Ma, All The Way From Paree!

"Ma! Ma! Hurry up. It's going to start soon," I yelled to Ma, who was finishing the dinner dishes in the kitchen.

Everyone in Wilson, Kansas, had chattered about this event for weeks. The excitement was palpable. We were simple country folk, few had been further than the town limits.

The doctor in town and the undertaker had been to universities in far-away Kansas City, and there was a lawyer who had actually gone to college in New York City and married a girl from Boston, which was in Massachusetts. They were the fanciest people in our town and even they had never been to such a grand event.

Ma took time to powder her nose and put her Sunday dress and hat on before coming to the dining room table. Her red hair was freshly combed and the powder hid the freckles the sunshine had brought out on her little pug nose.

Pa laughed at her, "Dolly, nobody can see you but us'n."

"Oh, you shut up. It's a special evening and I want to look my best. Now, everyone, pull up closer. Grandpa, get your horn."

"What? Who's blowing a horn?" Grandpa crowed grumpily from his rocking chair in the corner of the living room, his bald pate shining in the light from the gas sconce on the wall.

"Nobody's blowing a horn. You need to get your EAR HORN out," Ma enunciated carefully.

"Why? You gonna read the Bible?"

"No, Gramps, just come out to the dining room for a big surprise!" I yelled, tired of Ma and Gramps's constant bickering over what she did or didn't say.

I went over to his chair and held my skinny teen-age arm out for him to grip while he unwedged himself from the chair, which seemed to have become a permanent part of his rear end. I grabbed his dusty, old ear horn from the side trestle while I guided him to his special chair at the head of the table.

Every time we turned around new things crept into our lives. Technology was spinning faster than the globe, with inventions every week. Instead of cooking with a wood stove, Ma could now cook meals in a new gas powered oven that she could set at a certain temperature for different foods. It was a miracle.

Along with the gas-powered ovens came gas-powered hot water heaters, which seemed redundant to me, as we could just as easily heat the water on top of the stove now with the gas burners. But, anyway, Ma said it made washing dishes easier. What I liked were the gas wall sconces that allowed us to stay up after sundown and get chores done. Although Pa feared putting them into the barn, with all that hay, so we still had to drag the kerosene lanterns with us for settling the cows and horses at night.

The wall lights made it possible for me to read The Rustlers of Clover County series at night after the rest of the house had gone to bed. Someday I'd be a famous writer too. Maybe I'd write about all the new stuff being invented and how backward my folks were about it all. That might be funny. I'll drink black coffee, smoke Winston cigarettes and stay up all night writing stories, just like Landon Jeffries.

The wall sconces helped me practice expressions to use on the girls at school. Sometimes I'd be Errol Flynn, pretending to have a skinny mustache that I'd pull on while impressing Madelyn Allbright, my favorite girl in school. Sometimes I'd curse the modern lighting for shining on the stupid pimples that seemed to pop out of nowhere every now and again.

Gramps made fun of me and told me to put cow manure on them and they'd go away. I only did it once. I was real mad at him when he told me that. I think it's kind of funny now.

There was talk about electrifying our town. The town council had to vote on it first though. All the towns around us had been electrified for a few years now. People in Pilotsburg had electric light bulbs, electrified ice-boxes, and clothes-washing machines that even wrung out the water for you. It seemed like every time there was a new invention, someone was trying to make money off it by selling you something you just had to have. Anyway, that's what Pa said.

Pa picked up the handset from the wooden box on the wall like it was a snake and set it smack dab in the center of the table, facing up as we all snugged our chairs as close as we could. Penny kept knocking my shin bone with hers and I slapped at her, only to be rewarded with a swift kick under the table.

There was a lot of static that lasted almost five whole minutes. Gramps was getting impatient, but Pa told him to hold his horses. Then, a scratchy voice said in a weird-sounding accent, "Welcome to the Paris Opera House presentation of Rigoletto, written by Victor Hugo and musical score by Giuseppe Verde. Felice Varesi: As Rigoletto, Raffaele Mirate: As the Duke and Teresa Brambilla: As Gilda with the Parisienne Symphony Orchestra. We now begin our worldwide broadcast.

We sat, mesmerized for the entire opera. Ma kept wiping away tears and Penny piled her red hair on top of her head in a bun, and said she was going to be an opera singer someday. It was a miracle. Here we were, a bunch of farmers in the middle of Kansas, listening to a live concert all the way from Paris France where fancy people lived.

Pa said the telephone was the beginning of the end of civilization because people no longer could see each other face to face when they spoke. He hated that Ma liked to listen in on the neighbor's gossip and thought that was the devil's tongue snaring her. But tonight, he was as awestruck as the rest of us was.

"By gum! Wasn't that just something, Ma? All the way from another country over the ocean," Pa said, beaming at us all around the table, his bright, blue eyes shining and his gap-toothed smile lighting up his face.

"Pa, we sure are living in exciting days. Do you think they've invented everything that could ever be invented?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, son. No doubt. This is it, I suppose. How much more do we need? We got gas coming into our house, electric might come along too. This telephone thing I guess is good for more than just listening to gossip. They's a concert almost every week from Radio City Music Hall and now this. It's amazing. Ain't nothing left to be thought up."

"Gramps, what did you think? Could you hear any of it?" I asked.

"Gramps?" Ma said, loudly, so he wouldn't yell at her for not speaking up.

The ear horn clattered to the floor and rolled into the dining room wall as Gramps collapsed onto the table.

"Dear God! What do we do?" Ma yelled.

"Dolly, put the receiver back on the box and ring Marietta at the town telephone office," Pa told her.

Ma cranked the wooden box liked her arm was about to fall off. "Hello! Hello! Oh, Maisie, get off the line. I gotta get the doctor!" she sputtered to an old gossip on the line. "Hello, Marietta? This is Dolly, yes, Frank's Dolly. Grandpa is real bad. Can you ring up Doc Halsey?"

We could hear a staticky voice on the other end of the handset and finally, Ma put the little black cone back on the box. "She's callin' Doc and he'll be here right soon as he can," she said quietly as Pa checked Gramps over.

"Dolly, I'll bring the washtub to the kitchen. We gotta clean him up for the viewing."

"What? No. He just fainted. He'll be all right, Frank."

Pa shook his head at Penny and me, then took Ma by the shoulders and said, "Dolly, I'm real sorry, but your Pa is passed." Then, to Penny, he said, "Henny Penny, take your Ma upstairs to our room and help her get ready for bed. Just sit with her a while, would you?"

"Sure, Pa," Penny said between sniffles.

"Freddie, you and me is gonna have to heft Gramps to the kitchen wash tub."

Pa got on one side and I got on the other. Gramps sure was heavier now than when I helped him to the table a few hours ago. He shit his pants too. I got to thinking about that. What if I die at school and shit my pants in front of Madelyn Allbright? Now there's something to worry about.

We figured to put Gramps into the washtub before taking his duds off. Then we'd be able to wash out his clothes at the same time. It was going to be a stinky job. Now I was glad for the hot water that came out of the faucet.

I had to bucket the tub out four or five times until we got him cleaned up. I could hear Ma upstairs crying her head off, and Penny trying to talk to her. Poor Ma. She and Gramps argued like cats and dogs, mostly about him not hearing her and her yelling so he could hear her and him yelling about her yelling. But when Gramma passed, Ma was right there to take him in.

Love is complicated. Sometimes you think you're gonna bust if you have to look at your family one more minute. But you wouldn't let anyone else have at them. Even Henny Penny. I'd kick the tar out of any boy who tried to kiss her, although I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to.

Anyhow, with Gramps dying, sudden like, we learned that the telephone was more useful than just listening to gossip and operas from across the sea. Doc Halsey got to the house as we were finishing up with cleaning Gramps and gave us a paper that said he was dead. Not like we didn't know it. But he said it was legal and proper.

He was gonna call the undertaker and get a hole dug for after the viewing. Pa drove the team into town to get some ice blocks in the morning and Penny and me picked some wildflowers and took the shears to Ma's rose bushes for the smell.

We laid Gramps out on the dining room table on top of some ice blocks that Ma covered with a couple of quilts Gramma made. Penny spread out the flowers all around Gramps and opened the windows even though it was March and still kind of cold.

Ma combed what was left of his hair and Pa trimmed his nose hairs and beard, then hid his hands under the family Bible. One arm was a little crooked because it got stuck like that when we pulled him out of the washtub. But, in general, he looked fine.

Ma wanted him to have a military funeral, so Pa called Marietta to ask if she would let all the veterans in town know. There wasn't many, 'cause we being in Kansas and all. But, the ones who were still alive showed up to viewing and promised to help carry his coffin.

With the help of the fancy new technology, Gramps had himself a 21 gun salute send-off with a bunch of Civil War veterans who showed up just because they's brothers in arms, and word got out faster with the telephone.

I suppose there ain't nothing new that can be thought up now. We got pretty near enough modern stuff to do everything we need.

Freddie Langston 10th Grade