Tomah Train Station :: Photographer Unknown
Apple Picking :: 1967
When the train approached the station thirty-seven years ago I was excited. I was at most of the stops we made crossing the country because I’d never been to any of those places. We were in Wisconsin and I missed the conductor’s announcement, but I saw the station sign next to the tracks a half mile out and it said Tomah. I thought the sign was wrong even though I only saw it through part of a moving train window. I assumed it was supposed to read Tomahawk, with the ‘awk’ letters missing. My grandmother, Florence Scott, grew up in Tomahawk, Wisconsin, and I wanted it to be Tomahawk. I even started an ink drawing about it the next day titled Tomah while we where in Ohio en route to Rhode Island. Eight years later I drove by the Interstate 94 exit sign to Tomah on my way to Chicago from Minneapolis. I’d been mistaken for years. If laptops, Wi-Fi and Google had existed while I was on the train in 1983, I might have discovered my assumption was wrong, but those things didn’t exist then.
Whenever I imagine her hometown and her childhood with her sisters Georgia and Belle, it’s mostly fiction. I don’t remember most of her history there, but I know what Wisconsin feels like because we live near it and spend time there. I know what a small town with a lake nearby feels like too because I’ve lived in similar towns and watched TV shows like The Walton’s and the opening to the Andy Griffith Show when I was a kid. Maybe she had experiences like that. My parents told me that she was strong, direct, and didn’t suffer fools. I remember her hospitality and grace, like when she made me poached eggs for breakfast, how she managed family during holiday dinners and Easter egg hunts, and when my cousin and I picked apples from her tree on Saturday and were rewarded with root beer floats from A&W. I remember other moments too, but never how my grandmother felt, or how her childhood and teen years shaped her.
She visited me in a dream when I was an adult and long after she died. She wore a distinctive blue and white floral-patterned dress that I remembered from my childhood. When I told my mom about the dream, she remembered that dress too. My grandmother and I were in a small dimly lit room. We looked at each other and after a minute, she walked over and gently touched my arm. I can still feel her hand and and remember how the hazy light warmed and brightened slightly when she told me “everything is going to be alright.”
Songs :: Tell Me All the Things You Do and The Way I Feel by Fleetwood Mac, White Lily by Laurie Anderson and Here by David Byrne
© C. Davidson