By David O. Woodbury
From our January 1963 issue
When fall came that year at the seashore, my mother said she could not undertake the “horror” of another boardinghouse winter in Boston. She would have to take me and go to her mother’s in South Berwick. That got a rise out of Father, quick. “Marcia,” he cried eagerly, “why not stay right here in our own house in Ogunquit? Just you and David and me. We’ve never done it before.”
My mother blanched. “All winter? Without a furnace?”
“We’ll put in stoves,” he proposed hastily. “One in every room. Little air-tighters. They get red-hot in a minute.”
“Granpa could do it!” I broke in excitedly. “Let’s have Granpa come and put in lots of stoves!”
“Certainly not!” my mother objected instantly. “He would put in two stoves in every room. He would burn the house down around us.” It wasn’t the fire danger my mother feared so much as my Granpa’s insatiable eagerness for experiment. Mother could never forgive her father-in-law for being an inventor. She had been fighting for years to get me away from his “terrible” influence and had always lost.
But she finally gave in about staying for the winter and Father hired the plumber to put in the stoves. We were snugged down for a real Maine winter. The little fishing village of Ogunquit was magnificent that fall. I was old enough then to appreciate its beauty: the crisp, cool days and sharp nights, the endless carpet of vermillion bayberry undulating over ridges and gullies, the plastic blue of the sea, laced with streaks and whitecaps by the joyful north wind. Tucked into sweater and knickers and woolen stockings, I roamed the place a free spirit, grimy city life forgotten. I was nine.
To our surprise, Mother began to like it too. “We’re having such fun!” she would cry, beaming across the dinner table on a frosty, lamplit evening.
“I just wish Granpa was here,” I said thoughtlessly.
“David misses him, Marcia,” Father contributed as unwisely.
A hurt look came in her eyes. “If we can only have this time, this little time, alone, without him,” she pleaded. “We’re such a nice family by ourselves.”
She didn’t get her wish. Early in November, “Missoakes” came to stay — my mother’s mother, referred to in private by Father as “that old battle-axe.” She was as squat and heavy as a tugboat and wallowed in her rocking chair, grumbling with rheumatism. But her mind was as sharp as a kitchen knife. She had once been a school teacher, around the time of the Civil War, I think. The minute she arrived, she announced she would start my schooling and end “the disgrace of having a little savage in the house.” She made Father get her a willow stick, and though I guess she didn’t intend to whip me with it, she whished it through the air continually to accent my lessons.
I began to spend long dreary hours before the blazing fireplace, pronouncing silly words and doing sums on a small slate that I managed to make squeak to give her rheumatism an extra tweak. It was a cruel time for me because we had a wonderful series of great easterly storms and I wanted dreadfully to be out in them, along with Father, who painted all day planted far out on the most dangerous rocks. I used to jump up and run to the window every few minutes to see if he was all right. “David!” my grandmother would command, “come right straight back here this minute and write ‘cat’ 40 times.” I would go, resolved to hate cats and Missoakes eternally.
Two days before Thanksgiving, it began to snow — the windless, silent fall of little flakes. I was so afraid they would stop that I spent the evening at the window with a lamp, peering out. They kept drifting down, and by the time I was sent up to bed in what Father had christened “Stove Heaven,” there was no doubt about it: we would have a white Thanksgiving and all the lovely things of the winter would begin.
Missoakes was determined to defeat that snowstorm. Thanksgiving morning, she pronounced that we would have half a day of school, “and maybe all day if you don’t pay better attention to your lessons.” How that morning dragged, until suddenly there was banging in the kitchen and a chilly draft of air blew in under the living room portieres.
“Who,” demanded Missoakes, “is making all that commotion?” She began struggling out of her chair. Then the portieres were suddenly parted and an apparition of white whiskers and pink cheeks confronted us.
“Granpa! Granpa! Granpa!” I was in his arms and the snow was melting off his beard into my face and Mother was hurrying into the room, her expression changing from incredulity to horror and finally to a forced welcoming smile.
We got through Thanksgiving dinner somehow, though not with any help from Missoakes, who probably disapproved of Granpa even more than Mother did. She said at once that he had no right to “move in” that way without giving notice. Of course, he had let us know, weeks ago, by letter. My heart sank. That was the letter I’d lost out of my pocket getting walnuts and hadn’t dared tell anybody. I told them now, with a gulp.
“You see?” Missoakes said decisively to my mother. “What that child needs is the rod. Discipline.”
“Oh, rats!” Granpa shot back at her. “He doesn’t need discipline. He needs to have some fun. Don’t you, Davy?”
There never was anybody like Granpa. Afterwards, in the kitchen, he said vigorously, “Now, Charlie, you just tell me where I can do the most good. I want to help.”
Father looked at him speculatively and winked. Then he indicated a long-handled force-pump beside the sink. “How about getting some well water up for the toilets?”
“Nothing easier,” Granpa cried, seizing the handle and working it at top speed. You would hear the water gurgling through the pipe on its way upstairs. He stopped with a grunt and examined the pump. “Anybody ought to have his head examined for slaving like this,” he complained.
“I know,” said Father. “I have to do it 10 times a day.”
Granpa studied the layout thoughtfully. The ancient little machine, if you were strong enough, forced water from the well into a small round tank under the sink, and what little pressure you could build up was supposed to raise the water upstairs to the bathroom. If you washed the dishes in the sink, the pressure failed and somebody was sure to call down through the bathroom register, “Please pump some more water up here!”
It was an out-of-season arrangement we had to have when the town water was turned off in the fall. Mother had never got used to it and Father had all he could do to work the pump, day and night.
Granpa was still studying the pump. Suddenly his face took on its beloved “dead angel” expression, his whiskers bristling, his eyes snapping. “Yes,” he murmured. “I see what to do. I see just what to do.”
“What, Granpa, what?” I cried. “Are you making another invention?”
“A real humdinger of an invention, Davy. You just wait and see. Come on, let’s take a look up in the attic.” Father and I clambered up the stairs in his wake, and stood expectantly while he examined a big empty space under the roof. “That’ll do it,” he exclaimed in a moment. “It sure will. We’ll put a big tank up here and pipe the pump up to it. Then we’ll hire some schoolboy to pump up enough water to last all winter.”
“Won’t the tank freeze?” Father asked doubtfully. “It gets pretty cold up here.”
“Never freeze, never. Too big a tank. It’s got to work. You want me to go ahead with it?” “Oh, do, Granpa! Please, please!” I chirped.
Father grinned. “Go ahead, Papa,” he said. “Even if it doesn’t work, it’ll be worth it if you can rescue David.”
Then, Granpa had an even more beautiful idea. We would make the tank in secret and give it to Mother and Missoakes for a Christmas present. We tiptoed back downstairs like three conspirators and Granpa spent the rest of Thanksgiving tucking Missoakes’s tired old feet into her rug and fetching things for her. He didn’t fool her a bit, though. She knew well enough that he would rather have stuffed her into the fireplace. “You leave me alone,” she grumbled. “You’re up to something, you old reprobate. I know.”
The plan was to build a large wooden box in the attic, line it with zinc, and run a pipe down to the pump, connecting to the house system. Granpa went off to the village and consulted his friend Hartley, Ogunquit’s jack-of-all-trades, about getting a plumber. Hartley was untroubled by modesty. “You better take me, Mr. Woo’bry,” he advised brightly. “I ain’t no professional, but you let me git a Stillson in my hands and I sure think I’m one.”
So Hartley came to help Granpa and me with the tank. This was a secret enterprise, so we slunk up attic and began. We had the help of the stoves, whose combined roaring blanketed all but the loudest noises. We even managed to get the lumber up there without detection. The result was a wonderful sense of mystery through the house. Missoakes rocked and grumbled by the fire and took a potshot at Father every time he came within range, for letting me skip school. Mother said as long as we confined ourselves to the attic she didn’t mind. But if it was something for Christmas she doubted if she’d like it. Granpa didn’t even notice the rebuff. His capacity for surprise was getting a real workout this time.
The tank was a huge affair, all of six feet on a side. When it was all done, Hartley got inside and began soldering up the zinc lining with a plumber’s furnace. Hartley thought of plumbing as a perpetual crusade and talked to the pipes and tools as if they were enrolled in an army dedicated to his utter defeat. “Oh, yes you will, you little fool!” he would address a threaded part that refused to screw on. “I’ll set right here till you do.” If “settin’” didn’t do it, he was quite apt to fling the offending fitting through the attic window, kept open for the purpose.
Hartley carried on a perpetual conversation inside that tank, mostly in friendly interchange with his surroundings, his cheerful voice echoing against the roof. “Reminds me of the time,” Hartley’s nasal twang would emerge above the roar of the plumber’s furnace, “that my old man played trombone in the band up to Biddeford — drat you, Mister Solder! Won’t stick, hey? Well, you just try and not stick and see where you end up! Fourth of July parade it was . . .”
It went on that way all day, with Hartley coming up for air occasionally and not infrequently kicking over the furnace in the process. Sometimes, the device spilled gasoline and caught fire, but it didn’t faze Hartley in the least. He would just stand by the tank and wait for “her to burn herself out,” meanwhile telling us another yarn.
Well, the tank was finally finished and Hartley and us other conspirators had quite a time getting the piping run downstairs without Mother and Missoakes knowing. My job was to keep them both diverted. Sometimes, I would have an attack of school fever and voluntarily go back to the willow switch. Other times, I would be so sweet to my mother that she would become alarmed and hastily take my temperature. Both women were sure something devilish was afoot and awaited the outcome with foreboding.
The project, as Hartley executed it, took a little more time than expected and it was not till Christmas Eve that the surprise hydraulic system was complete. I don’t think I was ever so excited over an impending Christmas, before or since. After breakfast on the great morning, we gathered in the living room for presents. I couldn’t have cared less about mine. Missoakes was instantly on the alert.
“Something is very wrong in this house,” she decided grimly. “David has not even opened his stocking.” Granpa was unaccountably absent; he was still asleep. He and three local boys had spent half the night pumping the final water into the tank. But at last he appeared and went sheepishly for his presents under the tree while everyone waited. Finally, he finished thanking everybody and stood up. “Well, I guess that’s about all,” he said.
“Now, let’s have it,” Missoakes said. “What are you holding back?”
Granpa tried to look innocent, failed, and grinned disarmingly. “That’s right. I almost forgot. Marcia, there is a little something for you upstairs.”
Mother smiled sweetly. Though she dreaded what it might be, she didn’t show it. She was a good actress and had a wonderful sense of Christmas. Granpa took her arm and started for the hall. “Anybody else want to see?” he called back. We all made a rush for the stairs, leaving Missoakes with her dark forebodings.
The bathroom was the first thing you came to in the upper hall. Outside the door, Granpa cried mysteriously, “Now, Marcia, you wait right here and watch!” Then, he dashed in and turned on a faucet in the washbowl. Mother had expected the dribble we usually got. Instead, there was a swoosh of trapped air, followed by a violent squirt of water that hit the bowl and fanned out all over the room.
“Oh, my goodness!” gasped Mother. “Papa, what’s happened?”
Granpa yanked open the other faucet; the room was filled with spray. Then, he made a dive for the toilet and bore down on the chain that dangled from the overhead tank. A Niagara of noise greeted us. Nothing like that had ever happened to that toilet before. I jumped and screamed with delight as whitewater thundered into the bowl and almost overwhelmed it.
Above the roar, Father shouted, “Merry Christmas, darling!”
Granpa had Mother by the arm again and was steering her into the attic. There in the corner stood the tank.
Mother, bless her heart, rose to the occasion. “What a gigantic thing!” she cried. “What in the world is in it?”
“Water!” Granpa told her. “Sixteen hundred gallons of it! Enough to last all winter.”
“Oh, how wonderful! And I never guessed! How did you manage to do it without my finding out?” All the right things to say. She understood Christmas perfectly.
It was a lovely Christmas dinner we had; even Missoakes smiled.
“It works in the sink too,” Granpa burst out, and he and Mother hurried out to see. There was laughing and joking between those two for the first time I could remember. “And the best thing about it,” Granpa was saying as they came back, “is that Davy learned to use tools.”
“And forgot everything he knew about spelling,” Missoakes put forth grimly.
“Oh, Mama, let’s not spoil the Christmas spirit. They worked so hard to do something nice for us.” She was really full of it, my mother. I don’t think she’d been so happy for a long time.
In the goodness of her heart, she had arranged a wonderful party for Christmas afternoon — a special celebration for the 13 Brooks children and their widowed mother. Mother felt she owed a lot to the Brookses, for they had posed patiently for her to paint for two years. The oldest was scarcely 15. Mrs. Brooks had done her best to shine her children up, eking out their threadbare clothes with gay little colored ribbons. She herself was in what must have been her wedding gown of long ago.
Granpa had agreed to act as Santa Claus. By midafternoon the house was stuffed with children. Panting and squealing, the Brookses poured in, spreading snow on the rugs and leaving their boots to make puddles in the corners. The two mothers bustled about furiously and presently had them all lined up and the party hilariously underway. Granpa, a natural Santa Claus anyway, was having the time of his life, making gruff little speeches to each recipient as he held the presents aloft, then tossing them into eager hands.
Missoakes sat stolidly by the fire, missing nothing but seeming to disapprove of it all.
In the midst of the proceedings, Hartley turned up, stamping happily into the hall with a hearty “Merry Christmas” for everyone. “They tell me you got some new plumbing,” he chuckled, “so I figured I’d better come and inspect it.”
It was shortly after this that Mother, who had gone upstairs for a moment, called down in a frightened voice, “Charles! Come up here quick!” Father recognized the note of panic and went on the run. I followed. In the upstairs hall there was a long puddle of water, and a small brook was running from under one of the bedroom doors. Father hastily pushed the door open. “Great Scott!” he cried.
The room was a sodden wreck. Water was dripping from the ceiling in a dozen places. The bed was soaked and the floor was a lake.
“My gorry! She’s sprung a leak!” It was Hartley. “I figured she might.”
“Get Santa Claus up here quick,” my father commanded, making for the attic stairs. Mother scampered below in search of Granpa. Father went on his knees beside the tank and began lighting matches to examine the big wooden box. There was no trouble finding the leak. Water was squirting out in a sheet all along the bottom seam.
“Must of been them stories I told,” said Hartley laconically. “I wasn’t payin’ enough attention. Ain’t that too bad!”
“It’s a darn sight worse than that!” cried my father. “Suppose you do something about it.”
Santa came puffing up the stairs, followed by all 13 of the Brooks children. The clatter was deafening.
“Papa!” yelled Father. “You’re flooding the house!”
Granpa sized up the situation with one look. “Rugs, Charlie! Rugs, Hartley. Rags, rugs, anything to soak up the water and plug up those cracks. Hurry!”
“Rags, hell!” shouted Father. “You’ve got to get the water out of that tank before it bursts and drowns us.”
“I know it, Charlie. I know it. I’ll figure something.”
“Can’t you understand there isn’t time to figure anything? Bail it out, siphon it out, drink it out! But get it empty somehow before it lets go!”
“There’s sixteen hundred gallons of it—”
But Father had plunged through the mob and was clattering downstairs. Granpa galvanized into action. “All right, you small fry,” he shouted an order. “Jump downstairs and get every pail and dishpan and kettle you can find. Anything that holds water. And get ’em up here just as fast as you can!”
With a scream of delight, the Brooks tribe threw themselves into the game. Granpa rushed after them and leaned over the stair rail. “Marcia! Or anybody else down below there! Turn on every faucet in the house. And start pulling the toilet chain and keep pulling it.”
The roar of 13 pairs of feet was heard again. Saucepans and buckets and tinware had begun to arrive.
Granpa was magnificent, albeit playing a strange interpretation of Santa Claus. In a jiffy, he had organized a bucket brigade, composed of the children, reaching from the tank to the attic’s one window. Hartley, standing on a chair, was bailing for all he was worth. Above the uproar of the kids came the steady hiss of water flowing from every opening below, punctuated by the repeated gnashing of the toilet as Mother pulled the chain.
After a while, Hartley said he couldn’t reach the water from outside the tank anymore. So he climbed in and stood submerged to his thighs, handing bucket after bucket up over the edge. It was long after dark, that Christmas night, when the party of exhausted children was herded into the living room by a very much battered Santa Claus. Everyone was wet to the skin.
They stood around dumbly while my mother wiped their faces with a towel and kept saying “Oh!” to herself. She was bravely facing up to the worst disaster the house had ever known.
“Poor, poor Mrs. Woo’bry,” said Mrs. Brooks. “Guess we all better go. Oh, dear! I’m awful sorry this happened. But I — I don’t know when they’ve had such a good time!”
The house seemed unnaturally still after they had gone.
Missoakes, who hadn’t stirred from her rocker the whole afternoon, cleared her throat for the last word. “Well,” she said, in a level tone, “we are going too. Tomorrow. The very first thing.”
“I don’t know what to say,” poor Granpa mumbled, and I reached over and took his hand.
“The less you say the better,” Missoakes said. “It will take you all winter to repair the house. At least, I hope it will.”
Just the same, it was the most exciting Christmas I ever had.
CHARACTER SKETCHES
In this tale of an early-20th-century Christmas, David O. Woodbury briefly makes mention of his parents being painters, his father, Charlie, working plein air and his mother, Marcia, having neighbor kids pose in her scenes. Charlie, in fact, was Charles H. Woodbury, whose works — seascapes, largely — reside in major museum collections across the country and whose national reputation as both a painter and instructor resulted in the development of a thriving art colony in Ogunquit. Marcia Oakes Woodbury enjoyed a successful run of her own with the brush, and shortly after she died, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, presented several dozen of her works in a memorial show.
As for David, this Christmas story helps to explain his own trajectory in life, considering his younger self’s enthusiasm for his grandfather’s inventions. David went on to write books that had the spirit of invention at their core, on such topics as the development of the world’s largest telescope, prominent electrical engineer Elihu Thomson, space exploration, World War II engineering feats, and automation. He also contributed frequently to Down East in the late 1950s and early ’60s, with a profile of a Maine gem-mining guru and a deep dive into the harvest of a particular variety of seaweed, plus several other personal essays in which Granpa featured prominently.
