Here are a few selections from my parents’ surprise 50th
anniversary scrapbook that I happened to have electronic copies of. I discovered these as I was cleaning stuff
off my old computer (prior to scrapping it).
My parents just celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary a
few days ago. How time flies! Names (and in some cases, places) have been changed for the sake of privacy.
Trees (Ari)
This little ditty on “Trees” was written for the occasion of my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary.
My earliest, dim recollection of existence as a child is of sitting outside on the soft green grass, in the shade of a sycamore tree. I’ve always loved trees, perhaps because in Nebraska we didn’t have a lot of them. On a camping trip to Colorado once, I remember being awed by the dark cathedral-like forest of tall scented pines and the quaking aspens…but the most memorable trees to me were the ones in our own yard.
My parents like to watch the squirrels and the birds in their bird feeder hanging outside their picture window. This is an activity they hardly had time for when we were growing up. My mother no doubt watched anxiously out the window as we children were climbing the trees ourselves, building our tree house perhaps, or leaping onto our monkey swing from a nearby tree limb.
When each of us children was born, Dad planted a tree. “My” tree was a Seckel pear—a prolific but messy fruit tree in the front yard that always provided a feast for the bees and the occasional human who wanted to compete for one of its small, sweet pears. Today it is nearly the last of those original fruit trees still alive. Its gnarled, ashen-gray limbs remind me of a wrinkled, feeble old person one step from the grave. Each year we think it will surely die, but so far it just keeps on producing a bounty of pears.
As children, we had an abundance of fruit trees, in addition to grapes, currents, gooseberries, strawberries and raspberries. I have fond memories of stuffing myself on our sweet sour cherries—it was quite equal to the fun we had climbing up onto Fred Jones’ garage roof and gorging on the overhanging mulberries. Once, my brother Allen and I were sitting in our tree house spitting cherry pits down on the passing cars that were rounding our corner…one driver stopped his car, looked around, gesticulated angrily, but failed to look UP! Now you see, a tree house was just the thing for a kid to have—especially if you were lucky enough to have not one, but FOUR huge sycamore trees to climb as we did. All of the sycamores are gone but one, now—and the monkey swing that used to be attached to it has been missing for 25 years or so.
Perhaps we all remember the simple childish pleasure of jumping in a pile of autumn leaves, feeling the crunch under our feet as we waded knee-deep through them…and smelling the pungent odor of burning leaves on a cool fall day.
At one time, Dad was working some part time jobs to help make ends meet, and one of those jobs was yard maintenance for an old retired Architect (Mr. Strasburg?). On occasion, Dad would take me along to help pull weeds, dig dandelions, etc. In the very back corner of Mr. Strasburg’s back yard stood a giant oak, and I remember helping Dad dig out one of the pesky little seedlings that had sprouted below it, to replant in our own back yard. That little oak sapling is now a beautiful shade tree. Mr. Strasberg’s stately old tree is likely still standing, unlike the row of Lombardy poplars that used to line the back of our own yard, or the willow tree, or the plum, peach or apricot trees. Even our huge apple tree is gone now, the tree that gave us so many bushels of apples, that shaded Heather’s little playhouse and our sand box, that provided our first tree-climb-on-a-cool-Fall-day-to-reach-a-crisp-sweet-juicy-apple-and-take-a-bite-out-of-it experience.
It seems to me the most productive fruit trees are not very tall or stately looking--pretty humble, really. But they have their own beauty… which reminds me of the time my dad was working at another of his part-time jobs at Marvin’s orchard. On one particular spring day our parents decided to pile us all in the car to go see the orchard in full bloom—of course I expected to be bored. But one couldn’t help but be affected by the gorgeous, ethereal forest of delicate white blooms that surrounded us in every direction, and the wonderful apple-blossom scent that filled the air. This was a sensory experience I would never forget.
I have a lot of trees on my property now in Illinois, but no fruit trees. I miss them. Perhaps I will plant some fruit trees myself sometime, perhaps a whole orchard. Then I’ll invite everyone to come see and smell the blooms in springtime…
There’s nothing quite like the serenity and peacefulness of a forest. My German grandfather had a forest near his home, with countless forest paths. On a few occasions, I would go for a hike with one or two others. Early in the morning or after a rain, the sun would filter in and reflect through the mist and off the shimmering leaves overhead; dark ferns, blueberry bushes and soft, damp leaves would surround the forest path. It was a spiritual experience, a quiet, glistening symphony of light and color.
My parents loved beautiful music; they sought to impart this love to each of their children as well. Often on a Sunday afternoon they would take us to hear the college orchestra, and later, my sister and I would play in it ourselves. My folks made some unlikely friends with some of the college professors and others, based on their common love of music. The various instruments in the orchestra, carefully handcrafted from European maple, spruce, birch and ebony, were capable of producing a beautiful new symphony of sound, quite apart from the symphony of their native forests. These were trees I had otherwise never seen, whose life was taken and whose life-giving trunks were cut up for a higher human purpose, carefully formed into the sounding board on instruments such as my viola perhaps, or our sturdy old piano.
We had no grandparents close by, but our surrogate grandparents lived just a block away from us, on a couple of acres or so on the edge of town. Fred Jones was the practical type; outspoken and enthusiastic, and always busy with his hands and working in his big garden, nearly till the day he died. I loved to see the new seedlings growing in his little greenhouse in March—it was a reminder of the rebirth of spring, of warmer days to come. In addition to gardening, Fred had an old building he converted into his “shop”—a place you could go for lively conversation on a cold Winter day, immersed in the scent of fresh sawdust mixed with wood smoke from his Franklin stove. Aunt Naomi (as we called her) had a personality that was quite different from Fred’s. To most people, she was a quiet, shy, diminutive figure who preferred to stay in the house. But to those who knew her better, she was the intellectual, the philosopher, the bold, intrepid adventurer who would accompany her literary and historical characters when they circumnavigated the globe in tall, wooden ships. In another time and place, she might have become an adventurer herself, a discoverer of new worlds, but we children were simply content to help share in her literary adventures and her oatmeal cookies. So, you ask, what does this recollection have to do with the subject of trees? I like to think that both Aunt Naomi’s printed pages and Fred’s various garden tools, buildings and other possessions—and perhaps, we might even say, most of the tools and edifices of both our human survival and our culture—we owe to the gift of trees.
Take an open field, plant some trees and grass, and after 15 years or so, you have a park! My favorite park was Harmon Park. A year ago my parents happened to give me a wall clock that had a picture on the front, of a stone tower next to a shaded pool. This was a photograph from the “rock garden” in Harmon Park. The many stone footpaths winding around underneath grand old trees, with little bridges over man-made streams, little pools and waterfalls—these all evoked a sort of medieval sense of mystery and beckoned us to explore! Last year when I visited the park with my parents, it seemed that everything was smaller and less impressive than I remembered as a child. But the pavilion was still there among the trees, where I had my high school graduation; a band was playing nearby, the fountain and flower gardens were still there, and a path to the rock garden still beckoned to us. We passed a particular, small garden planting, and my mother suddenly paused and revealed a secret. “When I first came over here from Germany, I was so homesick that when I saw some familiar peppermint growing in this little garden, I just had to have some of it, so I stole a tiny sprig when no one was looking and planted it in my backyard garden.” (She has a peppermint patch even to this day.)
It may seem odd that trees would even factor into my childhood memories. And yet, in a sense, we can find analogies, parallels and subtle echoes of our own humanity in the trees. A tree or a forest provides protection from the cold winter winds and food and habitat for the animals and us in the summer, but it also quietly reminds us of life and death, of succeeding generations, of growth and decay, of vigorous youth and tottering old age, of beauty and humility, of greatness and of the impermanence of life on this earth.
Perhaps we can sometimes even picture our own parents a little bit like those old fruit trees, bent with age and wracked by the storms of bygone years, yet continuing to provide quiet shelter and sustenance to any who would venture to sit under the shade of their branches.
--Ari
“I teach them love for all mankind,For all God’s creatures, but I find
My love comes lagging far behind.”
This verse of a poem reminds me of the love my parents taught us children – the same love I want my own children to know, but I find “My love comes lagging far behind.”
Our parents had respect for all mankind – the helpless, the old, the unfortunate – and little children. Long ago, after baby-sitting 8 month old Ryan B., I came home and begged Mom to take him full time. Back then I didn’t consider how much Mom would get paid; if a baby in the house would get on people’s nerves; if she would be “tied down” or any other inconvenience a small child could mean. I was happy that she agreed to baby-sit Ryan, which also led to his sister, Anna, later becoming a part of our family. We had the privilege of watching babies grow, develop and respond to loving care. After having my own child it brought back memories of how I loved those little ones at home. Then came Edward – not until years later did I find out what some people’s uncaring, cold attitude toward such a severely handicapped child could be! It made me appreciate a home where we learned respect for all mankind: that even blind, helpless Edward knew the difference between friends and strangers, and he could respond to love and to music.
We learned to respect the old – when we mimicked Great Aunt Gertie and Grandma by walking bow-legged or knock-kneed Mom scolded us! I remember laughing so hard when Aunt Gertie told us stories about when she was young while helping us pit cherries – especially when she said she could hang by her toes from a tree branch, how we laughed! I couldn’t picture her being young. She enjoyed her break from the nursing home and we found out how much fun an old lady could be.
When Dad took us kids to visit Emma Trefzger, it was like a visit to the past sometime in history. Everything in the barn was just where her father had left it, and we were fascinated by the rocking chairs and kerosene lamps so we explored the place while Dad repaired her leaky roof and did odd jobs for her. We discovered that old people can be interesting. Of course, there are many more examples of what our parents did for old people – God has them written down in His book, and it made impressions on my life.
Our parents had respect for all God’s creatures. How many parents would have let me raise messy ducklings in a box in my bedroom? Who else would have let Joni raise a piglet in the basement? Remember the 6 tortoises who came along in the car from the trip to Valentine so they wouldn’t get run over on the road? We had dogs, cats, goats, chickens and fish as well (and didn’t live on a farm), though Mom didn’t appreciate the garter snake we brought home for her garden. And she made me send away all the stray dogs I brought home with me. I’m thankful now for the privilege of learning to care for (and care about) “all God’s creatures” in my childhood.
Sometimes my parent’s good-hearted generosity has been taken advantage of, but it never kept them from trusting and giving to the poor or sharing with children and neighbours. They also have an open home for the homeless servants of God who freely come and go. Matt. 25 “The righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?” We know what the King replied: “whatever you did for one of the LEAST of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Our parents voluntarily took Aunt Edwina into their home when she had Alzheimer’s. That’s what I call an “open home.”
--Heather
I Remember (Joni)
I remember I remember, the house where I was born,
The little window where the sun, came peeping in at morn….
Some of my earliest memories are of sun and heat. I remember only faintly picking vegetables with mom over at old Mrs. Maloof’s.
And I remember the sun and the heat walking with my siblings to the “egg lady’s” house. When we were just about there, we always stopped to rest under the “Chestry Oak”, which, of course, was not an oak at all, but a sycamore.
I think my early memories of winter must have been dad reading. I can remember lying around in the evenings, enjoying the sound of the words and the tone of the voice, without being able to follow the story line at all.
I remember walking home down 8th Avenue, from Kindergarten with mom. I remember very little of kindergarten, and so vividly the walks home.
As the youngest child, I’m afraid I lacked a little in discipline and responsibility. Any of my older siblings would quickly attest to it. But, oh--what carefree days! Summer days stretched on forever, like a long highway curving off into the distance. And bare feet walked the dusty roads of summer. Laurie and I roamed the town like gypsies, and chose whose home to sleep in when night fell, with very little aforethought.
Remember the old brown station wagon? I don’t believe we ever went to meeting without being loaded to the shock absorbers’ capacity. And the youngest ones got the third seat riding backwards. Namely me! Climbing through the back window to the third seat offended my girlish dignity thoroughly; regardless of the fact that none of my friends seemed to mind at all.
With dad being who he was, we took a lot of back roads when we went places. He wanted to “see the country”. This was an aggravation to me when I was a teenager. But I can remember my enjoyment of country roads when I was younger. I remember coming to the top of a hill, and begging to be let out to run. I knew with perfect certainty that I could fly; I could feel it! My toes would only just skim the grass at the side of the road. The car would be left behind in ignominy. Dad would let out whoever wanted out, and we’d find out how hard the earth really was, under our feet.
Here I’ve rattled on about nothing, and if I tell all I want to tell, it’ll become a book. I remember the trips out to Emma Trefzgers; singing hymns at the nursing home; the apple tree with the perfect spot to sit in, in the very top (You could sing higher when you were up there); pitting cherries in the front yard with Grandma and Aunt Gertie; the little current bushes where you could pull off a whole handful of berries at once; the sycamore trees, and the monkey swing. I often got the job of feeding old Sally and Rags, and Mittens. They had a pretty good life, those three. There was Sunday morning meeting at Grants (Turn left on Vitamin E), and bible study at Modines, where we couldn’t swing our bible cases in fear of the beautiful plates on the walls. I remember going hither and yon to Gospel meetings; to hear the workers in our field…
There were the travelogues, the orchestra concerts, the college plays. There was Thanksgiving time with the Jannsons, everyone at Grandma Naomi’s; The poems, and grandpa Fred acting as judge.
I can taste my childhood as well. Sundays with spaetzle and sauerkraut, summertime with creamed lambs quarters over mashed potatoes, Christmastime with magenbrot and anise cookies.
There was music, always music—the piano, violin, viola, flute, accordion, saw and harmonica. When I hear a hymn sung in especially nice harmony, or someone gets a few violins going, I find myself with a little feeling of homesickness. These memories are just some of the music of my childhood.
The Sign Painter (Ari)
When I was a boy, I remember each of us children having a piggy bank to hold our weekly allowance. My first piggybank was a tall tin can with a slot at the top—it made a dull, metallic “clunk” when I dropped a quarter into it, and I would often take it down from the high corner shelf above my bed to weigh it in my hands. For the most part, I’ve long since forgotten what I used those savings for—perhaps the purchase of a toy, some bottle rockets, a chocolate bar, or a 25 cent hamburger from Bikes burger bar?
However, I do remember one notable exception--which brings me to the story of the sign painter. It all started one day when Dad was trying to sell our big brown Buick station wagon. This car had a third rumble seat that would fold up in the back, and it definitely came in handy for carrying a family of seven plus other passengers. Incidentally, by the time our family was finished with a car, it either became a demolition derby contestant, was acquired by someone who restored old “classics” on the cheap, or was sold to some desperate person in even greater need of an inexpensive car than we were. In this case, it was the latter situation.
Now, my dim recollection is very likely to be inaccurate and incomplete, and perhaps my parents could have shed more light on this, but no matter. I do remember that a billboard sign painter came to look at the car, and he, his wife and their four children were in desperate straits. Their car was broken down and abandoned, and they were forced to travel in their remaining pickup truck. Apparently, the sign painter had been traveling with his family across the U.S., stopping in each town to solicit a job painting someone’s billboard. What might have once started out as a romantic adventure had obviously turned into a nightmare—the family was all but destitute and completely out of money, the man was having trouble finding enough work, and the wife and small children were hungry and cramped in their tiny room at the Motel 6.
My dad agreed to sell our Buick to them for about $45, or some such paltry sum. The sign painter did secure a deal to paint a sign for a local motel, but he needed a place to paint, so my dad offered our backyard. I was intrigued as he set up his giant easel against our “playhouse” and proceeded to paint a pleasant landscape, although I kept a respectable distance. Later on, a small thundercloud emerged in the very corner of his picture, the only thing that detracted from an otherwise cheerful, welcoming scene. We understood this was because he felt the proprietor who had hired him to paint the sign was cheating him. Looking back on it, I wonder if the man was also frustrated and bitter because he had an inkling that his artistic profession was being quickly swallowed up by the new technology of screen printing, and it was getting harder and harder to find anyone willing to give him a billboard to paint.
At some point, the man’s wife came to our back door, most likely without the knowledge of her husband, who was not there at the time. She apparently spoke to my mom, who was the only one home besides me. My mom told her to wait at the door, then came to my room, sat down with me and told me “this woman’s children are hungry, they have no money to buy food. Would you be interested in donating some amount from your piggybank to help them out? It’s purely up to you.” I suppose my mother may not have had any money on hand herself, or perhaps she didn’t feel right about giving out money without first consulting with my dad, or perhaps she saw this as a lesson to impress on me the value of giving…I don’t know. In any case, when confronted with the picture in my mind of this woman’s poor, starving, whimpering children huddled in a cramped room at the Motel 6, I naturally proceeded to break open my ceramic pig. I put what money I had, maybe 35 or 40 dollars, in a small paper sack, and handed it to the woman at the door. She thanked me heartily, and there was a little choking sound and perhaps some tears as she quickly left. I remember feeling almost a little ashamed that this woman had gotten to the point that she had to lose all her dignity, had to beg for money from a stranger, and had to accept money from a child’s piggy bank, no less. But in any case, I knew that I couldn’t have spent that money for anything else in the world that would have made me feel so good as I felt on the inside. That warm glow of happiness is the focal point of my recollection.
The canvas was soon to be completed before the painter would then proceed to install it on one of the billboards. (Was it on Rte 24? I don’t remember anymore, but I do remember later on that Dad would point it out as we passed it on the highway.)
In the meantime, Dad made a flurry of phone calls to see if he could find this man a temporary job to help him get back on his feet. He finally found a job opening at the municipal waste treatment plant, but the man was apparently still too stubborn to recognize his dire situation, and perhaps aghast at the prospect of lowering himself from the lofty position of an “artist” to a job working in a sewage plant.
I don’t know if the sign painter ever actually paid my Dad for our car or not. I never asked him, and it doesn’t matter anyway. A day or two later, the man and his family left their motel in the middle of the night and moved on.
What ultimately happened to that family, and to what extent my folks’ small token of kindness may have made a difference in their lives, I’ll never know. But I did learn there are always plenty of ways to help others if one is willing to get involved, to help even in small ways. And experiences like this remind us once again “it is more blessed to give than to receive.”
E-mail to siblings:
Here’s a rough draft of a story I wrote for the parents’ 50th. Do you happen to remember anything about the sign painter?
Yes, I remember the sign painter, too. I could add that Mom bought them lots of groceries, etc. and Dad found them an apartment and paid the down payment for them. Don't know how long they lived there without paying a cent, and that's why they up and disappeared... I believe the owner of the apartment turned to Dad to demand payment. But of course, we were children and our parents didn't tell us everything about the money matters. I felt sorry for the mother and children, and they would have been better off getting welfare than always on the road. But I felt angry at the man for taking advantage of my folks good-heartedness. Who knows what ever happened to them.
--Sibling “A”
I'm just sending in my 2 cents, which probably isn't very accurate. Isn't it funny how we can remember different parts of the same story? I never knew that you contributed to the sign painter! I'm afraid I was at a selfish and critical minded stage at that point in time. It was years later before I appreciated what mom and dad had done for those people.
I think dad sold the car for $200.00. But that’s irrelevant. I only remember it that way because I thought it was a lot of money, and I thought dad was being foolish throwing it away. I knew that they weren't going to pay him. It was a long time before I realized that dad, of course, knew that too. Every time I crabbed to him about those people "stealing" his car, he would scratch his head and say, "I sure hope that transmission doesn't go out on them, if they go through the mountains in CO." And he sincerely meant it. I remember the woman too. I was worried she would try to steal something from the house...anything. She told mom a lot of wild stories, that I thought were all balony, but some of those bizarre things were probably true. In my cynical young teenage mind these people were trash. To mom and Dad, those kind of people were "down on their luck", or "life was treating them hard right now". Remember, mom hired the little boys to pull weeds in her garden? They were nice kids.
It was a fascinating experience to watch that man paint. He had palsy, or Parkinson’s, and his hands were already beginning to shake pretty bad. His days as a painter were on the way to being over.
The sign went up on Highway 24 coming in from the west.
--Sibling “B”
E-mail to Dad & Mom:
Dad & Mom--
Here's some behind-the-scenes correspondence regarding the "sign painter" story that I thought you might get a chuckle out of. Probably only you know the actual, true complete story, but anyway, thought this was sort of interesting.
Cheers,
--Ari
E-mail Response from Dad:
…And all through the years when we have come from the West, I would see it and say, "There's my sign!" I guess I got my money's worth.
--Dad
Now, from your mother:
This is turning into an interesting story. Now I will write a few things that I remember. No, dad did not find them an apartment. But they lived in a motel on Hwy. 24. They left in the night, we wondered if they paid the rent. They lived there 1 or 2 months.
I liked the four little boys. The oldest one kept saying, "If only we were older, we could work very hard to earn money to help Dad and Mom.”
The father told me, "I love my little boys very much. They mean the world to me and I want to be a good Dad". He told me that he had been a concert pianist and played on stages all over the U.S.A. His favorite composer was Tchaikovsky. One day when he saw the piano, he looked longingly at it--and I asked him to play. With his big hands he played Tchaikovsky--all over the piano. How he could play, like in a concert hall. Then sadly he said, "This was my life. I cannot go back."
Now what the wife told me -- For two years she saw or heard nothing of him. The youngest was a baby when he left. He sent no money or support and she knew nothing about him. Then the county helped her out and at the end they were going to take all her children away and she went to court and battled for them. At the most critical moment he came home, with no explanation, broke, no money. He loaded up his family and drove, I don't know all from where. The gas gave out in Kearney, I guess.
He was a good sign painter but that was not enough to support a family. We just hope things went better for them and they raised the family together.
Postscript from Ari:
I had a dim memory of standing in our living room and listening spell-bound to someone playing our piano, but I couldn’t remember who or when exactly it was. Now I remember. His palsy had obviously not yet completely silenced his ability to play.
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