Tag Archives: carol crump bryner

Farm Cats

Most of the farm cats had hard lives. They had full time jobs (catching mice) and not much food. Their diets consisted of mouse meat and cow milk. They lived in the barn and had litters of kittens in an incestuous kind of way. The gene pool of the Whirlwind Hill cats was pretty shallow. At some point, way back when, a cat with extra toes must have made an appearance, because by the time I paid attention, almost all the cats had what we referred to as “double paws.”

We were encouraged not to make pets of them. My sweet grandfather was in charge of “game management,” and must have hated to do what needed to be done to keep the numbers in check.

But my grandmother had a soft spot for cats and managed to find a way to keep a succession of kitties in the house.

“Agnes and her Cats,” Carol Crump Bryner, drawing and collage, 1975

She talks about two of them in letters she wrote to my mother at college.

“Beautiful, the cat, is in my lap. He is gorgeous this fall.”

“I have a funny looking, dirty looking friendly cat from Aunt Annie. I call it Smudge.”

In my generation there was Sally Cat, a motherly calico with double paws. We played with her babies until it was their turn for barn duty. But Sally Cat stayed near the house. She was a smart feline. I found a photo of some of the barn cats. If that calico cat isn’t Sally Cat, it’s at least one of her ancestors.

Barn cat and kittens

The last cat on the farm was a grey tabby kitten rescued by my grandmother after he was hit by a car. The accident damaged his jaw, and from then on his bottom teeth closed over his top lip, giving him a sinister look. But he was sweet and loving, and he kept my grandmother company for a long time, especially during the two years she lived alone after my grandfather died. Grandma Hall named him Pussy Willow and claimed that he would eat nothing but “Nine Lives Tuna.” She told us to have Pussy Willow put to sleep after her death. She didn’t think the cat could live with anyone but her.

But he survived her by many years. My Uncle Francis and Aunt Glenna took him in and he thrived. Whenever I saw Pussy Willow after my grandmother died I felt that a little bit of her was still there with him. They had given each other so much comfort and companionship. He had a very good life.

Pussy Willow on the lounge

On Monday: Half-Remembered Rooms

Ellsworth’s Room

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My brother and I had the best possible babysitters – our two sets of grandparents. Sometimes we stayed with our grandparents who lived in town, but more often we would stay at the farm. Our parents dropped us off before dinner on Friday evening, and we stayed until Sunday.

When I was eight and my brother almost four, our parents went to Florida for a week. My brother stayed at the farm, but I went to our town grandparents because they lived closer to my school. They did their best, but I was unhappy. I missed my mom and dad, and because I’d been reading a book about an orphan, I was convinced they were dead and never coming back. I cried every day. I cried at breakfast, I cried in school when I tried to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and I cried at night in the little bed in my father’s old bedroom. Because I was afraid to tell them what was wrong, my bewildered grandparents took me to the farm at the end of the week to be with my brother. There, soothed by the familiarity of the place and by my Grandma Hall’s ample lap, I told her my fears. After reassuring me that my mother and father were coming back, she fed me dinner and sent me upstairs to bed in Ellsworth’s room.

This small bedroom at the top of the front staircase had been my grandfather’s bedroom when he was growing up. The bed was in an alcove and sported an enormous number of blankets – I once counted ten. When I snuggled under them to read my comic books, I was pleasantly stuck in one position by the weight of the covers. The pillows were soft, and there was a light over the bed that I turned on and off by pulling a long string. I don’t think I’ve ever again slept in such a comfortable and comforting bed.

But the two attic doors at the opposite end of the room were not comforting. There were rat holes in both doors, and I was scared that the rats themselves would come out while I slept. It was a legitimate worry, but minor compared to the fear of losing parents.

“Attic Doors with Rat Holes,” Carol Crump Bryner, 2013

It’s hard to tell what children are thinking. When my daughter and son-in-law spent the night at the hospital after the birth of their second son, I stayed at their home with my four-year-old grandson. We read books, took a walk, went out to eat Chinese food, brushed our teeth, and put on our pajamas. But as we were climbing onto his bed to read stories, he began to sob so hard that it caused a “spill” (his word for throwing up) of the wontons and the soy sauce all over the bed covers.

While my lap is nowhere near as ample as my grandmother’s was, I try to be a reassuring presence for my grandsons. So after the cleaning-up, and the drying of the tears, and the calming-down, I asked my grandson if he wanted to sleep with me in the big bed. He did, so we went upstairs, tucked ourselves in, and watched a cheerful cooking show about making cupcakes. He was fast asleep before the cupcakes came out of the oven.

Carol with Aubrey and Henry, 2011

On Wednesday: Farm Cats

Watermelon Pickles

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A cold watermelon on a hot summer day is a glorious treat, especially when eaten outside where seed spitting is allowed.

Francis and Janet Hall eating watermelon, 1921

Whoever invented watermelon pickles must have had the bright idea to preserve the memory of this sweet, watery, cold, pink, and green fruit for a dark winter day.

My uncle Francis loved these pickles, so my grandmother kept jars of them in the basement and put the sweet sticky blobs in a glass dish to go along with the big Sunday dinner. But watermelon pickles are a disappointment. They don’t look like watermelon because they’re actually watermelon RIND pickles. And during the pickling process they become translucent and kind of slimy. I think someone should figure out a way to make watermelon pickles so they look like the ones my grandson and I painted on a recent July afternoon.

“Watermelon Pickles,” Carol and Henry, 2014

On Monday: Ellsworth’s Room

The Creamery

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The creamery was a refreshing oasis on hot summer days at the farm. Until the late 1960’s, when milk cans gave way to bulk storage, milk from the cows was poured into metal cans and stored in the creamery tank.

You may be picturing a sterile-looking refrigerated room when you think of “creamery.” This was not the case on my grandparents’ farm. The milk cans were carried out the back door of the barn to a wooden shed built over a spring. Entrance to the building was through a tall sliding door. On the right side of the room stood a long cement tank filled with cold, cold spring water. My uncle or my grandfather immersed the cans in the water and, using pulleys and counterweights, lowered a heavy lid onto the top. Even with the tank covered, the air inside the creamery stayed deliciously cool and made for a peaceful respite from the heat of the midday sun.

“The Creamery in 1972,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 2013

On Friday: Watermelon Pickles

Agnes

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In 1888, my grandmother, Agnes Maud Biggs, came to America from England with her parents, Joseph Biggs and Maud Pawsey Biggs. She was six months old. A photo of her taken before they sailed shows an eager and well-dressed little baby perched on a fur rug.

Agnes Maud Biggs, six months old

The Biggs family settled in Glastonbury, Connecticut along with other Pawsey relatives. My great-grandfather got work in a woolen mill. On the back of a photograph of the mill building my grandmother wrote, “This is the factory where Joseph Biggs spent all his working days in America.”

Agnes was always a good student. In one of her report cards from 1900 she ranked first in her class. She went to nursing school in New Haven, Connecticut and graduated with honors. Her specialty was maternity, and I’m fairly certain she met my grandfather when she was nurse to one of his newborn nephews. When Ellsworth Hall and Agnes Biggs married in December 1913, she gave up her nursing career and her life in Glastonbury, and went to live at the farm on Whirlwind Hill.

Agnes Biggs, (right) in the maternity ward, New Haven Hospital, 1910

According to my great-grandmother’s journals, Agnes was up to the challenge of living in a large house with her in-laws. She entered into marriage, not only to my grandfather, but also to his aging parents, a large house, and a busy farm. During her courtship she was referred to in the journals as Miss Biggs. “Miss Biggs has gone back to her home in Glastonbury. We like her more and more each time she visits.”

Agnes and Ellsworth had three children by 1918. Nine years later, when she was forty years old, my grandmother gave birth to twin boys in the downstairs bedroom of the farmhouse. My mother, who was nine at the time, described the event like this. “I didn’t even know she was going to have a baby. And suddenly there were two little babies, and my mother hadn’t made a peep.”

Agnes with the twins, Luther and Aaron, 1927

How tired my grandmother must have been all the time. She rarely had a minute to herself. She was responsible for keeping the whole show together. She was the nurse, the mother, the grandmother, the daughter, the bookkeeper, the chauffeur, the cook, the veterinarian, the letter writer, the stockbroker, and the babysitter. And she was the go-to person in any emergency.

She treated sick cows, put gentian violet on their wounds, gave my uncle emergency shots when he got stung by bees, rocked new-born grandbabies, herded cows, and lifted my two year old brother up by his heels one day to dislodge a wayward cough drop from his throat. When something went wrong, we called Grandma Hall, and she answered on the big black telephone in the dining room. She embraced new technology, and would, I’m sure, have bought herself an ipad if they’d been invented during her lifetime.

That my grandmother was smart I have no doubt. She was the adult I went to for help with math homework. She called a zero a “cipher.” She kept the farm records, did the driving, and the planning of the meals and activities for her children. When she became a grandmother she often took care of as many as seven grandchildren at one time.

It’s nearly impossible to describe my grandmother Agnes in a few paragraphs. Families are often strengthened by the addition of outsiders, and my grandmother brought new life to the two-hundred-year-old farm. Along with her dark brown eyes, her magnificent hair, and her sturdy body, she brought a desire to educate her children and grandchildren and send them out into the world. My grandmother and I were close. I loved her with a fierce attachment, and I miss her every day.

Agnes Maud Biggs Hall

On Wednesday: The Creamery

Gardens

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When a cousin visited me recently, we talked about the gardens on the farm. Most of the large crops of hay, corn, alfalfa, oats, barley, etc. were planted in fields away from the house. But near the house my grandparents grew all kinds of shrubs, flowers and vegetables.

My mother and her brothers and sister started their interest in gardens when they were very young. In this photo of them from Children’s Sunday, 1921, they hold tiny potted plants received that morning at church. All the Hall children went on to have “green thumbs.” My Aunt Lydia studied animal and plant life and raised orchids, Uncle Francis worked his whole life on the farm, Uncle Aaron tended a beautiful yard and garden, and my mother made striking bouquets from her flowers and then did paintings of them.

Francis, Lydia, Ellsworth, and Janet Hall, 1021

The visiting cousin, Skip, spent many years working on the farm and for our Uncle Francis and my grandparents. Skip never understood how anything could grow in the vegetable garden behind the farmhouse – it was so very full of rocks. I pulled up carrots from that garden and wiped them “clean” on my pants before taking a gritty bite. They tasted of sunshine and earth, and I don’t think there is any better way to eat a carrot.

“Garden Carrot,” Carol Crump Bryner, watercolor, 2014

At the foot of the hill leading to my Aunt Glenna and Uncle Francis’s house my grandmother grew flowers, and around the front of the house and across the street near the barnyard fence my grandfather planted hollyhocks. When they bloomed in the heat of summer he brought single hollyhock blossoms into the kitchen for my grandmother. They looked like dancing girls in brightly colored skirts balanced on the tips of his fingers.

Iris, hostas, peonies, and phlox are what I picture when I remember my grandmother’s gardens. Maybe that’s because the plants lived on for many years after she died. In 1986, sixteen years after her death, my grandmother’s flowers were plentiful enough for a bouquet. During a summer visit that year, my mother and my daughter picked an armful of phlox and hostas to put into a pewter pitcher for the dining room table. Most people grow hostas for their foliage, but I’ve always loved the pale lavender-colored blossoms because they remind me of Julys on Whirlwind Hill.

Mara Bryner and Janet Hall Crump picking flowers, 1986

On Monday: Agnes

The Back Staircase

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My mother didn’t like me to read too much, especially when there were more active things to do. With a shake of her head she’d say to me, “Carol, you’ve always got your nose in a book!”

I loved having my nose in a book – especially books about Nancy Drew. She solved mysteries, and I was fascinated by mysteries. Again and again I read the books in which Nancy Drew discovered secret rooms or passageways.

Cover of “The Hidden Staircase” by Carolyn Keene

My grandparents’ farmhouse reminded me of houses from these books. It had endless doors, strangely shaped closets, and stairways that we were not always allowed to use. The main staircase, just beyond the front door, was wide and light and had a beautiful banister and landings at the top and bottom.

But the back staircase – behind a door in the living room, was different. The closed door made it seem almost like a hidden passageway, and I was sure there must be a secret panel somewhere in its dark walls. We were discouraged from using this stairway because the painted wood steps were steep, narrow, and slippery. A knotted length of rough and scratchy rope served as the only handrail. My grandmother grew nervous when we wanted to go up “the back way,” and now that I have grandchildren of my own I can understand her fears.

To discourage their use, the door at the bottom of these stairs was kept shut, and when I got permission to climb them I had to go up two steps in order to reach the latch that opened the door toward me. This pushed me back down a step before I could get over the threshold and begin my ascent. The staircase led to three of the five upstairs bedrooms, the landing, and a bookshelf-lined hallway. On the shelves were storybooks, comic books, atlases, and nursing textbooks illustrated with drawings and photos of horrific and fascinating wounds and diseases. (My grandmother was a nurse before she was a farm wife.) My brother claims there were Playboy magazines hidden there too, but I never saw them.

I wanted to climb the back stairs for two reasons. The first was to find a hidden panel. (I never found it.) And the second was to sit on the floor in the silence of the dimly lit and almost hidden hallway and spend the afternoon with my nose in a book.

“Door to Back Bedroom and Door to Stairs,” Carol Crump Bryner, colored pencil, 2012

On Wednesday: Gardens

Independence Day

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On July 4th, 1776, one of my ancestors added his signature to the Declaration of Independence. Lyman Hall, a grandson of John the Immigrant (I wrote about him here) was born in Wallingford, Connecticut, but as an adult he moved to Georgia and became a Congressman. Celebrating Independence Day took on more meaning for me because someone in my family had played a part in its making.

For the past few years we’ve celebrated the Fourth of July in Portland, Oregon at our daughter’s house, where her very careful husband sets off a modest, but still impressive, display of fireworks at the end of the driveway, followed by sparkler waving in the wet grass of the back yard.

When I was growing up we had picnics at the farm. Mostly I remember quiet feasts outside in the yard.

Farm Picnic, 1948

But one year in the 1950’s, someone in the family brought to the farm a car load of fireworks. After the day’s celebrations, when dusk turned the night sky a deep blue, we rode in cars and pickup trucks down the lane toward the cow pond and up the hill to the field with the lone tree. On blankets spread over the stubble of mown hay we waited for the men to start the show. One minute we were sitting in the dark, and the next the sky lit up with one burst after another. Under the “rockets’ red glare” we shared together a magical evening marking the birthdate of our country.

Happy Birthday America!

“The Rockets’ Red Glare,” Carol Crump Bryner, 2014

On Monday: The Back Staircase

July Window

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Weather was a major pre-occupation for the Whirlwind Hill farmers. Each year in June and July they looked for sunny dry days to help make good hay. Journal keepers often start entries talking about what kind of day it was. Lydia was no exception. I do it myself when I write in my own diary. It eases me into the recollection of the day and makes each entry part of a bigger cycle of life and living.

“July Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, monoprint

Tuesday, July 28, 1914 – “Rainy. Men working around home. Pa went to town in afternoon. Agnes ironing, etc. All done at three o’clock, a busy day for housekeepers, quite a large ironing for us. Am willing to help but think I am more in the way than I can do good, but never mind, they will all get old if they live long enough. It is hard to grow old and feel that your usefulness is gone.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Saturday, July 16, 1921 – “Nice hay day. All very busy. The busiest of all. Agnes took the children to town in morning. Emily [hired girl] busy doing the work, righting the upset rooms, washing dishes – scrubbing the floors, doing chamber work. Agnes doing the baking when home, also helping rake the hay and drive the horses for unloading it at the barn. They got in most of the hay that was cut.” – Lydia Jane Hall

On Friday: Independence Day

Cornelia and The Sea

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My great-great-grandmother Cornelia Andrews Hall was a stern woman. At least that’s the way I always pictured her. A portrait that used to hang in the living room of the farmhouse is said to be of her. She has a serious and tired countenance, and she wears a brooch containing a lock of an ancestor’s hair.

Possibly Cornelia Andrews Hall, around 1860

Five years before she died she tried to evict my great-grandfather William E. Hall from the farm. Her husband Salmon had been dead for thirteen years, and it would be five more years before her own death. William wrote a comment on the eviction notice that says “Thirteen years of pleasure – five years of hell.” Something went amiss between Cornelia and her son William to cause this rift. I’ve never been able to find out what it was or if my great-grandparents actually had to leave the farm for awhile. It’s another mystery waiting to be solved.

Until last fall I didn’t know much else about Cornelia. But after my cousin Ellen sent me a photo of Cornelia’s childhood home in Sheffield, Massachusetts, and I was doing research about that homestead, I stumbled upon a letter Cornelia had written home to her family in the third month of her marriage to my great-great-grandfather, Salmon Hall:

Wallingford, August 12, 1832

Dear Parents,

It has been three months since I left you. I enjoy good health and am perfectly contented with my new situation, and much pleased with my new neighbor. I should like to have brother Dwight with me. He would find enough here to amuse him. He could pick whortle berries and go to school, drive my cow and feed my chickens. Last Monday we went to the sea. We had a very pleasant time and I enjoyed myself very much. We sailed to Kids Island and took a pleasant walk. I went in the water over my head. Mr. Hall gave me my choice to go to Sheffield or the sea. I hope my friends will not forget me. We have long waited for a line from you but have not received any. Mr. Hall says he shall not write anymore unless you write to us. I hope you will come and visit us this fall. I shall expect a visit from grandpa and grandma this season and I hope they will not disappoint me. Give my love to all inquiring friends and tell them I have not seen one homesick moment yet. Tell Brothers and Sister to write to me.

Good evening parents – This is from your daughter C.T. Hall & S. Hall

Her home in Sheffield was a stately-looking place. A photo of it hangs in my cousins’ cottage in Madison, Connecticut, but until last fall I didn’t realize it was the Andrews Homestead. The fact that she chose not to go back home for her outing, but to have an adventure at the sea gives me a younger and more lively picture of her.

Andrews Homestead, Sheffield, Massachusetts

Nearly one hundred years after Cornelia wrote this letter, her granddaughter, Ellen Hall Norton, bought a cottage near Circle Beach in Madison, Connecticut. A copy of the above photograph of the Andrews Homestead hangs on the cottage’s living room wall. Later this summer I’ll write about the cottage – a place loved and often visited by our family. I’m glad that Cornelia “chose the sea,” and glad that my aunt Ellen did the same. My aunts and uncles and cousins have generously shared their cottage with me, and I’ve enjoyed painting the views into and out of its windows and doors. When Cornelia went to the sea for an outing it must have been a welcome respite from the busy life of the farm. Our family on the farm always kept a close connection to the sea – a connection I try to continue through my paintings.

“Sleeping Porch Windows,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 2010

On Wednesday: July Window

On Whirlwind Hill

An artist's memories of a family farm – Carol Crump Bryner