Strange Bedfellows
Quite a few years ago, I went to a hunting camp in Potter County for bear season. The cabin had three rooms with my brother Ken and his son Kenny Jr. One room held the kerosene heater, cook stove, sink, and a foldout couch. Another room held two bunk beds, while the third room was set up as a living room with a couch and recliner chair. The first night at camp, I was so tired. The other beds were taken and I was relegated to the living room recliner. The other hunters said I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep and stay asleep because the other hunter assigned to that room snored.
I was so tired; I didn’t care. I dropped off almost immediately and slept soundly through the entire night. After the second day of trudging through the hills of northern Pennsylvania, I felt weary and thought I’d have no trouble sleeping, but I was wrong…someone had moved a saw mill into the living room. The loud snoring almost pulled down the ceiling tiles and the paint from the walls. I tried to shut out the sounds with a pillow over my head, but to no avail. The irregular breathing and loud snorts didn’t allow volume and variation of the noise. Finally, I could stand it no longer. I gathered my bed linens and headed for the foldout couch in the main room. I rousted my nephew and told him to scoot over. Three people tucked into the foldout couch were very tight, but at least I was away from the locomotive-like snores. The snores could still be heard from there, but a wall separated us and dulled all but the loudest snorts.
My mom Sybil Miner Beck used to tell the story about my grandmother Rebecca Rugg Miner who was taking care of one of my cousins while his mother was in labor. The cousin nudged Gram while they were sleeping together and said, “I’m scared. I hear something.” Gram said, “Don’t be afraid. I’m here. You’re safe. Go back to sleep.” After several times of being awakened, Gram asked, “What does it sound like?” The cousin said, “It sounds like a piggy, Grandma.” Gram said, “Oh, that’s just Grandma snoring. You’ll be just fine. Go back to sleep”

 Snake Oil Salesmen
Snake oil is a term used to describe deceptive marketing, health care fraud, a scam or outright lies. A "snake oil salesman" is a similarly common expression that’s used to describe someone who sells, promotes, or is a proponent of some valueless or fraudulent cure, remedy, or solution. Snake oil comes from the concoction that was sold as a cure-all elixir for many kinds of physical problems and diseases. Many 18th and 19th-century shady entrepreneurs advertised and sold mineral oil mixed with various active and inactive household herbs, spices, drugs, and compounds, but contained no substances derived from actual snakes whatsoever. It was labeled as "snake oil liniment." The peddler made unsubstantiated claims about its efficacy. These patent medicines claimed to be a cure for a panacea of symptoms and diseases were extremely common from the 18th until the 20th century This was particularly in vogue among vendors who marketed addictive drugs such as cocaine, amphetamine, alcohol, and opium-based concoctions or elixirs. They were often sold at medicine shown as medications or products promoting health. Often shills were hired to extol the virtues of the product.
There are still snake oil salesmen today in medicine, politics, telephone scammers, and yes, even in churches. That list includes false teachers, faith healers, and prosperity preachers.
An interesting side note, rotgut whiskey of the old West often had two rattlesnake heads in each barrel. Rotgut wasn’t aged and had extremely high alcohol content. Its recipe quite often used dubious quality of grains and corn in its fermentation bases. Whiskey labeled as bourbon was actually distilled from low-grade molasses. Whiskey that was shipped West in the 1800s might have started out as bourbon but along the way, but it was watered down and mixed with other ingredients to increase profits. One favorite western whiskey recipe was Ol’ Snakehead. Its ingredients were: one gallon of alcohol, a plug or twist of tobacco, black strap molasses, red Spanish peppers for spice, five gallons of river water, and two rattlesnake heads to give it “spirit.” There was a saying, “Drop in a horseshoe. If the shoe sinks, it ain’t ready yet but when it rises to the surface and floats, the whiskey’s ready.”
Now I will share the point I wanted to make about the original snake oil salesman. The Bible says Satan appeared in the Garden of Eden as a serpent. He enticed Eve to eat the forbidden fruit by telling her that she could be like God and know the difference between good and evil. Satan was a liar then and has been passing along the same lie that caused his fall from Heaven. That old snake wanted to be equal to his Creator and he’s been a snake oil salesman ever since.

 School Days
    Several years ago I posted on Face Book a black and white photograph of a fire that consumed the old Poplar Run School. A huge column of black smoke rose as the tar paper roof melted and burned. The building was located between Normalville and Indian Head, Pennsylvania where the Poplar Run Road intersected with Route 711. The school was located just below my parent’s place, Carl and Sybil Miner Beck.
    The one room, white washed clapboard school building sported a hand hewn sandstone block foundation. Eight steps were formed of the same stone that were inserted into the earthen bank to create easy access to the hollow of land where the school was nestled. There was just enough room for the teacher to park her car on the berm and still allow the flow of traffic on Route 711. Every weekday Miss Ora Woomer would descend those stairs to open the school. Cold days she would start the fire in the pot bellied stove and on warn days, she would raise the windows to allow the air to circulate and cool the uninsulated building.
    Ora was a roly-poly, short statured woman with close cropped gray hair who wore glasses only when she was in the classroom. The heels of her black lace up shoes would tap loudly as she crossed the wooden floor.
    To one side of the school was the coal and kindling shed. It was the responsibility of the older boys to keep the coal scuttle filled and that there was kindling inside to start the fire for the next morning. At the rear of the building were the two privies, little more than latrines. There was one for the girls and one for the boys. Peeping was discouraged, but it didn’t always deter the more ambitious children.
    Recess was always a much anticipated event where boys would often disappear into the woods that surrounded the school. It was mostly a game of cowboys and Indians. Occasionally, someone would get tied to a tree, unable to respond to the bell announcing that recess was over. When Ora would discover that a child was missing, she would send out a search party, extending recess for nearly another hour, until the “lost” child could be found.
    All of these stories were shared with me by the neighbor boys. If the Poplar Run School would have stayed open for one more year, I would have joined those who could claim that they attended a one room school house. I did get Miss Ora Woomer later as a teacher in third grade in the newly built Springfield Elementary School.

 Corncobs
I can remember seeing a movie where two “city slickers” called country folk corncobs. I remember cartoons with the character Popeye having a corncob pipe clenched in his teeth. There are memories of old people saying they kept a supply of dried corncobs in their outhouses for sanitation purposes.
But my oldest recollection is a faint one, augmented by retellings from my mom, Sybil Miner Beck. One of my great aunts was a backwoods woman. She was as backwoods as Daniel Boone, frontiersman, explorer, and statesman. My great aunt smoked a corncob pipe. It wasn’t very lady like, but it wasn’t unusual for country women of that time to rub snuff or to smoke. She was visiting a friend in the hospital. Smoking was permitted then. The friend was smoking a cigarette when the doctor walked in. The friend who wasn’t to be smoking shifted the cigarette to my great-aunt, who held them both. She refused to smoke either so the doctor wouldn’t know who was smoking either.
Another group of happy memories is of our family’s annual visits to the Sweet Corn Festival in Millersport, Ohio. My parents would stay at my aunt Ina and my uncle “Nicky” and Ina Miner Nicholson in the summer when the ears of corn were yellow, full, and ripe. The festival was almost like a county fair with amusement rides, entertainment, game booths, and lots of good food. One of the community organizations had a large steam engine thing at their booth. It cooked hundreds of the kernel-covered cobs at one time. The ears of sweet corn were pulled out on trays, lifted with tongs, buttered, and served in narrow cardboard boats. Hot and butter flavored, the corn quickly disappeared leaving only sweet flavorful memories, chewed cobs, and butter smeared face, lips, and chins.
When my mom served corn on the cob, we had yellow plastic holders that looked like small corn ears with two metal prongs. When plunged into each end of the cob, it secured the ears, and allowed us to eat the delicious kernels without burning our fingers. My dad, Carl Beck would eat the kernels circling around the cob, while Mom at them like a typewriter, going end to end.
After I married Cindy Morrison Beck, summer get-togethers often had sweet corn served at the family meals. Her dad, Bud would hang a large kettle of water over a wood fire. Once the water boiled, he would fill a pillowcase then drop the ears of corn in to cook. With one swift move, he would lift the pillowcase out, let it cool, then remove the cooked corn. All of the corn was ready to eat at the same time.

 Lost in the Snow
I’m not a person who likes the cold and snow. I am an avowed couch potato when the snow flies and the cold winds blow. Sometimes I am lured outside to keep my driveway clear of snow, but the snowplows are just as determined to close it back up and placing an impassable mound of packed snow and ice at the mouth of my driveway. When my wife was still alive and my kids were living at home, I always made sure the driveway was shoveled and there was at least half a tank of gas in the car. I was never able to be sure there wouldn’t be an emergency. Back then there were no twenty-four hour gas stations if you ran low and had to drive any distance at all.
There were many nights that I would shovel my driveway with snow falling steadily. The impact of the near silence was refreshing. The noise of the tumbling thick snowflakes would make a soft shushing sound as they fell in the darkness around me had a calming effect.
I’d never make it in Alaska with the frigid temperatures. The harsh wind and the potential for a case of frostbite have no appeal for me. There is too much of relying on myself for me to survive there. I am a procrastinator as well as a couch potato. My wife Cindy Morrison Beck labeled me as mechanically retarded and I would respond, “I’m mechanically dyslexic.” Somehow that slight change in the title made it more palatable, but I must agree I am mechanically challenged.
I’ve lived in Pennsylvania most of my life, but as a corpsman in the United States Navy, I was stationed in Orlando, Florida after spending a winter in Great Lakes basic training and then in Keflavik, Iceland. I was far from satisfied with the weather in those places; dealing with frigid temperatures at Great Lakes, mosquitoes and hurricanes while in Florida, or the winter darkness and snow storms in Iceland…no thank you. When I was being discharged in August, I was sent to Philadelphia. The heat and humidity I endured there in the un-air conditioned barracks were stifling. I guess it all comes back to the old phrase, “There’s no place like home.”

 Cheapening
Over the many years of my life I’ve seen new words added to our vocabularies while other words have lost popularity or been discontinued. New terminology has been created to cover the increasing complexity of inventions of the changing world. But what I am concerned about is the cheapening of some words’ meanings. Too many people casually use words that are being hurled in playground episodes, epithets or name calling. When an individual or group of people can no longer rationally debate their differences or are unwilling to act reasonably toward each other, they begin to use thoughtless phrases or toss offensive words at each other.
Take the word “racist.” It was a term to define someone who asserted differences in character, intelligence, etc. judged by skin color or ethnicity alone. It asserted that one person was superior prejudging another based on those differences without knowing the other person. Too often it has become an epithet used when another person doesn’t agree with another’s ideas and has nothing to do with one’s view on race or ethnicity.
The same is true of the word “bigot.” When someone can’t win arguments by reason, another person may resort to calling the opposition a bigot. When a person cannot be swayed or persuaded into a similar view or opinion an opponent is often times called bigoted.
Using the term “Nazi” seems to be the most recent term being used when someone disagrees with the ideas being espoused. The term is a despicable term describing a tyrannical political party that foisted one atrocity after another on dissenters and on a specific race. “Fascist” is another term running parallel to it. Hitler was at the helm of this demented political party and his name is another insult randomly hurled when someone refuses to believe the argument or stands against the opposing belief. Hitler and his followers committed barbaric and horrendous attacks on mankind. They herded men, women, and children into box cars, hauling them to concentration camps as slave labor. They were either worked to death or murdered in gas chambers. Sometimes the skin of a corpse was used to make lamp shades. Gold teeth were extracted and sold. Even their hair was used to stuff furniture. The dead were buried in mass graves and forgotten like trash.
When the people of today casually or loosely toss around words like Hitler, Nazi, Fascist, and concentration camps, they cheapen the real meaning of the horror that is concentrated in those terms. They lessen the true historical facts and gravity those words imply. People need to be able to argue, defend, and debate their points of view without denigrating or cheapening the true meaning of history found in those words.

 So Sick of It
When I was a young guy, my friend Earl Duane Barkley was staying with his grandmother Carrie Hall while his parents drove to the big town of Connellsville, Pennsylvania to shop for groceries. Carrie Hall was my neighbor and Duane and I were good friends. When he visited, came for short vacations, or stayed overnight, we’d get into trouble together. We were the same age. We didn’t actually get into trouble, but we’d build things, explore, and play games.
This particular day, I’m not sure what we were doing when his Mom came home, but she gave me some cashews to eat. She purchased some at one of the five and ten stores. Most of the five and ten cent stores had a confection area of candies and a windowed section that displayed hot Spanish peanuts and cashews near the entrance to the store. They were in a lighted glass case and rotated on a carousel under a heat lamp. The enticing aroma filled the store from the time you entered until you would leave. It beckoned customers to purchase hot nuts. There was a person who would use a large metal scoop to fill the bag with the selected nuts into a white and pale orange striped paper bag. The person would place the bag onto a scale to measure out the correct amount.
They brought some home and gave it to Duane and I to eat. It was the first time I’d ever eaten cashews. I liked the flavor and probably made a pig of myself, eating more then I should have. Later, I got so sick from them. I puked and thought I’d never stop. For years, even the mention of cashews made me turn green.
Another food item that made me so terribly sick was a zucchini boat. My wife Cindy Morrison Beck was given a zucchini. She scooped out the seeded center and filled it with bits of bread, onions, and some of the flesh of the zucchini. She added mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce then baked it. The concoction tasted good on the way down, but it was horrible coming up. I spent the entire evening hovering over the porcelain toilet bowl. Again, it was years before I could think of the words zucchini and food in the same sentence. Looking back at the whole ordeal with the zucchini, it may have been something else that sparked my ill-feeling and aversion to the zucchini, but I still couldn’t see it being served on my dinner table for years.