Traverse City Record-Eagle

Terry Wooten: Elders Project

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June 14, 2010

Lifelines: Family affair turns poetic

By TERRY WOOTEN Special to the Record-Eagle

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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