I'm a writer by trade, but a baseball card collector in my heart, an addiction I acquired late in life. When my grandmother told me a few months ago that she thought my father might have some cards still stashed in her attic, it took me about five minutes to drive over to her house and start sifting through boxes of mostly junk, with visions of Honus Wagner in my mind. Most kids' mothers would have thrown out this stuff as soon as the kids left the nest, but my grandmother is a saver. Perhaps my father not coming home from Korea was responsible for her hanging on to his junk this long, but whatever the reason, I was sure I would find a buried treasure in his old baseball card collection.
I did find a few cards in a cigar box, mostly of players I had never heard of, and most of which were torn and creased from their primary purpose of turning a bicycle into a motorcycle by clothes-pinning them against the wheel spokes. Never the less, I was happy to find this glimpse of the past, regardless of its value or lack thereof. Card collecting was fun to me more because of that mystical connection to the past than for any investment potential that might be there.
This same fascination with the past piqued my curiosity when I ran across the crumbling cardboard box tied together with a brittle ribbon. I recognized my great grandfather's name, Hiram Ruhl, written on the lid in a shaky cursive script. I quickly forgot about the baseball cards as I began to read the contents of the box.
Darkness fell as the story in the box unfolded. My grandmother had given up on me and long since eaten her supper by the time I descended the stairs with the treasures under my arm. She had been unaware of her father-in-law's box or the story it contained and was as fascinated as I had been as I told her what I had found and briefly related what I had read. Her eyesight was poor, and it was late, so I promised to come back the next evening to read to her my great grandfather's story.
I did as agreed, and the following evening we opened the box again and pored over pieces of our history never known to anyone but my great grandfather. The box contained a yellowing typed manuscript, a journal, and quite a few letters. I knew from the previous night that the journal and all the letters had been reproduced in the manuscript, so after showing everything to my grandmother, I began to read to her from page one of the manuscript. About half way through, I suggested that she was probably tired and that I would be glad to finish reading to her the next night. She wouldn't let me stop. I was painting for her a picture of a side of her father-in-law that she had never known, and she wanted to know it all. Misty eyes had turned to flowing tears for both of us by the time I finished.
Hiram Ruhl never intended for anyone else to read his manuscript. He lived some thirty years after he wrote it, and the box remained undiscovered for another forty years as it gathered dust in the attic. I asked my grandmother what she thought about me getting the manuscript published, and I no sooner had suggested it than it became her passion. Had I not agreed to see this story through to printing, I have no doubt that somehow she would have done it herself.
What follows is Hiram's manuscript. I have embellished only minor details to make it more readable. Writers have a hard time denying themselves this license. Those embellishments should be very obvious once the complete story is read. The story itself is Hiram's; I have changed nothing of the story line or of the sincerity that was poured into the manuscript and the journal and letters on which it was based.
John Ruhl
February 20, 2004
Foreword
Josiah Webb was my best friend. My earliest memories include him....the two of us running barefoot on the wooden sidewalk to his father's general store, the penny licorice we always got from his father behind the counter, the dreaded day at age six when we had to put on our new shoes and trudge off to our first day of school, then, finally, summer vacation. Oh, how we lived for summers after that. The endless days spent in grade school are a blur now, but sometimes I think I can remember every minute and every adventure of every summer. And Josiah is indelibly etched into each of those memories as he now is in my soul.
We were two of the few in our class who were fortunate enough not only to finish high school, but to go on to college, together of course. We had both been fascinated by the sciences, and he eventually became a pharmacist, occupying a shop adjacent to his father's store. Coaxed, or perhaps more accurately described, coerced by my own father, I became a banker, and started my career across Main Street from the Webbs'. I'm still there today, in the corner office now. I thank my father now for the coercion. It kept me at home, to fulfill my destiny, to complete the one task for which I had been born, to help my best friend die.
When he got the news, at the ripe old age of thirty-four, that he wouldn't see thirty-five, I was the next to know. His wife found out a few shots of Jack Daniels later. Pharmacists had ready access to such improprieties, for medicinal purposes, even during Prohibition. His five-year-old son would barely know him, but as his godfather I tried to let him know his father as the father I knew he would have been.
Shortly after Josiah died, Molly brought me a sealed box with my name written on the lid in the shaky scrawl of Josiah's final days. When she left, I opened the box to find a note to me, a bound personal journal and several opened envelopes containing letters. In the pages that follow, I have reproduced Josiah's note to me, and his journal, with the letters inserted chronologically. Perhaps you will be able to read them dry-eyed, an accomplishment I have yet to achieve despite the years that have passed.
Hiram Ruhl
July 26, 1934
June 8, 1924
Dear Hiram,
It's no secret to either of us that I have very few days left, and I must share this story with you while I am able. You have been my friend for life, even in these past few months as I have withered away to another person. I have appreciated that, even if I was never able to adequately express it.
I must first apologize if I have seemed distracted lately. I have indeed had other things on my mind. I have been caught up in an adventure of sorts, one that I have not shared with anyone, not even you, my trusted friend, for reasons that I hope will be understood. Soon after my adventure began, I decided it should be recorded, so I started a diary. I am now entrusting it to you, to do with as you see fit. I fear that my judgement is not to be trusted anymore, so it's up to you now to decide if the story survives.
We will already have said our good-byes by the time you receive this, so I won't linger on morbid farewells. I regret leaving you as much as I regret anything, including not seeing my son become a man, and leaving my dear Molly to fend for herself. I know she will survive, because, in her own way, she is a stronger person than I am or was. She has shown me that, especially in these last months. You will all be with me, as I will be with you, in your hearts for now, until we are all together again.
Enough of that. I have been very diligent in keeping my diary, so I don't think I need to preface it. The story will tell itself if you read the accompanying letters as they are noted in the journal.
Godspeed, my friend.
Josiah
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