Granny Duggar's Hidden Treasures

by Doug Cogburn

To little Reed McAmis, on the occasion of his baptism:

A few years ago I wrote a little play for a church homecoming. The play was set fifty years in the future and made a few predictions about you. Some of the details have been wrong, but it was fairly correct. First, it predicted that you would be born. And here you are, although I missed the actual date by a year or two. Second, it predicted that you would be named Duggar McAmis. I was wrong about that. But, third and most importantly, it also predicted that you’d be a precious treasure of a baby and would grow into a handsome man. I got this right, but that was an easy one considering what lovely people your parents are.

You are a little treasure, but as you grow older and can get around more and listen to long-winded people like me because your parents will make you be polite, you will find that you’re not the only treasure in your home. Your great-grandmother, Granny Ada Duggar, left behind several hidden treasures for you to find. Here’s the story of a few of them.

..................................................

The people milled about the house and yard. There were dishes and furniture and a wagon full of odds and ends. The auctioneers kept bringing up things to sell and various people bid on and bought these things. The Cogburn family bought a library table that Dan Duggar used to do his homework on when he was a little boy.

One of the hottest items for sale was a dilapidated old organ that was practically in pieces. It had been some of the junk that was stored in the old family home that Dan had hauled down there just to see if anybody would buy it. The old organ brought more than a lot of stuff that Dan considered to be good and he was amazed at the several hundred dollars it brought.

People go to auctions for different reasons. Some go to find a bargain, some go to get a chance to go through a person’s house. Some people go to just have something to do or to visit with friends and neighbors who’ve also shown up. Some people go to auctions as a show of respect to the usually deceased person’s memory. Most people go hoping to find something that most other people won’t recognize as valuable so they can get it cheap. Hidden treasures attract many people to an auction.

I was there the day Granny Duggar’s estate was auctioned, but after looking around I knew that there weren’t any hidden treasures to be bought that day, most had been picked out by the family and the rest couldn’t be auctioned. Here’s a few of Granny Duggar’s treasures:

There was one treasure that was sold that day, but I didn’t buy it. It went unnoticed by most people there and probably the person who bought it didn’t know that he’d found a hidden treasure. The porch swing was taken down and auctioned off just like everything else that day, but it wasn’t just like everything else. The porch was a part of the house unlike the other things were. Granny Duggar had spent many days in that swing, watching the world go by. I spent several of those days with her, swinging away. Sometimes we’d see how high we could swing and she’d kick her legs high in the air, but usually we kept the swinging slow and steady, like we were in rhythm with the world we were watching go by, a world that seemed so much slower and calmer than it does now, but that was what made it a part of Granny Duggar’s hidden treasures. Granny’s sister Aunt Mary would sometimes be visiting and she’d sit on one of the porch chairs. She was fun and lively, but she just wasn’t a porch swinger like Granny Duggar. We swung and watched the world go by and talked about what was happening and days past and things yet to come. Times spent with Granny Duggar on her porch swing was one of the hidden treasures. The house looked so empty and lonely without a porch swing there, so when the Sunday School class was looking for an appropriate wedding shower gift for Wade and Daniece, I suggested and fairly well insisted that we replace the porch swing. After all, how could Granny Duggar watch over them if there wasn’t a porch swing there for her to use.

I looked through the wagon of various things for another hidden treasure, but it hadn’t been put out for sale. The pans that Granny Duggar used to make her corn sticks was another one of her hidden treasures that might go unnoticed by most of the people at the auction. For several years it was a tradition in the community that the youth group would have a bean supper every fall. The ladies of the community would donate the desserts and cornbread. Everybody else made cornbread in a pan and cut in squares or triangles, but every year I’d wait for a basket covered with a red checkered towel. These were Granny Duggar’s corn sticks. She always sent them and I always grabbed two or three as soon as they got there. They were one of the things that I knew I could depend on, one of the things that never changed. They would always be hot, sweet and crunchy. I don’t know what made them so good or how she made them, but I knew that they would be there. I don’t think it was the pans that she used, but I still looked for them that day because they’re all that’s left of Granny Duggar’s corn sticks, another of her hidden treasures.

 There was another hidden treasure that might have gone unnoticed by everyone else except for the family who had taken it out of the sale. On Granny Duggar’s porch, in addition to the porch swing, were other pieces of furniture. Granny Duggar and Marion had bought this from somebody selling it door to door years ago. One of the pieces of furniture was a little child’s rocking chair. The fellow took it off the truck and set it on the porch and little Dan Duggar took to it immediately. He sat in it and rocked away. There just wasn’t any way that they couldn’t but it for the little fellow since he like it so. It sat on the porch from then on, even though Dan soon outgrew it. Granny told the story of the little chair often, always ending the story by telling about the person who was visiting when they bought the chairs who said that if they hadn’t bought it for the little fellow he would have. That helps make it a part of Granny’s hidden treasure, that it reminded her that she was part of a community that shared with each other and treated each other’s children as their own and friends were more like family taken in. That’s how Granny Duggar always treated me. I looked for the chair, but it didn’t get put in the auction; it was kept aside for the next generation of little Duggars. That’s why I was going to do, keep it on the porch so someday I could watch a little Duggar rock away in his chair.

Sometimes it was too cold or dark to sit out on the porch and I’d visit with Granny Duggar in the living room. Then we might look at pictures or old family things and she’d tell me about her earlier days: Boarding at college and she and her friends tying the teacher’s doors together with the ropes for their trunks and then knocking on both doors and watching the teachers try to open them at the same time, which pulled the ropes and doors tighter. Teaching school and boarding with some of my Britton cousins, laughing at how she burst into tears when Luke Britton teased her the first night, telling her that she’d have to go home. Putting a stern word on a young man who’d come calling on her and was using some strong words that he’d best watch his language if he intended to be around her, which he evidently did, since he was known as a quiet and taciturn man for the many years they were married. Watching the children growing up and having different adventures.

She’d share her stories and she’d talk about good days and hard days, happy days and sad days, past days and present days. She talked about them all with enthusiasm and a lack of regret or sadness. They were all precious days because they were her days, they were what had brought her where she was and helped make her who she was. I’m glad for all the days she shared with me, the days that are another of Granny Duggar’s hidden treasures.

Granny Duggar had one hidden treasure that came as a set. That set of hidden treasures was at the auction, but they weren’t for sale. They were Granny Duggar’s most prized possessions, the things she talked about the most. The children and grandchildren meant everything to her, and so did the in-laws. “That Linda is a saint, an absolute saint; she’s put up with a lot out of that man over the years.” I believe she said this the time that Dan shaved his head. Before long the auction was over and the furniture and farm tools and odds and ends were gone. Somebody remarked that it was always sad to see a person’s belongings that took a lifetime to collect being sold in an afternoon, that it was sort of like the person was gone and soon to be forgotten. I’ve felt that way myself at other auctions, but not at Granny Duggar’s auction. Even if I didn’t know about her other hidden treasures, I’d still know that her real treasures were never for sale and are still here and growing.

Granny Duggar had one other favorite hidden treasure that didn’t get sold that day. If her most prized treasure was her family and her second most prized treasure were her memories, then her next favorite were the sunsets that she watched from her porch and living room. Her house faces west and sunsets stream across the field and cascade into her home. She often remarked that she had the prettiest sunsets she’d ever seen and she enjoyed each one. I’ve sat with her many times and watched the day turn into evening, the bright day turning bright red and yellow with glowing streams of sunlight shining through the clouds, and then becoming darker and darker crimson until only the darkness and stars remained.

The end of a day might seem sad or gloomy to some, but not to Granny Duggar. For her the sunset got prettier even as it turned to twilight and then to night; a sunset didn’t get darker and turn into black, it got richer and better and led into an equally beautiful night that twinkled with hints of a good tomorrow. That’s what happened to Granny Duggar. Her life ended like one of her sunsets, changing colors and losing some of its brightness, not fading or darkening, but turning from an afternoon and evening like those we shared into a twilight and finally to a nighttime that isn’t black and sad but still twinkles with hints of a good tomorrow.

...................................................

Wade and Daniece moved into Granny Duggar’s house and made it their home. I have been over there to sit in the living room and share stories and talk about days past and days to come; I’ve been there to watch a sunset with them. They hung up their new porch swing to replace Granny’s old one; I’ve not tried it out yet. The little rocking chair is waiting for Reed to get big enough to use it. I don’t think that Daniece has tried to make corn sticks yet.

In the entranceway room between the bedroom and living room there’s a portrait of Granny Duggar that I brought over one twilight evening.  I told Daniece that Granny was the one thing their new home was missing and that she’d been away too long. After we hung it up there we stood looked at Granny Duggar for a few minutes, each of us lost in our own special memories. As I stepped out on the porch to go home, the rich crimson sunset had turned into a clear and sparkling night that twinkled with hints of a good tomorrow.