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Sat, 03 Nov 2007 05:35:30 -0400
Starting Lines 2: The Wedding
RUNNING COMMENTARY 700[From my book-in-progress, titled Starting Lines. Photo of Virginia King and Jim Henderson, early in their marriage.]
COIN, IOWA, April 1940. The best gifts that our elders give are those that go unseen and unappreciated when we are young. I had to grow up more to know how much a gift from my Grandma King would keep on giving each day I sit down to write. Mabel Kent King was my family's first writer in a lineage that now extends into its third generation. (My daughter Sarah and one of her cousins, Annie Shuppy, are journalists.) The earliest of Mabel's diaries date from the 1890s.
She couldn't say so that April day in 1940, but she had to feel relieved that a child of hers hadn't wait as long as she had waited to marry. She had felt ancient her own wedding day had finally arrived. Both Mabel Kent was on the far side of her 20s when she met Elton King, already into his 30s and looking older than that because he had balded early.
Elton had returned to his hometown of Coin, following service in Cuba during the Spanish-American war, to work as a carpenter. But he was better known in Coin for his musical skills. He led a group, Snyder King's Band, under his nickname. Mabel had arrived in Coin to teach in the elementary school. She appeared about to take the dreaded title "old maid schoolteacher" when she and Elton began courting.
Marriage and nine live births followed. All but one child came after Mabel's 30th birthday, and the last two after her 40th. Eight of these Kings grew to school age and beyond. Six were girls, and none had married -- until April 1940.
Elton's carpentry continued to support the family. The two surviving sons, Kent and Bob, built homes and barns in and around Coin when their schooling allowed. Mabel always insisted that school come first, and both boys would graduate from the University of Iowa.
Mabel, now 60, had kept a diary since she was a girl -- an only child living away from home while attending high school. The diary had grown into a weekly newsletter as her children scattered to college and jobs. Never had an entry been more important than this day's. It reported the wedding day of her daughter Virginia, only the fourth-eldest of the girls at 22.
Mother King wrote in the perfect script of a former schoolteacher, "The wedding took place in our living room, with members of both families present. Virginia was a beautiful bride and James a handsome groom."
Virginia was the smallest of all the Kings. None had grown taller than 5-feet-4, and Virginia had topped out at 4-10. But like the others she was a little person with a big personality and voice.
In high school Virginia played center on the basketball team. This was the era of the three-court game -- with forwards, guards and centers occupying separate zones. Coaches put the smallest players in the middle where they never had to shoot at one end of the floor or rebound at the other. Centers weren't shooters or jumpers, but runners who relayed the ball from one court to the next.
Virginia ran well but excelled at music, which she studied for two years at the University of Iowa before her money ran out. She came back home to Coin and worked at the local bank while waiting to marry Jim Henderson.
When Virginia chose Drake Relays Saturday as their wedding day, Jim didn't argue -- or couldn't because verbal jousting was beyond him. He missed the big track meet for the first time in years. Mother Mabel's diary reported, "The King and Henderson boys talked and laughed at great length about the Drake Relays held this weekend in Des Moines. They seemed more excited about the track meet than the wedding."
UPDATE: GRANDMA'S GIFT
My grand-ma-to-be began writing a diary-style weekly letter from the time her first child left home in the 1930s. This continued until a final illness struck in 1970, at age 90. My mother took over this weekly-diary from 1970 into the 2000s. I carry on this practice with a weekly newsletter to my family.
My sister Anne ghost-wrote the letter in our mom's last years, after her own ability to craft beautiful sentences failed. Anne, a newspaper editor, now keeps the family archives. As a Christmas letter she sends entries that Grandma penned in long-past Decembers. An event reported in 1939 had everything to do with my eventual arrival.
"Jim Henderson came this evening to see Virginia. After he left, Frances [the second King daughter] told me to get up and come downstairs quickly to see what Jim had given Virginia. Amazed to find a diamond ring sparkling on her little hand."
Jump ahead now to Christmas 1954. Then 11 years old, I was still only vaguely aware that Grandma King mailed a family letter every week. We lived a block away from these grandparents, and a block in the other direction from the elder Hendersons. I thought that all families were this close.
Grandma struggled through the Depression, trying to keep her huge family fed. Like many survivors of that era she remained obsessed with putting enough food on the table. Her letters about family feasts always listed the full menu. She wrote that Christmas, 1954, after hosting a dinner for 20, "We all had a lovely time with too much food." I still thought that everyone ate so much with so many people.
To Grandma's dismay my eating habits had diverged from the family's by 1961. My diet was at its most extreme then, my first year as a college runner returning home for the holidays. "I baked a pot of beans and made a kettle of vegetable soup," she wrote. "I am afraid that Joe doesn't like either kind of food."
She reported my runs as faithfully as I recorded them by then in my own diary. Seven miles one day, five the next, then back to her familiar theme: "Joe eats so very little. I fear that he tries to follow a too-rigid diet." She would be relieved to know how much this has changed. My diet has rounded out nicely, as have I.
Grandma lived simply, her life centering on family and food. She never drove a car or boarded a plane. She wrote her diary pages longhand, for a daughter or granddaughter to type.
She once wrote, "Today would have been my mother's 85th birthday, and she has been gone to her heavenly home for 24 years. How many new, strange sights she would witness if she could again visit this terrestrial sphere. Radios, talkies, automobiles, airplanes, etc., would all be new to her. But how many sad and tragic events she has escaped."
I could say the same for Grandma King so long after she left us. How much she didn't get to see and wouldn't have wanted to witness. How nice too that her words have long outlived her, both on paper and through genetic gift-giving.
[All completed chapters now appear together in the "New Books" section, http://joehenderson.com/startinglines.]