Chapter 2: Nobody and Somebody: The Loving Ways of Lone Oak<\/strong><\/p>\n It was a warm, or fairly hot day in spring\u2014the grass was turning green, and the budding trees sent a pleasant odor thru the evning air. The patient lowing of the cattle in the lane, was distinctley heard above the scuffling on the roosts in the chicken coop; the grunting and squeeling from the pig-pen, and the blating of the hungry calves. The sparrows churped loudly from the Tamarack in frunt of the house and from across the road in the woods came the song of a whip-poor-will and numerous other songsters\u2026.These sights and sounds\u2014usually interesting to any city boy, were especially so to me.[i]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Edwin Way Teale, Tails of Lone Oak<\/em>, 1908<\/p>\n On both sides I am descended from a long line of those who were not the kind of folk whose names name-droppers drop. They were not the kind to provide ammunition for excessive boasting. They were, in the main, common people. But the world was not made worse because they lived in it.[ii]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Edwin Way Teale, autobiography draft, July 27, 1974<\/p>\n I\u2019m Nobody! Who are you? How dreary\u00a0\u2013\u00a0to be\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Somebody! Emily Dickinson, poem 288<\/p>\n The old man stood atop the open platform of the Furnessville train depot, the right side of his face lit by \u201cstation lamps gleaming on the snow,\u201d the left by a kerosene lantern held high, as five-year-old Edwin stepped from the train with Clara and Oliver following at his heels. The Teales had arrived for a week-long Christmas visit to Lone Oak. It was the earliest such visit to remain forever etched in Edwin\u2019s memory. The old man, \u201cbundled in a fur coat until he resembled a great grizzly bear,\u201d[iv]<\/a> was Edwin Franklin Way, Clara Teale\u2019s father and Edwin\u2019s grandfather. Ed Way\u2019s roots, like those of his bride, were eastern. His father, Hiram, a New York lumberman, had moved his family west during the pioneer days of the mid-nineteenth century, settling in Porter County, Indiana in 1855[v]<\/a>\u2014fourteen years prior to the start of the family peregrinations chronicled by Laura Ingalls Wilder. At the time, Ed Way, the second of five children, was twelve. When he turned eighteen at the outset of the American Civil War, he \u201cenlisted as a private in the Fourth Indiana Artillery, attached to the Army of the Cumberland,\u201d[vi]<\/a> later fighting in several major battles. The first, the October 1862 Battle of Perryville, expelled the Confederate Army of General Braxton Bragg from Kentucky, forcing an overnight retreat through the Cumberland Gap into Tennessee. Three months later, the forces met again on New Year\u2019s Eve day in the battle of Stones River, also called the Second Battle of Murfreesboro. Of the major battles of the American Civil War, the casualty percentage at Stones River was second only to that of Gettysburg.[vii]<\/a> Ed Way was amongst the seriously wounded at Stones River and was discharged for disability and sent home to recuperate. In 1865 he reenlisted, this time with the ninth\u00a0Illinois Cavalry, and served out the remainder of the war.[viii]<\/a> Afterward, he used his Army pension to buy a homestead at the edge of the Indiana dunes.<\/p>\n A studio portrait of Edwin Way Teale, circa 1904.<\/p><\/div>\n Exiting the train platform on that bitter, Solstice-dark December night in 1904, the Teales packed themselves into the waiting bob-sled that would hurry them out to Lone Oak. Edwin later recalled how \u201cthe horses stamped and jingled their sleigh-bells and sent out clouds of silver steam into the cold night air.\u201d[ix]<\/a> At the clean, modest farmhouse, the young boy\u2019s gaze was drawn first to the freshly-cut Christmas tree \u201ctrimmed with polished apples, strings of popcorn, paper decorations and marshmallow fish.\u201d These fish, he recalled later, \u201chad a flavor which haunted me for years afterwards.\u201d[x]<\/a> But his gaze and his admiration shifted quickly to the loving pair who would remain at the center of all of his later Lone Oak exploits, a pair \u201cas remarkable as the dune country itself, as remarkable as the varied fields of the farm from which they had so long wrung a living.\u201d[xi]<\/a> That winter visit, and another during the summer that followed, preceded his matriculation at the Woodland School in Joliet.[xii]<\/a> Thus, these visits comprised an early, critical education for Edwin, an education that contrasted sharply and restoratively with that of the twig-bending kind to which he had grown accustomed at home. It was palliative and healing, an antidote both for the trials of his earliest years and for the \u201cnew, strange world\u201d of formal schooling still to come\u2014a sphere whose governors often showed little patience for a mind \u201clike a butterfly flitting about in a field of flowers.\u201d[xiii]<\/a> In a \u201cworld [that] was so full of interest,\u201d he wrote in his unpublished autobiography, \u201cI could not concentrate on any one thing.\u201d[xiv]<\/a> \u201cIt was not that I was dull witted,\u201d he observed elsewhere. \u201cIt seemed more that my mind was too lively.\u201d[xv]<\/a> At Lone Oak, Edwin\u2019s lively mind could flit unfettered. At Lone Oak, he could escape the disapprobation and shame that haunted his childhood. At Lone Oak, his grandparents set him free in nature, \u201ca liberal mother who gave me room to expand, freedom to seek my own level, time to think my own thoughts.\u201d[xvi]<\/a><\/p>\n *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n Gramp Way, Edwin remarked in Dune Boy<\/em>, \u201cwas probably not a very efficient farmer.\u201d He paid little attention to \u201cproper soils or [crop] rotation.\u201d[xvii]<\/a>\u00a0 In farming and in life he eschewed routine; it \u201cgalled his spirit.\u201d[xviii]<\/a> For Edwin, this was an endearing quality: \u201cGramp was one of those unschooled men whose minds are not molded to conventional patters. He was himself, never anyone else.\u201d[xix]<\/a> Despite a lack of formal schooling, Gramp\u2019s was a percipient mind that expressed itself in tenaciousness and ingenuity, in wit and compassion. He was, Edwin reflected, \u201ca living refutation of that specious fallacy of the literate\u2014the belief that illiteracy and ignorance are synonymous.\u201d[xx]<\/a> Though he had never read a book before marriage, he became, through his wife\u2019s tutelage, an engaged reader by the time Edwin made his holiday pilgrimages to Lone Oak. In a journal he kept during the summer of 1911, Edwin noted, \u201c\u2026gramp\u2019s deep in the mistarys of \u2018The Silver Hord,\u2019\u201d Rex Beach\u2019s popular 1909 novel of the Pacific fisheries. \u201cI hear grampa exclaming from the corner couch,\u201d Edwin continued, \u201cso I suppose he has found an extra instering part\u2026.\u201d[xxi]<\/a> Edwin\u2019s profound struggles with spelling as a child\u2014at which he later poked fun both in Dune Boy<\/em> and his unpublished autobiography\u2014likely deepened his capacity in later reflection to fully discern Gramp\u2019s vigorous if unschooled intellect. Despite his proclivity to \u201cblithely ignore the dictates of Webster and the grammarians,\u201d[xxii]<\/a> \u00a0Ed Way sacrificed much to send his three daughters through college. He knew the pioneer landscape was giving way to a new, more educated world in which tenacity alone might not ensure one\u2019s future.<\/p>\n In Edwin\u2019s view, Gramp\u2019s love of subtle humor was the greatest expression of his keen mind. This humor, most conspicuous in the stream of aphorisms the older man interjected into daily conversation, was a staple of Lone Oak life. Edwin recorded many of these aphorisms both in Dune Boy <\/em>and in his autobiography notes. Waking from an after-dinner catnap, Gramp would proclaim, \u201cDon\u2019t know what you folks expect to do\u2014but I know I\u2019m about prepared to rear and tear and mount!\u201d After this, he would \u201csaunter off to bed.\u201d[xxiii]<\/a> Of his daily financial plight, he\u2019d remark, \u201cIf the whole meetin\u2019 house was for sale fer a cent I couldn\u2019t buy a shingle today!\u201d[xxiv]<\/a> When guests arrived, he\u2019d quip, \u201cSit down boys, just as cheap as standing up!\u201d[xxv]<\/a> Growing impatient over the slow preparation of a meal, he\u2019d say \u201cToday, tomorrow and the next day will be three days since I had anything to eat.\u201d[xxvi]<\/a> Or, \u201cI don\u2019t git hungry very often. But when I do \u2018ts about now<\/em>.\u201d[xxvii]<\/a> Once, when a new pair of shoes had given him blisters, he declared, \u201cI must be like a Jay bird with my longest toe behind.\u201d[xxviii]<\/a> About a jacket Gram had sewn for him, he complained, \u201cSay mother, ye put these pockets in my jacket so high I had to git up on a stump to pull out my handkercher.\u201d[xxix]<\/a> And he reveled in the story of a young female school teacher who boarded briefly at Lone Oak. As the three ate breakfast one morning, Gram said, \u201cSometimes I wish you\u2019d cut your whiskers off!\u201d Gramp held his tongue, but the young lady responded, \u201cI think a kiss without a mustache is like an egg without salt!\u201d Gramp retold the story often.[xxx]<\/a> \u201cThe ax and the hoe and the pitchfork,\u201d Edwin reflected later, \u201cthe years of toil which had bowed his shoulders and enlarged the knuckles of his hands, had never dulled his sense of humor nor his love of the joke.\u201d[xxxi]<\/a> For Ed Way, humor released the injurious steam of daily struggle. It reflected his desire \u201cto \u2018camp out\u2019 at home,\u201d[xxxii]<\/a> to live contentedly in the present, imprisoned neither by past regrets nor dim future prospects.<\/p>\n Edwin Way Teale with his maternal grandparents Edwin F. and Jemima Way at Lone Oak, their Indiana farm, circa 1916-1918.<\/p><\/div>\n Gramp Way\u2019s easygoing nature sometimes belied the fierceness of spirit that allowed him to eke a living from \u201can uncompromising tract\u201d of land and to combat the steady stream of hucksters and thieves who plied the uneducated country folk at the edge of the dunes. Once, two men arrived at Lone Oak, a pair of \u201ccrooks [who] tried to get Civil War veterans to mortgage farms for $500 for [a] pair of glasses to keep Gramp from going \u2018blind before morning.\u2019\u201d Gramp surreptitiously sent Edwin outside to let air out of the front tire of their car and to bring in cordwood. Gramp then \u201cuse[d] [a] stick on [the] crooks\u201d and sent them hastily on their way.[xxxiii]<\/a> Another time, a wandering tramp offered to chop stove kindling in exchange for a meal. Gramp assented and went back to his own work, realizing shortly afterward that the tramp had \u201cshouldered the ax and set off at a trot down the road.\u201d This prompted Gramp to set off \u201cin hot pursuit.\u201d When caught and confronted, the tramp dropped the ax and fled for the woods. Later, Gram expressed her dismay that the tramp might have killed Gramp, to which he replied, \u201cWhat d\u2019 y\u2019 think I\u2019d a bin doin\u2019 about thet time?\u201d[xxxiv]<\/a><\/p>\n Gramp\u2019s earliest experiences on the Indiana frontier and his wartime service provided rich fodder for storytelling, an act bolstered by his \u201cgift for the colorful phrase, the humorous twist, [and] the original observation.\u201d[xxxv]<\/a> On late summer evenings, sitting by \u201ca smudge fire which kept the mosquitoes away,\u201d Gramp wove elaborate tales \u201cof the early days, the Indians, the wolves, the deer, the struggles of the pioneers.\u201d At the start of the twentieth century, the dune edges had been converted to farmland \u201cdevoted to corn and oats, melons and potatoes,\u201d but Gramp could remember the time when forests still blanketed the landscape. For Edwin, those stories \u201cwere like windows looking back into a glorious and adventurous past.\u201d[xxxvi]<\/a> Another such window lay in the southwest corner of Lone Oak, in a small \u201cmarshland \u2018island\u2019 where Gramp\u2019s cows stood in the shade and flicked away the flies\u2026during the hottest hours of the August noontide.\u201d[xxxvii]<\/a> Local lore told of this island as a former battleground of warring native tribes. From the \u201csand which lay beneath the sparse grass\u201d of the island, young Edwin unearthed \u201ca storehouse, a museum, of Indian implements\u2026more than 100 arrowheads, spearheads and tomahawk-heads.\u201d The plowing of the neighboring Gunders\u2019 field yielded up similar treasures. It is no wonder that Edwin saw Lone Oak as \u201ca sort of Never-Never-Land come true,\u201d and no wonder that, in the confines of Joliet and under his mother\u2019s critical eye, he would \u201ccross off the days on the calendar and count the number remaining before the next vacation when I would return again to the green pastures of that Indiana farm.\u201d[xxxviii]<\/a><\/p>\n *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n In late August of 1852, three years before Hiram Way would move his family to the edge of the Indiana dunes, Jemima George was born in Ogdensburg, New York, spending \u201cher early years near the banks of the St. Lawrence River.\u201d Her father, \u201ca prosperous masonry contractor\u201d who was \u201cengaged in building large churches in the region,\u201d was able to send her to \u201ca select seminary for young ladies\u201d in Ogdensburg for 1865 and 1866.[xxxix]<\/a> Henry George\u2019s health failed in 1867, however, and with it his finances, so the family headed west in search of opportunity and healing, possibly encouraged by the prospects of \u201cthe prairie cure,\u201d the widely-held belief in the power of \u201cthe clear dry air of the Midwest to allay\u201d tuberculosis[xl]<\/a> and other ailments. By the spring of 1867, they arrived in Morgan\u2019s Sidetrack\u2014later renamed Furnessville\u2014and settled on a farm several miles from Lone Oak. \u201cFor the young girl,\u201d Edwin noted, \u201cthis swift change\u2026was like a plunge from daylight into darkness.\u201d[xli]<\/a> Jemima \u201cfloundered about\u201d for several months, feeling \u201cbewildered and uncertain, shy and misunderstood.\u201d[xlii]<\/a> Then she met Ed Way, who, \u201cat the time, possessed nine white shirts\u201d\u2014a potent if amusing symbol of his post-war prosperity. For \u201cstate occasions,\u201d he still donned the brass-buttoned blue Army overcoat he had brought home from the war.[xliii]<\/a> He cut an impressive and benevolent figure, and Jemima, now 16, and Ed, now 25, were married on November 12, 1867.[xliv]<\/a><\/p>\n The main barn at Lone Oak, the site of many of Edwin Way Teale’s childhood exploits.<\/p><\/div>\n In post-Civil War pioneer society at the ede of the Indiana dunes, it was \u201cthe harder qualities of mind and character that [were] at a premium,\u201d Edwin wrote later. \u201cMen and women, struggling desperately to make ends meet, [were] like tightrope-walkers who [could not] forget for a moment the business of preserving their lives.\u201d[xlv]<\/a> Despite her initial shock and floundering, Jemima Way adapted quickly to the rigors of her newly-entered world, a process accelerated by her father\u2019s death in 1869. Still, the physical and emotional rigors of frontier life cut deeply. On Christmas Day 1868, just over a year into marriage, she gave birth to a daughter, Alice. Alice lived only a few hours, and \u201cas often was the custom in those early days\u2014a grave was dug under an apple tree, about 2 rods from the house and a little home-made wooden box containing the infant was lowered into it.\u201d[xlvi]<\/a> Clara Teale later remembered how \u201cFor many years we younger children planted flowers and cut grass on that little spot of ground.\u201d[xlvii]<\/a> Ed and Jemima went on to have four more children: Clara Louise, in 1870; Allan Henry, in 1874; Winnifred Margaret, in 1880; and Blanche Elizabeth, in 1885. Tragedy came again for the Ways when Allan, who had been diagnosed with an enlarged heart, died shortly after the celebration of his twenty-first birthday. At the time, he was studying law with a Judge in Valparaiso; it was a halting end to a once-bright future.[xlviii]<\/a> Such early deaths were common enough in a time when \u201cit was the unusual thing for any farmer\u2019s wife to have a doctor for childbirth\u201d[xlix]<\/a> and malaria was so rampant \u201cthat a little dish of quinine was placed on the table and every member of the family had to dip out a quantity and swallow it at breakfast-time.\u201d[l]<\/a> Still, the expectation of such loss did little to temper its sting.<\/p>\n Jemima Way spent her days \u201cbending over her scrub-board or laboring at the churn,\u201d often \u201cwracked by chills and fever.\u201d When farm help was scant, \u201cshe hoed in the blistering sun\u201d[li]<\/a> and took on nearly any other work that needed doing, often singing \u201cold folksongs and ballads from England\u201d to help pass the long hours.[lii]<\/a> She rarely complained, but there were times during Edwin\u2019s boyhood visits when Gramp would pull the boy aside and say, \u201cMother\u2019s got alum on \u2018er tongue this mornin\u2019. Better steer clear o\u2019 the\u2019 kitchen.\u201d[liii]<\/a> Of these moments, Edwin wrote poignantly, \u201cFatigue is Life\u2019s great poison.\u201d[liv]<\/a> Still, he noted further, \u201cThis hard labor which was her lot never broke her spirit.\u201d[lv]<\/a> A chance event that occurred when her children were young helped nurture and sustain that spirit; the effects of that event would ripple over decades, shaping the lives of a host of passers-through at Lone Oak, none more than the boy who \u201cwhirled like a satellite\u201d around Ed and Jemima Way \u201cfrom June to September in the golden days of summer and youth.\u201d[lvi]<\/a><\/p>\n Lone Oak was located in the center of Pine Township, in Porter County. Sometime during the 1880s, \u201cThe Township trustees purchased a set of 140 of the world\u2019s classic books of history and literature.\u201d The books, \u201cbound in leather and housed in a special bookcase,\u201d were to serve as a public library.[lvii]<\/a> Despite her constant toil at Lone Oak, Gram never forsook her educated roots. She had carried the intellectual flame kindled at Ogdensburg to the Indiana frontier, and there she had banked it beneath the ash of daily struggle, refusing to let it die. The Township library provided fuel for her inward fire, and the trustees\u2019 selection of Jemima Way as its custodian, and Lone Oak as the site where it would be housed, yielded a cascade of effects they could never have anticipated. Throughout the decades that followed, Gram Way \u201cread aloud every one of the millions of words\u201d entrusted to her, over and over again, not just to her own family but to anyone who would listen. Long before young Edwin\u2019s arrival at Lone Oak, \u201cneighbors and hired men from near-by farms used to stroll over after the chores were done\u2026stretching out on the front porch, puffing silently at their pipes\u201d as Gram sat beside a kerosene lamp \u201cinside the screen door\u2026[and] read on and on, her expressive voice rising with the exciting passages.\u201d[lviii]<\/a> It was one of a host of Gram\u2019s \u201cnameless, unremembered acts\/Of kindness and of love\u201d[lix]<\/a>\u2014love for her family and for neighbors, and love for the power of the written word, a power that could both validate and transcend daily human struggle.<\/p>\n The north view of the farmhouse at Lone Oak. Edwin F. Way is seated in a rocking chair, reading in the breezeway.<\/p><\/div>\n Gram\u2019s love of knowledge and the extraordinary value she placed upon the written word were not bound by her custodianship of the Pine Township library. \u201cPossibly the greatest pleasure she had while living at Lone Oak,\u201d Clara Teale recalled in the 1940s, \u201cwas her connection with the Grange\u2026She wrote both prose and poetry for their programs.\u201d[lx]<\/a> She also wrote and published numerous articles for The Rural New Yorker<\/em>, some of which were \u201creprinted in New York [City] papers.\u201d Edwin recalled later how \u201cshe would write, by the light of an oil lamp,\u201d despite her exhaustion of the day.[lxi]<\/a> These articles, reflective of the time, were printed unsigned, rendering her a nameless voice from the country, at once somebody and nobody\u2014a paradox driven home to her by events surrounding a particular article of which she was especially proud. After publication, she recopied its text, sent it to her only brother, and waited \u201canxiously for his reply.\u201d When it came, he had written not with praise but doubt of her authorship: \u201cWhy did you tell me [that] you wrote that article? I read it some weeks ago in a New York City paper.\u201d\u00a0 The slight \u201churt her deeply,\u201d as \u201cshe had thought above all people\u2014he would be the one who would see its worth,\u201d[lxii]<\/a> and likewise recognize hers.<\/p>\n While her brother could not see the deep well of her talents, Edwin could; and for her beloved grandson, Jemima Way dipped that well even more deeply. During one of his earliest summer visits to Lone Oak, Edwin recalled, \u201cShe put me to sleep each night with a new installment of a continued story about the River Pixies,\u201d a complex, extempore creation sprung from her imagination. Accompanied by the \u201cchorus of the katydids and crickets swelling outside the bedroom window,\u201d Gram sat nightly on the edge of Edwin\u2019s bed and conjured \u201cfaint, long-ago images of little people, with peaked caps, running about the banks of a dark stream.\u201d[lxiii]<\/a> Those images \u201cremain with me still,\u201d he wrote nearly four decades later.[lxiv]<\/a> Amidst the life-preserving desperations of frontier life, he reflected, \u201cA sensitiveness to the color and poetry of Nature\u201d was \u201cunessential, excess baggage.\u201d[lxv]<\/a> In that world, the majority, Thoreau\u2019s \u201cmass of men\u2026so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life,\u201d[lxvi]<\/a> spent their lives \u201cstifling the desire for luxury.\u201d[lxvii]<\/a> Jemima George Way was an exception, and thus was she exceptional in her grandson\u2019s memory. \u201cIt is only the rare and superlative character,\u201d Edwin wrote, \u201cwho is able to retain the softer qualities, beneath his armor, in a world of constant struggle. This Gram did and she stands out in my mind as one of the indomitable, great women of my meeting.\u201d[lxviii]<\/a> \u00a0Jemima Way not only retained such qualities but shared them freely: with family and neighbors, with farm hands and strangers, and with her beloved grandson, for whom her influence endured to his last days. She nourished Edwin\u2019s acute sensitivities when it mattered most, when much of the world seemed bent on smothering them. She helped his emotional and intellectual waters find their level.<\/p>\n Reflecting on his childhood, Edwin understood fully how erratic the spotlight of memory could be, but he likewise understood how it was inevitably drawn to fixed points, to anchors, to holdfasts in the flood and ebb of life\u2019s waters. Such were the memories of Gram and Gramp Way. Later, he came to associate these benevolent centers of his childhood orbits with three lines from Irish poet William Butler Yeats:<\/p>\n For life moves out of a red flare of dreams<\/p>\n Into a common light of common hours<\/p>\n Until old age brings the red flare again.[lxix]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Reflecting on these lines decades later, Edwin wrote, \u201cThus it was that my grandparents seemed to understand best of all, the world of dreams, of fantastic plans, of make-believe in which I spent so many hours.\u201d \u201cWhen we are young,\u201d he continued, \u201cwe know least of all how different we are, or how different from the norm are those around us. It takes perspective to see ourselves in relation to the world at large. It was only after many years had passed that I understood how strange a boy I must have been or how unusual were the two who were my closest summer companions.\u201d[lxx]<\/a> Long after Gram and Gramp Way had returned to the earth they had spent their lives tending, Edwin took comfort in the fact that he had memorialized them through his writing. \u201cThinking of those golden duneland days,\u201d he wrote in the spring of 1962, \u201cI realize, with something of a start, that I am the only person in all the world who remembers them. Who remembers Lone Oak now? I alone. But in a way there are thousands more\u2014all who have lived those days with Gramp and Gran in the pages of \u2018Dune Boy.\u2019\u201d[lxxi]<\/a> To the broader world, Ed and Jemima Way were nobody; to their friends and neighbors, they were somebody; to a strange, self-conscious, highly sensitive satellite of a boy, they were everybody.<\/p>\n Richard Telford<\/strong> has taught literature and composition at The Woodstock Academy since 1997. In 2011, he helped found the <\/em>Edwin Way Teale Artists in Residence at Trail Wood<\/a> program, which he now directs. He was a long-time contributing writer for <\/em>The Ecotone Exchange<\/em><\/a>. He was recently awarded a Rose and Sigmund Strochlitz Travel Grant by the University of Connecticut to support his work on a book about naturalist, writer, and photographer Edwin Way Teale. The Woodstock Academy Board of Trustees likewise granted him a sabbatical for the 2016-2017 academic year to support this work.<\/em><\/p>\n References<\/p>\n Civil War Trust, The. \u201cTen Facts: Stones River.\u201d https:\/\/www.civilwar.org\/learn\/articles\/10-facts-stones-river. Accessed 24 7 2017.<\/p>\n Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. <\/em>Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Boston, London, New York: Little Brown and Company, 1960.<\/p>\n Goodspeed, Weston A., and Charles Blanchard, Eds. \u201cEdwin F. Way.\u201d Counties of Lake and<\/em>\u00a0Porter Indiana: Historical and Biographical<\/em>.\u00a0 Chicago: F.A. Battey and Co., 1882.<\/p>\n Pryor, Elizabeth Brown. Clara Barton, Professional Angel<\/em>. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987.<\/p>\n Teale, Clara Louise Way. Notes for Edwin Way Teale\u2019s autobiography, Circa 1945-1950. Box 63, Folder 2170, Edwin Way Teale Papers 1799-1995, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut\u00a0 Libraries.<\/p>\n Teale, Clara Louise Way. Notes for Edwin Way Teale\u2019s autobiography, Circa 1945-1950. Box 63, Folder 2188, Edwin Way Teale Papers 1799-1995, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut\u00a0 Libraries.<\/p>\n Teale, Edwin Way. \u201cDays of Hearsay\u201d chapter notes, drafts,\u00a01974. The Long Way Home<\/em> (EWT’s autobiography). Box 63, folder 2167, Edwin Way Teale Papers 1799-1995, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.<\/p>\n Teale, Edwin Way. \u201cDays of Hearsay,\u201d draft, 25-27 July, 1974. Most Complete Manuscript, undated. The Long Way Home<\/em> (EWT’s autobiography).\u00a0Box 63, folder 2187, Edwin Way Teale Papers 1799-1995, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.<\/p>\n Teale, Edwin Way. Dune Boy: The Early Years of a Naturalist<\/em>. Lone Oak Edition. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1943, 1957.<\/p>\n Teale, Edwin Way. Edwin Way Teale\u2019s Composition Book [Circa 1910-1912]. Box 85, folder 2664, Edwin Way Teale Papers 1799-1995, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.<\/p>\n Teale, Edwin Way. \u201cMemories of a Bent Twig\u201d chapter notes, drafts,\u00a01974 July 31. The Long\u00a0<\/em>Way Home<\/em> (EWT’s autobiography). Box 63, folder 2169, Edwin Way Teale Papers 1799-1995, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.<\/p>\n Teale, Edwin Way. \u201cMy Earliest Home\u201d chapter notes, drafts,\u00a01974 July 31. The Long Way\u00a0<\/em>Home<\/em> (EWT’s autobiography). Box 63, folder 2168, Edwin Way Teale Papers 1799-1995, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.<\/p>\n Teale, Edwin Way. Tails of Lone Oak<\/em>. 1908-9. Unpublished manuscript. Box 84, Folder 2585, Edwin Way Teale Papers 1799-1995, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.<\/p>\n Teale, Edwin Way. The Trail Wood Journal, 1962-65, unpublished journal. Box 120, Edwin Way Teale Papers 1799-1995, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.<\/p>\n Teale, Edwin Way. \u201cWoodland Days\u201d chapter notes, research, drafts of manuscript, correspondence,\u00a01974 August 19. The Long Way Home<\/em> (EWT’s autobiography). Box 63, folder 2170, Edwin Way Teale Papers 1799-1995, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.<\/p>\n Teale, Edwin Way. \u201cWoodland Days,\u201d draft, 10-19 August, 1974. The Long Way Home<\/em>, most complete manuscript. Box 63, folder 2187, Edwin Way Teale Papers 1799-1995, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.<\/p>\n Thoreau, Henry David. Walden<\/em>: or Life in the Woods<\/em>. Ed. Edwin Way Teale. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1946.<\/p>\n Wordsworth, William. \u201cLines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798.\u201d Wordsworth\u2019s Complete Poetical\u00a0<\/em>Works<\/em>. Cambridge Edition. Ed. Andrew J. George. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1904. 91-3.<\/p>\n Yeats, William Butler. The Land of Heart\u2019s Desire.<\/em> Chicago: Stone & Kimball, 1894.<\/p>\n Notes:<\/p>\n [i]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Tails of Lone Oak<\/em>. 1908-9. Chapter 1. Box 84, Folder 2585.<\/p>\n [ii]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. \u201cDays of Hearsay,\u201d draft, 25-27 July, 1974. The Long Way Home<\/em>, most complete manuscript. Box 63, folder 2187. 5-6<\/p>\n [iii]<\/a> Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. <\/em>Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Boston, London, New York: Little Brown and Company, 1960.<\/p>\n [iv]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Dune Boy<\/em>. Lone Oak Edition. 7<\/p>\n [v]<\/a> Goodspeed, Weston A., and Charles Blanchard, Editors. \u201cEdwin F. Way.\u201d Counties of Lake and Porter Indiana: \u00a0<\/em>Historical and Biographical<\/em>. 398<\/p>\n [vi]<\/a> Ibid. 398<\/p>\n [vii]<\/a> Civil War Trust<\/em>. Ten Facts: Stones River. Accessed 24 7 2017. https:\/\/www.civilwar.org\/learn\/articles\/10-facts-stones-river<\/p>\n [viii]<\/a> Goodspeed, Weston A., and Charles Blanchard, Editors. \u201cEdwin F. Way.\u201d Counties of Lake and Porter Indiana:\u00a0<\/em>Historical and Biographical<\/em>. 398<\/p>\n [ix]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Dune Boy<\/em>. Lone Oak Edition. 7<\/p>\n [x]<\/a> Ibid. 8<\/p>\n [xi]<\/a> Ibid. 12<\/p>\n [xii]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Undated notes. \u201cMy Earliest Home.\u201d Box 63, folder 2168.<\/p>\n [xiii]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. \u201cWoodland Days,\u201d draft, 10-19 August, 1974. The Long Way Home<\/em>, most complete manuscript. Box 63, folder 2187. 1,5<\/p>\n [xiv]<\/a> Ibid. 5<\/p>\n [xv]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Undated notes. \u201cWoodland Days.\u201d Box 63, folder 2170.<\/p>\n [xvi]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Undated notes. \u201cMemories of a Bent Twig.\u201d Box 63, folder 2169.<\/p>\n [xvii]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Dune Boy<\/em>. Lone Oak Edition. 17<\/p>\n [xviii]<\/a> Ibid. 17<\/p>\n [xix]<\/a> Ibid. 16<\/p>\n [xx]<\/a> Ibid. 16<\/p>\n [xxi]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Edwin Way Teale\u2019s Composition Book [Circa 1910-1912]. Box 85, folder 2664<\/p>\n [xxii]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Dune Boy<\/em>. Lone Oak Edition. 16<\/p>\n [xxiii]<\/a> Teale, Clara Louise Way. Notes for Edwin Way Teale\u2019s Autobiography, Circa 1945-50. Box 63, folder 2170.<\/p>\n [xxiv]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n [xxv]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n [xxvi]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n [xxvii]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Dune Boy<\/em>. Lone Oak Edition. 141<\/p>\n [xxviii]<\/a> Teale, Clara Louise Way. Notes for Edwin Way Teale\u2019s Autobiography, Circa 1945-50. Box 63, folder 2170.<\/p>\n [xxix]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n [xxx]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n [xxxi]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Dune Boy<\/em>. Lone Oak Edition. 14<\/p>\n [xxxii]<\/a> Ibid. 17<\/p>\n [xxxiii]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Undated notes. \u201cWoodland Days.\u201d Box 63, folder 2170.<\/p>\n [xxxiv]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Dune Boy<\/em>. Lone Oak Edition. 20<\/p>\n [xxxv]<\/a> Ibid. 14<\/p>\n [xxxvi]<\/a> Ibid. 11<\/p>\n [xxxvii]<\/a> Ibid. 29<\/p>\n [xxxviii]<\/a> Ibid. 10<\/p>\n [xxxix]<\/a> Ibid. 20<\/p>\n [xl]<\/a> Pryor, Elizabeth Brown. Clara Barton, Professional Angel<\/em>. 67<\/p>\n [xli]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Dune Boy<\/em>. Lone Oak Edition. 21<\/p>\n [xlii]<\/a> Ibid. 21<\/p>\n [xliii]<\/a> Ibid. 21<\/p>\n [xliv]<\/a> Teale, Clara Louise Way. Notes for Edwin Way Teale\u2019s autobiography, Circa 1945-1950. Box 63, folder 2188.<\/p>\n [xlv]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Dune Boy<\/em>. Lone Oak Edition. 25<\/p>\n [xlvi]<\/a> Teale, Clara Louise Way. Notes for Edwin Way Teale\u2019s autobiography, Circa 1945-1950. Box 63, folder 2188.<\/p>\n [xlvii]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n [xlviii]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n [xlix]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n [l]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Dune Boy<\/em>. Lone Oak Edition. 21<\/p>\n [li]<\/a> Ibid. 21<\/p>\n [lii]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. \u201cDays of Hearsay,\u201d draft, 25-27 July, 1974. The Long Way Home<\/em>, most complete manuscript. Box 63, folder 2187. 5<\/p>\n [liii]<\/a> Teale, Edwin Way. Dune Boy<\/em>. Lone Oak Edition. 22<\/p>\n [liv]<\/a> Ibid. 22<\/p>\n [lv]<\/a> Ibid. 22<\/p>\n [lvi]<\/a> Ibid. 26<\/p>\n
\nAre you\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Nobody\u00a0\u2013\u00a0too?
\nThen there\u2019s a pair of us!
\nDon\u2019t tell! they\u2019d advertise\u00a0\u2013\u00a0you know!<\/p>\n
\nHow public\u00a0\u2013\u00a0like a Frog\u00a0\u2013
\nTo tell one\u2019s name\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the livelong June\u00a0\u2013
\nTo an admiring Bog![iii]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/files\/2017\/08\/TelfordStudioPortraitEdwin1904-222x300.jpg\")
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<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/files\/2017\/08\/TelfordOldBarnLoneOak-1024x616.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/files\/2017\/08\/TelfordNorthSideLoneOakFarmhouse3-222x300.jpg\")
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