Summer Squash

Abstract

the hero in a novel by John Fox Jr.; he could have been The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come. For her part, Addie had many of the qualities that made Harriette Arnow's character Gertie Nev- éis so appealing in The Dollmaker, and that Wilma Dykeman gave to Lydia McQueen in The Tall Woman. It is a tribute both to the novelists and to the Ledfords that the art of the former imitates the lives of the latter. When she died quietly in her sleep on December 12, 1987, Addie Ledford was six weeks short of her 103rd birthday and six days shy of the 84th anniversary of her marriage to Burnam. She was ready, finally, to go and join him, as he had asked her to do nearly five years earlier. And with her passing, a remarkable story spanning two full centuries of continuous history and remembrance came to an end. Beginning with the birth of their great-grandparents in the late 18th century, Burnam and Addie chronicled the lives of seven generations of forebears and descendants. They were the balance point of that saga, the essential voices uniting past and present and future. After them, there is no one who remembers the 19th century, and no one who has actively worked to keep the oral history skein unbroken. Some of the story is recorded.* Addie remembered that the last time I saw her. She had been telling me about her father, logging on the mountainsides above Clover Fork in Harlan County in the late 1800s with the help of a few strong men and eight yoke of oxen. She was lost in thought for a minute, and then she said: "So you've got it all written down somewhere , have you?" "Yes," I replied, "just like you and Burnam told it to me." "Well, I told you the truth. Everything I told you is the honest truth, and that's a fact/' She was at peace that day, alwaysserene and content, just the way I remembered her being the first time I ever saw her. She knew her truth, and it had set her free. *In 1983 the University Press of Kentucky published Generations, an award winning book about the Burnam family. Summer Squash rise in the middle almost three feet tall with leaves eight inches across that canopy the tiny, white gold gourds, slowly pan old Helios' ore and siphon into them the sun to help them swell to fruit. Some, in only the first stage of miracle, are large, slightly fringed ochre stars, petal precursors of squash. The green mosaic dome keeps itself. Jimson weed, morning glory and lamb's-quarters find little purchase here. Grass blades stand short for lack of light; a few pale green stems stretch toward the roof. This July morning bumble bees tryst with the golden blooms. -Harry Brown 65 ...