Drill Ye Tarriers Drill

Drill Ye Tarriers Drill

By John W. Vander Velden

 

When I was in Junior High – it is called middle school these days – we had music class.  Basically we sang for the hour.  One of the songs was “Drill Ye Tarriers Drill”.  Even then, the meaning of the ditty did not escape me, but it didn’t really hit home until years later.  My wife and I took a trip to Staved Rock State Park.  It’s in Illinois.  We are very much into historical “stuff”, covered bridges, mills, old barns, and the like.  So we found the Illinois and Michigan Canal.  Those that remember their U.S. history know about the canals dug throughout the Midwest, particularly Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois.  Of course the most famous, the Erie Canal is in New York State.

But it was seeing that canal in Illinois, seeing the aqueduct and lock, considering the ninety miles of trench dug…by hand…that made the words of that song we sang, years before, leap out of my past.  The thought of tons upon tons of soil moved by men and their shovels amazed me.

It was not only canals that demanded the toil and sweat of bent backs.  There is an old drainage tile that crosses my farm, eight foot of heavy clay soil cover it at its deepest.  A man worked all summer to put in that tile…by hand.  The railroads, ribbons of steel that cross the country, the first ties and rails were laid…by hand.  Mines, which supplied the resources our young country demanded, were dug…by hand.  The grand old barns with their tons of “hand” hewed beams were raised on the backs of men.  But the past’s toil was not reserved for males.  Women may have had different obligations but often those duties required hard, long hours, working around the home and in the fields.

We forget the labor demanded of past generations.  We forget when honest sweat was a symbol of honor.  We forget that this country was built on the backs of men and women.  So many striving to create something new.

Yes, the folk song is about those that carved railroad tunnels through solid rock.  They dug the tunnels that made the linking of our shores possible.  But that song reminds of the countless that accepted the challenges and with their perspiration changed the world.

 (379 Words) 

   

    

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Otis Green

Otis Green                      9-20-2014

By John W. Vander Velden

Otis Green was a hard man, so the stories tell.  They speak of a big man, tall and broad, with dark brooding eyes that seemed to stare right into a body’s soul.  He had a temper to match.  Those that dared to approach the Green farm met the big man with a scattergun in hand and threats upon his lips.  I heard tell of the time he beat his mule to death, when it failed to pull out a stubborn hickory stump.  Few dared face the farmer of Yangle Road, whether to approach the man on his farm or in town.  Otis had no friends.

Why Millie Connor married the man none knew.  Some say that Millie had been cast out by her family, had nowhere else to turn.  Others think that the young neighbor saw something in the big man no one else did.  Everyone hoped that the lovely young woman could bring a change to Otis’ disposition.  But Otis Green was just plain mean, and Millie and their baby did nothing to soften him.

Now Yangle Road remains little traveled.  Just a strip of dirt and gravel going from nowhere and leading to nothing in particular.  There is only one place that stands on Yangle Road, though most might pass it unknown.  For the grand barn fell most of seventy years ago, and the house remains scarcely a remnant of the structure Otis Green’s father built.  If you force yourself through the briars and brambles, past the gnarled twisted scrubs that have swallowed the old farmstead, you will find the building, the paint so faded that no trace of color remains on the weathered wood.

No one has lived in that house with its broken windows and faded taters that blow out those openings, not since that night Millie and her one year old left in the Chevrolet.  No one know what drove the woman to the point of leaving.  And no one knows where she went that dark October night all those years ago.  How Otis became locked in the root cellar, carved in the hillside behind the house, remains a mystery.  Oh, the gossip tells how in a fit of rage he beat his wife -- whooped her good.  That after, when Millie found the man in a penitent mood, she sent him to fetch potatoes for their supper.  That Otis Green went down into the cellar -- the dark hole carved in the dirt -- and she closed the heavy oak door, slid the bolt, locking it fast.  Stories tell of the rage filled shouts she heard as she walked away.  The sound of heavy blows against the planks as she loaded Albert and their things into the sedan, and the profane vile threats as Millie looked back one last time before she drove away.

But those are old stories told around campfires.  For no one knows the truth and Otis was in no condition to tell them when he was found.  Weeks had passed before some brave soul found what remained of the man.  Couldn’t be certain the corpse found among the onions and potatoes was Otis.  But each time someone closed and bolted that heavy wood door that sealed the farmer to his death, they would find it open the next morning.  One time Nathan Martin nailed it fast, only to find the door shredded and scattered the following day. 

Those that force themselves through the brush as they venture among the rotting remains of the Green Farm, find an eerie sight.  For among the tall weeds and brambles they see a worn path that connects the old house’s back door to the yawning pitchy black portal of the cellar.  And times footprints, large work boot’s traces, can be seen on that tread bare way.  Only the brave, the curious, or fools wander the place where others speak of knowing they are watched from eyes unseen, hidden in the dilapidated long abandoned house.  The ancient structure from which a flickering light spills out an upstairs window on the thirtieth night of each month.  The wise know to avoid Yangle Road, a place where only the disoriented or lost find themselves after dark.  For many times – a tall broad man searches the night – wandering that gravel covered way -- calling out into the darkness.   You see Otis Green was a hard man – perhaps he still is…

(732 Words)

The Season Between

The Season Between              9-30-2013

By John W. Vander Velden

 

For some, autumn is only the time wedged between the blistering summer and dark and snowy winter. But to overlook those special ninety plus days, of the years transition, the time when the breeze becomes a bit cooler and the days grow a little shorter, is to ignore a magnificent portion of the year. For the season provides unique experience​s that come at no other time. It is impossible not to notice fall’s colors, the tree's grand pallet of reds and golds.  Yet how easily we disregard the thousands of unique things of the season. The mists that settle in the hollows and glows pink with the day's first light. The apples of red and yellow that decorate the rows of trees on gently rolling hills.  The bright orange pumpkins placed that embellish many a lawn and porch.  Have we forgotten the Friday night lights, that shine on high school gladiators, as fans, bundled against the cold, cheer?  Or the musty scent of fallen leaves that fill our nostril?  Can we take no notice of frosts tiny flakes that paint our lawns on crisp mornings?  Wonders abound each and every day.

Though autumn is a time of change, each season has its purpose, for fall brings maturity, the completion of spring’s beginnings and summer’s growth, while preparing the world, for winter’s rest.    Fall is so much more than the season between.   

(231 Words)

 

Colors

 Colors                             8-26-2014

By John W. Vander Velden

Have you ever wondered, if you could be defined by a color, what color you would be?  I would have to agree that it is a strange concept to cross my mind on this stormy afternoon.  But colors are tied to many things…emotions for one.  Gold seems to indicate great value.  Red can mean anger or devotion among other things.  Yellow is often associated with happiness.  Purple has been linked to royalty or grandness.  And we all know what label poor blue finds itself bound to.  There is green, fresh and new.  White purity and pink shows youth and desire.  Colors surround us, the world is filled with colors.  Which color are you?

But look closer, the yard maybe green but it is not one green.  The grass is not like someone opened a can of paint and just covered it all with one shade.  Thousands of different hues blend together to form the green of our yards.  Each with different textures, shapes, shades, make up the simple thing we call grass.  This fact is not reserved for the blades we mow, but surround us.  The bark of trees, the flowers in bed and roadside.  Mixes of primary colors in infinite ratios forming everything from the heavens above to the soil at our feet.

Are we so different?  Surely a color might describe our mood at a particular moment but a single shade could never define us…completely.  Each of us are made up of countless facets, thousands and thousands of unique bits of who we are.  These facets change as we change, perhaps daily.  Change as we face new challenges, new opportunities, new experiences.  Even now I am growing, no, not taller and hopefully not broader, but growing mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.  If I were a color you could not name it, and the color would always be changing, moving through uncountable blends of red, yellow and blue.  At times bright…other times subdued even dark perhaps, but alive…the colors would live as I live.

I am so many colors…and so are you!

(349 Words)

 

Just A Ripple

Just a Ripple               9-26-2014 

By John W. Vander Velden

There are times when I consider the where I belong.  Oh, I know geographically the real estate, the bit of earth that I find myself – the place I consider home.  It is good to have that knowledge of something solid, something true.  But that constant is not what I mean. 

Perhaps I should approach it in another way.  On some early morning, stand at the edge of a pond, large or small.  Look carefully over the water when it is smoother than glass.  Then select a small pebble -- the smaller the better.  Now stretching your arm forward, allow that stone to fall into the water.  Watch as it breaks the surface.  Allow your eyes to follow the rings moving outward.  I would contend that you have changed that pond.  You have changed the pond with those ripples that race outward and though may go unnoticed reach the far side. That change will soon disappear.  But you have changed the pond in ways permanent – ways you do not see – ways you can not know.  For that bit of rock settles upon the bottom, a new feature.  Animals, perhaps microscopic, must move by a different path because that stone now lies, a barrier, in their route.  Other plants and creatures may with time use it as a foundation for new growth.  Who can know all the changes that just one small pebble causes – changes greater than just a ripple?

There was a day – to me it seems very long ago – when I was just a pebble dropped into this pond.  And my birth may have been just a ripple.  To some those ringlets were large as ocean waves, but to most of those that shared the world with me, the new arrival, the wavelets went unnoticed.  But just as that pebble changed the pond, my entrance changed the world.  However there is an important difference.  You see the pebble has no control -- none what so ever.  I on the other hand have abilities, gifts – can make choices.  Through those choices, I affect those around me.  How I use the gifts I have been given, changes this pond we share. 

So I look about the world I share with you and so many others.  A world I share with those I know.  A world I share with so many I have yet to meet.  A world I share with those I will never have the opportunity to see, some near others much distant.  I wonder where I belong, and more, what can I do so that God makes me more -- than just a ripple.

(434 Words)