A Year Down Yonder

“And I could swear I heard her murmur, ‘Better you than me.’ […] She meant Grandma.”

Mary Alice, who will be living alone with her grandmother for a year, keeps the reader in suspense by not providing many clues about this relative. Her mother’s sardonic remark, however, hints that she anticipated difficulty for Mary Alice. This potentially adds to the difficulties that Mary Alice already faces, uprooted from her urban surroundings, friends, and relatives and forced to adjust to rural life among strangers, beginning the development of the theme of The Challenges of Feeling Out of Place early in the narrative.

“The recession of thirty-seven had hit Grandma’s town harder than it had hit Chicago. Grass grew in the main street.”

After several years of recovery from the lowest ebb of the Great Depression, the United States’ economy hit another rough patch in the late spring of 1937, when production went down nationwide and unemployment soared by almost 5%. The rural town where Mary Alice’s grandmother lives has suffered a particularly sharp downturn, to the point that its unpaved main street is sprouting grass due to the lack of traffic and maintenance.

“‘I’ll make you welcome,’ Mildred rasped. She made a fist and showed it to me, under the desk. ‘Rich Chicago girl.’”

Mary Alice, whose city clothes and hair mark her as an outsider in this small-town school, attracts the ire of Mildred Burdick, the school bully. Mildred tries to extort money from the new girl, though it has little to do with her being “rich”: She also bullies children who are as poor as herself, like Ina-Rae Gage. This is the first physical threat Mary Alice has faced in the novel, and she is at a loss for how to deal with it—this physicality is highlighted by the fist that Mildred displays and her rasping voice.

“‘And is your paw still in the penitentiary?’ she asked Mildred. […] ‘He was framed,’ Mildred mumbled, sulky. […] ‘Oh, I guess them sheep off the Bowman farm found their own way into your pen.’”

Grandma, greeting Mildred at first with friendly hospitality, casually steers the conversation to her family’s criminal history, chipping away at the girl’s bravado. Meanwhile, her friendliness has caught Mildred off guard, allowing her to slip out and set Mildred’s (stolen) horse free, forcing her to walk five miles home, barefoot. With this, Grandma’s character is established as she provides her granddaughter with an object lesson about the advantage of brains over brawn.

“What the Halloweeners didn’t know was that Halloween was her favorite holiday. And being mostly boys, they didn’t seem to remember this lesson from year to year.”

Grandma has already shown a mischievous streak to rival any of the Halloween pranksters, and here, Mary Alice foreshadows that they will rue the day (or night) they crossed her. The town’s boys, never studious, have not absorbed this lesson from previous years and will suffer accordingly. Mary Alice’s comment shows that although she doesn’t know Grandma well yet, she understands her better than others in town who should know better.

“Anybody who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city. Except for Ina-Rae Gage, they were all giving me a wide berth.”

Small towns are stereotypically represented as friendly, but in reality, strangers and newcomers may find themselves excluded. Mary Alice has a hard time making inroads in this close-knit community, thanks partly to people like Carleen Lovejoy, the snobbish “leader” of a large clique of girls. She is still facing the challenges of feeling out of place, but Ina Rae’s friendship turns out to be important to Mary Alice as the story continues.

“She was dumbfounded. ‘He said I could have any pecan that fell. And as long as we’re out and about, we might as well go ahead and get us some punkins.’ […] ‘Oh Grandma,’ I said. ‘Whose?’”

Slyly, Grandma feigns shock that anyone could accuse her of stealing—after she rams a neighbor’s tractor headlong into his pecan tree to make off with the nuts. Though she derides the Burdick family for their thieving ways, she feels no qualms about appropriating her neighbors’ pecans and pumpkins. Mary Alice is at first both confused and dismayed by Grandma’s actions but later comes to understand that they are generally in the service of the community’s greater good.

“To Grandma, Halloween wasn’t so much trick-or-treat as it was vittles and vengeance. Though she’d have called it justice.”

Still a child at heart, Grandma exults in the relatively lawless Halloween season as a time to even the scales of justice and equity in her town. With her pies, she redistributes wealth (pecans and pumpkins) that would otherwise have gone to waste, and with her tripwires and homemade glue, she gives the neighborhood vandals a taste of their own medicine. However, as Mary Alice points out, Grandma’s motives point toward social justice, even if her actions seem to be just mischief.

“Once in a while a thumping sound came from overhead in the attic. I didn’t think Grandma’s house was haunted. What ghost would dare?”

Mary Alice ponders the origins of strange noises in her grandmother’s attic, introducing a suspenseful mystery that won’t be solved until months later in a climactic scene. Though bothered by the sounds, she consoles herself that it can’t be ghosts since even they would be skittish of her fearsome grandma.

“The best thing about radio was that you couldn’t see anything, so you pictured it in your mind.”

Before television, radio was the only form of broadcast entertainment, and the narrator of A Year Down Yonder nostalgically suggests that it was more stimulating, in some ways, than visual media. Guided only by sound effects and voices, the audience used their imaginations to fill in the rest, visualizing the actors (as Mary Alice notes) to be as handsome or beautiful as they liked. The narrator uses this memory to evoke the lost pleasures of a bygone era and argue for radio as a more engaging, collaborative form of entertainment, one that made every listener a director, casting agent, and set and costume designer.

“‘From you I wouldn’t say no to a five-dollar bill,’ Grandma said louder than before. ‘If you can get the bootlace loose from around your wallet. The boys who fought at the front didn’t count the cost.’”

Ladling out “burgoo” stew for charity, Grandma squeezes as much money out of the customers as she can, never giving change and demanding a fiver from the miserly banker. As with the pecans and pumpkins, she shows how brazenly ruthless she can be for a good cause, willing to use guilt and shame to collect money for her cause. However, as is characteristic, Grandma doesn’t explain her motives or actions, and Mary Alice is forced to interpret for herself, which becomes easier as she gets to know Grandma better.

“She’d tied him into the chair with flannel strips, and his head was fallen back. His face was slick and raw, and his jaw hung open.”

Upstairs in the Abernathy house, Mary Alice learns the reason for Grandma’s high-pressure sales tactics. Mrs. Abernathy and her son, who was gassed and injured in World War I, depend on the money from the burgoo charity. In this scene, Armistice Day ceases being an abstract observance for Mary Alice as she sees The Effect of Societal Upheaval on Families.

“I began to notice how old Grandma was, how hard she worked herself, how far from town she’d roam in the frozen nights, across uneven ground. I began to want to be there with her, to make sure she’d come safely home.”

As the months pass and Mary Alice gets to know her better, Grandma seems less a daunting figure of family lore than a selfless, hardworking old woman who perhaps does too much. Though much of the town sees her as an eccentric loner, she is actually an important part of its civic life, largely due to her hard work. Mary Alice goes from being afraid of her to fearing for her and soon wants to accompany her on all her tasks, showing the progress of their relationship and The Power of Intergenerational Relationships.

“She’d made me a halo so Carleen Lovejoy in all her tinsel wouldn’t outshine me. It looked more like a crown of thorns, but I handled it, carefully.”

Grandma, who has little affinity for snobs, counters Carleen’s scene-stealing wardrobe with an elaborate halo for Mary Alice fashioned out of baling wire and stars cut out of tin cans. Like its maker, it is tough and sharp edged but made out of love. By this point in the narrative, Mary Alic understands how to handle both the halo and her grandmother: “carefully.”

“The baby had one blue eye and one green. Grandma blinked. She held it up to the audience. ‘It’s all right,’ she hollered out. ‘It’s a Burdick!’”

The school’s nativity pageant has been thrown into chaos by the miracle-like appearance of an actual baby in Jesus’ manger. Grandma reassures the audience that there has been no kidnapping or other crime: The baby is, from its distinctive eyes, a Burdick. Grandma’s actions show both her characteristic straightforwardness and her insight into the community—everyone in the audience understands the implications of her words and the fact that Mildred is likely the mother.

“‘As I expect you are aware,’ Mrs. Weidenbach said, warming up, ‘my family descends from Captain Crow, who was at Yorktown when Cornwallis capitulated. My mother was a Crow, you know.’ […] ‘Ah,’ Grandma muttered. ‘That explains it.’”

Wilhelmina Weidenbach, an entitled woman who is president of the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), seeks to pressure Grandma into making tarts for her function. Trumpeting her illustrious lineage, she sets herself up for a fall, which comes when her true origins are made public by Mae Griswold at the tea party. For now, Grandma slyly insults the smug woman as a “crow,” illustrating both her intelligence and humor.

“The day had been gray, but crisp winter sun broke through and seemed to find the newcomer. He was as tall as Mr. Fluke and lots better-looking. His hair was red-gold, according to the sun, and not cut at home.”

A handsome new student catches the (spot)light of the sun, signifying a possible romantic interest for Mary Alice. Tall, elegant, and well groomed, the newcomer stands apart from the few other boys in class, highlighted by the fact that his hair was “not cut at home,” an indicator of both some degree of affluence and outsider status.

“‘I well remember when the Roaches took you,’ Aunt Mae recalled. ‘It was about 1883, wasn’t it? You was a Burdick.’”

Mischievously, Grandma socially integrated the DAR tea party, relocating it to her parlor and inviting Effie Wilcox and Mae Griswold, who are even lower on the town’s social hierarchy than herself. When Wilhelmina angrily puts on airs, Mae deflates her by exposing her true bloodline: Wilhelmina is actually a Burdick. As such, not only is she not eligible for the DAR, but she has also moved down the town’s social ranks.

“‘Son, you’re home,’ Grandma said. ‘It ought to take you about a month not to paint a mural in the post office. I charge two dollars and fifty cents a day. You can get your meals up at The Coffee Pot Cafe.’”

Not liking to see tax dollars go to waste, Grandma redirects over half of the mural painter’s commission (for work he will not do) into her own pocket. In exchange, she leases him a bedroom in her house and lets him paint canvases in her attic. Reprising some of the ruthlessness she showed at the burgoo charity, Grandma continues to redistribute wealth from people who (she thinks) least need it to those who do.

“And though I couldn’t believe my eyes—and heaven knows, Royce couldn’t believe his—the snake was all that Maxine wore.”

As in a tightly orchestrated farce, some of the narrative’s moving parts (the mysterious sounds in the attic, the artist lodger, the gentleman caller, the “man-hungry” postmistress Maxine Patch) intersect in a jaw-dropping climax. Just after Royce arrives for a visit, a large rat snake drops from the attic rafters onto Maxine, who has been secretly posing nude for the painter. Always quick to escalate a scene, Grandma fires off both barrels of her shotgun to attract a wider audience.

“In a town like this, an unmarried man was either going to be packed off or picked off. She’d decided against Maxine Patch. She backed Miss Butler.”

Grandma continues to flex her outsized influence in her small town by applying her matchmaker skills, maneuvering a meeting between her lodger and Miss Butler, Mary Alice’s teacher. Having helped eliminate Maxine as a prospect, she moves to seal the deal with Butler, a smarter, more worthy match for the artist, in her opinion. As has been illustrated throughout the narrative, Grandma’s tactics are often underhanded but always have the common good in mind.

“A terrible sound wiped my mind clean. It was like a giant, chattering typewriter directly overhead. […] ‘That’ll be the tacks coming out of the tar paper on the roof,’ Grandma hollered in my ear. ‘Hoo-boy.’”

Grandma and Mary Alice shelter from a tornado in the cellar of her house. Mary Alice has disobeyed her teachers by running home to check up on her grandmother, a sign of her growing attachment and concern. Additionally, her burgeoning interest in writing and journalism shows itself in her use of a simile to compare the sound of the roof to a typewriter.

“And she was telling me to go. She knew the decision was too big a load for me to carry by myself. She knew me through and through. She had eyes in the back of her heart.”

Her homesickness for Chicago now a distant memory, Mary Alice wants to stay with Grandma and look after her, instead of returning to her parents as agreed. Grandma, knowing that her future lies elsewhere, has been easing her out with hints that she’s in the way, so as not to burden her with the decision to stay. Mary Alice finds that her once-forbidding grandmother, without making a show of it, knows and loves her deeply. This new understanding shows Mary Alice’s maturity, part of which is due to her grandmother, illustrating the power of intergenerational relationships.