“The years flow by like water, and one day it is spring again.
Shall we ever ride out of the gates of the East again, as we
did once at morning, and seek again, as we did then, new
lands…..and glory, joy and triumph, and a shining city?”

—Thomas Wolfe
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The dawn of spring. It always takes me back to the Aylmer days of childhood. In a fading sense each year, it seems, as the vivid memories recede ever further into the mists, and I wonder sometimes which are real and which are ghosts, figments in the subconscious mind of things not lived, but only seen or heard. Or if I can even tell the difference anymore.

Time languishes when you are a child. A day lasts a week. A long adventure from dawn to dusk. Where even the most mundane events are exciting forays into wild, uncharted terrain, the experiences eagerly absorbed and processed by a young and hungry mind. The sun, when it shines, does so endlessly, and a sunset lingers for hours, frozen in the western skies. The seasons creep slowly by, each a span of years by adult standards. A blustery March day, a lingering eternity of dark and wind-swept clouds.

And so it was in those long ago days.

Back then, the winters were always tough up there. Cold. And long. The Lake Erie effect. By late January or early February, our hockey games were over. Thawing and refreezing made the pond unsafe. We focused then on slogging through days and weeks to the coming breath, the warmth of spring, yearned for it with the fervent desire that only children know.

In March then, the winds howled, the hard cold rain spit sideways from the skies, the real thaws came, and the mud. Black greasy sticky stuff. Leeched onto and soiled everything it touched. Clogged our shoes as we huddled against the elements and doggedly trudged off to school on the spongy gravel roads. The great snow banks that had bordered the roads only weeks before now sat sad and shriveled, a shadow of their former grandeur, dirt-spattered by passing cars and trucks.

At school, we sat at our desks and longed for summer and heard the winds swoop and moan and rattle the windows. Chafed at recess, because the yard was too muddy or too wet to go out and play. Set up the carom board and played game after game during the lunch hour.

The sun shone too sometimes in March, and the warm winds blew and dried the earth. Like bees from hives, the plows came then to the fields on every farm about. We heard the jangling teams, saw the farmers hunched over on the cast-iron seats, and the endless ribbons of black dirt flowing from the plowshares.

In the afternoon, we walked home through the bustling neighborhood. And we could feel the pulse of new life in the air. Here a house wife, planting an early garden, there another gathering the flapping laundry from the backyard wash line. And everywhere the timid sprouts of green emerging in yards and pastures. Above us the great rafts of geese and ducks swept back to the north, returning now from their winter stay in southern climes. And maybe it was just me, but in spring I did not feel the deep longings that always stirred within when I saw them heading south in the fall. In October, they were leaving home, in March they were returning. Somehow it just wasn’t the same.

On the farms the impatient livestock milled about knee deep in muddy barnyards. The fields were still too soft and too tender to graze the cattle. So they remained confined, stirring in restless discontent until the day they would be freed.

The mud was everywhere.

And it got me one day, when I was probably four years old. My friend Karen and her Mom were at our house for the day. Karen was my best friend, and we played together several times a week. That afternoon, the March clouds parted, the sun emerged and it seemed like summer. Karen and I played outside, running here and there in the grass and mud.

Shortly after three o’clock, we looked to the west, and saw our siblings half a mile away, coming home from school, over the little hill at Neighbor John’s. Two of my brothers, Stephen and Titus, and maybe my sister Rachel. And several of Karen’s older brothers and sisters.

One of us got the bright idea that we could walk down the road to meet them. So we headed out, two little children, best friends. As we trudged along contentedly, I suddenly decided to veer through our pasture field on the south side of the road.

I don’t know what got into me. I wasn’t showing off or anything. Just a snap decision of a child. No rhyme or reason. Didn’t need one.

“I’m taking a long cut through this field,” I told Karen matter-of-factly. I don’t know where I got it, but that’s the term I used. Long cut. Guess I figured if you can take a short cut, it must follow that you can take a long one too.

Karen looked dubious. But she didn’t dissuade me. She didn’t follow me either.

There was no fence. I slopped through the road ditch and into the field and walked along on the soft dead grass. Almost immediately, serious difficulties arose. Mud. With each step, I sank down further. But I’d get through, I figured. I kept slogging on, veering further into the field. Sank deeper. Finally realizing there was no way forward, I turned back to the road. Too late. I was stuck. And how. Couldn’t move. The harder I struggled, the deeper my little boots sank.

Karen, who’d wisely stayed on the road, saw me sink and heard my distressed wail.

“I’m stuck,” I shouted. Duh. I swayed back and forth. My boots sank even deeper.

Karen remained calm. “Mark will get you out,” she called back. Mark was her older brother, a stocky powerful seventh grader.

By now the crowd of school children approached. Karen ran to meet them.

“Ira’s stuck,” she told them, pointing at me. Duh, again. They could see that much. I was still struggling forlornly, increasingly helpless, sinking ever deeper. But I didn’t cry.

Her brother chuckled a hearty burly chuckle. He handed his lunch box to one of my brothers. Walked into the field toward me. I waited helplessly, fearing he’d get stuck too. What would we do then?

But he plowed right in, and came up to me. “Are you stuck?” he roared cheerfully. Duh, again. He grasped me firmly under my armpits and lifted with a powerful heave. Up I shot, one of my boots making a loud sucking sound as it was unwillingly extracted from the mud. My other boot slipped off and remained stuck. Somehow Mark cradled me under one arm and reached down and pulled up the recalcitrant boot.

Still holding me under one arm, he strode through the mud back to terra firma. I marveled at his strength. We reached the road and he set me on my feet. I stomped and kicked vigorously to rid my boots of mud.

Karen flitted about, proud of her big brother who had rescued her best friend. And that was that. We all walked on home to our warm house, where Mom and Mandy, Karen’s mom, were finishing their afternoon coffee. No one fussed too much at my unfortunate little adventure.

That’s what it was to me. An adventure. A thing to reflect on and ponder. I quietly locked it safely away in the files of my memory.

And that was spring when I was four.

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Last weekend several relatives showed up unexpectedly. Lester Yutzy from Kansas was at Steves Friday night for one night. Also, my nephew Gideon Yutzy drove over for the weekend from his classes at Faith Builders in western PA.

Gideon and Ira

Gideon is in his student stage, attending classes and grappling with the issues of his culture and generation. After supper we sat around and debated many things, iron sharpening iron. Fairly or unfairly, I’ve always been mildly suspicious of Faith Builders as a quasi-socialistic Beachy/Mennonite enclave. Somewhat hostile to wealth. Open to theories of voluntary poverty, and so forth. Which are anathema to me. But I might have it all wrong. If so, I’m open to correction. Any Faith Builders students out there who might care to clarify?

We had a great time. Lots of fun, debating. I did manage to push a book on him, entitled Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators. David Chilton’s timeless classic. Which Gideon promised to read. I read the book back in the mid 1990s, and it had tremendous influence on the way I view a lot of things, including wealth. I look forward to hashing it out with him in future discussions.

Obama continues his hapless floundering while trying to socialize every aspect of our culture, under the guise of stimulating the economy. Every time he announces a new bailout, the markets plummet another couple hundred points.

But last week I heard of a policy he wants to change, one that I would definitely support. The lifting of the embargo on Cuba. One of the most senseless policies in our country’s recent history. JFK installed the embargo back in the 1960s, as a punishment for Castro. No president since has had the guts to revoke it.

So when Obama proposes something I agree with, I’ll support him most heartily. As I do on this, the only thing I’ve heard from him that makes even the slightest lick of sense. The embargo’s major accomplishment: It has for over a generation cruelly deprived Americans of the finest cigars in the world. Break open the gates. Cuban stogie, anyone?

My buddy Erik Wesner of Amish America headlined me on his blog again. Very favor-ably. Guess I really need to get him that case of good wine now. Or at least take him out for a decent meal when he’s in the area. Welcome to all new readers.

A few thoughts on last week’s post. Whoa, Nellie. I certainly didn’t expect such visceral reactions. A great cacophony of yowling, like cats with their tails tied together. Readers merrily whacking each other, which was fine. And a few cheap shots at me. But that’s OK. I’m a big guy. I can take it. And all for merely suggesting that alien life might exist out there. I feel fortunate the Inquisition is not around anymore. I would surely be defending myself before a grim hooded tribunal. And be stretched out on the rack by now, in preparation for burning at the stake.

Not that I didn’t appreciate every comment. All 25 of them, certainly a record for recent months. I always appreciate all comments, at least the ones you see posted. But I am surprised nobody excoriated me for enjoying such childish things as Tom and Jerry cartoons. Maybe someone could take up that cudgel this week. Should be no shortage of volunteers.

I wrote what I wrote. I stand by it. And I’d write it again.