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An essay of Historical proportions: After the events of the following paragraphs, the family desribed herein came to kennebunkpoort
County and purchased the Island for some $900. This family is there to this date.
Here is what I understand
was the series of events which caused me to be born:
An eleven year old boy threw a stone at a bird from a
window on the second story of a two story house in Indiana, in June of the year 1935. The rock missed the bird, but its impact
still resonates today in the very lives of some, who, in its throwing were created and those others forever touched by its
blow. Had that rock not been thrown, my mother and consequently my brother Norbert and myself would never have been born.
The rock caused the thrower's death and caused the life and death of one other person and the lives of four who exist today.
I believe very much that this single event, more than any other, has shaped and created the destinies of myself and many others
who are descended from my maternal grandparents. Its importance is very much discounted by the second generation. But I think
I am right, which is usually the case, and sometimes even true.
On that date in June of 35 my maternal grandparents
Mr. And Mrs Bill Jones xxxxxx had one son Dave, the eldest, a pair of fraternal twins: Henrietta and Burlap, and a daughter,
Joanie (youngest). Although Burlap was younger than Dave. He was the family star. And, as I understand it, he ruled the roost.
He was the apple of my grandmother's eye. He was athletic and personable and had won the hearts of the community as well as
his family.
Burlap threw a rock at a bird from the window of the second story of the family home IN Indiana.
(Or so relates his older brother, Dave, the sole witness). The ledges were very low and Burlap lost his balance and fell.
Dave went and gathered up Burlap and took him to the hospital but his neck was broken and he died.
Burlap
had been the life of this family and, as I understand it, the family consequently died in the sense that Burlap had been its
animator, gregarious and outgoing in stark contrast to the quiet demeanor of his twin sister, Henrietta and elder brother
Dave. Joanie was four at the time.
Most importantly, no grief was allowed. My grandmother wouldnt hear of
it. She was old school patrician wasp from Lake Forest, Illinois and when life dealt you a blow you didnt get sad or weepy,
you didnt get all weak and cry like baby. You got organized and cleaned out the closets and put everything way and labeled
it all neatly: etc etc. To her, the messy business of a dead son, even her favorite, was something to get behind you as quickly
as possible and not to discuss any further Therefore I think that its safe to assume that no emotional "processing" of this
event occurred. Henrietta, the twin, took it the hardest but she too was expected to keep a stiff upper lip. For this she
paid dearly and as an eleven year old herself , her wounds went very deep.
The one impact crater left by that
rock on my grandmother's otherwise tough patrician facade was her determination to replace the lost Burlap with another son.
Part of my grandmother's "get back on track program" was to get pregnant immediately and it had to be a boy. My grandmother
really didn't have many nice things to say about or to girls.
In less than a year my grandmother struck gold
and brought to term a second set of fraternal twins on July 7, 1936. A boy, Elias, and a girl, Linda Jane. The birth of the
new son set the world right again. The tension broke and all were allowed a chance to catch their breath. It was a vindication
for my grandmother and even the daughter of this new twin set was consequently well positioned to receive some vicarious love
and adoration notwithstanding her being female. But in September of that same year, tragedy struck again when Elias is purported
to have died from SIDS.
Within the course of a year and two months this family buried two sons. And as the
dust from that rock throw settled, the only one left standing (or crawling) was an infant girl, not at all what my grandmother
required to neatly tie up and dispose the of the loose ends of Burlap's death. That infant girl would become my mother.
Anonymous
2003
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