What I Learned From The Hairy Barrel

What I Learned From The Hairy Barrel

“Okay now, jump in! I want to see you jump in the pool!”

If you see a picture of me when I was a kid you would see a stick girl. I had no “extra padding,” so I froze on June mornings when I stood at the side of the pool with other shivering children for swimming lessons.

Norm—I think that was his name—was the swimming teacher.  I wasn’t supposed to know he had a first name I called him Mr. ____.  I can’t remember his last name. My aunt knew him though and she called him Norm.

He looked like a barrel with legs and a round head on hardly a neck.  I remember wondering what was wrong with him because my father wasn’t nearly as hairy as Mr. Hairy Barrel. I also somehow thought he was warmer than I was on those mornings.  He had fur to keep him warm.

“Jump in! Come on jump in!” he urged us as he stood in crystal blue pool water up to his waist. One by one we jumped in.  When it was my turn, I jumped toward Mr. Hairy Barrel without hesitating. 

I hit the water with both feet. Water bubbled all around me and closed above my head. I found my feet, pushed from the bottom, and shot partly out of the water like a tiny breaching whale. The water felt warm after a moment and it was fun to be so agile and weightless.

 I was a little afraid of Norm Hairy Barrel, but I did learn to swim. I still know how and love it, even though I’m a larger breaching whale nowadays.

Norm Hairy Barrel taught me something else too.  I still jump in with both feet. Shayna and Rachel need a home and pseudo-family? Sure we’ll take them. A local charity needs a yard sale fund rasier? Sure I’ll organize it. Christine needs pies for her wedding? Of course I can make them. You’re lonely? Sure I can be your friend.

I jump in and usually find that the water closes over my head, then I find my feet and enjoy my splashing around. Thanks to Mr. Hairy Barrel, I can jump in and find that the water is a fine, fine, place to be.

What I Learned From Irv Clapp and Jack Kroh

Okay, so if I wrote everything I ever learned from Irv Clapp, my father-in-law, and Jack Allen Kroh, my good old dad, you would be reading for a long, long time.

So I will tell you one thing that popped up this week.

Friday is date day. We do a lot of mentoring in our church so we need a day to just go away and talk to each other. It was a beautiful spring day, the first of its kind. Warm enough for the convertible to be open. Not too hot, not too cold. Perfection.

We planned to drive to New Paltz and take our daughter out for lunch. We wanted to see her, and were eager to drive through the countryside.

But we had a leaking tire. We talked about options and then I said, “Well, what would Irv do in this situation?  More to the point here, since it is tires were talking about, what would Jack Kroh advise us to do?”

My dad changed tires from the time he was fourteen until he re-tired (hee-hee) well after retirement age. I remember one time walking across a snowy unplowed alley and he identified every tire track the whole way across.

Irv kept his dryer running twenty years after they quit making it because he bought all the parts he could when they went on sale because the dryer was discontinued by the company.

These guys knew how to do things!

We got tires, four new ones, and went to the movies and out for a burger later that day.  We still got to talk.  Although they’ve both been gone many years, the advice of both dads is indelibly imprinted in our minds. When we walked into the tire shop it did smell like home. I knew my dad and Roger’s dad would have approved of our better- safe- than- sorry date day.

Okay, so if I wrote everything I ever learned from Irv Clapp, my father-in-law, and Jack Allen Kroh, my good old dad, you would be reading for a long, long time.

So I will tell you one thing that popped up this week.

Friday is date day. We do a lot of mentoring in our church so we need a day to just go away and talk to each other. It was a beautiful spring day, the first of its kind. Warm enough for the convertible to be open. Not too hot, not too cold. Perfection.

We planned to drive to New Paltz and take our daughter out for lunch. We wanted to see her, and were eager to drive through the countryside.

But we had a leaking tire. We talked about options and then I said, “Well, what would Irv do in this situation?  More to the point here, since it is tires were talking about, what would Jack Kroh advise us to do?”

My dad changed tires from the time he was fourteen until he re-tired (hee-hee) well after retirement age. I remember one time walking across a snowy unplowed alley and he identified every tire track the whole way across.

Irv kept his dryer running twenty years after they quit making it because he bought all the parts he could when they went on sale because the dryer was discontinued by the company.

These guys knew how to do things!

We got tires, four new ones, and went to the movies and out for a burger later that day.  We still got to talk.  Although they’ve both been gone many years, the advice of both dads is indelibly imprinted in our minds. When we walked into the tire shop it did smell like home. I knew my dad and Roger’s dad would have approved of our better- safe- than- sorry date day.

What I Learned From Elece

The other day I opened my blog to see that a free lance writer, a friendly woman from Oklahoma followed my blog. Hi, there Elece Hollis. She is the first person to join up that I have never met. 

I was in awe when I realized that here is somebody out there who just stumbled across my blog in that mystical space called the internet.  I’d heard it was possible for someone you didn’t know to follow your blog.

But hearing about it was very different from actually seeing Elece’s name and picture in my blog followers.

Kinda like the difference between talking about riding a bike, going on a roller coaster, getting kissed, and actually doing it. You can tell me about Manning’s ice cream or take me out to the farm and buy me a cone so I can experience it myself.  

This must be what my grandfather felt the first time he turned a switch and a light came on. He used to say that when he was born they had no electricity at home and in his lifetime he’d watched a man walk on the moon.  

This must be what it feels like for a pilot like Zach Benedict or Bill Jaquish, (or any flying Jaquish) to solo for the first time. Or what it feels like to go from the practice room out to the stage. This is what it felt like for me to take the reins and ride Silver, my own horse, for the first time. 

Elece is not an old friend or somebody related to me. I expect them to join my blog, to follow me and comment. I even have blog friends from writer’s conferences. I love keeping in contact with them. I know they support me as I learn to write. 

And I am grateful for all of you. For old friends, for supporters like my family, for new friends like Elece. We live in an amazing world. Where we can befriend people in places we have never even been.  This sis better than pen pals. Wowee. 

So welcome to the family Elece! 

Anybody else out there I’ve never met? Follow me and let’s be friends.

What I Learned From Harriet Beamer

My favorite movie is It's A Wonderful Life. And I already know it's a sappy movie, in a nice small town that is too ideal to be real. But I like books and movies that proclaim that nice people still exist.

All I have to do is read the paper or listen to the news to see that the world is mostly rotten.

But there are nice people still out there. Like once when we bought a futon at a garage sale and the guy who sold it to us followed us home and helped Roger move it to the upstairs room where we wanted it. 

So when a book or movie proclaims that something wonderful can still happen in literature and might happen in life, that thing must be celebrated.

I must share it with everybody I know. So here goes: YOU GOTTA READ THIS BOOK!!
It comes out April 27 and it's called Harriet Beamer Rides the Bus.

I got my hands on a pre-sale copy, just finished reading it and I have to say that it's one of the best books I've ever read. And I read a lot. Harriet Beamer is one of my heroes like Ponyboy or Lucy and Edmund. I guess my heroes have gotten a little more mature as I age, but Harriet has the same spirit of Lucy of Narnia.

Harriet is a 72- year- old- lady who rides public buses and trains from Philly across the USA before she moves in with her son and his wife in California. Harriet is a wonderful old lady, brave and funny, and delightful. This book is all that plus you end up thinking about stuff without even knowing it.

I want to be Harriet when I grow up. I already have the red high top sneakers.