I have a long-gone great grandmother like that, waiting for me to do something with her poems.

Thanks for the reminder. Her name was Mandana Holt Carpenter-- Dana. I have seen a photo of her in long skirts and long, puffed sleeves, getting ready to rustle up supper for her men at the summer Adirondack fishing camp I began visiting again a few years ago. She is just about to go in to the hot woodstove, which now sits in my kitchen, to cook with water fetched for her (on a good day) by the boys.

She was a doll, formal and austere looking, except for those dancing eyes and wild poems. And her sons, all three, grew up to be Sugar Dog Men. They romped at Camp every summer, all summer, with their rather severe dad, who knew young men need large woods to play in and large deeds to do.

I suppose old BF must have been a Sugar Dog Man in his own way, in his own time's way, as curmudgeons often turn out to be. For Dana's eyes do dance, unquenched, and even a Sugar Dog cannot raise Sugar Dog Men without a little help from someone or other. (I hope it was BF, who is remembered by later generations now for the severity.)

One of these boys, who grew up to be my grand-uncle Ben, had a particularly wicked sense of humor that still catches Camp visitors today, though he is no longer sitting in his chair to see it and lead the gales of laughter. There is a door that opens on the opposite side doors usually do. So Ben installed a big ornate, black, cast iron handle, where the handle "should" be, on the white door. The real, operable doorknob, also white, is in "plain sight" on the other side. That door has kept all visitors on one level-- below Ben!

~S~