Where the sky turns from an azure blue to a rosy pink the delicate new
moon rests with its points toward the evening star. From these two
jewels of heaven, the sunset sky grades away to a misty, mysterious
horizon. The gray distance is offset with a delicate lacework of the
autumn-stripped hedge of poplars with their slim, graceful lattice work,
reaching to points in the pink, and where the dark earth and the white
road come to the foreground, two great apple trees with their gnarled
autumn boughs frame the scene of simple beauty as it fades to night. As
I entered the kitchen of a little old farm house, which people who eat
there choose to call the “Aviator,” cheery voices and appetizing odors
greeted me in preparation for the evening meal. The clean tile floor,
the whitewashed walls, the low-hung, richly stained rafters, and the old
walnut chest by the brick fireplace all made me think of Aunt Maggie’s
old kitchen where the pies and the cookies were kept, and that makes me
think of other fireplaces and other rafters—and the folks at home.
So I just sit down to the oilcloth-covered table and try to tell them
what a restless, twentieth-century lad thinks of the environment of his
parents’ childhood.