CHAPTER 1
Home On The Farm
"Ours is simply the journey back to God who is our home"
-A Course in Miracles by Helen Schucman
On a hot July 20th in 1943, I was born to hardworking parents in Western New York. My home was in a rural township of thriving dairy farms surrounding a prosperous little village of about 1000 people named Sherman. I grew up on one of these farms. Established in 1824, after removal of Native Americans, Sherman enjoyed four distinct seasons with winter snows averaging over 200 inches. My rural farm roots became foundations for my life's development.
I came home to a large white house, set atop a hill at the end of a long gravel driveway. With breathtaking views of the valleys and meadows below, it was a wonderful and quiet place to relax and dream. To my post-depression family, financial freedom was important. During World War II, Dad failed his draft induction physical but maintained his dairy farm by day while working nights in a nearby aircraft factory. He made enough money that when the war ended, he purchased another farm across the road. Now with nearly 300 acres, nearly half being woods of maple, birch, pine and locust trees, we moved off the hill into our new house. The one on the hill became the residence for Dad's hired families. Sensing growing abundance and financial success, I often told myself what a lucky person I was to be in such a beautiful place and family.
Besides my two older siblings, three more were added over the years, another sister, and two younger brothers. As I grew, I respected my older siblings, my sister with her reddish hair and a sharp mind, and my handsome year older brother, blessed with dark hair and matching eyebrows. I had fair white skin, reddish brown hair and before long, lots of freckles to accent my blue eyes. I grew up drinking lots of raw milk and eating fresh meat from home raised chickens and cattle. Each autumn Dad normally added a few weeks of fresh deer meat. Mom supervised our large vegetable garden with us kids helping to "pod peas" before canning. Mom also cooked and canned hundreds of jars of pears and peaches to be enjoyed over the long winter months.
Education, reading and new ideas were important to both my parents who turned their visions into creative actions and accomplishments. When not working the farm and his side businesses of hauling lime, feed and coal, Dad often sat at his old wooden desk in the backroom. There he drew up measurements for other additions and improvements: a new barn and granary, an equipment storage shed, a larger garage, and whatever other ideas came each year. Other times he laid on the couch in our large living room reading magazines to find new ideas to employ his energy and fatten his bank accounts.
Dad sported a thick crop of wavy brown hair, meticulously combed and sealed with sprinkles of Vitalis hair oil. He walked with his head high, displaying his almost unstoppable confidence to succeed. His narrow Swedish nose no doubt enhanced his constant sinus issues. Endless cigarette and cigar smoking didn't help. Around 1953, when he began wheezing, his doctor explained how black tar had thickened over his lungs. Dad immediately quit. I never saw him smoke again, and I was no longer able to steal cigars out of his box under the truck seat!
Dad also loved speed. Many times he risked his own life and others with an almost addictive love of driving fast. I often thought he should have been a race car driver. My mother married him, one of her cousin's told me, since she was the only girl brave enough to ride with him! I still shudder remembering high speed rides and times he raced other cars on narrow two lane roads. Some called him a driving "maniac." We frequently attended races, loving the exciting noise and screams of roaring engines. When I was 6 years old, he took me to the Indy 500 Race in Indianapolis. All I remember is hearing roaring engines and loud "awes" when accidents occurred. One winter we drove to the Daytona Beach races where cars raced along the Atlantic Ocean shoreline. Dad parked carefully on the sand infield, close to tow trucks who waited to extract sand trapped drivers with outrageous fees! We watched cars roar past into the sand-banked curve, often scooting between race cars to get a view from the ocean. It took years to break my own speed addiction.
My parents loved Florida vacations during our long winters. Some years, they took us kids for a couple months near the small rural village of Nokomis. One year, Dad towed a house trailer while others years we rented cottages. Us kids, then five of us, either homeschooled ourselves or attended a small country school. In 1957, all seven of us (one yet to be born!) traveled to Florida in Dad's bright, new red Ford station wagon. We stayed in a little white cottage near Nokomis where we watched for Water Moccasins who might crawl up the back steps for scraps of fish remains.
Returning home to Sherman, Dad became drowsy driving through sparsely populated Georgia on a two-lane paved road through swamps and cotton fields. Dad's usual method to "wake up" was to roll down his window and stomp the gas pedal to the floor! Asleep in the rear third seat bench, which faced backwards, I awakened to see pavement flowing out behind like a wild river. To make room for us, Dad had tied our luggage to the roof. Suddenly, ropes and cords began breaking loose as luggage cases, like cows let out to pasture after a long winter, flew up, sideways and off into the blue! I shouted warnings as gyrating cases crashed and exploded on pavement like small bombs. Debris scattered along the road and into reddish clay ditches like waves. Dad muttered "Oh shit!" and screeched to a stop. Cursing, he circled around and for the next hour, some with silently suppressed grins, we gathered up suitcase parts, underwear, souvenirs and swimsuits. We finished the ride home with laps full and feet resting on fishing poles.
Mom, quieter than Dad, maintained our huge garden, washed loads of laundry, and cooked what I considered the best meals of mashed potatoes, roasts, pies and cakes. With Dad hiring seasonal help during harvest season months, Mom always made enough for all to have extra helpings. Second in her graduating class, Mom read constantly, modeling for her children our own future habits. She also, along with Dad, loved playing evening games, especially before the advent of television. Cards and checkers were among those I remember. When not playing games, we often listened to radio, comedies such as "Amos and Andy" and mysteries such as "Fat Man!"
I remember large family reunions with many aunts, uncles, and cousins. Living close to each other, most then still farmers, I remember reunions with piles of good food, including more than enough pies and cakes to leave us feeling stuffed. Horseshoe pitching and softball were favorite games, softball bases placed on recently harvested hay fields. One summer picnic took place at our relatives near Westfield, a few miles south of Lake Erie. Word spread that new swimsuits were out for women called "bikinis." My uncles decided to take a closer look and I even got to ride along with them. Sure enough, on a bright, warm July Sunday afternoon, we spotted women at the Barcelona beach in those skimpy, two piece suits. One uncle asked another what he thought and he replied, "Wow! I like them!"
One summer reunion took place at a relative's farm along the back road to Westfield. It may have been the 4 of July, one of the many holidays we gathered together. Dad had purchased a new, green, 1952 Oldsmobile 88, one of the fastest family cars of the time. We finally left for home, all of us packed into the four-door sedan. I sat behind Dad in the back seat next to the window which was rolled down. As Dad left the gravel driveway onto the narrow paved road, he suddenly stomped the gas pedal to the floor as many relatives looked aghast, still waiting on the front lawn. Gravel stones banged off the car fenders with flying dust billowing behind into the ditch and road. When we hit the pavement, rear tires suddenly began to screech and smoke rolled up around the back of the car into my window! Mom uttered something like, "Damn fool!" as relatives stood on the lawn laughing and cheering, some with thumbs up for the "great display."
Mom had relatives located all across the country. In the summer of 1955, Dad bought a new two toned sandy brown Chevy Station wagon to go see some of them. With one of Chevy's early V8 engines, he hitched a large green "house trailer" behind and during August, we traveled across the country to see relatives and friends in Iowa, Denver, Oregon and Nebraska. In Yellowstone Park, we drove down to see the Lower Falls after watching "Old Faithful" shoot up on the hour. It was a hot day and the road down to the Falls was steep. Coming back up, the motor whined and labored to pull us up the hilly park road. Dad told us kids to be ready to jump out and help push if the car groaned to a near stop under the load. We didn't need to!
Later, climbing a long mountain pass returning east near California, the car overheated on a record hot day. Dad made it into a mountain side parking lot with several other cars waiting to cool down engines. After resting awhile, Mom went back into the trailer to make sure dishes and chairs were still in place but when she opened the door, an awful, pungent smell puckered up her nostrils. She opened up the onboard bathroom and raised the toilet lid and discovered one of us had left moved bowels in the base, unflushed! In anger, Mom stepped on the flush pedal and walked out, jumped into the car, and ordered Dad, "get going!" He started the now cooled engine and slamming the doors shut, we slowly pulled away as a long trail of raw sewage slowly rolled down the mountain, trickling around and beneath still parked tourists with hot engines.
Our home seemed run like a small enterprise. Beside the cattle business, late winters brought on the annual maple syrup business, tapping hundreds of trees and boiling thousands of gallons of fresh sap into thick sweet syrup. Dad also bought trucks for hauling loads of lime from Conneaut, Ohio, fertilizer and feed from busy Buffalo mills, cattle to Buffalo slaughterhouses, coal from Pennsylvania mines, and corn picked from ripened Ohio fields. I often rode to Buffalo in one of Dad's trucks to haul back feed or fertilizer. Driving up South Park Avenue, I remember feeling pity for people who had to live there, jammed in close like cows in a barn, but without open fields and woods to roam. I often took walks across our fields and through woods alone or with friends, sometimes carrying my 22 hunting rifle looking for woodchucks, or to just pretend I was Daniel Boone. I would say to myself, "I am so lucky to have been born and raised in this wonderful place!
CHAPTER 2
Grandpa's Death
"A man's death is more the survivor's affair than his own."
-Thomas Mann
By March 13, 1953, bright yellow daffodils and crocuses were beginning to sprout from the recently frozen earth. On a late winter day, I was playing "cowboys and Indians" on the front yard with my brother. Inspired by recent movies at the Sherman Theater, we "shot" each other with life-sized cap gun pistols purchased from Voigt's 5 & 10 cent store. Suddenly, someone hollered, "Grandpa Dean was just killed!" The shootout ended. I stood frozen in disbelief as gentle spring wind whispered through the surrounding maple trees. Was this real or one of my dreams? "It was a tractor accident!" the voice explained.
Driving his small grey Ferguson tractor up a steep hill pulling a full load of cow manure, Grandpa apparently shifted into a lower gear. Releasing the clutch to move ahead, the tractor flipped over backwards, crushing him into the spreader.
I walked numbly into the house. It felt like a dream. Mom, days short of her 33 birthday, sat at the kitchen table weeping; "My Daddy, oh my Daddy! I can't believe it! I can't believe he's gone."
A couple days later, we rode quietly to the Funeral Home in Sherman. With curious anxiety, I enter the flower-decorated room. With strong fragrances hanging thick in the air, I wondered what Grandpa would look like, crushed under his tractor. Relieved, Grandpa lay dressed up in his best dark suit, stretched out in a beautiful, red maple casket. Looking asleep, his face appeared whitish but his thick black hair was perfectly combed with hands folded neatly over his stomach.
Grandma Dean stood at the end of the casket, thanking each person for visiting. People moved slowly past, stopping to express their shock, murmuring words of disbelief and sorrow with little praises of his being a "good man." Instead of quickly leaving in silence after seeing Grandpa, many stayed and began chatting with each other about farms, families and weather. Laughter even erupted at times, making it seem like the tragedy never happened, or was just normal, not that big of a deal. I worried about Mom, however, who still was in deep sorrow and often cried. I felt sad realizing I would never again enjoy rides and day trips with Grandpa in his big red truck. The sense of being in a dream kept returning.
At the funeral service in the Baptist Church, the open casket lay in the narrow entrance for each guest to pass by and take a final look. Then, with all seated on uncomfortable wooded benches called pews, the service began.
We had never attended church very much. I remember attending one of their summer "Vacation Bible Schools" where I got candy and heard stories about a man named Jesus, the name Dad often used when he got mad. I knew Grandpa and Grandma Dean were quite active in the Baptist Church but I didn't understand much about what they believed or why people thought going was even important.
The service began with a few songs sung, accompanied by the piano. Then the preacher began his sermon. Standing behind a large wooden stand called a pulpit, and wearing a dark suit, he claimed Grandpa was ready to die. He assured everyone Grandpa now resided in heaven, a much better place than here on earth. Such words amazed me. I wondered how the preacher knew this and could say such things. He said it was all in the Bible. I wondered where heaven was and what part of it Grandpa lived in since all I knew of him lay in the casket. It seemed comforting, however, to hear Grandpa was still living somewhere.
The preacher explained Grandpa trusted Jesus to save him from his sins. I didn't realize Grandpa even sinned, or what sin even was. I knew Dad often disagreed with Grandpa, even his removal of some safety bars from the new tractor. Maybe that was the sin. The safety bars, I heard, could have helped prevent the accident. The preacher said, however, that we all sin, which meant doing and even thinking about things that offended God. Jesus, however, died so God would no longer be angry with us, if we believed Jesus did this for us. Grandpa believed, the preacher continued, and so God loved and welcomed him into heaven. The preacher also explained if we wanted to see Grandpa again in heaven, we would need to make the same decision. If we didn't, he continued, we would never see Grandpa but spend forever in an awful place called hell. The ideas comforted my mind as far as Grandpa's fate but puzzled me about my own. The service ended with another song accompanied by the piano.
We rode slowly behind a long line following the large black vehicle with Grandpa's body to the Sherman Cemetery. Moving past hundreds of stone markers in all sorts of sizes through large maple trees, we stopped where a large hole had been dug. Some big relatives, including Mom's brother, slowly carried the large case with Grandpa inside to the grave. The casket was set on metal bars atop the deep hole. There I stood in loneliness and fear, my body shaking in the spring chill, as the Preacher said a few more words. After the last prayer, we silently moved back to our cars before Grandpa was lowered into the grave. Someone said Grandpa's body would be sealed in a concrete vault before it was covered with dirt. We were assured if Grandpa got dug up in 25 years, he was guaranteed to look the same.
Grandpa's death made a major impact on my family. I began hearing more about the man who officiated Grandpa's funeral, Preacher Smith. He often came for visits to talk and pray with us. Good-looking and even younger than my parents, he always wore a nice suit. A tall, fairly effeminate looking man, he spoke with a soft high-pitched voice, almost heavenly compared to Dad's loud and often demanding pitch. He had a hearty laugh, however, and seemed quite friendly. Soon, Mom began taking us kids to the church. Grandma Dean seemed pleased but Dad usually stayed home.
