The Search for Grandma Sparkle Read online

A strange young man was standing in the kitchen! Simultaneously they each said, “What are you doing here?”

  Tom recovered first. A glance at the box showed it to be full of cookies. The frightened old woman was giving cookies and not stealing. “I’m Sarah’s boyfriend, Tom Hager. I think that you had better come in and sit down,” he said to the shaking woman. Tom took the box of cookies from Ruth’s hands before he took her arm to help the woman up the steps into the house. He led her to the kitchen table.

  “I’m Opal’s friend Ruth Vander Veer. I’ve been calling and calling her on the phone but haven’t gotten an answer from the house or cell phone. I can’t remember a time when Opal didn’t answer me. When I saw her yesterday, Opal didn’t say anything about taking a trip. This morning, I went to church where Pete said that a search party is forming. I can’t walk very far so I brought the cookies for searchers.” She paused, “I knew something was wrong last night when Opal didn’t answer her phone. She has to be okay. She is my best friend. We all need her.”

  Ruth’s hands were shaking more than ever. Tom looked at her and noted that she wasn’t in any condition to drive. “May I get you something to drink?” he asked.

  Ruth nodded her head toward the shiny aluminum kettle on the stove. “I’d like hot tea, please. Opal keeps teabags in the canister to the right of the stove.” She stood up to help herself but was so dizzy that she sat down again.

  “I’ll get it for you.” Tom put water from the tap into the kettle. Sarah is with Susan and her mother and father. He explained what little he knew about the disappearance. “Sarah asked me to stay here in case someone came with news of them.” Tom explained. “Can I call someone for you?”

  “My husband is no longer living and my children are living too far away. I could call someone from the SPARKLE club but then . . . she paused. No, I’ll be okay in a minute.”

  “You know that Sarah calls Opal ‘Grandma Sparkle,’ Tom said with a grin. Tell me about this club.”

  Ruth thought back to the night many years ago when the Sparkle club was named. As the new pastor’s wife, she had been expected to lead the woman’s fellowship group in the church. There wasn’t a written itinerary or guide statement. They didn’t want a Bible study. She didn’t know what to do.

  Ruth nervously looked at the circle of ladies that sat in her living room on the battered old sofa and the folding chairs from the church next door. Even though the secretary had finished the role call, she didn’t remember their names. The tall woman dressed in black said; “Now we want to hear from Ruth.”

  Ruth saw a friendly smile across the room so she focused on her. “Ah, what do we want to do in CWF this year?”

  The smiling lady said. “My name is Opal. It’s simple. We want fellowship with Christian ladies.”

  Ruth said, “Okay.”

  No one else said anything so Ruth tried again. “You may know that last year I taught sixth grade.” She motioned to the Bible and the dictionary lying on an end table. Someone in the group chuckled. What would the teacher do?

  Motioning to Opal, Ruth asked her to look up the word “Fellowship”. Then she walked over to her husband’s study and returned with a chalkboard, scotch tape and ten small pieces of paper.

  “Would you ladies each write your name on a piece of paper and scotch tape it to your blouse or dress so I can learn your name?”

  Opal found the word, “fellowship” in the dictionary and read: “Close association with individuals having common interests, ideals, experiences, and beliefs: brotherhood.” She paused. “I think we need to change that to ‘sisterhood’.” The ladies laughed. Opal continued. “To join in fellowship with others, especially in a church group.”

  Ruth continued, “All right. What do we want to do in CWF this year? How can we find out about our common interests, ideals, experiences and beliefs?”

  Angie answered, “We need to talk about them. Let’s start by sharing.”

  Ruth wrote on the chalkboard, “SHARE.” What else?” The woman wearing a bright red blouse whose name-tag read, Louise, said, “We need to care for one another.”

  Under “SHARE”, Ruth wrote “CARE”

  Pauline spoke next. “We need to pray about these concerns and study the scriptures to see what God wants us to do.”

  “Excellent.” The words “PRAY” and “STUDY BIBLE” appeared on the chalkboard.

  “That’s not enough, Angie answered. “I want the word ‘Love’ in there.”

  Martha interjected. “But what are we doing? How can we help? I mean besides praying.”

  The discussion was lively with everyone talking at once. Ruth heard suggestions like: “taking a meal to someone who is sick, sending someone a card and visit someone in a nursing home who is lonely.”

  Ruth pointed to a lady dressed in purple who said, “I’m Pauline. We could offer a ride to church or CWF.”

  “Sometimes we can’t really change a situation but we can always encourage one another,” Shirley offered. The group looked at the words Ruth had written.

  SHARE - CARE - PRAY - STUDY THE BIBLE - HELP - ENCOURAGE

  Phyllis, who likes acronyms and organization, said; “If we want to remember words, let’s make an acronym for them.”

  Even Pauline, who liked Scrabble, couldn’t make much sense out of rearranging the letters. S-C-P-S-H-E. She thought a minute before she suggested, “What if we change the words ‘Help’ to ‘Action’ and ‘Study the Bible’ to ‘Research the Bible’?

  Ruth wrote on the right side of the chalkboard.

  SHARE

  CARE

  PRAY

  ENCOURAGE

  STUDY THE BIBLE – RESEARCH THE BIBLE

  HELP – ACTION

  “How about adding ‘CARE’ to ‘SHARE’ making it ‘Share and Care’? Then we would have S-P-E-A-R.” Thelma suggested.

  “That is a bit militant but I guess that we are fighting evil.”

  Angie, the youngest woman in the group, spoke again but her voice was hesitant. “Remember Matthew 22:39 ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ I think we need to have L-O-V-E in the acronym somewhere. I want us to be positive in helping others and show God’s love. We should focus on the good that we can do by loving everyone.”

  Ruth wrote “LOVE” on the blackboard.

  Ruth said, “If we added ‘KINDNESS’ and rearranged the letters it would spell S P A R K L E .”

  Helen responded, “S P A R K L E.” . . . I like that.

  S for sharing

  P for prayer

  A for action

  R for research

  and give Kindness, Love and Encouragement. I vote for that.”

  Martha responded, “Sparkle means to reflect or give off light. I like that.’”

  “Yes, we should reflect God’s light. We would be positive.”

  “Who makes a motion that we use ‘SPARKLE’ as our motto?” Ruth asked.

  Opal raised her hand and said, “I so move.”

  Ruth asked for a second and then called for the vote. Each woman raised her hand in an affirmative vote.

  Ruth sighed and looked up at Tom. “That’s how we the club got the name SPARKLE. Then Sarah started to call Opal, “Grandma Sparkle.” Since Opal also means reflection of light and the word sparkle reflects Opal’s personality; it seemed so appropriate.”

  She looked up at Tom with a half smile. She was much calmer now. “We will do whatever we can for her. I can’t do much but I can pray. Will you pray with me?” Ruth took Tom’s hand and prayed for God to help them find Opal and Jessica and that they would not be harmed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Tom took his cup of tea upstairs to the spare bedroom, where he had slept last night, and glanced at the many books that Opal and her husband had purchased over the years. There were several that were about coal mining in Iowa. Thumbing through them he found one about coal mining in Marion County and read that there were over 500 mines in this county alone.

  Tom pulled a chair t
o the window so he could look out for Sarah and read parts of the book. Outside, he observed hills and more hills. The distant hills were covered with trees. When he drove over on Highway 5, there were rolling hills but only a few places where there were trees. The land was made up of crop ground which was mostly corn and soy beans. Here there were irregular areas of forest. In areas around where the rivers and creeks flooded, tall grasses and wild flowers such as yellow daises, purple thistles and white Queen Ann’s lace grew.

  North of Interstate 80, where he grew up, the land was mostly flat. The few trees were either in farm yards, cemeteries or by rivers. Here there were more trees and the land was covered with ridges. Water was standing in the low areas. I’ll have to ask Sarah about this, he thought.

  He glanced down and read about the Andersonville mine. Located near English Creek, it was an underground shaft mine in contrast to the surface mines. After digging as much as forty feet down, horizontal tunnels made entry ways to the hole to remove the coal.

  The school, built for the miners children, was called Liberty School. There were two rooms, one for blacks and one for whites. The teachers taught their classes as if there were two different schools. Soon the parents and teachers realized how impractical it was to duplicate each grade when there were only a few children in each class. So the school was integrated.

  Tom’s reading was interrupted when he heard the sound of a diesel engine coming from the lane. He looked out the window and saw Sarah driving a green Dodge pickup. He ran down the stairs and met her in the driveway as she got out of the pickup.

  He slowed to a walk as he moved to the driver’s side of the vehicle.

  “Hi. What’s with this pickup?” Tom asked. He moved back as she jumped from the driver’s seat.

  “Do you want to drive?” Sarah asked.

  “Sure.”

  As Tom moved to open the passenger door, he checked out the red T-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots that fit Sarah in all the right places. He thought. Her eyes looked tired as though she didn’t sleep well. I’ll get her to talk about her grandmother. That way she seems more calm and I get more information that might help in finding her grandmother and niece.

  When Tom got into the truck, Sarah noticed that he pulled at the lobe of his right ear.

  She answered his question. “I thought that the pickup was more practical since we had quite a deluge last night. It has four wheel drive in case we go down roads with little gravel. I brought four bottles of water but no food. Is that okay?”

  “Yes, since it was only an hour or so that I filled up on pancakes and bacon, I won’t be hungry for a long time. Where to?”

  “Drive north on Highway 5.”

  “Sure,” Tom replied. “How was the interview?”

  Susan read the paper that the sheriff had given her which basically said that Grandma and Jessica were missing. They asked that people report any useful information they may have concerning the disappearance of Grandma Spoolstra and Jessica. When they showed the video of Jessica helping Grandma blow out the candles on her birthday cake, Susan lost it. As her sister, I tried to help by taking the paper to read the rest but Dad took it from me and thanked the people who were looking for them.

  He then took my mother’s arm and returned to the house without saying anything to Susan. Michelle took Susan’s hand and led her to the car to take her back to Michelle’s house.

  “That must have been so hard on all of you,” Tom sympathized. “There was a visitor named Ruth who came to Grandma Sparkle’s house. She was so upset that she was shaking. I told her to sit down and have tea and then asked her about the SPARKLE Club. She explained what the letters S-P-A-R-K-L-E meant to the church club and talked to me about what they do. It seemed to calm her down.”

  “That was good of you. It was probably what she needed. Ruth is close to Grandma Sparkle.”

  “I can tell that you are close to Grandma Sparkle, too.” Tom commented.

  He turned his head toward Sarah and said, “I thought that we would join the church group that is searching for your grandmother.”

  “Yeah, that was my first plan. Then I talked again to Aunt Mary from Alaska this morning. She told me Grandpa and Grandma and she used to hike on Sunday afternoons along the old creeks and slag piles and check out the abandoned buildings near where the mines used to be. Grandma would pack a lunch. They might be gone until sundown. Then Aunt Mary suggested that we might want to see things as Grandma saw them because you get a different perspective on the land when you are looking for abandoned houses, mine areas and old railroad tracks.”

  “Why would they hike there?”

  “Grandpa Mark said that he was looking for his roots. His grandparents were Swedish miners on his mother’s side of the family. He also said that they were treasure hunting because in his mind’s eye he remembered a pay office that held a red brick vault. Grandpa thought that when the state made a law that all mine openings were to be closed, they just pushed dirt up against the pay office and buried the vault in a shallow grave.

  Tom turned to look at Sarah. “I read that the miners would line up and get their earnings on pay day. They were often paid in silver and gold coins or even gold dust or flakes. Of course, the money owed to the company store was deducted first.”

  Sarah answered, “I guess so. Anyway, Grandpa Mark said that there might be some gold and silver left there. Aunt Mary thought that her dad was just looking for good fishing spots. Grandma Sparkle said that the only roots she was looking for were the ones under the perennial irises, peonies and day lilies that she found near abandoned miners houses. She would get permission to dig the flowers up and plant them in her own garden.

  “Did you ever go with your grandparents on Sunday hikes?”

  “I really don’t remember much about Grandpa Mark except that he put a rope and tire swing in his yard and pushed me in it. I was only four years old when he died. Grandma Sparkle, Susan and I went mushroom hunting most every late April and early May when we were older.

  “Where did you go?”

  “It was impossible to know for sure. Grandma didn’t talk about where we were located when we were picking the morel mushrooms. She never went directly to the spot but drove in a circuitous route to get there. I’m sure that Grandma Sparkle didn’t want my sister and me to tell anyone where her special hunting grounds were but she must have gone to areas that she hiked with grandpa.”

  “I have never eaten morel mushrooms. What do they taste like?”

  “It’s rather hard to describe. They have a unique mushroom taste. It depends on how you fix them. Grandma would brush off the dirt and bugs with a damp paper towel. Then she cut them in half lengthwise and soaked them in cold salt water before she put them in the refrigerator for half an hour or so. She drained them on another paper towel and dipped them in a beaten egg mixture, dusted them with flour and sauteed them in butter until they were soft in the inside and crunchy on the outside. Once she tried to make hors d’oeurves from some dried morel mushrooms that she re-hydrated and sauteed but they didn’t taste as good cold.”

  Tom asked, “What are hors d’oeurves?”

  “Little munchies for a SPARKLE Club meeting. Usually she just made toast and cut it in squares that had dried beef, sour cream and pickles or olives on it and was held together by little plastic swords or spears. Of course, she always had cheese pieces to add to your plate. Her favorite is Gouda cheese from Frisian Farms. The Spoolstra family is from the province of Friesland in the Netherlands.”

  “My mom never cooked the fancy stuff like hors d’oeurves and we didn’t find morels in northern Iowa.”

  “Susan ate some raw morels once and got sick.”

  Tom didn’t know how to respond to that.

  Tom drove slowly north toward Knoxville. Although it was wet from the storm last night, the noon breeze had dried the road. Traffic was heavier than a normal Sunday afternoon because the races were going to continue at 2 PM but Tom and Sarah were in no hurry. They were
concentrating on any movement that could signal them that Grandma Sparkle and Jessica were nearby.

  The detective in Tom spoke up, “Let me get this right. Your grandfather was Mark Spoolstra married to Opal. Their children were George and Mary. George had two girls- you and Susan. Susan’s child is Jessica. Am I getting this right?”

  “Yes.” Sarah answered.

  “Did your father go on these hikes too, when he was a boy?”

  “No, I don’t think so. At least Aunt Mary never mentioned him. She was born in 1974 so she was twelve years younger than Dad. My grandparents had another son who died of pneumonia when he was two years old. Then when Mary was born, she was especially welcome. Dad thought that she was spoiled. By the time she was four and they went on hikes, Dad was sixteen and had his drivers license. He wanted to go out with his friends on Sunday afternoons.

  “Then there was a money issue,” Sarah said.

  Tom turned his head toward Sarah. “Money issue?” He asked.

  The truck made a grating sound as the tires crossed the center line of the highway.

  “Hey, watch the road!” Sarah’s voice rose a full octave. “Dad would kill me if I wrecked his truck.”

  “Sorry.” Tom sharply turned the steering wheel so they were in the right lane again. They were silent for a minute.

  When Sarah calmed down, she answered Tom’s question. “After Grandpa died, Dad got the farm except for the fifteen acres of land with the house on it that went to Grandma. Dad then used his equity to build us a new house. Once I overheard a conversation with grandma where Aunt Mary wanted money to pay off her credit cards. She was already married to Pete Martin and living in Anchorage, Alaska where Pete was in the military. Dad was yelling at Aunt Mary that she was wasting money. It seems that Mary wanted money to pay for a bill that she made on a spring break three years before when she and some friends rented a condo on the ocean that was paid for by Mary’s credit card. Of course, she expected her friends to pay her back but that never happened. I think that she inherits the house and fifteen acres of ground where Grandma Opal lives, when she dies.”