The Lazarus Project Read online

  The Lazarus Project

  K.C. Hanson

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  St. Cloud, Minnesota

  Copyright © 2014 Kenneth Hanson

  All rights reserved.

  Print ISBN: 978-0-87839-744-0

  eBook ISBN: 9780878398423

  First edition: September 2014

  Published by

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  P.O. Box 451

  St. Cloud, MN

  www.northstarpress.com

  For the people in the pictures

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Before the Steeple

  Leaving Winnipeg

  Annabelle

  Astronaut

  Wilhelmina Louise Griswold ’07

  The Recipe Book

  Sincerely

  Leaving St. Louis,

  Loving Father, Beautiful Child

  Editorial Marriage

  The Servant

  Dell and Nell

  Katy

  Found Poem

  I Played Pa

  Lovingly Vallie

  Dad’s Girlfriends

  Children’s Ward

  Redondo

  Mr. & Mrs. F.S. Griffith

  The Cameraman

  Alma Mater

  Cora & Art Preise

  Russian Photo

  The Man of Industry

  Mrs. Taylor Stone

  Here

  Rev. Bruer in Pulpit

  Taken in 1918

  Stella

  Brothers

  Dear Mrs. Bliss

  Faith

  Your Grandma

  Solstice

  Will You Love Me Forever?

  Credits, and a little about the pictures:

  Foreword

  The Lazarus Project is very much just that, an attempt to wake the dead. It is a resurrection of voices lost in the American past due to death of a blood line, literally or figuratively, and a celebration of the art that has allowed what little we have of these people’s history to come forth in time. On the Internet, where fully half of these pictures were purchased, they are often tagged as “instant ancestors.” Somehow this is very telling of our culture. My intent, though, is to make it true—to make of my readers, at least, literary descendants of these people.

  Because these photos represent family and history we have lost, I have spent a great deal of time running each photo through a Google image search—and every marking through an extensive textual search—in an attempt to discover any holders of copyright. I was lucky enough to find the descendants of some of the photographers, and to gain a set of names for one photo. Though most of the photographs are too old for it to matter, my search did not reveal a copyright holder for any of the images. They are printed here as orphaned photos. Most of the people in them remain a complete mystery. If you recognize any of them, please contact me. My greatest desire is that at least some of them might find their way home. My email is [email protected].

  What little I know about the pictures is listed along with the credits.

  – K.C.

  So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

  –William Shakespeare

  Before the Steeple

  We stood on the cusp of a great new world, balanced

  like the long row of cars, black with envy,

  tipping between the steeple-less church and

  a road that stretched the prairie to the sky.

  We thought that road was endless, that if we

  were bold enough, like our uncles in the last

  great war, and charged the ditch, we would be-

  come like the words through the wire, grown up fast.

  We gazed at its ends for hours that day, watching

  our futures build out there in front of us,

  wishing one better each time, hoping

  one day to cross the ditch into its dust.

  We went back into the church that day

  not knowing we were already on our way.

  Leaving Winnipeg

  This postcard, like the young men in it, was meant

  to travel, to live in smoke and steam on the tracks

  and roads, streets and rivers of continents—

  all it needed like they did was the jack

  to go and a place to go to. Home. The address,

  again like theirs, is blank both ways and free

  like three young men of any correspondence

  at all. What a stunning way to see

  the world, clean and blank as Descartes’ slate,

  always inventing the future before you like glass

  spinning molten on a tube. No time, no date,

  only a story to tell, how one of these

  one day pointed out the American verb:

  perpetual i, and n, and g.

  Annabelle

  Like my dress, this chair and table fit

  me perfectly. Each leg has its foot

  like mine and each foot has toes. I sit

  in this chair reading, for fun, a book

  written so I can read it myself. Its size

  allows it to fit just right in my hands. The print

  is easy to see and there aren’t so many words

  on each page to confuse me. This is important. I haven’t

  been reading that long. I suppose it’s like good shoes

  in that I can run and jump and skip faster

  and farther and higher and so much prettier in those,

  or just like how kindling makes the best little fire.

  It really should come to you as no surprise,

  I do so much better with things that are exactly my size.

  Astronaut

  Even then I was reaching for the heavens,

  my white bonnet pulled down tight, all buttoned

  up, so short I was lifted by my earthbound

  family, giants, and yet I knew the stars

  were mine. I just knew I could make it as far as

  the street without falling, maybe farther—send

  my beaming glance backward, squeal, and if the wind

  and luck were with me, if I caught my legs

  on the other side of that stutter-step, I’d be gone.

  Of course I never made it. I couldn’t get free

  and when I did, the glance back, or the curb,

  some minor glitch in the timing always sent me

  crashing down. Still, I leapt from the Earth

  in my mind—did somersaults—raced the dawn.

  Wilhelmina Louise Griswold ’07

  This is Lady Liberty, except

  not in the French form (so romantic) but

  a child, a laughing little girl on the doorstep

  of the world carrying not a melting pot,

  no salad, certainly not a torch (children

  shouldn’t play with fire, you know), but

  a mixing bowl, her grandma’s, the wooden spoon

  stirring in the freedom, moving about

  swiftly, dragging the yeast and sugar through

  the layers and lumps of glutinous paste (the salt

  of the earth, you know, has always been wheat), the dough,

  so it can rise unwatched, like the poor, and put

  food in the mouths of children. A wondrous feat

  for a Lady of Liberty: “Come to my table and eat.”

  The Recipe Book

  I took my Confirmation picture while swearing

  on a recipe book. I held my breath

  the whole time thinking God would surely blast

  me down. Dad said I was being silly

  but he never said why. Mother just said

  to be quiet. Years later with my Bible

  in hand I would show my Great Uncle, the blasphemer,

  and he would laugh. “Good God, Girl,” he said,

  “A recipe for Heaven is what religion is!”

  I felt relieved, sanctified, and told

  him so, but he just shook his head. “Jesus

  Christ,” he muttered, grabbed my Bible and held

  it, shaking. “He made everything—plant and beast—

  every thought in your head. You can’t trick God like yeast.”

  Sincerely

  How could one word mean so much? Hold

  sway over the all and the everything, dash

  dreams like china in a fireplace, fold

  my someday with a cursive hand to trash?

  How could one word mean so much? Rolled

  letters in a loop, no cut or slash

  penmanship, just bold and circling cold

  swirls of lovely carved as if in ash.

  How could one word mean so much? Hold

  court: attorney and judge, jury and lash,

  witness and gavel—everything all told

  for the sin except the sin, the sin and the fl
ash?

  How could one word mean so much? How could

  one word mean so much? How could? How could?

  Leaving St. Louis,

  the gateway to the West, he holds the iron

  rail in his fists even for the picture.

  Her hands are loose, two fingers on

  the bar, resting, enjoying the ride—the other

  hand hangs quick, ready to grasp the moment.

  They are going to San Francisco. To him

  this is a trial: a test of his will bent

  against the world. To her: adventure. The brim

  of her hat soars. Romance to him is a porter,

  keeping the train on time. Maybe we all

  were born on this train, somewhere between wherever

  and when, poor and free, before the fall,

  to this unwed couple of dreamers, our Adam and Eve,

  going to Eden, already ready to leave.

  Loving Father, Beautiful Child

  He told her once that pennies were for wishing,

  that in America you should wish for land.

  We found them at a wooden table sitting

  together, trapped staring longingly toward

  the door, past the dumb heirlooms lying

  around in well-placed disarray, all busted

  and broken, awaiting purchase by patrons wasting

  their wishes on what someone else had dreamed.

  Now it’s all worth ninety-five cents,

  their lives wrapped in plastic, protected, given

  a home in a box, shared, his life and hers

  forever, a bastion of wishes adrift in time. In

  pennies, that is nearly a hundred dreams,

  but in her eyes are one-hundred-million.

  Editorial Marriage

  For those of you who don’t have this picture in hand,

  it’s simple: a young bride in her white dress and

  gloves stands by and holds a chair; there

  is a window behind her, and flowers in her hair.

  It’s the sort of thing an optimist would call

  a traditional pose, to allow the dress to fall

  more naturally, one perfect shot of the bride for

  her husband’s desk—pessimists say he’s dead in the war.

  But for the poet, symbol is everything;

  whether her husband is there or not, alive

  or dead, she is still married to an empty chair

  and wearing the suit of an angel who’s traded her wings

  for a veil. All she wants to do is dive

  out that open window, to dare, to dare to be so fair, so very fair out in the open air . . .

  The Servant

  I am real though my life is fake, this child

  of light before me not my own, the column

  behind but a painting of a column, even the hide

  I stand upon, borrowed, like the sum

  to take this picture, or my servant’s outfit

  which I’d never seen before this afternoon.

  Seeming rich must be so important,

  to lose so much now that he might later win.

  It is that way for me as well perhaps,

  stirring other people’s pots so I

  one day might have my own, bigger, for soups

  made the industrial, American way.

  Some will say then this child was raised an heir,

  but it was I who delivered him up to there.

  Dell and Nell

  This is mother and daughter as they were meant

  to be, close and happy, comfortable if not

  with the camera, at least with each other, no hint

  of animosity between them; they had a lot

  of things in common—eyes and chin and the way

  they held their hands in fists, as if relaxing

  a finger were out of the question, that it would say

  “I’m lazy, slothful, in my heart the devil is king,”

  so there could be no husband, no granddaughter

  for them to have so many things in common with—

  eyes and chin and the type of clothing, better

  in youth—surely, dresses always look better with

  bows—hair and the air of feminine wiles,

  yet always this apple between them, a universe of cells.

  Katy

  On the day of the vote, my breasts caught with ribbon,

  I wore a campaign hat and seated you,

  my only daughter, at my right hand like the son

  before the father, and had us shot, you

  and I and your brother, with a camera when

  the men at the booth didn’t do it with guns.

  I think your father expected them to, but then,

  who really knew? He called the line that runs

  across the front of the picture, separating

  him from all his family, the “vote,” and still

  holds it against me that I went. “Voting,”

  he said, “it’s dirty business.” I said, “It will

  be fine.” I wrapped the photo in pink ribbon

  for him—a concession to allow both sides to win.

  Found Poem

  Across the back of this postcard Edith wrote:

  “Mrs. Grey, Ray, and Edith pilloud the home

  in Spokane, Washington. Dear Laddie, Here

  is a picture of the house. What do you think of our home?

  You can tell Mother, Ray, and Me. The other

  two were just friends out here when they were taken.

  The white dog is Lady. She is in the hospital

  now, not expected to live. How

  are you? I won’t write anymore now.

  I think I owe you a letter but I’m not sure

  so if I do—I’ll write in a few days.

  Have you a telephone? If so, let me know,

  might call you up some day—Love to all

  from Edith.” I wonder why it was never mailed.

  I Played Pa

  I played Pa, the dreamer, though the gun

  was real. Jill played Ma, her sour face locked

  like a raisin. Sara was our wild son,

  Jacob. Brave and daring, his new hat cocked

  to the side, sure to find us plenty of fun

  (trouble, you mean, Jill would say) socked

  into an afternoon along the sun-

  drenched trail to California. “Gold is locked

  in them hills,” I would say, and Jill would hurl

  “No more jaw-jacking. We won’t have biscuits come morning.”

  But Jake would be off messing with some pretty girl

  farther back in the wagon train, or stirring

  up cattle rustlers or Indians, and in that whirl

  of a world and a story, I guess we grew up spinning.

  Lovingly Vallie

  How is it so often when a woman wants

  to present herself, her real self to someone

  without the falseness of the everyday, take a run

  at eternity I suppose, or love, she creates

  a dream of herself like silk from a mushroom, or treats

  a magician pulls from your hair? Sincere and fun,

  sexy and pure and—perfect. She’s the one

  every time. But how can that be? What feats

  are in a camera’s lens, in the film

  or in the practiced script of the feminine hand,

  what ancient trick, genetic code or whim

  of fancy lies in a picture built to land

  the hearts of men? Lovingly Vallie, it says,

  as if that’s all there was, or ever is.