Finished

Yesterday I finished the second reading of 'Between Times' and have a better grasp of it than the first one gave.

The title is most appropriate: it isn't 'time' but 'times'.  There are several 'times' through which Drum lived. (Sometimes he was Ben and sometimes Drum; in the series he started out as Ben, then for a while was 'Bear' and later Drum.

In the second book he was pretty consistently 'Drum'.  He seems to have been too young for the war and later too old.  Of course Henry had very clearly a life time hatred of War;  he and I met at the Quaker meeting in Greenville, a 'peace group'.

In Between Times (290) we find both Ben and Drum; Ben returns from the war and goes to 'University' while Drum (from an earlier generation) moves to Asheton.

Later in 290 Millicent meets a ghostlike figure she had known in former years.

After reading 'BT' twice I've come to feel that it's primarily a fantasy with many appearances of people after death to those who experienced love from and for them. In later posts I mean to put emphasis on those episodes.

Spirit and Flesh

"The face he had seen was his." 'Between Times' 232.
Through the book (up to this point) we seem to meet several (at least two) Drums.  In particular the one celebrated in 'Summer Boy' and the one in most of 'Between Times' seem to be different (or the same!).

The quote from page 232 suggested (to me at least)  that the two Drums met momentarily (and collided).

Other moments suggest this, and this one sealed the idea for
me.

(Of course the Japanese man is a great example.)

I began  to feel that this idea could be the crux of the meaning of the story.

The Dark Woman

In a letter from Drum to Mora on 138 he spoke of a "large dark skinned woman" who said, "let me take her Ryder"

In a letter from Mora (139-410) to Drum he had something to say about the 'Dark Woman'.

It harks back in my mind to the 'large dark skinned woman' who was so prominent in 'The Summer Boy'

On page 48 of that work we read:
" 'huge woman (dark skinned) let out a whoop and folded him into her ample bosom"; that was Calley.

Might it have been Calley who spoke to Drum as Ryder? 

urakami cathedral

On page 1-2:
"The American knelt beside her mother-in-law during prayers at St. Mary's cathedral
in Urakami District.....
The world ended without warning....no sound, no shift in the earth...
all the souls they had sheltered were transmuted instantly into light."

On first reading this can only be a quandary.  It's resolved near the end of the book.
On page 299 Drum is looking for an assistant to replace Polly Coggins who "ran off with
Tadahito or Mura or whoever he was."

If you research Urakami you may realize it was in Nagasaki that the second atom bomb
incinerated Urakami's Cathedral and 10,000 Christians.

Jonas Healed

Jonas had been bitter and angry since the death of his wife and children, but when
he found that he loved Drum, the bitterness and anger fell away to be replaced by
page 35: "for he lived now not only for himself but for each soul who had been
joined to his".

Read on to page 48 "Lorraine (his dead wife) had come to visit and smiled down
at  him and laid her hand lightly on his chest" read on! Was this a dream or a
vision? Who can say?

Life and Death

Near the middle of the story, on page 133 I read:
"From behind her chair her father's voice [dead?] startled her...
'you should read those.  You really should...
glad though surprised somehow that he has stayed on with her
.. you seem to know a lot about things  for a dead man...
...wishing she might reach up and touch his hand as he fades
into the wallpaper."

Wow! Who is dead and who is alive!

As you read this book, you may recognize continuing incidents of that
sort.  They become more prominent until at the end you may realize
that many of the characters appeared 40 years early in 'Summer'

My first recognition of a ghost.

Rest

On page 156 of 'Between Times' the lovely song spoke emphatically to me.
It spoke to experiences of long ago, when I was a pastor of an unruly
congregation. The Smokies was some distance, but there were times
when I felt a strong compulsion to repair my soul in the highlands.

I drove some distance to Cherokee, the gateway from the eastern side.
Going up that highway was a healing act for me; as the elevation
increased one by one my church concerns dropped away.  When I
got to Newfound Gap, parked and got out of the car, the concerns
were all gone, to be replaced by a mind filled with gratitude and joy.
Oh what liberation!

"I need to go awhile away
-------------
And all my cares forsaken
and in the space they used to fill
I feel my soul awaken"

A lovely poem by a gifted poet!

Death and Birth

Jonas came to this isolated place after losing his wife
and daughters Emily and Lucy something he had never
got over.  On pages 34-5 his new friend mentions a dream
about two sisters of the same names. This provokes sadness,
but it also marked the moment when his grief was subsumed:

"The love he had known had not been erased....nor his
grieving, for he lived now not only for himself, but for each
soul who had been joined to his."

Many people have occasion to grieve but happy is the one
who takes that tremendous step from Death to Love.

Beginning

This blog will now focus primarily on 'Between Time'.
On page 15 Henry described a hike of Drum and Jonas.
Among other things I picked out this sentence:
"Now the resurrected trees bore their mute witness to
the transience of death and the abidance of renewing
life."
Amazing! Written by a poet, a naturalist and quite a
few other things.

Between Times

This post simply records Henry's gift of the book;
you  may expect more posts to come.

Chariots of Fire

The miracle occurred  on page 162:

Rider (Bard's alter ego) came and found Mad Davey dead, Bard's best friend  a few days after Brad had left on his pilgrimage. Rider filled his fairy bowl breathed into it and raised his rivener high over his head, he tuned his heart, his mind his spirit, his whole body to one soul's plea, and called down heaven's fire upon Davey's house.

A flash of searing light and heat...the concussion of blue sound..made the Rider and and the earth beneath him flinch and tremble....Davey,s house blossomed into a great flaming tower.

"Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven" (2 Kings 2:11)


 "Give me my chariot of fire"

Laurel

Laurel is a fictious place, but perhaps better said a state of mind (or spirit)

In the Southern Highlands rhododendron and mountain laurel are the two most common plants in higher elevations.  Henry chose the name, 'Laurel' to refer to the area where 'God's chosen people' lived.   A generation of good people lived in that area.  But like Heaven there was two way traffic; some 'bad' people wanted to improve themselves so they moved to Laurel; and conversely some of the people in Laurel chose to drop to the majority and go with the flow.  (to me this seems roughly  comparable to the hardshell Baptist distinction between the Lost and the Saved; those is Laurel are saved while the others are Lost; the author likely had other things in mind when he made the  distinction.)

(The author commented about Lizbet as follows:
Note on Lizbet (p.92): Lizbet's family live in the Laurel, down in the Dismal beside Dark Fork. There is some Shadow darkness in Laurel, too, although Light generally prevails over it there. See Map. http://thesummerboy.com/map.html 

In The Summer Boy the word 'laurel' is mentioned often, but it wasn't until Robberlee, speakng as the gray family at the ferry (Even their clothes were ashen beyond life)  that it was used as a place:
"Robberlee chuckled, “I’m the only fool in the Laurel who ever wants to go the
other way.” (page 66)

The opposite of the Laurel is the Shadow; speaking of the 'gray people':

"Unchecked, their need to subdue and diminish all about them would have wrecked the whole

world. So they were set apart into Shadow until such time as there may be a Mending. But for the

Separation Maker has wrought, we who live in the Laurel would be vanished from the earth and there would be none here to sit in Council.

All of us are still in the world, but the Shadowfolk cannot see us and we cannot touch

them. To their minds we are not real, and to us, they are unfettered death." (page 85)

As the council proceeds it developed that Bard was thought to have come into the Laurel and caused the fear that others with wicked intent might find a way in to make havoc.

Like the on-going problem of illegal immigrants, it became the problem of immigrants per se; the 'good people of the USA' are thought to be confronted with illegal "wetbacks".

It's a place, but also a state of mind!

The Higher Power

Mother is the word generally used in The Summer Boy, but the matter of gender at this point is complex. The Higher Power created the world and not until the nth day did man and woman come about. Throughout the story 'Mother' appears as the Higher Power:

 On page 48 we meet Callie, a very motherly type; she feeds everyone; she has a daughter, Elizabeth, who serves her faithfully (in biblical terms no less than Jesus Christ). Elizabeth appears frequently with help in case of need: "Mama told me to [something] provide every need. At the council she appears out of a tree and runs the proceeding.

 Turn now to page 207: Lizzie says something about 'the Mother' eliciting a reply from Drum

 "The Mother?" there follows:

"God, Spirit, Maker, Mover, whatever word you use, it names the one who is all."

"God is a woman?"
 Lizzie smiled at his query, "Sometime She is; sometimes He isn't."

 That's about as good an answer as can be given to the God question.

On page 218 we see a prayer that Drum raised on his own:
"Holy Father and Mother and Lover and Friend. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you."

Who Dat?

Page 170-71 has a section that some of us may find 'mystering': who is this old man and how did he get into the story at this point.  A second or careful reading suggests that he is 'this old owl'.  And who is this woman talking through the door?  Third reading suggests it might be Calley.

Both of these people are 'spirit people', and maybe we're let in here on how this 'Summer Boy' world works.  Finally we see that Beaverdam is a 'spirit place'.

Am I on square one here?

A Personal Recollection

Happening upon 'Making Fire' brought forth a cloud of personal recollections.  I was invited to pastor some churches around Hot Springs, NC.  Big Laurel Creek is close by.  My family moved from LA to Western NC to be near those mountains.  I traversed most of The Appalachian Trail entire length of The Great Smokies.  Reading Summer Boy I'm consistently reminded of those experiences shared to me by my friend Henry Mitchell.

We live now near the water in Florida, but we simply have to go back up there at least every year; in between those trips the next best thing is reading Summer Boy.

Gifts

Someone said life is not made up of blessing and cursing, but of challenges.

Some of us are blessed with frequent if not continuous gifts.

Gifts may be said to come from the 'Holy Spirit' (or Calley).
It often, but not always, comes from Elizabeth with "my mama told me to..."

Pages cited here are those of the hard copy book, not the ebook:

Here are some of the gifts apparent in Summer Boy:

Little Bear's aunt gave him many gifts, treated him like a mother.

An early gift was made by Little Bear when he found a hawk with his beak
was imprisoned between two rocks when he was seeking his prey. a groundhog.
(page 22)

Soon after when he was very hungry he received a gift of food from Elizabeth.
"Mama said you would be needing these")
(By this we realize that Elizabeth was a 'spirit person' like her mother, Calley.)
(page 33-34)

This one can only be seen as a carnal gift--from Lizbet
"Mama wants to know what’s your name, boy.”
Her 'gift' was a poisonous dish followed by a knock on the back of his head.
See page 92ff.
This happens in a dismal place, presumably away from Laurel.

For extravagant gifts we move to Davey's Wood (106).
Davey was the soul of generosity; he gave Bard everything but the cloths on his back.
Bard referred to him as his best friend.
Davey's first gift was bread for the boy he called Pilgrim. He gave  Pilgrim a room of his
life to stay in etc,etc, extravagant hospitality!  He became a father (of the best sort!) to
Bard.

There are still many gifts to name, but these are the only ones who have met my eye so\
far.

Deliverance

In the chapter on Arrival we read how Harry, Ben's father took him to his aunt Mary's to spend the summer 'in the rough' in the Gap, a small community at the foot of large mountains; Ben (Henry?) secretly liked it as any healthy teenager likely would.  (Most stories have a largely autobiographical dimension.)

Mary had two younger children of her own, which made things nice for Ben.  The early pages of 'Summer Boy' display a strong (very common) tension between Father and Son; that theme runs through the story.  (Boys and Girls in general find it necessary some time along their lives to forgive their parent, because in this fallen world there has never been an adequate parent; it occurs only in the Great Beyond.

They sat at the breakfast table; his Baptist parents would have required a "long and ornate blessing, but Mary and family confessed in unison "we receive unworthily" (much like a Scout blessing: 'good bread, good meat, good God, let's eat')

Harry was very strict with Ben, but Mary was permissive; she allowed (and encouraged) him to explore the mountains as he wished. Jokingly she  called him a bear, the first of several names he was to acquire in the book.

Mary had a sort of neighbor who lived a long way up Mount Pinnacle: Ethan Owl was close to Mary and glad to see Ben; in fact as the story progresses he became a prime adviser; he was one of the 'spirit people' we may read about. 

The Choices

There are two definite choices in The Summer Boy:
The first came when Boy chose not to return when his father came for him.  In this he was encouraged by the Owl, who enabled him to see and appreciate the charm of living in the mountain.

When Bard was crossing the river after a delightful evening and night with Calley's hospitality, Roberlee offered him three choices:

He could go to Beaverday with him; he could go back with Charon to his place; he could strike out for himself.

Charon broke in to tell him that "the widest road always takes you most directly to your undoing."
Charon's advice closely resembles "the broad road that leads to Destruction" (Matthew 7:1).

Calley

Calley may appear fairly minor, but she may be considered as second only to the boy.

She first appears when Bard, waiting for the ferry, finds it inoperative for the night, and Charon (Charlie), the ferry keeper invites Robberlee and Bard to his house to eat. When Charon appears at the house a 'huge woman (dark skinned) let out a whoop and folded him into her ample bosom'; that was Calley.

Calley cooked an enormous variety of food for the (supposedly paid) guests.
She conducted a tremendous meal (every good and grateful gift comes from Thee (Calley).

Calley was the primary manifestation of God: female and forever loving-- and powerful.

She might appear wherever she chose. The most dramatic appearance was at the Circle when she came out of the monstrous tree. Calley was obviously a 'spirit person', look at page 157 where Rider "spoke softly ..and said "Calley, please talk to me":
"Callie stepped from the tree. or more precisely flowed from it until she was fully present."

Elizabeth: adopted daughter of Calley appears often with "Mama told me you might need (something or other)".

The Circle

On pages 76-77: "Bard spent a good part of his afternoon inspecting the Circle.  He saw it was obviously a place of meeting and gathering," much like the early Appalachian settlers had gathered for preaching and revivals.  

Someone is generally in charge at these meetings; Calley conducted this one. It's actually more like a Quaker gathering than a preaching service, moderated by a clerk with others playing an active part. Who are these others?

Raven is the first beside Bard/Drum to appear at the Circle.
Hawk (remember that Bard had saved Hawk's life).
Bear
The three-headed Dog all face outward (to protect against intruders?)
At that point Calley emurged from the tree, and brought Bard to a place near one of the Dogs. Then she called on Hawk to fill in Bard on conditions at Laurel.

Pages 84-85  begin what was in effect an enactment of the story of Genesis: "In the Beforetime" there was a common language of "One Speech" used not only by humans but by all creatures.

Then Bear took up the narrative: "Two-legged came late and last",
(in strick conformity to Genesis). They forgot God and soon became warriors against one another.

Raven: they were set apart into 'Shadow' until the 'Mending', separated from the Laurel.  (To relate this to the Bible story one might best call it The Chosen People, although not as messed up as the Chosen People have proven to be. (The 'Laurel' deserves a post of it own.)

Raven goes on to explain the porous nature of the boundary between the Shadow and Laurel.  Some of the Shadowfolk get into Laurel and start doing better, and residents of Laurel may begin to 'turn gray'.

Callie (Mother) tells Bard that the Council was called to find out whether he should be expelled or accepted; they were especially intersted  in knowing how he got across the 'Great Divide'

The 'dogs' called themselves Warders to protect the boundary.

Bear, who proves to be also Owl told them where Bard came from
and agreed to "guard the passage".

The Circle unanimously agreed to let things stand, and Bard awoke from his Dream. (The reader perceives the boundary between fantasy and materiality, often celebrated in the Bible and in Blake.)

I would hope for some critical judgment on this post.

Elizabeth

We saw Elizabeth as one of the Spirit People.  She was the adopted daughter of Charon and Calley, the mother of mankind.

Elizabeth appears first bringing a basket to a hungry son with an exemplary Gift from 'mama' (Mother) , who is a synonym for God.  These gifts occur throughout the story.  The author was certainly familiar with "every good and perfect thing come from God" (James 1:17).

Elizabeth, like other 'spirit people' is not bound by time or space the way most of us mortals are.  She has the habit of suddenly appearing at any particular time and at the most unlikely place.

Her character is revealed further at pages 51ff as a fiddler and singer, and when she brings towel and soap for Bard's birth she says "We're all dead, don't you know? We are only real when we are in the Music."

Elizabeth is pointing out to us what we all should know, that we're capable of living eternally, a very Blakean idea, although I don't know where the author got it.

Drop down now  to page 91ff; here we meet Lizbet, not a 'spirit person' but a 'gray person'; she mentions 'Mama', but it's not Elizabeth's mama: "Mama wants to know what's your name, Boy".  This Mamas food is not like Calley's food.  And her gift is a rock in the back of his head.

You may find Elizabeth again before you get to the end of the story.

Bible Soaked

Henry was once a Baptist preacher, but like the present writer, he outgrew that vocation.
Never the less his knowledge of the Bible is vast to the point of second nature.
Northrup Frye, the best known critique of English Literature traveled the same road as
the above;  his world reputation began with his thesis for a Phd at Oxford with Fearful
Symmetry.  He also described William Blake as a 'bible soaked Christian".

Frye also said that virtually every serious writing in English literature is to a large
degree involved with biblical thought and that often from completely secular writers.

On even a cursory reading of 'Summer Boy' a multitude of allusions to Scripture appear:

p.38 "..with nothing but Mary's staff to..comfort him on his way" echo of Psalm 23.
p.198 Lizzie gave Bard a lesson on 'shepherding'

"melted down into "plow shares and such"
they shall beat their swords into plowshares, (Isaiah 2:4

p.41 "The One Mother breathed in them all, and they were all her."  (John 17:22f)

p.84f Callie tells the story of Creation and the Fall....and the loss of a 
common language, a version of the biblical story called The Tower of Babel.

207 The Mother "God, Spirit, Maker, Mother, whatever word you use, it names
the One who is all"

p.235 "sustaining Grace"

Graduation from Childhood

The Seed

In my attempt to grasp the fullness of The Summer Boy I've found this most usefull:

The story begins with Boy's problem with his father.

 Like most boys this one had a 'Father' problem: 

This problem is ubiquitous, as well as the 'Mother' problem of many girls; these two types tend to be called 'mother boy' and 'daddy girl'.

The problem of 'Summer Boy' is central to the myth. In the beginning of the book we get a taste of the 'father-son' relationship.  Dad wants to maintain control of Son, and Son is frantic to get away. (At 16 I rode 900 miles to get to a new school.)

This motif runs through the entire story.

Most cultures have some form of  transit between adolescence and maturity (William Blake expressed it with this image in Gates of Paradise.)

The Council

Pages 84-8 are of the essence for understanding the way things work in The Summer Boy.  He found himself listening to Callie (a spirit person) who leading the meeting called successively on Hawk, the three head dog, Callie again, Bear and Raven.  All of this serves to give Bart an idea of where he is, who he is, and where he's going. It might be considered a mythopoeic  version of the Creation:

'In the Before time, before the world had been broken' is perhaps comparable to the Bible account of the 'first couple' before the Fall. It continues with an account of the days of one speech until the Days of Babel and the Flood. The people were so wicked that 'they were set apart into Shadow until such time as there may be a mending.  In substance the 'good people' live in Laurel, the 'shadowpeople' are separated.

There is a border-patrol made up of the Riders who try to prevent leaking of shadowfolk, with their corruption into Laurel;  however some of the shadowfolk come with a desire to do well

Characters

In a myth of the magnitude of The Summer Boy it seems imperative to become acquainted with the characters; their identity may become significant and vital for a full understanding of the myth.
Here are some of the important characters:

The summer boy was named 'Boy' by his father and a number of other things by other characters.  His given name was Ben, but that name plays a very small part in the narrative. He was named successively Little Bear, Bard, Drum and a few other things in the course of the story.
Ben's father was Harry, who sounds like a drill sergeant to an unhappy son.

Ben's Aunt Mary was as permissive to Ben as Harry, her brother was demanding. Mary named Ben "Little Bear" and encouraged him to explore, but perhaps she didn't realize what kind of exploration Little Bear would make. Mary also had a staff that Bard made us of in his wanderings.

Way up the mountain an old man lived, named Ethan Owl; Ben got acquainted with him, but didn't immediately understand Owl's mythopoeic significance.   He's the first of the many characters who seemed to exist materially and also in a spirit world.  Owl became Ben's mentor.

In his wanderings Ben came upon a road; he followed it and encountered an old truck and at a substantial river.  The man in the truck, named Roberlee took up with Ben and named him Bard..  They were both waiting for a ferry, operated by Charley Charon.  The Charons had operated the ferry for several generations, and Charlie married Calley, one of the most important figures in the myth, and very much of a 'spirit' person.

The Charons were dark skins, but they had adopted a light skinned girl named Elizabeth who led the music of the afternoon.  That evening she brought towell and soap and gave the first of a statement that became famous, "Mama said you would be needing these" and another equally poignant statement, "We're all dead, don't you know, we're only real when we're in the music.

An import
ant character is the 'three headed dog', non-material but very significant .

At the ferry, coming across the river was a family of four gray people; gray is an appelation
for people (shadow-folk) outside the bounds of what might be called 'good people' who live in 'the Laurel'.

At the circle Bart encountered the Raven,. The Raven spoke to Bart (in a sort of extra-sensory perception) to say  there would be a Council. Several of the characters take part, but on pp 84-6
they offfer Bart a picture of Creation.

Lizbet (and family) are the gray people; she rocks Bart and virtually knocks him out. Lizbets'
father was named Jude.

Mad Davey introduced another pleasant and healing chapter for Bard, the pilgrim.\

In a change of scene Rider is introduced. (There are many Riders, generally speaking law
inforcers. Millicent is Riders horse virtually a 'spirit person'.

In his travels Bard meetings an old itinerant trader named Aengus with his mule, Molly Dear.

Lizzie, the herb woman, took Bard in and taught him a number of things including shepherding sheep.

Mathilda was another of the 'spirit people'

Wandalena

Thomasene had been a Sister in the Abbey, but left to become a hermit in the highest peak.

To learn all of these characters is a good first step to understanding The Summer Boy






Wandalena (220)

Summer Boy 1

This is the first of a series of responses to the novel, The Summer Boy
by my friend Henry Mitchell.

Boy is a teenager who has had trouble with his father, which is fairly
common in our American culture. A teenager needs to distance himself
from the direction of his father; Boy might be considered an extreme
case.

Boy was more or less released for the summer to 'father's' sister, Mary
in a mountain area; she was considerably more easy going than her rigid
brother and allowed Boy to roam about the mountains to his heart's content.

Boy went to a number of interesting places and met quite a number of
interesting people. He also had several names, quite common among young
men.

The thing that struck me in this first reading was that during his summer
experience several father figures entered his life.  In general they were more
tolerant than his father was and treated him with courtesy and consideration.

The story ends when Boy, now called Bard returned home; the least you
could say about his experiences was that he had learned to prosper
without the courtesy and consideration he had expected.

Father figures are often better guides and helpers than a blood relation
for many teenagers.

What we write usually if not always have an autobiographical dimension;
reading this book I was impressed with the resemblance it had to my own
experience.

I've long believed that the biggest chore that most of us have in our lives
is to forgive our parents.