Sunrise and Sunset

I am fortunate enough to live in an area where beautiful sunrises and sunsets abound. I often share photographs of shots I’ve taken on Facebook. The variety of colors and designs are endless. Clouds often change shape and reflect the wonderful light from the arriving or departing sun.. Sometimes the moon makes an appearance before the sun disappears for the day.

My house is located higher up in the Laurel Ridge with an open field to the East of me that is lined with trees at its far side. I also have a pasture to the West of me bordered by trees and a higher hill. The scenery alone is beautiful, but their colors and shapes change with the seasons sprinkling even more interesting details.

I’ve seen the sun as a hot glowing red ball just beginning to peek over the horizon to the East as the day begins. It spreads its red light onto the clouds that scurry by or swell up into huge behemoths of white and gray. Clouds act as “movie screens” reflecting the sun’s distinctive hues of the sun. Often the East field is sometimes shrouded in dew, veiled in a low hanging white fog giving it a misty otherworld appearance. The colors of autumn add a patchwork of color and winter decorates the trees in ice and snow. There are some days when the rain storms into the area and hides the sun behind a thick curtain of clouds and downpours. On days when the sky is free of clouds, the sun rises as a white hot orb hovering at the top of the trees. The dew quickly dissipates in the heat.

All day the sun travels over my home to its destination in the West. As it settles in for the night, it often leaves red lip-prints as a goodbye kiss, staining the horizon. Sometimes it is a bright, bold color while other times it’s just a hint of color as if to say, “Don’t worry. I’ll be back tomorrow.” I believe that God uses the sun, clouds, trees, and skies to show His attention to detail and the routine of each changing day and season for us to know that He is reliable and faithful. 

 

Flax Scutching

Over the past weekend Stahlstown, Pennsylvania held its annual Flax Scutching. The Scutching has been going on for over 100 years. In the past farmers grew flax and used its strong fibers to make thread. The thread was woven into linen material for clothing. The flax threads were also combined with wool fibers to create linsey-woolsey cloth. Bothe the linen and linsey-woolsey were sewn into clothing.

The Scutching was an assembly of farmers who gathered to soak the flax plant, beat apart the fibers, comb them out, then twist the fibers into thread on a spinning wheel. Later, the threads were placed on a loom and woven into cloth. Not all the farmers could afford the machinery and equipment to “scotch” the flax, so that was why the assembled in a community effort.

The annual Scutching was larger this year. There was a goodly number more vendors selling their wares. Several tented booths were selling craft items, ground wheat flour, cornmeal, and buckwheat flour. Several food areas selling sandwiches, buckwheat cakes and pancakes, soups, ice cream, and funnel cakes. Some vendors were selling maple syrup or honey.

In the main pavilion there was an area where “actors” demonstrated the acts of beating the flax to separate the thread, combing, spinning and weaving the tread into linen cloth. In the rest of the pavilion were areas set aside for historical displays of local photographs, authors selling their books, and our Chestnut Ridge Historical Society table. Our display this year was photographs of schools, the classes and the actual buildings. I did my duty and worked my three hour shift after eating a hamburger and a chocolate ice cream cone.

I can’t sit for that long and often got up to talk with the authors and people moving through the displays. An author who had 5 different books was in his 90’s sharing his history in the Navy and afterward as a sunken ship locater. One of the divers under him also dove to recover the U.S.S, Hunley, a civil war submarine.

Another author was selling his several books of the paranormal along the different roadways in Pennsylvania. A final author had books of the local Native Americans and areas they lived with maps. He also had a display of arrowheads, pottery, and a hand carved war club with the huge ball on the end. It was made especially to bash the heads of the enemy.

Because I was unable to leave the Society’s booth unattended, I couldn’t watch the reenactment of the Native American raid and burning of the settler’s cabin, but the loud retorts of rifles reverberated in the warm evening air.

The Sound of Silence

I share things share my thoughts, not to seek pity, because I know others have the same feelings.

As the years have passed, my house has gotten less noisy. My wife Cindy Morrison Beck died and our children have married and started their own lives. When my last child married, she couldn’t take Willow her cat. Willow and I were left to continue our lives together, sharing a large two-storied house. Most times Willow was less noisy than me, her meow almost non-existent unless I stepped on her tail. She made more noise when chasing a mouse; most times she would play with the mouse chasing it. I had to get out of bed and kill the mouse with a shoe, giving it a burial at sea by flushing it down the toilet.

As the house grew quieter, I’d often turn on the television for company. The boob tube taught me tricks to survive in cold Alaska winters, how to make a delicious meal form an odd assortment of food, and how to renovate an old house if I had the tools and manpower. Ministers with Bible teaching and sermons also filled my quiet times.

Recently Willow passed away. She rapidly deteriorated, refusing to eat. I buried her lifeless body beneath the Willows at the back of my property. Her soft meows have now been stilled. My house seems even emptier. More and more I am tempted to leave the television’s remote in the off position, only my puttering breaks the stillness. There are times late in the evenings when vehicles no longer whizz past my front door and crickets no longer serenade me, their chirping songs become stilled. If I don’t have a fan running or if the humming of the refrigerator is stilled, the ensuing silence will fill my ears and I will hear silence. That may seem an odd thing to say, but my ears fill the void with a soft ringing sound. The universe hates a void and will do something to fill it. Right now, even with the low hum of the ceiling fan over my head, I can hear a faint ringing. It’s a barely heard sound. This quietness is often a spur for me to write or at times a detriment when it intrudes on what I’m trying to say.

There are times I long for the sound of my many cousins that filled my Grandparents Ray and Rebecca Miner’s house and times when my children lived at home with visiting friends. But alas, those times are no more and I’ve become accustomed to the quiet and only enjoying brief interludes into my solitude. 

The Farm

My grandfather Raymond Miner and his wife Rebecca Rugg Miner owned a small farm near Indian Head in the southwest corner of Pennsylvania. Granddad raised a few cattle, a couple horses, several pigs, a flock of chickens, and a passel of kids, eight to be exact, five girls and two boys. The only crops I can remember him growing were hay, corn, and of course Grandma’s garden.

The farm was dominated by a large two story farmhouse and a weathered gray barn. There were several outbuildings, a block covering for the spring, two chicken coops, a smoke house, a corn crib, and of course the outhouse. The farmhouse had a large basement that contained a myriad of shelves to hold canned goods, the pump for water, a coal bin and the huge coal furnace with its octopus maze of heating ductwork. At the end of the steep stairs descending to the basement was a huge flat stone approximately three feet by five feet platform before stepping down onto the basement floor. Cobwebs decorated much of the less frequently explored areas. The lighting was single bulbs that dangled from ceiling wires.

Three large hemlock trees shaded the long front porch, their roots lifting a few of the bricks in the walkway to the porch. Later, I remember the back porch being built in to house “indoor plumbing” t to make room for a toilet and bathtub. I was too little do more than get in the way as the men dug a hole to place the septic tank and ditches for the drainage field. That was a blessing for Gram and her progressing rheumatic arthritis. She no longer had to make trips to the outhouse or use the chamber pot, but. Granddad still kept the two-hole outhouse. With so many kids and grandkids, the outhouse was often necessary in peak demand times at gatherings to butcher the hogs and a bull or for holiday celebrations.

He donated a small lower field to his church when they were looking for a new location to build and expand. The minister once described Granddad as Enoch-like. He was a quiet man who walked with God when he died.

Verizon on the Horizon

The past few days have been a struggle. My cell phone slipped from my shirt pocket while I was burying my cat Willow. It fell onto a rock. One corner of my cell’s screen cracked halfway across the bottom and almost halfway up the side. I had an insurance policy and the replacement phone was sent. I spent nearly three hours Monday evening on the phone transferring the content from my old phone to the new one. One thing I forgot to do was to write down the “code” to unlock my new cell. My old phone didn’t have the lock out on the screen, so after I hung up from the tech support, I tried to access my new cell, but was unable to do so. I tried to call the tech support, but the transfer to the new phone was complete, and when they would send verification codes that I couldn’t receive because I was locked out. Verizon would ask questions like what is your 4 digit access code, like an old codger like me would have it memorized or written down somewhere that was easy to find.

So, my attempt to rectify, I called the Verizon help number. Because I was unable to access my phone, it was suggested that I go to the nearest Verizon store and have them do a “factory reset.” I spent a bit over an hour at the store. The sales rep was very polite and attempted in multiple ways to do a factory reset while talking to a Verizon help tech. I haven’t used my Google account for ages and couldn’t give them the information to access my phone date through another avenue because of the lock on my “new phone replacement.” Any message sent to my phone was locked away. Their attempt to do a factory restart filed. I was upset enough thinking of the phone numbers and photos that I would lose.

It was suggested by this smaller satellite store to go to the Verizon center in a nearby city to have them do the reboot and factory restart. Again Verizon was chasing tails and the larger store was unable to do the restart. I only spent an hour and a half there. My only option was to get an updated phone and call Verizon to activate it. The staff of that store couldn’t help (although they tried) because the Verizon IVR (activations) was closed, of course.

I almost went back on my resolution of, “I never go out if I’m grumpy, because no one wants to deal with a grumpy old man. Pray for me while I try to activate my new phone.