The following essay serves as chapter 7 of One Grew Up in the Cuckoo’s Nest.
The previous chapters focus on my preteen years and my later teen years. Our times spent in activities on the grounds of Danvers and Medfield State Hospital and my first employment as a farm hand were prior to my senior year at Medfield High School. My subsequent employment in housekeeping and nursing service played out the following four summers after my graduation in June 1967. This chapter focuses on one eventful evening and night that changed my father’s professional path forever. This event was also an harbinger of different ideas which would transform institutional mental health care by the early 1970s. April 23rd, 1967 is the date. Mother Nature struck a little over a month before my graduation and I had a front row seat to her seminal bolt of lightning.
The Night My Father Cried
Recollected and Written
by
Mark R Ellsworth
The day was humid, strange for the time of year. Spring in New England might be warm one minute and snowy the next, but an early evening thunderstorm in April was not a frequent occurrence. I was babysitting my six year old sister. For the life of me, I cannot remember if my younger brother was home with me too. I do remember that my parents were visiting friends in town for a few hours. It was already dark when the storm came up suddenly. I have an intense respect for thunderstorms as I experienced their power during the many summers I spent on our family farm in Becket. The Berkshire farm was nestled in a valley between hills on Bancroft Road. That road connected Chester to Middlefield Mass.
As a youngster I had witnessed lightning strikes that struck trees behind the farmhouse while simultaneously finding the lightning rods on the roof of the house. Strikes so loud that my ears would ring along with the party line phone that dared you to answer. I was taught at a young age, never pick up the phone, never sit on the toilet and never go near a tree during a storm. (Sadly some cows didn’t learn that lesson.) I heard horror stories from grandparents, uncles and aunts of fireballs entering the house slowly spinning while moving through it. I listened to stories of lightning hitting the house and discharging itself in a crisscross pattern across the floor from outlet to outlet. That story told by my aunt who I believed to be a great athlete as she explained her avoidance of the deadly crisscrossing lightning was only accomplished by her leaping into the air and landing up-right on the couch. After one violent storm at the farm I remember my uncle opening the door to the basement and telling me and my cousins to listen. He explained that the zapping pinging noise echoing up the stairs was produced by the lightning arcing between two copper pipes while it slowly grounded itself. Lightening storms in Medfield had their fair share of close strikes too. Most flashes would strike the railroad tracks that ran behind the pastures and barn. Other bolts would strike in the marsh and the Charles River that were located beyond the tracks. Close enough to be startling loud but not close enough to see any visible damage. This early evening in April 1967 was different and I saw it happen!
Fascinated by the light show, I went to a window in the den. Our home was a two family home and we lived on the second floor of the home. Looking out across the lawns, the Clark Building lights were in my view. My view to the right found a large pine tree. It was located in our side yard a few yards from Hospital Road. Down through some fields, as I looked to the left, the large barn, silos and dairy parlor came into my view. During a lightening flash the two story gray hulking barn structure would be visible. It’s roof line was the anchor for large spires. I believe they were ventilation ducts for the massive hay loft located directly under the roof. This loft covered the entire second floor of the barn. It was full of hay bales numbering in the hundreds at that time of year. On the main floor of the barn heavy farming equipment such as the hay baler and the long necked harvester were parked for the night. To the right of the barn as you faced it was an attached one story dairy parlor. At the angle of my view from the window, it was in my sight. Attached to the left of the barn was a long one story cow barn housing approximately 120 Holstein cows locked in their stanchions. If I remember correctly there were two farmhands attending to the cows. They were in the process of milking, feeding and bedding them for the night. The low cow barn was blocked from my view by the massive hay barn. Just behind that wing was another low structure attached to the large barn. It contained stalls for birthing calves, paddocks for young cows, heifers and the occasional bull! The whole complex was guarded by tall silos. Some filled with grain but most filled with silage. Silage is comprised of chopped cow corn and stalks sticky with molasses. A high energy food for the cows and in at least one instance rocket fuel for the barn fire.
The bolt of lightning was low and surprisingly slow. It appeared in my view to the right and above the Clark Building. It steadily zigzagged in a ragged fashion right to left across route 27 and over the low farm house before blowing a hole in the roof just under the ridge line of the hay barn. Within seconds flames burst up through that hole. In shock, I dialed the phone number of the friends my parents were visiting. A hard moment was at hand telling my father his farm was on fire!
My ensuing memories of that terrible evening and night are not connected in my memory’s timeline. I do not remember calling Medfield’s town fire department. But they came as did other neighboring town’s engines and crews. I do not remember running down to the fire after my mother entered and I was relieved of my unfocused baby sitting duties of my sister. I do not remember coming back up to the house and collapsing on the couch in the den with the now famous, (to me), window just before false dawn.
This is what I do remember. Standing fifty yards or so from a towering inferno. The flames now fully engaged in devouring the barn. Flames leaping hundred’s of feet into the sky. A silo top burning hot like the rear end of a rocket engine lifting heroes into space. Seemingly miles of fully engorged fire hoses crisscrossing the ground. Each nozzle held by two or three fire fighters as they trained water up on the conflagration. The heat was sun hot! This fire had many voices. Crackling loud like my Grandfather’s voice when he wanted to gain my attention to a new chore in the hay field . However this night the crackling was so loud; it sounded like thousands of peeved grandfathers barking new orders! The sounds of the water turning to steam as it feebly tried to tell the fire who was the boss! I remember wishing the thunder storm wouldn’t leave. Maybe it’s earlier downpours would help my father and the other shadows of men trying their hardest to slow down this huge flaming monster. The lightning still flashed as a dimmer backdrop to the red and white hot flames. It was too dark to see any smoke except when it was illuminated by the lightning left over from the retreating storm. This raging blaze produced muffled sounds that I first thought were explosions. The next day I learned they were the sounds of the burning building floor’s weakened beams giving way. At that moment the burnt twisted metal of heavy farm equipment parked on the main floor was discharged into the basement.
The barked orders and warnings of firefighters sounded muffled to my ears. Their outbursts pulsated in pitch under the fire’s attended cracks and steamed screams. From my position, standing near a fire pumper truck, I suddenly realized that the apparent goal of the firefighters was to save the milking parlor, other silos, the low farm house and the tractor sheds in front of the burning barn. The main barn was lost. The fire blocked my view of the aforementioned low cow barn which was attached like an airplane wing to the left side of the burning fire ball of a barn. The next day I would see that Dad, the farm hands, the firefighters and others had used water to protect that structure too. More importantly the two farmhands on duty had saved the lives of the hundred (or so) cows by evacuating them out of the barn. They herded them down to the farthest reaches of the pastures close to the railroad tracks. I do not know the amount of heifers living in the other stables, if any, that night in April. I do know that no livestock perished.One of those farmhands was a fellow high school student working part-time for Dad. Both of them were heroes in my eyes!
The sun was up viewing the smoldering rubble of a once proud structure of a barn. Approximately two hours after I had retreated to the couch in the den, Dad came up the stairs. As he walked by me I could easily see he was completely soot covered except for two tear streaks canyoning his charcoal cheeks. Dad moved quickly by me heading to the recesses of the bedroom. No words, no looks, no sounds. My father’s tears told me this was the end of a dream for him.
Following the fire, the cows were transferred to other farms. Dad’s new office was a gutted dairy parlor. Chickens soon to follow the cows to new homes if not the butcher’s block. While I was in college, I worked summers in nursing mostly in the Clark Building. During those years, Dad still had the landscaping, a few vegetable gardens, the maintenance of any remaining state vehicles and snow plowing. But it wasn’t the same. His title remained but in reality he was no longer a head farmer. The hay pastures were loaned out to neighboring farmers in Dover and Sherborne to cut and bale hay for their cows. Dad transferred to Wrentham State School in the early 1970s. He was in charge of their maintenance and what was left of their agricultural operations. They gave him an apartment and for ten or so years he commuted from Yarmouth Massachusetts. Down on the Cape he and my mother bought their first home in 1971. I was newly married and living in Westfield Massachusetts when they moved to the Cape. My young sister was still in school and graduated from Dennis-Yarmouth High school.
Before I end this chapter I have to share the question I asked him during the days after the fire. Dad are you and the State going to rebuild the barn, so you and the cows can take care of everyone here at the State Hospital? That is the day I learned the life as I had known it at the State Hospital was coming to an end. It might take some time but this type of care was deemed too expensive for the state budgets. A new focus of community mental health care was to be the coming model. De-institutional planning was to be the new game in town. No need to invest in farming when someday there would be no patients or staff needing a glass of milk, a fried egg, or a rhubarb pie. I only hope that today someone is mowing the grass around the grave markers of those who were left behind.
The eighth chapter of this series of essays is titled Going to the Chapel for Movies?
Thank you for reading.
Be in peace and joy!
Mark