Morgantown
A morning’s dreary gray becomes a long afternoon of waiting out a downpour in the shelter of a covered bridge. As I listen to rain hammer above me, I read initials and words carved into the bridge’s walls. Swear words, love words, names.
I pull my jackknife from my pocket to add my name, but Grandpa grabs my hand with a jerk, and my knife clatters to the wood floor.
“You know better’n that,” he scolds.
“I just wanted my name remembered with the rest of these folks.”
“There’s better ways’a bein’ remembered.” He picks up my knife, folds my fingers around it, and pats my hand. “Proper ways.”
* * *
Late Monday morning, we top a rise that looks out over Morgantown. Fields, roads, and buildings spread before us like a patchwork quilt. Two shimmery ribbons, the Monongahela River and Deckers Creek, meet on the quilt’s far side. Heavy stitches run clean across it. Railroad tracks! Plumes rise from the quilt and smudge the blue sky in every color smoke can be.
Tonight we’ll sleep in a hotel. Grandpa wants us to take time for baths. And shopping.
The bathroom with a tub and water closet is down the hall from our room. The water closet is like our backhouse at home, yet not like it at all. It’s inside, and has a tank and a bowl with a seat. I push a button on the tank, and whoosh! The bowl empties and fills again with fresh water. No backhouse smell!
The tub has two taps, one for cold and one for hot. Hot water without boiling it!
Sinking into the bath makes me feel human again. I wash away the feel of being a wild critter. I soak until my skin is wrinkled as an old potato, but a clean one.
After my bath, I suds the past week out of my everyday dress and hang it near the window to dry. Grandpa bathes and trims his beard.
When we’re as spruce as Sunday morning, we mosey the brick roads of Morgantown, our ears pelted by the sounds of trolley cars, trains, and river traffic. Folks going places.
Louder sounds come from sawmills and factories.
I pause at a college with red-brick buildings. Their sign says they admit women!
“Nice town, ain’t it?” Grandpa says.
“Beautiful,” I say, wondering how smart a girl needs to be to go to college.
“We kin stay a spell if we git a mind to.”
“I thought we were taking the train tomorrow. Don’t you want to hurry to Gettysburg?”
“No hurry. Gettysburg’ll be there.”
“But I pine to ride the train. And see where all the history happened.”
“History happens ever’where. But I’ll think on it.”
What’s to think? We came all this way to go to Gettysburg.
We visit a store that bears only faint resemblance to Mr. Pender’s back home. Its smells are different, but they sell dress goods like Mr. Pender does. And shoes. You don’t guess on size like in the Sears, Roebuck catalogue. You try them on and walk around the store.
Grandpa buys me a pair. High-heeled coltskin with silk laces. I say I don’t need them. They’d be nice for church, but I’ll never be able to trek two hours down the mountain in them.
“Sometimes ya buy somethin’ on account o’ ya want it, even if ya don’t need it,” Grandpa says.
A shop lady shows me a bottle with French writing on it. Eau des Fleurs. Mama knows French words that sound like music, but the shop lady pronounces it like Oh-the-floor.
She waves the stopper under my nose. “Like a garden, isn’t it? You dab it on your handkerchief to tuck in your bodice or your sleeve. Or put a dot behind your ears.
“It smells a bit like a garden,” I admit. “But real gardens have pretty flowers.”
She waggles the bottle. “This supplies the scent, and you supply the pretty.”
I feel my face redden. Grandpa wants to buy me the fancy French water, but I say I don’t want it. He buys it anyhow.
We tote our purchases to a millinery shop, a place that sells nothing but hats.
“Bonnets seem right spare here,” Grandpa says.
Morgantown women wear straw hats with ribbons tied under their chins, or fancy hats like Nellie Finch wears.
We look at hats decorated with flowers, ribbons, bright-colored feathers, and even shiny red cherries.
“How ‘bout this one?” Grandpa points to a green hat with huge pink roses around its crown.
“No, that’s a Nellie-Finch hat.”
Chuckling, he holds the hat over his head, purses his lips, and stretches out his chin like Nellie does to tighten her neck wrinkles. It’s like Nellie with a beard. I laugh so loud folks stare.
A smaller hat catches my eye. White straw lined with a yellow-flowered print. Its brim curls up on one side. And in the curl, sits a tiny black-and-yellow bird that looks real enough to sing. I stroke its soft feathers. “Isn’t it pretty, Grandpa?”
“That’s a goldfinch,” the shop lady explains, as if we know nothing of birds.
“Did she say gold-finch?” Grandpa says with a chuckle. “Could be kin to Nellie.” The two of us lapse into laughter.
