Gene and Maggie Part 1

Nobody Saw it Comin’

Listen to the audio narration on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/SBay0rKTkxI

Walter Phillips was a hard-workin’ man who thought through things an’ always had a plan. He’d learned from experience to prepare for the worst. It was bound to show up someday. It always did.

Walter went to work as a farm hand in 1935, right about the time Germany was beginning to believe they could take over the world. He was twenty-one years old. He’d worked on his family’s farm in Madison County, Iowa, ‘til they nearly lost it at the height of the depression.

Sellin’ it for forty cents on the dollar got ‘em outta debt, but it left their youngest son without a job. Like always, he figured out how to make it work. He always seemed to be able to do that.

After hearin’ a friend say he’d found work on the R. W. Child’s farm in Adair County, Walter borrowed his father’s car an’ drove there the next day. He’d work for Mr. Child’s until 1942 when he was called up by the draft to serve in the war. Nearly six years of trainin’ with Mr. Childs, a man he respected, who saw some of himself in this fine young man, helped make Walter the innovative thinker he would always be.

He met Magdalena Rose Jensen in March 1939 at a Saturday night square dance in Greenfield, about five miles from Mr. Child’s farm. Walter loved to dance, but he was an even better fiddle player. Handsome, too. Whether on stage or on the dance floor, he knew how to have fun an’ nearly ever’ girl in town had her eye on him. Maggie took the challenge an’ she won.

Livin’ in the area all her life, Maggie had seen Walter in town. He was seven years older’n her, so he never looked back when she looked his way. But in 1939, Maggie was nineteen years old. No longer a child. It took time for her to grow into a woman who would catch his eye, an’ when she did, she made sure he remembered who she was.

Maggie didn’t wait for him to ask her to dance that night. She marched right up to him, her chin held high, her bright blue eyes sparklin’. “Walter Phillips, you’ve been fiddlin’ for these girls long enough. Now let’s see if you can keep up with me on the dance floor.”

Walt’s grin was like the sun creepin’ up over a field, slow an’ certain. He tipped his hat an’ said, “Well now, Miss Jensen, let’s find out.” That night they spun an’ stomped until the fiddler’s arm gave out. By the time the music stopped, Walter had her hand in his, an’ her laugh all tangled up in his heart. That’s how Maggie did things. Full force, no apologies.

Peter, her father, had lived in Iowa more’n thirty years, long enough to sound like an American farmer most days. But ever’ now an’ then, his Danish cadence slipped into his words, remindin’ folks that part of his heart still belonged to the country he’d left behind as a young man.

He grinned at Walter, warnin' him, “That girl is full of piss an’ vinegar. She’s a feisty one who don’t mind a good tussle to prove her point. Best you know what you’re gettin’ into, son.”

At first, that was what made ever’thing so excitin’. Walter was the quiet type. Maggie, just the opposite.

They were married on November 29, 1940.

Maggie threw herself into marriage the same way she threw herself into ever’thing else, with full determination, an’ not a lick of doubt. Walter thought she was the strongest woman he’d ever known, but even he couldn’t have predicted just how much she’d have to bear. They lived with her parents while Walter split his time between the Child’s farm through the week an’ his in-laws farm at night an’ on the weekends. The plan was to save their money an’ buy their own farm in a year or two. Life was good.

A year later, Pearl Harbor threw our country into war, an’ five months after that, on April 30, 1942, Walter was inducted into the Army Air Corps as a Staff Sergeant. He’d leave Greenfield to lead a team of fellas who had a knack for workin’ on machinery. Only now they wouldn’t be fixin’ tractors an’ combines. They’d be buildin’ an’ reparin’ B-17 bombers at MacDill Army Air Base in a place called St. Petersburg, Florida.

Maggie wasn’t about to let Walter go to Florida without her, but it wasn’t just love that drove her determination. Maggie had never set foot outside the state of Iowa, an’ the idea of travelin’ to someplace as exotic as Florida set her heart racin’. She packed her bags with more excitement than Walter had ever seen, talkin’ about palm trees an’ ocean waves like she’d already been there.

“I’m your wife, Walter, but I’m not just taggin’ along to keep house,” she declared. “I’ve spent my whole life lookin’ at cornfields. I want to see somethin’ new. Besides, you’ll need me down there. Who else is gonna make sure you don’t forget to eat?”

When Maggie left Iowa, her younger brother Darrell was just about ten years old, runnin’ around the farm with his best friend Gene like a couple of colts fresh out of the barn. Gene’s family lived in Grinnell, nearly a hundred miles away, close to Maggie’s grandparents, and since these boys became friends as toddlers, they found ways to spend time together whenever they could. Herbert, Gene’s daddy, drove a delivery truck part time, and when he was drivin’ anywhere near Greenfield, Gene came along with plans to see Darrell.

Maggie barely noticed ‘em, too caught up in the whirlwind of leavin’ Iowa and startin’ this new chapter with Walter. But by the time she returned, three years later, Darrell an’ Gene were nearly fifteen, their lanky boyhoods were gone. Gene, especially, had grown tall an’ broad-shouldered, with an easy confidence that could almost make you forget he was barely old enough to shave.

From the spring of 1942 until September 1945, when the war ended, Walter an’ Maggie made a life for themselves in St. Pete on 7th Street under Florida’s royal palms an’ moss-covered oaks. Walter worked long hours on the base, buildin’ an’ repairin’ planes to keep the war effort alive.

Meanwhile, Maggie found her rhythm in a city far from the farmlands of Iowa, makin’ friends with other wives who had come from places like Omaha, Nebraska; Youngstown, Ohio; an’ Boston, Massachusetts. They were more used to diggin’ out of a February snowstorm than buildin’ sandcastles on the beach. Together, they soaked up the sun as a far-away war changed the world.

Walter loved the work he did, but it was the evenings he enjoyed most, sittin’ with his wife on the porch an’ dreamin’ about the future. For those few years, life was sweet an’ easy, just like the breeze that drifted through their home.

When I’s a kid, the only time I heard Daddy talk about somethin’ that made him truly happy was when he remembered his time in St. Pete. But in 1951, six years past the joy of newlyweds livin’ their best life in the Florida tropics, the worst would come knockin’ on the door in Iowa.

When the war ended in 1945, connections made with new friends from around the country an’ around the world had to end as well. Ever’body packed up an’ went back to wherever they’d come from. Maggie hadn’t realized how much she’d miss the sunshine until she was back in Iowa, with early September rain peltin’ the windows an’ the cold seepin’ into her bones. When she left St. Pete in September it was still hot, but she had barely unpacked her suitcase before she was lookin’ for her heavy sweaters. She tried to hold on to the happiness she knew in Florida, but the quiet of farm life wouldn’t let her.

Walter brought her home in their 4-door sedan. He was on a three-week furlough an’ would return to Florida at the end of the month to finish up his duties at the base. He would be home again, this time for good, right after Thanksgivin’. But before he left, they received word from Darrell that the James Mackey farm would be up for sale in the spring.

When so many men went off to war, Darrell an’ Gene quit school to start work in town at the co-op. At fourteen or fifteen years old, they were too young to join up, but old enough to work sunup to sundown. Along with another dozen boys, the co-op provided rooms for ‘em to sleep in, built for just this reason, an’ board at the diner across the street. If you were goin’ to hire teenagers, an’ you expected ‘em to show up for work every mornin’, you’d have to keep an eye on ‘em. Money in their pockets would burn a hole tryin’ to get out if they didn’t have some guidance.

After Darrell caught wind that the Mackey farm was about to go on the market, he an’ Gene came home to share the news with Walter. When Maggie stepped out onto the porch an’ saw ‘em walkin’ up the path, she did a double take. Darrell still had that same boyish energy, but Gene? The boy she remembered was gone. Now he carried himself like someone older than his years, an’ it caught her off guard. The last time she’d seen him he was just a boy runnin’ around with Darrell. Now, he looked like he belonged alongside the grown men.

The talk that evenin’ circled around the farm, what Walter knew of the land, an’ whether it was worth takin’ a look. It didn’t take much convincin’. The next day, Maggie’s parents joined Walter an’ their daughter to make the 12-mile journey to Orient, Iowa, an’ the Mackey homestead. While the Jensen farm was the first one outside Greenfield city limits, the Mackey’s were about as far south from town as you could get an’ still be in the county.

Maggie’s father, Peter, knew this place well. The Mackey family had farmed this land for more’n a hundred years, ever since arriving from Ulster, Northern Ireland, in the mid-1800s. Now, James Mackey was the last of his line.

He and his wife, Elizabeth, had raised three sons here, but war had taken ‘em all. The oldest died in the Pacific in 1942 when his aircraft carrier, the USS Yorktown, sank at the Battle of Midway. The second fell in North Africa at the Battle of Kasserine Pass in 1943, where the Germans handed the Americans their first major defeat. Their youngest, the surprise child born when James was fifty, was barely eighteen when he landed on Normandy Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and never made it home.

James had been proud of his boys, proud of their service, proud of the country they died for, but he was tired. Nearly seventy now, he and Elizabeth were ready to move to town with their spinster daughter, Mary Beth. There were too many ghosts on this land.

After touring the farm and spendin’ time at the kitchen table with James and Elizabeth, it didn’t take long for Pete to nudge Walter toward makin’ an offer. Before the farm was even on the market, earnest money was exchanged, an’ a handshake sealed the deal. The papers would be drawn up an’ ready to sign come spring. Until then, Walter would work alongside Mr. Mackey on weekends, gettin’ the lay of the land. It was ever’thing he’d hoped for.

On September 20th, Walter left Iowa for his final trip to Florida. Without him, Maggie’s world felt emptier than she’d expected, an’ the days stretched long an’ lonely. She told herself it was just the weather, but that restless feelin’ inside her wouldn’t settle.

She kept busy helpin’ her mother with the chores an’ chasin’ her little sister around the house, but nothin’ filled the quiet like Florida had. Knowin’ she’d have her own home soon was excitin’, but it still felt a long way off.

Darrell an’ Gene stoppin’ by nearly every evenin’ after work was a welcome distraction. Their laughter filled the kitchen while Maggie made coffee, the house feelin’ a little less empty.

Gene had shot up since she’d last seen him, his boyhood all but gone. Maggie found herself more aware of him than she meant to be. Darrell had picked up a second job at the hardware store an’ often left Gene to finish whatever task they’d started together. He’d help Maggie carry wood or feed the livestock while they talked about nothin’ an’ ever’thing all at once.

Somewhere in those evenin’s together, Maggie became “Mags.” It felt so natural, they hardly noticed it happenin.’

She was enjoyin’ his company more’n she should’ve. Even when she told herself it was harmless, she knew better. They were playin’ a dangerous game, an’ she felt the pull of it stronger ever’ day. But the excitement of listenin’ for his boots on the porch was irresistible. The whole thing just kinda snuck up on her, an’ before she knew it, she was in up to her neck.

Walter an’ Maggie had been married ten years to the day when she delivered her second son, Evelyn Lee, in 1950. His older brother, Leland, had turned four in July, four months earlier. Right from the start, it was clear, this new baby wasn’t gonna have an easy go of life.

I mean, just look at that name. Why in the SAM HILL (Walter’s favorite minced oath) would you name your boy Evelyn? I never knew where it came from, an’ when I asked, which I did plenty of times, I’s ignored. By the time I sat down to write it all out, that poor boy’s name was one skeleton that would never make its way out of the closet.

A few weeks after Evelyn’s birth, it was clear. Maggie was very sick.

It had started a year earlier, the day after Christmas in 1949, when Maggie came down with the ‘flu, or at least, that’s what ever’one thought it was. Her low-grade fever, body aches, an’ fatigue hung on longer’n expected, an’ her cough never fully left her, not even when spring came.

The first three months of 1950 had seen extreme weather conditions that only made Maggie’s slow recovery harder. It was one of the worst winters she an’ Walter had ever lived through. Severe blizzards an’ constant snowfall created enormous snowdrifts that swallowed up fence posts an’ trapped whole communities.

The entire state of Iowa—the whole Midwest, for that matter—shivered under a thick blanket of snow an’ ice. Travel was nearly impossible in some areas, an’ food an’ medical supplies had to be air-dropped into stranded farms.

It didn’t get quite that bad on the Phillips farm, but the daily burden kept Walter on edge, always on guard. He fought against snow an’ sub-zero temperatures that threatened his livestock an’ outbuildings. Makin’ sure the animals had enough food an’ water, battlin’ frozen pipes an’ frostbitten hands, filled his days.

He’d been doin’ this work for years, but this winter tested him like none other. Ever’body’s life was at risk, human an’ animal alike. An’ it wasn’t just the physical toll, either.

The weight of it all, the endless fight to keep roads around the farm clear, the long hours spent seein’ to the livestock, the constant worry over Maggie’s health. It all drained him. By the end of the day, Walter barely had the strength to fall into bed. Some nights, he was too tired even to eat.

Maggie’s three-year old son, Leland, required much of her time an’ energy. Household chores an’ helpin’ Walter with the farm durin’ such extreme weather would have been difficult in the best of times. When Maggie got sick, it was more’n she could manage, an’ Walter could see the cracks.

Maggie’d been through hard times before, but this was different. The fire that had burned so brightly in her had dimmed, flickerin’ against a cold wind she couldn’t fight. Walter watched her in the kitchen, his brow furrowed, the worry set deep in his bones. Maggie brushed off his concerns like she always did, sayin’ she was fine, but he knew better.

The truth was, the Maggie he’d married, the Maggie who marched right up to him an’ demanded a dance, was fadin’ away an’ he didn’t know how to stop it. He had to find a way to help her.

Walter still believed hard work an’ determination could fix most things. He had no way of knowin’ that some troubles had already slipped beyond his reach.

Listen to the audio narration on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/SBay0rKTkxI