MY NAME IS CHARLESMy name is Charles…

Charles Adams…Charles Adams Eaton

IMy mother’s father was Charles Ryan Adams.He was born in 1874 on a farm in Switzerland County Indiana near the banks of the Ohio River. He loved nature and people and writing and singing.His students at Park College would call him Dr. Adams;The parishioners at the Presbyterian church called him Reverend.His close friends called him Charlie.I called him granddaddy and, later, granddad. My grandmother called him Mr. Adams and he called herMiss Oldfather till the day they were married.

IIMyra Oldfather was born to missionary parents in Persia in 1875.When she was young, she loved horses and could “ride like the wind”.Once she showed me her ivory comb with fine, close-set teeth.She told me that, as a girl, she would comb lice from her hair. I was fascinated. What did lice look like?In the summer at their cottage, she cooked over a wood stove.I have never tasted fried chicken as good as hers—not ever.Surely the secret ingredient was not the deep-frying in pure lard, or the chickens whose heads we cut off shortly earlier.But our keen little taste buds honed to a quick sharpness, and the unrecoverable appetite following hide-and-seek in the woods, and swimming until the skin on our fingertips puckered-up on those hot, nearly endless summer days.

IIIOur grandparents were killed in 1948 when their car was struck by a high-speed passenger train. We were told that they died instantly.I hope this was true, that the only screaming heard was of screeching steel-on-steel as the train dragged their car for over a mile before stopping.They were headed for the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Ohio, (where Charles Adams had been pastor for many years) for the dedication of a Celtic cross designed by Philip Rhys Adams, their second son.Most of our extended family had already arrived for the anticipated celebration.I was not there. I had a summer job at Camp Martin Johnson—within view of my grandparent’s now empty cabin on the other side of Big Bass Lake.

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The YMCA camp had a telephone, one of the few in this part of Michigan’s Manistee National Forest, but I received the news from a State Trooper.I was in the camp kitchen washing pots and pans—suddenly numb and disoriented, and I remember nothing of what he said or how it was arranged for me to take trains to Ohio. The first service at the church was the regularly scheduled dedication of the bronze cross. Uncle Phil delivered the speech that he had originally written for the event. I cannot imagine how he was able to stand or speak, but he did both. My grandfather was to have spoken, too.The presentation and dedication of the Celtic cross—which would have been the first act of a day of celebration and gladness—was immediately followed by a memorial service conducted by Rev. Maxwell Adams, their first child.The church must have been filled with immense and complex feelings of grief, yet I can recall nothing of that terrible day except a deep sense of loss and emptiness.

IVMy grandparents’ cabin was on a hill above the lake. They also had two canvas tents whose best years had been exhausted in the service of a traveling circus company. I learned to walk on a splintery pine tent platform. We were told never to touch the canvas with our fingers when it rained because it would leak there—but it leaked everywhere. If you touched the old canvas, the beads of water would follow the trail of your finger tip and perhaps fall to the deck and not on your cot.It might have been after daylight, but it often seemed before dawn when our grandfather would step out to the porch of his cabin and, with his deep, rich voice sing:

“Arise Ye! Arise Ye! Get Ye UP!”We snuggled even more deeply into our blankets.Before breakfast, he would lead us in singing two stanzas of a metrical version of Psalm V.

Lord, in the morning, Thou shalt hear my voice ascending high. . .V

He taught us how to use a seine to net minnows and how to bait them on hooks

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so that we could invite the little pan fish to join us at our breakfast.One day, when we docked the boat and brought our stringer to my mother, he said: Miriam! Charles noticed that when his oars enter the water it looks as if they are bending!

How young would I have been? My chest swelled with his praise.We learned the number of needles on a White Pine cluster (5), Red pine (2), and Jack Pine (2), and how to find the pine knots that formed at the junction between the trunk and major branches of the tree. This land had been clear-cut by loggers in the 1890’s, and many large logs were left to their decay—except for the knots which had a concentration of sap that kept them from rotting. Two or three would feed a small, long lasting, hot fire.Fifty-plus years after the logging, I searched for pine-knots with him in the thick woods some distance both from the lake and our camping site of cabin and tents.We walked past huge stumps three to four feet tall and three feet wide.

[Loggers felled the giant pines at almost chest height with two-man saws and hauled them out in the winter with horse-drawn sleds. Our logs had been left behind]

My grandfather and I walked over those trunks melting into the earth and picked up the heavy knots to be saved for fires that could burn even in light rain.After our meandering, he said: “Charles, can you tell me where our cabin is?”I turned and pointed to the precise direction. “And how do you know?” he said.I replied that the we were now in dark woods but there was a patch of light green which must come from the corn field 200 yards away. It had no trees at all.If we kept the bright spot off our right shoulder, we would walk straight into camp.When we returned with our treasure of pine knots, my grandfather said:Miriam! Charles has learned to find his way home from the woods!He can explore them by himself—all alone. And I did.

VI Taking a Proper AimWe learned Bible stories and passages each morning. If we successfully repeated them, we could go swimming in the afternoon; if not, we read the text until we knew it.My grandfather had many favorite Biblical passages. This is one:

I Corinthians 13:13. And now abideth Faith, Hope, and Love, but the greatest of these is Love. Make love your aim…

VII The Art of the Two-Man Bucking SawThe logs were floated from the South end of Big Bass Lake to our shore.

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There my grandfather built a log cabin for his second daughter, my aunt Dorothy Moore.He and Burton Jones cut the logs into proper lengths with an eight-foot two-man bucking saw that now enjoys a deserved rest nailed to those same logs above the main-room door. It is strange to see such a mighty and effective instrument now merely decorative next to its partner, the tough Cant Hook with its 5-foot handle and sharp swinging spike that could bite deep into any log and roll it almost regardless of resistance.It is worth reflecting on the art of the two-man bucking saw (long since replaced by the gasoline chain-saw). Two sawyers must be in absolute harmony and resist the natural inclination to push the saw—which would then bend and jam.Instead, you must draw the vertical twelve-inch handle toward yourself. Then, at the point at which you stop, your partner begins to pull and you relax your grip and follow the blade. Back and forth; back and forth. It sounds easy, but requires a learned synchrony—like dancing or growing into a good relationship.My grandfather told me that it would be possible to achieve A Liberal Education if you were on the other end of a two-man saw with Mark van Doren or Henry David Thoreau. It was an education for me to pull one end of Charles Adams’s great saw.

VIII Axes and GunsHe taught us how to use axes to fell trees and to split wood. The single most important thing is that your hands must be slightly below the ax head when it strikes the wood. First, because it is the best way to protect yourself from any slight error that would bring the ax to your leg. Second, because the ax brings its full force to the wood in this position. There are good reasons why most parents would not teach their young children marksmanship with a rifle today. But, when I was young, all of the grandchildren were schooled in safety and the proper use of a gun. Once a year, we had foot races and a competition that consisted of one single shot per child at a tin can for a target about twenty feet away.We would take a prone position with legs splayed and our elbows set just-so. Then my grandfather placed his .22 rifle in our hands, we exhaled slowly and, at the

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very end of our breath, squeezed the trigger.

IX Foot RacesCharles Ryan Adams was a competitive athletic. Each year he challenged all freshmen at Park College in a one-hundred-yard dash, and every summer he arranged foot races for his grandchildren.We ran from the second tent to the old lumber road and back.As the oldest boy, I always ran against my granddad and, although I never won, I could make the turn back from Old Grade Road faster than he could— and then his long legs would stride past me at the Finish.But I was growing older and stronger each year—and he was getting old, so I thought that I might have a chance when I was fifteen and he was seventy-four. I thought he still would probably win—but I was getting even quicker on the turn. This might be the Year! But there would never be an outcome to the imagined competition. On July 1st 1948, the railroad train was faster than either of us and he never ran again.

X Seven Decades LaterIn 2013, I entered the coordinates of the train accident on Google Earth and could see from the sky the exact site of the impact—the highway, the railroad bed angling toward the road at an acute angle behind the car, and a farm house very near the fatal spot. As we drove toward Michigan and a rendezvous with our family, Pauline and I followed the GPS ever closer to its target.We stopped at the farm house and I talked with its owner—whose parents had been there at the moment of the crash. The rails were no longer on the railroad bed.I walked on it until I came to the highway…and stood, motionless.I did not go on to the point at which the train and car finally stopped, to the place where someone stole my grandmother’s wedding ring from her finger and took my Grandfather’s .22 rifle—the one that taught us to take a steady aim. I stood very still, aware that I was not thinking about anything. Not anything at all. Just standing.But I am thinking now. And what I think is that while you can steal a ring or a

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gun, no thief can take away a song, or a prayer, or a lesson, or a fond memory, or love.Furthermore, I have within myself the Adams name—which I carry now, tomorrow,

and for ever.My name is Charles Adams Eaton

Carl Moore with two-man saw – Dorothy Adams – Charles Ryan Adams – Burton Jones – Robert Eaton with Cant hook

CHARLES RYAN ADAMSJanuary 5, 1874 July 1, 1948

A ministerof the Presbyterian Church

MYRA OLDFATHER ADAMSOctober 23, 1875 July 1, 1948

and in their death they were not divided

Hanover Cemetery, Jefferson County, Indiana, USA Plot: Row 151/4

I wrote the following letter to my sister, Beth, after I had visited the site in 2013.

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C.E. 05/09/2019

Dear Beth,

Philip Rhys Adams created a Celtic Cross in partial fulfillment of his Masters Degree. It was sold nationally through the Westminster Bookstores (Presbyterian Church, USA). I have seen copies in the Macalester College chapel (St.Paul, MN) and in the Manitowoc, WI, Presbyterian Church.

The children of Charles and Myra Adams had decided to honor their parents by presenting one of these crosses to the Covenant Presbyterian Church of Springfield, OH, which had benefited from fifteen years of his ministry.

They had completed all but 37 miles of the 422 mile trip from Camp to Springfield and were driving on National Road east when they were struck at an acute angle from behind by a “fast Pennsylvania Railroad train” travelling east/south/east. This was such a dangerous train/car crossing that the highway was in the process of being raised so that the train could pass by tunnel beneath the road. The train-tracks were removed c.2005 but can easily be seen on Google Earth seventeen miles west of Bachman, Ohio, 45309. In 2013, I spoke with a man who had been born at a farmhouse close to the collision site. The coordinates for the accident are: N45º51’39,47” W84º28’16.03” I include the coordinates because some descendant, some time, may want to find the site.

THE EVENING INDEPENDENT, MASSILLON. OHIO Friday, JULY 2, 1948Prominent Presbyterian Minister, Wife Die In Crash -TWO DEAD Train Hits Automobile DAYTON, (AP) — A nationally prominent Presbyterian minister and educator and his wife were killed last night in an auto-train collision at Bachman, O., 17 miles to the west. Dead were: Dr. Charles Ryan Adams, 74, Parkville, Mo. & Mrs. Myra Oldfather Adams, 72, his wife.

Identification was made by a friend, E. A. Twitchell of Springfield, OH, who was a passenger on the fast Pennsylvania Railroad train that struck the Adams automobile. Long after the bodies had been taken to Dayton, Twitchell heard their names. He made the identification in Dayton's Good Samaritan hospital after early reports gave the victims' names merely as Charles and Evelyn Adams, Parkville, Mo.

Dr. Adams and his wife were on vacation from their work at the Parkville Community (Presbyterian) church. He had been scheduled to speak at the Covenant Presbyterian church in Springfield Sunday. The state highway patrol reported that the mangled Adams machine was carried more than a mile by the speeding train. Mainline traffic of the Pennsylvania was held up for three hours while workmen cut the debris off the engine with torches. The road's crack Jeffersonian was among the delayed trains. The body of Mrs. Adams was thrown clear of the wreckage, but the body of her husband was pinned within the car.

Dr. Adams had been pastor of the Parkville (Mo.) Community church since 1944. He was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1901 and before moving to Parkville he had served churches in Greensburg, Ind., Fargo, N.D., Champaign, Ill., and Springfield, OH. At Springfield, he was

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pastor of the Covenant Presbyterian church from 1921 to 1936. During the years of his ministry, Dr. Adams served as trustee of Western College for Women in Oxford, O., as dean of chapel at Park college, Kansas City, and secretary of the New Era movement for the central district of the general assembly of the Presbyterian church. A native of Indiana, he studied at Hanover (Ind.) college, University of Chicago and McCormick Theology seminary. A son, Philip, is head of the Cincinnati Art Institute.

My sister Beth, my brother Philip, my cousin Judith, and myself listening to our grandfather recount a story of a man hunting rabbits with a Beagle, a Cocker Spaniel, an Irish Setter, a Bluetick Coonhound, and a Bloodhound. The story introduced each dog with its style of hunting and its bark, yip, or howl. The climax comes when all of the dogs have sighted the rabbit and raise a great unison cacophony.

Our grandfather wrote poems about each one of us. This one includes Philip and me:

RUNNING FROM THE COWS

With tomahawks and bowsAnd tested clubs and stoutThey boldly climbed the hillTo put the cows to rout.

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And here they come! As thoThey’d met ten cherubimWith flaming swords of deathOr Canaan’s Anakim.

They run in blinded panicAnd give our shouts no heed.(We will not speak of courageBut must admire their speed.)

Upon the hill behind themA cow with placid faceAnd ruminating wonderWatches the breakneck race.

To Charles, when he’d reached safety,“You know I thought you saidYou feared no cow. That only kidsOr girls would be afraid.”

“That’s so. I wasn’t runningFrom any fat old cow.I just wanted to find outWhere Phil was running to.”

CLOSING THE SUMMER COTTAGE

Goodbye Little House!

The wooden shutters, closely nailed, make twilight hereDeeper than the early dawn through which we now must be away

on the long journey home.

This one inevitable last look before the door is locked—How much it magnifies the little that the eye can see

of this familiar commonplace.

The fire screen is in place. The magazines we left are piled Precisely on the table top, one historic headline showing—“McArthur enters Tokyo.” How stale the news will be when next

the sunlight breaks the shadow here!

The oil lamp stands all filled and trimmed. Under an upturned glassThe matches, thus protected from the mice, await

next summer’s need.

A few books on the all but empty shelves, protest their solitude.“Peloubet’s Notes-1944” (we hesitate to burn thoughts on the Holy Scriptures.)“Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary”, an irritating thing with all the

hard words missing, yet pleading someway, like the eyes of hungry dogs, that it not be left behind.

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An outworn almanac, remarkable for adding to its weather lore, a markFor each day that the fish will bite.A written record of the birds the children learned this year.What matter now the interests of a transient summer’s stay?

The robin’s nest above the door—we will not pull it down becauseIts recent summer tenants are flying down to Rio on a missionOf Goodwill. So let it fill with snow till the robins come again—

If they shall come!

And here a few discarded toys: a wooden soldier with music in hisHelmet, his brave song now diminished to a single squeaky note.On a high shelf a baby’s wrinkled shoe; scarcely an adornment forA city home yet wrapped about with sentiment enough to halt itsHalf-made journey to the fire.A record, left unpacked, “Bellbottom Trousers” and, reverse, “Beer BarrelPolka”. (Three guesses on the ages of our summer guests.)

And now our inner sense discerns that there have come to join these sentinelsof silence, the “Little Toy Dog” with his blanket of dust; the handcarvedhelpers of mankind from ancient Pharaoh’s tomb; the half-remembered play-things, from an attic, once we knew, and other lovely dwellers of the stillnesswhich, like angels’ songs, only the heart can hear. May they keep each other company.

So, Farewell, shadows! Farewell dear ghosts! Farewell echoes—children’svoices; glowing hearth fires; bedtime stories, with the never failingplea for “just one more”! Farewell whippoorwills and lapping wavesand music of the summer rain upon the roof!Farewell till living hands shall come again and turn this now-turningkey the other way and let the sunshine in—

If they shall come.

GOODBYE LITTLE HOUSE!Charles Ryan Adams 1946 (b.1874 d.1948)

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