The Reindeer Keeper

Over the years relatives would tell me how I used to love the song, "Buttons and Bows." Some would say whenever I heard that song, I would start dancing which probably meant I jumped up and down and all around. I'd also been told my love for the song led to my liking bows in my hair. I guess I had a whole collection of them and liked to change them several times during the day.When I came across this photo I considered it evidence to what I'd been told although looking at those bows I wonder why I had to have them so big! Besides being evidence of my love of bows, this photo also shows me with an aunt who called me 'Button.' She never married but considered her nieces and nephews as her own. She was always there for each and every one of us. She never missed a birthday. She took us to church and shopping. We would sit around the kitchen table and listen to her stories of when she was a little girl, growing up with five sisters and living on the farm. We...

If we're lucky we have a place rooted in our childhood that was a most magical place-a place stirred not by computers or plastic devices-but rather by imaginations set free to explore and pretend; wonder and soar. I've gone on and on about my 'field of dreams.' I've written about my grandfather's barn, the chicken coop clubhouse, the granary, water pipes strung on poles from the pumphouse to the barn, the farmhouse, the pastures and fields. I've told you about our rafts made from telephone poles; how there was one for the boys and one for the girls and how we'd forge our way around the creek on those rafts from one port to another on grand adventures.While this was my field of dreams, any place that ignites wonder and imagination when growing up is a field of dreams. This past week I went back there-back to that straight away on that country road where the barn, granary, chicken coop, and farmhouse sat. I wanted to take a picture to show you all that...

All the recent news about snowstorms, blizzards, and Nor'Easters got me thinking about snowstorms of long ago on the family farm and how they survived. After all, there were no 24-hour news outlets; no weather channels sending out alerts and updates and warnings to stay off the roads or informing the public that airports and train terminals were closed or what pin-pointed time one could expect a surge in snowfall or when high wind velocities would blow through or if ice was expected to cover anything and everything. No news casters were sent out with a camera crew to capture the storm before, during, and after it struck. No Anderson Cooper-types or young women reporters with perfect make-up and designer snow gear were hunkered down in my grandfather's pasture measuring the snow drifts or standing by the creek bed documenting the snow ripping across the backfields for all the world to see. And if there had been-no one would have cared because everyone back the...

My father was a funeral director. He was very good at what he did but there were parts of him I never knew when growing up. By the time he became a father those parts had disappeared. I think that's normal as we grow older and responsibilities come along. I know I was determined to keep my hair down to my waist and listen to my records forever-but that certainly has gone to the wind  As far as my father goes-from what I can put together-those parts I never knew seemed to have stayed with him right up to the point of his buckling down and going to school. After that, he got married, bought a house, and started to have a family-that time of life when those responsibilities set in. I remember hearing how he used to have a horse called Colonel. When I came across this photo I realized I was looking at my father riding his horse. He looks so content with Colonel-a natural for sure. Funny thing though, he is wearing a tie-something he always did even if he wa...