August 13, 2016

Reaching Ernie

I never know whether to be impressed or depressed when I read about monumental figures who died “young” yet accomplished much.

Impressed that they could do so much in a shortened lifespan. Jesus Christ, age 32; Wolfgang Mozart, age 35; prolific author Jack London, age 40; Princess Diana, age 36; John F. Kennedy, age 46; U.S. Army Officer, Captain Henry T. Waskow, 25. Of course, Ernie Pyle, age 44. And so many, many more.

Depressed that at age 74 I feel my accomplishments so much more diluted. Like wine weakened with water of which the ancient Greeks were so fond. The wine and accomplishments began at full strength. But diluted, wine, like accomplishments attained over a broader span of life, do not seem as spirited or full-bodied as the undiluted versions.

Ernest Taylor Pyle is of the impressive sort – a life lived quickly, heartily and then over. By the time he died as a non-combatant in World War II, Ernie had written millions of words and many of those words ended up between the covers of books.

His wartime writings are preserved in four books: Ernie Pyle In England, Here Is Your War, Brave Men and Last Chapter. Many more books, such as Home Country, have Ernie’s name as author and he certainly is the author of these books, which are a compilation of the numerous stories he wrote as a journalist. Other collections of Ernie’s writings include Ernie’s America, The Best of Ernie Pyle’s 1930s Travel Dispatches, compiled by David Nichols in 1989, and At Home with Ernie Pyle, compiled by Owen V. Johnson in 2016.

If this latest book’s date seems surprising – in that interest in a newspaper correspondent dead for more than seven decades still elicits enough interest for an author to invest time in creating yet another book about him – you have not yet grasped that Ernie has a large following in this century. That book’s author, Johnson, is a journalism associate professor emeritus at The Media School, Indiana University Bloomington. Johnson  developed the course “In the Footsteps of Ernie Pyle,” and is author of historical columns and research papers focused on Pyle.

If you need further proof that Ernie’s essence is alive and well, check out the Facebook group, Friends of Ernie Pyle, which has a following that posts frequent messages and photos. In a recent posting you will find that a documentary is planned by Pyle scholars. The group is applying for scholarships and grants to fund the project, which may cost a half-million dollars.

I have purchased and am reading a few of Pyle’s books, currently Ernie Pyle In England. I’m simultaneously reading Ernie’s America, The Best of Ernie Pyle’s 1930s Travel Dispatches, Home Country, and At Home with Ernie Pyle. There is also a small collection of Pyle’s writings gathered in a booklet, Images of Brown County, that can be purchased at The Ernie Pyle WWII Museum in Dana, Indiana. If it seems I’m getting hooked on Pyle and his writing, I guess it’s because I am. In David Nichol’s introduction he mentions noticing that his grandparents always turned to Pyle’s column after reading the news in their paper. Nichol says he doesn’t know what his grandparents thought about Pyle’s writing, but he thought they must have enjoyed the columns because they always read them. That made me think of my father and his voracious reading habits. I can imagine my dad, and probably also my mom, reading Pyle’s columns regularly and I can hear in my head how my dad would have laughed or how he would have repeated a story to his buddies.

But, like so many readers of Pyle’s columns I think I just feel that strong connection to someone who really “gets it.” And after nearly three-quarters of a century, his writing has both a contemporary feel (what ever really changes?) and gives a glimpse into the realities of life in the 1930s and 1940s.

As this blog flowed from keyboard to computer screen it has taken turns I did not plan for or expect. I wanted to describe how Lyla and I came to Ernie’s home farm and prowled around it, completely alone. And that is what we did.

The road to the farm.

The Mound, where the Pyle farm was 

located on the left.

It was the second day of our six-week trip last summer. The sky was a hot blue and Lyla and I were both feeling a bit unsettled. We were still close enough to our southeastern Ohio home that I could have turned tail and pulled down our long rural driveway in less than 8 hours. The tug of that comfortable existence was like a rubber band that would have to be stretched a few hundred more miles before it would break and free the two of us to our solitary existence on the road.

Following hints from others who knew where the former Pyle farm is located, I had no trouble recognizing landmarks and finding the acreage. But other than knowing I would see a slight rise on this platform-like land and a grove of “very big trees,” I had no idea what to expect. I did know the house is gone and that there might be a few outbuildings.

I did not expect a partially-overgrown field with the faint outline of a driveway that had been mowed at least once that season. I did not expect the complete silence of a country road – no nearby neighbors would even notice our arrival. (At this point I should add that I did not feel I was trespassing, due to comments that led me to believe visiting was not discouraged.) 

I was glad for the solitude, for I am that sort of person who enjoys her own company. Not always, but often. And, especially when I want to think.

An overgrown driveway leads into the old Pyle farm.

An old shed sits alone amongst the weeds.

A tree seems to find the interior of the shed homey.

I parked our van a few hundred feet up the trace of driveway, hoping any recent rains had not left the ground too soft. As I stepped onto the course grasses and slid open the door for Lyla, I immediately felt at home. More, I felt I already knew Ernie. I grew up in the countryside most of my young life and fully embraced all the pleasures that come with the solitary life of a country kid. Unlike Ernie, for me living in the country has been a life-long passion and only rarely, and of great necessity, have I lived where neighbors can hear you flush the toilet.

Lyla surveys the Pyle farm.

For about an hour, Lyla and I had the pleasure of exploring the small acreage that is left of the Pyle farm. Here is some of what I wrote in my blog July 21, 2015.

“(On the way to Dana) We made a small detour because we saw a sign that said “Ernie Pyle School.” I expected an old one-room affair with a memorial sign out front, but it is actually the real school used by today’s young Indianan farm kids. It’s nice that they named it after Ernie. I hope those who want to go to college get to, but I also hope some stay on the farm, because without them we would get very hungry.

The Ernie Pyle school, 2015

Finally, down the lonesome road so accurately described to me, I found what the locals call “the mound.” It’s a slight rise in the otherwise pancake-flat land with the ruler-straight roads, and on it is a lovely group of very old and some younger trees. Two ancient outbuildings whose window-less windows frame the pretty trees, lean in on themselves. It was very easy to imagine the blacksnakes and the hornet’s nest waiting inside the buildings to startle intruders (which I was not).

Mosquitoes buzzed my ears and I anointed myself with repellent, but they still followed, creating a small haze around my head. Then, as I approached the bare area where I knew the house had to have been (they say it burned down), the insects mysteriously disappeared. It was about that time that I began to feel watched over in a good way, as if Ernie appreciated my appreciation. I hope I am correct that his mother is the one who planted all the flowers that lined the edges of the house site – of course they are still there, reappearing year after year. Day lilies, a rose of some sort (pin rose?), lacy blue and white flowers.

Did Ernie climb this tree?

A huge tree near the end of the drive was forked part way up and I could imagine a young boy climbing that same tree a hundred years ago. The boy would have looked down on the ancestors of the Queen Ann’s Lace that festoons the ground at the base of the tree and out at the acres and acres of corn, soybeans and other crops that grew in all directions then and today. And he would have appreciated them and he would have growing in his mind the thought that the world is big and that in it were stories to tell.”

Since I wrote those words I have done a bit of research about crops of the early 1900s and doubt that soybeans were planted in the Pyle fields at that time, as they were not a popular crop in the U.S. until the 1940s.

Looking across a present-day soybean field at the back of the former Pyle farm. Dana is in the far distance.

I have also read a number of Ernie’s “dispatches” as well as commentary from those who have performed marvelous research and pulled his millions of words into cohesive books. I’m impressed with the most recently published book, At Home with Ernie Pyle. Researcher and editor Johnson has done an astounding job of ferreting out columns of Ernie’s that have some reference to his home state, Indiana. Johnson’s 22-page introduction is especially intriguing background of Ernie’s early and later connections to Dana, as well as providing information not found elsewhere about his long relationship and marriage to Geraldine Siebolds, referred to by Ernie as “That Girl.” Also from Johnson’s book I learned that Pyle’s Dana neighbors, Howard and Ella Goforth purchased the Pyle farm after the elder Pyle died and that descendants of the family tore down the house in this century.

My hour wandering Ernie’s farmland last summer spawned many small imaginings about his early life there. The At Home book has managed to fill in those mind scenes with some very tangible imagery. Plus, it helps that, although I wasn’t born until Ernie was 41, many of his youthful experiences were still very much in practice during my young years in the 1940s. White bread spread with butter and sprinkled with white sugar was considered an actual lunch! (Page 35, Ernie’s mother brings him a lunch of bread and butter and sugar the first day he drove a team of horses in the fields at age 9.) In 1938 Ernie’s parents, still on the farm, had electricity and running water, but the phone was a “party line” (page 58). Ernie could remember who had the various “rings” – theirs was three shorts. As late as the 1950s, our phone was also a party line. It was considered courteous to hang up if you picked up the receiver and heard someone talking. But, of course, not everyone was courteous and even if you were, there might be a snatch of conversation that would turn into the week’s gossip.

To say that I’ve become obsessed with Ernie and his writing might be a stretch – I still get up in the morning and do a zillion things besides reading and thinking about Ernie, his life, his legacy. But I keep wandering mentally back to that mosquito-infested, prairie-like farm, where, thanks to one photo in Johnson’s book, I can now envision the home where Ernie spent all those long winter evenings and slow summer days. The falling-in buildings have taken on new meaning as I visualize Ernie’s dad driving their car into a shed and a moment later a wagon somehow coming crash-bang out one end and into a gravel pit (page 34). I have a photo of an old concrete post with a big iron ring stuck in it, such as one would use to tie a horse. I have another photo of an old decorative mailbox post in front of the farm.

Was this the Pyle mailbox post?

Flowers still bloom around the old Pyle homesite.

An old concrete post with an iron ring at the front of the Pyle
farm appears to be a hitching post for horses.

And then there are the flowers. They should be in bloom right now, outlining where I think the house sat, just as they were when Lyla and I walked the land on July 19, 2015. And I really want to believe that Ernie’s mom and his Aunt Mary planted and tended their predecessors.

Postscript: Lyla and I did also tour Ernie’s birth home (which is a different house than the one on the farm where he spent his growing-up years) and the World War II museum three miles away in Dana. Both are well worth visiting. The house has been beautifully restored and offers more wonderful imagery (right down to a couch Ernie may have hidden behind to escape being kissed after his Aunt Mary’s wedding). As for the museum—well carry a tissue! As with so many smaller and struggling museums/historical sites, this one is kept open by volunteers who dedicate much time to helping preserve important history.

Downtown Dana during a visit in 2014.

Near the Pyle museum.

Lyla took note of the dog on the sandy 

beach depicted in the Pyle museum.