Up in the Haymow: Lynne O. Ramer Memories of Mifflin County in the Early 20th C.

My grandfather Lynne O. Ramer wrote hundreds of letters which were published in the Lewistown Sentinel by Ben Meyers in his column We Notice That. Many were filled with memories of his boyhood in Milroy, PA.

Today I am sharing his letter which appeared on September 7, 1968, in the Lewistown Sentinel. He recalls boyhood in the haylofts of barns in the early 20th c.

*****

Lots of Work and Fun-Making When Barns Flourished

Up in the Haymow

Being a Blue Hollow lad back in the days when every farm had its great big and roomy barn, filling it was a lot of hard work. But there was something to compensate for it. There was lots of fun-making too.

Up in the haymow there were also sheaves of wheat, oats, and corn stalks. The mow’s floor consisted of scanty, open-face planks where the food for  the livestock had to be handled with tender care or it would be ruined.

To prevent spontaneous combustion and heatings and excess molds, causing fire to break out and perhaps burn the building to the ground, there had to be proper ventilation.

So the kids had to heap the hays and straws and sheaves in the most intricate manner. After those things began to settle down, the puzzle of getting out of it would have challenged the skill of an escape artist like Houdini. The kids had a job trying to untangle the mess.

It was hard on the kids too on a smootheringly hot day. In the haymows the harried youths dragged and tramped the hays until they actually dropped from sheer fatigue.

Remember, it was 100 degrees and more up there beneath the tin roof. Then the kids sweated, but in the winter time they almost froze up there, chutting the feeds down through the mow hole, down to the ever-hungry horses and cows.

Yet, despite all this, it was like a paradise up there next to the cool tin roof on a rainy day. It was pleasant and relaxing, listening to the pitter-patter of the rain. Or the clank-clank of hail stones in sweet music as they descended on the corrugated galvanized roof.

‘Twas no place to linger on sub-zero days, dragging the food supply to the mow holes. It was fully a 50-foot drop from the top of the mows to the barn floor below.

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Knocked Out Cold

So the muscle-power of the cows and horses had to be called on to help. A one-inch hemp rope around the neck of Old Daisy, Old Bessy or Old Dobbin or Old Mary would pull the pitchfork-holding sheaves up to the top.

The arrangement worked real well. But then one day Mary’s colt whinnied at an unguarded moment. The rope was tightened as Mary tried to go to her baby and it caught the farm boy, who was tossed through the air “with the greatest of ease.”

When he hit bottom he bounced off a heap of limestones. Result: The lad was knocked out cold. It was a long sleep for him before he woke up with the help of old Doc Boyer. Unconscious he was from 2 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next day.  The youngster had the “ride of his life,” nearly the last ride.

When the thunder rumbled and the lightning flashed and the rain and hail pummeled the galvanized roof, nobody had to worry about being up in the haymow. They felt perfectly safe. No electrical charges landed there. There were four lightening rods. Ben Franklin proved a point with his kite.

If a lad got careless when the mows were being filled he might disappear in the hap, falling through an unfloored section of the floor, reappearing again in the stable below—scaring a horse or cow half out of its wits.

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Thresher Comes Around

The time came when Homer Crissman* brought his threshing rig to separate the chaff from the grain. The thresher was set up. And soon the barn floors were littered with dust and chaff and the wheat and oats sheaves did fly.

The cone-capped stack grew bigger and even bigger in height and width. There the livestock could munch later, but meanwhile the chickens followed the sifting chaff and grains away out into the meadows and fields.

Yes, the kids had lots of useful things to fill their lives. Unlike the youths today, they didn’t need thrills such as some do nowadays—pulling over mailboxes, prowling rural lanes, scaring the people by the noise of their motorcycles.

Gone are the days and gone also are many of the old-fashioned barns which furnished to much work and play, not only for kids, but for all the family.

*Samuel Homer Crissman was born in 1858 in Mifflin County, PA. He was a farmer in 1910. In 1930 he ran a saw mill. He passed in 1940 at age 82.

*****

My grandfather lived with his mother and Ramer grandparents in Milroy. Joseph Sylvester Ramer and Rachel Barbara Reed are shown below with their house and an outbuilding behind them. Joseph ran a saw mill.

After the death of Joseph's first wife Anna Kramer he married Rachel Barbara Reed. Their daughter Esther Mae gave birth to Lynne in 1905. When Joseph died, Esther and Lynne continued to live with Rachel.

When Gramps was nine he lost both his mother and his grandmother. His mother's siblings stepped in to care for him. He lived with his aunt Carrie Ramer Bobb and aunt Annie Ramer Smithers.

Carrie Bobb (52 y.o.) and Lynne Ramer (24 yo.)

Annie and Charles Smithers in the 1940s

Charlie Smithers encouraged my grandfather's academic success. Gramps worked his way through college and seminary at Susquehanna University and Columbia Teachers College. Later, he earned his Masters in Mathematics from University of Buffalo.

*****

My husband's maternal grandfather John Oran O'Dell was a farmer with a thresher in Lynn Township, St. Clair Co., MI.

He had a farm in the upper left corner of Lynn Twsp. almost to Brown City. The 'old homestead' had a large barn.

*****

Although my first home was an 1830s farmhouse, we didn't have a barn, just a series of 'sheds' or 'garages'. But across the street was another 1830s farmhouse with a barn. When my dad was a boy, he would help John Kuhn. Below is John with a load of hay, his barn in the background.

The Trees

I am reading Richard Power's novel The Overstory with the Facebook group Now Read This, sponsored by PBS Newshour and the New York Times Book Review.

Readers have been uploading amazing photographs as a testament to the beauty and power and meaning of trees. I have been thinking about my childhood home and the importance of the trees planted by my grandfather in my own life.

In 1935 my Grandfather Gochenour lost his job as an insurance salesman. The family had to sell their new bungalow house in Tonawanda, NY, built by my grandmother's brothers. They moved into an apartment in an old farmhouse on Military Road. 

the Military Road house in 1935

The house was built by one of the early German settlers who farmed the land. When my family moved in it was in disrepair, divided into several apartments. My grandfather was a self-made man; he left his home in Woodstock, VA as a teenager and set up a furniture polishing business in New York City before ending up in Tonawanda. In a few years, he purchased the house and restored it. There were lilac bushes surrounding the house and my family planted Weeping Willow Trees.

The Military Road house in the 1940s

In the 1940s my grandfather built a gas station along the Military Road property line and ran his own business. 

my grandfather's gas station on Military Road

Dad married my mother and in 1952 I was born. We lived in one of the apartments in the house, my grandparents living in another section and my dad's sister and her family in the third.

By the time I was born, the farm fields around the house were sold off and Levittown-style housing projects were built. The willow tree had grown and towered over the landscape. I loved to climb the tree. We sat under its shade. I took the branches and dangled them over the porch pretending to be fishing. In winter the branches would be covered in ice.

In 1963 my family decided to sell the service station and move to Metro Detroit for Dad to seek a job in the auto industry. I dreamt of growing up and returning to buy my childhood home. We often returned to Tonawanda to see family and neighbors and I took photos of the Weeping Willow trees.

The willow in 1965

another willow near the service station

In the early 1970s the property was sold again and torn down, an apartment building erected in its place. My father's sister took photos and told us the house was so well built, framed with old-growth timbers, it was a hard tear-down. I was heartbroken.

my childhood home being torn down; you can see three willows

The trees were brought down as well.

In later life I wrote a poem* about my childhood home, The View From Windows, in which I talked about the willows:

From my bed, looking across a gravel drive,

ironposted streetlights lit small box-like houses,

while from another open window I could hear the wind

playing in the branches of willows

(how they swayed like a girl's long hair in summer,

but in winter were plaited in clean ice).

These trees my touchstone;

I knew my house by its being next to the biggest tree,

I told others so, believing my own veracity.

My mother was an oil painter who preferred landscapes that always featured trees.

painting by Joyce Ramer Gochenour, my mother

I now live in the house my parents bought in 1972. Dad planted two Silver Maples, two Northern Spy Apple Trees, two pine trees and birch.

the Northern Spy apple trees planted by my dad

We had to remove the pine trees. One was growing too close to the neighbor's driveway and onto the roof of the house and the other had a split trunk. They both were towering. We planted flowering trees in their stead.

My brother is fed by nature, walking, and kayaking and photographing the beauty he sees.

While reading The Overstory I came across this line: "How willows clean soils of dioxins, PCBs, and heavy metals."

I had long considered how my childhood home had lead paint and asbestos siding, and how my family used poisons to kill the rats and weeds, and how the land around the house was leveled by allowing dumping--who knows what was dumped there! And then the gas station was built with leaded gasoline and all the chemicals used in the service shop. I realized how my family had polluted the area.

But they also planted five willows, unwittingly, which helped to alleviate the pollution they created.

To survive we must preserve our trees.


*The View From Windows
by Nancy A. Bekofske

Rescue is out of the question,
going back not an option open to me.
Gone are those lofty trees like green umbrellas,
the purple flag of iris near the white rail fence,
the fragrant French lilacs, purple and white,
my world--my first world--and a life rooted
in a sense of place, no longer exists in space.

I remember the view from every window in every room.
Windows to the wider world.

I could see traffic on the burdened road;
the pushy hopefulness of yellow crocus in sooty snow.
From a doorway, looking across the room and out a window,
a water tower seen in a flat land, horizon's sentry.

From an upstairs window, I could see to the river,
the perpetual flame of the gas works,
the mangle of pipes and tanks.

Drying dishes, a glance to the left revealed a doorway,
pink hollyhock, a gigantic horseradish plant.

From my bed, looking across a gravel drive,
ironposted streetlights lit small box-like houses,
while from another open window I could hear the wind
playing in the branches of willows
(how they swayed like a girl's long hair in summer,
but in winter were plaited in clean ice).

These trees my touchstone;
I knew my house by its being next to the biggest tree,
I told others so, believing my own veracity.

At times, an airplane--no jet, not then-- droning
overhead would shake my world of make-believe to its roots
with reality's heavy awareness.

My heart would beat a faster tattoo, and restless,
disquieted, but directionless, I rushed outdoors
to breath freer air, escape the restraint of walls,
to seek the questions I already felt swelling
in my girl's breast, the mystery I could not name.

I only knew that I must shake off
girlhood's cushioned hermitage, to live and work,
now, suddenly aware of mortality's unaccustomed weight,
because I heard, and looked up from play,
to catch sight of a mystery outside my window,
common, yet profoundly unsettling.

Lynne O. Ramer's "Stories and Sagas" of Reedsville, Mifflin County 100 Years Ago

Between 1959 and 1971 my grandfather Lynne O. Ramer wrote hundreds of letters to his hometown newspaper which were published by Ben Meyers in his We Notice That column.

Lynne O. Ramer, age six

Today I am sharing Gramp's memories of a hundred years ago in which he recalls people and places in and around Reedsville, PA. I have added information about the people mentioned in the article wherever possible.

*****

August 1, 1960

We Notice That
By Ben Meyers
The Heights       Phone 8-8430

‘Twont Be Yours Again
Hustle this moment to yourself and hold it close,
and warm it with your flesh.
But do not spoil the new and uncut cloth of time
Around yourself, enhancing you.
Turn it gently, fit it, give it shape
And do not overstrain the weave.
You want it perfect, strong, unmended, whole.
It won’t be yours again.

Dear Ben: No, it won’t be ours again, to recall the memories of those olden, golden days back in Mifflin County. So I’ll include a few more for the sake of your readers who like to linger in memory’s lane.

He has passed to his reward, but Hyman Cohen* often recalled the time when it was my privilege as Boy Scout counsel or to initiate him into the mysteries of frying eggs on a heated rock, then making them the basis for a grand outdoors meal.

Also he leaned how to mix water and flour and wrap it round a stick and bake his own bread. And eat it amid the glories and wonders which Mother Nature so lavishly furnished.

I still remember those days. Also how I used to attend Mr. Cohen’s theatre, the Embassy, also the Rialto, long ago in the silent movie days.

If Jimmy Mann* were here, he would recall all the series of boy’s books I borrowed from his library.  Also the pheasant-on-toast I once dined upon at his folks’ table. (Haven’t had any since either!) Jimmy’s books were the beginning of a liberal education for me: Rover Boys, Rocky Mountain Boys, Motorboat Boys, mentioning just a few.

Of course “Boozer” (Lester Charles) Bobb* of Valley St. and I used to hide the contraband books such as Jesse James, Liberty Boys of ’76, A-One Books of Hobo Life, etc., in the barn and read them where Nammie [pet name for his grandmother Rachel Barbara Reed Ramer] wouldn’t catch us. And we got them all from old “Al” Nale*, Civil War veteran, Milroy’s last member of the GAR.

If Jim Young, my Reedsville pal*, is around, tell him I remember his dad’s bakery with its luscious pastries. Also how I almost broke my hip, slamming into a tree on Young’s Hills and how his mother massaged my bruised hip. And was I ever embarrassed at the age of ten!

Frank Barr would remember the time when he advanced threateningly to the front of Reedsville seventh grade room where the teacher, Mr. Manwiller, was chasing his girl friend, Hazel Shupe*.
At the instant Frank arrived up front, with clenched fists, Charles Hilbish*, principal, stepped in. Now wasn’t that a tableau! And we were all so disappointed, for we thought it would be a feast of fists---Barr vs. Manwiller.  But it all vanished into nothing.

Lynne O. Ramer, left, in his first long pants at age 15

purchased by his Uncle Charles Smithers in 1919

Stories and Sagas

Stories and sagas about the Rev. A. H. Spangler*, Lutheran divine of Yeagertown-Reedsville-Alfarata in the first decades of the present century, are legion and probably growing in numbers.
Thus, like Lincoln, if Mr. Spangler lived all the events he is reputed to have experienced, he’d have to be living still. And in the memories of many former parishioners, he probably is.

It’s well known that he outlived two wives and was married to a third. His jovial companions oft queried, “When will you make it a home run,” that is, “outlive a third and a fourth wife?”

This story about the Rev. Mr. Spangler comes from Mrs. Maude Ramer*, 7 Linn St., Harrisburg.  [Editor’s note: LOR wrote “Lives in Drexel Hill, PA (1965)”]

It seems the clergyman and Harry W. Ramer*, first principal of the now absorbed Burnham High School, were very good friends. At one time Dr. Spangler was sick and his family doctor prescribed pills and whiskey. At some banquet which Harry attended Dr. Spangler spoke thus: “I am glad to be here. I have been sick, in fact, sick enough to die. If I had died it would have been too bad because Mrs. Spangler here (seated beside him) waited so long and wanted to make home rum.

“But now I have recovered due, I believe, to the fact that when the doctor inquired about my progress in taking the prescribed medicines, I was able to tell him, ‘Although I might be a day or two behind on the pills, I’m several days ahead on the whiskey!”

This apparently was said at a public gathering and is typical Spanglersque. I would not detract one whit or one iota from his revered memory, but thought you’d like to hear this bit of folklore.

I sat in the pews of Dr. Spangler’s church in Reedsville during 1913-15 and preached my very first sermon (a horrible thing, if I must say so) in the pulpits he once graced—Yeagertown and Alfarata.  That was back in 1925 when I was still a seminarian at Susquehanna University.

The time draweth nigh when a bus load of 50 PA Dutchmen invade the Motor City en route to the famed Wisconsin “Dells” from the Harrisburg-York-Hanover area. John L. Getz*, now of York’s Hannah-Penn Junior High School faculty, will be the leader. He’s my former fellow teacher-neighbor from Kane. A Michigander spots a Pennsylvanian for the latter always refers to his home state as PA.

     Sincerely,
     Lynne O. Ramer
     514 Gardenia Ave.,
     Royal Oak, Mich.

[Editor’s note: LOR wrote: “Dr. Spangler was once president of the “S.U.’s board” and “Lottie: I wrote this right after a trip ‘home.’ This is the last year I met you and Kep! (No! 1962!)” My grandfather often sent the articles to friends, who returned them. This clipping must have been forwarded it to Lottie to read.]

*****
Notes:
* Hyman Julius Cohen (b. 1878 in Lithuania, d. 1952) appears on the census with his wife Lena and their children Harold, Miriam, Wilton, Miles, Isabella, Solomon and Samuel. In 1910 and 1920 he owned a clothing store. In 1940 his occupation was listed as Real Estate. The 1930 census shows his son Harold D. was a theater manager. The City Directory of 1929 shows the family owned the Embassy Theater at 380 S. Main in Lewistown.

* Jimmy Mann appears in the records as James Hutchinson Mann (b. 1900) to Walter Mann and
Mary A. The 1920 Brown Twsp, Mifflin Co. Census shows Walter manufactured lumber. Lynne's grand-father Joseph S. Ramer had operated a saw mill. In 1930 James was an office clerk living with his uncle Percy G. Mann.

*Lester Charles Bobb (1895-1981)was Lynne's cousin, the son of his mother's sister Carrie Viola Ramer Bobb. After the death of Lynne's mother Esther Mae Ramer, he and "Boozer" were staying with their grandmother Barbara Rachel Reed Ramer when she died. Lynne then lived with his Aunt Carrie or Aunt Annie Ramer Smithers.

* Albert Weidman Nale (1844-1932) See more at Find A Grave here.

*The James Youngs I found, of which there are several generations by that name in a Reedsville
family, did not have an occupation of running a bakery on the census.

*The 1910 Brown Twsp, Armagh County, PA census shows Hazel Shupe/Shoop 9b 29015, d 1998) was the daughter of William P. Shupe and Edith G. She had siblings Andrew C., and Rebecca. William was an axe polisher in an axe factory. The 1920 census shows Hazel was a department store clerk.

*Charles Edgar Hilbush was a 1909 Bucknell University graduate from Northumberland. The 1910 Census in Northumberland shows him living at home, working with his father in real estate at age 25, with parents John and Melissa and siblings John and Sara. A WWII draft card show Charles, age 57, was the Sunbury County Superintendent.

*The Reverend Alexander Hamilton Spangler appears on the 1900 Derry Township Census with his wife Cynthia and their sons Thaddeus and Luther who both worked in the steel mill.
Find A Grave has his obituary of Feb. 21, 1924 published in the Lewistown Sentinel:

Rev. Spangler was born near Shanksville, a son of Daniel & Sophia (Myers) Spangler. After being educated in the local public schools he attended Wooster University in Ohio, graduating in 1873.
He began the study of law in New Bloomfield, Perry Co. and was admitted to the bar at Johnstown. In 1885 he entered Union Theological Seminary and graduated three years later. He served as pastor of the Lutheran congregations at New Bloomfield, Middleburg, Port Royal, Braddock, Yeagertown, Reedsville & Alfarata.

He was married to Cynthis Penrod in 1874. They had three sons, H. Kelly, L. Stoy & Thaddeus S., all of whom survive. [In 1920 the census shows his second wife Catherine.]

Rev. Spangler was vice president of the Saxton Coal Co., director of Saxton Vitrified Brick Co., Russell National Bank, Burnside YMCA (also 1st vice president), Gettysburg College Theological Seminary & Burnham Medicine Co., member of the board of trustees of Susquehanna University & Tressler Orphans' Home (president of the board), member of the State Democratic Committee, Masonic Lodge at Mifflintown and the Harrisburg Consistory, grand chaplain of the Masonic Order of Pennsylvania, etc.

*Harry Webster Ramer was a distant cousin of my grandfather. His wife and gramp's pen pal was Maude Shannon Ramer. Their son George Henry Ramer died in the Korean War.

*Teacher John Lewis Getz (1898-1970) appears on the 1930 Kane, PA Census and the York, PA 1940 Census with his family: wife Goldie and children John, Donald, and Richard.

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

I first read Dandelion Wine in my teens, back in the late 1960s. I had read through all of Bradbury's books, and a few years later when my younger brother needed a boost in his interest in reading I gave him my collection. It revitalized his interest. And my son has also read this novel, and most of Bradbury as well.

Because it had been so many years since I had read this book, when a local book club chose it for their monthly read I knew I had to fit it into my heavy reading schedule.

Reading Dandelion Wine in my mid-sixties was very different from reading it as a teenager. I read it in small bites, drawing it out over several weeks. I would pick it up and read a few paragraphs, or pages, or a scene, and my heart would hurt and my mind would thrill and I had to let the feeling just be for a while.

The nostalgia overwhelmed me. I was not alive in 1928, the year in which the book is set, and I never lived in this small Indiana town with the trolley and front porches with swinging chairs on creaking chains. Two Black Crow records and stereoscoptic viewers are antiques to me. But I felt the perfect beauty and preciousness of the time and place, of which the protaganist, Doug, finds himself suddenly aware.

Doug is a boy who is on the cusp of growing up, and has just discovered he "is alive." The other side of that knowledge also comes to him over the summer, for all that he wants to deny such knowledge: all that is alive will die, and all that is changes and passes.

"...does everyone in the world..know he's alive?...I hope they do," whispered Douglas. "Oh, I sure hope they know." 

Douglas takes a notebook and makes lists about life: Rites and Ceremonies, the cycle of known things, and Discoveries and Revelations/Illuminations/Intuitions, what he is just learning about life.

The passage that most hurt with bittersweet truth was when Douglas's friend John notices the colored glass in the attic window of a house. "I never saw them before today," John marvels. "Doug, what was I doing all these years I didn't see them?" "You had other things to do," Douglas responds. John is upset, "It's just, if I didn't see these windows until today, what else did I miss?" And since John is moving, it upsets him all the more, and he makes Douglas promise to never forget him.

I set my tablet down and looked around me. It is the end of August and the days are growing shorter. I felt the urge to go out, do something, see something new. Life is passing by, and here I am caught in the web of 'something else' and missing the colored glass in a window I pass every day. There are so few years left me, so few years of health and ability, and what am I missing? What have I not noticed?

In the forward, Bradbury writes, "I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiement and was statles when truths leaped out of bushes like quail before gunshot. I blustered into creativity as blindly as any child learning to walk and see. I learned to let my senses and my Past tell me all that was somehow true."

He uses the wine metaphor as a way of fathering "images of all my life, storing them away, and forgetting them." He plunged his memories and they bloomed into flowers that were captured in this rare vintage of Bradbury wine. I am so glad to have sipped it again.

"Here is my celebration then, of death as well as life, dark as well as light, old as well as young, smart and dumb combined, sheer joy as well as complete terror, written by a boy who once hung upside down in trees, dressed in his cat costume with candy fangs in his mouth, who finally fell out of the trees when he was twelve and went and found a toy-dial typewriter and wrote his first "novel."

The Reminders by Val Emmich: Love Victorious Over Death's Oblivion

Memories and remembering are at the heart of Val Emmich's first novel The Reminders. The Beatles music provides the thematic structure. The heart of the novel is love.

Nine-year-old Joan Lennon can't forget anything that has ever happened to her. When her grandmother Joan's Alzheimer's disease took away her memory it frightened Joan to be forgotten. Now she wants to create something so no one will forget her again: she wants to write a song.

Joan's father is a struggling songwriter; her mother works to pay the bills. Her parents have decided to close her father's studio and rent it out; her father will work in his dad's construction business. Joan is despondent. She hopes to win a songwriting contest so her dad can keep the studio.

Joan's parents' friend Sydney has died, and his partner Gavin, a television show actor, underwent a very public meltdown. Joan's mother had introduced Syd and Gavin. They invite Gavin to come stay for a while.

Gavin thinks he wants to forget everything about his true love Sydney. When he learns that Joan can recall every time she met Syd, down to the details of his clothes and conversation, they agree to help one another. Joan will tell stories about Syd. Gavin, who had been in her dad's band, will help Joan write a song.

Gavin's grief over Syd's death is complicated by doubts about Syd's activities prior to his death: he made several secret trips, meeting with a woman he never mentioned. Was their life a lie?

The story is told from Joan and Gavin's viewpoints in alternating chapters which offer a nice balance between Gavin's grief and doubt and Joan's determined, naive, hopefulness.

Joan is beautifully drawn, a lovable, adorable, kid. The book is worth reading just to know Joan! The story is about grief and yet what remains after reading is the joy. I am sure this uplifting book will become a best seller, well beloved by book clubs.

Emmich draws from his career as an actor and singer/songwriter, and his life as a dad, to create a charming and warm story of the power of friendship.

I was excited when Emmich agreed to answer some questions for me in February.

Nancy: What motivated you to write The Reminders? What came first--story, character?

Emmich: The character came first. Specifically, the character of Joan. I was a new father and I was frustrated by the lack of progress I'd made in my life and in my career as an artist. Fatherhood felt like an impediment to where I wanted to go. That finally changed when I attempted to write from the point of view of a little girl. If I wasn't the father of a girl (two little girls now), I probably wouldn't have tried something like that. Once I did, though, all sorts of new possibilities opened up for me, both creatively and as a parent. Drawing on my family life for materials finally put me in a place where I could start to accept my new reality and embrace it.

Nancy: Is the creative act for you an endeavor to, as Joan believes, ensure people remember you?

Emmich: No. I create because I have to create. I feel compelled to. It's probably the only time I feel happy. And at times, it doesn't even feel healthy. It can feel like an obsession or addiction. But after I create something, if I think it's any good, I feel this strong desire to share it with people. I created the thing first for myself--to try to process life and understand it better--but I still feel I need some validation from others. I shouldn't need it. But I do. I crave applause and feedback. I wish I didn't.

The whole idea of being remembered, which is a huge part of the book, is related to the above (and certainly in the book, the two are directly linked), but it's also, for me, a whole separate problem. It bothers me that we're so focused on what's happening today and what will happen tomorrow that the past is often too easily forgotten. I'm certainly guilty of forgetting. And I'm not talking about the distant past only, but even the recent past, as in last week, or yesterday. Now, when someone close to us passes away, which is what happens to the character of Gavin in the book, there's a feeling of guilt that comes with forgetting. Forgetting feels like a betrayal. That's how it feels for Joan. To forget her is unfair, because she would never forget you. But some amount of forgetting is helpful, and even necessary. It allows us to heal. It's a complicated thing, which is why I love the quote by James Baldwin that begins the novel: "it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both."

Nancy: We know so much these days--the relationship between Gavin and Joan could have been considered suspect. What considerations helped you ensure the purity and healthiness of their relationship?

Emmich: I understand what you mean, but I also hate that I understand what you mean. In other words, it's a shame that's where our minds go. I've always loved stories where two very different sorts of people are placed together. It's a good starting point for conflict and misunderstanding. So I didn't want to avoid that uneasy feeling completely. But in one of my earliest drafts, the character of Gavin was straight and I did find that there were moments between his character and Joan's that felt strained in a way that was distracting from the narrative. Once I decided to make Gavin gay, I found that it relieved a lot of that unintended pressure. Also the fact that Gavin is pining for his lost love and Joan is helping him reach that lost love helps, I think, maintain that feeling of purity that you mentioned.

Nancy: What were the challenges and rewards of writing a book as compared to writing and performing your songs and acting?

Emmich: There are different challenges with each, too many to list here. But I will say that so far writing a novel has been the most challenging thing I've ever attempted in the arts. In terms of rewards, a song can be written in minutes, recorded in a few hours, and uploaded online where it can be streamed instantly. So, it's a much more immediate sense of satisfaction, both with the creative act and the sharing.

Writing long-form fiction is a slog that can stretch for many years. And it's a lot lonelier. I can write and perform songs with others, but a novel is written alone Writing prose is rewarding in a different sort of way than more communal activities like music and acting. Maybe it requires a little more confidence and faith, I don't know. You'll have to ask me this question again when I'm a little farther along. My book still hasn't been published yet. Most people in m life still haven't read it and I've yet to do my first public reading. So, I haven't had much feedback from readers. All this buildup scares me. Wish me luck.

Val Emmich

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

See the trailer at http://ew.com/books/2017/02/14/reminders-book-trailer-val-emmich/

The Reminders
Val Emmich
Little, Brown & Co/Hachette
Publication May 30, 2017
$26 hard cover
ISBN: 9780316316996

Found in My Memory Box

I was organizing my closet and decided to upgrade my 'memory box' into a larger box. The new box had been a silverware box that had seen better days. I tore out the inside and lined it with a silky fabric and painted it with a Japanese design.

It was a trip down memory lane!

There was the real leather change purse in the shape of a turtle which dates to about 1963, and a leather purse hand-stitched by my brother in a scout project. The RMS Queen Elizabeth pen was a memento that Grandmother Ramer and her mother my Great-grandmother Greenwood brought me from their 1958 trip to England. The ship would float in a sea of oil.

A plastic collie dog that was chewed on by some family pet I remember it as Red Scott Collie, the hero of all my childhood play with my plastic model dogs, horses, cowboys, knights on horses, and farm animals. I had a large collection!

My Fifth Grade Teacher at Philip Sheridan Elementary School in Tonawanda, NY was Jewish and educated students about her faith. She gave all the class a dreidel was given for Hanukkah in 1962. The penguin is hard plasti and weighted so it wobbles; it was a toy belonging to my Grandmother Gochernour's pet parakeet in the late 1950s.

Dad brought home pencils from work at Chrysler and he made the bracelet at work. And the two irridescent swordfish pins were gifts Dad brought me from a fishing trip to Canada in 1968.

My first pair of contact lens, bought when I was sixteen in 1968, were green. They cost $250 and I earned and saved up most of the money. My high school choir pins and Journalism award pins and the charm bracelet reflect my interests as a teenager and young adult. The Chile pin was a gift from an exchange student, Mirna, who was from Chile.

Charms include a bicycle, a piano, Niagara Falls, and Kimball High; Adrian College; Our Wedding, an agate and miner from our honeymoon in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan; METHESCO where my husband attended seminary; a Disselfink from Lancaster, PA, Washington DC, and a Thunderbird; a fish with a large mouth and a race car from the Indianpolis 500. 

The artist's palatte pin was Mom's, one of a set of two. I borrowed it from Mom in 1966 and somehow never returned it. The silver horse dates to my girlhood infatuation with horses. My Grandmother Ramer bought it for me in 1964. The green turtle pin dates to about 1963, the Petosky stone pin to my honeymoon in 1972, and the blue and green stone pin is my latest turtle addition. The blue Delft pin is handpainted on porcelain, picked up on our honeymoon.


The jewelry in the photo below are from Finland. In 1969-70 my family hosted an exchange student, Elina Salmi. Her mother made her Marimekko dresses and sent us beautiful jewlery and glassware.

There is a necklace made from woven bark. The pin and the bracelet in copper color were made to look like tree bark.The red enamaled copper mediallion was a good luck symbol. Mom wore the knotted design medallion and the delicate filigree silver bracelet.

I won the copper book mark by attending church all summer long, about 1967. Over my life many people have given me crosses; they include a Lutheran and several Catholic crosses, one given me by a nun I met in a church study group.

My box includes 1970 "Hippie" love beads! My brother gave me the eagle beaded and the handpainted wood floral necklaces. My husband made the macrame and shell necklace for me as a gift. Very 1970s!

And the fabric bead necklace was made by my son when he was little. Precious.

Happy Birthday, We Miss You

I have been thinking about last things and family.

My mother Joyce Adair Ramer Gochenour passed away in 1990 at age 57 of cancer. Tomorrow would have been her birthday.

Mom as a teenager

My mother was an oil painter, a life time reader, a generous soul who made lifelong friends. She was stubborn and didn't give in.  As a girl she was a real jitterbug queen. My friends all liked her. Mom also suffered with psoriatic arthritis and psoriasis, her joints crippled and deformed, her skin condition involving long soaking baths and applications of various creams and ointments. She worried about living into an old age of dependency.

Painting by my Mom

When I was a little girl Mom had long blond hair that she often wore in a pony tail. I realized Mom was younger and prettier than my friend's mothers. I was an adult when Mom asked if I had ever been embarrassed by her condition. I was amazed. No, I said, you were the prettiest Mom around.

Mom about 1960

My dad Eugene V. Gochenour's birthday is August 13; he died of cancer 8 Decembers ago. I have been and will be continuing to share stories of his early years.

Dad at work at Chrysler

And my 'baby' brother's birthday is also coming up next month!

My brother circa 1961

Our son moved into his own home last Saturday, a huge step and we are happy for him, but I have been grieving for days.

My dad and our son

Today we took our Kamikaze to the vet and learned her heart is very enlarged and is the cause of her breathing problems, coughing, and lethargy. She spent five to seven years in an Amish Ohio puppy mill before Safe Harbor Animal Rescue rescued her and we adopted her. She suffers frequent inter-digital cysts and has cataracts. She was like a puppy when she came home with us, playful and joyful and adventurous.

Kamikaze five years ago. 

Kamikaze lived with our son for months at at time. Our Suki and Kamikaze have become great friends. We all dearly love her.

Kamikaze and our son five years ago

Kamikaze and Suki looking for trouble

This week also marks my birthday.

Baby Nancy with Mom and Dad

I am immensely happy. Reviewing books and getting books FREE is a dream come true. Making quilts and sharing with quilt friends in my weekly group is a joy. My husband and I are retired and finally have our own house after years of parsonage living.

But suddenly I realize that life passes with the speed of a bullet and I need to be more conscious of living in the moment and not the future. The future is here.

Gary and I at Adrian College 1971

Living in my parent's house, which I inherited when Dad passed with my brother's agreement, I see our folks everywhere, memories of Mom blotting her red lipstick in front of the bathroom mirror, long talks into the night sitting in the living room, family games of Michigan Rummy at the kitchen table, Dad racking up autumn leaves with our son.

Dad and our son racking leaves

I have memories of our son playing in the swimming pool Mom set up in the yard, the swing she hung from the birch tree, long gone; I see him banging on her pots and pans and playing with the old decks of cards Mom gave him. I recall walking him to the local playgrounds. And visits when he was older, after Mom passed, and Dad trucking us to Belle Isle.

Life will continue to bring change. The ghosts will again become happy thoughts. I am grateful for a wakeup call.

Lifetime Address Seventeen

In January of 1972 my folks bought this house, built in 1969. This is the Realtor photo of the house.

Notice the antenna for television reception? This week we had a 'dish' installed for satellite TV. Things change, but not too much! Only one house on the street still has the original gas light in the yard.

Dad planted trees. We had to take down some. But we still have a huge silver maple in back, as well as another towering pine tree.

In June of 1972 our wedding reception was held in the back yard of this house. I only lived here for about two weeks between college and my wedding.

Our son was born and my folks loved having a grandchild. Dad had an above ground pool. Before the days of central air conditioning it kept the family cool. Mom let him play with her pots and pans, and gave him decks of old cards. She had a baby swing in the tree. Our son loved to visit his Papa and Nana at this house.

Mom passed away in 1990. Dad had Non-Hodgkin s lymphoma and after consulting with my brother left us the house. Our son has lived here since he graduated from college.

So after 42 years I will live again in the house...for more than two weeks!

I am so busy clearing out my folk's stuff, making room for us to move in, I have little energy left over. Then a storm brought water in the basement. We didn't need that. So instead of a new kitchen we will have to waterproof the basement. It has to be done, as my sewing room has to be downstairs. We have taken down Dad's workbench to make room for my workroom. He worked with wood. I prefer fabric.

It will be many weeks before life settles down again.