How little we remember of an object – it had been a part of the background all my fifty-odd years. Not 4 feet high, natural wood, simple ¾” cane bottom, curved back; two flat arms curved on the front and two simple rockers set into slots in the bottom of the legs. Color slightly dark, but of pine, oak or hickory I know not.
The history I know mostly – the rest I can surmise or feel. Grandfather Ezekial Warner made it before 1900, probably starting during an idle moment at either the grist mill or the wheelwright shop northwesterly from the village of Richmond, Rhode Island – don’t look for it on your map – it is long gone, like Wilbur Hollow, and the Providence-Danielson Trolley, under water as the Scituate Reservoir for 60 years. In the early 1890s Grandpa Warner was considering his precocious first child; a real bright lass, a reader and probably a talker. She could use a real nice rocker all her own, and the idea of our Rocker was conceived.
In the way of all loving projects Grandpa pondered upon it a while then drew a sketch on a piece of board or wrapping paper. Wood was selected probably from local trees and sawn in his own shop. Shaped with loving care, edges beveled, curved, smoothed and fitted into one tight whole. Grandma W. then a young mother caned the bottom to form a comfortable seat where a young daughter could rock her dolls to sleep or hold tight to while reading what few books that were available.
Viola the little girl spent many happy hours in the little wooden rocker, holding dolls, listening to stories and ever rocking her brother Earle, though he grew fast and didn’t sit still long. Soon another brother arrived – little Leslie. Viola could enjoy him. Rock him to sleep, feed him, tickle him in the wooden rocker while her auburn haired little mother was busy keeping their hillside home neat. The old home and mill site are still visible at low water if you stop at the right spot on Tunk Hill Road, though you may have to leave your car and trespass a bit on reservoir property. Viola had a great area of pasture, field and woodland to explore, but many a sunny day was spent in the shade of a generous chestnut or oak rocking in her little hair, reading, playing or imagining strange journeys to foreign lands. Though these dream travels could have never approached the realities of the paths she truly traveled in her adult life. Viola, skinny, with glasses on her freckled nose, grew nobby and tall, always precocious, always searching. Brother Earle was a willing and able accomplice, little Leslie available for their experiments. One fine summer day Viola and Earle built a box kite – a large box kite, in fact a HUGE BOX KITE!! They fastened little Les in the kite and succeeded in flying him high over the meadow before Mother W. with the red-headed temper discovered their enterprise.
Viola – Aunt Viola – graduated from grammar school at 12, from high school at 15 and through the efforts of a proud mother entered a church college. A devoted scholar, she received a degree in theology at 18 and went on to become an ordained missionary for the Baptist Church by the time she was twenty. The little wooden rocker was still Viola’s but a new latecomer, Doris, was now using it industriously. Grandpa W. had died in a farm accident, the farm and mills were taken for the new reservoir and Grandma W. and family had bought a home in Cranston, R. I. where the little rocker had a new place of honor in the cozy parlour.
Viola wrote home from somewhere in Columbia, South America, telling of riding burros high in the Andes Mountains – cliffs towering skyward on one side of the trail, and on the other, dropping downward just as far. Nights spent in the wild high country listening to mountain lions ravaging garbage buckets and days teaching the people about the Lord.
She came home only once for a short time, then returned to Columbia. Letters were infrequent. Once she wrote regarding life during a revolution.
“Marquez made a secret room under the stairs in the mill building where I and the girls (they ran a school and had adopted several children) could see out, but not be seen. We watched the banditti take the plantation owner out of the big house and march him away until out of sight. His hands were tied behind him. Next day his body was found near a tree with many bullet holes in it. We were so blessed that Marquez was away on farm business yesterday.”
In 1971 news came from Bogata that Aunt Viola had gone on – the little girl wouldn’t use her rocker again, but she had lived adventures more exciting than those she rocked or read in it during the idyllic years near her Dad’s shop in staid dreamy New England so many years ago.
