C.E. Skilling
Sawnee
I’d run the road there, from our place to hers
sprinting half the distance, burning up my toes
I’d eat two breakfasts on the way
between our place and Bernie and Joes’
It was summer vacation for me
and this mountain top was my home
discovery awaited me every moment
with 500 acres waiting for me to roam
Her cabin stood just off the dusty road
hidden by the apple trees she called her love
she chased deer out of the yard with a broom
but to us kids, she was gentle as a dove
She’d been a vaudevillian with her sister
and tramped the mighty stage
her bedroom had all the clippings
and I loved to flip through them page by page
I’d get my second breakfast there
as we’d talk of this and that
for I was only seven years old
and at times quite a brat
She’d tell me stories of her time
when “hoofers” were kicking high
a time of great live performances
before film took over and produced a fat thigh
From when the cane came out
‘cause the boos’ were to loud
and management feared more than tomatoes
might come from a rowdy mining crowd
To the times when a song sung by a maid
wrenched at the hardest of their hearts
and the men in the audience, reached for their hankies
no longer seeing upon the stage simply tarts
For now they saw them as angels
or sisters trapped in a hurricanes swirls
the men would cry and stamp their approval
as the barroom would for a moment, notice these tiny girls
But now she was old
and the source of many wondrous tales
when John Wayne would punch their noses
and Gabby Hays would trip on pails
She was a sister of a friend of a friend
but to me she was a second mom dear
I hold her here in my memory
and bring her out now, to show all here
You’d have liked her
this gravely voiced old maid
she had a heart of solid gold
and even at seven, I would have loved to have stayed
But the world waited for me
and I packed her tales in the waxed paper there
I’d bring them ‘round again for the telling
when the stage was once again quiet and bare
I’ll listen for the echoes of light feet; tap, tap, tap
or a song echoing there in the hall
a time when Sawnee and her sister
might once again, sing for the bawdy miners
one and all It was the spring of her life
and she loved it so ….