The Heirloom

The Heirloom

“What’s that?” asked Austin.

“A cowbell. Haven’t you ever seen one?” I replied.

“Okay, I know what a cowbell is. Why are you keeping it?”

“It’s a family heirloom. I can’t throw it away.”

My husband rolled his eyes and sighed. As an only child, he seldom seemed to have an affinity for anything related to family history. I’m not quite sure since it seems he should be the one to carry the repository of his family stories. But no, that is and has been my appointed chore my whole life. I am the collector of family lore-my own and his, the researcher into ancestry, the keeper of tangled family trees. And I don’t mind. Who I am is a collaboration of generations, and it is my duty to absorb as much as I can and then pass it on to the next generations. 

“Okay, I’ll bite. Why is that cowbell going to our house instead of to the auction to get rid of all of your parents’ conglomeration of doodads?” asked Austin.

I did understand my husband’s reluctance to spare even an inch of space in our house for what seemed to him to be “junk.” We had just spent an entire week cleaning out my parents’ home after the death of my mom who had lived in the house for 55 years. My dear husband took 96 large garbage bags of trash to the dump which included 42 old telephone books stored in the cabinets above the refrigerator. Every grocery receipt for at least 15 years had been neatly folded quadruple times and placed in a large soup tureen on the sideboard in the kitchen. In a wooden trash bin about 3 feet high, my mom had placed every church bulletin since the death of my dad 40 years earlier. Then there were the over 100 sympathy cards she received after his death tucked away in a box in her closet. We even donated the World Book Encyclopedias circa 1975 along with the year books through 1985 to a local charity shop along with books she would never read again. It was a monumental task that at first seemed to have no end. When we finally whittled the mountain of items down to the pieces to be auctioned, the last item sitting in the middle of the den floor was the cowbell.

           Not a cowbell, but The Cowbell. A cowbell that once had been around a cow’s neck, but became The Cowbell that was the source of my family lineage going back at least four generations. And I had all but forgotten about it. Until now. Suddenly, the stories my dad had enthralled me with as a young child about the origin of the cowbell and the role it had played in our family history flooded my mind with images of survival and joy. Why had I not remembered this once important piece of our story? Why had I not passed it on to my children?  With new resolve to enlighten my son and daughter about their heritage, I stopped staring at the copper bell and texted my daughter and son to meet me at MiMi’s house as soon as they could get there. 

           I love my children, but sometimes it truly irks me that they respond to a text faster than they will answer an honest-to-goodness phone call. My daughter replied first, as she usually did. “Hi, Mom. What’s wrong? I can’t get there until 5:00…I work, remember?”

Mark seldom replies immediately, so I was pleasantly surprised that he even answered within 10 minutes. “Mom, I’m kind of tied up right now. Can I come at 5:00 when Stella gets there?”

5:00 it would be. Four hours to remember as much detail as possible of the stories my dad had handed down to me. I felt guilt over not remembering the bell or the stories for the last 40 years. Maybe I had pushed all those memories of being with my dad and listening to his storytelling into a forgotten corner of my mind after his untimely death. And where had the bell been for the past 40 years? No way to get an answer to that question. One thing I knew for sure, though. I would tell the stories and keep the flame of family knowledge burning so that my children and grandchildren could weave them into their history.

“Austin, I’m going to stay here until Stella and Mark come at 5:00. I want them to have one more look at MiMi’s house, and I need to tell them about the cowbell.”

I expected Thomas to give me his look that meant that I was being overly sentimental about the house and the contents. But this man to whom I had long ago pledged to be with through better or worse often surprised me with his own sentimentality. He walked over and gave me a hug and kiss…an unspoken but loud expression of solidarity. I saw the tears glistening in his eyes and knew that he understood that I needed space to process the closing of this chapter in my life. 

Sitting in Mom’s glider rocker, I caressed the bell and then rang it as hard as I could. Each clanging note seemed to pull me into a long ago time when I sat cuddled up beside my dad and listened with wonder and pride about my ancestors and their connection to the cowbell. In that moment of reflection, I was transported to the year I was nine, and I could hear my dad’s voice as clear as if he were there with me now.

“Maggie, listen carefully as I ring this cowbell,” Daddy said. “It will reveal a wondrous history of our family, one that I want you to always treasure.”

“Yes, Daddy,” I said with a serious expression on my face. I had seen that cowbell sitting on the mantle over the living room fireplace and had wondered why it was there. Now, I was going to learn the answer to my questions.

“First of all, I have some photographs to show you. They’re part of the story. It’s important to me that you understand who these people are because they helped to form in small measure who you are.” With that Daddy pulled out of an old photo album a picture of a young boy in a military looking uniform. I could tell it was very old because of the cardboard type backing and the color wasn’t black and white as much as it was gray and white. His clean-shaven face broadcast his youth and his somber look told me that deep down in his soul he must have been afraid. “This is your Great-Great Grandaddy Benjamin Collins. He was sixteen when this picture was taken at a studio in Charleston, South Carolina. He ran away from home so he could join the Confederate Army to fight in what is called the Civil War.. He left home as a child and returned four years later as a man.”

Daddy paused in his story and took a deep breath. I knew him well enough to know that he had an important point to make. I sat quietly wondering exactly what it would be. “Maggie, war is absolute hell! There was absolutely nothing civil about that war or any war. I know. I’ve been through war, and I can tell you that the sacrifices men make when they go to war often overshadow the reason they go to war.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, but I nodded. I wanted him to get on with the tale of how the cowbell became important.

“I imagine that you are trying to understand how in the world a cowbell has anything to do with this story.”

My eyes widened. How did Daddy know what I was thinking?

“You want me to get to the cowbell part, and I will,” he said with a slight chuckle. My daddy surely knew me well.

“When the war ended in 1865, Benjamin was with General Joe Johnston’s army that surrendered at Bennett’s Place which is near Durham, North Carolina. Once he was paroled, Benjamin began the long trek home. At times he was able to ride a train, but because of the war, many rail lines had been torn up and walking was the only way home. Benjamin knew that if he could get to Wilmington, he would probably get on a boat headed to Charleston.”

I interrupted because I had a question that bothered me. “Daddy, what did they have for food?”

“That’s an excellent question. They had to depend on the kindness of strangers or forage in the woods for food. There were no grocery stores or restaurants along the many miles between towns. Benjamin was already skin and bones from the war, but the trek home took what little reserves he had to put one foot in front of the other. He was traveling with a group of four men also going to Charleston, none of whom he knew before he started home. Somewhere between Fayetteville and Wilmington, they had run completely out of food. They were literally starving. There were few farms along the way and most of them were run-down with little to offer in the way of a place to sleep and get a meal. As they stopped to rest, Benjamin heard a familiar sound, the clanging of a cowbell. Wandering in the woods was a poor excuse for a cow, but it was beautiful to their eyes. The men looked in all directions to see if there were any people or any other cows. It was just the one. As hard as it sounds, they killed the cow right there and divided it among them. None of the others thought about the cowbell, but for Benjamin, it was a talisman, a symbol of good fortune that he would make it home.”

“But Daddy, why did they have to kill the cow? Why didn’t they try to find the owner and see if that person could feed them?”

“I know it sounds cruel, but when a person is starving, he doesn’t often have the luxury of using good judgement. But I’ll tell you what Benjamin did do. He kept looking for a home or farm near where they found the cow and made a promise to himself that if he ever had the money or the means to help whoever owned that cow, he would make reparation. Do you understand what reparation means?”

“I think so. Does it mean a kind of payment for something you did or stole?”

“Basically, yes. And do you know what? Benjamin did that very thing five years later. But back to the cowbell. For Benjamin, the cowbell represented hope in the face of despair. When he finally made it home, he made sure that he put it in a prominent place in his house in order to see it everyday and remind him to keep hope in his heart.”

“Is that why it’s important to our family? To remind us to always have hope?” I asked Daddy.

“It’s one of the reasons, but there’s much more to the story. After Benjamin finally arrived home, he went to work in Mr. John O’Hare’s mercantile store, like a huge grocery store with more than just food. Within a year, Benjamin married Mr. O’Hare’s daughter, your Great-Great Grandmother Nellie and in 1867 their only son, Thomas, was born. Thomas is your Great Grandfather. Now fast forward 19 years to 1886. Do you know what happened in Charleston that year?”

“There was a hurricane?” I guessed.

“That’s a good guess, but the most fatal event of that year was in August. Can you believe that the worst earthquake to have ever happened on the East Coast was centered around Charleston? No one had any idea that an earthquake could happen there, but it did. Thomas was working in the store for the summer before going back to the Citadel. On the night of the 31^st, he was putting up stock after it had closed when close to 10:00 p.m. he felt the building begin to sway. Then a wall collapsed, a beam fell down from above barely missing his head, and he was suddenly knocked to the floor by a barrage of items thrown off of shelves onto him. He later told my father, William, that he thought he must have died because he had no memory of how long he lay in the rubble. Can you imagine how scary that was? When he came to, he heard people yelling and calling his name, but he couldn’t say anything. He tried to move but he was pinned down. His right arm was the only part of him that seemed to be free, so he began moving it and felt something hard at his fingertips. He could tell that it had a small handle at the top and realized it could possibly be the cowbell. Slowly, he managed to lift it up and began shaking it. He told my father that he had never heard a more beautiful sound. His father heard the clanging of the cowbell and directed rescuers to Thomas. Once again, the cowbell had saved a member of our family. Here is a picture of Thomas and Benjamin in front of the collapsed store taken after the earthquake. Look carefully and tell me if you see something important.”

The photo was old and grainy looking, but I immediately knew why Daddy showed me this picture. “Thomas is holding the cowbell!” I said excitedly.

“Yes, and that cowbell was displayed proudly in their home in Charleston. Because of the earthquake, Thomas did not go back to the Citadel. He helped his father rebuild the store and found his calling in construction. He and his best friend Arthur Haynes started their own company in 1887 which is also the year that Thomas married Arthur’s sister, Elizabeth. Here is a picture of them on their wedding day. I think they look rather grim for a newly married couple, but that’s how photos were made in that time. I understand from my dad that his mother actually had a wonderful sense of humor, but you sure wouldn’t know it from this, would you?”

I looked at the stern-faced couple and wondered what part of them I had in me. I was considered a rather serious child by those who didn’t know me; however, I liked to laugh and tease with people when I was comfortable with them. “Daddy, did you know your grandparents? Am I like your grandmother Elizabeth?

“Yes, and that’s a good thing. You have her ability to find the joy in small matters plus stand up for what you believe even at your young age. Now to the next part of the story of the magic associated with the cowbell. As I said, Thomas and Elizabeth married in 1887 and a year later they had my dad, William Thomas Collins. One night when he was eleven, my dad woke up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water. He heard a crackling sound as he came down the stairs and saw that the kitchen was on fire! He grabbed the cowbell off the mantle and frantically rang it to wake everyone in the house. Because of his quick action, everyone of his family made it safely out, but the house was destroyed. Once again, the cowbell saved the family. What do you think of this seemingly unmagical-looking object, now?” Daddy asked.

“It’s almost like there is a magic genie that keeps protecting our family! Is there more that happened?”

“No more life-saving events as dramatic as these, but it has continued to be a part of our family heritage. You see, when my dad grew up and married your grandmother Vonda, she took on the role of caretaker of that cowbell. She wouldn’t let any of us play with it. She claimed it had special powers. My brothers and I kept trying to sneak around and grab it and ring it, and oh brother! When my mother heard that clanging, she’d come roaring into the living room threatening to kick us out of the family. Of course, we knew she wouldn’t do any such thing. To us, there was nothing special about it, but we were just kids. What did we know or understand? 

“What changed your mind?” I asked.

“In 1943, I was drafted into the U.S. Army. After boot camp, I was sent to the China-Burma-India theater of war as it was called. One of the most important morale boosters was mail. And every letter I received from my mother, sisters, and brothers ended with these words- ‘We will ring the cowbell when you come home to us!’ It may sound far-fetched, Maggie, but those words gave me hope that I would get home. I was mature enough by then to realize how that one seemingly insignificant object represented resilience and determination. So now you know why I want you to also treasure it.”

My reverie was suddenly interrupted by a knock on the door. “Mom, where are you?”

My children had arrived. It was time to pass on to them their heritage.