The Magic of Ordinary Days by Ann Howard Creel Read Free Book Online Page B

introduced me to their children. Sixteen-year-old Ruth wore a big shirt over denims, and her hair swung behind her in a long, rusty-colored pony-tail. Her eyes grew large as she looked me over. “Is that dress ready-made?” she asked.
    It hadn’t occurred to me until then, but of course store-bought clothes might still be considered quite extraordinary out here. During the Depression, farm wives and children were still wearing chicken-feed-sack dresses and flour-sack underwear. I nodded to Ruth and said, “It’s my favorite,” but then I wondered if perhaps I should have worn something simpler.
    â€œOh, I can see why,” she replied, still looking me up and down.
    Ruth’s thirteen-year-old sister Wanda rose from reading a book to be introduced to me. She had copper-colored hair the same shade as her freckles and thick, straight hawk brows that must have spent a lot of time in thought. The two boys, Hank Jr. and Chester, looked more like twins than brothers. “They’re only a year apart,” Martha explained. As I shook their hands, I noticed they had the same shade of brown eyes that ran in the blood of this family—lighter than mine—the color of brown eggshells.
    After a polite exchange of how-do-you-do‘s, the boys headed back upstairs to finish a game of cards until dinner was served. Wanda took herself back between pages, but Ruth never left my side. Over dinner and dessert, she stared at me. She asked about the fabric of my dress, and later she asked to try on the opal ring I wore on my right hand, a gift from my mother.
    In the kitchen, Martha started pulling out pots and pans, ladles and spoons, jars of spices. Ruth and I offered to help her, but she assigned us nothing but the table to set, and working together, we finished it in minutes. As we sat to fold the napkins, Martha kept moving about her kitchen with a certain ease of movement and steady purpose that let everyone around her know she had everything under control. Ray and Hank discussed farming business endlessly, and I overheard words and terms I’d never heard before, letting me know for certain just how out of my own element I was.
    Beet pullers and feedlots. Fresnos and slips.
    At last, Martha took a rest. She sat with me at the kitchen table while dinner baked in the oven. Ruth stayed with us, too, her chair scooted up flush with mine. When I told Martha I was not a cook, she offered to loan me recipe cards she kept in an old oak box, and she told me she knew a secret for perfect piecrust, if ever I wanted to know it. And she offered to pass on her “starter” for baking bread. I thanked her but didn’t say I had no wish to spend my one evening out wasting it in talk of nothing but the kitchen.
    â€œHow did your ancestors arrive here?” I asked her instead.
    â€œOh, well, that’s a story,” she said as she knotted her hands together on the tabletop. “Our grandfather came out here in 1870, one of the first to homestead in these parts. He was only nineteen at the time.”
    Already she had me hooked. “Where did he come from? Why did he do it?”
    Martha looked puzzled. “I guess I don’t truthfully know for certain why he did it. Most likely it was the lure of free land. For poor folks, owning land was the only way to get respectable,” she said with a smile. “Anyway, he came out from New York City’s Lower East Side, traveling by rail and by steamship and then by rail again all the way to Granada. From there he loaded a wagon and followed the Arkansas.”
    â€œAnd he was alone?”
    â€œAt the beginning of the journey, yes.” She smiled and gazed as though remembering something pleasant. “I heard the story many times as a young girl. He met our grandmother, a pretty little thing of only seventeen, on the steamship and convinced her father that he would be a good husband. He was quite the smooth talker, I heard. They