She was born in an upstairs bedroom of a two-story farmhouse in Evansville, Indiana, on Thursday morning, June 20, 1895. Her mother was well attended with female members of her family, and the delivery was without complications. As was the custom of the time, her father was relegated to another part of the house. They named the first of their two daughters Margaret, and she would live through five wars, the Great Depression, the moon landing, two presidential assassinations (McKinley and Kennedy), the invention of the information super highway (Internet), and the worldwide computer crash that never occurred on the first day of January, 2000. She was one of a very small percentage of people who could say they lived in three centuries.
In the early morning hours of June 21, 1895, as the young farmer's wife sat in the dim light from a oil lamp and rocked her hours-old baby back to sleep, she could not have been any happier than she was at that very moment. She had been blessed with a large, supportive family who lived minutes away, a God-fearing, hardworking, family-first husband, and now a beautiful, healthy daughter. Margaret's mother could not, in her most fanciful dreams, know what the next one hundred and five years would bring to the world and her precious daughter.
1975
She opened the door of her small bungalow, and when she saw me standing on her porch, she said, "Well, what do I owe this pleasure, fraulein?" Even with a curve to her back, she towered over me. She was wearing her Sunday best, along with a pearl neckless and matching earrings. Her white hair was pulled back into a French roll and kept in line by an army of bobby pins. Before I could explain the reason for my visit, she pulled me inside, and within minutes I was sitting at Margaret's kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee, anticipating that German coffee cake (kuchan) still baking in the oven, and listening to stories from an enchanted time way back when.
So much had happened in her short eighty years, she told me. "The turn of the century was a wonderful time to grow up." She didn't know where to begin. "Just start at the beginning," I said. I had no job, no social engagements, no pressing appointments. In this unsettling, complicated life of mine, I needed a distraction from the battles being fought in my head. I found it in a time machine in Margaret's kitchen. "Tell me everything," I said, "Take me back to 1895."
Her parents, extended family and friends were from Germany and had settled in Evansville all within a short horse and buggy ride from each other. Major events such as building a house or barn were shared by the men in the community while the women fixed the meals and brought them to the site. Hard work brought rewards and benefits, she told me. No one complained about the how hard life was back then because at the end of the day there was a sense of accomplishment and purpose as well as a spirit of comradery and fellowship that came from helping each other. "Did you know that the house you are renting from me next door was built that way?" she said as she got up from the table, pulled back the kitchen curtains, and pointed to an old farmhouse a stone's throw away. Sitting under an attached lean-to sat my little yellow VW bug. "That was my dear, dear grandparents' home," she said. "I loved them so much."
So what brought me, at age thirty, to a small German community in the southwest corner of Indiana in the first place? Instead of enjoying a Saturday night out with someone my own age, why was I sitting in an eighty-year-old lady's kitchen looking out a window at her grandparents' home that was now my home?
LOVE
Margaret found her true love a little later than most women at that time. But, she would never settle for less than what she wanted in a lifetime mate. She was patient, willing to wait and in her mid-twenties, Freddie came calling. "Oh, how I loved that man," she said more than once. Even though he was quite a bit shorter than her, she wasn't going let a detail so insignificant taint all of the other qualities that made him so special. Just like her father, her new husband was a God-fearing, hardworking man who always put family first. "It was the best time to be young and in love."
It became an every morning ritual. The combined aroma from coffee brewing and kuchan baking never failed to greet me the moment I opened the door to my neighbor's home. She always met me with a hug and kiss, a place at a fully-dressed table with linen tablecloth, napkins and silver flatware for two. Then she would start the time machine, and we would travel back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Her stories of a golden age forever lost in history captured my imagination, fed my romantic notion of life and love, and convinced me that I had been born fifty years too late. Over time, we became close. I cherished those mornings in the company of an articulate, well-dressed, lady full of proper manners, charm and grace who claimed to have been born at just the perfect time in all of history. "It was a simpler time back then," she said. "We didn't have all of the modern distractions that took us away from what is important in life." Sometimes, when we were leaving one event to attend another (Freddie's new Model T, their wedding, the birth of her son, etc.,) I could sense her slip down into a state of melancholy. After a while, and much to my surprise, I also fell into the sadness with her. As if it were my own life we were reminiscing about, I mourned the loss of the good ole days along with her. I longed for the simple life, connection to a large, extended family, sense of community, being a part of something bigger and more important than just myself, the love.
THE LOVE
Oh, yes. The love. That's why I was living next door in the farmhouse that her grandfather and a community of family and friends had built. It was love, or the hope, promise, and illusion of love, that persuaded me (without one iota of thought) to quit my job in Indy, pack my Beetle Bug with a few belongings and move to, well, his town...so we could live a block away from each other, get to know one another better, get marri...uh...go our separate ways.
1995
Margaret made the news. She was a centenarian. One hundred years old. It had been a very long time since the two of us sat at her kitchen table and travelled back in time. The coffee and kuchan smells were exactly as I had remembered them. She still wore her Sunday best and the pearls were there, too, but the stories were gone. It was her memory. Not so good anymore. Her melancholy was lost to a bit of senility and my melancholy was gone as well. I was fifty now, divorced with one son, and my youthful fantasies, thoughts and expectations about life and love had been reshaped by having lived in the real world. Twenty years had passed since I had come to Evansville looking for love. I didn't find it, but I did discover a sweet little old lady with a time machine living right next door.
2000
My precious friend passed away on August 8, 2000. She was one hundred and five.
She opened the door of her small bungalow, and when she saw me standing on her porch, she said, "Well, what do I owe this pleasure, fraulein?" Even with a curve to her back, she towered over me. She was wearing her Sunday best, along with a pearl neckless and matching earrings. Her white hair was pulled back into a French roll and kept in line by an army of bobby pins. Before I could explain the reason for my visit, she pulled me inside, and within minutes I was sitting at Margaret's kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee, anticipating that German coffee cake (kuchan) still baking in the oven, and listening to stories from an enchanted time way back when.
So much had happened in her short eighty years, she told me. "The turn of the century was a wonderful time to grow up." She didn't know where to begin. "Just start at the beginning," I said. I had no job, no social engagements, no pressing appointments. In this unsettling, complicated life of mine, I needed a distraction from the battles being fought in my head. I found it in a time machine in Margaret's kitchen. "Tell me everything," I said, "Take me back to 1895."
Her parents, extended family and friends were from Germany and had settled in Evansville all within a short horse and buggy ride from each other. Major events such as building a house or barn were shared by the men in the community while the women fixed the meals and brought them to the site. Hard work brought rewards and benefits, she told me. No one complained about the how hard life was back then because at the end of the day there was a sense of accomplishment and purpose as well as a spirit of comradery and fellowship that came from helping each other. "Did you know that the house you are renting from me next door was built that way?" she said as she got up from the table, pulled back the kitchen curtains, and pointed to an old farmhouse a stone's throw away. Sitting under an attached lean-to sat my little yellow VW bug. "That was my dear, dear grandparents' home," she said. "I loved them so much."
So what brought me, at age thirty, to a small German community in the southwest corner of Indiana in the first place? Instead of enjoying a Saturday night out with someone my own age, why was I sitting in an eighty-year-old lady's kitchen looking out a window at her grandparents' home that was now my home?
LOVE
Margaret found her true love a little later than most women at that time. But, she would never settle for less than what she wanted in a lifetime mate. She was patient, willing to wait and in her mid-twenties, Freddie came calling. "Oh, how I loved that man," she said more than once. Even though he was quite a bit shorter than her, she wasn't going let a detail so insignificant taint all of the other qualities that made him so special. Just like her father, her new husband was a God-fearing, hardworking man who always put family first. "It was the best time to be young and in love."
It became an every morning ritual. The combined aroma from coffee brewing and kuchan baking never failed to greet me the moment I opened the door to my neighbor's home. She always met me with a hug and kiss, a place at a fully-dressed table with linen tablecloth, napkins and silver flatware for two. Then she would start the time machine, and we would travel back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Her stories of a golden age forever lost in history captured my imagination, fed my romantic notion of life and love, and convinced me that I had been born fifty years too late. Over time, we became close. I cherished those mornings in the company of an articulate, well-dressed, lady full of proper manners, charm and grace who claimed to have been born at just the perfect time in all of history. "It was a simpler time back then," she said. "We didn't have all of the modern distractions that took us away from what is important in life." Sometimes, when we were leaving one event to attend another (Freddie's new Model T, their wedding, the birth of her son, etc.,) I could sense her slip down into a state of melancholy. After a while, and much to my surprise, I also fell into the sadness with her. As if it were my own life we were reminiscing about, I mourned the loss of the good ole days along with her. I longed for the simple life, connection to a large, extended family, sense of community, being a part of something bigger and more important than just myself, the love.
THE LOVE
Oh, yes. The love. That's why I was living next door in the farmhouse that her grandfather and a community of family and friends had built. It was love, or the hope, promise, and illusion of love, that persuaded me (without one iota of thought) to quit my job in Indy, pack my Beetle Bug with a few belongings and move to, well, his town...so we could live a block away from each other, get to know one another better, get marri...uh...go our separate ways.
1995
Margaret made the news. She was a centenarian. One hundred years old. It had been a very long time since the two of us sat at her kitchen table and travelled back in time. The coffee and kuchan smells were exactly as I had remembered them. She still wore her Sunday best and the pearls were there, too, but the stories were gone. It was her memory. Not so good anymore. Her melancholy was lost to a bit of senility and my melancholy was gone as well. I was fifty now, divorced with one son, and my youthful fantasies, thoughts and expectations about life and love had been reshaped by having lived in the real world. Twenty years had passed since I had come to Evansville looking for love. I didn't find it, but I did discover a sweet little old lady with a time machine living right next door.
2000
My precious friend passed away on August 8, 2000. She was one hundred and five.
Margaret's grandparents' home that I rented in 1975
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