Vandemarks Folly | Page 3

My name is Jacobus Teunis Vandemark. I usually sign J.T. Vandemark;
and up to a few years ago I thought as much as could be that my first
name was Jacob; but my granddaughter Gertrude, who is strong on
family histories, looked up my baptismal record in an old Dutch
Reformed church in Ulster County, New York, came home and began
teasing me to change to Jacobus. At first I would not give up to what I
thought just her silly taste for a name she thought more stylish than
plain old Jacob; but she sent back to New York and got a certified copy
of the record. So I had to knuckle under. Jacobus is in law my name
just as much as Teunis, and both of them, I understand, used to be
pretty common names among the Vandemarks, Brosses, Kuyckendalls,
Westfalls and other Dutch families for generations. It makes very little
difference after all, for most of the neighbors call me Old Jake
Vandemark, and some of the very oldest settlers still call me Cow
Vandemark, because I came into the county driving three or four yoke
of cows--which make just as good draught cattle as oxen, being smarter
but not so powerful. This nickname is gall and wormwood to Gertrude,
but I can't quite hold with her whims on the subject of names. She
spells the old surname van der Marck--a little v and a little d with an r
run in, the first two syllables written like separate words, and then the
big M for Mark with a c before the k. But she will know better when
she gets older and has more judgment. Just now she is all worked up
over the family history on which she began laboring when she went
east to Vassar and joined the Daughters of the American Revolution.
She has tried to coax me to adopt "van der Marck" as my signature, but
it would not jibe with the name of the township if I did; and anyhow it

would seem like straining a little after style to change a name that has
been a household word hereabouts since there were any households.
The neighbors would never understand it, anyhow; and would think I
felt above them. Nothing loses a man his standing among us farmers
like putting on style.
I was born of Dutch parents in Ulster County, New York, on July 27,
1838. It is the only anniversary I can keep track of, and the only reason
why I remember it is because on that day, except when it came on a
Sunday, I have sown my turnips ever since 1855. Everybody knows the
old rhyme:
"On the twenty-seventh of July Sow your turnips, wet or dry."
And wet or dry, my parents in Ulster County, long, long ago, sowed
their little red turnip on that date.
I often wonder what sort of dwelling it was, and whether the July heat
was not pretty hard on my poor mother. I think of this every birthday. I
guess a habit of mind has grown up which I shall never break off; the
moment I begin sowing turnips I think of my mother bringing forth her
only child in the heat of dog-days, and of the sweat of suffering on her
forehead as she listened to my first cry. She is more familiar to me, and
really dearer in this imaginary scene than in almost any real memory I
have of her.
I do not remember Ulster County at all. My first memory of my mother
is of a time when we lived in a little town the name and location of
which I forget; but it was by a great river which must have been the
Hudson I guess. She had made me a little cap with a visor and I was
very proud of it and of myself. I picked up a lump of earth in the road
and threw it over a stone fence, covered with vines that were red with
autumn leaves--woodbine or poison-ivy I suppose. I felt very big, and
ran on ahead of my mother until she called to me to stop for fear of my
falling into the water. We had come down to the big river. I could
hardly see the other side of it. The whole scene now grows misty and
dim; but I remember a boat coming to the shore, and out of it stepped
John Rucker.

Whether he was then kind or cross to me or to my mother I can not
remember. Probably my mind was too young to notice any difference
less than that between love and cruelty. I know I was happy; and it
seems to me that the chief reason of my joy was the new