George's World

Beyond 60... WAY Beyond

2026-03-06T15:53:00.000-08:00

By George Eleon Shuman

A few days ago, my nine-year-old granddaughter Nahla came to me and asked if she could ask me a question. I don’t know why she does this and doesn’t just ask the question in the first place, but she always does, and our short conversation went something like this:

“Papa, I have a question.” (See what I told you?)

“Sure. What is it?” I answered, as I always do.

“Do you remember when you were sixty, Papa?”

“Yes, I replied. Well, I don’t remember anything specific about being sixty, I guess.”

“But do you remember things that you did when you were sixty?”

“Um. No, I guess I don’t.”

And that was it. She didn’t ask anything more and left me puzzled at her query as she left the room. And then it hit me just a bit, with that sort of sinking ‘wait a minute’ feeling we probably have all had from time to time, that my ‘sixties’ were all gone; every one of them.

I did remember being on the other side of those years and considering and thinking that sixty-something ‘retirement aged’ people were moldy-oldie, crunchy, cranky, wrinkled wheezer geezers. I will admit that it scared me a bit to realize that the sixty-year-olds of today were just being born when I had my eleventh birthday. That that decade of life, which for so many years was squarely but distantly in front of me, was now getting smaller in my rear-view mirror. It was already small enough that I didn’t even remember much about it when my granddaughter asked.

You know… I know that I’m not as spry as I might have once been, although ‘spry’ is a relative term. (George Burns once said that he could do anything at 95 that he could when he was 18. And then said: “That just proves how pathetic I was at 18.”) At my age now I sort of resemble that remark. Still, I truly hope that the younger people in my life don’t think of me as some dried-up old codger… at least not yet.

I do remember one other short conversation with my granddaughter. This one happened last spring. I had just hauled my bicycle up from the cellar, for the summer, as I always had, and she laughingly, but kind of seriously said: “Papa, don’t get on that. You CAN’T ride that bike. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

Well, I proved her wrong, at least briefly, but didn’t get much joy from mounting my old green ‘steed’ that day. I remember that everything hurt that night in ways and locations that I won’t describe here. I left the bike outside for the rest of the summer, without getting on it even one more time.

I am convinced that age is ‘mostly’ in our minds, although mine is also somewhat in my bones and in my bathroom mirror. (I hate that mirror.) Mentally, I don’t feel old at all. I know some others feel the same about those things. My wife’s grandmother, a woman Lorna and I both loved very much, once told me that she was just an eighteen-year-old girl in a ninety-five-year-old body. There is a lot of food for thought in that.

Also, my own mom, who is still with us, and who we both love very much too, still calls me every single evening, just to see if I’m okay or if I have some ailment that she can worry about, (I don’t.) She just took a trip to Florida and then back again to Maine to celebrate her 102^nd birthday with a huge party of family members whose very existence is entirely her fault. She’s a true treasure!

I never found out why Nahla wanted to know if I remembered being sixty that day. Maybe it was so that I could write this column?

Long Winters / Long Johns

2026-01-28T10:31:00.000-08:00

By George Eleon Shuman

Last weekend, sort of as a joke, sort of not, my mom sent me a pair of long johns. You know, thermal underwear. I haven’t had a pair of those since way before Reagan won the presidency, but they haven’t changed a bit.

Mom will be 102 next month and is spending her first winter in many years in the north, specifically, in central Maine. She is very sensitive to the cold. Mom knows through our nightly phone conversations, that for the past several years, winters have not been fun for me, either. (Actually, the past seventy or so haven’t been fun for me, {I think I liked the first one.} but these recent winters have been even worse.) My circulation is probably not great, I guess. Either that or my body is just desperately trying to assume room temperature.

I try not to complain too much about the cold, but it’s hard to hide how I’m feeling when I’m hiding everything else up to my nose in several layers of blankets and comforters, as I recline in a fetal position on the couch; tough guy that I am.

Not that many years ago members of a certain segment of our country’s political class were terribly upset by what they referred to as global warming. You know, with the melting polar ice caps as proof and everything. Personally, I never thought these people were right, but I was secretly hoping they were. Longer, warmer summers seemed like a good thing to me, and they still do. Besides, I’m not anxious to visit any polar ice caps anyway.

To me, the proof of global warming is much closer to home. It’s actually right out under my carport in the form of a big, slightly rusting chunk of metal called a snow blower. I must admit to having a love-hate relationship with that thing. I’m glad I have it, but I kind of hate using it or even getting too close to it. Nearly every time I touch it something seems to fall off; (I mean off of it, not off of me. Not yet anyway.) Every time I use it, it seems louder and clunkier than it did the last time.

My barometer of global warming, climate change, whatever you want to call it, since the politicians keep changing the term because they really have no idea what’s going on in the world, weather-wise or otherwise, is this. I just keep track, loosely, of the number of times each winter that I have to crank the old thing up and do the driveway. Truthfully, for the past three winters or so, I’ve only used it three or four times each. And yes, I mean here in Vermont.

Unfortunately, this winter is proving to be a little more ‘traditional’ up here, this year. The massive storm that everyone in the US is painfully aware of experiencing earlier this week, might have been unusual for some areas, but has just been a reminder of a ‘regular’ winter here. Monday, I watched the snow fall all day. It would start and stop, and several times I almost worked up my courage to dig myself out from under the couch blankets so I could get our and our neighbor’s driveways out from under that blanket of white stuff. Finally, when the storm really seemed to be almost over, I got up and got to spend a few hours of quality time brushing the snow from my face, glasses, jacket, and nether regions, which I won’t discuss further.

Then, the snow started up again, allowing me to have all that fun, all over again, on Tuesday. What a wonderful surprise it was to learn that my phone was wrong, and it wasn’t partly sunny at all outside. No, it wasn’t.

I will end this time of whining with this. In truth, God has always been incredibly good to me and so has my family. I have a snow blower, which is much better than a shovel, and I have a big old warm home with lots of comforters on the couches. I also have a brand-new set of long johns, which came in very handy this week. Thanks Mom.

It Gets No Better

2026-01-04T13:34:00.000-08:00

By George Eleon Shuman

This evening, I sat in my recliner, or at least on ‘my’ end of a reclining couch in our living room, with one of my dearest friends snuggled right up against my right side. His name, chosen because of his mother’s faith that he has been chosen for important things, is Chosen.

At this writing, Chosen is about fifteen months old, and, he has, as has his nine-year-old sister Nahla, completely wrapped this old person around his tiny little fingers. I surrender willingly to that fact and really don’t care much what others think about it.

It is Lorna’s and my agreed, mutual opinion that we have been wonderfully and completely blessed with our great family. As of today we have five kids, (That number is unlikely to change.) about sixteen grandkids, (That number may change.) and four great grandkids, (That number IS going to change, for sure, and already includes one who will make his appearance sometime this coming April. I am quite anxious to meet him!)

“What a brood,” some might say. To us, it is better said: “What a great God we have, to have blessed us so completely.” For sure, all those kids, grandkids, and greats are what Lorna’s and my lives are all about. But now, back to my buddy Chosen.

I have often called Chosen my little teddy bear. I think of him this way as he sits beside me on that couch, snuggling beside his papa, under the blanket on both our laps. He almost always chuckles as I drape the blanket over us so we can share the comfort and warmth. It is nearly a ritual as I put my arm around his back and hold him close. He then always wraps his little arms around my forearm, patting with tiny hands as he squeezes it. The ultimate feeling, at least for this papa, comes a few minutes later, as my Chosen slips into slumber beside me, and that adorable little head relaxes and presses against my arm; as this priceless child trusts his papa’s care as he sleeps.

Life? It gets no better than this.

Mary’s Christmas

2025-12-24T17:34:00.000-08:00

By George Eleon Shuman

Today I have been thinking about Mary, the mother of Jesus. As a protestant Christian, I think about her son a lot, but not so much about her. Today I have been thinking about what she went through for her son, and what she might have been experiencing in those days surrounding the first Christmas.

The Bible does not say a lot about Mary, and so the world knows little about her. But she was a real, live, feeling, caring person. She was young. She was also without the benefit of history; to even be able to know the whole story of the very history she was helping to create. Here's my idea of what she may have been thinking on part of that first, very real, and rough Christmas day.

I imagine that Mary might have awoken after a short evening's nap, to suddenly realize once again that she had just given birth. Before rising she may have looked up into the rough rafters of the shoddy stable in which she lay and pondered exactly what was happening to her. Barely more than a child herself, here she was, with an infant son asleep in the stable’s manager, only inches from where she slept on the hay-strewn floor. And this was not just a child, but one miraculously born from her own young womb, from her own virgin body. He was a son for which she had been visited by the angel Gabriel months before, who had proclaimed to her that the child within her would save His people from their sins.

Mary may then have been stirred from her thoughts as she heard the baby move a bit, and whimper where he lay. Still unrested and uneasy, she was somehow comforted by her tired young husband's loud breathing as he slept in the hay, just to her other side.

Mary thought again of the angel's visit, and of their hard recent trip by donkey to get to this town of Bethlehem, so that Joseph could pay his taxes. She may have then recalled the bumpy ride, the cold nights along the way, and her husband's smiling glances back at her as he led the beast upon which she rode. She likely remembered the innkeeper's gruff voice and awful smell, as he told them to stay in the barn if they had to, and then slammed the door in their faces.

The Bible says that Mary later thought about what the shepherds had reported. Their talk included the angel which had spoken to them, and she might have wondered if it had been the same angel, Gabriel, as had come to her on that seemingly long-ago night. She may have well imagined the heavenly host those shepherds described, and pondered their quick trip to this very place, to see her sacred son. She may have remembered, only briefly, that agonizing thought of whether Joseph really, genuinely believed what she had said about the angel’s words, and of the bigger fact, that she had never known a man.

Mary would have arisen to pick up her tiny, sweet son from the manger hay, and then hold this most precious one to her breast. How, as she did so, would she not have also wondered and worried for the future of this nursing infant child, this most Holy One, born in such a noisy, dirty place.

None of us can know what Mary actually thought during that wondrous time… but think she surely did. The stable, the chilly air, the smell of manure, the hard ground and the soft and dusty hay were real. So also, was her own body; real and still sore and tired from childbirth. Mary certainly considered that the greatest reality of all was that the child which she now held and felt in her arms was none other than the very Savior of the world.

"And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart." Luke 2:18-19.

A Bit Cuckoo

2025-12-01T09:39:00.000-08:00

By G. E. Shuman

As I sit here to write this column, on the wall just on the other side of the room is my cuckoo-clock. It is an old one and is getting older (as am I) with every tick and every hour its little bird announces.

Cuckoo-clocks are sort of novelty clocks. I must pull those chains to wind the clock and the cuckoo twice a day, EVERY day. If I forget to do so, it will stop before the next twelve hours are over. So, with my memory being what it is lately, the clock stops quite often and must be reset and then wound again. The next time I will keep it going, I always think. Sure, I will.

The thing is that the clock is just a measuring device of sorts. The ticks and cuckoos measure the passing of time, but don’t keep time going. The clock often stops due to my inattention. Time does not.

But then, I now remember, I have always wondered if time, the thing the old clock is measuring, is really a ‘thing’ at all. If not, the old cuckoo behind the little door on the clock has wasted his ‘time.’ It is, of course, very handy to have something to tell us if we’re going to be early or late for work, I suppose, (or is it, really?) Our ancestors must have thought so, or they wouldn’t have put clocks in church steeples; or maybe they were only tired of people being late for church all the ‘time.’

The reason I’m not sure about clocks and the time they measure is that the only sure thing about time’s existence is existence itself. I exist right now. I don’t exist yesterday, at least not anymore, and I can’t exist tomorrow, yet, because tomorrow hasn’t happened yet. Nothing about it is real… at least it isn’t right now. Right?

In Philippians 3:13 the apostle Paul tells us to forget those things which are behind. For him that was a real mouthful. Remember, he was the guy who had held the coats of the crowd so they could stone the Christians. In Matthew 6:34 Jesus himself admonishes us to “take therefore no thought of tomorrow.” Why worry about something that doesn’t exist yet?

So, the past is just a memory which shouldn’t be worried about, and the future isn’t even that yet. We live in the ‘right now.’ And that ‘right now’ is all we have. My cuckoo clock does tick off the seconds, (when I remember to wind it,) but yesterday’s ticks and tocks will never be heard again; tomorrow’s have not yet happened, and we have no promise that they ever will.

Look at it this way: A yard stick measures the length, depth, and breadth of an object; a clock only the length of the existence of that object. Duration is the fourth dimension, to be sure, but if the first three dimensions of a thing didn’t exist, there would be no need for it. I believe that when God created the first ‘thing,’ He began time and started the possibility of the necessity of a clock. Remember, nothing exists, right now, in the past or in the future. We would be wise to live in the ‘right now, of our own existence; for that is all we really have. Tick-tock. Okay, I’ll admit that is a bit cuckoo.

Deleting

2025-11-14T13:21:00.000-08:00

By G. E. Shuman

I just spent over an hour of my life painstakingly deleting junk e-mail and other ‘stuff’ from my two addresses on my phone. As I was doing so, I suddenly realized that the entire process seemed far too familiar and that I had spent a similar hour doing the same thing several weeks ago. So, I said to myself, “Self, what are you doing this for, anyway? Brand new junk is just going to appear in this same spot within days, you know.” I kept deleting, and kept deleting, and kept deleting. Delete, delete, delete.

By the time I got to the second account I simply pushed the Select key and then Select All and then Delete. Hummm. Before I hit that final button I did (momentarily) think about the fact that a lot of my deletions would be things in that list of mail that I had saved there. Some of those mail items were quotes, facts, stupid jokes, or profound statements that, within the last few weeks, I had saved or written myself. (No, I didn’t write any of the profound statements. Those were saved from greater brains than this old one.) Some of the stupid jokes may have been mine.

In any case, I hit the delete button on the screen and suddenly the junk, spam, stupid jokes, saved profound statements and everything else was simply gone from my phone, and from my life, probably forever. I would get to live without the junk mail but also without those things I had once wanted to remember. I thought I would feel a bit of regret or even remorse about those saved things, simply because there must have been some good reason for saving them in the first place. Right? Well, evidently there wasn’t, as I truly felt nothing but relief at the bit of simplifying of my life that I had accomplished with one little button push.

If anything, it was a bit exhilarating to dump the mental junk I had collected on a device that is supposed to make life easier. It was almost as if a weight had been lifted from me, by ‘throwing out’ those electronic, weightless but somehow weighty files.

My phone somehow seems a bit lighter now, as do my thoughts.

2025-10-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

What Happened to my Halloween?

By G. E. Shuman

For most of my life I was a true enthusiast, but not a true believer, in the old traditions of Halloween. I loved to see whatever the contemporary trends were in ‘spooky’ October things each year. I especially liked the old, antique appearing room decorations, even if they were made of cheap plastic. Somehow that made them even better. They just had to look scary and old. Fall had always been a favorite season to me, and that cold, eerie, blowing leaf and biting wind end of October was always special.

All of that was until the past five years or so. Lately I just don’t ‘feel’ the Halloween ‘spirit,’ if you will pardon the pun. I see all the work some families put into their lawn decorations and wonder why those things don’t seem as cool to me as they used to. Maybe I’ve just finally grown up, in my 71^st year. I don’t know.

My nine year old granddaughter has done a great job of decorating the rooms of our home, using some of the signs and ceramic things from the ‘ghouls and skeletons’ area of our cellar shelves, as strange as that sounds, along with her family’s more elaborate, ‘antique’ looking decorative things. Still, I’m having trouble getting into the traditional spooky mood this year.

This has been an unusually busy and trying year for us, and that might be what the matter is with me. It takes me a little time to soak up the good things in any season, and I feel like I just haven’t had that time, this time. 2025 has been filled with too many illnesses, doctor appointments, and the like to worry much about things like Halloween.

Next year could be different but for now I will accept that I may have reached adulthood at 71. Who knows, by this time next year I may be well into my second childhood and fall in love with Halloween things all over again. Right now, I’m just going to attach the following piece that I used in my World column several years in a row. It was about the only one I repeated, but I thought it was worth that yearly repetition. I hope you agree.

Spooky!

By G. E. Shuman

It is a distant memory, cold and old, dusted off now as a long-neglected, rediscovered book might be. It matters, somehow, that this nearly forgotten evening happened within a mid-nineteen-sixties year. Perhaps it could be that the late autumn wind cooled and creaked the leafless, lifeless-looking trees even more then than now; again… somehow. Or perhaps it is only because those October thirty-firsts were spookier then, at least to the one whose memory of the night it is. Those Halloweens contained no costumes of bleeding skulls or vividly maimed souls. They were, simply, or perhaps, not so simply, ghostly, hauntingly spooky nights.

On this one Halloween, dusk, as dust, had settled slowly upon the small New England town of the boy’s youth. Supper had been a hurried affair, gobbled by giggling goblins anxious to get out into the night. Low voices and footsteps of other spooks were already upon the front steps; knocks and bone-chilling knob-rattling had already begun at the door.

The boy of ten or so was more than ready to go out. By accident or plan, his siblings had already slipped into the night without him. He was very alone; at least he hoped that he was alone, as he ventured into the much too chilly night air. The cold breeze stung his eyes as he peered through the rubbery-odored mask of his costume. He began the long walk through the frozen-dead, musty-smelling leaves covering the sidewalk.

The youth hurried past the frightful row of thick and dark, moonlit maples that lined the way. He was very afraid that the dry crunch of death in those old leaves would alert of his presence whatever ghoul or ghost might be lurking behind one of those trees. As he walked on in the increasingly inky black, he dared not peek even slightly around any of them. It was a sure thing that not EVERY roadside tree hid some witch or ghastly ghoul, but the boy knew that he was certain to pick the one which did, if he were to dare to look.

By sheer will, or by chance, the youth succeeded in passing by the haunted trees, and successfully trick-or-treated at many houses on the street. Every inch of the way he thought about the one house he dreaded visiting most: the house of the witchy-looking old lady. Sure, she seemed kind in the daytime, but you didn’t see her humped old back or the wrinkly look in her eyes in the daytime. Her house was cold as a tomb, at least, such was her old porch, at night, in late October. The boy knew this well from the year before, but that year he had been with his brothers and sisters. As he walked, the scuffing, leaf-scraping sound of every step seemed to taunt him with the words: Every… witch… awaits… the child… who walks… alone… Every… witch… awaits… the child… who walks… alone…

The boy’s small hands were nearly freezing by the time he reached the old lady’s small dark house far down the street. He managed to climb to the top of the worn and creaky steps. He stood there a moment, and then worked up enough courage to open the narrow door of the witch’s small, windowed porch. The rusty door spring, worn to its own insanity by countless other small boys who were fools enough to enter here, screeched a hateful, taunting announcement of the boy’s arrival. This it repeated, mocking its original scream, as the door slammed tightly shut between the lad and the world outside.

The long, enclosed tomb of a porch offered no relief from the cold, but some little relief from the night wind. The only light therein was that of a maddening, perfectly placed jack-o-lantern which hideously smiled up at the boy from the floor, at the farthest corner of the room. The porch exuded the sooty-sweet smell of that candle-lit carved pumpkin. This strange aroma mingled with that of crisp, cold Macintosh apples which filled a wooden crate at one wall. “What could possibly be the use of apples to a witch?” The boy briefly pondered.

The one who disguised herself as a regular, kind old lady during the daytime was very cunning indeed. Her trap for little boys was a porch table full of the biggest and best treats in the town. Those very famous treats were the single reason the boy was even on this terrifying porch. There was a tray which held beautiful, candied apples and another laden with huge, wax-paper-wrapped popcorn balls. A bowl between them overflowed with candy corn, the boy’s favorite. Thoughts of poison apples and boiling cauldrons momentarily filled the child. He then nervously picked his treat and got it safely into the candy-stuffed pillowcase he carried. Hearing the nighttime witch walking across her kitchen floor toward the door to the porch, he headed out, past the screeching door, down the creaking steps, and toward home. If she had ever invited any little boy into her home, that boy certainly had never come back out, he thought, as he briskly walked. This boy, that night, had, somehow, survived another visit to that house. He had even gotten away with the biggest, most delicious popcorn ball of all! His only fear then was in once again getting past the street-side ghouls that certainly stared at him from behind those huge old maples.

It is a fact that Halloween was different in the nineteen sixties, before the age of sugar and plastic holidays. There was just something hauntingly powerful about the cheap paper cutouts, cheesy cardboard skeletons and black and orange streamers of those years. Fold-out paper pumpkins and eerie (and probably dangerous) cardboard candleholders lit the yards. Homemade, totally safe treats filled pillowcases and paper bags of those who dared to face the night. Those were night-prowling, costumed, youthful vagabonds, young souls whose parents had no fear at all that they would not return home safely.

Halloween nights were ones of simple, frightful fun, in those years. Cartoon ghosts and goblins, fake witches and funny Frankenstein monsters were all that stalked the streets or the innocent imaginations of children then. True evil had nothing to do with those nights at all.

The ghouls of Halloweens long-past may live on only as aging, dusty memories, but the dark and distant nineteen-sixties Halloween you just read about really did happen. At least, that’s how this old trick-or-treater remembers it.

(Note: The author invites you to view his novels, “A Corner Café” and the second edition of “The Smoke and Mirrors Effect” at Amazon.com. Both books are available on Kindle and in paperback.)

A Sunny Sunday Afternoon

2025-10-06T08:56:00.000-07:00

By G. E. Shuman

Yesterday was Sunday, from when and where I sit, and it was a beautiful, sunny October Sunday, for sure. Lorna and I had just come from a very inspiring and helpful Sunday morning service at our church, and she happened to suggest that we take a little ride in that bright sunshine.

The only possible negative to our decision about a short trip was our other decision to stop for some fast food to eat on the way. There was just something about those burgers that sat like rocks on our stomachs for much of the trip around the corners and up and down the hills of our beloved Central Vermont. Every time I stop for such food I regret it, wish I hadn’t done it, and swear I won’t do it again. Then, eventually, I do it again.

We had decided to eat and tourist-watch from our car, while parked in front of the Vermont State House in Montpelier. That has always been a favorite spot for us, for checking out the aging out-a-staters as they pile out of the leaf peeper busses there this time of year. Those folks always seem just a bit different to me. It’s not a negative thing, but the countless caps atop all the gray hair and huge sunglasses just give them away. Then I remember that I would look exactly the same as those old geezers if I got out of one of those buses with them. Oh well.

So after ‘dining’ we continued our trek up old Route 2, through Middlesex, Waterbury, Stowe, Morrisville, Wolcott and Hardwick. Driving through Waterbury and Stowe was the worst, as it is always the worst if you don’t like traffic. I’m sure the pumpkin and apple cider sellers along the way were happy with the traffic, as they watched their bank deposits getting fatter and their wares being placed in the trunks of hundreds of cars and sucked right out of our state and back to the various ‘away’ places those tourists came from.

As Lorna and I slowly age, (She like fine wine, me like old cheese) we have taken to the travel game of the elderly, in counting the different license plates of those cars as they head for home. Sunday afternoon, I know for sure, there were at least a dozen other states represented along the road back toward 89 from the Stowe area. To me that is amazing, as I have always imagined that at least a few of those states must have leaves of their own. Maybe I’m wrong.

It did seem that the further north we went on our little trip, the brighter the scenery looked, and I verbally chalked that all up to the fact that it may have been a little cooler up there than here this fall. I also thought aloud to Lorna that they might have gotten a bit more rain over the summer too. (As if I knew anything at all about what makes leaves turn brighter or duller in fall.)

Eventually we circled back, (as news people and politicians seem to like to say lately) and came home. It was a simply wonderful morning service and afternoon of sunshine for us. Both made us thankful to be here.

Dear Readers,

I realize it has taken a while for me to get the last few columns out to you. I actually hesitate to use the word ‘columns’ as these writings are no longer traditionally published. I do promise to try harder to get something to you, here, on a more regular basis in the future.

One note: I have been working on a group of short stories; some older, some brand new, and all mine, that I will soon be submitting to Amazon for publication. I’ll let you know when this happens. In the meantime, please remember that “The Smoke and Mirrors Effect”, “A Corner Café”, “Cemetery Bridge”, “Up On Heath Street”, and “George’s World”, are all available on Amazon under the George E. Shuman list of works.

Thanks.

Also, if you know of others who would like to get the free link to this site when more pieces appear please send their email address to vtwordsmith@gmail.com I will happily add them to the list of readers.

My Diagnosis? I Wasn’t Born Yesterday

2025-08-25T05:44:00.000-07:00

By George Eleon Shuman

No, I wasn’t born yesterday, but after one phone call this morning, I am convinced that some people might think I was.

What happened is that I called a local car dealership, (It is one which I have purchased new cars from several times in the past.) Today I wasn’t interested in a new car. As I told him, I was simply asking if my four-year-old car had any outstanding recalls that I should be aware of. I also had one other small issue with one aspect of how the windshield wipers were working or not always working.

Anyway, I will admit that the person I spoke with in the repair department was very nice. He carefully checked my VIN number, my name, address, phone number, hair color and underwear size, (I’m kidding on those last two, but believe me, the list was long.) He told me that the only recall on the car was something about the trailer hitch wiring. My car has no trailer hitch, so I thought this was good news.

Then the nice repair shop gentleman suddenly slipped into the conversation the fact that there would be a charge to enable him to pay his service rep to find out what was wrong with my wiper. (Remember if there WAS something wrong with the wiper system, it was a COVERED repair.)

Me: “But this is a covered item under your bumper-to-bumper warranty. Right?”

Him: “Well yes, but the diagnosis charge isn’t covered.”

“I didn’t know there was a diagnosis charge.”

“There is. I can’t have the service rep. do the diagnosing for nothing.” (He somehow seemed a bit less friendly now.)

“How much is the charge then, to tell me what is wrong, for something that, if broken, you will fix for free?” I didn’t say it quite like that to him, but I wanted to.

“The charge is $130 per hour.” (He said this part softly and very quickly, just like my cardiologist did when running through the ‘death or stroke’ part of my possible future surgery complications.)

Me: “And how long will it take?

“Well, I have no idea,” he said, “until we begin diagnosing it.” (This was more like when a particular politician, who I won’t name here, told us we would have to pass the bill to find out what was in it.)

‘More than an hour?” I asked back.

Him: “Like I said, I have no idea.” Then: “Yes, it could be more than an hour...”

From the conversation so far, I had become aware that the service department was fully ready to present me with a bill for several hundred dollars for diagnosing why my windshield wipers didn’t work, whether or not I had them fix them. Something about this seemed like less than good service, and nothing like warranty service to me. Also, the car maker would obviously pay the dealership for the part, plus the cost of the labor, but this seemed a separate issue to my new friend on the phone. And wait, there’s more.

Me: “I have several trips to take in the next few weeks, and the appointment date you gave me will be after those trips and after my car has just barely passed the bumper to bumper warranty limit.”

“Well, that’s the soonest appointment I have open. We’re busy and booking things out through next month.” I bet they always say that. (Now he seemed less friendly, for sure.)

“Ok, so can we at least make a note that I called while my car was still fully warrantied and that this repair will be covered?

“No, I can’t do that.” He muttered.

“But why not? I’m calling today, the car is still under warranty today, and it’s just a windshield wiper. I’d be glad to have you fix it before my trip.” My feeling was that he could guarantee that the wiper repair would NOT be covered by the time of that tentative appointment date.

With that, I decided to not make an appointment, or purchase a car at that dealership again. They were very logical in their effort to convince me that they weren’t worth dealing with. I don’t have the energy these days to fight such things, so I just won’t.

I don’t mind paying for a diagnosis with my aforementioned cardiologist. I’m just not paying anyone whatever hourly amount they want to charge me for however long they tell me it took them to figure out the mysteries of my windshield wipers.

My advice? If you have a good, local, honest mechanic hang on to him or her. Unlike the dealership people who should know your car very well, a neighborhood mechanic will usually tell you what’s wrong… for free.

Nathan's Carousel

2025-04-04T13:18:00.000-07:00

G. E. Shuman

(A story best enjoyed on a cold and blustery day.)

I was awakened that day by the rustle of fallen leaves as they whipped against the glass of my bedroom window. The room was all but dark, but not from the earliness of the hour. Indeed, my wife and children were up and gone already, and I was alone on this unusually dreary fall day. My good family had let me sleep, as a stubborn cough and nagging fever had kept me up and held me down throughout the long cold night which now seemed intent on delaying the light of day. It was nearly mid-morning, but the streetlights were still on beneath those thick black clouds. I lay for a while, with some comfort, in my warm bed, listening to the leaves and their crisp crackling in the blowing air.

The sounds soon turned to the fierce beating of window glass by uncounted drops, as cold rain came upon the old house on Wellington Street. I could hear and nearly feel the accompanying bitter wind, as it whistled against the walls, frantically prying at the old cedar-shingled front of this massive and aging building we call home. It was good, I thought, even if in the grip of a virus, to be able to stay home today. After passing in and out of some few more minutes of fitful sleep, I decided to get up. I soon stood a moment, motionless, at the foot of my bed. The entire scene was a bit surreal to me. The howling noise outside and my sore and feverish skin reminded me again that I could not venture out today.

I have always liked, but somehow disliked this old Vermont house. When we bought it years ago, I knew it had stood already on its granite cellar walls for nearly a hundred years. Our family was once told that the house had been built by a dentist, or by whatever manner of professional man was referred to as a dentist all those years ago. We had heard that the dentist's family had lived here only briefly and had sold the house within a few years of its completion, only to build another in another part of town. The dentist story soon became fact to us, as we told it to others, ourselves. We would never know if it was the truth.

In those long past times, our neighborhood was the affluent place to live around here. The area's best-known professional people constructed these once-grand, towering old homes. I am sure they enjoyed looking down on the village below from high on this lofty hill. But today they would also see across the valley, at newer, smaller houses, with bigger yards. Those homes are covered in plastic siding and lacking in size, ornament, and the beautiful, pillared front porches of our aging neighborhood.

Yes, I have always liked our massive, solid house. This day's blasting wind could never get inside, and the snows of scores of winters have not broken down the thickly beamed old roof. And, yes, I have disliked the house a bit, too. It is ever in need of repair and surely never again to see perfect health and form. The upkeep is without end, and all the painting and papering are not enough to hide the wrinkles of age, the onslaught of time. Ancient pipes and wires thread their way through these old, plastered walls, and I fear, as would any elderly man, that these arteries, as his, might soon break from age alone.

I took my robe from the bedpost and slowly walked into the hallway which winds around and past three more bedrooms, until it becomes the stairway down to the main floor of the house. It is true that I always feel lonely when I am here alone. The house is bright enough, and homey enough, but still so large, far too large for one person to spend much time here alone. It was made for families, by a family. It should never be this empty, I thought. I walked past each room on my way to the stairs, and was reminded, as always, of my three grown children, and that they played and slept and grew up here. It is not easy for me to think of how short the years were when they were home; and I pushed the idea of their being grown from my mind. *

As I approached the stairway I happened to glance into the last room. It is the first you reach as you surmount the stairs, and the last that one of our older three girls had occupied, before going off to college a few years ago. At this writing it is still her room, and filled with her things, but no one sleeps here anymore, unless she is here on a holiday. The urge to step into the room was just too much for me; perhaps in part because I was alone and wanting something else to think of for a moment, and, in truth, because I missed my little girl so much. For whatever reason, I was soon standing in her room, glancing around at the things that made this room hers. At that moment I felt sad, and seemed to recall that when I am ill, I tend to do more lonely things, more things that make me sad. This was not a comfortable thought to have.

As I stood, gazing about my daughter's room, I happened to notice a light, dimly shining out from the crack under her closet door. My first thought was that she had been so wasteful in leaving the light burning. It was very much like one of our children to be unconcerned with the electric bill, and this girl had been away at school for several months now. Why weren't kids more aware of such things? I opened the door and intended to reach for the string to extinguish the light but did not end up doing so right away.

My daughter's closet has always been a strange place in our home. Firstly, it was constructed, I suspect, to make use of waste space in the eves of the house, and it is an oddly impractical place to actually store things. The door to the closet is on the far end of the side wall of the room, and the narrow, slanted space behind the door runs the entire length back to the front of the room. This makes for a long, dim passageway of a closet, and I have never understood why anyone would want one like that. The closet is also the only untouched, unfinished area in our old house. In the past nearly one hundred years of almost constant darkness its bare plaster walls have never been painted, and its floor never finished. The tiny bulb above the door at the close end of the closet provides the only light to have entered this cramped space for any of those scores of years.

On any other occasion I would have left the room and gone about the many things that always fill my days, but this day was so different; so strange, somehow. Perhaps it was due only to my fever, and to my sadness in the emptiness of our children’s rooms, but I just had to peek my head into the closet and look the length of it to that far end wall.

I had probably not seen so deep inside this narrow space more than twice in all the years we had owned the old house. There was a strong feeling that things were somehow detached in here; that

for some reason the rest of the world had little to do with how things were in here. It was a feeling that I cannot explain, but one brought on, in part, by the contents of the closet. This had been less a place to hang clothes and more of a playhouse for my children years ago. The older two girls had put playthings in here when they were quite young, and our youngest of the three had added hers later.

We do try to keep a tidy house but have taken little thought of this nearly unusable part of our home. Many of the old toys, games and childhood drawings were still here. I imagined it to be a place of squirreled away memories; with ever more treasures of passing playtimes heaped on those already there; added over years, while the first were never removed. It seemed that the closer to the closet doorway you looked, the more recent the things collected; the further back you peered, the further back into time and playtimes you could see.

There was no good reason for what I did next on that cold and surreal excuse for a day. I just did it. I entered the doorway; passed the dim bulb hanging from the ceiling, and crept over unnumbered paper and plastic memories, to the very back of the closet, where I knelt and then sat still on the rough old floor. It is a strange feeling to be, for the very first time, positioned in a shadowy place in a home you have owned for many years. The imperfections of the walls, the bits of wood in the corner, and the few discarded nails on the floor had been here, untouched, I was sure, the nearly hundred years since this house that I own had been built. I had just never seen them before. I was suddenly quite aware of great silence in the place, and even held my breath to try to hear the wind outside these walls. I could not. This spot was somehow totally insulated from the noise, and I soon came to learn, as insulated from much else of the effects of living in our world.

I must have remained there, motionless in the silent closet, for several minutes before noticing the old board wedged up against the end wall. I vaguely remembered seeing it, some years before, from the doorway, but had thought it just another remnant of construction of the old house. It was jammed up against that small wall, held in place at the ends by the corners of the other walls. It looked to have no purpose, and on this strange day I decided to pry it free. This I did, and it came off the wall readily, as if meant to do so, or as if others had removed it at earlier times. To my surprise, there was a roughly rounded hole about a foot in width in the wall behind the board. This hole in the plaster looked to have been pounded out by amateurish hands; almost in a childish, random fashion. It was the strangest feeling to put my hand into that black hole, and to find what I did upon doing so.

I pulled my treasure from its hiding place inside the wall and blew the plaster dust from its top. The light was so dim here; I had no idea what I had found but was intent on finding out. Creeping back through my now-grown children's abandoned rubble of toys, I made my way to the door, and back into the brighter light of my daughter's room. Sitting down on her bed, I began to study my find from the closet. What an unusual day this blustery bitter-cold sick day was, I thought, noticing that I could clearly hear the howl of the wind again.

The thing I now held in my lap was a smallish, old time round hat type box of the kind that ladies of the past purchased their best plumage-laden millinery in, and stored it in. It was indeed smallish for such a thing, and old, although age was not what first caught my eye about the box. The box looked,

strangely enough, as if someone had waxed the outside of it, especially around the edge of the flat round cover. It was as though the box had been sealed by the drippings of a candle, and then opened and resealed several times, as the wax was of two or three distinct colors and textures. I could not imagine what might be inside this thing and decided, quite obviously, that I had to find out. I opened the box as carefully as I could.

Removing the pasteboard cover from my newly found treasure, while still sitting on the bed in a state of mild fever was an almost dizzying experience. Could this be some old timer’s nest egg, somehow forgotten when a family moved from the house? Whatever I had found, I immediately knew that something very special was in my hands. The box was layered inside with several pieces of folded papers, notes from the past.

There was a drawing in the top of the box. The drawing I held was a simple childish depiction of a person, seemingly a child, lying on a bed. The paper was in very good condition, as were the others, and it was easy to tell that this picture was not a happy one. The crudely drawn face was that of a child in pain. The face had a sad look; the eyes big and hollow; and the mouth downturned in a frown. One stick-figure arm clutched what looked to be a toy carousel being held at his side, on the bed. The other arm held a cross. That was all the picture told. The back side of the paper held a date, it read December 30. 1905, and the words “To Nathan.”

Just beneath one small note to the mysterious Nathan, was another similar one. This page was signed by someone by the name of Samuel B. and carried the simple message of "Best of wishes Nathan. " It also had numbers on it. These numbers were 1912. Then I saw the longer letter beneath the other papers.

I began to read the long, pencil-lettered note, aloud. "This is my young brother Nathan's carousel. It was his Christmas gift from Mother and Father, in this, the fifth year of his life, and the year of the building of our fine new house. Nathan is not with us now, being taken by a winter’s grip only Monday last. He did so love the wooden horses on the big ride at the fair. Mother and Father knew he would delight to see them all year round, so gave him his beloved toy to pass the winter. So sad he had it only days before God took him from us. I fear that Mother will never be the same with Nathan gone. She is so sorrowful now. Father is waiting already to sell the new house, to help relieve her pain. Nathan wound the key to the carousel one last time the night before he was taken from us. He loved to watch the toy go round but fell to eternal sleep before it played its tune again. It is wound still, with the very might of my little brother's sickly hand that Sunday evening. Stored within the spring of the toy is all the life left of him.

No one can change this, so I save it for future eyes. I wish his power to take the carousel to far off days. I have thrown the key so far off too, so none can mix their strength with that of the boy we loved so well. The box is Mother's new pill box hat one. But now she does not care to dress for Sunday. The box will not be missed. She did not see when I removed her candle from its stand and used the wax to seal the cover fast.

Please touch this toy with care. If you find it, move the lever but for a moment, and see the motion of Nathan’s very life. See it only briefly, and do not waste. Send Nathan on and let him live forever." The note was thus signed, Jonathan, Nathan's elder brother. January 1906

I barely dared to look again into the box. Whatever was there had been carefully surrounded and covered by a crumpled newspaper page or two. I would have thought this thing was all a prank, had I not seen the date of Dec. 29, 1905, on the edge of one old, printed page. I lifted the crumpled paper from the center of the hat box and could not believe what lay before my eyes.

There it was… Nathan's carousel. The old metal toy was right there, and in my own hands, as I raised it carefully from the box. It was smaller than I had imagined, from the brother's drawing. And it was perfect. Six brightly painted pressed-tin ponies stood, ready to run on their tiny metal rods, waiting as they had for ages in that darkened space. The tiny metal carousel roof, with its cheerily painted decorations, looked as if it were nearly new. The trimmings all around the toy were carefully painted there, by such a toy making craftsman as likely no longer exists in our time. The thing could have come from a fancy toy store that very afternoon. But it did not. It had been here, since Nathans last Christmas, while nearly one hundred December Christmas trees had been taken into the house, decorated, and later removed. The carousel had been here through two world wars and more and had lain in silence through countless happy times and surely some sad times in our old home. Thousands of family dinners had taken place in the dining room one floor down, just below this closet; millions of words had been spoken here but not heard by the toy, and a half dozen families had come and gone, pretending to own a home that outlasted them all.

As I sat there in amazement, I wondered how this toy could be so old, and still so new. I thought of the near-numberless hours since this carousel had last seen the light of day. And I began to see that time had little grasp on what I now grasped in my hands. It was not alive, and although contained the energy from the winding of a small boy's hand, also held the strength to pass that energy on, through many days and years, itself unharmed. It would not grow old. In the sealed box it did not even fade or rust. Indeed, I thought, without life, the ability to sense a passing hour, or the effects of nature on a thing, does the hour pass for that thing at all? I wondered if time had meaning for something without the mind to measure it. I pondered if our lives went whizzing by as a speeded-up film to something so insulated from the world as this one had been. Perhaps the dark closet; the wax covered box, and the silence of the walls all worked to let this small traveler slip quickly, effortlessly through the relentless fingers that press so heavily on us all, time.

Then I saw the small bent-metal lever on the side of Nathan's carousel. I touched the lever, at first afraid to see the carousel fail to run, and then afraid to waste Nathans power, as his brother's note had warned. I placed the toy on the bedside table, and slowly pressed the lever to one side. In an instant the whirring of a tiny flywheel buzzed to life; the music box briefly played its tinny tune, and the carousel spun slowly; its horses gliding up, down, and around, propelled by the spirit and the muscle of the boy Nathan. I quickly pushed the lever back, and chuckled at the wonder of it all, while the carousel abruptly stopped.

As I cautiously replaced Nathan's toy in its box, and gently tucked the newsprint all around and over it, just as it had been, I knew I would never see the carousel again, and could tell no one of it at all. I had had my turn in line, waiting for the carousel to spin its way through time. I felt honored to have stumbled blindly on this antique traveler. Or did I stumble at all? If so, I was one of several to do so over the years. That I knew. Perhaps we were all meant to greet the carousel, as future dwellers here may do, as long as the old house stands. I placed the drawing, the letter, and the other notes, as I had found them, back into the box. Then I wrote a note of my own to add to the pile of wishes for Nathan.

It read: "Nathan, thank you for sharing your carousel with me. It is beautiful. Be at peace to know it travels on, and still contains the life you lent to it. A happy journey to you." I signed the note and added the numbers 1997. I placed it on top of the rest and put the lid on the box. The brief flash of light that was this day was quickly extinguished inside; I knew. Finding a candle, of a different color still from those used before, I lit it, for Nathan. The wax dripped around the edge of the box, and mingled with wax from ages past, sealing the box once more.

As I placed the box within the hole, within the closet of the old house, and wedged the board back into place to cover it, I felt sorrow for the young lad Nathan. How sad that this poor child, dead a score of years before the birth of even my parents, had slipped out of existence at such an early age. Or had he, really?

My Earliest Blessing

2025-02-16T06:30:00.000-08:00

By G. E. Shuman

I don’t remember mentioning in another column what I’m about to share, but if I did, please forgive me. We’re all friends here, right? Lately, my ‘rememberer’ isn’t what it used to be, and what it used to be wasn’t all that good either.

Anyway, here goes. Almost exactly a year ago Lorna and I made a trip to Florida to celebrate my mom’s birthday. It was to be a very special birthday, and a big party had been planned for her. I happened to mention that this was going to happen to one of my high school English classes at the time and was met with several surprised looks. One girl in the front row, with eyes so wide it looked like she had swallowed her eraser or something, simply blurted out: “YOUR mother is still alive?” Now I know teenagers aren’t often known for their tact, but this seemed a bit rude to me; at least until I had given it more thought. Yes, she’s very much alive, I answered the girl. She actually still flies to Maine each summer to visit, and I continued, she still rides her Harley. (That Harley point was a lie. I just couldn’t resist.) I do have a great pic of her sitting on my brother’s bike not that many years ago, though.

That birthday, last February, was Mom’s one hundredth; yes, one hundredth, and in thinking about that, while looking at me, and in commenting, I guess it’s easy to see why that young girl’s eyes were so wide. What I had said in class that day must have seemed like an impossibility to her. It nearly does to me.

For about the past year, ever since the party, Mom has begun doing something new. Each evening at about seven o’clock, and I mean every single evening at about seven o’clock, she calls me from her Florida home, for just a few minutes. I told our eight-year-old granddaughter Nahla about this, and, with a sheepish look and a slight giggle, she said: “Papa, she’s tucking you in.” Since telling Mom about Nahla’s comment, each evening when we’re done our chat, Mom says something like “I hope it’s okay to tuck you in this early.”

An amazing thing to me is how much this small ritual with my elderly mother has blessed my life. After all, how many seventy-year-old men still get ‘tucked in’ by their mom each night? How many seventy-year-old men even still have their mom?

It has been said that a person’s blessings are where they find them. Be on the lookout for yours, or you might miss some of them. I would add that you don’t always find your blessings, some blessings find you. Our new, handsome, smiley four-month-old grandson is a splendid example. Wow! Talk about getting wrapped around a tiny little finger in a hurry!

Still, one of my greatest and earliest blessings ‘found’ me over 70 years ago. She brought me into this world, she raised me, she took me to church since before I was born, (literally), and she still tucks me in at night. How cool is that?

Thank you, Mom, and happy one hundred and first birthday.

Goodbye to an Old Friend

2025-02-13T08:59:00.000-08:00

By G. E. Shuman

Over the years I have learned that friends can come, and can go, in all shapes, sizes, ages… and even species of life. We have all had and lost family members and other human friends, and those times are always sad. But who hasn’t also Iost a family pet or even a farm animal that has just become one of the family and is missed exactly as such when they are gone. Sometimes the old saying, “You don’t know what you’ve got, ‘til it’s gone.” is a true jolt of reality. It may seem strange, but I believe that life in any form can be missed, even if it is time for that life to go.

For the past one hundred or more years a huge sugar maple tree has stood, strong and silent, on the corner of our front lawn. The house was built a hundred and twenty years ago, and I have always assumed that this big tree was planted at the time of the construction of the house. It was one of three such maples that had been spaced fairly evenly across our front lawn and that of the home next to ours and was the last of the three that were once there.

Very unfortunately, the week before last was the tree’s last week on our lawn. We had known for a few years that the tree was dying and had finally come to the decision to have the huge old friend removed. The company that we hired was very professional; the workers were friendly and knowledgeable and knew exactly what to do. They arrived on time with more equipment than I could believe, but with exactly what was needed. Within the next five hours the three- to four-foot-thick tree was completely gone from our property, almost surgically removed from its spot, along with every single twig and branch it had once held high above our large old home. (We highly recommend this company, Vt Arborists/SavATree.)

Since that day I have thought a lot about that old tree, and how it had, truly, been a part of our family’s experience here on Wellington Street. It is very conspicuous in its absence, and that absence has left a big tree-shaped hole in the appearance of our small front lawn. The squirrels and chipmunks can no longer use it as a lofty bridge to safely get from the wooded lot across the street to our side; the birds who once lived in the tree must, obviously, just be somewhere else now.

And we have lost a bit more than a beautiful, if dying old tree from the yard. The adage of a tree being ‘shade in the summer and warmth in the winter’ is a very real occurrence. The many thousands of leaves this one tree produced shaded the entire front of our home from the afternoon summer sun; and fell in the fall, just in time to let that sun into the front rooms the entire winter season.

Yes, to our family, the old sugar maple was important, appreciated, and will be missed. It is possible that its giant root system will produce another tree. If this happens, we intend to let it grow, although Lorna and I probably won’t be around to see it become what the old one was. That will be saved for the next generation to own this old home. I’m just glad I have the pictures I took last Thursday. Goodbye old friend.

The Things I ‘Love’ About Winter

2025-01-17T07:59:00.000-08:00

By G. E. Shuman

Most people who enjoy winter in the North have a few things in common. They either love outdoor sports, like skiing, snowboarding, and snow machining, or they are into making snowmen, snow angels, and other strange snow things. They love awaiting the first snowfall, which normally hits our area before we get our pumpkins carved, and they get excited by that ‘winter wonderland’ feeling of a snowy Christmas. Well, I don’t do or feel much of that. I used to, but not anymore.

I am pretty sure that aging is directly proportional to a lack of tolerance of cold weather. Either that or I’m just getting cranky in my elder years. I guess that’s why God makes snow birds and sends them off to Florida every winter.

I always ‘look forward’ (joking) to my first winter preparation ‘ritual’ which usually has something to do with fixing the snowblower and checking to see if it is gassed up and actually starts. (The only thing I dislike more than snow blowing is shoveling when there is no gas in the blower. I almost never let that happen.) Getting the thing ready for the first blizzard is just so satisfying. Sure.

I also have an exciting time, usually sometime in January, trying to unscrew the garden hose from the house after there is already ice in it. (I don’t have a garden… just a hose. I’m terrible at growing things.) I am reminded that I didn’t disconnect that hose when I notice it, still attached to the house, while driving into the yard. This is always on the coldest and windiest day of that month. I then go inside, remove my boots, go to the cellar, find the correct wrench, or one that will possibly work, go back up the cellar stairs, put my boots back on and go back outside to undo the hose. I then drag the stiff thing down into the cellar, again. It all seems so familiar. Now I’ll just have to see, again, in the spring, if the hose split and if I will get to buy a nice new one. Yea!

Another thing I love about winter is that I don’t have to mow the lawn. Having a ridiculously small lawn, I shouldn’t complain about taking care of it, but I do, anyway. It is always a joy to me when the lawn finally gives up the ghost sometime in August and just stops growing. I don’t water it with my new yearly garden hose, (I wonder if it will be a bright green one this year.) The hose is mostly just out there so that I can disconnect it when it’s really cold out. I also do, in the summer, wash the cars out there. I also would NEVER buy lawn food. That would not help my feeble lawn grow much, and even if it did help, that wouldn’t help. A nice snow-covered lawn is smooth, and some people think, pretty. In any case, the snow covers that grass very uniformly and builds up as the frigid days linger. The difference between it and grass is, mostly, that it will get rid of itself after it gets to be a certain height. Sun doesn’t help it grow; it helps it go away, which is good. So, that’s another good thing about winter.

I also get to stay home more in the winter, and I don’t mind that at all. There’s nothing like hunkering down on a cold winter’s night and listening to the furnace run.

Eventually the snow will go, and I will head to the hardware store, peruse the seed display and outdoor tools, (for someone else’s garden,) and pick out my new garden hose. I wonder what color it will be this year. Like I said, I don’t have a garden, just a hose. I’m terrible at growing things.

Replacement Resolutions (For men who have already forgotten theirs.)

2025-01-03T06:30:00.000-08:00

By G. E. Shuman

New Year’s resolutions are quite easy to make. Somehow, right around New Year’s Day many of us make some bold decision or other, and also, somehow, many of us keep that ‘resolution’ exactly until the first time we forget to do it. Then it’s just all over.

My ‘resolution,’ although I did not say it was a resolution, was to walk more. I thought I could do that, because more than ‘not at all’ didn’t seem like a big task. Still, it is a week past the start of the year, and I haven’t walked more, yet. The road to the mall is paved with good intentions, or something like that. In any case, that’s where I intended, and still do intend to walk until the weather improves. Then I intend to walk the sidewalks of our town. Ya, okay.

You may have something else in mind, resolution’-wise. You may intend to lose weight, or get a new job, or save money, or do all three of these or something entirely different than these, this year. Whatever your case may be, isn’t it great, at the very beginning of a new year, to have some brand-new goals too? I think so.

I am a man, and can only speak here for my own gender, but I do have a few suggestions for guys of my age and attitude. If you have not yet resolved to resolve something, how about starting with these things? Or, if you’re like me and have somehow resolved to procrastinate on committing to your resolutions, the following simple things might be just what your new year needs.

Firstly, be polite, have manners. Open doors for ladies, especially older ladies. You may get a few dirty looks in doing so, but I doubt it. At my age, the older ones are getting harder to find but they are still there.

Use please and thank you. You learned how when you were a little boy, from a lady not unlike the older ones you’re attempting to open doors for now.

Next, do more things for yourself. If you shop at stores that deliver your items right out to your car, don’t use that service. Get your butt out of the car and do your own shopping. You know, if more of us did that we would get more exercise, there would be more parking spaces for all customers, and the stores could train those cart employees to cash people out, like they used to. And then there are the safety issues. A few weeks ago, I was nearly bowled over by three vested zealous employees as they pulled what first appeared to me to be a Smurf Christmas train across the store.

Also, as a man, when you enter a building, maybe a store, but especially a church or someone’s home, take off your danged hat. It isn’t that hard to do. Military men tuck their hats under their armpits without even thinking about it. The rest of us have armpits too… right? I think so.

And, not to put anyone down, but please watch your language? Do this around ladies, children, your mother, and your dog. Using the ‘f’ word, especially, three times in each sentence makes a person sound a bit language-challenged. Sorry.

Say I’m sorry if you’re sorry, like I did at the end of the last suggestion.

Lastly, and possibly most importantly, a great resolution would be to take the advice that the late Fred Rogers once offered when asked to tell the three most important things a person could do in life. His reply? “Be kind, be kind, be kind.”

Mary’s Christmas

2024-12-17T08:16:00.000-08:00

By G. E. Shuman

"And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart." Luke 2:18-19.

It’s About Time

2024-12-05T17:01:00.000-08:00

By G. E. Shuman

This is the time of year when I usually write a column or two about the passing of time, about how fast the year has gone, and about what we may have in store in the next year. It may touch on things recently experienced and be a bit about how quickly we get old… things like that.

This year I thought I’d do something a little different. It is true that the year has gone by quickly, as usual, for me, seeing that we are already halfway through December. Twenty twenty-five will be here seemingly any minute, for sure.

The ‘different’ thing for me this year is that I recently experienced something in my life that sort of grabbed me by the collar, shook me around a bit, and made me re-think exactly what the times of our lives are, and even more, what time itself is. If you don’t mind, and at the risk of you thinking me even more strange than you might already, I'd like to share some of that with you.

I love books, and believe it or not, stating that now should make sense to you in a few minutes. It’s not that I’m a voracious reader, as is my wife. In fact, I probably write a lot more than I read. Writing sort of invigorates my mind; reading a lot seems to put me to sleep. Go figure.

The books I do love best are the really old ones. The Bible is the one that is understood as my favorite, but also other old and brittle, well-worn tomes full of even more worn pages are wonderful too. Those books bring the past, the ‘then-present’ thoughts of long-ago people to our own present, to the ‘now’ of our own existence. In this way I think of old books as time capsules. Those people who wrote them share their ideas with us; their ‘present’ moments are presented to us in our own present moment, if you see what I mean. The author had the same thoughts at the moment of writing as I do at the moment of reading, regardless of the number of years or even centuries between my time and his or hers. (That makes my brain hurt, just a little.)

I’d like to do a short object lesson regarding ‘time’ and maybe the fact that we really don’t need to worry about things in the past or the future. To do an object lesson you need an object. Our object will be a book. It doesn’t need to be an old book, just a book. So, go get a book. I’ll wait.

Now if you could just hold the book in your hands and let it open, maybe somewhere in the middle, although about eleven twelfths of the way toward the back of the book would be perfect. It is December, which will be in the back, but it’s just an object lesson, after all. Find a page in the book and hold that page between your thumb and forefinger. That’s right. Just like that. Now imagine that the pages to the left of your fingers are the pages you have already read, or the days of this year that you have already lived. The days, the pages to the right of your hand, although just in your mind, would be blank, as those have not been experienced yet. That part of the book has not even been written yet; you have not ‘lived’ those days yet.

If you think about it, maybe not completely clearly, but somewhat objectively, the page in your fingers is all we really have. We live ‘on the edge’ of that page, a fleeting moment at a time. The pages of life, of the year, of the months and weeks and days of it, are all either in the past or the future. Sure, you can re-read those old words of the past, written to the left of where your page is, but you are reading them in the precise ‘now’ of your time. You can attempt to write on the pages of the future, but only in vagaries and hopes of what will happen during them.

To me, all that means, if it means anything at all, that we don’t need to worry about the past, as it no longer even exists other than as old words. We don’t need to relive it all the time. It has been said that “Forgiveness is giving up on having a better past.” Interesting.

And looking at the blank pages of the future may help us sort out and manage tomorrow’s time a bit, but that also does not YET exist. All we can do is try to pin those pages down with what we think, or wish will happen.

So, my good friend, time as we know it may not exist at all, other than as an invention to keep things mentally ordered. We have no promise of tomorrow but exist on that thin edge of the page called ‘now.’ As the next year approaches, let’s remember to live in the present, where we belong.

On Being Thankful

2024-11-21T08:07:00.000-08:00

By G. E. Shuman

This year November was a month of recuperation, of settling in, of staying put, and of thinking thoughts of the soon-coming winter, for me. Any spare time in October was spent doing the chores which make November’s ‘settling in’ possible, like getting air conditioners put away, leaky doors fixed, and windows locked up tight in this hundred-plus year-old home of ours.

Leaves from our two huge maples are faithful to cover the lawn each autumn, and are blown or raked away, followed by the rakes, themselves, being put away and replaced by snow shovels under the carport. Each year I spend some time making sure the snow blower still starts, and is greased up, fueled up, and ready for the weather to come. I don’t mind doing these chores that make our home as efficient and comfortable as possible when the harsh weather really hits.

I get a bit contemplative at this tucked-in holiday season, especially, it seems, in the past few years. This old house is not as full of family and their belongings as it once was. Sometimes that is a difficult thing for me to think about.

I tend to be something of a poor sleeper and am thankful for the chance to fill some late evening hours writing to you, dear readers. So, thank you for easing those hours, and for the chance to express a few thoughts that many of us ‘northerners,’ even though we may be strangers, likely share.

Even now, as I sit here in silence, it is cold outside the windows of this house on the hill, and it is very dark out there. The winds of one more late fall evening beat against the aging glass panes, but fortunately, those winds have always stayed on the outside of this place. For this I am thankful. Indeed, it is quite warm in here, and cozy, tonight. The furnace works well, and there is enough fuel.

All this contemplation is not a sad thing to me, but is, sometimes, a chance for reflection on the things my wife and I have done this year, and, reaching back further, the things we have done throughout all the years that we have lived in this place. (Obviously, without her, there would be no ‘we,’ and likely, by now, not even a ‘me.’) We were so blessed to raise five tremendously talented children in this old place, for which I am, truly, thankful. Those five amazing people are as diverse as any five children could ever be, and I would do anything at all to help any one of them.

I have been, truly and unquestionably, very blessed. Having a beautiful, faithful, Christian wife, wonderful children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, and a warm home to occasionally share with them all makes for quite a life. What more could a man ask for?

I am not at all sure why the words that have assembled on my computer screen this evening have done so as they have. When I write, that is often the case. I think, tonight, it is just because I cannot help but tell you that I am very thankful for my life, and for the people in it; for what I have, and for what I have had. I hope you feel the same way about your life, too.

Unless you are a member of my family, or of my small group of friends, I do not know anything about your beliefs. In any case, I will let you know mine. I believe very much in God, in His Son Jesus, in our nation, and in family. I also believe it is important to recognize and to be grateful for all that we have in the overflowing cornucopia of a country that we share, especially in this contemplative, settled-in time of year.

I hope you will take a few minutes, as the holidays approach, not to stop and smell the roses, as there are few roses outside right now, but to stop and sense the fullness of what your life is, and of what you have experienced, so far. And, in a word, to be thankful. If you express your thankfulness in a prayer, He really will listen.

Have a blessed and happy Thanksgiving!

A Most Unusual Day

2024-11-07T10:12:00.004-08:00

By G. E. Shuman

This most unusual day, of which I am about to tell you, happened not long ago. In fact, I’ll tell you exactly when. It’s no secret, and, although it won’t mean a great deal, or add much to the story, I think you should know when it was. That way, if someone asks you when George’s most unusual day was, (they won’t,) you can tell them.

The exact day was October 18th of this year. It was a Friday, as I recall, but ‘recalling’ is something I’m not known for doing well; at least not lately. October 18^th of this year was a day like many others; at least it started out that way and was proceeding that way… right up to the point that it wasn’t. Our daughter, Emily, had been visiting with our new grandson, and had left less than an hour before that point when it was no longer a day like many others.

The afternoon was progressing along just swimmingly, as they used to say. Lorna was watching her fav ‘chick’ type, or more like ‘grandma-chick’ type TV show, (something about birthing babies, midwives, and such,) and “I don’t know nothin’ about birthin’ no babies,” as someone else once said.

I mentioned to Lorna that I was going to go take Babi out for a ride. Babi is my antique VW, (It’s the blue and white one you may have seen around town.) I’m quite sure she replied with an ‘okay’. (Lorna, not Babi.) Anyway, within minutes I had walked down our driveway and onto the sidewalk in front of our old house. I do remember bending over to straighten up a wind-blown political sign on the lawn, (Thanks Michael B.) and then straightened myself back up, probably too quickly, and became dizzy in the process.

Now comes the unusual-day part. You see, I was suddenly seeing double as I continued down the two sidewalks that were usually one. I crossed the street to the garage where my VW sleeps and, even though there were now four garage doors instead of two, as there used to be, I pressed the remote that was in my hand and opened at least one of those doors. I then actually walked to the car door, unlocked it, opened it, and stood there looking at the ‘two’ Volkswagens I now seemed to own. (Yes, I would love to have two, but not that way, I somehow reasoned.)

You know, I really wanted to get in the car and take it for a ride, but somehow came to my double-visioned senses enough to realize I probably shouldn’t do that. With this decision I shut the car door, then the garage door, and headed back across the street toward the house.

Lorna has mentioned that God must have been there with me in those moments, as, by this time, I was, for some reason, dragging my right leg and foot through the fallen leaves on the walk. “Now that’s strange,” I thought, as I watched my foot plow through the leaves. I really had no thoughts of fear or trepidation as I walked, (At that point I probably couldn’t have even spelled trepidation if I had wanted to,) and, in fact, dropped the remote in the leaves, looked around for it, and found it, before I headed up the steep driveway to the back door of the house.

As Lorna sometimes relates all of this to a friend or relative, she always mentions that God Himself must have held my hand as I went up that driveway. Indeed, He might have, as I have little memory of it. If I had passed out, out there I would have been there for some time. After all, I had told Lorna that I would be going out with Babi. She wouldn’t have expected me back for a while. I also didn’t have my phone, even though I wasn’t thinking about that either at the time.

I did get to the back door, opened it, and evidently, told my dear wife that I thought I was having a stroke, which was exactly what was happening. Then, with lots of love, clear thinking, and a 911 call, Lorna saved my life. She really did. Before the ambulance even arrived, I had lost consciousness several times and was unable to speak or walk. I am still sorry for scaring her so.

Soon I was in the hospital and awoke with most of my family encircling my bed. My first thought at that time was something like ‘Oh crap, they’re all here… this must be it.’ Still, honestly, I wasn’t the least bit afraid. In fact, I remember feeling a genuinely great peace. It was strange to me that all these wonderful, supportive people seemed so worried.

To make this story a bit shorter, let me just say that, at this writing I simply have everything back, which, to me and my family, is a miracle, or the result of many miracles. I had received a powerful ‘clot-busting’ medication in time and was soon back to whatever level of normalcy I had once had. (Sorry, this is all there ever was.)

God has been incredibly good to me, and I learned at least three things that most unusual day. I hope I never forget them.

Firstly, if we are saved; if our hearts are right with God, there is no need to fear the future, or even death. You have heard that before, but it really is true.

Secondly, we have no promise of tomorrow, so today must be lived, and appreciated, passionately.

Thirdly, you may have the second-best spouse and family in the world, but I have the best.

Subtle Hauntings? Installments 1, 2, and 3

2024-10-24T13:09:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,

There are many things I would like to share with you in this short season of scary thoughts and imaginings, and I don’t want to leave out vital details. For those reasons I am dividing this long piece into three parts. Each one relates one or more true and sometimes creepy experiences of my family at our one hundred twenty-year-old home at the top of a Barre City hill. I invite you to read this first installment now and pick up the October 23rd and 30th editions of The World to continue reading. These true tales may be best enjoyed in a candle-lit room on a cold and windy midnight.

Subtle Hauntings?

-installment one-

By G. E. Shuman

Many full moons, fallen leaves, and Halloween seasons ago my family bought our old house on the hill from an elderly Barre couple who, at the time, had lived in the house for over forty years. Their kids had grown, and the house was too much work and just too much house for the couple. Those are the reasons they gave for wanting to leave the place. I remember, while discussing our deal on the house, the old man of the couple looking directly at me and relating that they were tired, that the house had been on the market for a year, (at a very good price I will add,) and that only four people had even stopped to look at it, before our inquiry. There was some look of puzzled disbelief if not desperation in those eyes.

Time is a strange thing, and it is funny, or not so funny, how it passes, how changes all around you can occur with barely a notice or warning. This is especially, I think, if you are surrounded by a place that barely changes at all. We are now the’ elderly’ couple living in the house and have just finished our own fortieth year here. As with the previous owners, our children have grown, along with even most of our grandchildren. We have no plans to leave the house, but plans can change; things can happen to convince you to go. Given enough time they ultimately must do so, and then you will go.

A suitable time of year to talk about our spooky old house on the hill seems to be when others are in the mood to hear such things. It is October and night comes a bit earlier each day now, blanketing the fallen leaves with ever-lengthening blackness. The winds are colder and stronger than they were, especially during the night; gnarled ‘witch finger’ bare boned branches of our large maple tree rub and creak and complain to the world. Jack-o-lanterns and ghosts adorn the neighborhood, even up here on the hill.

So, in honor the old house and everyone who has grown up here, or at least spent a night here, I will now relate some things that have happened within these walls, over the many years of our occupancy.

Disclaimer: I personally do not believe in ghosts, ghouls, or goblins. I do believe my own eyes and ears and promise you that every single thing I will tell you here is absolutely true.

-The Attic-

Our grown and oldest child, Chrissy, is, to this day, fairly convinced that something besides humans and the occasional mouse lives in our old house on the hill. I have never asked her directly, but I’m sure something must have scared her horribly here when she was a young child. She recently confided to me: “I really have heard and seen things there, Dad.”

For years Chrissy had one of the upstairs bedrooms as her own and would tell you today that she had often heard footfalls, in the night, as of something walking across the attic floor above her bed. Ours is a full walk-up attic, with the usual dust, cobwebs, and creaking floors of such places. The dampness and darkness of the attic is not inviting; tapping sounds have been heard, and things have tended to fall to the floor unexpectedly up there. Not from fear or dread, but rather just of no necessity, we rarely open the old door and go up there, especially in the night.

Chrissy is a rational, reasonable, intelligent adult. Still, I doubt that she would ever spend a night all alone in our old house. I know that if she did, walking up those attic stairs would be out of the question for her. This, perhaps, because of experiences that only she understands. Sometimes there are just more reasons to stay away than to venture up into something of the unknown.

There is, truly, nothing creepier than experiencing something thought to be impossible or only of your imagination, and then having that impossible thing firmly verified by another person. Imagining as a child that someone was lurking under your bed could only be more terrifying upon learning that someone actually was. Such is the case of our experience of ‘The Little Girl on the Landing,’ which is part of the next installment of Subtle Hauntings, to be shared in the October 23rd edition. See you there.

Subtle Hauntings?

By G. E. Shuman

Here is the second installment of my three-part, ‘spooky’ stuff series for October. These tales are true ones from our old Barre house on the hill. You may not believe in ghosts, goblins, or other such things, (I don’t either,) but I do believe my eyes and ears, and so should you. Note: Reach back to the October 16th edition of the paper for part number one and step patiently into the near future for the final installment on October 30th.

-Installment Two-

The Little Girl on the Landing

Many years ago, and for many years, the furniture in our living room, in the old house on the hill, had an arrangement that didn’t change. A new couch or chair might have been added to the room if an old one was removed, but the general placement of things remained the same for a long, long time. By habit, I assume, I would usually sit in a recliner while watching TV in the evening; Lorna would usually sit on the couch against another wall. This was not always the case, but usually. In those days we watched many more evening shows than we do now, and the spooky part is, I don’t remember one of them. What a colossal waste of time.

That past TV era of ours was when our older three girls were very young. As with many families, we would get the kids tucked into bed, listen to prayers, and wander back down to turn on ‘the tube.’ I would climb into that old recliner, and Lorna would go to the couch.

One evening, an hour or so after the kids were in bed and, we assumed, asleep, I saw something eerily disturbing that I remember clearly to this day. The recliner sat under the archway to the next room, which was the front entryway to the house. (Things like entryways are as big as rooms in old houses such as ours.)

You see, sitting there, while facing the TV, my right peripheral vision was toward the twelve stairs which led up the stairway to a small landing and then around a corner and three more stairs, up to the bedrooms. Rooms in homes like ours take on a large and cubical appearance due to their extremely lofty ceilings. The landing before the three additional stairs allows you to catch your breath on the way up. The more years pass by, the more I appreciate that landing.

On that dark evening, I was sure, and still am sure, I caught a glimpse of the outline of a long-haired little girl standing in the dim light, on the edge of that high stairway landing, momentarily looking directly down at me. The child then either went around the corner and up the three stairs or disappeared. I could not tell which. I was not at first surprised at these things, as the little girl could have been any of our three, perhaps unable to sleep or wanting a glass of water. I did want the girls to get to sleep.

I immediately went up the stairs to see which one of our girls had not yet gotten off to sleep that night. Strangely, I found all three very soundly sleeping in their beds, breathing deeply or snoring. I could tell if they were ‘faking,’ pretending to be asleep, and they were not. Pillow drool always seemed to confirm such things. I went back down to the living room without saying anything about it to my wife.

This same increasingly disturbing occurrence happened at least three more times over a few more weeks.

Eventually, after repeatedly going to check on the girls, I chalked it all up to either my glasses failing me or some after image from the TV blurring my sight and didn’t give it much more thought. That was until one evening when Lorna got to the recliner before I did. I sat on the couch across the room. After some time of our mutual and mindless show-watching Lorna suddenly turned her head and looked directly up those stairs. We had never discussed the little girl on the landing, but at that moment I just said: “You saw her, didn’t you?” ”Yes,” Was Lorna’s whispered reply. We have not seen the little girl since that night, but Lorna’s visual confirmation was enough to make me realize that just because reason tells you someone or something isn’t on the landing, or in the closet, or under the bed… doesn’t mean they are not.

Come back next week for some shared memories of a perhaps ‘haunted’ but more likely ‘God-sent’ toy firetruck, blood-red words of warning in the cellar, and rattling bedroom doorknobs at midnight. In the meantime, pleasant dreams.

Subtle Hauntings?

By G. E. Shuman

Here is the third installment of my three-part, ‘spooky’ stuff series for October. These tales are true ones from our old Barre house on the hill. You may not believe in ghosts, goblins, or other such things, (Neither do I) but I do believe my eyes and ears, and so should you. Note: Reach back to the October 16th and 23rd editions of the paper for parts one and two or read them all on the paper’s website: vt-world.com. Thank you.

-Installment Three-

The Firetruck

This part of the story of our old home on the hill goes back over twenty-five years, and is an occurrence that I cannot explain, but rather give God the credit for, not some phantom or spirit as some here would imagine. This happening probably, literally saved lives in our home one night, including that of our oldest grandchild, Devon. Devon was just an infant then and was sound asleep in his crib in the same upstairs bedroom that Chrissy used to have, and that we sleep in now. I heard a siren sound, unbelievably, coming from that second floor and went upstairs to see what was happening. The sound was coming from where Devon slept, so I slowly approached the crib. Just as I did so, a small battery powered toy firetruck raced out from under the crib, directly toward my feet, lights blazing and siren blasting. I stopped the toy and turned it off. Then I looked under the crib to see and smell a small pile of clothes that was within moments of bursting into flames, right below where my grandson slept. Pulling out the clothes I discovered one of our girls’ hair curling irons, on and extremely hot, beneath that little ‘haystack’ of hot discarded clothes.

I believe that that night possibly our home, and certainly our grandson had been saved by a warning from the perfect thing to do it… a small toy firetruck which had somehow turned on and had pointed out the danger at the precise place, at exactly the right moment.

The Shaking Doorknob

The story of the shaking doorknob shook my wife to the extreme when I first told her about it. I thought I had solved the situation, had figured out what was happening by the time I told Lorna about it, so I was not disturbed at the time. Lately I have wondered if I figured wrong.

You see, and as I have said, our house is old. Much of the house is original, including the doors to the rooms, with their hinges and latches. Things were made very well a hundred and twenty years ago, when our house was constructed, and those well-made things are still fulfilling their intended purposes here, including the metal doorknobs.

One night, months ago, I had just gone to bed, my wife had done so earlier and had fallen sound asleep. I lay there thinking of the day behind and the one ahead, as I usually do, when suddenly our closet doorknob rattled. It didn’t rattle a tiny bit as something might have from some vibration or other. It rattled only momentarily, but quite hard. I was, of course, startled, and eventually got out of bed and very slowly opened the closet door. No goblin or alien was seen, thankfully. Believe me if you wish to, or not, but over the course of a week or so, this rattling happened several more nights as I lay in the bed before falling asleep.

In explanation, there is a small clothing hook on the inside of the closet door, and I always use it to hang my towel on after my daily shower. These hooks were all over our home when we first bought it. They are the ones that appear to be made from coat hanger wire that has been twisted into a hook shape. Evidently, many years ago, such hooks were thought to be the perfect way to hang something in a home, at least, someone in our home’s distant past must have thought so. I eventually woke up to the fact that my bath towel was often on the floor of the closet when I opened it to check for ghosts. Silly me, I thought. All that happened was my towel falling off the hook and hitting the inner doorknob on its way to a soft landing on the floor. Okay, so there were no ghoulish fingers rattling that knob.

Lately though, I have wondered more about all of this. You see, it now occurs to me that the towel always fell late at night, sometime after I had gone to bed, if that is what rattled the knob. This is very strange, as I always shower in the morning and hang up the towel immediately after. Also, after a week or so the rattling stopped, and the towel has not fallen from the hook again. Still, I’m waiting.

The Falling Pictures

I know that people who believe in the ghosts and ‘spirits’ of the Halloween season are probably just innocent thrill and attention seekers who want a story to tell to their own families. If you know me at all, you know that is not ‘me.’ I am the opposite of one who seeks attention. It is my goal to leave this world as silently as I entered it. (My mother says I was not a fussy baby. Good for me. I hate whiners.)

Still, there is another, maybe minor story from our home, that I would like to tell. About three years ago now Lorna and I decided to move from the bedroom we had nightly occupied for thirty odd years. So, we got our stuff together, and moved into Chrissy’s old room, which had become Emily’s old room. In the process we bought a new bed, did the minimalist thing of putting shelving in the closet, (you know that closet,) and forgoing dressers. FYI, this has worked extremely well for us. We (meaning I) painted the ceiling and walls. We, (meaning Lorna and I) picked out two big, beautiful, and scenic prints to hang on the walls.

Evidently, or not so, I’m not sure which, someone or something soon got tired of those prints. Last spring, which was a few years after we (I) first hung those pictures with the strongest frame hanging adhesive strips I could find, one of them, one night, very loudly fell to the floor. Within a day or two I got strips that were even stronger, wider, and just infinitely superior to the others, (according to the words on the package) and rehung the painting. A few days later, during the night, it was on the floor again.

All this was not enough to make me suspicious of apparent ghosts in our bedroom, but what happened next was. You see, one morning, only a week or so later, as Lorna was still sleeping, the other painting, which hung at the head of the bed, left the wall, and came crashing down onto the pillows, only inches from her head.

I have finally learned my lesson. Those pictures are now screwed to the wall. I know of no ghosts with the ability to use a screwdriver.

The Mantle Statue and Other Minor Bone Chillers

To end this account of all the strange things our old home contains, and to save time and words, I will just briefly mention the small Roman statue which sits on the fireplace mantle and often had been seen turned around, facing the wall, until I glued it in place. There is also a small root cellar down in the basement with the words “No Girls Allowed” sloppily done in red and formerly-dripping, dried paint from the distant past on its door. Across from that room, in the patched concrete floor of the cellar are the simple, scrawled numbers proclaiming the year 1937, for some untold reason. The house had been built in 1905.

I leave you now with an anonymous quote from my youth; one which I have never known the origin of or my reason for remembering it. Perhaps it was given to me to foreshadow this place in which I would live so long.

“From ghoulies, and ghosties, and long-leggidy beasties, and other things that go BUMP in the night; Good Lord deliver us.”

The Counsel of the Years

2024-09-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

By G. E. Shuman

For some reason, my columns seem to be getting a little more philosophical lately. I’m not sure why that is, other than as people get older, they probably consider the spiritual and emotional areas of life more. The awesome paper you’re reading right now has always given me free reign in my subject matter here, and for that I will always be grateful.

So, I sit at the computer every other week and write about whatever comes to mind. Sometimes the subject might be on the humorous side; sometimes it is quite serious. I am not a trained literary or writing expert, for which I am very thankful. I do what I do because I just love expressing my thoughts through writing.

I am just like you, and I believe that is the key to this column’s success. People often come up to me on the street and thank me for some little thing I wrote that touched their heart or made them laugh. They always say how they identify with my thoughts here, which is a great honor to me. My secret is that we really are much alike, all of us, and have similar experiences in life.

So, this week, here is what I’d like to share with you. A friend once told me that the older we get the closer our emotions get to the surface. Boy, what a statement of truth that is. He said that to me many years ago, and even then, a heartfelt piece of music or emotional story would affect me greatly. These days a few words of God’s truth spoken in a Sunday morning sermon or a hug from one of my grandkids can turn this old curmudgeon into Jim Carrie’s Grinch as he sobbingly states: “And I’m leaking.”

We lost a lifelong friend last week. He was eighty-seven and terribly ill, but such realities didn’t strike me until, as I watched, one moment he was with us… and the next instant he no longer was. The tide of emotion for me at that moment was almost more than I could stand. I have since thought some of those emotions through and believe that my reactions were in the incredulity of what had happened. My life seems so steady, so ongoing that I know I don’t realize how much ‘ongoing’ there has been. Other than for a few aches and pains and lack of ambition, I don’t feel much different from when I was in my forties. (Actually, I lacked ambition back then too, I think.) We have lived in our home for so many years it seems like nothing will ever change… then I look in the mirror and realize just how much they already have. Oh well.

I hesitate to use this quote here, but I have always liked the honesty of it. In the movie Space Cowboys, an aging ex-astronaut, after being asked to do one more mission, casually states, “Everybody seems to be dead lately.” Well, the older I get, the more things do seem that way. My generation is quickly becoming the ‘old folks’ of the world. Those middle age ‘40s I referred to are getting pretty distant in the rear-view mirror these days.

But that’s all okay. In fact, that’s the way things are supposed to be. One of my favorite poems is the long and instructional “Desiderata,” meaning ‘desired things’ by Max Ehrmann ©1927. One of its best admonitions reads as follows: “Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.” It’s not easy, but I’m trying my best to do just that.

The Journey

2024-09-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

By G. E. Shuman

My brother-in-law, Art, is a great man. A retired, successful physician, Art has always been a very caring person who did well by his patients and still studies and seeks out treatments for people he knows are in medical need. His caring nature has helped our family in many ways over the years.

Art and my sister Barb moved to Florida years ago and have enjoyed their life together there.

In recent years Barb has become Art’s main medical concern, even over his own health issues. As I write this my dear sister is in a very real battle with a well-known, debilitating, and sinister disease. Art is doing absolutely everything humanly possible to help her enjoy her life.

Earlier in the summer Lorna and I had the opportunity to briefly visit Art and Barb in Florida. It was a difficult visit in some ways, but an important one for us to make. Through it we witnessed just how hard my sister’s husband is working to make her life everything it can be, for as long as he is able. I believe that his efforts are nothing short of heroic, and I have expressed that to him.

As we were saying our goodbyes that day, Art, Lorna, and I stood beside our cars with tears building and words hard to find. My heroic brother then said something I have yet to forget, and hope I never do. He simply said, “I’m on a journey.”

It was unusual that we had driven down to Florida this time, for this visit with them and the wedding of our grandson, Noah. Florida is not around the corner from Vermont, as you know, and I had many hours to think on our way home. I thought a lot about Art’s words, which I consider to be profound in meaning.

The thought occurred to me, and has never left me, that I am also on such a journey, as are you. A journey is a series of events, of experiences, of people and places, and none of this journey, including its length, is a certainty. Indeed, we have not been promised even tomorrow. We are given only today to live ‘today,’ and that is enough.

Our trip up to Vermont from Florida that week was not done all at once; obstacles were avoided, thankfully, but there were slowdowns and difficult traveling at times. These things were all taken one at a time, as they came.

Such also is our mutual journey through life. Today is the only part of this journey that we have, for sure, and we can never see what might be around the next corner. For this reason, I believe that we should travel cautiously. I also believe that we should make every effort to help others along the way, and also to enjoy the ride.

Thank you, Brother Art, for your wisdom and all you do.

An Unanswered Question

2024-08-02T06:57:00.000-07:00

By G. E. Shuman

While sitting together in our living room the other evening, my barely-eight-year-old granddaughter Nahla asked me a somewhat telling question. She was playing with her iPhone at the time, (Yes, she has a phone but with limited screen time, is not allowed on social media, and uses the phone mostly to play games on.)

Whenever Nahla asks me a question, she always prefaces it with “Papa, I have a question.” That’s how I know a question is coming, I suppose.

So, “Papa, I have a question.”

“What is it?” I responded, as usual.

“Do you have any smart devices?”

“Um, well…” I stumbled over my words. “I guess so.” In all honesty, I wasn’t sure, and before that moment I didn’t know that Nahla even knew the word ‘devices.’ I do know our home is littered with electronics of every shape and size; I wasn’t and still am not sure what constitutes ‘smart’ when it comes to all the undead thinking things surrounding us these days.

“Do we have a smart TV?” I asked her, knowing that we get more channels of mind-numbing programs than you can shake a stick (or a remote) at. I asked her that because I didn’t know if our TV was smart. I know it is big, flat, and black. Does that count?

She responded, “Maybe,” never looking up from the phone.

At this point, while already knowing my granddaughter is smarter than me, I was beginning to wonder if some of the doorknobs were too.

“How about my laptops, or Alexa?” I offered. “Are they smart?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I asked you.”

It’s like someone my age is really supposed to know the answers to such questions. Turning seventy and retiring, (both for the last time,) and realizing how much time you may or may not have left on this planet is no incentive to learn how to control or be controlled by any more devices, smart or stupid. I do still want to learn, but please don’t try to get me to understand or operate many more new ‘things’ with screens and buttons and apps and pages of tiny-fonted instructions. (I hate those instructions.)

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m happy that my grandkids are all intelligent, capable young people who can run rings round me in the electronic-literacy realms of life. That knowledge will serve them well in our ever-advancing world. And it may or may not be too late for me to absorb much more of that stuff, but I do hope it is. I’d rather read a book and take a nap, preferably at the same time.

I never adequately answered Nahla’s question about smart devices. I only recently figured out my Keurig and the garage door opener. Still, at this point in my life, maybe some ignorance really is bliss.

My New Flag

2024-06-13T18:32:00.000-07:00

By G. E. Shuman

I bought a new ‘outdoor’ America Flag today. Our old one had gotten a bit faded over the last several years, and had acquired a slightly dingy look, as has our entire front porch, due to sun damage and the blowing dust from the passing traffic in front of our home.

We have replaced our flag more times than I can remember in the forty plus years we’ve been in this oId house, and I decided to get a somewhat ‘better” one than usual, this time. Our new flag will be a bit bigger than the others, with bold, stitched stripes and actual embroidered stars. Even better, from my point of view, it will be clean, bright, and new.

We always retire our flag from where it flies from the pole and bracket on one column of our front porch as correctly as we know how, by folding it in the traditional ceremonial triangle, and by later respectfully burning it. (I learned how to do this folding ritual in Cub Scouts, more than a few years ago. It was actually about sixty-three years ago, and I’d like to offer a very belated ‘thank you’ to my den mother, Mrs. Cole.)

I consider myself to be a patriotic person, but I am nothing compared to my wife Lorna in this regard. Lorna loves to wear American flag tee shirts, earrings, and other red, white, and blue garb, and not only around the patriotic national holidays. If Lorna had a tattoo, (She doesn’t. At least I’ve never seen one and I probably would have by now.) There is no question in my mind that it would be our country’s flag. In the area of love of country, Rosie the Riveter has nothing on my wife.

Actually, one year, several years ago, Lorna walked into a group of our family members at some gathering, wearing one of her stars and stripes tees, only to be welcomed by a comment by our son in law Adam: “Here comes old glory.” What a hoot! Adam has a wonderful way with a joke, and that one will always make me laugh.

These days there are celebrations around nearly every date on the calendar, and for many of those there are accompanying flags. Ours is a free country, and you and I are welcome to celebrate and promote any cause we think is important. That’s a big part of what makes America great. Your cause may differ totally from one I may have, but here, unlike in many other countries, it is not illegal for either of us to (peacefully)** proclaim ours.

“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15 states, and so does George Shuman. Also, as for me and my house, the flag we will fly is that of the United States of America; it’s the one flag that makes all the rest of them possible.

Adam had it right: “Here comes old glory!” I sure hope she will always be around.

A Fairly Personal One

2024-06-06T16:08:00.000-07:00

By G. E. Shuman

Last February I and many of my family members gathered for a large party in Florida to celebrate my mom’s 100th birthday. That’s right… it was number one hundred. The party was awesome. We, and especially Mom, had a wonderful time.

Mom has always been an amazing woman, raising six children and helping care for nearly countless grandkids and great grandkids. For Mom, her family is her life, and that life has not been an easy one, bringing up kids in small-town America in the 60’s and forward, and surviving the losses of both my dad and my brother Paul, and also of all of her own siblings. Somehow, Mom has been an incredibly positive encouragement to us all… all those years and right up to today. Her tremendous faith in God is where she gets her strength to continue, even after her first hundred birthdays.

I have noticed something about Mom since that February birthday. It used to be that I would call her, or she would call me a few times a month so we could catch each other up on the happenings of life. Lately Mom has made it a point to talk with all her children, basically every day. This is probably not consciously because of the passing of time and the limited number of days that she, and all of us have, but I’m not certain of that. For me it is simply good to hear her voice those evenings, just before she has her nighttime tea and goes to bed.

A week or two ago our seven-year-old granddaughter, Nahla, had facetimed me from her home, as she also likes to do after school or before bed. I love getting those calls from her. We talked for a few minutes and then I happened to mention that I had also just talked with her great-grammy in Florida. I mentioned to Nahla that my mom calls me almost every evening lately, to just chat a while, and that I look forward to those calls, just as I do Nahla’s.

Nahla immediately got a caring grin on her face and simply, profoundly replied: “Papa, she’s tucking you in.”

How could I be any more blessed than this?

All Good Things

2024-05-22T12:26:00.000-07:00

By G. E. Shuman

This spring has been a bittersweet time for me. Some things are changing in my life; most are for the better, but they are still changing, and what’s so great about change? My grandkids seem to be doing strange and foreign things lately; things like graduating from high school and even college, way too soon. In fact, I just watched our granddaughter Sofi get her diploma from her school in Florida only a few minutes ago. She was a baby only days ago, it seems. Talk about bittersweet.

One of our grandkids got married last year, another will in just a few weeks from now. Those things are all great blessings to our family, I know. Kids do grow up, and doing so successfully is a wonderful thing. Still, most of the grandkids don’t come to Grampy and Grammy’s for holidays anymore. Feeling sorry for me yet?

My career is about over too. In June I will retire, for the second time, from teaching high school English at Websterville Christian Academy; (a school I personally recommend highly). Every teacher everywhere must admit to looking forward to summer as much as the students do. Still, when it is your last year to do so, well, there’s that old bittersweet again.

Last week I gave my students one of their final English assignments for the year. Monday was an especially gorgeous day, so we went outside with notebooks and pens. I told them to separate, to go someplace alone to think, and to write. The assignment was to author a five-stanza poem about some aspects of the natural beauty around them. Easy, right? This is Vermont in springtime, after all. They were instructed to not just ‘be’ outside, but to observe at first the macro world. They could write about anything in that part of 0*creation, the blue sky, the green trees, images in the fluffy white clouds. But I also asked them to look down, to see the micro world, to observe the blades of grass at their feet as the mighty sequoias that they are to the tiny creatures that make their homes in the little shards of shade they provide.

I asked these teenagers, whose generation is widely thought of as an uncaring, media-obsessed, self-centered lot, to give me their written thoughts about all this. What I later received was a stack of well-written, thoughtful, and observant poetry that showed true appreciation of the immense complexities and beauty of the world we live in. I believe that this exercise was good for them; I know it was good for my faith in them.

So, all good things… the saying goes, ‘must come to an end.’ There’s that bittersweet feeling again. I believe now more than ever that all truly good things are right here before us, if we just take the time to see them. It’s something I learned recently, from a bunch of teenagers.