remembering

Perhaps we Americans have come to that place where we only help one another if there is something in it for us, or if it takes only a quick fix, but I well remember a time when we lived in a different America. 

Not so many years ago my wife's grandmother was just such a giving person.  She took it upon herself to look in on the elderly and the ill in her extended neighborhood.  This lady, not young or in good health herself, stood at her stove all day making soups, stews, breads and cookies and cakes and then bundling them into her large wicker basket and heading out to make her rounds.  She not only left good nourishing food, but sat and visited, or tidied up a little as she shared the local gossip...always good news...to cheer up the lonely Spirits. 

In fact, this sort of world still exists out here where Cathy and I live.  We are few and far between and we look out for one another.  One hard winter I had traveled to Denver to visit my eldest daughter.  Cathy had not been well and chose to stay home.  A heavy snow fell, pulling down several trees across our drive...which is a quarter of a mile long...and Cathy figured she was locked in until I returned and could help cut and roll the logs off the road.  Even while she was talking to me on the phone she heard the sound of a big old chain saw.  Our neighbor Russ appeared at the door, grinning his big grin.  "I noticed you had a problem", he told her.  "I had planned to see if I could borrow a couple of bales of hay from you, so I figured I'd better clear your road before I asked". 

Russ and Darlene live on an 80 acre ranch down the road.  They look out for most everyone in the neighborhood, cutting the winter supply of wood for an elderly woman across Snow Creek Road, keeping her water system running, picking up the month's supply of groceries for both this elderly lady as well as another around on Lord's Lake Loop, and just dropping in to see if they are well and comfortable. 

It is the way we all might learn to live again.  It doesn't take much effort, and everyone reaps the rewards. 

I have long forgotten how it was to live in a crowded neighborhood with houses or apartments crammed in on one another, and never know a single person in the area. 

 

Curious Carl