Background

(first written in 1992)

I grew up on a small farm in Michigan. The original area was once a bountiful forest of white pines, hardwoods, cedar, etc. that were harvested almost completely by the logging industry around the turn of the century.

At one time, this area where our farm is, was a swampland. In today’s vernacular, it would be called a “wet-lands habitat” but 100 years ago it was just “the Swamp”.

The logging industry set up camps and sawmills near here to cut and harvest the timber. There were great white pine trees with their straight and towering trunks that were valued for their use as masts on the great sailing ships of the day. Other trees were used for the rapidly expanding building market of the nation and the world. Trees like oak, maple, hickory, elm, walnut and cedar.

It was a time when the land was bountiful and full of promise. One of the side benefits of timbering the land was that once the trees and stumps had been cleared, it was found that the land was extremely rich for farming and most of the land was sold for that purpose.

Into this setting then came the farmers. Most of them in this area were of European and/or German heritage. They cleared the land and began to farm under many hardships and only with the help of the entire family did they survive and continue.

My grandfather, Pipi, as we called him, had grown up twenty miles from here near another small town. His family, and he as a very young child, had moved from a German-area of Ontario, Canada in the mid- 1880’s.

Pipi purchased his eighty (80) acre farm from a lumber baron from Wisconsin in the early 1900's. His brother Joe, bought the adjoining 80 acres at the same time and they set about to clear the land so that it could be farmed.

The land was very rich because of the mucky peat-moss type soil, in fact it was almost too rich. But it needed to be cleared and one of the first things Pip and Joe did that first spring was to take a long wire, tie strips of cloth to it and soak the cloths in kerosene.

Next, they lit the cloths on fire and ran through the meadow setting it ablaze in order to burn off the tall grass so they could plant at least a little bit of crops that first year. Well, it didn’t work out the way they figured it would but in the end it definitely worked out for the best. What happened was that the fire burned the grass off alright, but then it started to burn down into the muck where it smoldered and very slowly burned away until about two feet of the muck was gone.

By very slowly, I mean like for a year ! In fact, Pip’s wife to be (he hadn’t met here yet at this time) lived about four miles east of the area and she took great pride in telling the story..after they were married.. of how her mother reacted to the “swamp-fire”.

It seems that during that summer, there were times that her mother would be doing the laundry and hanging clothes on the clothes line to dry, only to find that the wind had switched and it was blowing the soot from the “swamp-fire” onto her clothes and she would have to re-wash them. My grandmother, ( Mimi) said her mother’s comment at the time was; “I wonder what ‘dern fool lit that swamp on fire?” Little did she know that the “dern fool” would become her son-in-law.

Well, Mim and Pip did meet and they were married in 1912 and moved to the farm where the whole process of clearing and farming began. They had two children, my aunt and my dad. (he was named after my grandmother’s family and her great grandfather had been the first person to homestead in the area, and in fact, it was he that was given the honor of naming this new township and he named it after the place he grew up in New York) Anyway, Mim and Pip and kids worked together to get things done.

Later on, my dad and mother, were married and they bought the farm that had been owned by Pip’s brother Joe. He had gone on to other things and it had been owned by some other people for awhile.

My mother was a teacher and my dad and Pip farmed together. This was the environment I grew up in during the 1950’s. My sister and I helped on the farm hoeing weeds from sugar beet and bean fields for what seemed like the whole summer. There were also times like butchering and canning of vegetables and fruits from the garden that were done together with Mim and Pip. There was hay harvest where everybody had a job but when you were done you could have a bottle of home-made root beer or maybe even home-made ice cream.

My sister and I helped in the grain harvest….well, our job was to level off the load in between dumps from the thresher. We were supposed to use shovels but we found that by chasing each other, rolling around in it and just generally playing in the wheat, we accomplished the same task. Besides, it was more fun! We didn’t play in the oats or barley however because that stuff made you itch.

The hoeing was not a favorite job of anyone I don’t believe. But, it had to be done and one thing is for sure, it gave us all a chance to talk to each other. One of the things I liked best was hearing the stories of the “old days”. Over the course of the summer we would probably hear the same story over and over but it was still fun.

My point in telling you this is that we worked together, played together and depended on each other as a family. I think it made all of us stronger. And the entire community was like this and everyone was considered a neighbor and whomever needed help, the neighbors would pitch in to do what they could.

After high school, (32 in my graduating class, I believe) it was on to college. I began my studies in Radio and TV, then Advertising and then I thought about Journalism (because during a News-writing class, I had had an opportunity to interview Muhammed Ali while he was visiting the campus) and then other majors that seemed interesting.

It was during the fall term of my junior year that I decided on the field of education. I had had a good life growing up with my dad being a farmer and my mother a teacher but when I went off to college I swore I would not become a teacher or a farmer. But…………now education and in my case, Industrial Arts Education (a shop teacher) sounded pretty good. After all, my mother was a teacher, her sister was a teacher and so was my dad's sister and her husband, along with my sister. And my dad spent about 20 years or more on the school board. I guess there was no escape.

There was no opening in the Industrial Arts program right then so I quit school and worked in a local factory for about 9 months, at which time the I.A. program opened back up and I went back to school, finished my degree, did my student teaching, graduated and then by chance…received a teaching position in a town about 15 miles away from where I grew up. I didn’t plan to be that close but ……..things happen for a reason!

I spent five years teaching there and during that time, met and married your mother, who was a teacher there too. (wow…another teacher…surprise, surprise) And then, as you know, you girls came along after a while.

Grandfather Pip had passed away in 1972 (which was very tough for me) and my dad had a heart attack in 1978 and then lung cancer. I had been teaching full time and helping my dad with the farm but when it was known that the cancer was going to be extremely serious, I had a decision to make and I couldn’t keep working 2 full time jobs so at the end of my 5th year, I quit teaching and started farming full time with the idea of raising my family in the same way I had grown up. In September, two days after my 30th birthday, my dad died.

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There have been a number of notable things that have happened in my life and a number of different people who have influenced me…but the single most memorable event in my life occurred in the summer of 1974. The event was an accident that resulted in my having a glimpse into the next life. From that point to this, I have spent nineteen years or so, searching for answers and contemplating what life really is, what it holds and what there is to look forward to in the next life.

I will be the first one to tell you that I have not always done everything right or with divine intervention. I have made a lot of mistakes, done some things I wish now that I wouldn’t have and basically learned as I have gone along. (you will do the same) In fact, if, as it is said that we learn by our mistakes, I should be a very learned man at this point! But I know there is a lot more to learn and I will make more mistakes but I also know that God will be there to guide me……mistakes and all.

Each of us have things in our lives that shape our thoughts and dreams. It’s not easy to set down and actually put those things down on paper. And, it is even harder to do it with the intent of allowing others to read it. It’s something akin to standing in the middle of a football stadium with no clothes on and saying…….”this is me, such as I am…..take it or leave it.” But, I have come to believe a statement I’ve heard many times in life. “God always has a reason for things working out the way they do. Just trust in that and believe.”

So………..here I am, telling my thoughts to you, my daughters and allowing others to see also.