The 28Th day of the tenth month of the year of the OP

A BLAST FROM THE PAST

This is going to be a long entry, so all you hallo weenies be patient because you only have three more days.

Last night around 9:00 I had a phone call from someone who I have not seen nor talked to in close to sixty three years! Talk about surprise!

I would like to welcome to the blog and my current life, my long time friend and childhood playmate now from Texas-------Tom Big Eagle!

Now, if you have been following this blog..........and most intelligent and noteworthy people I know have..........you will remember my story about the black walnuts and the farm upon which I reached the age of third grade.

The back of the farmhouse where my grandparents lived is the middle photo (now a museum) and the top photo is the final resting place of both my grandparents and parents at Concordville Friends Meeting in Concordville, Pa. It literally took the four of them to raise me and to this day I am not sure how they did it. I always thought that if I lived to the ripe old age of 40, I would be satisfied. Now pushing 70 I want more. Go figure. Bless them for their patience. Wish I told them when they were all alive.

Not mentioned in that entry, which was on the 23rd day of the year of the Op, was my friend Tom Big Eagle, his brother Herby, and his father James (reverently referred to as Jim T ), and the rest of his family who all lived on my grandparent's farm. They lived in a house, now gone, which was in the distance beyond the picnic table in the bottom photo. Also not in the photo on the distant right would be my grandmother's vegetable garden, upon which they lived most of the year,

Jim T was my second father type, as mine was working in New York City at the time during the week. As I pointed out I had the run of my grandparents farm. My playmates were Jim's children and boy did we do some stuff!

Jim T was in charge of maintaining the livestock which included the few horses, the chickens, and the cows. He taught me how to hand milk a cow and to know the difference between those you milked and the bull whom you didn't try to milk. He taught me how to feed the cats and kittens at milking time with milk directly from the cow. He would yell in the grain shoots, trying to scare me while he pretended to be the barn's ghost. And the list goes on.

As I said to Tommy last night, it is just a wonder that we both lived through our adventures on that farm. It was only 100 acres, but we thought it was Nebraska. Somewhere I got a 22 caliber rifle....what were my parents thinking? We would go around the farm "Hunting" for pigeons in the hay barn, squirrels in the "Big" woods, and rabbits along the hedgerows. We once found a 300 something caliber rifle belonging to one of the hired farm hands, and not knowing how to use it, we almost shot ourselves with the one cartridge we found with it. Equally amazing is the fact that we didn't kill anybody else.

There was a stretch of lilac bushes about one field away from the building complex and it was probably 300 yards long. We both go back there whenever we smell that flower no matter where we are.

When I got free from daily chores that my mother or grandmother would heap upon me, I would end up in the cow barn. There was a holding pen type of area outside of the back of the barn and it was fenced in with a concrete wall about 10 feet high. I would somehow get my body on the top of that wall. I would walk along it (and no I didn't become a gymnast) and call for Tommy whose house was about 400 yards away. He would hear the call and the day's adventures would start.

There were times when we would just go out into a wheat field, we weren't much taller than a stalk of wheat, and roll down the stalks making I guess what today would be called crop circles. Who knew? Maybe that's where the idea came from? If there was something big going on on the farm we would get involved. It might have been following the potato machine picking up spuds. Or sneaking into the mushroom houses just because they were dark. Or milking cows but I would never go into the horse stalls. The were big, it was dark in there, and I didn't trust them. Besides they just plain scared me. To this day I prefer not to ride horses.

I remember, at age six, one Thanksgiving dinner my parents found me missing from the dinner table. I guess the conversation was pretty good for them, but not evidently for me. When they found me I was on my way up the back lane atop a very large and powerful tractor. Lord knows how I figured out how to start and run it. I am sure I would have no clue today.

There were always eggs to collect and roosters to chase (or the other way around). Tommy told me that the reason for the call last night was to remember an incident in his yard.

I guess we were playing in a pile of leaves, must have been this time of year, and found some kind of large snake. He wanted to know if I remembered and what kind of snake could it have been. Well in Southeastern Pennsylvania, there are not a lot of different kinds of large snakes and probably no poisonous ones. I don't remember it, but he did remind me that I was the one who ran faster and farther.

I still don't like being surprised by a snake............maybe that's where that phobia comes from.

It is truly amazing that I would write about that place and four days later he would call. Call it fate or some other liberal, transcendental, garbage..........but it is what it is. And I appreciate the call.

Thanks Big Eagle!