The Romancing of Evangeline Ipswich Page 15
At one time, my Uncle Rusty (Hubert Switzler) was staying with us. We had a snowstorm during the night. The next morning my dad asked Uncle Rusty how he had slept. Uncle Rusty retorted, “(Blankecy Blank), it snowed in my face all night!” As was his usual characteristic, my dad bent over with laughter.
The attic was a neat place to sneak away to for a little privacy (especially since I didn’t have a window seat). One Christmas season when I was still very young, I came home from school, slipped up to the attic, and made red and green construction paper chains. (Yes, Skeeter, we had construction paper when I was young.) I was having so much fun I hardly noticed I had turned into a block of ice until Mom found me.
Then winters arrived with cold and wind again and snow and ice and the car not starting and Dad having to walk two and a half miles to work and having to do chores night and morning half frozen; breaking ice on the horse tank so the animals could drink, feeding horses and cows and pigs and chickens and milking cows. Days when Mom would keep us home from school because it was so cold and maybe just because she wanted some company.
I was never required to help outside except for getting in the kindling, coal, and water. My dad was a staunch believer that women’s work was in the house and maybe in the garden but not out in the cold tending livestock except in an emergency, and not working away from home. He seemed to have a feeling that his mother literally had been worked to death after they moved from Kansas to Colorado. She died at age 62 of a stroke.
Christmases were great fun at our house. Santa Claus bought us each a nice gift and filled our stockings with oranges, candy, and nuts. Mom and Dad always gave us each a couple of small gifts, usually clothes and some little trinket.
The Christmas of 1954, my senior year, I got a Lane cedar chest, which I still have. Sharon got a piano, which she still has, Wayne got a .22 rifle, and Russell got a pair of boots, a black cowboy outfit, and a toy gun belt with two holsters and toy guns. After Dad started managing the Lemon’s Feed Store, he got a bonus twice a year one of which was around Christmas. This year I’m sure most if not all of his bonus went for Christmas. I don’t know how much they paid for my cedar chest, but I do know Sharon’s piano was $90.
Other gifts I remember receiving from my parents are two Shirley Temple books and Patty O’Neal on the Airways, which I still have. Another book they gave me at some time was The Swiss Family Robinson. These may have been birthday gifts. These are the only books I ever remember owning until recent years except for my scriptures and some church books and The Little Red Hen, which Aunt Opal gave me while we were still at Westcliffe.
Other Christmas gifts I remember receiving are a Bible, which I requested, a jewelry box, a string of “pearls,” and a pink sweater set. The last three were all received at one Christmas I think in 1953. Normally, we never received a lot of gifts like so many do today, but it was a lot to us. I also have the remains of a big baby doll that still cries but whose two front teeth have fallen inside. She also has a broken leg. My sister stepped on it. Guess I should have kept her off the attic floor.
As another rambling, pointless sidenote—the baby doll my mom mentions is in my possession now. Some twenty-five years ago, I couldn’t stand the thought of the poor baby doll being buried in a trunk out in the garage! I mean, how on earth was she able to breathe in there? Nightmare, right? Knowing that her smothering baby doll in the trunk horrified me so, Mom dug the precious doll out of the trunk so she could breathe more easily and gave her to me. That old, banged-up composite doll with the shattered and then glued-back-together leg had now been a part of my own family for over twenty-five years. Today she sits in our front room, in an old wicker dolly sled, wearing a pretty Christmas plaid dress, a white baby bonnet, and a white faux fur cape, with her small, well-loved hands tucked into a white faux fur muff. Although the poor little thing kind of always creeps out little kids (even my own kids when they were really little), my little eighteen-month-old grandson seems to love the baby doll and probably thinks she’s real—because for about six months now, whenever he’s over, he always talks to her, rocks her little sleigh, and gives her a kiss on the mouth! Is that adorable or what? When my mom was still able to remember that I had the doll, she always told me that she was so glad her baby doll was out where she could breathe well and be loved. I love my mom so much!
Snippet #8—And now for my final snippet, which is me endeavoring to leave you with some added loveliness! Finishing The Romancing of Evangeline Ipswich found me feeling liberated of sorts. I’d spent almost two years in that same venue of writing (western, same basic characters being the Ipswich family), and I was more than ready to move on to a new project. And so, I leave you with the poem that I included an excerpt from in the beginning of this author’s note—because it uplifts me and is such a beautiful piece of beauty and respite to me, and it helped me in finding my enjoyment in writing Evangeline’s story. That’s how thoroughly I love the words James Whitcomb Riley put together so eloquently in that poem. Thus, being that the poem is public domain, and therefore I’m able to print it here for you, I have! I hope you’ll take the time to savor it—and not just once but anytime you feel your mind, heart, and soul need a lift.
*I’ve listed a few words, and their definitions, that may be unfamiliar to you because they aren’t commonly used anymore to allow you to read the poem more smoothly.
Kine—“Cows collectively.”
Bobolink and Killdee are both birds.
Freak—in this instance means “to fleck or streak randomly.”
Mascadine—“wine grapes.”
Shallop—“a sailboat.”
The South Wind and the Sun!
O The South Wind and the Sun!
How each loved the other one
Full of fancy—full folly—
Full of jollity and fun!
How they romped and ran about,
Like two boys when school is out,
With glowing face, and lisping lip,
Low laugh, and lifted shout!
And the South Wind—he was dressed
With a ribbon round his breast
That floated, flapped and fluttered
In a riotous unrest,
And a drapery of mist
From the shoulder and the wrist
Flowing backward with the motion
Of the waving hand he kissed.
And the Sun had on a crown
Wrought of gilded thistle-down,
And a scarf of velvet vapor,
And a raveled-rainbow gown;
And his tinsel-tangled hair,
Tossed and lost upon the air,
Was glossier and flossier
Than any anywhere.
And the South Wind’s eyes were two
Little dancing drops of dew,
As he puffed his cheeks, and pursed his lips,
And blew and blew and blew!
And the Sun’s—like diamond-stone,
Brighter yet than ever known,
As he knit his brows and held his breath,
And shone and shone and shone!
And this pair of merry fays
Wandered through the summer days;
Arm-in-arm they went together
Over heights of morning haze—
Over slanting slopes of lawn
They went on and on and on,
Where the daisies looked like star-tracks
Trailing up and down the dawn.
And where’er they found the top
Of a wheat-stalk droop and lop
They chucked it underneath the chin
And praised the lavish crop,
Till it lifted with the pride
Of the heads it grew beside,
And then the South Wind and the Sun
Went onward satisfied.
Over meadow-lands they tripped,
Where the dandelions dipped
In crimson foam of clover-bloom,
And dripped and dripped and dripped;
And they clinched the bumble-stings,
Gauming honey on their wings,
And bundling them in lily-bells,
With maudlin murmurings.
And the humming-bird that hung
Like a jewel up among
The tilted honeysuckle-horns,
They mesmerized, and swung
In the palpitating air,
Drowsed with odors strange and rare,
And with whispered laughter, slipped away,
And left him hanging there.
And they braided blades of grass
Where the truant had to pass;
And they wriggled through the rushes
And the reeds of the morass,
Where they danced, in rapture sweet,
O’er the leaves that laid a street
Of undulant mosaic for
The touches of their feet.
By the brook with mossy brink
Where the cattle came to drink.
They trilled and piped and whistled
With the thrush and bobolink,
Till the kine in listless pause,
Switched their tails in mute applause,
With lifted heads and dreamy eyes,
And bubble-dripping jaws.
And where the melons grew,
Streaked with yellow, green and blue
These jolly sprites went wandering
Through spangled paths of dew;
And the melons, here and there,
They made love to, everywhere
Turning their pink souls to crimson
With caresses fond and fair.
Over orchard walls they went,
Where the fruited boughs were bent
Till they brushed the sward beneath them
Where the shine and shadow blent;
And the great green pear they shook
Till the sallow hue forsook
Its features, and the gleam of gold
Laughed out in every look.
And they stroked the downy cheek
Of the peach, and smoothed it sleek,
And flushed it into splendor;
And with many an elfish freak,
Gave the russet’s rust a wipe—
Prankt the rambo with a stripe,
And the wine-sap blushed its reddest
As they spanked the pippins ripe.
Through the woven ambuscade
That the twining vines had made,
They found the grapes, in clusters,
Drinking up the shine and shade—
Plumpt like tiny skins of wine,
With a vintage so divine
That the tongue of fancy tingled
With the tang of muscadine.
And the golden-banded bees,
Droning o’er the flowery leas,
They bridled, reigned, and rode away
Across the fragrant breeze,
Till in hollow oak and elm
They had groomed and stabled them
In waxen stalls oozed with dews
Of rose and lily-stem.
Where the dusty highway leads,
High above the wayside weeds
They sowed the air with butterflies
Like blooming flower-seeds,
Till the dull grasshopper sprung
Half a man’s height up, and hung
Tranced in the heat, with whirring wings,
And sung and sung and sung!
And they loitered, hand in hand,
Where the snipe along the sand
Of the river ran to meet them
As the ripple meets the land,
Till the dragon-fly, in light
Gauzy armor, burnished bright,
Came tilting down the waters
In a wild, bewildered flight.
And they heard the killdee’s call,
And afar, the waterfall,
But the rustle of a falling leaf
They heard above it all;
And the trailing willow crept
Deeper in the tide that swept
The leafy shallop to the shore,
And wept and wept and wept!
And the fairy vessel veered
From its moorings—tacked and steered
For the centre of the current
Sailed away and disappeared:
And the burthen that it bore
From the long-enchanted shore—
“Alas! The South Wind and the Sun!”
I murmur evermore.
For the South Wind and the Sun,
Each so loves the other one,
For all his jolly folly
And frivolity and fun,
That our love for them they weigh
As their fickle fancies may,
And when at last we love them most,
They laugh and sail away.
~James Whitcomb Riley
Three Little Girls Dressed in Blue Trilogy ,
Book One...
The Bewitching of Amoretta Ipswich
by Marcia Lynn McClure.
The spirit of adventure and curiosity that dwelled within her bosom was passionate with excitement! It was obvious there was something wildly interesting inside the gristmill, and Amoretta silently swore to herself she would discover what it was no matter what. She promised herself that nothing short of torture could keep her from seeing what was inside now that her feet were set on the path.
Amoretta carefully knelt in the cool grass shaded by mill and trees. Once Prudence and Blanche had knelt down with the others, Prudence pointed to the low, loosely hanging board, indicating that Amoretta and Calliope should look through the open space it presented.
Amoretta’s heart was pounding like the rapids of some raging river! What were they about to witness? Spirits roaming the old mill? Pirates? Outlaws? Her imagination couldn’t list possibilities quickly enough.
And then, all at once—in the space of a moment and a short gasp—Amoretta Ipswich knew exactly why the young ladies of Meadowlark Lake liked to sneak out to the gristmill and peep through the loose siding board.
“Oh my—” Amoretta’s exclamation of astonishment was silenced by Winnie’s hand quickly covering her mouth.
Three Little Girls Dressed in Blue Trilogy,
Book Two...
The Secret Bliss of Calliope Ipswich
by Marcia Lynn McClure.
Blanche’s pretty forehead puckered with a slight frown. “You don’t like Fox as much as he likes you, do you, Calliope? You’re not in love with him.”
Calliope silently scolded herself for having let her countenance and words reveal her secret to Blanche. The truth was that she was not as sweet on Fox Montrose as he was on her. Yet there were secrets in her heart that could never be revealed to anyone—not even to Blanche, not even to Calliope’s own sisters.
Therefore, she chose a counter maneuver with which to distract Blanche and said, “Oh, I adore Fox! I just think these things may take time, you know, for me to…to…”
“To really fall in love with him, you mean,” Blanche finished.
“Yes. Perhaps that is what I mean,” Calliope responded.
Yet as they neared the Montrose house, trepidation welled up in Calliope’s bosom, for she knew that if she hadn’t fallen in love with Fox Montrose by now, she never would. Furthermore, she didn’t want to.
A secret bliss was nestled deep inside Calliope Ipswich. It had been nestled there from nearly the moment the Ipswich family had arrived in Meadowlark Lake all those months past. And though it was a bliss she owned in knowing something about herself that even her own sisters did not know, it likewise brought her pain at times—for it was the very reason she knew she would never fall in love with Fox Montrose. Calliope’s love was already spoken for—and no one in all the wide world, save Calliope Ipswich herself, would ever know it.
To the man of my dreams…
My husband, Kevin!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marcia Lynn McClure’s intoxicating succe
ssion of novels, novellas, and e-books—including Dusty Britches, The Whispered Kiss, The Haunting of Autumn Lake, and The Bewitching of Amoretta Ipswich—has established her as one of the most favored and engaging authors of true romance. Her unprecedented forte in weaving captivating stories of western, medieval, regency, and contemporary amour void of brusque intimacy has earned her the title “The Queen of Kissing.”
Marcia, who was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has spent her life intrigued with people, history, love, and romance. A wife, mother, grandmother, family historian, poet, and author, Marcia Lynn McClure spins her tales of splendor for the sake of offering respite through the beauty, mirth, and delight of a worthwhile and wonderful story.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A Bargained-For Bride
Beneath the Honeysuckle Vine
A Better Reason to Fall in Love
The Bewitching of Amoretta Ipswich
Born for Thorton’s Sake
The Chimney Sweep Charm
Christmas Kisses
A Crimson Frost
Daydreams
Desert Fire
Divine Deception
Dusty Britches
The Fragrance of her Name
A Good-Lookin’ Man
The Haunting of Autumn Lake
The Heavenly Surrender
The Highwayman of Tanglewood
Kiss in the Dark
Kissing Cousins
The Light of the Lovers’ Moon
Love Me
The Man of Her Dreams
The McCall Trilogy
Midnight Masquerade