A Character Sketch

     Short short stories are not so easy to dash off.  My first 'newspapers' search launched me into an unknown area--the 1910's--which launched me into research I really hadn't planned on getting into.  That sent me back to the archives looking for my grandmother (for reasons unrelated and whom I did not find) where I landed on this article of less than 80 words.
    This article inspired still more research and began to spin into a story (in my mind) that would easily outgrow the 2000 words I was hoping to limit myself to.  So it will become a character sketch here.  If I like her enough to write her story I'll let you know.

     First, the article:
              From The Daily Courier, Connellsville, PA, Monday, June 4, 1917.

ARM BROKEN 

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"Mother" Stillwagon of Hickory Square, injured in Fall.

           While chasing chickens from her garden, which she was working herself, "Mother" Stillwagon of near Hickory Square church, fell and broke a bone in her right arm a few days ago.

           Mrs. Stillwagon, who was 83 years old May 6, last, has reared a family of nine children.  She is now caring for a number of great grandchildren.  She claims the accident was due to "clumsiness."

     What was the deal with WWI, I wondered?   The U.S. had only recently declared war on Germany (April 6, 1917), so involvement in that would have been minimal at best. 
Connellsville, PA is about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh on the Youghiogheny River.
There was a nasty train wreck in the area in 1903 in which dozens of people were killed.
There is a Hickory Square church on the corner of Hickory Square Rd. which is still a rural area.
There are still several Stillwagons in the area.

    I did math in my head and looked at fashions, photos, articles and maps.  I took bike rides to generate questions and work out story lines.  It was getting bigger by the minute.  It had to stop--I have other projects.

     So, inspired mainly by the facts in the article, loosely (but barely) based  on my research (that is to say, any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental), I would like to introduce

Mother Stillwagon

     She has been called “Mother” since the birth of her second child in 1854.  It had been more than sixty years since anyone had called her Elisabet—almost as long since anyone knew she’d had a given name.  She gave up her simple surname “Miller” when she married in 1852.  She was eighteen. 
 

   Her husband had been one of the last casualties of the Civil War.  He had left her with nine children to raise on her own.  Hard work, but not unfamiliar.  She was of sturdy country stock.  She knew about farming, about animals and about home remedies for sniffles and sneezes. 
 

   While she did not spoil the child, she used the rod sparingly, relying instead on her ability to intimidate with a scowl or shame with a look of utter disappointment.  Only when those practiced looks failed to get the chores finished or a purloined item returned would she resort to spanking the guilty party.   More often than not, though, her children and grandchildren responded to her looks with heart-felt apologies and instant action.
 

    They were looks that came easily to her still.  Even at her present age of 83, she was an impressive looking woman.  Once tall and solid like the trees that surrounded Hickory Square, she stooped more now than she did twelve years ago, when her first great-grandchild came to live with her, but still worked her half-acre garden herself and kept a flock of chickens in line daily. 
 

    At work in the garden, she wore a long dark skirt that hid the men’s shoes she found more sensible than the high-buttoned boots she saved for town and church.  She wore the sleeves of her high collared blouse rolled up to her elbow and protected her clothes with a long coarse muslin apron.  She kept her long but thinning gray hair piled up and tucked under a wide brimmed straw hat. 
 

    She took more care on Sundays, when in addition to her carefully shined high-buttoned boots, she replaced her work clothes with a flounced skirt and trim jacket and wore her best straw hat, the navy blue one with the white ostrich feather and pale blue satin ribbon.
 

   The children—her three great grandchildren and the ones she called great grandchildren—dressed their best on Sundays, too.  Mother Stillwagon insisted.
Most of Saturday was devoted to shining shoes, rinsing stockings and pressing shirts, hair ribbons and sashes.  By Sunday morning, all eight children had a plain but presentable outfit to match their freshly scrubbed faces and hands.
 

    She marched them to church and marched them home again for supper.
The children always behaved because they would have hated to miss supper.  There was always roast chicken, mashed potatoes, hot biscuits, gravy, creamed spinach and pie for dessert.  Each week it was a different kind—apple, peach, cherry, or raisin when fresh fruit was out of season. 
 

    Mother Stillwagon believed in pie.  It was round and contained.  It could be neatly divided, served hot or cold.  It was her secret pleasure, downstairs at dawn while the children slumbered, to start her day with a cup of hot black coffee and a piece of cold pie—a second pie the children never saw.
 

    Her great-grandchildren were an accidental hobby of sorts.  She started her ‘collection’ with Mary Alice, who came to live with her after her mother died (her father had been killed in a horrible train wreck just a few months before she was born).  Mary Alice’s grandparents and great uncles (Mother Stillwagon’s own children) had ventured west once their children had grown.
Henry and Howard, Mary Alice’s twin cousins, came to live with them when their parents caught typhus and died.  The boys were two, and at eight years old, Mary Alice had the energy and self-importance to help Mother Stillwagon chase after them.
 

    The other children seemed to start showing up, like stray cats.  Certain young girls who found themselves in ‘the family way’ were told they could leave bundles for  Mother Stillwagon.  Friends of friends of distant relatives who knew of poor orphaned children in their town would send word to beg Mother Stillwagon to take them in.  She had a large house and a big heart.  How could she say no?