Willimantic, Now & Then
I remember, in fact when my father helped dig a hole in the pasture to bury those horses when they died within hours of each other. Those horses went into eternity, one facing east, one facing west, the way they had stood together for years, swishing flies off each other’s faces with their tails.
Uncle Albert was a man who would never say five words, if one would do the trick. Come to think of it, most of the time he wouldn’t say anything, if a grunt or a shrug would do the trick. It’s not that he was mean or grouchy. I loved him, and spent hours sitting next to him or in his lap, listening and watching whatever he was watching and listening to. I think he just didn’t want to clutter up the air with more words than were necessary.
By Mark Svetz
WILLIMANTIC –January 2010
Return to
A Story of a Ball and Chain
I was listening to an old Hank Snow album the other day. It was during Hank’s mournful rendition of Lonesome Whistle, with the line: “They took me off the Georgia Main/ Locked me to this ball and chain…” that I recalled a story I had heard as a child. It made such an impression on me at the time, I have often thought about this story through the years.
It is a story of trust and faith, and a way of life when a person’s own judgment was more important than so-called conventional wisdom (which is often neither!) or the advice of experts. It was told to me by Skip, a good friend of my mother, who has told me many stories over the years. This one stuck.
Skip’s Uncle Albert was a farmer in Northfield, over on the other side of the state, between Litchfield and Thomaston. I knew Uncle Albert; he was probably close to 70 when I was born, so I think this particular story took place in the early years of the 20th Century!
I remember spending time on his farm during the 50s and 60s. Uncle Albert always knew where the groves of hickory and butternut trees grew. We would tramp through the pastures carrying our coolers and pillowcases. We would spend the day emptying the coolers and filling the pillowcases with nuts, to be cracked and eaten all winter.
I didn’t know it then but Uncle Albert, his farm and even those groves were soon to be a thing of the past. This story serves as a reminder of a time when we were all a little closer to the rhythms of the Earth; when a person’s word and honest labor meant more than his past. The story is a powerful one for me.
We live in a world now where many of us would reach for our cell phone and call 911 if a man with a ball and chain showed up at our house. Uncle Albert came from a different world. He didn’t have to think up scenarios that might bring harm to himself or his family. He knew there was enough real danger around him, not the adventurous danger of strangers with guns, but the grind-you-down danger of frost-bite, saw blades and horses hooves.
I can still see the shocked looks on the faces of the other men as my father – a legendary strongman – bent over this anvil and muscled it into the back of the truck. Those men, all farmers and hard-working laborers, were as impressed with this feat of strength as I was at the age of 6.
The stranger did sleep in the barn that night, and for more than 20 years as a hand on the farm. The stranger, whose name I never learned, was long gone by my time. I could only peer into the dark recesses of the barn and wonder where he slept.
Skip remembers seeing the ball and chain when she was a girl, but I have never seen it, so I don’t think she still has it.
What I do remember is asking Skip what this stranger had done to become a prisoner. She swore Uncle Albert never asked, and the man never offered that information.
As Skip tells the story, Uncle Albert just thought the man looked honest.
Mark Svetz and Sarah Winter make clothing and bags. Look for their new “on-line shop” at SarahWinterClothworks.com. The web site also has a link to Mark’s past articles for Neighbors.
I think he was accustomed to dealing with this danger in his own way, using his own good judgment and trusting in the Earth to take care of it’s own.
I can imagine this old man quietly going over to his tools, finding a cold chisel and a 3-pound hammer, and then bending over this man’s foot to cut the fastener that held the shackle to his leg. That’s exactly what he did, according to Skip’s story.
In my mind, this was done on a big anvil I remember sitting on a log in Uncle Albert’s barn. The anvil stands out in my mind because it is at the center of a scene from my memory. I am standing off to the side of the barn while my father, Uncle Albert and a few other men were talking about putting the anvil into the back of my father’s truck.
11:9TipiLiving
Uncle Albert was working in the barn one day when a stranger wandered in and stood quietly, while this taciturn Yankee farmer eyed him. He must have eyed the stranger very closely, as the man was carrying a heavy steel ball, attached by a chain to his ankle.
As Skip told the story, the man asked for help. It is hard to imagine today, but Uncle Albert simply asked what the man needed.
The man said he needed a chisel and a hammer first off. After that, a meal and dry place to sleep for the night would be much appreciated. He offered to work in return.
Now, when I knew Uncle Albert, he was a gruff, mostly silent old man. His back was bent from years of hard work and he had a twinkle in his eye, and hands so big and rough it was like grabbing onto old leather work gloves. Uncle Albert lived, until he was maybe 90, in that old farmhouse with his sister Annie. They still had the horses that had pulled farm equipment, although in my memory, nobody really worked on Uncle Albert’s farm any more.
