(Home)School Days

November 20, 2019February 17, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 3 Comments

“Let’s try it for a year,'” we said. And so, in 1979, when our oldest was seven and we moved to a new house in a new town, it seemed a good time to give it a try. We set up a school room in a tiny sunroom off one of the upstairs bedrooms complete with little school desks and bookshelves full of just-out-of-the-box curriculum and in that room, flooded with sunlight, we began our homeschooling journey. A journey filled with small victories and major breakthroughs, with tears of frustration (from both students and teacher), with forgiveness and grace and hours and hours and hours spent reading and learning and living. For the next twenty seven years, in one form or another, we would be a homeschooling family. We only had a “designated school room” for those first couple of years – after that school happened at the dining room table, under the dining room table, the living room floor, on Mom’s bed and for one glorious month one spring – at the beach. We always took it one year at a time, one child at a time. Sometimes we had one in public school, sometimes we had one in private school, but always there was somebody sitting at the dining room table with books and pencils and paper. And snacks.

For twenty seven long years. . .

. . . it was the best of times

The day she went from sounding out each letter to reading a word and then a sentence. “THIS IS GREAT!! I CAN READ AND LISTEN AT THE SAME TIME”
Watching the caterpillars spin their chrysalis and hatch into butterflies
Unpacking the books each fall and buying new school supplies and starting a new year with high hopes and expectations
Going for slushies on the last day of school and packing away the school books
The day I realized the four year old had picked up the letters of the alphabet and their sounds by listening to me teach them to her brother and figured out how to put them together into words – basically teaching herself to read
Wednesday mornings, when Paul would take the morning off and teach school and I could go for a walk or a cup of tea or sit in my room in silence and read a book of my own choosing. . . or sleep
Fixing cinnamon toast on homemade whole wheat bread for lunch on a cold winter day
Reading the entire Chronicles of Narnia Series every time we had an eight year old – and loving the way no matter how many times they had heard it, they listened as though it was the first time
Watching the toddler frantically collect all of his toys for the morning and throw them into the playpen before he climbed in to entertain himself while school was in session
Hearing the words from my mother’s mouth “Okay, maybe homeschooling wasn’t a TERRIBLE idea.”
Organizing and helping them perform their “Christmas Programs” which they performed for me, their dad, and anybody else we could bribe with homemade cookies to come and watch them

. . . and it was the worst of times

Drilling math facts again and again and again and again
Trying to explain why someday they would be glad they had taken algebra (I don’t think the day ever came)
Finding the whole week’s Language Arts workbook pages had been left undone because “I couldn’t find a pencil”
Coming to grips with the fact that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who can spell and those who can’t. And I had some of each
Knowing that there were no sick days or personal days in my contract
Repeatedly being asked: don’t you think they will be socially awkward? (like asking a complete stranger this question about her children doesn’t make you socially awkward)
The days I really was afraid I was ruining them (and there were many)

In those early days in the little school room on First Street in a midwestern college town, homeschooling was not yet mainstream. There were no co-ops, no classes, no field trips with other homeschoolers. You didn’t even know of anybody else who was crazy enough to try this weird approach to education, To homeschool your kids, you had to hide them during the day lest you be discovered by Child Protective Services. And so for the first two years, we diligently kept them inside during school hours, hidden away from anyplace where they would be asked for the name of their school, and lived in fear of being found out. But after we had a couple of years under our belt, we were done with such nonsense. We wanted to put them in scouting and the programs offered by the local library and other activities and we were done hiding. So we loaded up all of their work, all of their school books, all of my lesson plans, and every other scrap of paper we could find and made an appointment to meet with the superintendent of schools and explained that we wanted to homeschool our children and thought we could do at least as good a job as the public school. After a two hour meeting, he agreed and gave us a signed document stating that our children were legally allowed to be taught at home.

The next day they were playing at the park across from the neighborhood school and were approached by a teacher. What were their names? What was their address? Their phone number? Where did they go to school? And just like that, when the pressure was on, they gave it all up. Names, ages, phone number, address and I’m sure they would have surrendered their social security numbers if they had known them. The next day the truant officer knocked on my door (Yes, really. A truant officer!). We produced the document and were never bothered again. Our children became a novelty at the library where they became favorites of the librarians who would pull their favorite books for them before each week’s visit and then talk to them about what they were reading.

Those were the Pioneer Days of homeschooling and while we got a lot wrong, I think we got some things right. Maybe the thing I am most proud of is that still today all six of them can get lost in a good book and that they are all critical thinkers.

Am I glad I did it? Yes, I am. Would I do it again? I’m not sure.

Eventually, the Pioneer Days gave way to the Settler Days of homeschooling; the movement became more visible and more acceptable More and more people were jumping on the bandwagon and they were looking for help. By 1991 we had graduated two from homeschooling, one was enrolled in public school and we had three still at home: a freshman, a 5th grader and a first grader. In that year I went to work for a homeschooling umbrella school to start a high school program for them. I took the job to build a community for my own kids – one that my older ones had lacked growing up.

I had no idea what the next 28 years would hold. But that’s another story for another day.

Looking Back on 50 Years

September 5, 2019February 17, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 1 Comment

On September 5, 1969, these two kids stood looking out over their future. So, today, looking back over 50 years, what have I learned?

1. Marriage is hard. It’s easier if you’re married to a good person.

2. Sometimes an argument isn’t worth winning.

3. Pie makes everything better.

4. The first 47 years of parenting are the hardest.

5. The only way this works is if you take turns taking care of each other.

6. It takes two people to make a great marriage, but one person can pretty much trash it without any help.

7. If you wait till everyone is happy to be happy, you will never be happy.

8. An introvert and an extrovert can make a good life together.

9. The empty nest can be a beautiful thing.

10. You live many lifetimes in half a century.

11. No matter how hard you pray, some things will not turn out the way you had hoped they would.

12. No matter how little you did to deserve it, some things will turn out better than you ever imagined they could.

13. You can, and will, fall in love many times in 50 years; if you’re lucky, it will be with the same person.

14. Just when you think there are no more surprises to be be had…. SURPRISE!!

15. An obsessive/compulsive personality and a “where are my shoes?” personality can live under the same roof . . . most of the time.

16. Called or uncalled, God is present.

With This Ring. . .

July 3, 2019February 20, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 6 Comments

When Paul proposed in January of 1969, he did it without an engagement ring. That is another story and one that is told in the story called The Proposal. But this is a different story.

The day after we graduated from high school, Paul got in a car and drove to Denver where his Dad had moved earlier in the year for a job. He got a job in the same bakery where his dad worked and eventually would land a second job at the Leaning Tower of Pizza (yup, that was really the name of it). The rest of the family stayed in Pueblo to finish out the school year and over the summer, they would all relocate. I stayed in Pueblo for my job. We wrote letters back and forth every day and I penned mine on stationary that I had purchased with some of my graduation money – a box filled with bright neon orange and green and yellow sheets and matching envelopes. He used a yellow legal pad with white envelopes (once a debater, always a debater). They were love letters of sorts and also a daily journal of what we had done that day and whatever it is that eighteen year olds write to one another when they are falling in love. I wish I still had them.

I say all that to say that even after working two jobs all summer and putting in lots and lots of hours because he had nothing else to do really, at the end of the summer he had no money to show for his efforts. Not because he spent it all on himself, but because his family was struggling financially trying to get moved and established in Denver, and Paul signed over his paycheck to them every week. That, with what his dad was bringing home, kept the wolf from the door until they could get on their feet.

He returned to Pueblo at the end of the summer to start school at the local college where we both had full scholarships and got a job at Sears selling paint to pay for gas to get back and forth to class from the home of a family friend who boarded him for free.

In December he returned to Denver to spend the holidays with his family and when he came back for the second semester we got engaged.and set the wedding for September. And yes, I know., We were too young, we were too poor, we were too stupid, we were too. . . . But that’s the way the story goes.

I think it must have been sometime in the spring, maybe over Spring Break, we went to Denver to visit his family. His mother wanted to go to the mall, and usually when Judy made a plan, it was going to happen. So we were walking through the mall, window shopping and visiting and at some point we ended up at the Sear’s jewelry counter. His mother stopped to look – she loved jewelry! I think I wandered off in a different direction to look at sweaters or some such thing and she called me back. She was pointing at engagement rings. “So when you get a ring, what kind do you like?” I hadn’t really thought about it. “Well. . . I like white gold,” I offered. “But what STYLE do you like?” I wasn’t sure what to say. “Do you like that one?” Not really, though I could’t really give her a reason. “What about that one?” Uuummmm. . . it’s okay. “That one?” No. “How about that one?” Yeah. I do sort of like that. She got the sales clerk’s attention, “Can we try that one on?” I put it on my finger. “What do you think?” she wanted to know. I thought it was pretty. “Okay, we’ll take it,” she told the clerk. And just like that, I had picked out my engagement ring. Had I known we were actually going to buy a ring that day, I’m not sure it’s what I would have chosen. But I did like it well enough. Looking back, I know we went to the mall that day to get a ring, and when Judy makes a plan . . .

Over the years, I wore it and the plain matching wedding band without really giving it much thought or notice. I wore it when I kneaded bread and when I bathed babies. When I washed dishes and when I folded laundry. When I slammed the door after a fight about who knows what and when I caressed his face and said, “I’m sorry “. When I taught my little ones to hold a pencil and when I walked down the street holding hands with the one who had put it on my finger at the altar. I wore it when I wiped away tears from little faces and from my own and when I served up ice cream floats to college students as we sat on the front porch on hot summer nights.

And then one day, about 20 years later, I looked down at my hand and the diamond was missing from the ring. It was not a big diamond, but now there seemed to be a huge gaping hole where the stone should have been. I had no idea how long it had been missing or when or where I lost it. I only knew it was gone, and I was devastated. All of a sudden the ring that had not mattered, mattered so much. Money was tight and while Paul wanted to get the stone replaced, I insisted that we should just get plain bands and wait on a diamond . . . so that’s what we did. For twenty years, we wore plain gold bands and I told myself it was way more practical anyway. Paul continued to wear his original band on his right hand and sometimes people would ask him why he wore two wedding rings. “This one is from my first marriage,” he would say. I wore my mother’s engagement ring and wedding band on my right hand which is another story for another day called The Fellowship of the Ring but also worth reading.

And then on September 5, 2009, on our 40th wedding anniversary, Paul had a gift for me. He put a black velvet ring box in my hand. I thought maybe he had bought me an anniversary band. When I opened it, there was my ring. With a new stone in it. And yes, I cried. He was explaining he had wanted to replace it with a bigger diamond but it would need a new setting to do that and that would have been more expensive. And that he was sorry the diamond was so small, and he wished it were bigger and maybe he should have just gotten a new ring altogether. How could I explain to him everything this ring meant to me after 40 years?

That this ring told the story of not just his love and his care for me, but for his parents and how he had spent all his summer wages to help them. That I had learned that a man who would care for his parents like that would care for his wife and sacrifice for her which he had done over and over and over again. It told the story of my mother-in-law and her generosity and her love and care for me. It told the story of our marriage: that it had never been built on money or expensive things but on love and commitment and our promise to one another. That ring, which had cost $160 in 1969, held so many stories. It was irreplacable. No, I did not want a different ring.

And now, as our 50th anniversary approaches (but how can we have been married 50 years??!!), Paul made a plan – he is his mother’s son. He wanted to put a bigger, better stone in the ring. “Because,” he said, “fifty years is a really big deal.”. I agreed. Fifty years is a big deal. But only if they could put it in the original setting and make it work. So we took it to a jeweler who helped us to choose the right stone and will repair the crack in the band and give it back better than new. And now this will become part of the story as well.

Side bar: A couple of years ago, I had a minor surgery which required general anesthesia. Following the doctor’s directions, I removed all my jewelry and left it on my dresser before I went to the hospital. I got all the typical warnings and instructions before I returned home: don’t drive, don’t operate heavy machinery, don’t sign any documents or make any major decisions, don’t use the stove. etc. When we returned home, Paul deposited me on the couch, and went across the street to get me a salad. He was gone maybe 15 minutes. During that time I saw my jewelry on the dresser and decided it needed to be cleaned ( I have NEVER cleaned my jewelry before in my life) so I took it all to the bathroom, plugged and filled the sink, slathered it with jewelry cleaner, washed it all off, dried it off, drained the sink, and put it back on – earrings, necklace, bracelet, etc. A few minutes later I noticed I was not wearing my wedding ring. I retraced by steps, looked all over the counter, and decided it must have been in the sink when I drained the water. About this time, Paul returned home. “We have a small problem,” and I explained the situation. “But all we need to do is take apart the pipe under the sink, and there it will be. Easy peasie.” The problem was, it wasn’t in the pipe. I could feel the panic rising. Paul said maybe he could disconnect the pipe in the basement and find it that way. Nope. Full blown panic was setting in. I was in tears and could not be comforted. Paul sat on the bathroom bench next to me: “It’s okay. It’s just a ring. We can get another ring. It’s just a symbol. We are the real thing. And we still have each other. That’s the important thing.” By now I was wailing. “NO!! THE IMPORTANT THING IS THAT WE FIND THAT RING! I HAVE HAD THAT RING FOR ALMOST 50 YEARS AND IT’S IRREPLACEABLE!” Okay, so maybe the hysteria was coming from the drugs still in my system. . . but still. . .

I could hear Paul in the living room calling plumbers, It was after 5:00 so it was hard to get anybody to answer. but he was trying. To calm myself, I stood up and began aimlessly moving things around the bathroom counter. And there, carefully tucked under the soap dish where I had obviously put it for safe keeping but had no memory of doing so, was my ring. That which had been lost was found and now I cried uncontrollable happy tears (didn’t Jesus tell a story something like this?).

Like a marriage of 50 years

Two lessons to learn from this chapter of the story: (1) Always follow your doctor’s instructions after anesthesia, though in my defense nobody said anything about not cleaning your jewelry and (2) The worth of an object is not always measured by monetary value but by the stories we attach to it. Some things are irreplaceable.

Lila’s Last Campaign

February 15, 2019February 19, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 2 Comments

On a hot August day in 1962, my sister loaded up me and her five kids in her station wagon and took us to the District 60 Stadium in Pueblo, Colorado, to hear President John Kennedy speak. I have no idea what his speech was about and the PA system made it impossible to understand his words even if I had been interested, which I wasn’t. I was twelve years old and would rather be at the pool, but afterwards we got to stop at the A&W Drive-In and get root beer floats. . . so that was pretty cool.

I’m not sure what her motivation was. Maybe she wanted us to be able to tell our kids that we had been there the day the President of the United States came to our city. Maybe it was because she was looking for something to do with six kids on a hot summer day. Maybe she was inspired by this young, handsome, charismatic president. Or maybe she believed that citizens should be active in their government and engage in the process and she was always one to teach by example. Whatever her reasons, I do remember the day and the event and the fact that we were there.

Fast forward 21 years. Now she is on the front lines of local politics: organizing volunteers to help a candidate get elected to the Pueblo City Council. He is young and passionate and wanting to make a difference in his community and she is convinced he has the wherewithal to govern and help the city so she throws herself into the campaign and learns a lot in the process. Her candidate did not win but he went on to serve his community through his law practice, his election to the Pueblo Water Board, and supporting and working to get other worthy candidates elected to public office, always recruiting the best organizer and recruiter he knew to join in the fight – that woman who had dragged him, his siblings and me to see a president on a hot summer day. A woman whom he called Mom and I called Lila.

Over the years, Lila was a force to be reckoned with. She was an expert at organizing and recruiting volunteers and putting them to work, ensuring that things ran smoothly. She was adept at managing call lists. She and her son worked to elect a governor and when a woman she knew, respected and trusted ran for County Commissioner, Lila and two other women managed a campaign which got her candidate elected.

Fast forward 46 years. The family gathers from near and far – aunts and uncles and cousins and nieces and nephews and children and grandchildren and great grandchildren – to celebrate the historic election and inauguration of Pueblo’s first mayor in over 60 years – Nicholas Gradisar. How happy she would be to know Pueblo is in such good hands. And we say to one another, “Wouldn’t she have loved to see this?!”

But that formidable campaign operative whose first foray into politics was to campaign for her son’s election to city council so many years ago has been gone for exactly six years. And though she didn’t live long enough to see him take the oath of office as mayor of this city she knew and loved and invested in, her spirit hangs in the air and seems to hover over all of it.

But if Lila is gone, she has left in her stead some pretty good replacements. All of Nick’s siblings have rallied to the cause. They campaign, they mobilize, they show up and do their part to get their brother elected. His sister Kay in particular seems to channel her mother and has the same bulldog tenacity when it comes to getting it done.

Kay, still working the phones on inauguration day.

After the swearing in, we have lunch and then walk down the River Walk to sit on the bench which was donated in her name to the city of Pueblo and offers a respite for walkers out for a stroll or for exercise. We take pictures and share her stories and say, “Wouldn’t she have loved this day?”

Family gathers from Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Maryland.

Really, the only thing that would have made that day better is if we had been able to cap it off at the A&W Drive-In and toast this day and her with root beer floats. So here’s to you, Lila. Ya done good!

Story telling vs “Visiting” – One in the Same.

August 14, 2018December 12, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ Leave a comment

When I was young, my mother and I visited Nebraska every couple of years. I no longer remember how we got there (my mother didn’t drive) but she would save up her vacation days and we would leave behind the mountains of Colorado for the farmlands of Nebraska and go to see my sister and two brothers and their families.

I liked it because I got to play with my nieces and nephews – all around my age. It was on one of these trips that I learned to ride a two-wheeler on Jolene’s brand new bike which she had won by selling the most subscriptions to the local small-town newspaper. I also drove a truck here for the first time (right into the ditch) – I think I was twelve and the only one among us who had not already spent a couple of years behind the wheel during harvest time. And of course I got to ride horses. Such adventures for a girl from the city.

All in all it was a grand way to spend a summer vacation. Except on the day we would go “visiting”. On this day I would accompany my mother to visit my aunts and uncles – the siblings of my parents – who were older than God and had no children who were not also old, and in my “I am the center of the universe” way of thinking led very dull and uninteresting lives. We would go from house to house – small town to small town – and at each stop along the way the old people sat at the kitchen table or sometimes on the living room sofa drinking coffee or iced tea and I would sprawl on the floor in front the fan turned to high to move the hot summer air. The whirring of the blades all but drowned out the hum of their voices, but I picked up little bits here and there.

“Where is Sonny now and what’s he doing? And what about Margaret?”

“That hail storm really tore up Dean’s place. He ended up havin’ to reroof the barn. Remember that storm out at Dad’s place that year and the Frenchman River rose and flooded everything out?”

“Did I tell you Lila Rae got a promotion at the hospital? She’s doin’ real good.”

“How many head of cattle does Charles have out in the feed lot now? Hope cattle prices hold steady this year.”

“Myrtle was in the hospital last month. They can’t seem to figure out what’s wrong.”

“Have you been out by the old Wise place? It got resold again a couple years ago. Remember when you and Ray moved out there? What year was that?

And so it went. . .

I dreaded these “visiting days”. But now I understand. These days gave life to my mother. They were her stories and these were her people. They connected her to her past – to a shared origin and a way of being. I just didn’t appreciate it. How could I?

But now I get it.

This summer my nieces and nephews will gather together back in the heartland and we will spend a great deal of time “visiting”. We will connect to our shared stories, our common heritage, and our past. We are now the grandparents, the “old people” and our stories will call to mind the days of our childhood and our parents and the generations past. And I will want to tell the younger generation – pay attention – these stories matter. But I won’t. Because they are building their own stories – and maybe this gathering will be one of them. And someday, though they won’t remember the particulars, they might remember the sound of the voices and the whir of the air conditioner. One can hope.

You Have a Great Past Just Ahead of You

July 9, 2017March 20, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 5 Comments

If you were part of the “second family”, summer vacation to you meant the beach: sand and sea and the smell and taste of salt on your skin. It’s boogie boards and sunscreen and the sound of seagulls and the sting of jelly fish and buying the tee shirt with a beagle in the hammock and going for ice cream on the sound. But if you were one of “the four” and you grew up in the land-locked midwest and it was 1980 something, summer vacation was a whole other thing. It was camping in the rain, little cereal boxes of your favorite cereals (except for the Raisin Bran which nobody wanted), trips to the ER for stitches and ear infections, and Silver Dollar City.

The first family vacation we ever took that was not to visit grandparents came about from a conversation with Paul’s brother David who insisted that the perfect vacation spot was hidden away deep in the Ozarks in an out-of-the-way spot known as Branson, Missouri. Today, of course, Branson is a destination in and of itself which draws thousands upon thousands of visitors each year to its music shows. But this was before all that. This was about a little theme park where you rode the trolley from the parking lot to the gate not because it was too far too walk but because it was one of the few “rides” the park offered and you listened to the patter of the “tour guide” who explained that you were about to step back in time – 100 years to be exact. “Welcome to Silver Dollar City – where you’ll find a great past just ahead of you!” he promised as we stepped off the trolley and into some of the best memories we would make as a family.

The first time we went was sometime in the early 80s; there is some disagreement among us as to the exact year so we’ll just call it 1980something. We sent away for the brochures and when they arrived in the mail (Seriously. That’s how we did things before the internet.), we sat down on family nights and poured over them: planning our itinerary, studying the maps and highlighting the best route from Illinois to Missouri, making a budget, writing the lists of all the things to do and take and ready before our big adventure. How many weeks (months) did we do this?

Because we had no money, we knew hotel rooms and restaurant meals were out of the question. But not to worry – for a fraction of the cost we could buy a brand new tent (I think we already had some sleeping bags we had collected along the way) and thanks to our trusty brochures we found the Blue Mountain Campground nearby (with a swimming pool and laundry facilities!) where we could pitch our tent. We could afford tickets to Silver Dollar City for a day and half and the rest of the time we would vacation at the campground: swimming and collecting wood for the fire we would build to cook our meals and toast marshmallows for the s’mores. What could possibly go wrong you ask. Let me count the ways.

1. Before using a tent for the first time it would behoove. . . (okay – cross that off my bucket list – I have always wanted to use that word in a sentence). . . it would behoove you to set it up at home to make sure (a) all the necessary pieces are present and accounted for and (b) you actually know how said pieces fit together.

2. It rains in the Ozarks. A lot. Not all tents are waterproof. Soaking wet sleeping bags require a heavy duty dryer which can only be found at a laundromat. Also, a strong storm can blow down a tent altogether.

Early one morning, after a night where no one had slept due to the soaking wet tent, the soaking wet sleeping bags, and the all round soaking wet, miserable conditions, the owners of the campground took pity on us. Chad was outside our tent – yelling. “Faye says for y’all to come on up to the house for pancakes and get those babies in outa’ this rain!!” Thank God for Chad and Faye and Ozark hospitality!

3. Camp playgrounds are all fun and games until someone parachutes out of a swing, lands in the gravel, and slices open her hand which will require a trip to the emergency room for stitches, taking up an entire afternoon of vacation. In years to come we would battle strep throat, ear infections and stomach flu – so much so that it seemed it wasn’t vacation if somebody didn’t get hurt or sick.

4. It is best not to allow a three year old to jump into the deep end of the swimming pool holding a beach ball as a flotation device. This can go south pretty quickly.

5. It turns out young children are more enamored with playing in the fire and cooking over the fire than they are with eating the food cooked in said fire. They’re not so much about the char the fire leaves on the hotdogs or the crunch of aluminum-foil-wrapped- potatoes cooked in the coals which never seemed to get done. But they did absolutely love the little individual boxes of cereal that they could open up, pour in the milk and eat right out of the box.

The tent – before it blew down in the rainstorm

And yet, for all of that, we returned to the Blue Mountain Campground again and again, year after year.

And to Silver Dollar City. After the first year we figured out that for not too much more money, we could buy a season pass and then go to the park every day for our five days of vacation. We rode the train with its steam powered engine and never grew tired of the train robbers who entertained the passengers with their scripted and improvised lines.

We were regulars at the Silver Dollar Saloon where the singing bartenders served rootbeer in frosty mugs and peanuts in the shell. The saloon girls put on their show and hauled a sucker up from the audience to mock and ridicule him and so of course the kids figured out which chair they always chose to pull their victim from and convinced Dad to sit in the chair at least once a season. In the middle of the show Carrie Nation and her Suffragettes marched in to break up the riffraff and it took the Sheriff to restore order. The girls bought garters and when they got home they practiced the Can-Can and sang “Why do they call us wild women, wild women, wild women? Why do they call us wild women when we’re just as tame as can be“. Rosie was the main saloon girl and one day on our way to the park from the campground we stopped at a convenience store to pick something up and there was Rosie – buying a loaf of bread! Day made!

Scan 18 — Good times at the Silver Dollar City Saloon.

The street theatre actors recognized the kids from year to year and incorporated them into their acts. They were on a first name basis with the Sheriff and the Deputy, with the Hatfields and McCoys. With the Rainmaker and the Undertaker who wandered the streets with his measuring tape. They loved the Story Teller and knew what time she would be at her spot to tell stories and choose them to be a part of them. They knew the musicians and where they performed and what time to catch them during the day. They knew the lady who ran the general store and the basket maker and the blacksmith.

And then there was Mercy. He was the star of Silver Dollar City. He seemed to be everywhere: interacting with the guests, heckling and teasing and aggravating and everyone loved him. He knew our kids by name and if we missed a year he would ask them where they had been. Eventually they got to know the actor behind the character. His name was Jack McDowell and they invited him to lunch and he told them about Silver Dollar City behind the scenes. We exchanged Christmas cards and kept up with him and his career for many years.

12642961_1121398154561726_7387714377258334224_n — Mercy

There were a only a few rides: the American Plunge which was a log flume ride and left your stomach at the top of the summit before plunging you down the to the bottom and the Lost River of the Ozarks inner tube ride that guaranteed a good dousing under the waterfall. There was a ball pit and a playground and a carousel, but mostly it was about the community: the musicians around every corner and the street theatre which was both predictable and spontaneous, the craftsman and the artisans. It was about the funnel cakes and the frozen lemonade and the penny candy at the general store. As the kids got a little older we would let them roam the park on their own and meet back periodically to check in at a designated spot (it was a different time and a different place). One day I was walking through the park alone and I turned a corner to find the baritone from the barbershop quartet all alone in an isolated spot singing “How Great Thou Art”. His eyes were closed, his arms lifted to the sky and it struck me that he was not performing, he was worshiping. This was a private moment, not a public one. I tried to slip away unnoticed so as to not interrupt him when he opened his eyes and saw me. He blushed a little. “I’m on my break,” he said. “I just needed to recharge.” For years I would recall that scene when I needed to recharge.

Every day at the park started with the sheriff deputizing all the kids with sheriff badges and then lining them up to stand at attention as the flag was raised. The day ended with the lowering and the folding of the flag.

Scan 33 copy 2 — The Sheriff deputizes the kids every morning. . . with a badge.

In the evening we headed to Echo Hollow, the big amphitheater, for the Silver Dollar City Jubilee: an evening of Bluegrass music and comedy with Mercy as the warm up act. They might change the show from year to year but the performers were always the same – and once again they recognized us and greeted us like old friends. And then it was back to the campground where, if we were lucky, the tent and sleeping bags would be dry and we could light a fire and Dad would pull out his harmonica and we would unwind from the the day so we could get up in the morning, eat little boxes of cereal and head back to do it all over again.

I don’t know how many times we went on this vacation. Five maybe? Six? I know we went back a couple of times after Joy was born. She danced in the streets to the music, she plummeted down the American Plunge tucked in between us and rode the Lost River of the Ozarks, squealing with delight as the water fall dumped water over our heads. She rode the carousel and ate the funnel cakes and slept in the tent. But I think it was after that that we moved east and the story shifted.

We made one trip with all of eight of us. In was in 1989. Fletcher was a year old, Joy was five and the others were . . . older. But it wasn’t the same. Some of the old, familiar faces were gone, others had taken their place who didn’t know us from the next guy and there some new, added “attractions”. Still, it was enough the same that we could say, “Oh! And remember this?!” But you could tell that change was afoot.

The last trip – 1995. And that’s Jack McDowell in the middle.

In the summer of 1995 we were making a trip to Colorado for Paul’s parent’s 50th wedding anniversary. Somehow somebody suggested, “What if we went through Branson and spent a day at Silver Dollar City? But maybe we sleep in a cabin.” And so we did. We wanted Fletcher to see it, to experience it, but afterwards we all sort of wished we hadn’t done it. The magic was gone. It was more like a conventional theme park – more about the plethora of rides which had been added over the years and less about the craftsmen and the music and the street theatre. Less personal somehow and more crowded. We did look up Jack McDowell. who was working someplace else by then and had lunch with him. But he had moved on too, and we all mourned the loss of the place where we had met and spent so many happy hours. We stopped by the Blue Mountain Camp Ground just to see if it was still there. It was. Chad had died some time ago and Faye was away when we stopped, but when we went in the office, there on the bulletin board was a picture of two year old Joy.

Joy reminds me that in 1999, Paul and I and she and Fletch stopped again when we were traveling west to see family. Oddly enough, I have absolutely no memories of it. Maybe it was just too different and I didn’t want to remember it that way.

One of the kids said once, “Don’t you wish you could go back to Silver Dollar City for the first time?” And that sort of captures it. It was magical. Pure and utter magic. But it’s sort of like Camelot or Brigadoon. It’s been almost 40 years since that first time and now it’s gone and there’s no way to get back to what it was no matter how much you might wish otherwise. And maybe that’s where the magic lies. The place – as we knew it – is gone. The children – as we knew them – are gone. But the stories. They are alive and well and welcome us back again and again.

Where I Come From

April 2, 2017March 20, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ Leave a comment

Over the course of my lifetime, I have lived in six states and twenty two houses (not counting various summer lodgings and a brief stint in a ‘59 Ford panel truck), and I expect that I have at least one more move in me before I land at my final resting place. Sometimes I sort of feel unanchored by my lack of roots or the fact that there is no one place that I think of as “home”.

There is the first house we lived in together as newlyweds and college sophomores. The one with the slanting living room ceiling that went from seven feet at one end to five feet at the other end and where we wore out our Simon and Garfunkle albums on our new hi-fi. Where we fought and forgave and learned to be married.

There is the house where we hung a giant crystal chandelier in the entry way of our our upstairs apartment and drug the table out of the kitchen when we had guests so we could dine under its brilliance.

There is the house with the pine cone wallpaper that shows up in the kids earliest memories. . . except they all put the room in different houses. But it keeps showing up which makes me think it was ugly enough to leave an indelible impression.

There is the house we rented because it had a living room big enough that we could hold church services there and we shared it with three single women who lived in the basement. It had a little room upstairs lined with windows which is where our first “school room” was and I taught several of my children to read. It’s where I cross stitched the dozens of Christmas tree ornaments with the names for Jesus that still hang on our tree.

There is the house that had an indoor swimming pool where we taught the two year old to swim. A sauna that she called “the warmer” and a fireplace that didn’t draw so that all of our clothes smelled like Eckridge Farm smoked sausage.

There is the first house that we bought instead of rented. We were forty years old with six kids and a dog. And now we were homeowners. We lived there for fourteen years, longer than anyplace else we had ever lived. It was a palace to us with a big yard and a deck and a strawberry patch. The walls of the living room were painted a country-blue which was in vogue at the time and I loved it. It had a fireplace and three full baths and five bedrooms. It was in the family room of that house where a little team of people gathered to pray about starting a new church. Before long we turned one of those bedrooms into the “church office” and it was in that living room with the blue walls that we folded church bulletins every Saturday night and had Women’s Breakfasts every month. It was in that house that Cedarbrook Community Church was born.

There is the two bedroom house where I grew up – the home of my childhood memories. There was a rocking chair in the corner of the living room where I did my homework, watched the black and white television with rabbit ears, talked to my friends on the phone, and dreamed the daydreams that young girls dream.

There is the house where we live now – just the two of us. The one where we asked the builder to take out any walls in the downstairs living area that were not load bearing so as to accommodate the table made to order by Amish furniture makers. The table that would stretch across the whole length of the room and where we could sit with friends and family over a meal and recount the stories that bind us together. The house where we added bay windows and skylights because the more light the better and where, though we had no idea what we were doing, we somehow managed to create this magical secret garden of a backyard.

And yet . . .

Last summer we made a trip to Nebraska to see my family. It’s where I’m from: this land of wheat fields and sand hills. Of windmills and wildflowers. Of farmland and cattle ranches. It’s where I was born, but I feel no real kinship to this land. I have no memories of it as a child and no real understanding of this way of life or how it matters to the rest of my family. But as I grow older there is a longing to connect with this past and this place.

I have heard the stories – mostly from my mother when she was living. The stories of how my parents were farmers who had a dream of owning their own place, but it never seemed to work out for them. Just when they thought they had saved enough to make it happen the drought would come, or the flood, or the depression, or the war, or . . . But then when their family was grown (all but the late-comer who was only two and named Sharon) they saw a way. Outside a little town called Wolbach, they bought a farm. This Nebraska farmland had been home to them all their lives, and now they owned a piece of it. My oldest brother Don and his family moved in with us and together, he and my dad worked the farm and when my brother Irvin returned from Korea, he joined them. It was the family business, this love and care of the land.

When my father died two years later and my mother had to sell the farm, we moved to southern Colorado where I had a sister who thought she could get Mom work to support us. I have no memories of a life before the dessert of southern Colorado and the wild, rugged beauty of the Rocky Mountains that surrounded us. I couldn’t relate when my mother talked about the wheat that looked like copper pennies when it was ripe for harvest. How the fields were green as far as the eye could see when the crops came up in the spring. How the corn fields marked the passage of the growing season with their changing tassels waving in the summer breezes. And how she could see it all from her kitchen window of that farm house.

She told me once that when she visited my sister in Colorado for the first time (it might have been her first trip out of state) as the bus pulled into Pueblo with its steel mill and monochromatic landscape she said out loud to herself, “Why would anybody want to live in this God-forsaken land?” By the time I can remember, my mother had made her peace with living in the place that God had forsaken, though I don’t think she ever stopped missing “home”.

There is no place for me that is like that. I liked some of the places we lived. . . others not so much. I have fond memories of some of them, but truth be told sometimes I get mixed up whether such-and-such happened in Kansas or in Illinois or if it was the house on First Street or the one on Columbia Street. It sort of all runs together.

So last summer when we were in Nebraska I asked my brother if he could take me to Wolbach and find the farmhouse. The house was gone, he told me. Had been for a long while. And he didn’t know if he could remember exactly where the land was . . . but he would try. And so we set off on our quest. Getting to Wolbach was easy. . . it is a booming metropolis of 283 people. But now what? We started down one road, but it had been washed out by the spring rains and anyway, he thought maybe we should have turned the other direction back up the way. We rode a while longer and came to a farm where a man in overalls stood out in the yard next to the fence, wondering at the strangers in his neck of the woods. We stopped and Irvin explained our mission – “We’re lookin’ for the place that was Ray Fletcher’s back in the early 50’s. I think it was bought by . . . . and then by. . . . and then I’m not sure who they sold it to. “Well, what you’re gonna wanna do is go back out this road and go about two miles and then. . . “ and so we made our way down some “roads” that were more like gullies until my brother said, “This. This is it. The house sat back there in that grove of trees. It’s been torn down now, but there’s still some of the barn standing. It was right back there.”

I stood there a long time. Remembering the stories from my mother. . . like the one about how the goose chased me and I caught my leg in the fence gate which left a good sized scar that I carry with me to this day. Or how my dad would go into town every Saturday and bring back a little brown paper bag with candy in it and would sit at the table in that kitchen and divide it between me and Jolene. And I called back Jolene’s stories about our time in that house. Almost exactly a year older than me, she is Don’s oldest daughter, the one who moved into the farmhouse with us and the keeper of the memories of the adventures she and I shared there. Like the time we escaped from a charging bull by climbing into the corn crib and throwing ears of corn out to him to scare him away, holding him at bay until we were rescued. Okay, so maybe the bull wasn’t raging but rather ambling and maybe he was ambivalent about our efforts to engage him and maybe we were in no real danger. But what a story! This was the corncrib where we had our “playhouse” – where we made mud pies and played away the hours which is what childhood is for. No matter how hard I try, I have no memories of these children or of this place.

The corn crib – our playhouse and refuge from the bull.

In the Celtic tradition, a “thin pace” is the place where the veil that separates heaven and earth is nearly transparent. A place where, for a moment, the spiritual world and the natural world intersect. That day last summer, as I stood on a road, looking over the fence into a grove of trees where you could just barely make out the the ruins of a barn, this was a thin place for me, and if I listened hard I could almost hear the echoes of their voices – those two little girls in the corncrib, trying to shoo away a bull who had meandered into their story. I can see through that veil the ghost of a woman, staring back at me from her kitchen window. She has the hint of a smile and I recognize my own face in hers . . . the features startling in their similarity. It is my mother, welcoming me home.

Because Every One of These is a Story

January 16, 2017December 12, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ Leave a comment

things I am done with:
1. rudeness in the guise of “speaking the truth”
2. apologizing for my kids
3. crying over real or perceived slights
4. thinking that it’s all my fault
5. trying to find the lesson in the hard thing
6. saving stuff because “I might need it someday”
7. rehearsing conversations in my head that I’m never really going to have

things i will hold on to for a little while longer:
1. the hope that some things can be restored
2. the recipe card for lemon meringue pie in my mother’s handwriting
3. the longing to make a difference
4. iced tea and ceiling fans on a hot summer’s night
5. faith
6. memories of the good times
7. the hand I have held for 50 years

He Was the First . . .

October 15, 2016March 20, 2024 ~ paul ~ 1 Comment

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by Paul Abbott

“Not only had my brother disappeared, but–and bear with me here–a part of my very being had gone with him. Stories about us could, from them on, be told from only one perspective. Memories could be told but not shared.”
John Corey Whaley – Where Things Come Back

On Monday, October 3, 2016, we lost Paul’s older brother David in his short, but hard fought battle with cancer. The following is the eulogy Paul delivered at his memorial service. Now the stories about them can only be told – not shared. And we are coming to grips with that loss.

All the world really was a stage for my brother and, at least in our backyard, neither Errol Flynn’s Captain Blood nor Fess Parker’s Davy Crockett could hold a candle to David Abbott. I know. I was there. I was his first audience and, for a time, his best supporting actor.

David was the firstborn in a cast of siblings that eventually grew to nine. Our little clan grew up in the fifties and early sixties, doing all the kid things every kid did back then. Through it all, David was the producer, director and always the star of the show. If he didn’t want to play, then no one wanted to play. It just wasn’t the same without him.

Our dad was a pastor as was our grandfather before him, so life revolved around church. It was sort of the family business. The first stage David ever performed on was at a small, country church. As much as anything in his childhood, it was the church that molded and marked him and made him who he was.

The life of the theatre that was David’s passion as a man may seem far removed from the church-centered life of his childhood, but church and theatre share a common thread. Both are about the power of story. Done well, both tell stories that remind us why we are here, that tell us our lives have meaning and purpose, stories that anticipate days like this day.

David was really smart, so smart he taught himself to read. Before he spent a day in school, he could read the Sunday funnies or the minutiae on the back of a can of string beans. He was always the smartest guy in the room. He always knew the answer, knew the right way to do things, and never hesitated to share this with his siblings. He was, after all, the director and he didn’t just run the show, he ran our lives.

His direction for me often employed the word idiot. He may not have always actually said it, but even when he didn’t you could hear it in his voice. When I was delighted at the prospect of a trip to see Santa, he enlightened me, how could the guy possibly get to every house in one night? He’s a fake . . . you idiot. Around maybe eleven or so, I was trying to sort out the mysteries of sex, but just couldn’t imagine: mom and dad? Doing the dishes one night – we two always did the supper dishes, he washed, I dried, always – I tentatively expressed my dismay at the thought of mom and dad and sex to the one guy I knew I could trust to set me straight. Where do you think this house full of kids came from? You idiot. At sixteen, David gave me my first driving lesson in our faded green ’53 Chevy. As I swerved perilously close to a neighbor’s mailbox, Left! Left! You idiot! Watch where you’re going.

As the firstborn, the leader of our troupe, David was always first: first to lose a tooth or learn to ride a bike, first to get a driver’s license and go on a date, first to kiss a girl, first to go to college, get married, have a child. And now the first to leave the stage. It won’t be the same without him. We who share his name and his blood won’t be the same without him. Our grief is the price we pay for love, and make no mistake, we did love.

If he were here to direct me now, I think he’d say, Enough. You’ve said enough, little brother. You can sit down now.

It Was 1970. . .

September 10, 2016March 20, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 2 Comments

It was the summer of 1970. A crazy and turbulent time to be twenty years old in America. The Viet Nam War was escalating and the returning body bags were on public display every evening during the 6:00 news. April brought the death of four Kent State students and nine others were wounded during a protest against that war. The Beatles broke up and Richard Nixon was in the White House and so what was to became of us we wondered. Throw into the mix the Jesus Movement which began in the late 60s in California and swept across the continent. And for all of us who were young and idealistic and wanting to make a difference, we wondered – what does that look like?

Paul and I had just finished our sophomore year in college. In one of our classes we had connected with a couple of Christians who told us about an “evangelistic tour” they were planning through the southwest over the summer where they were going to share the gospel on various university campuses and would we like to come? They were radical, passionate and fiercely committed to following Jesus. So we signed on, if somewhat skeptically.

“We’re gonna all travel on a bus, stay in churches who have opened their doors and spread the love of Jesus,” they said. “We’ve got it all planned out.”

Sort of.

One guy said, “We’re all meeting up to get on the bus in Colorado Springs (which was about 30 minutes from where we lived) so we can swing by and pick you up on our way south.” Great! Except eight hours later, still no bus – which should have been a clue. Eventually the guy drove down to Pueblo, picked us up in his car, and took us back to Colorado Springs where the rest were still waiting.

We got to the designated meeting spot (somebody’s parents’ house our ride explained) and there were people mingling about: some sitting on the floor singing while a guy played a guitar, some reading their Bibles. Some laying out snacks on a table. We saw a rather large group huddled in a group behind a grand piano. We asked what they were doing. “Praying.” Oh. What are they praying for? “A bus.”

A BUS!!. Really?? We don’t have a bus??!!!? Granted no one had ever SAID we would be met by a uniformed driver standing next to a chartered bus, but still. . . .

It was the first of many wrong assumptions we had made.

After many more hours an old yellow school bus with Ignatius Loyola School District No. 11 written on the side pulled up in front of the house. You will understand when I say that I did not join in the chorus of “Hallelujah-praise-the-Lord”s when I saw that the inside of the bus was completely empty save for the exhaust system which lay in pieces on its floor.

“Okay – everybody spread out your sleeping bag and we’ll pack the luggage (we were each allowed one small bag) in the back against the door and as soon as it’s dark we’ll head out.”

As soon as it’s dark?

“Well, the bus overheats during the day so we’ll travel at night when its cooler.”

Gotcha. So when the temperature dropped and the sun went behind the mountains, all fifty of us hopped on (except for the guys who had to push it to get it started). The starter didn’t work which proved to be a bit problematic every time we stalled at a red light and a designated team would jump off, wait for the light to turn green, push us till the engine turned over and re-board. We loaded up the one car that we were bringing, and we were off.

Our first stop was to be Las Cruces, New Mexico. And eventually we got there – after a six hour breakdown in the desert. But one of the guys who knew something about cars – sort of – patched us up and got us going again. That morning somebody passed around a bag of peanut butter sandwiches and one of donut holes with the instructions: “Take one half a sandwich and one donut hole.” The other half, we would find out later, was for lunch.

When we got to Las Cruces we went to a park and a couple of people left in the “follow car”. Where are they going? we asked. “To go find a church for us to stay in.”

Gotcha. Another part of the “plan” we had misunderstood. We didn’t actually have churches lined up – we would just show up and see what turned up.

But here’s the thing: we went to five different cities that summer and though we spent some long days in parks, we never slept in one. By nightfall a church would open its doors and let us sleep in their Sunday School rooms and gymnasiums, cook in their kitchens, eat in their fellowship halls. I have no recollection where we took showers. Maybe we didn’t. I do remember once washing my hair in a gas station bathroom.

We talked to people about Jesus on campuses, in the parks, on the streets, and then, if they were interested in talking more, we invited them back to the church where we ate hamburger gravy over toast (it was like hitting the lottery if you found a piece of hamburger in your gravy) and sometimes they just hopped on the bus with us and went to the next town. We slept on floors and took turns taking each other’s clothes to the laundromat or grocery shopping or cooking or cleaning. We held all night prayer vigils and opened our hearts to a broken world. It was 1970.

In the same way that the country was in a time of upheaval – so was the church. We were learning to throw off our old ways and take the message to the people and to love them where they were. We were learning to welcome the stranger and see what unites us instead of what divides us. We were learning what it means to live in community and what Jesus meant when he said, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Or maybe it wasn’t the church who needed to learn those things – maybe it was just us. And that summer was where it started.

In hindsight, that summer was ill-conceived, ineffective and unorganized. We suffered from a lack of leadership and maturity and understanding and training. We wanted so desperately to make a difference to a broken world that we were unteachable and over-confident and sometimes did more harm than good. But for Paul and me, it was a turning point and maybe God just protected us from the bad stuff – knowing we would grow up and grow out of the worst of it.

As the summer drew to a close, we prepared to go back to our real lives – back to school and jobs and we pondered how it would all look in light of the summer.

But the truth was we were spent. We were the only married couple who had traveled this adventure and we had been married less than a year. A little frayed around the edges, we went for a walk to get some alone time (community is great and all that but still. . .).

At the beginning of the summer we were told that everybody was just pooling all their money into one big pot and we would have all things in common. Those who had more money would give more and those who had less would give less and everybody would have what they needed. Communal living in the truest sense of the word. We put some money in but, because we weren’t as spiritual as the rest, we also kept some in reserve so we could slip away once in a while – to go get ice cream and regroup. (I always had a sneaking suspicion that everybody else did the same thing). Maybe that’s where our conviction came from that there always needs to “ice cream money” in the family budget.

But on this night we were down to a $1.38 – literally. We bought a bottle of Pepsi and a bag of Beer Nuts at a gas station and there was no change. We had no money. None. It felt a little vulnerable and a little scary and very sacrificial. And then I dropped the bag of Beer Nuts in the gutter and they spilled out and I just stood there and cried. I had sacrificed everything for Jesus and now this! Okay – maybe a bit of an overreaction.

We did return home – back to our “real” lives where we now had to learn how to grow into our passion, our zeal, our desire to make the world better. And we had a lot of growing up to do. We made a lot of mistakes, figured out how much we still didn’t know and how far we still had to go. And we learned what real sacrifice looks like – as opposed to sleeping on the floor and beer nuts in the gutter.

Over the next forty six years, (with a lot of help and love from a host of others, but that’s another story for another day) we would start three churches and open our home and our lives to hundreds upon hundreds of people. We would raise our children in the student slums of university towns so that we could be a part of the community we were reaching. We would welcome strangers who turned into family – some of whom “hopped on the bus” with us and went to the next town – and together we would work to build His kingdom.

I sometimes wonder if we would have gotten to the same place we are now if it were not for the summer of 1970. If this is where God was leading us all along and that was only one of many roads that would have brought us here. I think maybe that’s true, but I don’t know. I do know the world had gone crazy and we wanted to make a difference. But maybe, in the end, it was us that needed to be different.

because our stories matter

Once Upon My Story

Uncategorized

(Home)School Days

Looking Back on 50 Years

With This Ring. . .

Lila’s Last Campaign

Story telling vs “Visiting” – One in the Same.

You Have a Great Past Just Ahead of You

Where I Come From

Because Every One of These is a Story

He Was the First . . .

It Was 1970. . .

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