25. The Gold Windows

Chapter 25 | By Helen Hinkson Green

Note: This is the next installment of It Takes a Pair, a 34-chapter memoir written by my grandmother, Helen Hinkson Green (1907-2003). It recounts her memories of raising her twin daughters as a single (& widowed) parent throughout the 1940s. It is being published posthumously in her honor, with new chapters released every Sunday. View previous chapters and more information about this memoir.

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Among the things that I might have written to Frances Tanner in answer to her “Whatever do you do in St. Mary’s, pray tell, besides teach” could have been “We watch for the gold windows each evening during the winter months and drink in their beauty.” I doubt if she would have found that a very satisfactory answer.

But the gold windows added a very special minor ecstasy to our day—especially since we were probably the only people in the world who were in exactly the right place at the right time to observe them. Talk about having the best seats in the house. We had the only seats for the viewing. They were our gold windows. Nobody else’s but ours. But let me tell you about them.

As the days shortened during the winter and the sun sank earlier and earlier, its rays were reflected and caught by the windows on the west side of three lovely big houses that stood atop the next bluff to the north of the one we lived on. Actually, eons before that bluff had probably been a continuation of ours, but at some time something had caused a sudden and abrupt (as to topography) falling away of a giant chunk out of a continuous bluff paralleling the river, so that there were now two portions of a bluff with a fallen or sunken valley or meadow separating them.

Our bluff ended abruptly just a few yards north of the Lorch’s and Bobby Bartels’ houses where a tall series of wooden stairs led down to the valley below. Possibly someone had built those stairs years ago as a shortcut route to the church, but now they were seldom used for that purpose. In fact, they were seldom used at all. The valley or meadow now intervening between the two bluffs must have been at least a half mile or so wide.

Just as the children were convinced that the canyon that our house hung out over in Miami was the Grand Canyon, I was equally convinced that the abruptly dropped valley between the two bluffs must surely mean that we were perched right on top of the St. Mary’s Fault. Like children, like mother, in this case, vivid imagination substantiated by a modicum of knowledge or facts somewhat related but not necessarily applicable to the particular terrain. They had their Grand Canyon; I, my St. Mary’s Fault.

But whatever had caused the abrupt valley between the two bluffs that ran parallel to the river, it provided us with an unobstructed view of those lovely big houses with every window on the west shining like pure gold. Even when the sun sank from our view behind some hills directly to the west of us, its rays still caught those windows for ten or fifteen minutes providing us with an almost unbelievable view out our north kitchen window.

It became a special treat to watch for them. One moment the windows would be an almost indiscernible part of the distant houses. And, then, just as the sun reached a certain point in its downward arc, first the highest windows would turn gold—and, then, just a very short time later, all the western windows would catch the rays and reflect them, so that it were as if the buildings must surely be on fire within so blazoning were the lights.

“Oh, it’s like fairy castles,” the girls would say. “They’re beautiful! Look, they’re almost flaming!” And indeed as the sun’s descending glow became redder as it descended nearer the horizon, the windows did seem actually aflame. “Maybe we ought to call the fire department, Mother.” (I can’t recall that St. Mary’s, pop. 600, had one. But no matter, since in this instance we didn’t need one.) “Are you sure the fire isn’t on the inside, Mother? Maybe you ought to do something about it, Mother.” At six, they were still quite sure that Mother could fix or handle anything if she had a mind to. “Maybe you ought to do something.”

And then reassured that there was no fire except that of the sun that was millions of miles away, two small girls, as well as their mother, would continue to drink in the beauty and wonder of the gold windows that were magically placed at just the right angle for reflecting the sun’s rays and for being visible to us from our kitchen window which was situated just enough to the west and south of the houses on that second bluff to make the viewing of those reflections possible.

Three fairy castles sprang suddenly into being just for our viewing evening after evening. Not many people are so privileged.

St. Mary’s Main St, circa 1950 (photo: C.B. Walker, Ste. Genevieve Facebook group)

» Look for the release of a new chapter of It Takes a Pair next Sunday.