Gold Star Thursday - 40 Years!

I don't normally make tributes to my family here at The Bowl but this is an important one so I'm making an exception. Here's to you Mom and Dad.

August 26, 1969 my parents were married. It was a simple ceremony with a justice of the peace in Maryland but what happened next is nothing short of phenomenal in my book.

I'm a lousy daughter because I haven't ever asked a lot of questions about my parents' early married years so I don't know much more than I have lived - a situation I hope to remedy. I know my mother dropped out of college to help my father finish his BA. I know my parents lived in the mountains of North Carolina where my father worked in a fabric plant. He lost the tip of his middle finger on a velvet shaving machine.

I know my sister and I were born in North Carolina and my parents had some dear friends there that we would stop and visit every time we went to visit my grandmother in Florida. I remember many nights falling asleep to the sound of my parents playing cards with their friends and laughing and loving life.

I know that when I was very small we moved back to PA because my grandmother was very sick and needed help. We lived in a small farm house that we actually rented from some friends in the community. I remember being lifted in the front loader of a backhoe to pick cherries from a tree in the back field.

My parents purchased land from my grandfather and built a house from the foundation up and still live in that house to this day. I think I was about 4 when we moved in. My sister and I were a mile and a half from our elementary school. My parents worked in a sewing factory in our town; my mother as a seamstress and my father as a mechanic and manager of the cutting room. My sister and I worked in the evenings sweeping up the factory.

I remember many nights on the living room floor doing family devotions. Many nights at the dining room table playing Aggravation or Uno or Parcheesi. I remember folding laundry as a family and the laughter we shared when my father became confused by the ladies undergarments. He threw one into the air in frustration and the whirling ceiling fan carried it and our laughter to the rafters.

I remember long summer days in the garden hoeing weeds, picking beans, and plucking strawberries for dessert. I remember planting potatoes by the acres for the whole extended family to share. I remember picking my fair ton of those same potatoes. I remember my father working at a neighbor's farm in exchange for a freezer full of pork or beef at butchering time. I remember my mother making all manner of homemade presents and clothes. I remember canning our own vegetables, making our own spaghetti sauce, the smell of fresh jam, and the shelves upon shelves of mason jars full of supplies for a full winter.

I remember going out to the woods as a family and cutting up fallen trees for firewood for our Goliath of a furnace. I remember many a day my sister and I spent at the woodshed stacking wood as a punishment for some recent quarrel we had subjected our parents to. I remember my sister breaking her finger when she smashed it between a piece of wood and the tailgate of my fathers green truck. Speaking of broken bones, I remember taking the least graceful swan dive off our deck and breaking my own right arm.

There were pets - 4 dogs and an untold number of pigs, cats and goldfish. There were sleepovers. There were barbeque's that my parents threw for my camp counselor friends. There were birthdays and Christmases; Thanksgivings and long summers.

But above anything else in my memory is the total overall love. There was never a lack of love in our house. Not between my parents. Not from my parents to my sister and I. And not from our house to anyone else's. I don't remember my parents ever fighting. I'm sure they did. But I don't remember it. My parents always showed us that family is forever. They showed us that the best way to improve the world is to give of yourself to other people. They taught us that nothing is impossible if you are willing to work hard, be patient, and persevere.

My mother went back to college at the same time I went for the first time. She scored a 4.0 and graduated with a teaching degree which she is still using 10 years later. It was the proudest day for me to say that I finished right behind my mother's GPA. My father took a job at a local camp when I was 15 and has been the maintenance director there for 15+ years. They are not wealthy people until you start to count up their friendships and the people they have touched over the 40 years they have been married.

So my gold star today goes to my mother and father. For being role models for not just me and my sister, but for the people they come in contact with every day and for young couples learning to be married. I don't know that I could find a better example. Happy Anniversary!

When Life Begins in the Country.

I'm sure I've mentioned it before but I grew up country. And for those of you who didn't read or pronounce that correctly it's "cawn-tree." I mean cows outnumbered the humans. The local post office was inside the farm implement store and the two towns I lived between were really just wasglorified cross roads. My entire county had 2 red lights and one of those only a flasher. Everyone called the town sherrif (who was actually in the next town) by his first name. Call it the Pennsylvania version of Mayberry.

In our town there was a genuine country store. You could find everything from sewing thread, needles and zippers to hunting guns, fishing licenses, and ammo. In the back corner where the hardware was there was a stand up nail bin where the nails were still weighed on a scale per 6 penny or ten penny weight. People who still butcher their own meat could take their hams and bacons to the store owner who would slice it to order.

My sister reminded me about a tradition that we grew up on. Every year at Christmas the store owner (or another member of our community when he got too old) would dress up as Santa and hand out oranges and the Lifesaver holiday books. Even at Halloween we would trick or treat at the store counter. For the longest time you could find the older men of our town sitting on the bench out front talking about the weather or politics or any other notion that crossed their mind.

And this was such a part of our town that it had been passed across generations. First through one family and then bought and passed through another. I could probably even recite you the store schedule if I was hard pressed.

When I took my hubby to PA for the first time, I made a point of taking him to The Store. He strolled and looked. He was fascinated. My mom even got him a cammo ball cap for Christmas that year. Long's Store on the front and "A Little bit of Everything" on the back.

Even more fascinating was the decor. A mounted deer head over the phone in the corner (not a pay phone by the way); a preserved fox sitting on the gun safe in the raised office; pictures of various members of the community on the walls and the famous Brownie Calendar hanging behind the counter. Yard sale signs graced the front window right beside fliers for the fireman's carnival and band concert and senior class play.

In the wee hours Sunday morning, someone struck the gas pumps in front of the store and caused a fire that engulfed our personal landmark. It is gone.

Of course when you see a piece of your history fading you ask how you can get it back. The first question I asked my mother when she called this morning was, "Do you think they will rebuild?" Of course it is all so fresh now that no one knows but there is the rest of the story.

Should our friend and neighbor decide to rebuild, I would be willing to predict that it will be a full community holiday. Every man in town will call in sick and grab a hammer, pliers, wire cutters and any other necessary tool. Every woman in town will head for the kitchen to bake, roast, fry, boil and brew.

And they will laugh.

They will sweat and work and cut and lay block. They will plumb and pull wire. They will tell stories of times and people gone by and they will laugh.

All day I have been consumed by the thought of a huge piece of my memory being stolen from me. Almost to the point of tears. But I look at the possibility that lies ahead if there is a rebuilding and I have hope.

Perhaps we have found the key to my optimism and persistence. A life begun in the country.