The Old Man and the Rocketship

The Old Man as a Boy Who Grew

"Whatcha got there boy?" Jed's father once found him at eight years old hiding in the backyard tree. Not so high as to be dangerous but still out of sight of parents and nosey sisters, young Jed sat there straddling the lowest and largest branch. Sheepishly he held up the book

"Just something from the school library paw."

"Readings fine, son, but there's a time and place for things. Save that for the evening when you're trying to relax. As for now, there's real work calling. Get yourself down here and help your mother with these chickens." Sighing, Jed did as he was told, but he couldn't see anything especially relaxing about Captain Nemo trying to deal with the terrible menace of a giant squid. Much better to try and concentrate on that while one was refreshed and awake. As soon as his chores had been done Jed was back on the branch breathlessly reading. His mother had to call him an unheard-of five times for supper that night.

In the 1930s Jediah had discovered Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. He also read what later became known as the pulps. Magazines like The Shadow, Captain Future, Science Wonder Stories, and Amazing had been treasures rarely possible in the hard economic realities of living on a farm during the Depression. At night, after saying good night to his parents, Jed had secretly climbed out of his upstairs room window to lay on the porch still warm from the Ohio sun, and stare with longing at the distant stars.

Then the war came, and he saw his chance to see faraway places. He became a submariner, a crewman second class aboard the USS Bowfin. At the time it seemed like the closest thing to being in a space ship and certainly, there were elements of the experience that reminded him of Captain Nemo. But nothing he had read prepared him for the general discomfort and the startling moments of horror that occurred in wartime service. Still, the guys, his shipmates, had been great and he had learned so much about sub-construction that he had even been offered a job in the Quincy shipworks in Massachusetts.

But Jed was the only son, and the farm called. It offered familiarity, security and, furthermore, it was a treasure. The cost of working that treasure lay etched in the face of Jed's father, a well-plowed countryside which Jed studied, and on which it seemed new lines and furrows appeared yearly--especially during the dry times of the thirties. And yet the soil was good, and if the weaker stone was eroded what was left was granite in strength. Jed loved the chiseled features of his father's face, admiring the strength it suggested. So there really was no question about where he would go after completing his tour of duty. Jed had returned home to take hold of the plow handle, which had--during his father's time--metamorphosed into a tractor's steering wheel. Dad deserved some rest.

Still, Jed dreamed of faraway places. A lot of farm work can be done with one's mind in neutral, not nearly so much as a city slicker might think, but enough to allow Jed time to think and wonder. One day while parking the red tractor into the barn, his eyes fell upon a pile of scrap metal his dad had brought in for odds and ends, and a strange idea, as strange ideas will, lit up his brain.

Soon his mother began to hear alien sounds coming from the barn. She knew the noises of labor; her husband had built a good number of the pieces of furniture within their home. However, this din was not the familiar hammering, sawing, and drilling made in the shaping of wood but was, instead, new and strange. They were the squeals and roars of metal being bent and pounded, of being riveted and welded. And when Jed came in at night, he was elusive about what he was working on back there.

Then came the arrivals from the Army Surplus Catalog. By this time Jedediah's father was too ill to notice and his mother was of the tradition which said that the maintenance of the farm was the man's responsibility, meaning she did not question how much was being spent. Still, she did wonder. It was in the early spring of March that Jed had towed out the rocket from the barn. His mother and wheelchaired father sat on the back porch as he proudly paraded it by, heading for the launch cradle he had constructed in walking distance from the front of the house, not far from the interstate.

"The boy's plum crazy" his father had whispered to his wife. She smiled and was then surprised to feel his hand reach for hers "Still I can think of worse things to waste one's money on. He's a good boy."

The gentleness of his father's disapproval had surprised Jed. He'd been certain his dad would rail about the waste of time and money.

"Your father made some mistakes when we were both young," Jed's mother told him. "He ran with some men whose betting habits were expensive. A friend of his lost his homestead. The family traveled out west and was never seen again. But we heard sad stories about being homeless and not finding work and other things. We would have lost the farm ourselves if it hadn't been for your grandfather." Jed remembered the old man who had suddenly had no place to live and had come to squeeze their family home a little more with his own presence. Jed had blushed and then remembered his own resentment. No one had ever said anything.

It was during that spring, close to Easter, that Jed's father passed away. He remembered pressing Easter lilies his mother had been given by the church into his face, smothering his grief in their aroma, desperately hoping that the scent of the resurrection, would overcome the foulness of death in his own nostrils.

He'd met Edith Willaims, that summer. The talk about town concerning the rocketship, which sat so visible from the interstate, had made him a bit notorious around the town. It was around then that the adjective "crazy" got added to Jedediah's name. However, Eddy had not seemed to mind it. She didn't share his interest in other worlds or science fiction either. She did like sitting in the rocket's cockpit, but she liked it because they could talk there privately. And the angle of the ship pointing to the stars assured that they would both behave themselves. Jed married her the following year.

During the fifties when the sky had a new star called Sputnik sailing across the heavens, popular interest in things scientific and space jumped. Several newspapers carried stories about Jed's rocketship, which he christened The Excelsior because so many reporters asked, and it was during this time that the Stalker farm became a stop for tourists. Jed had purchased a cast-off flight suit, which Eddy had modified to fit the spaceship theme, and began to pose for shots with families who wanted a spaceman to be seen with as well as a rocket. Eddy was a little embarrassed, and Jed later thought perhaps he should have been. But it had been fun. Still, the farm needed maintaining and Jed had to make a clear schedule for visitors to follow and limit his appearances.

At one point he had gotten a call from a talent scout from Hollywood who had seen a photo of him beside The Excelsior. Back then Jed was a good-looking young man in the same mode as Buster Crabb, the famous swimmer turned space hero. However, Jed had turned the offer down. He didn't want to go to either California or Hollywood. He had seen enough of human variations during the war. His interests were in ports farther away and more exotic.

And so the years passed. Edward was born and Lacey a year or so later. Jed's own mother's pride for her grandchildren almost exceeded her delight in the farm's prosperity. Eddy was a marvel at organization and bookkeeping. And the disquiet she had felt when Jed and Eddy had taken over her old room, the master bedroom was soon replaced by the quiet sense of the rightness of things. When the time came to lay her down beside her husband, Jed realized the gift of peace she had brought to their home.

Farm life is a good life but a hard one. Ed Stalker had no real desire to be a farmer. He worked hard while growing up which left him little extracurricular time for school activities. At college, he studied physics and then joined the Navy. He ended up in law enforcement. Lacey, meanwhile, loved the farm. Early on she had been a regular at 4-H. Later, she grew tall like corn, tall and flaxen-haired like her mother, and joined the girls' basketball team. After graduation, she lived in a small apartment in town while working in a pharmacy, but she was keeping company with a young man who was part of a large family who owned a farm down the road. Eddy and Jed had hopes.

Still week in and week out, Jed made his way to the rocket ship, lowered the ramp, climbed aboard, raised the ship's nose to the stars, and did a test firing. During those moments he'd stare out at the distant lights and wonder and wish.