The Forewarned Man

CHAPTER 9

THE FOREWARNED MAN

“For all your days prepare,
And meet them all alike,
When you are the anvil, bear,
When you are the hammer, strike.”

Edwin Markham, “Preparedness,” 1918

“I was just thinkin’ the other day about the snow we had in 19 and 58. Ma and the rest of the family had just moved over here to the Kasey Place from the Dabney Place. It came a snow up to the windows and it was down below zero and me and Ma had all the cows to milk. Mr. Corbin, he lived down behind the dumpster down on the river, and was walkin’ to the mailbox for some reason or the other in that deep snow and he died from a heart attack. It took days before they could get him over to Updike’s [Funeral Home]. Leonard Bays bulldozed over that way and they finally got him there. I went to this funeral after the snow started meltin’ down at Staunton [Church].
Daddy and me went to Bedford before the storm and he bought a bunch of coal and a new stove, a Warm Morning. If it hadn’t been for that, I guess we would’ve frozen to death, but we made out pretty good with that coal and stove.”

The Audio Journal of Harold Martin


The President’s Day Storm of 2003 was expected to be fierce, so I began making preparations a days ahead of its commencement. I weighted down the back of my pickup with patio block that I would use later that summer for landscaping; I went to the grocery store to stock up the pantry with a few items we really did need, but also to purchase that gallon of milk and loaf of bread without which the rest of the food in the house would be useless; I made sure that my grandmother, who lived by herself at the time on the family farm, was well-stocked with her necessities, too.
Over the years, having used my father’s story as my inspiration, I have learned not to wait until the last minute to buy what is needed to weather a storm, natural or otherwise. By nature, country people plan for contingencies, and, when snow is in the forecast, they have already been prepared for days. This behavior is ingrained in us from earlier generations when people prepared for the barrenness of winter during the summertime with gardens and canning produce. In the Fall, hogs and cattle would be slaughtered for meat to eat during the winter months. However, even the most fastidious planner and worrier (as was my father) can be caught with his bib overalls down.
I wish that I had thought to ask my father why my Granddaddy Martin waited until the last minute to buy a stove to heat the Kasey House. He was a seasoned, old farmer who did everything with time to spare. He was a man who left few things to chance and who was always on time for appointments. Once, he and my Uncle Jack (my father’s youngest brother) had an appointment to meet several local farmers about a cattle purchase at 1:00 in the afternoon. Though the sellers lived just a few miles away, Granddaddy showed up at Uncle Jack’s house at 10:30 in the morning.

Furthermore, my father used to tell me that the only good thing about the Kasey House was that it kept the rain and leaves off of you. Because it had no modern-day insulation, it wasn’t much better than a freezer during the winter months. You had to have as many quilts under you as you had covering you to keep warm; if you did not, then the air under the bed would chill your backside. Sometimes, even the “honeypots,” (this house had no bathrooms) would freeze, too. Though the house had fireplaces, they helped very little because they were small and did not hold much wood. My father said it was almost necessary to crawl up inside one feel any heat, most of which escaped up and out of the chimney, anyway. So, why would a wizened old farmer like Granddaddy Martin wait so long to buy a coal stove?
Perhaps the most ironic part of this affair is that Granddaddy Martin was a progressive man among his peers. He drove from Moneta to Roanoke every day for years to work at the American Viscose instead of trying to eke out a living on the farm by growing tobacco. He drove a new pickup, too. As a farmer, he tried out all the latest farming equipment and techniques. His family had one of the first radios, refrigerators and television sets in the community. So, why was a stove so far down on his list of priorities?
When the American Viscose closed in the 1950's, when Granddaddy was in his mid-fifties, he managed to make a good living buying and selling horses, cattle, saddles. He was successful, too; he managed to pay for a beautiful, new brick ranch he had built on White House Road in the early 1950s. He was the model for a can-do type of man, but he almost got caught in a pretty bad storm. Almost, that is.
My grandfather waited until the last minute to prepare for a winter blast, but he was lucky. I, too, get caught in some bad storms, and they’re not all weather-related. No one can prepare for every contingency, and Granddaddy learned that same lesson, too. When he and my grandmother moved into their new well-insulated brick ranch house, they had a home with a wood cook stove in the basement and a very modern electric oil furnace, too. You don’t fool a wizened old farmer twice, particularly when he almost learned his lesson the cold way.