The bottom of the ravine was covered with a profusion of blue bottles, some looking “modern” like the Noxema bottles on Aunt Nina’s dresser, many much older-looking in all difference sizes and shapes. I picked up a bottle and tossed it as high and hard as I could. It crashed down on the rocks on the other side of the gully with a satisfying clatter, like a glass wind chime disturbed by a breeze. Goose bumps ran up and down my arms. The back of my neck hummed.
My sister, Laura, and I at about the time of this story.
It was autumn. My sister Laura and I were wandering the large fallow fields south of our Uncle Grant and Aunt Nina’s central Michigan farm in the mid-1950s.
Ahead of us was a dip in the field, a hollow in the weed-choked dirt. Butternut trees poked their heads above the lip of the land. We hurried toward the mystery in the field, drawn to it like a lover of books to a new book store in town. As we drew close, rocks of all sizes loomed up before us. Huge boulders tumbled down into the hole. Hundreds of smaller, fist-sized field stones mingled with the larger rocks. It was cool and shady in the depression. We would have to return here next summer with books to read.
“Aunt Nina once said that every spring when she was young all the kids in the family had to walk behind the stoneboat and pick up all the rocks in the fields that had worked their way to the surface over the winter. Then they had to empty the stoneboat into a ravine so the plow wouldn’t break from all the rocks. This must be that ravine,” I conjectured. I could just see all the children of our great-grandparents John and Jessie Weeks, working diligently. Only our grandmother, Eva, would be doing as little as possible.
A photo of a stone boat, similar to the one on the Farm, according to my Father.
“Aunt Nina was probably the boss of the whole operation. I’ll bet no one tried to get out of picking up their share of rocks, except maybe Grandma.”
One of my favorite photos of my favorite Aunt Nina.
“Boy, that’s for sure,” Laura agreed. Neither of us ever crossed our formidable aunt more than once a summer.
Laura’s attention was drawn to something she had caught a glimpse of on the rocks at the bottom of the gully. “Marcia, what’re all those sparkly blue things down there?” she queried.
“Oh, Laura, look at the bottles!” I marveled.
We set off carefully down into the rift, drawn by the riddle in blue. Rusty tin cans began to litter the rocks. Corroded bed springs long freed from the confines of a mattress, a discarded field scythe, and broken pieces of long-forgotten farm machinery reached toward our legs with angry intentions.
“We’d better not tell Aunt Nina where we’ve been, or she’ll tell us not to come here again. It’ll be off-limits. Let’s keep it our very own secret,” I cautioned Laura. She agreed with a snort. It was worth it to keep Aunt Nina pleased with us. We didn’t want to risk going to bed without a rousing game of Old Maid.
We proceeded to grab and toss blue bottles just to hear that wonderful smattering sound and see the blue shards dance over the rocks. We gathered up armfuls and climbed to the top of the depression to pitch them high into the sky and count how long we could keep them aloft.
“I can keep my bottles up in the air longer than you can,” Laura dared. I accepted the challenge but it was no contest. She was right.
We soon tired of the competition and decided to hike over toward the east field. Maybe we were brave enough this year to enter the dark, forbidden woods bordering those fields. We were heady with our day’s successful exploration. We came to a pile of shale rock exposed to the surface.
A huge black snake about twenty-five or fifty feet long lay on the shale outcropping. We screamed, both of us, no brave explorers left in this pack, and headed hell-bent and hollering all the way back to the kitchen door. I was absolutely certain-sure that snake was following us the entire way back across those fields, intent on snacking on the meat on the back of our legs.
We burst into the house, screaming and crying, sobbing out the story of the snake on the shale. Back-patting hugs allayed our fears. Uncle Grant explained about lethargic snakes taking sunbaths on warm rocks in the fall. Even as we were being soothed, we did not break our promise to keep the junk pile and its blue jewels a secret. It was a safe, hidden treasure for us to explore another time.
Part of my blue bottle collection.
Were I to visit that junk pile today, my only regret would be that the beautiful blue bottles would no longer be there for me to collect in my arms. If there were any left today, I would not climb to the top of the rocks and toss them high into the heavens. I would carefully wrap them in tissue paper and take them home to place on a glass shelf in my east window. Instead I have to savor those blue treasures in my mind, remembering a time when blue bottles were relegated to junk piles, not locked in antique store cabinets with pricey tags affixed to their necks.
© Copyright 1999. Marcia Knapp Krech. All rights reserved.
