Blue

People say you cannot remember stuff from before you were born. Hanno remembered something he did not know how to place. It seemed like it had happened before he was born, but he knew that he could not sell such a claim. There was a light-blue uniform field full of bubbles — not bubbles of gas that drifted to the top; these were more like globules suspended in the blue entity. There was no me as an observer separate from the blue. There was no beginning, no end, no time passing, and no space traversed, just blue with the slightly illuminated globules.

If Hanno had been asked to report his earliest memory, this would have been the first. But he could not call it similar to or different from some other memory. He could not say it was before or after. It was just blue and enduring.

Homestead

After Hanno grew up, he drove back to the old place once. He could see nothing but hundreds of acres of corn divided by the familiar network of gravel roads. He turned into a narrow lane where the mailbox had been. He drove over foot-high weeds with rows of corn swiping each side of the car. In two hundred yards, the lane quit. It had been used by trucks to haul out corn and fodder at harvesttime.

Hanno got out of the car and walked across the corn rows to where the old and new houses had been. He found a small patch of rubble at the top of the slope. Fescue grass mixed with the weeds. The well and the cistern had been filled in with rubble. A broken crock stuck out of the ground. Between two rocks was a clump of exotic flowers that had once been on Grandma Celester's rock garden. Hanno returned to the car and drove away.

In the soil among these cornstalks were a thousand stories. There was the story of a man, sold into bondage as a young lad, who had the courage to run from his illegal servitude. Later he had the courage to leave a bleak but secure setting in Kentucky to take his family by canal boat into a forested wilderness in Indiana. Life was to begin anew. There was the story of an ambitious daughter-in-law and her gentle but widely respected husband who built a two-story brick colonial house in an isolated location. There was the story of social and economic collapse as corporate coal interests dominated. The Oglesby homestead became only a memory, just like the Native American village that came before. Buried among these many cornstalks was the story of Hanno himself.

We go back to 1928. Although Hanno was born in the only hospital in Linton, Indiana, his recall of self began as a child who grew up on an isolated one-hundred-acre farm. Neither public gravel road nor private driveway led up to his house. How the roadless homestead came to be is one of the many stories across the bridge of time.

Hanno learned of thrice-told tales of his heritage. His maternal great-grandfather, Richard Oglesby, discovered this magical place. He was known as the bound boy. When not yet a teenager, he was sold into bondage by his father. It was 1814, and he was in what is now West Virginia. Once sold, he lived in a hayloft with pigs down below. He had first dibs over the pigs each day for the kitchen scraps. As the weather became cold, he ran away. This was not at all surprising. But having been blindfolded and tied down in the bed of a wagon when sold, he knew not which direction was home.

He found and followed the Ohio River for a good ways. It was a wandering escape. Fearing capture while on a packet boat, he turned south into the Kentucky hill country. Eventually, he found himself in Flemings County. A gristmill family adopted him, and he grew up helping run the mill.

As the wooden linkages of the mill became old and obsolete and after his adoptive parents died, Richard removed his wife and family by canal boat to Point Commerce near Worthington, Indiana. He then went across wooded land from the White River to his chosen area on high ground.

The year was 1854. Hanno's grandfather David was four when his family crossed over from Kentucky into Indiana.

As Richard and other old settlers moved in, their efforts were at odds with the welfare of the Native Americans. Rather than living from the richness of natural growth, the settlers were clearing land and fencing off fields and pastures.

This high ground that Richard discovered had once been an Indian village. On this ground in past centuries, happy times, hopes, and fears were experienced by the Plains Indians who prospered among the cool summer breezes while hunting, gathering, and planting.

Even in Hanno's time, with each spring plowing, he and his brothers found arrowheads and other stone artifacts. Like other old settlers, Oglesby cleared part of the virgin timber for farm fields and pastures. Part of the forest he left for firewood and wildlife. It was well populated with squirrel, muskrat, opossum, skunk, beaver, and raccoon.

As the European invaders established their colonies and moved west, the style of life of the Plains Indians was threatened by the sheer numbers of people staking land claims. Until then, it had been open, sacred, and free, but the arrow could not compete with the gun. A state was named. As a feeble honor, they named it Indiana, but, amid hundreds of sad tales, the Native Americans had to leave it behind.

The land seemed flat, and you could see for miles. Richard had staked it out in a prior visit. Both he and his wife, Louisa, were excited to face their new life full of unknowns.

For the settlers of the frontier, clearing land and stumps accorded the same respect as would be gained today from serving well in public office. Both contributed to the community's well-being. After centuries of seeking happiness, the sad exit of the Native Americans coexisted with the hope of the new settlers.

Clearing the land, however, was not the first order of business. One must dig at least one well. Without the well, water had to be hauled from a nearby stream to meet livestock and family needs. Hanno's great-grandfather, like many others, hired frontier well diggers to do this in advance of the family's arrival.

The second priority was to secure proper shelter for the livestock. Their protection was more urgent for family survival than building a house.

Richard Oglesby's house was among the last of his construction projects, and it is clear that his resources were running low. The house was partly of log and partly of rough clapboard. Barn latches were used on the doors. The interior was never fully subdivided. However, it was large, strong in structure, and warm in winter.

After the Oglesbys settled in, Richard and Louisa were blessed by an influx of German immigrant...