And the Angels Sing

6th and Grandview, Scotts Mills, OR

Last week my beau, Frank, and I went north to witness a total eclipse. As if the celestial spectacular weren't enough, I'd promised I'd show him the Willamette Valley, as well, where I'd lived for three years at the close of WWII. It's the second time I've been back to that part of the world. The first was 11 years ago. Nothing's changed in the intervening time. Oh, the Scotts Mills general store at the crossroads has spruced up a bit, but the hamlet still has a population of about 200...and the only public restroom in town is in the city park. Silverton, though, continues to boom, and we loved sitting on the Mac's Place deck overlooking Silver Creek.

And the Angels Sing 

For decades I’d planned to return to Scotts Mills. I’d learned something there once, but couldn’t quite recall what it was.  At troubled times, I’d muse and mull, but that will-o’-the-wisp memory flickered just beyond my perception.

At the close of WWII, my family, like many others, fled Los Angeles in the paranoia over potential nuclear submarine attacks.  They headed for Oregon’s Willamette Valley, miles from the Pacific.

For three years we lived in this hamlet of fewer than 200 people, in our two-story Victorian house with a wooden staircase, a root cellar and a barn.  In l948 we scurried back to Los Angeles.  My family bitterly regretted their hiatus from city life.  I hadn’t wanted to leave.

The little tea barn where I used to play.

Grandma had grumbled about the dark clouds, fog, and drizzle that cloaked the area.  Tracking the weather on her kitchen calendar, she claimed the sun peeped through the mist only nine days one entire summer.  Daddy, who played cornet in the sweet swing of style of Bunny Berrigan, rounded up a trio to play at local dances, privately grousing about having to include a schmaltzy accordion for keyboards, which didn’t seem quite right on And the Angels Sing, his signature song.

Mama lamented her suburban coffee klatches, and on weekends would bribe my big sister and me into playing Chinese checkers with heavily-sugared cups of her favorite beverage.  Grandpa reveled in growing parsnips and endive and teasing my little brother with garden snakes, but even he muttered about having to drive seven dang miles to Silverton to purchase his Old Crow from the state liquor store.

For me, a curious 8-year-old, Scotts Mills was Wonderland, Oz and NeverNeverLand all rolled into one.  I picked wild iris, blackberries, and crab apples.  I could earn a dime for a comic book by taking Grandma’s shopping list and wicker basket to the general store for items she’d forgotten to buy at the Silverton Safeway.  I could spot what Daddy said was the Andromeda cluster at night, and he promised when winter came we might see the aurora borealis. 

I learned something new every day that first summer.  Grandma taught me how to dogpaddle in the dam and to ignore my classmates’ claims of spotting cousins of the Loch Ness monster in its murky waters. Daddy taught me always to wear a long-sleeved flannel shirt on the mornings when it was my turn to carry wood to the box next to the kitchen stove.  Mama taught me to watch for broken glass when I waded in Silver Creek, and some sneaky opening Chinese checker ploys.  Grandpa taught me how to identify poison oak and make vinegar compresses, but only after I came home blistered and weeping.

When school started, I skipped third grade, since my reading scores indicated that I could do fourth grade work. I had missed multiplication and long division, so my teacher, Miss Magee, spent endless after-school hours helping me understand times tables and what to do with remainders. 

The three-room schoolhouse lumped grades three through five together.  Younger and smaller than my classmates, I was shy and nervous.  I sat with grade four in the middle row, where classmates on each side could jeer I sucked my thumb, chewed on the ends of my pigtails, and gnawed my pencils.  They called me Terri Termite until Miss Magee held a pointed discussion on The Golden Rule.  I worshiped Miss Magee, and studied hard so she would be proud of me. 

I learned outside of school, as well.  The town had been founded by Quakers, and just a few blocks downhill from our home on Grandview stood a Friends Church, built in l894.  Every Sunday I would trudge off to Sunday school, intent on earning my first New Testament, offered as a prize for four months of perfect attendance. 

Where I first sang "This Little Light of Mine."

I craved the pocket-sized book with the red leatherette covers, so I would set out even on rainy mornings, ignoring Grandma’s predictions that I’d catch a cold or the dreaded flu. 

In the basement, we would listen to missionaries tell exotic tales of their work in East Africa.  “I’m going to be just like them,” I’d tell my family.  “I’ll see jungles and monkeys and teach children how to read.”  From the missionaries too I had learned how to pray for others, and not just myself.  I prayed that my classmates would grow in grace enough to stop teasing me and other vulnerable children, such as the boy with the hare lip.

After we returned to Los Angeles, I got caught up with junior high and high school, boyfriends, youth groups at a variety of churches, and not too much later, even marriage and a child of my own.  But the values I learned from Miss McGee and the Friends Church remained with me, perseverance and discipline, compassion and social justice.

Still "Friends"

As I neared 50 and was preparing to leave for an overseas assignment with the Peace Corps, my son came by to visit.   He wanted to see his childhood photos, so I got out the duffle bag.  We sipped lemonade and reminisced about his early years.  As we neared the bottom of the bag, Steve pulled out an 8x12 and there I was in pigtails and bangs, clad in plaid flannel shirt and rolled up jeans, surrounded by Scotts Mills classmates. 

I told him about singing Do Lord in the choir, leaving secret messages coded from Bible verse under the maple tree for the neighbor children, about Grandma’s lemon meringue pie winning praise at the covered dish suppers in the basement of the church.

 “It sounds as if you loved it there. Will you ever go back?”

“I really did,” I said, surprised at much I longed to see the verdant hills once more.  “I know I will someday,” I said.  “There’s a reason to go and I will.”

Finally, in spring 2007 I was asked to be the keynote speaker at the Oregon School Counselors Association annual conference in Bend, Oregon in October.  The slated theme was “Global Vision, Local Action.” I’d been invited to talk about my adventures all over the world with the Peace Corps.  I had not returned to Oregon since l948. When I looked on the map I saw that Scotts Mills was just a few hours drive from the conference center.   I began making plans.

I discovered that the Scotts Mills Friends Church had a website, so I wrote, mentioning how the church and Miss Magee had influenced me.  The webmaster knew the Magee family and put me in touch with the children of Barbara McGee Hays, who had died of cancer in l972.  Soon I had letters from them, saying they would be at the church when I came in October.  

I drove over early from the motel in Silverton and sat quietly in the rear pew.  The pianist played a few quick practice notes, and I recognized the song.  I reached for the songbook before me, and flipped through to find the old hymn, Be Still My Soul.

I opened the Bible, and found the verse that had eluded me.  “Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10.  I smiled.  It was so simple.  I relaxed and the words “center down” popped into my head, the long forgotten but basic premise of the Friends Church.  What I had learned as a child was to clear my mind of chatter so that I could be receptive to a spiritual message. 

After the minister arrived, he approached me and asked if I were the woman who had contacted the webmaster.  He invited me to say a few words when the time arrived for offerings.  “We don’t always have much money to offer,” he explained, “but we always ask if somebody has something personal to offer.”

When it came time, I raised my hand and stood.  “Who is this strange lady?” he asked, smiling.  “Not so strange,” I answered.  When I got to the lectern I looked out at the congregation.  “The last time I stood on this stage was Easter, l948,” I began, “nearly sixty years ago.”

Park has more rules than people...

After the service Miss Magee’s grown children chatted with me. Amazingly, my fourth grade teacher’s son had done some international missionary work in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and knew the Peace Corps director who had been there when I had conducted an international workshop on HIV/AIDS prevention there in 2003.  We agreed to remain in touch.

I toured the town’s museum later that day, and chatted with one of my former classmates who lived across from it.  He remembered how the children teased.  When I learned to center down, I found I no longer needed to chew my pencils.  I hope the boy with the hare lip learned to ignore the taunts.

As I drove back to Silverton I found myself humming my father’s favorite, And the Angels Sing.  They will, I thought, if you remain still enough to hear them.  If you remember to center down.

At Mac's Place, sipping cider, munching chips

On the deck, Mac's Place, with Frank

Mac’s Place, located at 201 N Water St. in Silverton, Oregon, is the oldest building on the Silverton National Historic Registry! The building survived the fire of 1885 and was the only building in downtown to survive the fire of 1934!

Where I finally located a copy of Robert Paul Smith's 1957 memoir

Back in 1957 I read Robert Paul Smith's memoir about growing up in the age where boys wore knickerbockers...and was so enchanted with it I read it to my son's father, chapter by chapter. For years I've sought a copy, and finally was able to buy one at Books-N-Time, Silverton. This time I read parts of it aloud to Frank, who listened with great patience.