shattered Wheel. We started early, boiled some Chocolate. Our surviving Horse could not be found. Thomas shot a Squirrel and broke his Gun. I felt a dismal Impression grow upon me. We started early from this barren Place So shocking and dark on a Winter’s Morn. Passing through thick Bushes of Briar, Thomas muttered a slew of impure Words. We started early, with intent to cross the River, But in Vain, so we went Smart to Work And built a Raft. The Wolves and Owls Made a great Noise in the Night. We started early, fell in with Five of the King’s Men Who told us the disagreeable News, That the French had infused bad Notions Into the Minds of the Indians. We started early, for Time seemed precarious. Entering a Town, we learnt of Skirmishing. Rumour declared a Captive had been burnt, Which grieved All to a great degree, even Thomas. We started early, again reached the River, But I had forgot my Blanket, And Thomas’s black Oak Raft Sank as soon as it touched cold Water. We started early, for the Ice was violent. Thomas hallooed till he was Tired. Then he cut Wood and cleared Snow, Whilst I designed a small Cabin of Hides.
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We lay by a Beaver Dam. It snowed the whole Day. Thomas was discontent with his Lot, But I pulled my Belt a little tighter. I woke early, to find the Storm had eased. Angry boot Prints marched Town-ward. I was thus obliged to carry Much deserted Baggage.
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The Old General’s Equipage Trunk
1784
It shields my tangled affairs: 2 leather Cases, 1 linen Valise, alongside my Marquee, Sheets, Quills, and Camp-chairs, my Tent-poles and Pins, flasks of Madeira and Cherry-bounce, Oil, Mustard, Spices, an ounce of Laudanum, a grand Damask Table-cloth (tho’ not enough whole Finger-wipes remain). Tea, a Sugar-loaf, 2 Kegs of Whiskey, Silver Cups and Spoons, Rough Towels, a trifle of paid Rent, Horse Blankets, Sheaves of Deeds, a Telescope, 3 Missives yet to read from that Rarity: a Sensible Tenant. 1 Survey-chain, 8 Cookery-Pans, the vicious Slanders of a Citizen evicted from my Denizens, the drawing of a Tavern plan. Map of this Road we broke 2 score and 10 strange Years ago— Braddock’s last Memento. Ah, my slipping Days. A Yoke of Oxen, fat and slow, halts cheerfully to lie in Meadows where I once thought to die.
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Laurel Caverns
1802
In this year two men were lost in the caverns for three days. When found, they were locked in each other’s arms waiting for the end— two travelers, eyes wide in the blackness, ears pinned to the whisper of wings, the seep of water. When found, they were locked in each other’s arms. Breath by shallow breath, they had fabricated life. Blind touch bound them. They stole heat from the brush of a cheek, the cup of a calloused hand. And so they survived the ordeal of never embracing again.
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An Elephant in Greensburg
1808
His head, you may observe, reaches the height of a lilac tree in full leaf, and he shows dislike to the noonday heat. Note his restless tramp among the clanking cross-chains; see how he dips his bulky brow toward the dust as if in wistful thought. Yet thirst is all the Monster ponders, coiling the length of his ludicrous nose as girls might wind the ribbons of a bonnet. In this town, riotous with flies and whiskey, his brief tail gains him naught, and his cabbage ears tremble with vexation. Nay, Providence does not intend him to thrive in this land, and you citizens of freedom will never again witness his like on our great continent. Here he looms, sole beast of his kind, Angel cast out, Sinner in the wilderness. Tomorrow we goad him, through sun and peril, toward the peoples of the West. So stare and marvel, marvel and stare. Only beware the vicious feet, you frisking drunkards with your knives and jagged bottles. Swift as flood, he’ll squander your frolic; he’ll grind your bones to sand. Truly, this slow bewilderment is his mask. For his inner mind knows no restraint nor descries that Virtue we call pity.
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Genuine Church Music
1833
A pernicious error one would make, to claim That man’s free love of song may be the same As Piety; and yet its usefulness in whetting Our brightest blades of Faith, of vetting Our Devotional affections—in every age, This is the happy trust of those who do engage To hold communion with the King of mercies. So let us call our tuneful joinèd verses Conversation, consoling and remarkable: Let us praise our Lord in syllables Divine. Do not forget the Master took Much pleasant care to fill the pages of His Book With somber odes uniting voice and heart. He expects His singers to illuminate their part.
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From the Travel Notes of a Celebrated Novelist
1842
At night our river-trail wound through a gorge, cold and pale, Shining like a Highland pass under the gleam of a narrow moon. So hemmed in we were by the hills all round that we saw no egress Save through the path of shadow-ripples we ourselves had made, Until a cliff seemed to open and our barge, like a witless Jonah, Floated forward into gaping jaws that snapped shut upon us, Closing out the moonlight, wrapping our new course in shade. Dawn brought relief but also sorrow, for our roving eyes were loath To rest upon the stumps that loomed like rough-hewn graves, stark And chill among the greening corn. A thousand rotting branches Clotted every swamp, steeped in every wet crevasse. We marked Great wastes where settlers had been burning, and even, like an omen, glimpsed a twisted, withered tree-king, arms reared high aloft, railing at the slaughter of his thanes, laying curses on the blackened works of men.
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Fragment from a Ladies’ Book
1851
We stand on the lofty ridge of Time! The fashion of stiff corsets never will resume. We are constrained to note, “The female mind could never have devised the loom.”
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The Testimony of Various Witnesses
1859 There was noise in the field. No moon. Sky was clear. I could distinguish a white man a rod off. We live in a brick house, last one on the right. When they got to the hill, they went in all directions, except back. I live in the third house from the bridge, as you go down. Before I saw Z. dead in the morning, I was awakened by the firing of guns. Was in bed at the time of the firing, till I heard men gathered in front of my house. From their talk I took them to be whites. Saw between 15 and 20 negroes running up. Heard one say, “Come, boys, we will surround this place and have the damned rascal” (or words to that effect). I knew there was a fuss between the whites and the negroes. C. called on me for a revolver, a day or two before the murder. He did not get one. From the appearance of the eye, the gun was in close proximity to the face when fired. S. told me times were desperate below town, that the whites were molesting them, that he was afraid. This was about 2 days before the murder. I have often repaired his firearms. I don’t recollect him saying he wanted the gun fixed so as to shoot squirrels. A negro had been knocked down in the street. For fun I struck at him. He pulled out a pistol and said, “Look here.”
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I did not say that any person who took the darkies’ part was a damned mean man. In D.’s barbershop on Monday night, two or three present were talking of trouble between the whites and negroes. D. was shaving a man. He remarked, “If they do not be careful we will have bleeding Kansas here.” I heard nothing but the tramping of horses in the field. I only went because they asked me. As soon as I got into the corn, I squatted down. I was facing eastward, in front of the stone quarry. Then I got behind an apple tree and whistled a little. It was after prayer meeting. The company took no liquor before starting. I don’t know whether they stopped at hotels or not. The field begins just beyond the yard. Z. carried a club of some kind. I recall they all wore hats. Drank at T.’s. Can’t tell whether I was at the marble shop. Can’t tell what the row was about. I was in a doze. Something alarmed me. Put my head out the window and heard a terrible swearing. My husband and J. are cousins. The swearing I heard was by black men. On Sunday I swept shot off my porch.
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I arrested D. in his barbershop. He was shaving a man. D. said he did not know what he had done. I went along to arrest C. He was eating. Then he quit eating and commenced rubbing his hands. I saw Z. raise his club and yell like an Indian. The yell was such as the Indians gave who were with the traveling show. I said, “I am no nigger.” He replied, “It’s well you spoke. I might have killed you with this club.” I think I had my pistol out. I said my revolver was for six of them if they jumped me. A darkie came along and Z. said he sauced him and he knocked him down. I saw a darkie enter D.’s barbershop with a shawl on and something under his shawl. I do not think it was a fiddle. Went to T.’s, knocked 3 or 4 times. T.’s wife told me not to put my hand on the broken pane of glass. I have known them long enough to know them anywhere. The place is a house of ill fame. S. was in bed all that night. He was sick. His mother came to the door to speak with him. Mr. N. rode down to our house and asked whose gun that was. My sister said it was the one Pap borrowed. 19
We were going across the creek after firewood. When we came back, the gun was gone. I remained on the brow of the hill. The path turns off just before you get to the first apple tree. J. was badly scared, tolerably drunk, and suffering some pain. He did not faint when I extracted the bullet. He was in a chair he could not fall out of. My opinion is that he did not know what he was saying. This was his state pretty much the whole time. On the day Z. lost his life, he came to the well. He said, “The niggers about this place have been carrying on with a high head.� I never mentioned the conversation to my wife. I took a drink, went directly upstairs. I had a bottle of medicine I had got for her. I opened the directions and was in the act of reading them when the firing took place. I assisted in reaching Z. after the incident. I found no weapons on him. The night of the murder was a clear, starlit night.
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Letter from the 142nd Pennsylvania Infantry
1862
I received the sad intelligence Of Juliet’s demise. That sweet good girl now peaceful sleeps, At rest in Paradise. We lay last night in Snickers Gap, Endured a foul brass band. Midst sharps and flats, I wrote to Jane; My friends and I shook hands. We hope that we shall meet again As victors on the field. Without a faith in God above What thorns this life would yield. Our cavalcade has halted In a meadow by a stream. Two drovers work to drown a mule. We listen to it scream.
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Whist Drive at the Fishing Club
1887
Whist is a partnership game for four players, two against two. Member of Congress Owns a mining explosives supply company Bank president Developer of porcelain-insulated spark plugs At the clubs and in the family circle it still finds a following. Industrialist Chief counsel for iron company Lumber dealer Involved with real estate Were it not for the variety known as “Progressive Whist,” the organizing secretaries of charities might find it difficult to raise such ample funds. Art patron Manufacturer of steel springs for railroad cars Dentist Established in the cracker business As might well be expected in the case of a game with a long and honored life, the rules are many, and precise. Attorney general Owner of Banner Baking Powder Entrepreneur Window-glass millionaire It is a universally established truth that trumps should be led when five or more are held, and none but the most expert player should ever depart from this. Tunnel contractor Minister plenipotentiary to Turkey Federal judge Brother of man who will murder Stanford White Make sure of winning at the earliest opportunity, but take any risk if that is the only way of saving the game. 22
Flood
1889 A dark day, and a day of storm, and amidst the darkness the angel of death spreads his wings over the valley. Midday comes. And now rumors rush down like rain. A horseman thunders through the streets. “To the hills!” he shouts. “To the hills, for the love of God!” The townsfolk stare at him, as at a madman. They hesitate. They shake their heads The shadow darkens, and the hills are veiled with mist. Upstream, rain rattles into the pretty lake that laps against the dam. Only the desolating angel fishes there today. The dam is a jumble of boulders and straw and wet earth. Here and there a leak springs forth, and yet another, and yet another. Now the wall is honeycombed with tunnels. Still the rain rattles down. The lake laps against the dam. Streamlets of lake spill over the stones. Rivers of lake pour over the stones. Midday passes. The center stones begin to sink. An archway opens; it totters in the churning foam. Then, like a tiger rushing into a sheepfold, the angel roars down the valley.
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