Gayla Marty

April wedding, 1912

On Wednesday, April 24, 1912, newlyweds Sam and Mamie Marty made an auto trip to town to visit the photographer. Their vows had been spoken in the living room of the Hansen house, and a wedding dinner had been served. Many guests had come from out of town. Conversation that day certainly included the tragedy of the Titanic, which had sunk the previous week. The route to Rush City was three miles of a gravel road that would become U.S. Highway 61, still 15 years in the future. Accompanying the bride and groom were their siblings, best man John Marty—my grandfather—and maid of honor Tillie Hansen, both standing in this photo. Sam was 23, John was 19, Mamie was 24.

After the wedding, Mamie moved less than a mile west to the Marty farm, visible across the fields from her home place. Sam and Mamie took over the Marty farm from my great-grandparents, Jacob and Susanna, who moved to a house in town along with their youngest child, 13-year-old Anna. The two older Marty daughters had already married and moved away. My grandfather stayed on the farm, the bachelor brother in partnership with Sam. It would be 20 years before he married my grandmother, Viola, in the wake of Mamie's death during surgery after a long, unnamed illness.

Photo by Ometh, Rush City, Minnesota, from the Marty family album.

For the beauty of the earth

Marty farm, view from northeast, ca. 1957. Kodachrome. Photo by Gaylon Marty. 

What better portrait for Earth Day than earth? Here is my favorite color photograph of my family's farm taken around the time I was born into the world. This is the farm that I loved. This was the view of it from the edge of the woods, looking toward home. The only thing missing is my house, which stood outside the left frame of this photo. The house that you see is the 1898 farmhouse built by my great grandparents for their five children. Four years later, they built the big red barn, heart of my heart.

What I see here is, first, reconstituted trees. Every building in this photo except the cement silo is made of wood that didn't travel very far to get there. Second, an open field, which looks to me like it's just been planted in corn. You could say: deforestation, and erosion. That's all too true, but to me it's also beautiful.

My mother remembers her first summer at the farm. She had married my dad in May. That summer, Dad and Grampa Marty got up on scaffolding themselves and roofed the big barn, nailing green asphalt shingles over the old wooden ones. In this picture, the barn has the old wood shingles, so I know it was taken before that summer. My aunt found this picture for me last year in Uncle Gaylon's slide collection. Uncle came home from the army in the spring of 1957, just in time to be Daddy's best man. He had been to China and Japan, so I think I can imagine why he would have walked with his camera to the woods to take this photograph in the morning light.

There's a version of the song "For the Beauty of the Earth" that was set to the 13th century tune Adore Te Devote for the Missa Gaia by Paul Winter, performed at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York in 1985:

For the beauty of the earth, sing, oh sing today/Of the skies and of our birth, sing, oh sing, always./Nature, human and divine, all around us lies/Lord of all, to thee we raise grateful hymns of praise.

This is my song today.

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Names of the buildings in the photo, left to right: The big house (Auntie and Uncle's, where Gramma lived upstairs), Sam's garage, granary (gray), tractor shed, chicken coop, milk house and behind it the three-car garage, log barn, silo, big barn (called the old barn after the new barn was built in 1963), and the machine shed.

Blooming

After Mom gave up gardening vegetables and Auntie moved that enterprise north of her house on the farm, the triangle of grass north of our house, beyond the clotheslines, needed something beautiful. Mom and Dad chose this flowering crabapple tree. It grew on almost the same spot where Uncle stood in the wheelbarrow photo of the previous post, but this photo is taken facing due east. Beyond the tree, you can still see the weedy ghost of the garden between the grassy yard and the hayfield. It's certainly the month of May in 1977 or 1978—Dad was setting up to take a photo of the twins and their prom dates, another color slide in the same tray.

This year, the flowering trees in Minneapolis have bloomed almost a month ahead of schedule. Everywhere I go, I see a burst of white or pink. My own little city garden needs attention, but the tulips and perennials are bolting out on their own, ahead of me.

Crabapple tree on the Marty farm, 1970s. Kodachrome. Photo by Gordon Marty.

Putting in the garden

Gaylon pushing Gayla to the garden in a wheelbarrow, ca. 1960. Kodachrome. Photo by Gordon Marty.

Putting in the vegetable garden on the farm was a job that the men and women accomplished together because it was a huge task. When I was very little, Uncle Gaylon began teaching me how to plant seeds in the furrow, cover them up, and tamp down the dirt. On the day my dad took this photo, the garden has been planted along the edge of the lawn, and corn would be planted beyond that. The woods are visible over the horizon.

Today at the launch for Memory of Trees, I'll be wishing happy birthday to Uncle Gaylon! He would have been 76 this very day.

  

Going to church

Marty farm, ca. 1962

East Rock Baptist Church was my first church, and our family attended three times a week: Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening (prayer meeting). It was a country church that served mostly dairy farmers who milked cows morning and evening, so Sunday school was at 10, worship at 11, and evening services started at 8 o'clock.

In this photo, my dad and I are on the way to church or have just come home. Dad has his Bible in hand, and I'm feeling very grown up with that purse. We're standing outside the big farmhouse where Gramma, Uncle, and Auntie lived—you can see our smaller house in the background on the left. The photo may have been taken by Gramma Marty, because  she had a simple camera and we often drove her to church.

Now I live in northeast Minneapolis, home of dozens of churches for generations of immigrants. This year, Easter is the same Sunday on both the Roman and Orthodox calendars, so bells have been pealing during all of Holy Week. Dawn will be noisy and glorious.

My own church, just down the river, will be fragrant with potted lilies and other spring flowers.  One of them will be labeled in memory of my dad and Uncle Gaylon.