Autumn’s Cold Calling

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Doc Arnett

A hard freeze a week ago
and three days of stiff breeze
have left a skim of leaves on the lawn.

In the dull gray
of this day’s dawning,
the yellows and tans
of the big maple
at the bottom of the hill
have spilled over the bank
and line the old driveway.

Nearer the house,
a fluttering of browns
scatters across the ground,
a bit of grass passing up between
the curled edges.

The upper branches are bare,
the coming cold
working its way
down through the ledges of limbs
like age and worry
taking their early tolls
from what reaches nearest heaven.

Or, perhaps,
from what lifts itself the highest.

In the long thin
line of light
breaking briefly
through the passing front to the east,
I can feel the gray of my beard
bleeding into the rest of me.

I must make ready
for the coming seasons.

H. Arnett
11/04/13

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The Truth About Halloween

Posted on November 1, 2013 by Doc Arnett

Okay, right off the bat here let me say that this is not another conservative Christian rant about All Saints Day. Nor is it yet another attack upon right-wingers. It is one man’s truth, more confession than dogma.

The day after Halloween has long been a day of dark sin in my heart. It started in early childhood.

We lived on a farm six miles from town. The Hampton’s lived just less than a half-mile from our front door. The Simmons’ lived about a mile-and-a-half away. Those were our nearest neighbors. I don’t remember any explanation in my childhood as to why we never went trick-or-treating. I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with religious belief; I think it had to do with my parents’ views of consideration. They thought the idea of bothering your neighbors or strangers by asking for free candy was completely and inexcusably improper. Even when we visited church folks who had dishes of candy sitting on the counter or the table, we weren’t allowed to ask for any. “If they offer it to you, you may have some but if you ask you’ll get a spanking when you get home.”

It was like telling a fish he had to get permission to swim or a hummingbird that she had to get official approval before taking the first sip of nectar. I loved candy!! Loved it, craved it, ached for it, wanted it, desired it in the most powerful ways imaginable. And rarely got it, except at Christmas. And here, on the one night of the year when households across our entire candy-rich nation were giving it out for free in unimaginable quantities, I was confined to the coal oil darkness of a hundred-year-old farmhouse. (Okay, I made that part up about the coal oil; we had electric darkness.)

Every Halloween night, I would imagine my friends in their little costumes joyously circuiting through Trenton, filling their buckets or tubs or sacks or whatever they carried with all kinds of candy. That was only affliction; the real torture was the next day when they brought their bounty to school.

Most of them shared a little but we all knew they’d kept back or had already eaten the big candy bars. We knew because they told us. “I had this huge Payday! Oh, man, I got so sick last night.”

My soul grew darker as each kid recounted the generosity of people in a particular neighborhood or at a special house, “They always have the best stuff!” With each rattle and rustle of candy in their sack, my envy and jealousy grew greater. With each, “Here, you can have a Sweet Tart or a gumball,” my heart blackened. I wanted to eat Three Musketeers and Butterfingers until my belly ached. By afternoon, I was on the verge of rage. I doubt that they ever noticed, but if they did, my parents certainly never asked why I always came home in such a foul frame of mind on November 1st of nearly every school year.

I carried that pain and bitterness into my adulthood. Even when my kids were out trick-or-treating, I resented the strangers who brought their little strangers to my house. Finally, when the winds of change brought about the ultra-conservatism of the Silent Majority, I had my excuse: I could refuse to participate on religious grounds. No, I most certainly did not want to encourage the continuation of the Celtic Druids and their foul myths of monsters and demons!! Hooray! I can be selfish and grumpy and blame it on my faith. Heck, I could even feel morally superior about being so blasted unfriendly!

And then, yesterday, driving home in the chilling rain of the last day of October, epiphany. Standing near the threshold of my sixtieth birthday, I finally admitted to myself the only real reason why I kept the lights off and the doors locked on Halloween: I am a Stingy Ole Badger.

I still resented the kids who did get to go trick-or-treating, I still resented my parents’ unexplained refusal to take me trick-or-treating. I resented the multitudes who obviously enjoyed a simple cultural ritual in which I was never allowed to participate. I decided that I was going to quit being a Stingy Ole Badger and start enjoying Halloween.

Randa was a bit surprised when I came home with six bags of candy to hand out last night. But it only took two injections of adrenalin and a few shots of smelling salts for the paramedics to bring her back around. I think it helped that I was grilling burgers while we were waiting for the happy little strangers to come to our brightly lit porch.

The brightest light, though, is the one that is finally freed within our souls when we quit making excuses for our self-selected misery.

H. Arnett
11/01/13

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Cider Man

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Doc Arnett

You wouldn’t have to actually be a cider man,
but might have to know one pretty well,
to really understand the physical pain
it brings to see apples rotting under a tree.

It cuts right into him, that view of waste,
when he can actually taste cider
from just the smell of the orchard

and knows by the feel of the fruit
how much juice he’d likely get
from that particular bushel.

It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate
the fine beauty and half-flavor of a table apple
and isn’t morally opposed to pulling one
fresh off a branch on the likely chance
that there’s enough color to suggest
that it will actually taste like an apple.

But he knows, in a way he can’t completely explain,
that it’s not until an apple drops on a still day,
so full of sap and sugar that even the wind could bruise it,
that it’s really ready for making cider.

A cider man knows that the bruise
is actually sweeter than the crisp white flesh,
and that it’s the blending from several trees
that makes the best cider.

But what he doesn’t understand
is why it is that everyone seems to know
that the juice fresh from the grape isn’t wine
but they think that apples turn into cider
as soon as the squeezings hit the pan.

So he’ll play along with those
who’ve never seen a week’s worth of foam
form in the neck of a plastic jug,
and have never tasted real cider in their whole life:
“No sir, nothing like fresh cider straight from the press.”

He’ll go along with it, all right,
but not without a bit of pity
for people who swear they absolutely love something
they’ve never even tasted.

H. Arnett
10/30/13

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More Than Silver, Better Than Gold

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Doc Arnett

To be honest, making apple cider the old-fashioned way isn’t quick or easy. In my case, the old-fashioned way means by using a hand-cranked cider mill. The mill includes a grinder for reducing the apples to a coarse pulp and a press for squeezing out the juice. It’s a bit messy, too, with pieces of apple flying out helter-skelter. After the squeezing, there’s the filtering, pouring and storing. And before, of course, there’s the gathering and cleaning of the apples and the disposing of the pulp afterwards. Even the getting ready is work.

The small mill that I “inherited” was made in Lancaster, Ohio, about a hundred years ago. With the heavy cast iron press beam and flywheel, along with the other parts, the complete assembly weighs in the neighborhood of two hundred pounds. By taking down some of the removable parts, I can load it into the back of a truck by myself. Awkward but doable.

And so it was that with some awkward doing, I loaded up everything Tuesday morning in preparation for an annual student activity over at the HCC Klinefelter College Farm. And, on a blustery, chilly evening, unloaded it at the renovated barn with the help of two student farm workers, Ben and Hannah. While their supervisor, Wendell, continued cooking white bean chili for the expected group of sixty or so, Ben and Hannah helped me set up for the cider making.

After we laid a small tarp on the floor to help reduce the likelihood of staining, Ben and I sat the mill in place. I sent him and Hannah back to help Wendell and I arranged the boxes of apples, the collecting pan for the juice, jugs, strainers and all. By the time the first group of students left on their hayrack ride, I was set to start making cider.

Along with the students, there were several children, mostly belonging to the teachers and other staff workers. A few of the kids, including the ones so small they had to be lifted up, wanted to help, too. Even with the spatter of little apple pieces flying around, they grinned and laughed as they dropped apples into the hopper for the grinding. They kneeled and looked up underneath so they could see the apple pulp dropping from the hopper into the slatted press baskets. They marveled at how much juice started running out into the collecting pan. One of the little girls helped turn the handle for the pressing.

Even though they weren’t quite as excited at the prospect of helping, the college students were no less enthusiastic about sampling the cider. For most, especially those from urban areas hundreds of miles away from Highland, it was their first encounter with pure, fresh apple juice. Their responses were not at all disappointing. The expressions on their face as skepticism gave way to astonishment conveyed even more than their words, “Wow! This is really good.”

While I was cleaning up, I kept watching for the six-year-old who had helped me turn the press earlier. When she and her dad came back from the coat rack, I slipped over and handed her a quart of juice to take home with her. It would be hard to say which one of them seemed the most grateful. His eyes shone with appreciation as he looked at me. She clutched the little jug as if someone had just handed her a puppy.

It’s not the amount of work that goes into a thing that determines how we feel about its doing. It’s not the effort or the sweat or the pain or the labor; it’s how we reckon the reward. And in this world, it’s hard to find a reward that goes much beyond the genuine joy of a grateful child.

H. Arnett
10/25/13

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A Refreshing Desolation

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Doc Arnett

Ten miles or so past Emporia as you take I-35 toward Wichita, the highway hits the Flint Hills of Kansas and you discover the Plains.

Trees seem to disappear except for the few in the ditches and along what creeks or rivers manage to cut their runs through the prairie. There are few signs of human activity or presence other than the miles upon miles of fences. The rolling hills are covered by grass, except for the occasional breaks of bluffs where sod and soil have broken away. Block out the sights and sounds of traffic, look away from the highway and you could convince yourself that there are no other humans on the planet.

A traveler here could look in every direction and see no sign of other people for as far as the eye could see. And in this place on a clear day, the eye can see for quite a ways.

There is for me something oddly comforting about this expanse of isolation that could easily pass as desolation. In mid-autumn, all green is gone from the grass. Tints and colors shift among the shapes and patterns formed by the bending of the wind and the types of grass growing but they are all the colors of dormancy and decline. A huge sky covers the expanse with only a few widely scattered clouds, thin and small, drifting along. There is a serenity of sorts, a sense that there is nothing here of urgency and demand, the only schedule the schedule of seasons.

We need such places in our lives, even if only in the imagination: some place absent for a short time the rush and push of duty and commitment. Jesus, it is said, often withdrew to lonely places. Every soul needs a place of refreshing. Even the Son of God found it good to excuse himself from time to time from the needs of others.

H. Arnett
10/22/13

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A Bit and A Few

Posted on October 18, 2013 by Doc Arnett

I’d like to think
that I’ve done a bit of good
here and there
in the pausings of my life:

maybe a kid or two
who took a liking
to something I taught
in shop class,

a generation or two
I might have helped
by teaching their teachers
how to teach,

an addicted life
or three or eight
that were eased a bit
by my giving long enough

to have touched
and been touched
by some shared wisdom
and grace.

I’d like to think
that my small donation
put a warm meal
in between some hobo

and the next stranger
stopping on the highway
and sparing some sore, tired feet
from a few more miles of walking

in the rain or heat
or the long lingering shadows
of one more day
spent in the aloneness of the world.

I’d like to think
that a few hours
of my working
helped some poor family

I’ll never meet
this side of heaven
have at least one meal to eat
in a new home that they didn’t expect.

I know that there are quite a few kids
that Smile Train and my wife and I
gave a new life in a distant village:
a hope of friends

and an emerging
from the harsh darkness
of disfiguring difference
from cleft palates.

I’d like to think
that a few of my eulogies
brought a bit of hope and comfort
to those caught in the pain of passing

and that maybe a sermon or two
fanned into flame
the embers of faith
and obedient love.

I’d like to think
that I’ve done a few things right,
brought about a better moment or two
for a few folks.

I’d like to think
I might get in a few thousand more
before the night of this world
is swallowed up in light.

And I know
that not all of the good
that I can do
can take away a single sin

but each small act
is at least a beginning
of letting some light
into the world

and a bit less darkness.

It still won’t be enough,
but it will be that much more
than would have been
had I not been blessed

by greater grace than I deserved.

H. Arnett
10/17/13

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The Last Good Apple

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Doc Arnett

Pausing in between the pounding of posts
and the stretching of wire,
I saw a small hint of fire flaring
from the dark greens of late leaves
in the old apple tree in the pasture.

It seemed unlikely that there would still be fruit
hanging this late
above the few scattered on the ground,
still wet with dew in the deep shade of afternoon.

And yet, there it was,
bright in spite of the small spots of blight and bites,
old wounds from bugs and beetles in the early summer,
dimpled into the flesh of the fruit.

I pulled it from the branch
with only a slight tug,
rubbed it on the front of my shirt
until it shone like love on a chilly day,
found a smaller one hanging from another branch
and ate it on my way up the slope from the field.

I brought the larger one into the house
where you lay on the couch,
ice pack and ibuprofen nursing the pain and stiffness
from slipping on the stairs last week
and helping me with the fencing this morning.

I laid it, shining, on the small table
next to your coffee cup,
“Here you are, Hon:
the last good apple on the tree.”

The smile in your eyes
could have melted caramel.

H. Arnett
10/17/13

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A Changing of Seasons

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Doc Arnett

Something like the feel of fall
came calling yesterday:
a less than pleasant wind
sending its north chill
sprawling through the afternoon,
heavy limbs bending their boughs
in the plowing of breeze.

The leaves on the bluff
are showing more color now;
reds and yellows
and more than a hint of orange
seeping through the shapes of trees.

We spent the day before
re-fencing the borders
of the north pasture:
Pulling steel posts
and re-setting them,
repairing the wire strands
so that we could move the horse over
so that he could eat from the last green flush
of clover and brome,
before the browning touch
of the first hard frost.

Even in the closing hours of harvest,
we must work what can be done,
else the yield be lost
to the cost of other things
we thought we had to do.

H. Arnett
10/16/13

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Hold to Hope

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Doc Arnett

Hold to hope
no matter how frayed
the rope and your nerves.

Hold to hope
no matter how high
the waves and your anxiety.

Hold to hope
no matter how deep
the currents and your regrets.

Hold to hope
no matter how hard
the path and your foes.

Hold to hope
no matter how many
your tears and your fears.

Hold to hope
no matter how long
the day and your way.

Hold to hope
no matter how distant
your dreams and your friends.

In the end,
hope never relinquished
will conquer all
obstacles
challenges
mistakes
choices.

The soul that simply refuses
to ever give up,
that always believes for the best,
that draws upon a faith stronger than mountains,
and knows that nothing outlasts love,
is the soul that knows
the power of hope.

H. Arnett
10/10/13

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A Touch of Sun

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Doc Arnett

Heading west off of K-7 Highway,
I flip the visor down
to try and keep the low sun out of my eyes.
There is very little change of color in the trees
but the fields show the tans and browns of harvest.
These low rolling hills
are filled by miles of soybeans and corn.
Dust from combines in a distant field
billows up and drifts into the evening.

Out past Bendena,
just as I reach the low spot between slopes
and head back uphill,
the sun spills through an opening in the trees
behind a large farmhouse at the top of the rise.

The field toward me steps down toward the ditch
in a series of terraced levels.
At the edge of each step,
the sun catches just the tops of the bean stalks,
turning them chalk white in gleaming light.
The rest of the field is dark as dusk,
alternating bands of rust
with thin strips of bright.

Above all this,
strands of wire strung from post to post
running along the road,
shine like silver
in the last light of the day’s burning host.

Even in the ending of a single day,
this world offers some view of glory
to those who believe in something more
than come what may.

H. Arnett
10/8/13

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