I first met Julia Pascoe while doing a followup interview with her big sister, Margaret Fales. Margaret turns 100 on July 10. Julia is her little sister, and turned 90 on April 1. They both live at Noble Pines in Elk Rapids now.
During the interview, Julia popped in. I was trying to get Margaret to tell me how her parents met. Her answer was, "I don't know. Mother wasn't one to tell things like that. They lived in the same neighborhood, so I can assume."
Julia cut in, "I don't know how they met, but I know how mother and father got engaged. They were neighbors. He was 30 and she was 17. Father came to call on her, and they talked all night over the garden gate. That was a big deal. It must have been where he proposed. Mother said the next thing she knew she was married. The age difference wasn't a big thing back then."
I chose Julia Pascoe for the second round of Elders Project interviews in Elk Rapids for a selfish reason. She grew up in the house my wife and I live in. Where Stone Circle is now, was her dad, John Rutherford's cornfield. Margaret and Julia's mother was Mary Jane Ellis, and the younger sister of my wife's great-grandmother, Eva.
So this column is a family affair, and also a reminder that Stone Circle begins its 27th season on Saturday. I've heard a story about when they were digging the basement for our house, they hit a boulder so big they couldn't move it. So they poured the basement floor over it. I don't know if that is true, but I like the story.
Julia Pascoe (90) Our House
Father was a blacksmith in Charlevoix.
We lived behind the livery stable,
on the south side
close to the bridge.
I used to run away a lot
because I was bored.
I'd get my older sister in trouble.
They were afraid I'd drown.
I was afraid of Margaret.
She ruled
with an iron hand.
Then my family moved where Stone Circle is now.
Dad built that house
when I was six or seven.
We lived a half mile north
of where McLachlans lived
on the corner,
and I went to Creswell School.
To get our drinking water
you'd look straight at the summer sunrise
and go towards it.
On that higher ground
was a little crick.
Just above that crick was a spring.
Father dug a hole
deep as a table.
The water would fill in there.
He would clean it
out every spring.
On top of that ridge
was father's nine acre field.
Now it's part of that new golf course.
They took everything out.
You can't recognize the place.
I loved that nine acre field.
We used to go over that ridge
and walk down to Grandma Ellis' house.
Grandmother's old place
is where Bruce McLachlan's pond is
by the old orchard.
Only two trees are left.
On the south side of the road
are two graves,
two of Grandma's babies.
Two boulders are there now
where all the myrtle is
across from the A-Ga-Ming golf course entrance.
—Terry Wooten
Julia Pascoe Epiphany
The first time I went to Stone Circle,
about twelve years ago …I had an epiphany.
I can get excited about this.
The place was a lot like when
I was a child,
but the stones weren't there.
It was a cornfield.
I got out of the car
and looked around.
It was like I was eight years old again.
I walked down the road that heads south.
As little kids
it was a footpath
through the woods
and fields.
There's a little creek that runs
behind Stone Circle.
That's the way we used to go
to visit Uncle Will and Aunt Eva.
Will McLachlan had big workhorses.
They would see us
and get excited and run.
It was like thunder.
I was deathly afraid of them.
Seventy years later
walking down that road
I could hear those horses running.
It was an outstanding experience.
— Terry Wooten
Poet Bard Terry Wooten has been performing and conducting writing workshops in schools for 27 years. He is the creator of Stone Circle. Learn more about him at www.terry-wooten.com.
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