Fault Lines - John Knoop

highway. Ten days later, on the way home, they stopped again
and bought a young doe. Back on their farm above the Ohio
River, twenty miles east of Cincinnati, they realized that the
goat was not happy. It must be lonely, they decided, and the
solution was to go and get another, a young buck. So my
mother started her herd and her family at the same time.
Within a couple of years, she had a daughter and the first of
five sons and a small herd of Nubians. In 1939 her doe, named
‘Midnight’, set the world record for milk and butterfat
production. I heard about this triumph often enough to know
how proud she was of it and to realize how much it shaped her life. There must have been times
when she chose whether to comfort a crying baby or help a doe give birth to its kid. And times
when she wondered if she’s ever get back to her dream of being a writer. My father built her a
small brick goat barn below the springhouse. It had a hayloft, a set of wooden stanchions and a
milking stand that folded down from the door, all designed and carefully crafted by my father
from finished pine. The goats were given several acres of pasture on which to roam and feed. It
was my task by the time I was seven to milk the six or eight does before school each morning and
again each evening.
She was teaching first grade at Lotspeich, a private school in Cincinnati, when she met my
father. One of my aunts told me they all understood why she fell for him: ‘He was better looking
than Cary Grant, more interesting than her other suitors and he loved Mozart and played the
flute, which won daddy over right away’.
Marrying a talented, handsome, but socially
undistinguished man like my father and living in the country was an
act of rebellion that was not without its price. My grandmother never
approved of her youngest daughter’s marriage or lifestyle, with its
rejection of society and romantic back-to-the-land aspects. Marie
Wurlitzer’s disapproval may account for periods of tension between
my parents that sometimes lasted for days. I never understood the
source of those painful times when my mother and father tried quietly
to ignore each other, but I was well aware of the heavy atmosphere.
They were normally affectionate and happy with each other so it was
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