Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: CALENDAR (10/20/16)
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TITLE: Abandoned But Not Forgotten | Previous Challenge Entry
By Marlene Bonney
10/24/16 -
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It wasn’t until half an hour later that I noticed a roof’s edge peeking at me through the eastern horizon, a sunbeam glancing across a tiny window beneath its eaves.
“Ah, a mystery,” I thought, always ready for an unexpected adventure, “perhaps a sleeping prince awaits me to release him from a witch’s evil spell,” laughing at my poetic license to change the gender of a famous fairy tale character.
Scattered leaves crunched beneath my feel as they skittered out of my way, sounding like launched firecrackers in the, otherwise, pristine silence. The weather-beaten porch boards were alternating humidity-swollen slats, or dry like splintery appendages, bent and brittle like an old woman’s arthritic fingers. I gingerly tested each footstep, but it seemed sturdy enough to support me. The torn screen door’s rusty hinges, barely intact, protested loudly as if to shout that intruders were not welcome here.
Evidence of birds and mice inhabitants lay in dusty corners and I squealed when an unseen cobweb swept across my arm. Undaunted, I carefully walked through the house’s roomy interior, imagining all kinds of romantic scenarios of who had lived and breathed and even died in between its scarred and peeling walls. A broken wicker rocking chair laid on its side in one room, a tattered lady’s lacy handkerchief on a rickety corner stand covered a worn Bible, its crinkly pages tear-stained and smudged. The kitchen had two empty flowerpots on a window ledge and a cupboard housed a lone china cup and saucer, both chipped. A pencil here, a piece of string there, an old child’s school primer on a dusty shelf in one of the upstairs bedrooms.
On my second walk-through, I spied IT! Over on the north wall behind an open cupboard door. A 1941 wall calendar, a grocer’s giveaway, filled with a treasure cove of information to satisfy my inquisitive spirit. . .I could no more refuse my natural compulsion to turn its pages, than a dog could refuse a meaty bone. I righted the old rocking chair and sat there, reading a real life novel between the monthly pages, circled dates and notations at my fingertips seventy years after a hand had written them:
“January 1—New Year’s Party at Uncle Herb’s
January 10—Scotty’s 15th birthday
January 13—Our 20th wedding anniversary
January 18—Blizzard!
January 21—Johnny’s ship launches
January 31—21 U-boats sunk this month
February 4—USO entertained Johnny’s shipmen
February 9—Call Johnny at portside
February 10—Esther’s 13th birthday
February 14—Church Valentine Banquet
February 28—39 U-boats sunk this month
March 15—Timmy’s croup treatment
March 19—Pray for persecuted Jews
March 27—Mud, Mud, Mud from flooded river
April 13—Easter Service on Chaste Mountain
April 17—Dr. Stevens to pull infected tooth
April 23—Ship out Johnny’s birthday care package
May 1—Deliver May Day Baskets
May 8—Write to Lucille
May 10—Smith/Barnes Wedding
May 30—Barb’s graduation
June 6—Kids out of school for the summer
June 22—Operation “Barbarossa”—Germany invaded Soviet Union
Jun 28—Everett’s auto plant “Arsenal of Democracy” induction
July 4—Winston Churchill broadcast
July 10—Davy’s birthday party
July 31—Vacation at Wilton Beach
August 9—Grandpa’s 90th
August 20—Nephew Curt overseas
August 30—Grandma’s Funeral
September 1—Roosevelt’s Labor Day Broadcast
September 8—School starts!
September 11—Roosevelt’s Fireside Chat
September 15—Bailey ships out
October 17—USS Kenny torpedoed
October 21—Reuben James torpedoed
October 30—Johnny’s casket arrival
November 1—Our Johnny’s funeral/burial
December 7—Japan/Pearl Harbor attack
December 8—WAR
December 20—Pack for move
December 30—Move to Daddy’s farm”
I shut my eyes and the calendar and played a slide show in my mind through one year of this family’s history, surprised that tears gathered behind my lids. Seventy years had passed since this place had gathered memories between its walls and I had now seen it up close instead of just learning about it in history books.
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I enjoyed how you presented it.