“Thus passes the glory of the world”
Have I used that line before? How about “Time flies when you’re having fun.”? Well, both apply just now, as regards the latest project which I am involved in. That is to say, cleaning out Mother’s house.
Bless her heart, now that she’s gone, I can write about her…things that she never would have wanted to see in print. And if I wrote it, if it appeared in The Villager, she saw it; she had a subscription. Some of you out there, she would ask about you–having never met you at all–if I mentioned your name or your occupation or your latest adventure. She sometimes disagreed with the Perme Financial Group take on business trends. She enjoyed the pictures of various activities and events around the community. She was amazed that people here sent her cards occasionally or came to her 100th birthday drive-through celebration. She was onto you folks when it came to village council meetings or township disputes of one sort or another and would ask me about the latest goings-on. I know this because going through some of the numerous folders and envelopes and files, one was found containing clippings of virtually everything I ever wrote about anything. A little old lady in Wellington has been watching you all along.
Anyway, now that Ma is gone, we’ve got to clean out the house–no small undertaking. The house itself is probably close to two hundred years old ( A small clock niche and accompanying spice drawers was shown in the book Early Homes of Ohio; no picture of me though)with accompanying quirks. When we moved in, somewhere around 1947, there was no running water, no central heat (barely any heat at all on some winter mornings, until we got a furnace, and then it was delivered with great clanging and banging as somebody tossed chunks of wood onto the just-lit paper and kindling), and of course, no indoor plumbing. There was electricity, of a sort–you should have seen the wiring–so we could have lights, not oil lamps. The telephone was up on the wall in the kitchen; it had a party line and the lady up the road recognized everybody’s ring pattern and got much of the local news at the same time as the intended users of the other phones. Mom put up with it all, but immediately began making plans, worked out on graph paper, of what was going to be out there in the wilderness (No prairie, too many trees). She studied the “women’s magazines” for ideas and features that she wanted to include and ,by gum, she finally got a lot of them.
Besides memories, the place is full of stuff. All of us kids left clues as to what we had been up to all of those year. My father was on boards and committees, in offices, and operated a dairy/mixed agriculture farm…which he could not have done without Mom. You know that saying, that, “Behind every successful man is a woman” ? Well, Ma was never behind anybody…and Dad knew it. Sometimes, my more fanciful moments, I would think of the pair of them not as “oak and ivy” , because ivy is too clingy, or even as “the oak and the rose”, he being the big, strong one and she the lovely display, but as twin trees, American Elm and Sugar Maple, perhaps, rooted, strong, productive, each with a different habit (That’s tree-talk for the shape and normal growth patterns) but both contributing valuable features to a forest. And they were good-looking too; we have the pictures to prove it.
The stuff is in piles on the staircase (Black walnut from the farm), in boxes on shelves, in files in desk drawers. Behind glass in cabinets, hanging in closets, stuck out in the garage, closed up in plastic bags, hidden in drawers all over–treasures…or not. Mother was a saver…not a hoarder, but she did not want anything to go to waste, so she kept it–just in case. The amazing thing was that she pretty much knew where most things were; she kept records and knew how to access them–without a computer. I can’t do that at all. I’d have to have a full-time secretary and/or a lawyer…maybe both.
My brother and I are now engaged in trying to bring some order to all this, Ma was perfectly orderly but the family is another story. I would like to find somebody who’s an expert in early paperback science fiction and/or antique books or MAD Magazines–we’ve got a ton of them. A coin collector could help. Someone who knows about antique “fancywork” (as my grandma used to call it–embroidery and such) would be helpful. The tractor is going to a nephew, and the car to a family friend, so that’s settled, but there’s plenty more decisions to be made.
It was a great ride, for lotsa years, but the “gloria” is moving on to another “mundi” and you’ll be hearing more about the next steps in the “rapid transit” as we go along. Plenty more about Mom as we find even more stuff. Wait’ll you see her picture in the tractor pull.
