Jon

Jon, a tough old bird from Iceland, woke up at 5:30 every morning without the benefit of an alarm clock.  

On this Monday morning in early May he sat on the edge of the bed for only a moment.  He stood and stretched his 5 foot 11 inch frame.  Years ago he was 6 foot 2, but time had stolen a bit of his stature.  Despite his age, he was still what people called big boned, and without any fat – not even the hint of a paunch around his middle.  He looked like he could still hold his own in a bar brawl, but his fighting days ended long ago.

He bent down to put on his deerskin moccasins.  Then he walked to the bathroom and started seizing the day.  He began by washing his massive work hardened hands; his fingers were gnarled and thickened by decades of farm labor  Each paw carried several nasty old scars that stood out on his sun darkened skin; the tips of the ring and little fingers on his left hand were MIA due to a mishap involving the power take off on his father in law’s 1949 Ford N9 tractor.  Farm tools are unforgiving.   Next he scrubbed his arms with their rope-like muscles and the bulging blue veins that snaked from his wrists to his biceps.  While shaving, he looked in the mirror and saw prominent cheekbones, deep set grey eyes, a long nose, which hooked to the right, and a extremely wrinkled forehead.  When he was 19 he broke his nose in a scuffle with a local thug who had disrespected his girlfriend; he never had it set.  Because he spent hours outdoors throughout the year his face, like his hands, was always tanned.  Some dark brown spots dotted his nose and cheeks; for years his grandson’s wife, Alice, said he should have a doctor look at them.  He dragged a comb through his brilliant white hair, with little to show for the effort, because his hair was as thick as a sea otter’s coat and had a mind of its own.  Finally he brushed his teeth.  He inherited the kind of teeth and smile normally reserved for movie stars and CEOs who had money to waste on cosmetic dentistry.

He returned to the bedroom and dressed.  He used to buy his clothes from Sears; now he gets them from Fleet and Farm.  They always appeared to be new and immaculate.  In the warmer months, he put on tan khaki work pants and a khaki shirt.  In the cold months he wore wool pants and shirts with a plaid jacket.  When the extreme cold invaded Door County, he wore  long underwear, a heavy sweater and a down filled vest under his jacket.  He laced up his sturdy leather work boots, which he treated with mink oil every Saturday so they always looked new.  Finally he donned an ancient fedora.  This was the only unkempt part of his wardrobe; it had a few holes, a noticeable white ring of dried sweat just above the brim, and some grease stains.  His wife had given him the hat on their first anniversary.  He wore it every day, except in the winter, when he wore a traditional Icelandic knit cap with earflaps.

Jon made the bed and put away his pajamas.

He went into the kitchen, where coffee was the first priority.  He filled an ancient percolator with water from his tap and spooned a generous helping of Folgers into its metal basket.  Before putting the coffee on the stove he cracked a raw egg over the  grounds, something his wife taught him.  He pulled two more eggs, three breakfast links, a jar of grape jam and the butter dish from the refrigerator.  He fried the eggs and sausage in a heavy iron skillet.  While they cooked he toasted two slices of Wonder Bread.  When the toast popped up, it was burnt.  Jon buttered the blackened bread and smeared on the jam.  He ate at the kitchen table with its faded Formica top and shiny metal legs.

This was the hardest part of his day.  At breakfast he missed his wife, Mary, the most.  The kitchen was hers.  All the appliances, utensils, containers, pots, towels, refrigerator magnets, the toothpick holder, salt shaker, pepper shaker and pictures on the walls reminded him of Mary.  Everything he touched or saw brought back memories of the thousands of hours they spent together in the kitchen, where they dealt with the tragedies and comedies that arose during their 43 years of marriage.  It was before breakfast one morning when he found her dead in front of the open fridge.  An artery near her heart had exploded and she died instantly.

While he ate, he listened to the local news station on the radio.  Like all farmers his main concern was the weather.  He needed to mow the orchard.  He was glad to hear that the day would be dry and sunny.  He didn’t really care about the rest of the news.  As a younger man, he would get aggravated about politics; those days had passed.

At 6:45 the phone rang.  

“Yeah.”

“Hi, grandpa Jon.  It’s Alice, could you do me a favor? Could you watch Niles today?  My parents ate some carryout tacos from Marcos’ Restaurante last night.  Now they have food poisoning.  It’s not pretty; their internal and household plumbing are both getting a workout this morning.”

“Sorry to hear that.  Hope they’re ok and drinking lots of water.  Bring Niles over whenever you want. I have some work to do in the orchard and barn.  He will have to stay out of the way”

“Thanks.  I’ll tell him.  See you in a few minutes.”

“No problem.  Bless  bless.”  

Bless bless is goodbye in Icelandic.

Having Niles for the day was the finest news Jon could ask for.

Ten minutes later Niles ,who was 6 years-old, ran into the house.  Alice let him cross the road and go to Jon’s house on his own although she watched him from her car before leaving for work.

Niles and Jon went to the barn and pulled out the same Ford tractor that nipped off the tips of Jon’s fingers.  While Jon drove, Niles stood between the tractor seat and steering wheel.

They rolled out to the orchard and began mowing between the rows of trees.  Jon let Niles steer and shift the gears, while Jon worked the clutch pedal.

It was a cool late spring morning.  The trees were in bloom and the grass was long.  This was the first mowing of the season.

Jon said, “Did you hear about the couple from Door County who went to Florida and adopted a very short Italian boy?”

“No”, Niles said.

“They went south for a little son.”

Niles laughed because he was too young to groan.

One bad joke followed another.

Extreme joy overcame Niles like an avalanche.   He loved everything about this moment.  He inhaled deeply and took in the smell of the newly cut grass, the scent of the old oil from the tractor and the pungent aroma from Jon’s White Owl cigar.  He felt comforted by Jon’s arms which held him tight.  Since the rows of apple trees ran east and west, the sun warmed him while they tooled up one row and down the next.

Niles relished how Jon talked to him.  Jon spoke a mixture of Icelandic and English.  Kind of like Spanglish; one might call it Icelish. Niles understood every word.  Most adults ask kids the same questions; the most common query was, “How’s school?”  That was not Jon’s style.  Between the bad jokes, Jon told stories about his life, from his early years in Iceland to how he came to America.  He talked about apple trees, the names of the birds and insects they saw, the types of clouds the sky held that morning, how the weather would change during the day and why, he talked about the tractor engine, and much more.  Jon had a deep knowledge of many things.  He was like an information faucet and Niles was the sponge that soaked it all up.

After completing the mowing, they put the tractor away. 

Jon said, “There were some caterpillars nesting in a couple trees out there.  We better take care of those buggers.”

He went to a corner of the barn and took down an ancient two-gallon galvanized steel spray can that contained insecticide. They walked back into the orchard.  While Jon sprayed the trees without a mask, Niles stood 30 feet upwind so he would not inhale any of the poison.  Jon did not have to tell Niles where to stand.  They had done this before.

They went back into the barn.  

“I gotta work on this mower deck, the belts are slipping and the blades need sharpening, you can look around the barn on this level or down below, but no climbing up into the hay loft.”

“Yes, langafi“, Niles said, using the Icelandic word for great grandfather.

This was a new level of freedom for Niles.  Last fall Jon considered him too young to explore the barn on his own because it was full of rusty, sharp and heavy equipment.  But farm kids grow up fast and Jon felt Niles was old enough  Alice might not agree.