Reflections – Celebrating Harold

Spencer Harold Wells  April 15, 1916- August 23, 1991 (Photo by Spence)

My father-in-law Spencer Harold Wells is the reason Wells Wood exists

For years Harold and his wife Priscilla drove along tedious Route 19 from Mount Lebanon south of Pittsburgh to Presque Isle in Erie. Their three sons quarreled, punched, and yelled in the back seat of the station wagon. Harold calmed the crew with cues like, “Here we go through Sheakleyville.”

The boys silenced, extended their limbs like zombies, and shook themselves until they reached the outskirts of the borough.

As Harold approached retirement from teaching middle school shop students—the job, he claimed, is why he acquired eyes in his rear end—he and Priscilla searched for land part way to Erie.

In the spring of 1971, a real estate agent drove them down a dirt road in the northwest corner of Mercer County. The agent pulled into a field that sloped gently toward a maple and cherry woods. Then he lead them over matted leaves on a deer path down to a floodplain. Talking and following Deer Creek, he picked a bouquet of phlox for Priscilla. The flowers cinched the deal. Harold and Priscilla purchased the land, the original six acres of Wells Wood.

Camping in a tent by the edge of the woods no matter the weather, Harold joked.

* * *

If this rain keeps up, it won’t come down.

* * *

Priscilla, Harold, Spence, and Larry with 61 Plymouth Wagon (Photo courtesy of Bruce)

A couple of months later, Harold discovered Mount Lebanon Township owned a condemned garage. He made a deal. He would tear down the garage in exchange for the materials. Making multiple trips, Harold hauled pieces of the condemned garage into the back of the pickup and to what he called, “My Back Achers.”

Priscilla read novels and mysteries from the library in a lounge chair.

Crickets chirped.

He hammered, building a one room board and batten cabin at the edge of the field.

They painted the cabin barn red and added white trim.

Spence and I visited the day Harold laid out corner posts for the screened in porch. I perched on the stoop and sipped mint ice tea.

The fellas stretched the metal measuring tape from the cabin to stakes, which Harold pounded into the ground. “Measure that width again.”

Spence did.

Harold sat on his heels, pushed back his baseball cap, and shook his head. “The lengths and widths match. But the angles aren’t ninety degrees.”

Waving my beaded glass I said, “You’ve got a parallelogram. Move the far sticks to the left.”

Harold scrounged his porch material from the old porch Gracie demolished on her general store. He paid the wrecker $25 for screening, plastic roof, and poles. Harold included Grace and me in the story he told of his porch construction—at least if I happened to be part of his audience.

And Harold told stories.

* * *

When I was a boy, I walked to school uphill in both directions.

* * *

Harold Cutting Grass with the Gravely at the Trolley Museum (Photo courtesy of Bruce)

Harold walked the sloping field behind his Gravely and carved out a fifty- by thirty-foot organic garden. He discovered Native American arrow heads and six inches of top soil. “You put something in that ground, and you have to jump back.” Nevertheless, he spread bales of hay throughout his garden to feed the soil. He also added clippings he collected from mowing meadow grasses with his Gravely.

On a fall day, Spence forked the rich soil in the potato patch. Harold and I knelt to dig with our hands. If we unearthed a rock the size of a potato—a stream must have run through the field once—Harold said, “That one will take a long time to boil.”

And once he told a reporter, “Everything is allowed to live—even the raccoons that eat our corn.” He tolerated raccoons, birds, and bunnies, but fetched his shotgun if chubby groundhogs waddled toward his asparagus patch in the field. “Come on kids. Let’s go for a walk.”

Charlie and Ellen skipped after their grandpa.

Bang.

“Missed again,” he shouted.

Priscilla shook her head.

At the gathering after Harold’s funeral, Priscilla said. “Harold was losing it at the end. He kept missing the groundhogs.”

“He didn’t miss, Grandma.” Charlie rubbed her upper arm. “He didn’t want you to think he killed the groundhogs. He hid them in the woods.

* * *

Where are you going?

Down back to see how far it is.

* * *

Priscilla, Baby Sarah, Ellen, and Harold at Wells Wood (Photo courtesy of Bruce)

The woods held more mysteries than Harold’s groundhog carcasses. Harold and Priscilla lead me along deer paths. Once weeds wavered. A foot-and a half long garter snake approached at a pace as if the snake were fleeing a predator.

I gasped.

Harold used his calming teacher voice. “The snake’s more afraid of you than you are of him.”

Wanting to believe Harold, I stopped walking—and breathing—to let the snake pass.

It slithered over my shoes and under the bushes on the other side of the path.

If Harold was right, I hoped the snake’s heart beat slowed before its heart burst through the snake’s skin.

At least Harold’s and Priscilla’s wildflower education lacked immediate drama. “That’s toothwort.” Harold pointed at a violet-like flower with leaves notched in tooth shapes.

“This is bloodroot.” Priscilla touched a multi-petaled white flower with a yellow fringed middle. “People pick it to see its red sap. Don’t. It’s rare.”

Names flowed from their lips so fast I couldn’t remember them all. Two of Harold’s names, which alliterated and echoed like a near palindrome, stuck. “That’s Solomon’s seal and there’s Sealomon’s sol.” Both grew wide leaves on a long stem. But Solomon’s seal bell shaped flowers hung along the stem and Sealomon’s sol flowered in a terminal cluster at the end of the stem. After both Harold and Priscilla died, I opened their wildflower guide and discovered the true name of his Sealomon’s sol—False Solomon’s Seal. I belly laughed loud enough to startle all the groundhogs on Harold’s back acres.

* * *

Parents pay their children for each A on their report card.

When I was a kid, I was good for nothing.

* * *

Spencer Harold Wells - School Photo (Photo courtesy of Bruce)

As a young teacher, I assumed Harold would grant my request. “May I take some frog eggs to school so the children can observe tadpoles hatching?”

Harold grumbled, “Frogs belong in the woods.”

Had his respect for nature countered his veteran teaching instincts? “I’ll bring the frogs back.” I would have promised anything. I wanted the inner city Cleveland children to experience the wonder of nature.

“Well, okay.” Though Harold kept his stern teacher face, he probably meant to give in the whole time.

“Will you help me collect the eggs?”

“What! You want me to help?” He grabbed an empty coffee can.

We walked to a woods pond with clusters of frog eggs. 

Kneeling beside the pond, I scooped pond water into the can.

He added a cluster of eggs.

I wrote a children’s story, Dad and the Frog Eggs, using first grade reading vocabulary. Spence’s photos of Harold and me kneeling by the woods pond accompanied my hand printed text—including Harold’s words about the frogs belonging in the woods, not in the school.

The children read about Harold and squinted their eyes at the egg mass.

Three tadpoles wiggled out.

I added more pond water each week for seven weeks.

The tadpoles zipped around the aquarium and nibbled the egg mass. Their heads grew fatter and their tails grew longer. I never saw legs develop. One of the youngsters did.

“I see legs, Mrs. Wells.” Excitement squeaked in his voice. “They’re teeny.”

At the end of the school year, I brought the plump tadpoles back to the woods pond. They must have been bullfrogs which can take a year or more to mature. I imagine the twangy bellows on spring evenings come from the tadpoles’ descendants.

Managing the anticipation of tadpole legs at the inner city school all those years ago, however, I needed the advice in Harold’s joke.

* * *

Don’t bite your fingers. There are nails in them.

* * *

April 5^th is Harold’s fifth Easter Birthday—three during his life (1931, 1942, 1953) and two after his death (2015, 2026). On his 110 birthday, and everyday at Wells Wood, we celebrate this crafty jokester.

Dad and the Frog Eggs

Author’s Note: Our family has three men named Spencer. Spencer Harold was my father-in-law. Spencer Thomas is my husband. Spencer Charles is my son. Priscilla, who I called “Mom” while she lived, declared three Spencers too confusing. She called the Spencer she named “Spence,” her husband “Harold,” and her grandson “Charlie.” I use her names in writing. In life I use/used “Dad,” “Spence,” and “Spencer” or “Spencer Charles.”