Gettysburg's Cannon

The phonebook that year had a grid of nine images on its cover; each celebrated part of Pennsylvania’s history: the Liberty Bell, a covered bridge, a statue of William Penn, a round barn, Independence Hall, a locomotive, an Amish horse and cart and some Mountain Laurel. The lower right image was a cannon from Gettysburg’s Civil War battlefields.

The phone rang. It was what we called “Mammam’s hotline.” My parents had decided to get an additional phone line. We listed only our new number and we gave our new number to family and friends; except Mammam, she had our old number – 648-9649 – scrawled on a piece of paper beside her phone. She would dial it, talk to us, and frequently, after just hanging up, call us back, having no recollection of just speaking to us. We would make a point of answering it every once in a while but some days the phone rang continuously. My mother counted 40 calls one afternoon. Other days she wouldn’t call at all; we’d always make sure we drove over to see her those days.

“Hia! Hey, - hey” she would start talking before we would even say a word. She only needed to hear the ringing stop and her lips took off like horses from the gates. “I got the new phone book here!” She was very excited. “It’s nice on the front there. There’s the Liberty Bell, a covered bridge like the one there in, uh, you know ? Down by the – it has a roof on it, there is the statue of George Washington and the Amish buggy and then after that there’s – uh – some flowers and then, uh, there is, that uh – “ She went from left to right down the grid of nine images. When she got to the last one her synapses just failed. They didn’t connect to something similar in function, they didn’t connect to something similar in appearance. They connected to nothing. If she didn’t know it, it was unknown. There” she said, “ - there is something you or I know nothing about.”