And the Mountain Roared

 And the Mountain Roared
I often heard my wife’s Mother describing a sound that she would hear. Retha May Morrison would pause at whatever she was doing; cock her head to one side, and say, “Shush, just listen to the mountain roar.” And indeed the wind in the trees did. She and Bud her husband were groundskeepers at Camp Christian near Mill Run, Pennsylvania. The camp was surrounded by thick wooded hillsides and was graced with a small stream running through it. When the wind would blow from a certain direction, the sound of the wind did give a low, guttural growl.
Camp Christian once had been a summer retreat for weary people from Pittsburgh and the surrounding communities. They would ride the train to spend a day, a weekend, or even a week in Killarny Park. The park was a place of escape where people could boat, swim, and fish with lodging and meals available for those who were able to afford it.  Many would pack a lunch and for the price of the train fare they could relax, hike, wade, or swim, away from the smoke and noise of the city.
The camp had a large two storied Millhouse. It was of white clapboard hotel-like bedrooms upstairs. Downstairs was a huge kitchen, a banquet room with multiple tables for eating, and an open, wraparound porch. At one end of the dining room was a large stone fireplace where a fire frequently burned in the cool of the evening. There was a chapel and also a few rental cabins with little more room than to provide shelter and sleeping quarters. The white clapboard shelters were snug and provided refuge from the rain and wind.
A large metal bell perched atop a stone pillar at the front of the Millhouse and summoned diners when the meals were ready to be served.
Eventually Killarny Park was purchased by a consortium of churches in Pittsburgh as a summer camp. Reserved on different weeks, the camp was available for adults, for couples, and for children. One week was set was always aside for the underprivileged kids of Pittsburgh. Although the Millhouse has now been replaced with a more modern dining hall and kitchen, children’s’ shouts of laughter still echo in the camp.
As I sat this morning, deciding on what to write I heard the mountain outside of my windows roar. I live near White, Pennsylvania and although the trees aren’t as close to my house as the trees that surrounded Camp Christian, my mountain roared. The wind was just right. The sound of the wind’s roar entered my home, as did the memory of Retha’s once familiar song.

No Alarms

 No Alarms
I was needed to drive with a friend to have testing done yesterday. She would have to endure anesthesia for the test. I would be needed to be with her to listen to the directions for her post-operative care at home, but more importantly I would be needed to drive her home. She wouldn’t be permitted to operate a vehicle for twenty-four hours. She would need to be under the care of a relative for twenty-four hours.
I was to be at her house before six AM. She needed to be at the hospital by seven AM. I set my alarm for four-thirty. I was sure to wake up in plenty of time to grab a shower and eat a bite of breakfast before I got into my car and drive to her house. For some reason the alarm didn’t go off and I woke at five-thirty two AM. I was in a panic, because. It would take fifteen minutes to drive from my home to her house. I hurried outside to my car, pulled off the windshield cover and…there was a layer of ice. I jumped inside and peering through a clear spot I began the journey. For some reason the morning darkness seemed to absorb my illumination from headlight. Although I knew the road to her home, in the darkness it seemed unfamiliar. I arrived at her home at five fifty eight with two minutes to spare and we were off.
Along the way, we saw red flashing lights and slowed. There was an auto accident at a crossroad. Emergency vehicles had just arrived. The fire department was allowing traffic to drive by in a single lane. It slowed traffic, but we were able to continue.
It made us feel thankful. If we had started ten or fifteen minutes earlier, we could have easily been involved in that accident. We continued to drive, arriving at the hospital arriving at six fifty eight. We made it with two minutes to spare. I had a book that I planned to read while I waited, but in my haste, I forgot it in my car. As I waited, I went to the hospital’s cafeteria for the breakfast that I didn’t have time to eat. I felt better with some food in my stomach and now I could relax as I waited for her procedure to be finished and recovered from her anesthesia. I reviewed some articles on my cell phone as I waited. Once the procedure was over, we made the drive back home without incident.

Going Home for Christmas

An extra post because of the holidy. Merry Christmas

Going Home for Christmas
As I grew older there seemed to be nothing so wonderful, so good, and so blessed as to be home for Christmas to the place where I grew up. This was my home place where I learned to walk, talk, and play with my brother Kenneth Beck and my sister Kathy Beck Basinger. It was the house where we all grew up with our parents Sybil Miner Beck and E. Carl Beck. It was the place where we were raised, nurtured and loved.
When my father bought the land it had a small cottage covered in brown Inselbrick tar paper. Inside there were two tiny bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room that surrounded a covered porch in a U shape. The house had half basement and half crawl space beneath it. I didn’t forget to include an indoor bathroom because there wasn’t one. There was a path and an outhouse to the rear of the yard.
The house expanded over the years I lived there to include a full basement, another bedroom, and indoor plumbing. It became a home filled with love where life was celebrated, routine days, birthdays, and of course the holidays. Later in life we gathered within those walls to enjoy the annual celebrations of Christmas and Thanksgiving. We would and share our lives with our parents and each other as we sat, talked, and ate.
When my parents died my sister held many of the family gatherings, but one year, I opened my house for Christmas. Since I am widowed, it meant more than my usual cleaning and to provide an extra table and chairs, but it was worth it. I made my home ready. I prayed that this house where they learned to walk, talk, and play would become a treasured memory. I hoped this house where they were raised, nurtured, and loved would be remembered as the home where they celebrated Christmas.
My grandchildren now come here for Christmas and hopefully the memories of love and this house will be passed on to another generation. Merry Christmas.

All Gift Wrapped

All Gift Wrapped
I spent yesterday sorting and wrapping Christmas gifts for my family. We plan to celebrate tommorrow on Christmas Day. As a youth, my Mom Sybil Miner Beck would assign me the task of wrapping Christmas gifts at my childhood home. I ued to make very beautiful bows and because of that, it became my annual job. At first I didn’t mind, but it slowly became a job that I detested.
The reasons I hated to wrap gifts were twofold. The first was that most of the time of the time I had to use the lick and stick seals with te dry glue on the backside to fasten the edges of the wrapping paper in place to seal the paper wrapping. My Mom occasionally would have some shiny cellophane “Scotch” tape for me to use, but the tape would always be in short supply and I could only use small slivers of tape to secure the wrapping paper around the present. It was a horribly tedious task. Mom didn’t have a problem buying gifts, but she didn’t like to buy a large supply of tape, or do the gift wrapping or herself and my Dad Carl Beck couldn’t be bothered doing the wrapping. He would much rather wind some ribbon or string around the bag and stick a name tag on it.
Mom would even welsh out on wrapping my Christmas gifts. She would hide the gift inside bags, then turn them over to me to wrap. I must say as a kid, although I was tempted, I didn’t snoop. That happened mych later in my life. I didn’t want to know what presents that my Mom had purchased.
My Dad rarely shopped except gifts for my Mom. Because of the hours he worked, he would often wait until the last minute and would rush into Burn’s Drug in Connellsville, Pennsylvania on Christmas Eve to make some hasty purchases. All are just memories now. All are treasures lodged in my mind. One thing I always do is to keep plenty of cellophane tape on hand at Christmas.
Merry Christmas to all.

Why So Cold and Dark

 Why So Cold and Dark?
I’ve never been a huge fan of the cold and snow, but when you add the shoetened daylight hours, it becomes a triple threat to my happiness. As a couch potato I don’t like the shoveling of snow from the driveway, tha porch, and the porch stairs. I guess I could become a hermit over the winter months. I have to clear away the snow and ice to prevent another fall like I did in 2015.  My driveway became slick when a thin layer of water lay on top of a patch of ice. My feet flew out frm under me. I fell onto my back and the back of my head bounced on the ice. I’m not sure if I lost consciousness, but I lost a lot of memory of exactly what happened, but my daughter Anna Prinkey tells me I came to the door of her bedroom saying, “I think I need help.”
Much of that day I still can’t remember. I only recall small snatches of going the Frick Hospital in Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania. I’ve retained a very small thought of the CT scan and a few recollections of the ambulance ride to Pittsburgh. Some of the nurses and techs from Frick were olld friends and I can’t recall which ones they were and what they did for me.
The worst thing about winter for me that makes the darkness and cold worse is the wind. It so often bites and makes the cold and snow turn blizzardlike. Burrr, I dislike the hought of being forced to stay inside when the roads get drifted and dangerous to drive on. I live on a side road that is less travelled and less well maintained. Much of the roadway crosses open fields and has many steeper hills to navigate. Some of the hills have a curved approach that prevents me to get up any speed to shoot up the hill.
A couple of winters the transportation department’s snowplow became stranded in a drift and they had to bring out a snow-fan truck to free it and another year the drifts became so widespread and deep that they brought in a machine with a scoop shovel to open the road.
I pray that we can escape some of the more intense cold, the more extreme snow storms, and the heavier wind storms. I tease that Canada needs to keep their freezer doors closed, but it does have an edge of truth.

Almost

 Almost
This past week my brain has been slightly off. It hasn’t made me compleelly crazy yet, but the week isn’t over yet. I still have several days left. Monday I picked up my mail on my way home from shopping. I shared on FaceBook thyat I’d purchased holiday pint bottles of maple syrup in October feeling that I had gifts put away for my kids and the workers of the Chestnut Ridge Historical Society, only to find that I can’t find them. Looking back, I believe that I was so tired after two days of frying sausage that I forgot to load them in my car. There is no other explanation, so I needed to buy gift cards as a poor substitute.
I went shopping to get a few needed groceries and had to make a second run a few days later because I forgot some needed things. Not a big problem, but I get upset with myself when some things were on my written lisst. That is very irksome.
My latest ALMOST dip into a world of forgetfulness was that I needed to get my vehicle inspected before the end of the year. The beginnings of this gap in my memory had its roots in the year 2023. My inspection month should have been October and I was driving to the end of November with an expired inspection and my mechanic said that because it was so close, that he would apply the inspection sticker for the month of December. There was no harm no foul, but it was a miscue for my memory.
I was driving over to the Chestnut Ridge Historical Society on Wednesday for the ususal work day and exchange of Christmas cards and gifts when I noticed that the December inspection was due. I actually stopped along the road and callered my mechanic to see if he could fit me in. He was gracious enough to fit me in on Thursday morning. That was a blessing. I found out that he wasn’’t going to be open Christmas week and I was almost in violation again.

So Tempting

 So Tempting
We all face temptations in life, sometimes daily and sometimes it arrives unexpectedly, but they do come. It can be described as enticements, troubles, or trials. Satan doesn’t walk up to you, throw you over his shoulder, and carry you to the sin, he entices. He woos you a little at a time. Just like the fisherman with a lure. It isn’t the real thing, but a copy of something tasty, something good, something pleasant, but hidden there is the hook with barbs that pirce and hold on. It is a trap, a thing that bites, a thing that has consequences.
Temptation is the thing that often comes as a testing to see if we will keep our integrity. “Who will it hurt? Who will see it?” Satan asks as he whispers in our ears. “No one is looking.” It could be the lust of the flesh, greed for something that isn’t ours, or to try the taste of drugs or alcohol. Sometimes it causes us to move just one step closer to sin’s trap.
Temptation is sometimes a constant. It becomes an always present trial, hovering like a lion, waiting for an opening, waiting for the smallest weakening in our resolve. It can become persistent, seemingly growing stronger the more we resist it. Sin’s allure often seems pleasant with nothing to fear, but Satan doesn’t play fair. He plays for keeps.
But we have a companion that is faithfully at our side. We will never have to fight the battle on our own. God will give us everything that we need to escape and resist it. He will always enable us to have the victory. 1 Corinthians 15:57, “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
God gives us an example of how to handle temptation of when Potiphar’s wife attempted to cause Joseph to sin. First he refused. She still persisted. Joseph recalled all that he had been taught about a holy righteous God and ran from the temptation. He was falsely jailed for his resisting sin, but God restored Joseph and rewarded him by raising him up to an even higher position.