Trash or Treasure?

Do you keep old birthday and holiday cards and letters you’ve received in the past, hang onto them as memorabilia? Or do you throw them away once you’ve read them and maybe answered with a card or letter of your own? I’ve always kept many of mine that I have received through the years, especially ones that make me smile or press my happy button. In fact, I put them in big baskets that I call my happy baskets. It used to be one basket, but that one overran itself some time ago. Some cards I’ve thought about framing because they are so beautiful, but I’ve never followed through, yet. The short, or sometimes long, messages inside keep me from sending them to the trash. I have a few that are over forty years old. I wish I had ones I received growing up, but back then I didn’t realize that they might be important to me later on.

And I keep the ones that mark special dates like wedding, birth and graduation announcements. Every once in a while I enjoy going back through them, reading and remembering. Of course, there are some funny audio birthday cards. I remember one to my husband on Father’s Day of a man on a mower with actual sounds of the mower when you opened it up, and another of a man snoring...you can guess what that sounds like. Sadly, some of those have lost their audio and stay mute when I open them. I’m not sure why that is. That makes me smile, too. Could there be a tiny little battery inside?

I like to keep all those from each person or family together, oldest to newest if I can, and as I look through them, I can see a record of the past unfolding. As I read, I remember things to go along with their written words, and memories of other times come back to me like a movie reel rolling. What are even dearer to me are the signatures of those who have passed on, a little piece of immortality.

I even keep those holiday cards with newsletters from family and friends, mainly because they always include photos and record a history of the writer’s past year’s escapades, although they usually only tell the good stuff. I heard once they were called brag letters so I could never bring myself to write one. I could never think of anything to brag about anyway. Once I thought of making something up, but I quickly came to my senses when I realized how easily my lies would be found out. I never was good at poker, and my children couldn’t keep a secret if their lives depended on it. But the newsletters are still keepers.

I like the real letters best, though, especially ones from my relatives when they would write with particular news. Some aren’t dated, and I play a game with myself trying to pick the year before I look at the dated stamp on the envelope. Sometimes I’m surprised by how far off I am. And letters from friends are so handy when you need to remember what someone’s son or daughter does for a living. I can never remember that stuff.

Now, it’s an unusual day for me to get a letter or card through the snail mail, and I miss that. Personal mail makes me feel special, to know that someone took time from their day to pick out a card or write a letter, find a stamp, address an envelope and put that into a mailbox. And postcards, now I really feel special if someone sends me a postcard. That means they interrupted their fun to do all that addressing and stamp-finding. Postcards I never throw away. There’s something about having a physical thing in hand. It means so much more to me than an electronic message, or even a phone call.

Back to the Past, One Day A Week

I have volunteered for something else yet again. About five miles west of my home is a State Park called the Dudley Farm. It is a working farm meaning crops are planted and farm animals are kept onsite. The farm and its grounds were gifted to the State by the last Dudley family member to live there. Myrtle, a daughter and part of the third generation willed Florida the farm in the mid 1980s with the stipulation that she could live there until her death.

The Dudley Family

Sugarcane Syrup Making Day

Priming the Pump

The farm dates all the way back to the mid 1800s just before the Civil War when the Dudleys moved here from the Carolinas and bought a bunch of land, totaling at one time over a thousand acres. All the old pine farm buildings have been restored even down to the outhouse. Cotton, sugarcane, sweet taters, and tobacco were the main crops at the time and evidence of this is seen in the tobacco barn and the cane grinding wheel, then and now turned by mule power. A few Florida cattle, mules, and donkeys are kept even now and used as they were in the Dudley's time. The sugarcane crop is almost ready for cutting and thousands of visitors will show up for "cane day" in December when the mules will again turn the grinding wheel. Cane syrup is the finished product and that brings me to what I volunteered for.

There is a small gift shop or store on the premises where handmade donated items are sold including the cane syrup that will be made on the farm in December. I volunteered for 3 shifts a month (4 hours each). Last Thursday I was oriented and trained and will have my first solitary shift next Thursday. Most of the items in the store are donated but some are purchased like the Dudley Farm t-shirts. All the monies go back into the running of the farm. Most visitors show up on the weekends when the farm has its special events, a children's monthly craft day, cane day, and many others, so Thursday will probably be a lonesome day at the store although I may get a few customers from out of town. I will take along some knitting and of course a notebook to keep me busy. And then I am an organizer so I will be squaring up and tidying the things for sale. There’s even a basket of handmade children’s toys including a corncob/turkey feather toss (from turkeys on the farm with no fowl harmed in the process). The game is similar to today’s ring toss.

The gift shop itself is an old building originally a little store donated and moved to the site from the nearby town of Archer. All the buildings are constructed of local pine. The shop has a little front porch with 3 rocking chairs one of which I will be utilizing during my shift. It is a "shotgun" type structure meaning the back door and front door align allowing the most refreshing breezes to go through, important when there is no air conditioning (or heat). Three windows (no glass) with hinged shutters allow for more air circulation.

I first visited the farm a couple years ago for a Gainesville Fine Arts Association plein air paintout. Did you know North Florida, especially Alachua County, is renowned for its artists who paint landscapes out in the fresh air? I walked all around the grounds feeling lots of nostalgia from my early years on a farm up north, corncrib, chicken houses, a hand pump, a root cellar, a truck garden, and a smoke house, all things familiar to me. I knew why this was a great place for a paintout as I watched the many artists pick their subjects and begin to sketch out their compositions. It is a beautiful place, one that almost poses for you and takes you back in time. While I was there this week a group of amateur photographers were strolling the grounds, almost puzzled by what to “shoot” next, such was the abundance of subject material.

So my list of volunteer work grows, and I realize the word “rich” has very little to do with money. If you haven’t visited Dudley and have the opportunity, I hope you will take the short ride west of Jonesville on State Road 26, look for the Dudley Farm sign on your right, and follow the winding black macadam road to another kind of Oz.

Delaying the End

You can probably tell from my book list over on the right side that I like to read. No, let me rephrase that, not like, love to read. This love started at a very young age and has never waned. It’s unusual for me to start a book and not finish it whether I like the story or not. I feel as though I have made some sort of pact with the author when I read that first page. I can’t always be sure the book is a bummer after reading just a little bit even if it feels that way. I have to keep going, looking for the good stuff. Didn’t someone say, “I never read a book I didn’t like”? I may be mixed up with Will Rogers on that one.

The book I am currently reading is giving me a problem I rarely have. I don’t want to finish the story, and it’s not because I don’t like it. I just don’t want it to end. I’m afraid I may not like the ending, or I may be disappointed by it. I may just start over.

I selected this book because it deals with grief. My husband passed away almost four years ago, and I’ve read zillions of nonfiction about getting through the death of a spouse, but this book I’m reading now is fiction. The nonfictions say the same thing because we are all basically alike in our grief. You read one, you’ve read ‘em all. I’m not sure why I had to read so many to understand that. Most of them depressed me even more than I was and kept death and loss in the forefront of my mind. I should’ve known this would happen. Here are a few of the ones I liked enough to own.

 

But this book I’m reading now is different. To me it seems truer than the nonfiction. I think it may be like the suggestion one gets in a writing class for memoir, to write a difficult portion of your life as a fairytale. It's supposed to make it easier to write and the truth may come out of it, a truth you didn’t know when you started.

I don’t remember how I came across this book. I placed the large print edition on hold at my library and got it rather quickly. The title is A Man Called Ove (proper pronunciation here). The name is Swedish. The author, Fredrik Backman, wrote the book in Swedish. It is his first novel, but since this one he has written two more. An inside page says it was translated by Henning Koch in 2013. I was quite surprised when I discovered Mr. Backman was born in 1981. He is definitely an old soul. I love his answers on this interview, especially about how he wrote his novel.

If you asked me why I like this book, I couldn’t tell you. It’s a feeling I have and that will have to be good enough, for now. The ending may change things, but I think I’m ready.

3/1 - Yep, I knew it. I cried through the last ten pages.