Grandfather's Journal. C.W. Hanes
Across the Mantle said, “The Great Spirit (Ye-ho-wa-ah)”, on the hearth was written Jesus Wept (JSI) (A-TLO-YA-S-DI). The shelves were twelve feet tall and the room was thirty feet wide with the fireplace taking up twelve feet of the center of the wall leaving nine feet on either side of the fireplace. There must have been over a thousand books sitting on the shelves. Grandfather had every kind of book you could imagine in several different languages.
Grandfather had books on philosophy, poetry, mathematics, the history of different cultures, literature, science, biology, anatomy, and many other subjects. Some of them were first editions dating back to the mid-seventeen hundred. He even had some of them signed by the authors like Hemingway, Longfellow, Thomas Edison, and so many others I can’t name them all. Their home was like walking back into time; one, two, even three hundred years. It was incredible.
It was getting close to midnight when we turned in for the night. Grandfather and I had to get up early the next morning to do some simple repairs on the sweat lodge and the smokehouse to get them ready for use. The smokehouse was built two-thirds of the way into the ground; it served as a root cellar as well as a smokehouse. It was built out of river rock-like almost everything else around here. The roof was split wood shingles made from a hickory tree and the inside walls were lined with hickory. The floor was a flat rock with a fire pit built in the middle of the room; it was seven feet in diameter and about three feet deep. We had to split the wood for replacement shingles for the roof and then shave them by hand so that they fit properly. Grandfather still did everything by hand, the old-fashioned way by most people’s standards, but I thought it was perfect.
After church Sunday morning, it was time for Mom and me to head back home. I had to get back into the groove of things and get ready for school to start in two days; it was the last semester. I really had to buckle down this spring and study hard because everyone expected me to have a 3.5 or greater average by the year’s end, when school let out for the summer. It was another busy semester studying until late hours in the morning doing the best I could to learn as much as I could before summer.
My favorite class was Native American history. I loved our teacher, who was probably one of the best. Her name was (Gi-ta-ya u-ne-gv tsi-s-qua) in Cherokee (Cherrie White Dove). She looked like an angel to me with her long dark brown hair that draped to the middle of her back. Her brown skin gave her the look of a tan year-round; I believe she was two-thirds Cherokee. She always smelled like lilacs. It was very evident that she loved teaching. Her face glowed with love and excitement when she taught. She had the most beautiful brown eyes I have ever seen in my life; they held you captive when you looked into them. I think every boy in the class was in love with her. I know I most certainly was. I would stay after class when I could and talk to her about my Grandfather and the things he shared with me about the Native American ways. I brought my flute with me on the last day of class and showed it to her; she asked me if I could play. I told her my Grandfather taught me how to play. Then she asked me if I would play her a tune. I played her the tune my Grandfather taught me to play; I must have played for her for an hour. She really did like it and told me she knew this tune and she asked me if I knew what it was called. I told her it was called “The Spirit Dances within Me.” Cherrie’s family was getting together in July and she asked me if I would be willing to come and play for her family. I told her it would be a privilege to, but only if I could bring my Grandfather and he could play with me. She agreed that it would be okay for him to accompany me. I was glad school was finally over; I was looking forward to my birthday and getting another clue from Grandpa to find his journal that he had hidden.
It was four days before my birthday when Grandpa called and asked me to come over early. He wanted to know if I could come over tomorrow. “Yes, of course, I can, Grandpa.” I could hardly wait to find out why he wanted to come over a few days early; let alone what the new clue would be. I got up early the next morning to leave for Grandfather’s house with my flute and peace pipe and, of course, my journal with all the clues he had already given me. It was about five in the morning when I arrived at Grandfather’s.
“Good morning, Grandpa. Why are we getting such an early start? It’s usually the day before or on my birthday when we get together.”
Grandfather told me that this summer was going to be different than most. He said I would be meeting a girl and some very special people; this would be a turning point in my life!
CHAPTER THREE
Jacob Meets Catharine
It is May 26, 1975, and I am nineteen years old – another year had flown by. We got up at 5:00 a.m., the usual time to rise when I’m with Grandpa. He didn’t think you should lie in bed most of your life. We got in the truck and drove to a mountain range that I had never heard of, Forest of Many Spirits. Grandpa said that this place would be very helpful to me in the very near future.
“Grandpa, I forgot to tell you we are supposed to meet with one of my teachers named Cherrie (gi-ta-ya) on July 12th and play our flutes for her family. She is going to call me with the details of where it is going to be later. She is my Native American history teacher.”
“Jacob, I would be more than happy to go with you.”
We got out of the truck and went for a long walk through the woods. It was amazing; Grandpa knew these woods as well as he knew the one on his land. It felt as if the trees in these woods watched you as you walked through them. It was like we were being watched and yet I felt protected at the same time. We came to a great opening in the woods, a circle about thirty feet in diameter with a fire pit in the center. We gathered wood and made a small fire to fight off the chill in the air. Grandpa asked me to sit down and close my eyes and think about the summers past and the clues he had given me. “Time is getting closer for you to find your way on your own, I won’t be around forever. I only have a few more years with you before GOD calls me home to be with him. Jacob, I need you to really listen to me over the next few summers.
“Your grandmother will be going to meet GOD next year in October. Your grandmother and I both know what is coming. I’m telling you this so you will be prepared. That is why I brought you to this place in the forest. This is a very special place. This is where I proposed to your grandmother 77 years ago and a year later, we got married, on October 19th in the year of our Lord 1898. I want you to meditate on these things while I play you a new tune with my flute and recall what you see.”
Grandpa played for the better part of an hour. I saw the past as if I were watching a movie. I saw a young couple standing in the middle of this place together; as I looked closer, I realized that it was my grandparents as young people. I recognized them from photographs. Then I saw Grandpa get down on both knees and ask Grandma to marry him. Then Grandmother got down on her knees and took Grandfather’s hands and said, “Yes, yes I will marry you and be your wife for the rest of my life. Until I take my last breath, I will love you now and throughout eternity.” Then I saw them get up to build a fire together in the very fire pit I was sitting by; sitting facing each other with their legs crossed holding hands looking into each other’s eyes! Suddenly, I saw them standing in front of the preacher. Grandfather was dressed in white buckskins with beadwork in the middle of his back in the shape of a wolf and on the elbows of his coat were beadwork figures of eagles. Grandmother was wearing a long white dress also made of buckskin with the same beadwork as Grandfather’s. I saw them walk off hand-in-hand through the forest into an opening of a white teepee. It must have been sixteen to eighteen feet tall and twenty feet or more in diameter.
The next thing I saw was my Dad as a child lying in Grandmother’s arms in the same teepee. When Dad was thirteen and walking through the woods, he walked into the mouth of a cave; then everything went blank and Grandpa stopped playing.
“Jacob, I want you to write down the things you saw in your journal and remember every little detail. Don’t leave anything out.
“Jacob, here is the next clue for you to write down in your journal to help you find the way.”
“The table in the middle of the library is solid oak and one foot thick. The shape of the table is oval. Underneath the southwest side of the table is a hidden drawer. The release that opens the drawer is on the opposite side of the table. In this drawer is