Esther Martin sat up straight on her bicycle seat, lost in thought as her sturdy legs pushed down and up on the peddles, her shoulders swaying with the rhythm of the ride. Esther set a leisurely pace, enjoying the warm fall day with no thoughts of despair or anguish. Her life was orderly and symmetrical. Winterset was like so many small towns in the eastern Nebraska, wooden houses with detached garages, yards defined by sidewalks and alleys, numbered streets that ran north to south and avenues east to west, a tidiness that mimiced her life. Esther had no premonition that harmony would explode.
Esther glided down Lincoln Avenue on her route to the Hometown Grocery and swung left onto 13th Street. She’d spent her early school years at Washington Elementary a formidable square brick and concrete building on Lincoln Avenue between 13th Street and 14th. All except third grade, which she attended in a classroom-trailer behind the school building while asbestos was being removed from walls and ceiling. The school was gone now, grades K-8 went to the new school built in 1981 on 33rd Street across town. The county extended the park when the school finally came down. Esther slowed to look across the park lawns, gold and red mums sat court to the asters and coneflowers. Verbena mixed with native grasses created an autumn beauty. The county park was handsome but in her mind’s eye she saw the tether-ball polls and square-ball courts of her school yard memories.
Parking her bicycle in front of the store, Esther grabbed a grocery cart as she swung into the store. Where was that list? She patted her breast pocket retrieving a scrap of paper. She unfolded it and biting her lower lip, studied the list carefully before moving forwar...
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... volunteer fire department arrived in full gear. They stopped the truck in front of the store and six men clamored down and into the front door. She knew them all. The older swarthy one had been in her high school graduating class. The others, younger and blonde were Larsen’s and Hansen’s, each had played Winterset football and still carried big muscles and bull necks from lifting weights and working the fields. Darkening clouds drifted in to replace the earlier clear sky. A brisk breeze stirred the first tumbled leaves across the cement as Esther looked over her shoulder at the drama continuing behind the plate glass. Esther could see the commotion but heard only the familiar fall sounds of puppy yips and gas leaf blowers. She cleared the parking lot and headed home. Esther loved Winterset, after 50 years it knew all her lies and kept most of her secrets.
Filban said the home had a yard that was overgrown. “The trees and bushes were overgrown, and the house was dark,” Filban said. “And the windows were covered.” She and her sister slept in the front bedroom of the house. She remembers the bedroom having a large, floor-to-ceiling window. She said you could look out and see the wra...
“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen” (“Brainy Quotes” 1). In Edith Wharton’s framed novel, Ethan Frome, the main protagonist encounters “lost opportunity, failed romance, and disappointed dreams” with a regretful ending (Lilburn 1). Ethan Frome lives in the isolated fictional town of Starkfield, Massachusetts with his irritable spouse, Zenobia Frome. Ever since marriage, Zenobia, also referred to as Zeena, revolves around her illness. Furthermore, she is prone to silence, rage, and querulously shouting.
An example of the cycle followed by her father, his father, and his father before him is told when Blunt recalls a major blizzard in December 1964 that trapped the family and some neighbors in their small homestead. She unemotionally describes how her father simply proceeded to go through the motions of keeping the pipes from freezing, calmly accepting the fact that he could do nothing as the storm progressed and he could not prevent loss of a of their livestock. Or how when he first ventured out to check on the animals in their nearby barn and nearly lost his way back in whiteout conditions. Later, when the storm passed, she told of playing amongst the frozen corpses of the cattle, jumping from ribcage to ribcage, daring her older brother and sister to cut off pieces of the animals, all with the calm acceptance that this was so normal, nothing strange about it.
Walker, Alice. (1974). “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens.” Ways of Reading. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, pp. 694-701.
cold, harsh, wintry days, when my brothers and sister and I trudged home from school burdened down by the silence and frigidity of our long trek from the main road, down the hill to our shabby-looking house. More rundown than any of our classmates’ houses. In winter my mother’s riotous flowers would be absent, and the shack stood revealed for what it was. A gray, decaying...
Starkfield Massachusetts is a boring cold farm town. People become very ill there from the terribly harsh winters. Winter greatly affects the actions and behaviors of the characters. No quote better describes the harsh winters of Starkfield, and the effect that it had on the townspeople, than the following:
The wind whispered outside my flower curtains. My Rosemary garden swayed to the noiseless tune. I sit quietly watching their soft movement, the flowers I worked hard to nurse. The rest of my yard remained parched, with time it had given defeat to the hot Alabama sky.I glared at the cracked dirt, cursing it for giving in to the pressure, praying I won't do the same .I sip the cool lemon ice tea, the cubes of ice brush on my dry lips.
It was a pitch dark and blustery night in December 1926. The sky was starless and moonless, as dark as coal. The thunder rumbled and reverberated like a furious and wild tiger. The freezing wind was bitter, one could feel the cold biting through one’s skin, and etching every strand of nerve. It was the day she was born.
"Leaves of Grass : Preface." Leaves of Grass : Preface. Stockton Education, 2009. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
There are about twenty lots in our neighborhood; all consist of close to three and a half acres. Most of the lots have houses now, all of them are big and well kept; a perfect place to raise an upper-middle class family. Just outside of Richmond, the Boscobel neighborhood gives individuals a constant taste of the southern country air, a place to grow a garden, to sit out on the porch at night and look at the stars.… The neighbors are kind as they greet one another in passing. Families come together for picnics and cook-outs and mothers go on walks together with their dogs while the kids are in school. The kids of the neighborhood love to play by the creek in the back yard. They build forts and huts, find pretend food and crayfish in the creek, and play hide-and-seek in the woods beyond the creek. It is the peaceful, everyday life in the Boscobel neighborhood.
Standing on the balcony, I gazed at the darkened and starry sky above. Silence surrounded me as I took a glimpse at the deserted park before me. Memories bombarded my mind. As a young girl, the park was my favourite place to go. One cold winter’s night just like tonight as I looked upon the dark sky, I had decided to go for a walk. Wrapped up in my elegant scarlet red winter coat with gleaming black buttons descending down the front keeping away the winter chill. Wearing thick leggings as black as coal, leather boots lined with fur which kept my feet cozy.
It’s a beautiful morning, the air crisp and clean, not a cloud in sight, and the temperature cool but not cold. A perfect day for skiing. I take a deep breath in and hold it, smiling at the smells of pine, snow, and fresh air. I love fresh air. I reflect on this as we, my friends and I, move up the mountain on the (five person) chairlift. We’re at Huntington, the local ski mountain not twenty minutes away from where we live, Genoa, a neighboring town of Tahoe. Every weekend, my friends and I come here to get away from the stress of school and to relax. My friends are chattering away as I fade in and out of the conversation. Then something Lizzie says catches me.
Growing up in a massive neighborhood magnificent. My neighborhood flooded with kids around my age to hang out with. Occupying the edge of this neighborhood was a large park where the neighborhood’s kids and I would spend most of our time eliminating their boredom. When this park would not satisfy our needs, there were
I awoke to the sun piercing through the screen of my tent while stretching my arms out wide to nudge my friend Alicia to wake up. “Finally!” I said to Alicia, the countdown is over. As I unzip the screen door and we climb out of our tent, I’m embraced with the aroma of campfire burritos that Alicia’s mom Nancy was preparing for us on her humungous skillet. While we wait for our breakfast to be finished, me and Alicia, as we do every morning, head to the front convenient store for our morning french vanilla cappuccino. On our walk back to the campsite we always take a short stroll along the lake shore to admire the incandescent sun as it shines over the gleaming dark blue water. This has become a tradition that we do every
We all grabbed our lawn chairs and cozied up next to the roaring red fire. I always sat a little too close, enough to where the fire burnt a hole straight through my favorite pair of flip-flops, assuring me to never make that mistake again. S’mores was all of our favorite bed time snack time and a perfect way to end the night. Every time I would roast my marshmallow until it became slightly brown, mushy, and not too hot in the center; then I 'd put it between two graham crackers and extra pieces of chocolate. One too many s’mores and a belly like later I laid back in my chair and listened as Nancy told us stories. Before going to bed Nancy told us about her favorite past times here as a child and how just like the little girl we saw fishing, she was also afraid of fishing. She told us stories about how much the campground has evolved since she was a child and how every year she promises to take us here and to keep it a tradition. At bedtime Alicia and I crawl into our tents and snuggle up in our warm sleeping bags. We talked to each other about how sad we felt that it was almost the end of summer, and how nervous we felt to start our freshman year of high school. However, our conversations ended when Nancy yelled at as from the other tent to keep quiet and go to bed. I’d fallen asleep that night to the sound of the fire crackling out and the crickets chirping