'Wide Meadows' - Uncle Joe and the pulley

Editor's note: This is an installment from Jean Bell Mosley's book "Wide Meadows," first published in 1960.

Last week: Uncle Joe comes to visit the farm.

Each time they came down there was something new and exciting to tell about. "I tell you, Josie, you never saw anything as pretty as the parade they had for the president," or "You should see the new dresses they've got in the windows this fall. Styles are just like they were when we were young." Uncle Joe would rattle on about the handiness of the buses, right in front of the house. Wasn't nothing to go to town just any old time, shop, eat dinner, go to a movie. Every once in a while Grandma would sigh deeply and Grandpa would look at her wonderingly as if it had never occurred to him that Grandma would like city life.

"And then there's the handiness of the doctor," Uncle Joe continued. "Why, Josie, what would happen, say Steve fell down the cellar stairs sometime and broke his leg? Say in the wintertime. You know how the roads are." It was plain neither Grandpa nor Grandma had given that any thought.

At butchering time Uncle Joe brought Grandpa out a new-fangled pulley, a sheave pulley it called it, to help hoist the hogs.

"You see, Jeanie," he explained, "this rope passes around the sheaves in a continuous coil. You fasten this hook to the log and when you pull on this end" -- he handed me the free end of the rope -- "neglecting any slight obliquity of the plies of rope, this moves six times as fast as the lower block carrying the hog, and if there's no friction or other resistance, the mechanical advantage will be the same ratio of the effort to the resistance." It was plain that Uncle Joe had gone all out on the subject of pulleys.

A visit to the city

After the last piece of meat was cut up and salted down and the last can of lard poured off, Aunt Hannah said that since the year's work was running out, she didn't see what there was keep Grandma from going home with them for a long-promised visit.

"Oh, Hannah, I couldn't do that," Grandma protested, but with a wistful look in her eyes.

"Now, why not, Josie?"

There seemed no good reason, so Grandma said she would go, but only for a couple of weeks, mind you! "I would like to see the new quilt patterns and get a few things to work on for the grandchildren for Christmas and, Jeanie," she said to me on the sly, "I'd like to get something real nice for your Grandpa. A real surprise. Do you have any ideas?"

We discussed a new pipe, a new pair of suspenders, a new sweater, but none of those seemed quite elegant enough. "Well, I'll just look around," Grandma said, and left it at that.

The first afternoon I came home from school after Grandma was gone, I found Grandpa just walking around through the big barn, not doing anything in particular, poking his head in the wheat bin, scooping up a big handful and letting it sift slowly back; looking in on the horses; stopping by the harness room, running his hand over the smooth leather of his favorite saddle. He climbed up into the loft and looked out the little window in the back where you could see the whole farm at once, the yellow stubble fields, the green pastures, the river, the hills. It was sad seeing Grandpa standing there, just looking. I lay back in the hay and gazed up into the dim top of the barn and there was that hateful hay track with its pulleys at both ends. The way Grandpa was standing, it looked as if he were tied to one end of the rope.

"You think she'll want to move?" I blurted out.

"I don't know, lass. I don't know." Grandpa shook his head slowly and then looked at me quickly as if surprised I had read his mind. After a while he turned from the window and sat down across from me.

"Lass, why it is when a farmer comes to retire he thinks he had to move to the city? Why can't he stay where he knows and loves things?"

I knew Grandpa didn't expect to answer. So I just waited for him to go on. He picked up a piece of dried timothy and ran it through his fingers, spilling the seeds off in the hay.

"There's a hundred thing around here I've been laying off to do and never seemed to find time for them. Just sort of putting them off until maybe it's too late. Somehow or other I've always wanted to sit out in the middle of the ripe wheat field all night sometime. And then there's Simms Mountain. I've never climbed it and watched the sun come up like I've always planned to do, or sat all day down in the orchard and counted the different birds I'd see and hear."

Grandpa sat there a little while longer, his forehead puckered in thought, then, "Time to milk," he said gruffly, and we climbed down and started the evening chores.

Next time: Grandma returns with surprising news.