A deadline is negative inspiration. Still,
it’s better than no inspiration at all.

—Rita Mae Brown
_______________

I wonder sometimes, after posting another childhood sketch, what the reactions of my readers really are. A few comments always trickle in, but compared to the total number of readers each week, the feedback is pretty miniscule. And that’s not a slam at anyone individually or at all of you collectively. I appreciate all who take the time to read. I’m just saying, is all.

On the surface, the sketches are stories and memories of mundane everyday things that happened long ago in a world now long gone. But in the details of each sketch lurks the incessant hunger of a child to search and seize and explore the known world around him. His community, his family, his surroundings, and the events of an ordinary day. And the world outside his established boundaries. A world that beckons, calls, fascinates. A world into which he will one day venture on a quest to search for that magical land he had glimpsed only from afar.

It’s hard to reach back through the fog of years and try to recapture the essence of the things I saw and heard and felt so long ago. To shed the crusted cynicism of age and experience, and return again to the simple wonder and innocent unpretentiousness of the child. To get there, I have to be in the right frame of mind, kind of “in the zone.” A touch of brooding melancholy helps.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. You never see the failed attempts, the tattered incomplete scenes that get shelved for perhaps another try another day. But it’s been fun. A lot of work, but fun.

I’ve known a few adults who somehow kept alive the flame of childish wonder of their youth. Genuinely. Naturally. Some. But very few. And I’ve seen plenty who walk about with incessant exclamations of contrived wonder. There aren’t many spectacles sadder than that. Or more irritating.

For me, true childish wonder receded long ago. Only the memories remain.

Every week or two, it seems, another email pops up in my inbox. So and so wants to be your friend on Facebook, it informs me blithely. As if there would be scant possibility that I might not want to be that person’s friend and even less of a possibility that I might not have a Facebook account. I mean, how far back in the stone age could I be?

Pretty far, apparently. Because I don’t. Have an account, that is. I’ll be almost any-one’s friend, just not on Facebook. Many of my friends and relatives do have an account. And from what they tell me, it’s a beautiful thing. A great way to keep in touch and instantly share news gossip and opinions and comments. I think most Facebook people check their sites first thing in the morning for all the latest.

And from what I’ve heard, it’s a surefire way to reconnect with old friends from way back. People you haven’t heard from in years, maybe decades. I must confess, that would be intriguing. There’s a long, long trail of people out there I’ve lost touch with. Who knows who might pop out of the woodwork?

So I’ve considered it seriously. It would be cool to hear from old friends and to join the social network. I could even link to my blog and maybe increase my readership there.

But so far I’ve resisted the temptation. Where would I find the time? I’m too busy here, working on my writing. Besides, and this is the real reason, I’m just way too paranoid. I’ve read the fine print on the Agreement you enter when you sign up. Anything you post on Facebook is their property in perpetuity, or close to it. Which means forever.

That means all your pics, all your comments, your gossip, opinions, everything. Even if you take it down, it still exists on the main database. And it’s theirs to use as they see fit.

What about this website, you might be thinking. I post a lot of stuff here. True. But there’s a huge difference. This is a real website. I pay for the domain. It’s mine. I can take it down anytime. And when it’s down, it’s gone. Not saved in some huge database.

I don’t know. I might break down and open a very basic stripped-down Facebook account at some point. Just to check out that world and see if any old friends contact me. But for now, I’m pretty content where I am.

Most of you know I’m not a fan of our current President. I never watch him speak. Can’t stand the guy. But at the baseball All Star Game last week, as the President walked out to the mound to throw the ceremonial pitch, I rooted for him. Man to man. Throw it over the plate. Or at least to the plate. I felt a bit sorry for him as he stood there and waved to the crowd. He looked lost. Come on, man, I thought. Make me proud of this, at least. He wound up and threw. The announcers fell over themselves burbling about how he “got it to the plate.” But it was a bad throw. I don’t think he did get it over, or even to the plate. Otherwise, they would have shown it.

It happens now and then, and it never fails to jolt me a bit. When I’m in public some-where, in whatever setting, and some complete stranger walks up and tells me he/she reads my blog. The first time, I think, it happened at the mall in Lancaster late last summer. I was sitting and sipping a cup of coffee at the mall center, not a whole lot on my mind, when a young Mennonite girl approached timidly. Upswept hair topped by a little covering, she looked to be maybe twenty years old.

“Are you Ira?” She asked shyly.

“I am,” I admitted, startled.

“I read your blog,” she smiled. I smiled back and thanked her. It immediately struck me that she knew a heck of a lot more about me than I’ll ever know about her. We chatted a bit and she wandered on. I have no idea who she was.

And that’s how it goes sometimes. It happened again at a wedding I attended last Saturday. Almost all who introduce themselves are either plain or from a plain back-ground. Only once or twice was it a completely “English” stranger. So far no one’s asked for my autograph. Once someone does that, I will have arrived.

One of my sisters reproached me a few weeks ago at the Kentucky family gathering. I haven’t been fulfilling my reporterly duties in proclaiming all the new babies and upcoming weddings in the family. Been doing some serious slacking, she admonished. I bristled.

“I’m not The Budget,” I grumbled. “Read The Budget for that stuff. I got more important things to write.”

My brother Steve backed me up. “No, he’s not The Budget.” Steve said.

My sister was not convinced. Or satisfied in the least. She persisted. What can be more important than family?

“Not a fair question,” I grumbled again. “Of course family is most important. But the nature of the blog has changed over time. I don’t want to bore my readers with so many factual details about people they don’t even know.” Unless I can weave a story around it, I thought to myself. But I didn’t say that.

It was no use. My defense could not stand. So, in the interest of family peace and future harmony and all that, here goes:

CONGRATULATIONS TO:

Andrew (my nephew) and Marnita Yutzy on the birth of their daughter, Hadassah Ilene, born June 17, 2009.

Jason (my nephew) and Julie Yutzy on the birth of their son, Nicholas Klaus, born July 3, 2009.

Congrats to the proud parents. May your daughter and son prosper, along with your other children. I don’t have pictures of both babies, so I won’t post the one I do have. For continued harmony, and peace among the Freundschaft and all that.

AND CONGRATULATIONS TO:

Mervin Wagler (my nephew) and Mary Marlene Yoder, on their wedding, which was this very day in Worthington, IN. My regrets that I could not attend.

Jason Stutzman and Mary Ann Wagler (my niece) on their engagement. The wedding is planned for October 2, 2009, also to be in Worthington, IN. I plan to attend.

And there you have it. Sorry for my slackness. Family things, even the basic factual details, are very important. And I don’t want to lose sight of that. Ever.

I am a bit distracted this week. A lot of stuff going on. Things happening. Mostly good things. Some of which I hope to share before too long.

“Play us a tune on an unbroken spinet, and let us hear
the actual voices of old fairs; Let us move backwards
through our memories…Let us relive the million forgotten
moments of our lives….”

—Thomas Wolfe
______________

We made it probably three, maybe four times a summer. It was a rare treat, to be allowed to go. An experience to be savored and treasured, for the delightful thing it was. To partake of the bustle and stir of the great city market that was the Aylmer Sales Barn. Every Tuesday was market day.

It was a ramshackle ratty place, consisting of a few acres of cracked and rolling pave-ment and dirty broken gravel, lined with row upon row of vendors’ stands. Inside the main auction barn they sold cattle, and in later years, furniture. A dilapidated side wing housed a number of “English” vendors, who sold mostly cheap Japanese trinkets. And antiques and just plain old junk.

Amish vendors too, sold their wares from little market stands, outside in the elements. Of a Tuesday, the laden old top buggies lumbered down the main gravel road through the community, en route to town. Uncle Abner was a consistent mainstay, selling his eggs. He made the weekly trip to market until he no longer could because of age, a period of close to fifty years. LeRoy Marners sold baked goods. And maybe several other Amish families sold things too. I can’t remember. In the early 1970s, Sam K. Yoder also had a stand.

To us, the Sale Barn was a huge affair, a far shining vista of glittering treasure, a vital part of the pulse of the Aylmer settlement. A place that throbbed with life and lights, full of exotic and wondrous sights and sounds and tastes. Where one never knew the exciting adventures that might unfold.

Sometimes I got to go with Dad, sometimes one of my older brothers let me tag along. We usually went to town first, walked and shopped the great stores on the Aylmer square. Stedman’s. Canadian Tire. IGA. Then ended the day at the Sale Barn.

Outside the main building entrance the French Fry wagon sat parked, windows opened, the delicious tempting odor of hot oily fresh cut fries permeating the air. We always bought fries. Sprinkled them liberally with strong sour vinegar. Canadians don’t put ketchup on their fries. That’s for sissies. And Americans. I wasn’t even aware such a strange and frightful practice existed until I was probably ten years old.

There was a small café in a corner inside the ramshackle Sale Barn building. Beside the serving window stood a metal water tank filled with ice and shimmering bottles of cold soda pop. Mountain Dew, Coke, Orange Crush, and the swirled glass bottles of biting red Cream Soda. There, beside that tank, through the sliding serving window, auctioneer Les Shackleton bought me an ice cream cone one summer night. I was a penniless curly-haired little five-year-old kid, wandering around on my own, staring with hungry eyes at all the mouth watering ice cream and pop other people were buying. He was a nice loud man, who took pity on me and kindly asked my name and claimed to know my father. “So you’re David’s boy,” he boomed as he handed me the cone. Barely able to speak English, I nodded. I slurped the Maple Walnut ice cream, and marveled that such people existed, who for no discernible reason bought little Amish boys such treats. And I savored every bite.

Sometimes a few of my friends were there as well, and we hung out, absorbing all the sights and sounds. The fruit and vegetable man, hollering his prices at passersby. Dad usually stopped by that stand late and haggled for a box of overripe blackened bananas to take home to feed his ravenous family. And down the line, vendors selling clothes, shoes, sunglasses, toys, junk, and old used bicycles I would have killed for. Anything imaginable was available at the Aylmer Sale Barn.

The Pigeon Man sat parked off to one side. The back of his truck was lined and stacked with rows of wire cages. Pigeons and other birds fluttered and bounced inside the cages. Amish boys from around the community, including my older brothers, slipped out at night with dim flickering flashlights. Like squirrels, they scrambled and shimmied up the hand-hewn beams in the empty yawning lofts of great old red barns in pursuit of as many pigeons as they could grab. It’s a wonder someone didn’t fall and break his neck. The pigeons they caught were deposited into burlap feed bags and delivered to the Pigeon Man each Tuesday at the Sale Barn. For thirty-five to fifty cents apiece.

The action lasted until late; it was always dark when things shut down. The vendors wrapped up and loaded their leftover wares and headed out of town. I don’t know if uncle Abner usually sold all his eggs or if the Marners sold all their baked goods. I imagine the prices dropped as closing time approached.

And then one night, it happened. A strange and terrible thing. As the Marners were heading home, a car slowly approached from the rear. Pulled around, and stopped. It was pitch dark; the gravel road was devoid of all other traffic. Young Paul Marner and one of his sisters sat in the large top buggy. A man emerged from the car and approached. Paul pulled the horse to a stop. At his side, the man on the road held something that might have been a pipe, or a gun. He wasted no time with greetings, but gruffly demanded their money.

They gave him all the day’s proceeds, a grand total of twenty-seven dollars. The man returned to his car and roared away. Greatly shaken, the two headed on home, glad to be unhurt. The news flashed across the community the next day. It was all people talked about for a week or two. I was in the second or third grade, seven or eight years old. So it must have happened in 1968 or ’69.

I don’t remember all the details, but somehow the local police got on the case. And somehow they caught the guy. I don’t know if there was a trial, or if the Marners ever testified in any way, but the robber spent some time in jail. Probably a few years at least. And that’s about all I can recall of the Great Aylmer Buggy Robbery.

My father was a man of many trades, and once a year, for a few weeks in July, he too joined the vendors at the Sale Barn. He shipped in fresh cherries by the truckload, from the fertile orchards down close to Lake Erie. A smiling elderly man named Alfred C. High rattled in on a Tuesday after lunch. On the back of his old blue flatbed stake body truck, he had loaded stacks and stacks of lidded wooden baskets with half-loop handles, filled with some of the world’s most luscious black cherries.

Somehow Dad had located the High Farms and made a deal. He paid them just a smidgen above wholesale price, then sold the cherries at the Sale Barn for retail price. It was a money making proposition. By the time I came along, Dad’s reputation as a seasonal cherry vendor was firmly established in the Aylmer area. During the season, people flocked in to buy his cherries.

Alfred C. High usually delivered a few baskets of cracked cherries, or seconds, with each load. These were never sold at the Sale Barn, but were always snapped up by the local Amish because they were cheaper. One Tuesday about mid-morning, William and Fern Kramer, an elderly couple from the nearby Mt. Elgin settlement, trundled the fifteen miles in their horse and buggy to buy some cracked cherries from that day’s load. They sat for hours and hours, waiting for the truck to arrive. About the time the old blue truck pulled in, Neighbor John from half a mile down the road rattled in with his old hack to pick up a few baskets of cracked cherries for his goodwife, Martha.

Unfortunately, that day there were only three or four baskets of cracks, instead of the usual dozen or two. There was tension in the air as Neighbor John and Fern Kramer faced off on who would get to take the cracks. Standing there, hands on her hips, Fern struck first.

“I guess I’ll take them all,” she said authoritatively. Neighbor John looked extremely grieved. As Fern moved in to seize the baskets, Dad intervened. They would have to share and each take two baskets. That’s the best he could do, Dad said. And the fairest thing. Neighbor John looked slightly less grieved. It was not a good day for the Kramers, who had to trundle fifteen miles on their horse and buggy clear back to Mt. Elgin. After waiting for hours and hours. I don’t know why they didn’t just take a few baskets of good cherries. But they didn’t. Guess it never crossed their minds to spend the extra money.

Once in awhile, I got to go along to help sell. On Sale Barn day, we pulled into the vendor area and located a stand. Alfred C. High then backed his old stake body truck to the site. And we unloaded maybe a hundred or more covered baskets. Dad helped unload, but he was already busy selling, engaging anyone who showed even the slightest interest. To verify that the cherries were of good quality all the way to the bottom, Dad would pour a full basket into an empty one, slowly rolling out the delicious fruit. He even allowed people to taste a few before they bought. After tasting, few could resist a purchase.

And here, at a vendor’s stand at the Aylmer Sale Barn, I was introduced to my first real taste of commerce. Of selling a product, taking money, giving change. The bustle and stir of the crowd, the characters who stopped and talked and tasted and bought. “English” people, the old, the young, the fat, the tall, the long-haired hippy types of the age. Scraggly hillbilly hicks, most of them. As were we. We just didn’t know it.

And we engaged too, in some minor commerce of our own. Lugged in cages and boxes with baby rabbits and bantam hens with cute little fluffy chicks. Sold them for a few dollars apiece. We weren’t allowed to own large livestock like calves and goats and sheep. Dad said they ate too much feed. But we did raise small stock, rabbits and such. What we sold was ours, we pocketed the money, to save or spend on things we wanted, hockey equipment and occasional contraband like sports magazines and comic books.

When things slowed down a bit, or most of the cherries had been sold, Dad left us at the stand from time to time and went off to do his shopping. One evening, I stood there all alone. Selling baskets of cherries right along. Two long haired young thugs approached. Well, maybe they weren’t thugs, but they sure didn’t have any money to spend on cherries. One of them stopped in front of my stand and pointed at the sky.

“Look at the plane,” he said. I turned around and looked up.

The young long haired thug grabbed a handful of cherries while my back was turned. The neighboring vendors all roared with laughter. The two young louts walked on, snickering, munching on their pilfered cherries. I was helpless, mortified and hugely embarrassed. I resolved never to get fooled like that again. Like a country simpleton.

And once as I stood there alone at our stand during the early hours of a summer evening, a great ruckus arose from the fruit and vegetable vendor across the way. A bald giant of a man, he was particularly aggressive that night, staggering about and accosting passersby with loud, crude shouts. He was slosh-faced drunk, but I would never have been able to tell. I thought he was just a loud English man. Eventually someone notified the owner of the Sale Barn, and he emerged to confront the loud bald vendor.

The bald giant vendor stood there, red-faced with drink and breathing hard, as the owner curtly ordered him off the premises. The giant bellowed a slurred curse, then slowly cocked a massive paw and unleashed a wide slow looping swing. The owner ducked, then dove in and grabbed the giant behind each knee and yanked. The giant abruptly sat down on his rather sizeable butt. Confused, he slurred more curses, then slowly stumbled to his feet and attacked the owner again, cocking a massive menacing fist. Again, he swung a wide slow looping arc. Again, the nimble owner ducked and dove at the giant’s knees and tugged. Again, the giant sat down abruptly. This time the owner turned and walked away. A few minutes later, two cops arrived and escorted the drunken giant to their car and took him away.

In my memory, that was the first real violence I ever witnessed. I stood there, gaping in awe and disbelief. No one, I figured, would believe my tale.

The Aylmer Sale Barn. There never was one like it, before or since. A place where small children sailed on great voyages of adventure into a strange and mysterious world. A place never forgotten by those who shared the grandeur of its glory years.

It still exists. Vendors still gather of a Tuesday afternoon to sell their wares. Old timers still hang out in the café and speak of bygone times to those who will listen. On the morning of my uncle Abner’s funeral in January, I drove by the Sale Barn with my sister Rachel. We didn’t stop or get out, just drove by and looked. I barely recognized the site of so much drama and wild adventure all those years ago. The place looked sad and desolate. A small cluster of tattered, forlorn buildings is all that remains.

Maybe that’s all there ever was. Maybe it always was a sad forlorn little hick country place. And not the great distant shining vista I remembered as a child. Maybe. To most people.

But not to me.