* * * * *
The following winter--and her last winter on earth--was a time of wonder
and marvel for me ... sitting with her at the red-heated kitchen stove,
I listened eagerly to her while she related tales to me of old settlers
in Pennsylvania ... stories of Indians ... ghost stories ... she curdled
my blood with tales of catamounts and mountain lions crying like women,
and babies in the dark, to lure travellers where they could pounce down
from branches on them.
And she told me the story of the gambler whom the Devil took when he
swore falsely, avowing, "may the Devil take me if I cheated."
She boasted of my pioneer ancestors ... strapping six-footers in their
stocking feet ... men who carried one hundred pound bags of salt from
Pittsburgh to Slippery Rock in a single journey.
The effect of these stories on me--?
I dreamed of skeleton hands that reached out from the clothes closet for
me. Often at night I woke, yelling with nightmare.
With a curious touch of folk lore Granma Gregory advised me to "look for
the harness under the bed, if it was a nightmare." But she upbraided
Granma Wandon, her mother, for retailing me such tales.
"Nonsense, it'll do him good, my sweet little Johnnie," she assured her
daughter, knocking her corncob pipe over the coal scuttle like a man.
* * * * *
There was a story of Granma Wandon's that cut deep into my memory.
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