The Cool of Evening

Its been a good day. We got up, had some brunch, and worked on the house. I got more trim done. I was supposed to go to the steam show in Mason, but did not make it. I'll hopefully pop in their tomorrow to take in some nostalgic coal smell and ash as I take in the old time tractors and steam engines. It will bring back memories of my earlier days when I used to go with our family neighbor Calvin to the Steam Show in Dover, OH. Those were the days of helping grind corn at the stone mill, messing with the Ford 8N tractor, and so on. Here is a pic of Calvin and his wife, Berince, (Couple on the left) with Calvin's brother and his wife.

Calvin was like a grandfather to me. He and Bernice lived just up the road from when I was growing up. I used to mow his lawn. My family would help him bale hay, shuck corn (yes, I said shuck corn), and so on, along with feeding his cows when they were away on vacation. Any time we had something break, we'd take it up to Calvin's for a little welding job or what have you. It was the old days then. We'd help out when he needed our younger energies and in return, he'd plow our garden in the spring and our driveway in the winter. And, he'd always give us apple butter when they made some or meat when they would butcher a cow. We always got the liver--Calvin hated liver. Helping Calvin also gave us free reign on his sledding hill. It was a great hill. It set just right so that the snow would drift over the top 15 feet or so. You could make great tunnels and so on in the snow. It also gave us extra resources for the sled jumps we would build. It's a wonder I didn't end up paralyzed.

Two of my fondest memories of Calvin both involve animals. In addition to raising cows, Calvin and Bernice would get chickens from time to time. He'd build a pen in his garage, complete with heat lamps for the newly hatched chicks. As they grew, they'd move outside to a bigger pen. When they were fully grown, they would butcher them. Calvin was proud and boastful of some contraption he had made that would behead a chicken with "control". I say "control", because if you've ever butchered chickens, they are hardly easy to control, both with their heads and without. He would always let one go after whacking it to laugh and watch it run around the yard for awhile. Remember, it was the old days, back when you did such things and it was normal.

The other memory involves evenings under Calvin's pavilion. Every night after a hard days work of whatever, Calvin and Bernice would take their place on the swing under the pavilion. Sometimes there was lemonade, sometimes bread and apple butter. Every couple of days or so, my family would walk up to their place and relax in the cool of the evening. It was always a great time. In the spring and early summer, Calvin would watch for groundhogs in his field while they relaxed. If one was dumb enough to come out of the ground, Calvin would head inside for his gun. Within minutes, there would be a huge crack of the gun and more often than not, another dead groundhog to bury. Calvin took pride in being able to shoot a groundhog at probably 200 or more yards with his 22-250 rifle.

Calvin taught me a lot about doing things right. He helped me begin to learn about having honor and an ethic that was inherit in men and women of his era. He taught me about doing hard work and learning to enjoy it--about doing what needed to be done so you could sit under the pavilion and take in the coolness of the evening. He taught us about caring for your neighbor.

When I started this post, I was simply going to talk about being able to sit by the front window in my living room and listen to the bugs of the night and feel the coolness of the air coming in the window. That was over an hour ago. Since then, I've spent time reminiscing about the steam show and even greater, my time as an early teen back home in East Canton. I sometimes really forget how much my childhood and teen years really shaped me. Sometimes I get caught up in the learning I've done and what experiences God has given me to put me where I am. Then, to keep me grounded, I somehow always come across something that takes me back to then, when life was much simpler and slower. Sometimes its the call of a redwing blackbird or the chirp of a spring peeper. Sometimes its the flicker of a lightning bug or the taste of good, homemade jam. Tomorrow, lord willing, it will be the smell of coal and wood smoke and the chug, chug, chug of a steam engine hard at work.