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(This story includes two strict fathers whose domineering personalities do not allow their adolescent children any input into the tasks of growing up with subsequent tragic consequences.)
PROLOGUE…
"You know Les, y'all needs to grow up sometime, and your time is now, sonny boy. Fur sure!” Evan Chapin had no idea on how he might respond to his 16 year old son's plans to quit school and begin building a house for him and 14 year old Molly Barr who was growing up on another farm in the same section of our county...
Les's problems with his “Diddy” began only a few hours following the infant’s passage into this “vale of tears” when his mother died from an acute hemorrhage, an “unforgiveable sin” in his father’s estimation of things, and a sin for which Les would be punished his entire life…
On his 16th birthday April 1st, 1961 Les announced: "I's quittin' goin’ to school diddy, cuz I'm jest wastin' the teach's time. Can’t never read since first grade days, an so why go on? Instead I’s goin’ to build a brand new house for Molly Barr an me."
Mr. Chapin replied gruffly: “might ask y’all where did ya plan to build such a house Les? Ya have no land that I’m aware of sonny."
The confident boy then looked straight into his Daddy's eyes, waited momentarily to fire himself up, then stated without fear: "up on ole Bunker Hill, if you’ll give me that acre or so up there. I's hopin' anyways that ya will help me out a jest bit diddy."
The forever-domineering father would continue his efforts to discourage such an idea: "and money? A new house will cost a tidy sum of dollars ya know."
The son stood his ground: "I's no dummy an I’d saved more than five-hundred jest plowin’ people's driveways the last few winters an my boss at K-Mart is gonna give me 40 hours an some overtime, now wid me havin’ no school no more."
Evan Chapin was soon turned and the father began to truly relish the son's idea for this new house to be built on his property; after all, the family situation was less than ideal considering that Evan, Les, and Les’s older sister Julie were currently living in a two bedroom shack that was once the farmstead’s old barn. The family found itself forced to “simply make do” and move after Les had burned down their house playing with matches…
Evan Chapin gave his four year old son, who he already didn’t like, the worse beating with his belt he would ever give the boy: "told ya over and over Lester, never play with my matches. But y’all didn’t listen to me, and now ya know whenever I tell ya somethin’ – I do mean business. My commandments are as sacred as God’s own Ten Commandments. Fur sure!"
MOLLY BARR…
As quickly as Tom Barr had listened to Molly and Les telling all about their marriage plans and the brand new house Les had begun building, the man knew he would never allow it, and he told his woman that night in bed: “our girl’s never gonna marry that boy, certainly not at 17! Not when Molly’s twenty or thirty or forty or fifty even!”
Tom’s baby sister Evie lived in Ashland with her husband and two young toddlers and the woman was sick with something called “short gut syndrome” and Evie couldn’t eat much of anything and she was becoming weaker by the day, and the doctors didn’t know the cause, but suspected cancer and had scheduled Evie for her admission to the hospital, where they planned for the unhealthy woman to undergo numerous tests…
Thus a mere three days after Molly received her diploma, Tom Barr put his eldest child on a Greyhound Bus to Ashland: “it’ll only be til your Aunt Evie is back on her feet and able to care for those kids; and Molly this will be good experience since you plan to train as a nurse. Anyways, thanks for takin’ care of my sister. God’ll surely reward you.”
Molly arrived home on July twentieth after spending six weeks in Ashland, and as soon as she was back, the very next day in fact, her father and mother drove her to the community college for an interview they had arranged with the school’s Director of Nursing…
After this normally-obedient daughter was finished with her father’s community college business, and had been provided with a packet of information, and had been scheduled to take the National League of Nursing Exam in two weeks to determine if she indeed had an aptitude for such a career, an irate Molly stormed outside toward her Daddy’s truck yelling: “YOU DID ALL OF THIS WITHOUT ASKING ME? HOW COULD YOU? YOU KNOW ABOUT ME AND MY LES’S INTENTIONS!” After a calming interval, she added in a more respectful tone: “what about my brand new house?”
Molly’s mother became afraid and just sat there, but her old man had more than enough proverbial “piss and vinegar” for both and retorted: “Molly, we’re never gonna have any daughter of ours marry that illiterate boy who can’t write his own name – for God’s sakes girl, grow up!”
“Les is smart enough! He’s clever and knows how to build a house – a very pretty house, if only you and Mom were willing enough to go and see it.”
Mr. Barr refused to hear a single word on the subject of Molly marrying Les Chapin, and sat there silently despite the anger seething just beneath the surface…
Molly’s response was brash and direct: “Well dearest Daddy, I’ll have you know I’m pregnant! I’ll be eighteen in November and, you’ll be a grandfather by Christmas!”
Tom Barr searched his wife’s strained and tearful visage for some possible answer, but received nothing but continued sobs; this helpless father looked to Molly and desperately denied her condition could even be possible: “if you was four months already, your belly would be bigger.”
The daughter immediately lifted her loose-fitting blouse and revealed that she was certainly looking like a pregnant young woman: “there, are you happy now?”
Molly Barr would be admonished, then forced by her father to be sent to a half-way house in the city, a place for wayward, underage girls, and after having Lester Chapin’s son on 12/6/80, she decided to never return home; Molly got a job as a waitress instead; she would never attend nursing school; finally, the 18 year old woman admitted it was the end of her loving an “illiterate boy who can’t write his own name.”
Molly’s father had subjugated his daughter with his will: “I’m bigger than you Molly Barr! My will is stronger than steel!”
LES CHAPIN…
I can still recall every Saturday afternoon during an unusually extreme heatwave of our summer in the year 2001, this “stinky” farmer would enter my father-in-law’s country store after filling his 1980 Ford pickup and his 10 gallon spare can at the gas pumps and ask one of us three usually-busy clerks if we could hose him off: “how ‘bout if one a ya fellas jest squirt me fur five minutes, no more, ya knows, jest ta take the edge off this smell of me and my duds?” Les Chapin was certainly odoriferous, if one might describe the fellow employing the kindest term. The forty-one year old smelled like the barn he was used to living in and was simply imploring one of us to somehow wash that country stink away…
Then either “Big Pop” or his twenty-two year old son William, who was studying accounting at St. Thomas College, or maybe I would take time and oblige this lonely farmer who all three of us pitied…
In truth, anybody who accidentally spent an unsavory moment near Les, anytime somebody happened to bump into the man, they would either laugh at him or pity him, sometimes a bit of both…
It was the beginning of August, actually Saturday 8/2/80, and I offered to be Les’s hose man that day. I had completed my first year as a nursing student at our county community college and was currently taking Microbiology as a summer course to get it out of the way. My wife Miriam had recently delivered our third child in five years – another son! That’s three kids – two boys and one girl in the middle after our daughter Cindy had been born on the “Fourth of July” in 1997…
I worked twenty-four hours every weekend at Pop’s store, while my wife cleaned for her Mom; we stayed in the new house, which had been built on ten acres of land above where the store, with its large older house, and the big barn that housed a Shetland for pony rides stood; we spent every Friday and Saturday night there. I attended classes Monday through Thursday, and during the week we stayed with my mother in town to save by not having our own place…
The children loved weekends there with that pony, and the big swimming pool, and the pond filled with large mouths, pickerel, perch, sunnies, blue gills, and then every once upon a time our eldest boy, five year-old Jeff, would hook onto a large channel cat and everybody had fun with that; Jeff referred to his Pop and Granny’s place as “The Resort!”
After getting “washed off” so to speak, Les asked me: “how much did ya want for the water? I knows water ain’t cheap these here days. Me own well seems to have run perty dry.”
“Let me get your tab for today Les and I’ll be right back. By the way, the water’s still free.”
“It’ll be forty-five for gas, another ten for the 5 pound chunk of minced ham and a pound of soft salami sliced the way you like it – not too thin.”
The still-aromatic man, with only half of his teeth intact, smiled and handed me three twenties; I returned a fiver for his change: “thank you sir for your patronage and we’ll see you again next week.”
Every Saturday afternoon, at about four, things would be concluded almost-exactly the same: “thanks for that free water, may God bless ya.” Then the fellow would get into his old truck and leave us to complete the final four hours prior to cleaning up…
THE BRAND NEW HOUSE ON BUNKER HILL…
When Les was sixteen, the lad up and quit going to school after he had fallen “hid over heel in love” with fourteen year old Molly Barr, who lived on her parent’s homestead down the road about five miles from Chapin’s. The Barr Family was made up of the father Tom and the mother Opal, six kids, a solitary cow, a mule for plowing, a herd of red-faced goats, and a bunch of free-ranging chickens…
By contrast the Chapin family was made up the father Evan, Les, and his older sister Julie; the boy’s mother had died birthing him and that was that; Les was not what his teachers would call a bona fide student; the boy couldn’t read “one lick fur startin’ out an it’s why I’s quittin’ after wastin’ my teach’s time for years.”
Mr. Chapin protested his son’s decision until he would finally listen to the young man’s plan for marrying Molly after he had built them a brand new house on Bunker Hill: “if ya’ll give me that plot a land Diddy, I’d be grateful the rest a me days.”
This particular Bunker Hill sat on slightly more than an acre of land about half a mile from the Chapin’s previously-described living quarters… “Well Les, it seems you’ve a plan, but tell me, how have the Barr’s taken to it?”
“Me an Molly haven’t asked fur nuthin’ from her folks yit, but we’re gonna do it jest as soon as my woman’s graduated an our little house is builded.”
The father remained skeptical: “and money to build your little house on my land?”
“I alriddy saved five-hundred or so from plowin’ snow these couple a years an my hours at K-Mart will now be 40 a week, with maybe overtime – now that I won’t be goin’ ta school. An I’m gonna git a loan from the Miners National Bank up town.”
“Are you sure the bank’ll lend you money?”
Les was confident in his and Molly’s plans: “My boss at K-Mart Mr. Jones said they would cuz I had a good character an was known as a hard worker. Also I had nuff money down an that’s all ya need ta git more money from a bank.”
By the time Les was nineteen and his Molly was 17 and almost graduated, the couple’s home was more than half built; the planned place with its three bedrooms; a dine-in kitchen; a living room with a practical "hide-a-bed" couch and two large, comfortable "easy-boy" chairs for "jest sittin’ or maybe watchin' television a bit." There would also be a regular bathroom with a modern tub and indoor plumbing, instead of a usual outhouse, with Saturday night baths next to the kitchen sink in a cold, unwelcome metal washtub…
THE LETTER…
When Molly’s letter apologizing to Les, prior to stating that their “baby son had been adopted by a very nice family who could afford to raise him” – and then finally adding: “I’m never returning to become your wife Les, because my father won’t permit me to marry you. He's bigger than I am and has a will that's stronger than steel. Why should I return to such sadness that will amount to nothing good for you or me?”
After his distraught sister had read it in silence, she gazed sadly at her brother before finally reading “The Letter” aloud to him…
Les wandered outside without his coat while squeezing “The Letter” and he stalked up to Bunker Hill, where he sat down on the large swing he had recently added to his and Molly's house and began rhythmically rocking; winter’s cold, harsh wind blasted Les Chapin repeatedly in the face, but the young man remained there in place suffering for almost two days; Les had nothing to eat the entire time except for the paper that Molly’s final sad farewell had been written upon…
Les would eventually return to the make-do old barn and announce: “I’s stoppin’ all buildin’ on me an Molly’s home.”
The Miners National Bank would assume control of the construction site after buying the property it stood upon from Les’s father…
Three months after Les’s losing Molly and his son, Evan Chapin and Julie were killed in a late winter snow squall wherein a total white-out occurred; 37 vehicles crashed on I-80 in eastern Ohio; three of those cars, including Mr. Chapin’s 1993 Ford Station Wagon, ended trapped in a fiery pileup beneath a tractor-trailer…
EPILOGUE…
On Tuesday September 11th, 2001 Les’s decaying body was discovered and the fellow’s autopsy revealed he had died from heat stroke…
Strange as it might seem, Les Chapin’s last moments, hours, days, weeks – don’t honestly know the precise word to select here – but the man was discovered sitting alone at the kitchen table with his Bible; and although everybody had apparently been told for the longest time that Les could never read, his copy of the “Good Book” was open to the Old Testament’s “Book of Job” – to Chapter Thirty-one, with verses 16 through 18 carefully underlined: “Have I denied anything to the poor, or allowed the eyes of the widow to languish while I ate my portion alone, with no share in it for the fatherless, though like a father God has reared me from my youth, guiding me even from my mother’s womb?”
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