Terrace Talk

Notes for December

The Greatest Gift of All

With the Holiday Season upon us, thoughts turn to gifts we will give to family and close friends. We think hard as we spend money on “something” to fill what we believe is needed. Not always, but most of the time, the gift is precisely what was desired.

Gift-giving traditions are worldwide and vary by culture and religion. Among those Holidays are Christmas (Christianity), Diwali (Hinduism), Hanukkah (Judaism), Chinese New Year (Cultural), and Kwanzaa (African American Heritage).

Along with material things, let us consider giving something that costs nothing. Love is a gift that everyone can provide. It is what binds all people together. Love is patient, love is kind. The greatest gift of all is Love because it provides deep emotional fulfillment and has a powerful and lasting positive effect on others. This year, I think strongly about the gift of LOVE.

-Tom Deimler

I Remember Group

I Remember

By Pat Royalty

I was reading a book about a young woman in the 1880s, who says, “I don’t know how to drive. Papa put a coach and four at my disposal, and I’ve never needed to drive myself.” And as you find in these novels, our hero replies, “You are in Dorset now, put the reins in one hand. Here, take my gloves.” He hands her the leather reins to teach her to drive, and thus these lighthearted romance novels go in their plots. Of course, they fall in love after many adventures and travails.

I am immediately thrown back to how wonderful reins feel and smell, of sitting hunched over in the classic wagon pose, on the seat next to my Uncle Frank, in the barn red buckboard wagon, when we drove the plodding team into Dodgeville from the farm— a matter of 7 miles and an hour and a half one way on the gravel roads, or to the cheesemaker and back to take the milk. I remember the privilege of holding them – two in each hand.

I know how worn thick supple leather looks, because I was around when Toots and Bess were hitched to the wagon, and I was allowed to hook the long traces to the wagon tongue while Frank put the collars on the team, way too heavy a job for me.

Of course, I later took riding lessons and rode elegant 3- and 5-gaited saddle horses on the bridle path along the Midway, in front of the University of Chicago. Those fancy reins were well-oiled, with no cracks, thin, lovely brown leather, not black from use. And during every summer on the farm when my parents rented horses for me, I became well acquainted with reins.

Reading books brings back surprising memories. Now I can almost smell the horse paraphernalia, and how I love that smell. When I was older, I would roll down the window as we turned off US 18 onto the gravel road for the last miles to the farm. I would say, “Can you smell that?” My parents would say, “Smell what, Pat?” I would answer, “Can’t you smell the farm?” They would laugh, but I was dead serious: cut hay, cattle, manure, a perfect perfume blend.

Reading a silly novel on a lazy Saturday afternoon at St Anne’s Terrace, watching one football team try to beat the other, whiling away my time, I am thrown back 85 years, and smell the wonderful horse and farm smell. I feel the reins in my hands and know I want to pick them up and drive the wagon straight and true down the gravel road once again.