Tramping on Life

* * * * *

I have a vision of a very old woman walking over the top of a hill. She leans on a knobby cane. She smokes a corn-cob pipe. Her face is corrugated with wrinkles and as tough as leather. She comes out of a high background of sky. The wind whips her skirts about her thin shanks. Her legs are like broomsticks.

This is a vision of my great-grandmother's entrance into my boyhood.

I had often heard of her. She had lived near Halton with my Great-aunt Rachel for a long time ... and now, since we were taking in boarders and could keep her, she was coming to spend the rest of her days with us.

At first I was afraid of this eerie, ancient being. But when she dug out a set of fish-hooks, large and small, from her tobacco pouch, and gave them to me, I began to think there might be something human in the old lady.

She established her regular place in a rocker by the kitchen stove. She had already reached the age of ninety-five.