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The oldest commandment is found in Genesis 1:28 – “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it;: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
I could be wrong but, for the most part, it would seem that the American farmer as we know him today, has fallen a bit short of meeting or obeying this commandment. Perhaps we can find an obedient steward in the way of some of the Old Order Amish who still tend to be a bit closer to the earth than the new-order farmers who plant, cultivate and harvest according to the experts who sell them specific seeds and with that, contracts that they will not [even] get to plant from their own seeds of their harvested grain.
It is obvious this writer is not a farmer and some real farmers may find room for argument in this essay but that is OK; come to think of it I doubt if I have ever written an essay that went uncontested by someone a notch or two higher with wisdom or intelligence than I. However, I still notice with a bit of awe, the Old Order Amish farmer who does his work while cooperating with the birds and other creatures – at least like David Kline, “…who practices diversified sustainable farming on 120 acres of land in the Amish community of Fredericks burg, Ohio.” (Description of David from the back cover of his book, Great Possessions, , specifically on page 101 of his chapter titled “Hayland Birds”.)
David permits us to look over his shoulder as he “was making the backcut along the edge of the hayfield with the mower when the female bobolink flew out from in front of the cutter bar. Quickly stopping the team, I soon located the nest with its five newly hatched young. Using the cut hay, I built a flimsy canopy over the nest with hopes of saving it. The adult bobolinks accepted the makeshift cover and continued feeding the brood. But as I feared, my efforts to spare the nest also made it conspicuous to predators. Several days later the young bird disappeared.”
Not even this non-farmer essayist is naïve enough to know the big commercial farmer would have the time or inclination to “stop his team” (his $100,000+ tractor with thousands more dollars being pulled behind it) to search out a nest made by a horned lark, eastern and western meadowlark, red-winged blackbird, or grasshopper sparrow that might have been flushed by the equipment coming into their territory. The world, as we know it, is far too dependent and involved in a “larger picture” than the Amish farmer leisurely being drawn along by a faithful team. Both the Amish farmer and the modern professional farmer still have time to THINK as they do their job but the team of horses seems a bit easier and less involved than shutting down the tractor and making all the adjustments needed to take a minute to check out a nest of hayfield birds. “Whoa” is a bit less involved.
But as we continue to think about man and the oldest commandment, there are a lot of ways we have “run ahead of God” – Adam and Eve got us started in that track. Technology, as great and beneficial as it is, honestly sometimes generates new ways of doing things and unfortunately further shelves previous or old-fashioned ways of doing the same jobs. The examples of a simple knowledge of birding habitats and the utter destruction of nesting areas merge as a dichotomy where the “new ways” are outshined by the “old ways”. There is an article in the magazine, "Country Living", published by the Ohio Rural Electric Cooperatives, Inc., which uniquely parallels and illustrates this point. The January 2008 issue has an article on Page 10 written by Karen Kirsch that gives a convincing argument that our society might be better off sometimes to consider “low-tech work in a high-tech world”. With those words as her title, Miss Kirsch’s revealing article tells about a late autumn windstorm creating a havoc only nature could produce. Huge healthy trees fell like paper straws, uprooting other trees transforming a sylvan refuge into acres of a wreckage of forest groves.
Karen Kirsch weaves words of genuine excitement telling about a team of Belgian horses (George and Joe) worked by Ralph Rice, of Jefferson, Ohio. What looked like a disaster was turned into a managed forest and as such became a healthy forest. Instead of bringing huge machines such as rubber-tired skidders weighing 10,000 pounds, a team of Belgian horses (each tipping the scales at 1,700 pounds) were used; and the horses did not pollute the environment—their “exhaust” fertilized the soil rather than depleting the ozone level and the jingle of their double harness certainly was low on the scale of noise pollution.
These few examples -- The Old Order Amish ways, and a modern use of an old art of working with a Belgian team of horses is a mini list of how we might improve our ways of “having dominion over the…earth…” True, it might be a bit slower in getting the job done but think of the benefits. Mechanical ways are certainly manifestly useful in many ways today but sometimes it might be a viable option to consider using “a lighter touch upon the earth” as Karen Kirsch has eloquently challenged her readers. Great steps have always required the first step.
THE WORDWRIGHT
If you live in OHIO, you might contact the nearest cooperative of Ohio Rural Electric Cooperatives, Inc. to get a copy of the January 2008 issue of this fine magazine. Use the following link to begin that search: www.buckeyepower.com (Subscribers and users of this provider have already received their magazine at the time of this writing.) The 24 co-ops combined serve more than 380,000 homes and businesses in 77 of Ohio's 88 counties.
Bill Venrick - giving due credit to John Clayton (see link at bottom of page)
Today's essay comes with some entertaining words from John Clayton’s magazine (and website, DOES GOD EXIST?) Strange as it may seem some churches have a hard time figuring out how to deal with holidays. Some insist on the impropriety of claiming December 25th of the birthday of Jesus and nearly make it a test of fellowship. Let us not engage in meaningless debate about the seasons. Thanksgiving is a time of giving thanks for all we have been blessed with. Join in being thankful, however you wish to express it. Christmas is a time of giving and enjoying a variety of traditions. The following story by an unknown author was on the web this past year and demonstrates how much fun the season can and should be.
My husband and I had been happily (most of the time) married for five years but hadn't been blessed with a baby. I decided to do some serious praying and promised God that if He would give us a child, I would be a perfect mother, love it with all my heart and raise it with His word as my guide. God answered my prayers and blessed us with a son. The next year God blessed us with another son. The following year, He blessed us with yet another son. The year after that we were blessed with a daughter. My husband thought we'd been blessed right into poverty. We now had four children, and the oldest was only four years old. I learned never to ask God for anything unless I meant it. As a minister once told me, "If you pray for rain, make sure you carry an umbrella."
I began reading a few verses of the Bible to the children each day as they lay in their cribs. I was off to a good start. God had entrusted me with four children and I didn't want to disappoint Him. I tried to be patient the day the children smashed two dozen eggs on the kitchen floor searching for baby chicks. I tried to be understanding when they started a hotel for homeless frogs in the spare bedroom, although it took me nearly two hours to catch all twenty-three frogs. When my daughter poured ketchup all over herself and rolled up in a blanket to see how it felt to be a hot dog, I tried to see the humor rather than the mess. In spite of changing over 25,000 diapers, never eating a hot meal and never sleeping for more than thirty minutes at a time, I still thank God daily for my children.
While I couldn't keep my promise to be a perfect mother--I didn't even come close--I did keep my promise to raise them in the Word of God. I knew I was missing the mark just a little when I told my daughter we were going to church to worship God, and she wanted to bring a bar of soap along to "wash up" Jesus, too. Something was lost in the translation when I explained that God gave us everlasting life, and my son thought it was generous of God to give us his "last wife."
My proudest moment came during the children's Christmas pageant. My daughter was playing Mary, two of my sons were shepherds and my youngest son was a wise man. This was their moment to shine.
My five-year-old shepherd had practiced his line, "We found the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes." But he was nervous and said, "The baby was wrapped in wrinkled clothes." My four-year-old `Mary' said, "That's not `wrinkled clothes,' silly. That's dirty, rotten clothes." A wrestling match broke out between Mary and the shepherd and was stopped by an angel, who bent her halo and lost her left wing. I slouched a little lower in my seat when Mary dropped the doll representing Baby Jesus, and it bounced down the aisle crying, "Mama-mama." Mary grabbed the doll, wrapped it back up and held it tightly as the wise men arrived.
My other son stepped forward wearing a bathrobe and a paper crown, knelt at the manger and announced, "We are the three wise men, and we are bringing gifts of cold, common sense, and fur." The audience dissolved into laughter, and the pageant got standing ovation. "I've never enjoyed a Christmas program as much as this one," laughed the pageant director, wiping tears from his eyes. "For the rest of my life, I'll never hear the Christmas story without thinking of cold, common sense, and fur."
"My children are my pride and my joy and my greatest blessing," I said as I dug through my purse for an aspirin.
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Used by permission from John Clayton – please visit John’s website:
http://www.doesgodexist.org
The above story is found on this website – and a host of other interesting articles as well. THANKS JOHN for your fine magazine.
THE WORDWRIGHT
By Bill Venrick
Believe it or not, when I was a kid we would sit, as a family, and enjoy listening to the radio while eating popcorn or playing cards. There were special programs, they called them “soaps” [that term has stuck to this day] because their sponsors were usually soap manufacturers like Proctor & Gamble in Cincinnati, and whatever other sponsors like the makers of Oxydol, Fels Naptha or Duz (remember “Duz does everything”?) and so forth. Programs like "Stella Dallas" and "Ma Perkins" were usually afternoon or morning shows the housewives could follow while their husbands were at work.
Other shows, which you could call family shows, like “Fibber McGee & Molly”, or “Lux Radio Theater” and “One Man’s Family” were scheduled at the evening hours and that is when the whole family would gather in one room, some huddled around the radio while another group might be at a card table playing cards and all tossing down a lot of pop corn. You might have listened to “Mr. District Attorney” or “The Green Hornet” or “Gunsmoke” or “The Shadow”. There is an organization today that specializes in bringing back all those early radio memories, and you can even buy some of those old programs. Nostalgia is great and it’s only a click of a mouse away today.
Further back, 77 years ago there was a radio personality named Anthony Wons. I imagine he was somewhat like a radio personality I used to enjoy while traveling to Columbus, Ohio from Lancaster, Ohio every morning. Irwin Johnson, aka The Early Worm, had a morning program that made the 30-mile trip seem like just a few minutes instead of half an hour. He personally knew many of the recording personalities of the records he played. He would often save an especially long piece so he could play it in the middle of the half-hour time so his listeners would be able to enjoy that kind of music without any interruption of commercial breaks. I remember one recording by Harry Belafonte and Odetta did a number called, “There’s a hole in the bucket [Dear Liza]” – it was a hoot! [it was more than 3 minutes long!] Another regular the Early Worm would play was music by The Buffalo Bills, (no, not the football team) a men’s barbershop harmony quartet; and their records were usually more than 3 minutes too.
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The time of day was an important part of each time he introduced the music – no need to glance at your watch because The Early Worm would tell you every few minutes what time it was. Today’s radio is a bit different, at least in our area; some like to claim, “It’s all music…” but something’s missing when you don’t hear the time of the day regularly. In my commuting days one radio personality would “take you to work” and an entirely different personality would “take you home” at the end of your work day.
Here are a few bits and pieces Tony’s Scrap Book back in 1930:
“I expect to pass through this life but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” Stephen Grellet
“I love the man that can smile in trouble. That can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” Thomas Paine
LIFE IS LARGELY WHAT WE MAKE IT – by John Dale Kempster
Life surely is a seesaw thing;
We never know just what it’ll bring.
Sometimes it lifts us “high in air”
Where skies are blue, and all is fair;
Sometimes it “bumps” us down to earth
Mid gloomy days of little worth;
But never mind how dark the clouds
Nor blue the thoughts that come in crowds,
We know somewhere the sun is shining
And every cloud hath silver lining;
So lift your head, throw out your chest,
Put on a smile and do your best,
Stand firm in will, there’s naught can break it,
For after all, Life’s what we make it.
If your memories can take you back to years before 8-track tapes, cassette tapes, or CD’s or Ipods existed, maybe you can hear the cued music become louder and your favorite radio personality might say, “See you tomorrow…this is Tony Wons saying good night for now…”
Some of the above was taken from Tony’s Scrap Book printed over 70 years ago and published by The Reilly & Lee Co. of Chicago.
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Get a nostalgic kick by clicking on these urls for Harry Belafonte & Odetta [this is a VIDEO] and some news about the Buffalo Bills Quartet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5o6Ej5sirg
http://www.singers.com/barbershop/buffalobills.html
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THE WORDWRIGHT
Intermittently and cooperatively written by Bill and Jean Venrick
Every year about this time of the year my wife gets ready to stock our freezer with pumpkin puree. For some cooks that may not be surprising. The surprising thing about the beginnings of this restocking procedure is that of procuring the pumpkins. Rarely do we buy pumpkins – no we don’t steal them from a farmer’s field or take them off neighbors’ front lawn displays. But this year we came close. Our daughter works for a small catering company that has parties throughout the spring, summer and fall and she knows her mother’s taste in the cuisine part of living and when her employer was getting rid of a bunch of pumpkins, gourds and dried corn after the last of their fall parties, our daughter asked her boss, “What are you going to do with all that?” “They’re going into the dumpster…” and before he could get those words completely out of his mouth our daughter said, “Call me a dumpster…” Well, not in those exact words but she made it plain she would “take care of those pumpkins and stuff”.
Among those pumpkins our daughter rescued from the dumpster were several “large” pumpkins, probably 15-20 pounds (tops). We brought two of those home from our visit with our daughter as she culled out her find and Jean, my wife, had specific plans for those two large pumpkins. One was probably about 12” across and just barely fit in one side of our twin sinks. After washing it I got the job of cutting it into halves and then halving those pieces. Using a good stout butcher knife is essential and a steady hand helps.
Jean takes over again, putting those quarter-pieces-of-pumpkins into the microwave oven to “soften them up” so she can further pare them down to chunks. Cutting off the skin to discard, she cut the pumpkin into chunks about an inch or slightly larger and filled a large pan putting just a little water in the bottom of the pan to cook them down. When in that chunk stage she showed me how the pumpkin fruit is; looking closely it appears to be grainy but a closer examination reveals it is rather like thick threads compressed unbelievably tight. The only time you can see these threads is when you break the fruit apart, which makes it appear stringy.
After cooking these pieces Jean runs the cooked pumpkin through a food processor to make the pumpkin puree. My wife got enough pumpkin puree to make 16-18 pies from ONE of those pumpkins. She has a reputation of making the best pumpkin pie in our large circle of friends and family. She fills former cottage cheese containers with the puree and there is enough puree in one container for one large pie and a medium pie. Sometimes she uses what is called an “impossible pie” recipe—a pie without a crust!
I know some ladies will read this and say that’s too much bother. That may be for some but to us who carve out a living from two Social Security checks and an occasional bit of interest from some CD savings it is not too much bother – in fact, we work it out together. Go ahead and buy your cans of “cold pack” pumpkin – we will keep on messing around with pumpkins people don’t know what to do with them except throw them away. I prefer my “homemade” pumpkin to the store-bought canned kind because it seems more moist, not so dry and doughy tasting. As long as I can cut up a pumpkin (with occasional help from my husband) I will continue to “make my own”.
PS – Old Dad laid claim to those dried corn displays and while this is being written a small population of squirrels is enjoying that corn as much as we will enjoy eating those pumpkin pies this coming year – don’t think I will have to buy a 25# sack of corn from the feed store as soon as I did last winter. Also I have found a use for old peanut butter – I made up a wooden stand with two sized dowels positioned zig-zagged on opposite sides – one of which could be used as a “standing place” and the other, a larger dowel, I spread-on this old peanut butter. The squirrels have taken to this new diet with great interest – now the problem will be to find some more old peanut butter!
THE WORDWRIGHT
By Jean Steel Venrick
Originally I wrote about my father as a builder, but he had other abilities besides building houses and outdoor shelters. As Paul Harvey would say, here’s “the rest of the story” with some further explanations by Bill hidden within the text—he saw things about my dad that was unknown to me.
After graduating from high school my father took a two-year course at a local business college so he could work in the office at the lumberyard where he worked but that did not interest him. Instead, he enjoyed working hands-on with wood. He worked at the carpenter trade and became a “finish carpenter” or one who could make built-in cabinetry for kitchens and baths as well as fancy trim for windows and doorframes.
After retirement he spent his time in his basement workshop making grandfather clocks and some small wall clocks. His abilities were well known and regularly he got requests for corner cupboards with glass doors. He was very particular and when he designed the windows in the door he would also have designed the positioning of the shelves so they lined up with the frames of the glass—a small detail but one that is a sign the craftsmen knew what he was doing. One contract a local businessman made with him was to make cabinets to display trophies he caught deep-sea fishing, e.g., a long marlin was not in a cabinet but on a mount that could be fastened on the wall. One special contract was to make a Culligan [water-conditioning] script logo that my husband had contracted to make for a client. My dad glued up the required lumber and sawed out the script logo to spell “Culligan” all in one piece. I think it was twelve feet long! Nothing seemed impossible for him to figure out.
In his early days on the farm he even built a couple tractors from scrap material found at the local junkyard. One tractor needed angled metal cleats on the drive wheels, 34 on each wheel. With only a hacksaw he cut the required number of cleats — 68! Then he drilled the necessary holes in the wheels to fasten the cleats to the wheels. Mother was his helper on these projects whenever he needed a hand. My brother watched our dad as he sawed all those cleats and drilled all those holes and looking back to that job, he said, “…and those drills had to be sharp!”
My dad was raised in the city so I often wondered where he got all his knowledge for working on the farm. He still worked at the lumberyard in town while farming. He grew corn, rye and hay for the animals. The family, just four of us counting mother, did the harvesting.
He rebuilt a 1934 Chevrolet automobile and also a pickup truck. When he finished the pickup truck, someone wanted to buy it, so he sold it. We never had a truck around the farm and most of the time only one car which my dad drove 4 miles to town. We did not have a telephone either. He could fix most anything from the kitchen toaster to the car. Of course, during the depression you fixed what you needed or you did without. He was a frugal man but when television came along years later we were among the first to get one.
In 1971 he helped in some ways when a new church building project came along, he was there to make the built-in kitchen cabinets as well as a bench for the foyer. One of the ladies made a ceramic arrangement of the Last Supper and my dad made a fancy display case about five feet long, with built-in lighting, for that ceramic work. He also made a large circular wall clock, which was mounted on the rear wall of the auditorium.
The minister and he became good friends. One Sunday morning the minister challenged the congregation to write a poem. My father acted upon impulse and accepted that challenge and it turned out that he was the only person who wrote a poem. Here is his first poem:
MY LORD
Does your Lord mean to you
What my Lord means to me?
A kind and loving Savior
Who died on Calvary?
With outstretched arms,
and compassion sweet,
Your burdens He will share;
And lift your load and make it light,
And vanish every care.
He’ll help the strong — he’ll help the weak,
In sorrow He’s ever near;
He’ll send a helping hand with love
Each day of every year.
So bring your burdens to the Lord,
And trust in Him each day;
He’ll make life worth living
As you go along your way.
Ray Steel – April 1971
This poem was so appreciated by the minister it was printed in that week’s church bulletin in April 1971. His writing career continued for fifteen years; as he wrote, we published his poems into several booklets, which he shared with friends and acquaintances. It was like the Lord gave this carpenter and farmer a special gift for a little while. He wrote about fifty poems on all subjects – some humorous, most serious, religious poems, some about his wife and grandmother. It was interesting in those years he wrote, we would be visiting and he would say, “I wrote another poem, see what you think of it.” After that 15 year period the poems just seemed to stop coming to his mind. At least we have several of those booklets left and I am glad we printed them. This was a legacy he left us. He died at 85 in May 1991. His mate and partner for 62 years, my mother, joined him in September of the same year.
THE WORDWRIGHT
No, I am not talking about the petroleum problems, or the weather and how the government needs to regroup their forces. And neither am I trying to build a case from my own observations although I have attempted to comment on similar themes in past journals. Dr. M. Scott Peck’s book, A World Waiting to be Born, (1993 Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-37317-X) uses the very same words in the heading of this essay – “Something Is Seriously Wrong”.
It is my hope to present some fresh thoughts in our minds as we examine the church and society – and how our lives are affected (or should be). Dr. Peck’s book has for a sub-title: Civility Rediscovered. Now that is something I have thought about and also written about. The word casual has taken hold onto our society in epidemic proportions.
Civility is not the only thing that needs to be rediscovered. In our sophisticated society, or culture, there is much that we have let go by the wayside simply because of our technology. We use watches instead of our brains. We use stop-lights and trust in them instead of good judgment and common sense. Have you ever watched a flock of birds “flushed up en mass” from their perches and saw them circle the area that they just came from? Did you every wonder why they do that? I did and I asked an expert in ornithology, “Why do birds do that?” Simple – they are getting their readings or magnetic data together. They are plotting their course and the basis of where they are. Most new drivers do that, or at least my wife did when she began driving around 40 years of age. She would plot her whole trip to the grocery, doctor or bank. She wanted to avoid certain places – a lot of traffic mostly and you see, she was getting her bearings and readings all set before she left our driveway.
The American Indians, or any Indian on any continent didn’t have watches so they used their heads. Could they have noted what the shadows were like? How dark was it? What were the clouds like? On and on they would “get their bearings” and “read the signs of nature”. They didn’t eat by the clock either but when they were hungry they would just pick a few berries on the way. It is probably not out of order to consider the axiom, “Use it or lose it.” – we have lost a lot of our innate abilities because of our dependency upon technology.
Although Martin Luther once described the technology of printing as “God’s highest act of grace, whereby the business of the Gospel is driven forward.” Luther understood, as Gutenberg did not, that the mass-produced book, by placing the Word of God on every kitchen table, makes each Christian his own theologian – one might even say his own priest, or better, from Luther’s point of view, his own pope.” [From Neil Postman’s “TECHNOPOLY”, pg. 15] Neil Postman pondered the excesses or dangers of technology in his writings and yet in another book he wrote: “Can we blame those who want to find an easy way, through the agency of technology? Perhaps not, after all, it is an old quest. As early as 1918, H. L. Mencken (although completely devoid of empathy) wrote: ‘…there is no sure-cure so idiotic that some superintendent of schools will not swallow it. The aim seems to be to reduce the whole teaching process to a sort of automatic reaction, to discover some master formula that will not only take the place of competence and resourcefulness in the teacher but that will also create an artificial receptivity in the child.’…” (Neil Postman’s “The End of Education” (Redefining the value of school.) Knopf Publishing, N.Y., Page 49)
Technology is great but it doesn’t make a very good or dependable god – especially when a storm caused from natural circumstances like hot air and cold air clashing together making wind powerful enough to snap electric power poles in two like toothpicks. Like the TV ads of a few years back, “It’s not nice to fool [with] Mother Nature.” (Those ad writers were smarter than they realized.) In this past year it was “discovered” that people who built their houses below sea level ultimately lost the war with nature. But you see, “nature” has the upper hand in this card game of life. We are the temporary inhabitants who came along “redesigning” the shores and banks to improve upon Nature’s designs!
The Christian apologist and author, John Clayton, wrote:
“Much of the hostility to Christianity today stems from the militant political control that some have attempted to develop in the name of Christianity. Instead of trying to win people over by love, support and service, many religious leaders are crusading for political and financial power to force the agendas they believe in. When politics and money are the driving forces behind religious change, it will fail [and should always be suspect]. The fruits of the Spirit are what will change the world – not religiously acceptable laws. Christianity will change the world by changing the hearts and minds of people including those who make and enforce the laws.”
(DOES GOD EXIST? September/October 2005, Vol. 32, No. 5, Page 17) For further writings of John Clayton, use the following url – http://www.doesgodexist.org/
THE WORDWRIGHT
Written by Jean Steel Venrick
What woman wouldn’t be happy to move into a brand new house when she married. My mother was such a person. My father had built a lovely two-bedroom home on the outskirts of town and had it furnished when they married June 22, 1929. He was 23 and she was 20.
He worked for a lumber company, which provided quick access to buy materials needed to build this lovely place. Not only did he build the house but he made a lot of the furniture to go with it. I still have a dresser he made for this house.
When they moved into their first home after their marriage they had everything they needed except a skillet in which to fry their first breakfast eggs. So what to do? They did not rush out and buy one – mother found a paint can lid and used that-- I’m sure they had more than one laying around.
Not only did he build the house but he built a garage, a shop and plenty of decorative feature in the backyard including a small fish pond. They had it made, or so it seems. Three years later I came along to make their lives more complete—that was in 1932. Those were the Great Depression days and my parents began thinking about the necessities of life, mainly food they may not have should my Dad be laid off his job. Then he was laid off for an undetermined time.
In their short time together they had purchased 36 acres four miles from town that had nothing on it but an old log barn. My Dad built a small 3-room house, which later would become the garage. This was five years after their marriage.
They moved from this lovely house they had moved into when they got married to live in this quickly built 3-room abode in the country. Three days after they moved into the little country place, my Dad got his job back and worked at the West Side Lumber Company for 36 years altogether.
He never stopped building on the farm because there were always buildings needed: A chicken coop, a small barn, corn cribs, work shop and a smoke house for meats and other outbuildings for storage.
The idea was to live in the little house until he could build a large new house. That large house was ready to move into in 1939, on the fourth of July. It was a beauty compared to that little 3-room building. After moving into the big house my Dad decided they needed a larger barn so he started one, with my mother working with him, even way up on top of the roof. She was no stranger to work herself as she had driven the tractor as he scooped out the basement for the big house—holding my little brother on her lap as she drove the tractor which pulled the scoop!
They lived on the farm twenty years, during which time Dad worked in town and farmed on the side. After I left for college in 1951 my parents purchased a lot in town and built a modest two-bedroom house, which they moved into in 1952.
I have a brother, five years younger, who said he went to school one morning and instead of going home on the school bus, went to the newly finished house after school. He was rather disappointed he was not given the time to get one last look around the country place.
Across the street from the new house in town was a corner lot that took my Dad’s eye. The “building bug” struck again and another house was in the making. This time he built a large and stylish house. It was a show place with two large stone fireplaces, one upstairs and the other in the basement; the upstairs portion was a walk-around as you came into the front door on a slate floor. On the front side he laid up a portion of the wall with the same Bedford limestone; all laid and faced by himself. Even though a finish carpenter there was little he would not attempt and finish as well as anyone could, even stonework. Mother was quite happy with the smaller modest home but they moved into the new larger house just like any other house he would build in the years of their marriage.
While living in this new location, he purchased a cottage at the Methodist Campground in Lancaster (Ohio) and fixed it up as well. This little cottage was two stories and a tree had fallen onto it ruining the top floor so my Dad removed the second floor and made a lovely one-floor plan with a screened-in porch. They used that cottage as a get-away in he summer. At the campground there were activities going on during the summer so they would attend those some of the time.
Meanwhile they decided the showplace was a bit more than they wanted to retire in, so once again, in 1963, he built another more modest house, just one street from where they started housekeeping in 1929 – they moved into this new house November 1964.
Still the “building bug” worked on him in 1975 when they bought some ground twenty miles from where they lived, out in a serene country setting where he could build again. This time he bought a mobile home, remodeling it some, plus building a garage, a shelter house and an outdoor privy. This place was just another get-away from the city; in fact they named it,” The Steel-Away”, and my husband designed a nice oval sign with that name on it, placing it in the gable of the garage. The family used to routinely gather on holidays as Dad used to like picnics inviting anyone who would come to “party” with them.
The last outdoor project he made was a storage building for my brother in 1987. After retiring in 1968, at age 62, he made sixty-some clocks in his basement workshop, most of them were grandfather clocks. On the Wednesday before he died on the following Sunday, in 1991, he had been mowing grass at their “Steel-Away” driving an old Bolen’s Husky mower. Throughout all his life he never worked on Sunday because that was the “day of rest”. I can easily say, “I’m proud of my father.”
THE WORDWRIGHT
I found it easy to be proud of my father-in-law also. He was an inspiration to me as well.
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