In
Memoriam
Harold Perryman
1965-2004
The Perryman Rose ('Queen Elizabeth')
Joan Katherine Shaw
Harold Perryman
1965-2004
The Perryman Rose ('Queen Elizabeth')
Joan Katherine Shaw
Harold worked for us here on DragonGoose
Farm for nearly five years and had got to the point at which he was
indispensable. Every three weeks during spring, summer, and fall, he
and his two sons groomed our almost city-block-long hill using Stihl
trimmers and a DR hill-climbing lawn mower. He built
our carport (shown below left). He bricked in a patio and worked on a
brick walk that finally circled the house and led into the cutting
garden. He dry-walled the inside of our new barn as well as the ceiling
of the attached shop. He built a roof over our east-facing deck.He re-roofed the tub room after years of leakage around the skylights had rotted the plywood under the cedar shingles. He trimmed trees and shrubs and cut them down or dug them out when necessary. He planted untold numbers of roses. He tilled many miles around the edges of flower beds and shrub borders. He raked mountains of leaves in the spring and hauled them away.
He waged an ongoing war with burdock and bryony vines (at right is Harold pulling bryony from lilacs and wild plum trees). And he manned the Rhino front loader for hours on end moving compost and shredded bark and gravel and top soil and sand and rocks from one place to another.
It was a sad day last fall when he came in to talk to me about his and his family's wish to move back to New York state where his construction work prospects were better and better paying, and where both their parents still live. Right before Mother's Day, as a kind of farewell gift, Harold brought me a rose, a 'Queen Elizabeth' (shown above), which I planted and started calling, without thinking, The Perryman Rose.
What a loss Harold would be! But he and Kim and their children were so happy at the prospect of moving back to their old home that they'd left eleven years before, and Harold did assure me that he would find someone to take his place before he left.
And he was as good as his word.
A Fresh Beginning
Harold had spent last winter in Alaska making fantastic wages in construction, bought a new red truck, a Ford Ranger with a Power Stroke engine and a roomy crew cab. He'd also bought seven acres in upper New York state where he'd already been working in construction. The setting for the house he'd planned on building there sounded idyllic -- the land had a pond on it, surrounded by woods. "You've got to come visit us!" he said, with his usual enthusiasm. "You'd love it!" And I was actually thinking that we could do that. We hadn't been back East since we left there forty-two years ago, mainly because we'd never had anyone back there to visit, and never a summer goes by that I don't miss it -- the azaleas, the dogwood trees, the blue hydrangeas, the mountain laurel, the RAIN!
I'd talked to Harold's wife, Kim, about some plants growing here that she might take with her, though they hadn't time to come back for a visit to collect them before they left. They had so much to do, you see, so much to think about. They'd winnowed out their herd of horses to five -- a painful process -- and planned on taking these five with them in a horse trailer pulled by the Ranger. Their furniture and other belongings had to be packed in a U-haul truck to be driven by Joshua, the oldest son, and a friend. It's a difficult process enough, moving. But this was to be a move clear across the country.
So they were gone on their way before I realized it. I kept thinking about them -- their excitement at moving back to their old home, so much like my own old lushly green home in New Jersey. I knew what wonderful things they had to look forward to.
Then Spencer, the young man Harold found to take his place, showed up shortly after they left and told us that Kim, taking her turn at the wheel while driving across Wyoming on the first leg of their trip East, had caught a wheel in the soft shoulder, lost control of their rig, and the whole thing jackknifed and turned over. The injuries of the younger son, Jonathan, and daughter, Rhiannon, riding in the back seats of the crew cab, weren't life threatening. But Harold and Kim in the front hadn't been wearing seat belts. They'd been thrown from the truck. They'd been killed.
The Perryman Rose
We will never forget Harold Perryman -- his frustration at beauracracies and banks and insurance companies, his string of recalcitrant trucks and cars and their blowups, the children's work and sports injuries, Kim's osteoporosis, his trick knee, his bad back.
Besides, so much of the place here reminds us of him -- the carport he built, for instance, shown at left, and the lovely 'Queen Elizabeth' that will always be known now as 'The Perryman Rose.'
Joan
Katherine Shaw
July
2004
Photos - Joan Katherine Shaw
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