welcome to Ginny, Sharon, and me, and immediately started talking about her choice of quilt block. “I knew it was going to be a sort of forever thing, and I couldn’t change it with the seasons like I do my wreaths,” she said. Faced with the choice of a single season, Marge picked fall. “When the leaves are all turned, not that I am looking forward to cool weather, but that is such a pretty time of year.” Marge had made frequent trips through Amish country to visit her sons in school and had purchased an Autumn Splendor quilt on one of her trips, and the quilt was used as the model for her barn quilt. I admired the green paint on the barn, and Marge said that it was part of a complete renovation that included a new foundation for the structure.
I was surprised to learn that Marge was more than ninety years old, but her age fit with her discussion of the family business, the local phone company. Her father bought the fledgling company and the phone lines for one hundred farms when Marge was six months old. Marge and her family still run the company, one of a handful of independent phone companies in the state. Marge said, “These days it’s changing so fast. We are getting into the wireless and Internet and all of that. We are running fiber to other towns as we speak.” I have to admit that I was amazed that a woman old enough to be my grandmother was intimately familiar with the latest in telecommunications.
Autumn Splendor
Marge is not just part of the company in name but an active participant, as she has been for many years, even more so once she got married and her husband went to work for her father. Marge taught school but worked at the phone company during the summers. She said, “When my husband needed someone to get easements or get someone to stake a pole line or something, I’d get one of the fellas and go out. I miss that. Teaching school, you were inside all of the time, so during the summer, I loved the chance to be outside. Of course that was back when if you were alive and breathing you could teach.” I chuckled a bit at her assessment, having recently left the profession myself.
Marge went on to talk a bit about the events of the flood. “Every business was closed. We didn’t have a place to go to eat and couldn’t get our mail.” Her hilltop home wasn’t damaged, but Marge agreed with Ginny that the tragedy did benefit the community. “If there was anything good that ever came from that flood it was the resilience—everybody came out of the woodwork. Anybody who had grudges with anyone in the community, it just went away. It was the most amazing thing the way that people helped one another and everyone became so close.”
The surrounding community has been good to the family, and Marge has plans to build an athletic center for the use of all its residents. She said, “I have a big bucket list of things for the village. People have been so loyal; you have to give back. If I can just swim in the pool, that will be okay. But it probably won’t happen in my lifetime.” I left Marge behind thinking about what an incredible lifetime it had been so far.
We headed into Middleburgh where we met up with Bill and Glen, who had spent the day cleaning cattails out of Ginny and Bill’s pond and relaxing on the mountain. Glen reported that Gracie had enjoyed running around the property and had fetched decoys in the water. I worried about Gracie’s health, as she was then thirteen years old, so I always liked to know that she had been active. After their time in the water, Glen said with a smile, “We sat on the beach by the pond, sat in the shade under the tree, sat on the porch.” I was glad that he seemed to have enjoyed his day and, once again, was grateful for Ginny and Bill’s hospitality.
Our visit closed with a celebration of the local hardware store’s 125th anniversary. Country music played under a tent where dozens of families were gathered for a cookout. The mood was like a reunion, with kids playing along the fringes and adults talking from one table to the next. I loved hearing familiar songs played so far from home and grinned when I heard the lyrics from the stage: “You’d better leave this long-haired country boy alone.”
When a watermelon-eating contest was announced, the emcee asked whether anyone in the crowd might be willing to take on the local champ. Glen is naturally reserved, but he does have a healthy appetite. I shouted his name, and before long the chant began: “Glen! Glen! Glen! Glen!” He nodded his agreement, and almost immediately, I regretted having urged him to do so. He was wearing his Paddle Georgia 2011 T-shirt, a one-of-a-kind memento of the trip during which we had met. With his shirt turned inside out to minimize staining, Glen chomped and spit and chewed as fast as he could. In the end, he took second prize and donated his small cash winnings to the local quilt trail, in recognition of the warm welcome we had received in New York.
ohio
OUR LITTLE FAMILY moved on to southern Pennsylvania and a two-week break from travel. With no quilt trail stops to make, we began a series of lackluster stays in chain motels. The rooms were confining with no natural light, as opening curtains meant exposing ourselves to passersby just inches away. I appreciated having the downtime but missed the camaraderie of our visits to LeRoy and Schoharie, and the expansive lawns and pastures that had surrounded us. Restaurant fare was a poor substitute for the home-cooked meals we had enjoyed. And I was irritable from lack of sleep. Glen rises early and by the time I wake, he has been at work for a couple of hours. During our recent stays, he had been able to work in another room, and I could sleep undisturbed. Now we were in a shared space. Glen could not work without light, and I could not sleep with it. The clang of a spoon against a coffee cup, the jangle of Gracie’s leash, the creak of a chair broke both the silence and my rest, and chattering keyboard clicks kept me awake.
The bus would not be ready for another three weeks, and we both were miserable and moody. We could not survive if we allowed our bickering to escalate. With some trepidation, we agreed to state our grievances with an eye toward problem solving rather than recrimination, and together we found solutions. Now Glen’s soft voice woke me each morning, “Here is a towel for your eyes and here are your earplugs. Shh, now go back to sleep.” We agreed that Gracie would wait a couple of hours before her morning walk, a habit that continues to this day. Our mutual dissatisfaction with constant restaurant meals led me to scour cooking websites for motel-friendly dishes. I put together a traveling pantry that included essential spices, then visited a thrift store to find suitable utensils and dishes. Being able to prepare a simple meal of spaghetti with a Caesar salad in our temporary home restored a sense of control. It took a week or so, but together we created a pleasant motel lifestyle. More importantly, the habit that we developed during that difficult time—of sharing our frustrations and asking for each other’s help—has served us well since.
Time away from the quilt trail did give us a chance to explore Pennsylvania. A kayak tour on the Susquehanna River took us through the heart of Harrisburg, a lazy day baking ourselves in the sunshine that we had craved. Gettysburg was a highlight of the year. The battlefields were immense, and driving through them impressed us with just how momentous the fight had been. Glen was especially moved when we stopped to read about a “witness tree” that stood near the road. “Can you imagine? This tree was here, right in the middle of things. It makes you realize that it just was not that long ago.”
Heading west a week later, I was surprised at the terrain. Somehow, the Keystone State of my imagination was mostly flat; instead this was the first time in our trip that we encountered mountains. Part of me was glad to be in the nimble car rather than in the bus as Glen negotiated the twists and turns. Dozens of barns appeared along the roadside—red, white, gray, even yellow—some just a few yards from the highway. Most seemed to be in good repair, and some were larger than any I had seen, grand dames surveying the landscape and marking centuries of change. I couldn’t help wondering how many barns had been lost when the road shoved its way through. After a day’s long drive, we passed through the last tunnel and wound our way down the mountains to Ohio, birthplace of the quilt trail.
The corn was up, and abundant fields lined the roads, vivid green curtains shielding our view for miles at a time. As we neared our destination, a Victorian