The End of the World in Ireton

The story I'm going to tell is thirty-some years old. The story behind this story, a media phenom people still talk about, is much older--the night Orson Welles conned a nation into believing the Martians had landed, October 30, 1938. Prof. Lou Van Dyke, who died just last week, told me what he remembered about that night, a Sunday night, in a tiny Iowa town, where his dad, incidentally, was a preacher. I loved it. 

No, this is not exactly what Lou told me. It's been retooled as fiction; but there's a prototype, the story Lou once told. I'm telling it once again, thirty-some years after it appeared in The Banner, in his honor.  


Betts did her best to serve up big breakfasts the week their granddaughter stayed over, even though Shelley picked over her eggs like a blue jay and usually left enough ham to feed a starving family. At least that’s how her grandfather saw it, once Shelley was off to school. “Kids are all spoiled nowadays,” he’d say. “It’s a sin.”

At breakfast on Wednesday, as usual, the two of them couldn’t get much of a word out of their oldest granddaughter. She kept staring down at a tablet scribbled with school notes, and Betts knew very well what Jake was thinking right then—how in the olden days breakfasts used to be big, noisy times around the family table, eight kids, ma and pa, a hired man or two, depending on the season, lots of chatter.

He squinted at Betts, as if what his granddaughter was doing was downright impolite. But Betts let it pass, because she knew very well that Jake painted rosy pictures of what used to be. “It’s a sign of old age,” she had warned him often enough.

“Rosebud,” Shelley said, speaking softly, to herself. “Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud.” That’s all. Just “rosebud.” Fifty times maybe, Betts thought. The only word she used.

“What that mean anyway, sweetheart?” Jake growled.

“I hate tests,” the girl said.

Betts knew exactly what her husband was thinking: “Every last one of them kids is spoiled. Got no sense of what ought to be. Can’t even keep up a conversation.” She hoped he wouldn’t come out with all of that. He was capable of it, that’s sure.

“We got a test on this dumb old movie.” She whirled up her eyebrows and faked a yawn. “Boooooring,” she said. “It’s about this guy who gets real famous and then loses it all, and at the end all he says is ‘Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud—‘”

Jake dipped a forkful of ham in the liquid yoke of his eggs. “Hear that, Mom?—today they study movies at Christian High. I remember you got called by the consistory if somebody claimed they saw you even close to a theater.”

“You should know,” Betts said. That shut him up.

“You ever hear of Citizen Kane?” Shelley said. “Boorrring. This big fat famous guy made it—Orson Welles.”

Jake laid his fork down. “I should know that name—”

“He made the radio show about the Martians and the end of the world.” Betts told him. “You remember that.”

“That’s the guy,” Shelley said. “'War of the Worlds' --you guys actually heard of it?” She looked at them as if she had just then discovered they were alive.

“The invasion of the Martians.” Jake leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “It was the end of the world in Ireton,” he said. “What a night.” He shook his head. “Can't ever forget that one.” The silly grin he gave Betts was one she knew too well.

“We read about it,” Shelley said. “I mean, it was really dumb what happened—people jumping out of windows and freaking out—”

“Happened on a Sunday night,” Jake said. "On the Sabbath."

“You actually remember it?” Shelley asked. "Seriously?"

“Me and your grandma lived through the whole crazy business,” he said. “It was a Sunday night I remember, and we were over at the church for Young People’s Society—”

“Church on a Sunday night?” Shelley said.

“Things were different then, honey,” he told her. “We didn’t have a thousand and one things to do, so it was a big night for us, a big night out.”

Shelley looked like she’d just bit a lemon.
______________________ 

Tomorrow: the memories begin to roll.