He Was a Giant After All

Dad and his beloved Farmall 450  about 1960

I idolized my father when I was a child. Most boys do; I think it’s natural. “Daddy” is a boy’s first impression of what a man is. We all grow out of it, though—some of us through the natural process of growing up, and sadly, some through dreadful disappointments. Looking back down the trail, I’m genuinely glad I came to accept my father as a real person rather than a hero simply through growing up, rather than any other way.

When I was a little guy, I thought Dad was a giant of a man. He knew everything; he could do anything. It never dawned on me that he was physically smaller than a lot of men. My mind did not accept what my eyes saw—no judgment here, just a boy’s view of his father. It wasn’t until I left home and returned months later for a visit that the reality of Dad’s physical stature struck me. Standing in the kitchen talking to him, I realized for the first time that he wasn’t a physical giant. It didn’t really change my perception of him; I just accepted that he wasn’t tall. I still idolized him.

My understanding that Dad didn’t know everything came more slowly and over a much longer span of years. My first glimpse of this—and maybe the first time my sense of self-preservation kicked in—happened when I wanted to learn how to box. For some foolish reason around age twelve, I decided I wanted to be a boxer. I was an average-height kid, but I was strong in that way farm boys are strong: summers spent bucking hay bales, and winters chopping wood and wrestling feed bags. Dad was going to teach me.

Before we started, my natural curiosity prompted me to ask Dad if he had ever boxed. He told me he’d boxed in college. When I asked how he did, he admitted he got knocked out in the first round of his only fight—it turned out he had a “glass jaw”! My interest in boxing vanished precisely at that moment. Dad didn’t know everything, after all.

Realizing that much of Dad’s certainty didn't always come from innate knowledge or deep experience took even longer, revealing itself through small insights over time. Dad and I were both in the beef cattle business, though in differing capacities and at very different times in our lives. When we were kids in 4-H, Dad taught us his way of halter-breaking show calves. We’d spend a frustrating half-hour trying to corner a calf in a box stall to put the halter on, then fight with them as we dragged them around the barnyard. Eventually, the calves learned to lead, but it was hard, painful, and frustrating. Yet, it was Dad’s way, so it had to be right.

About twenty years after I left home—and ten years after Dad retired—I had the opportunity to halter-break a pair of calves for some friends. They didn’t have a stall barn or a fenced barnyard, so I needed a new approach. Using pipe gates, I built a 12x12 stall in the corner of a garage. We caught the calves in the headgate, put two halters on them, and "led" them to the garage (if leading includes dragging, dodging, and being dragged). My nebulous plan was to hand-feed and water them while tied, giving them a chance to get used to humans without the drama and trauma of our childhood methods.

After a few days of hand-feeding, I placed a water tub at the back of the stall. I would untie each calf, lead it to the water, and tie it back up. Once both were watered, I’d clean the stall, put fresh straw down, fill the manger with hay, and set out their grain. Then I’d untie them and lead them to the grain. As they grew comfortable, I moved the water tub further away—first to the space behind the stall, then to the far end of the garage—gradually increasing the distance they had to follow me. Within a few days, I had gained their trust so completely that I could lead them outside. No muss, no fuss, no adrenaline rush-a whole lot easier on both the cows and the cowboy. I used this method several times over the years, and it always worked.

It was hard to accept that Dad might have been wrong, but my new way was undeniably easier than the way he taught us.

Dad was a total, dyed-in-the-wool Angus guy. His career began when the Angus breed was still relatively new in this country, and every job he ever held was with Angus cattle. I can’t recall him ever acknowledging that another breed had merit, except for the occasional comment that Shorthorn cattle "would get fat on land that would starve an Angus cow to death."

Looking back on a lifetime in the business, that single offhand comment carried far more weight than I realized in my childhood. My fifty years in the livestock industry were a continual search for the efficient production of milk and meat. In retirement, I’ve often wondered if I should have taken that left-handed compliment to the grand old Scottish Shorthorns much more seriously. Had he seen something in his work that was far more important than either of us realized at the time?

Over my career, I learned that Angus cattle earned their reputation for being high-strung and hard to handle. I realized that the “protective momma” trait Dad used to praise was often just a whitewash for an aggressive, human-hating instinct. Though he’d never admit it, when we started in 4-H, I was given an Angus, but Dad bought a gentle, white-faced Hereford steer for my sister. As a ten-year-old boy, I didn’t question why. But after fifty years of experience, I know now what Dad knew back then: Herefords and Shorthorns were quieter, easier-to-handle cattle. I admire his loyalty even now, even if it wasn't strictly objective.

I was thinking about this one day while mowing my grandson’s lawn. I enjoy those two hours in the sunlight, getting lost in the hypnotic roar of the engine as my hands instinctively guide the zero-turn mower. Thinking about his strong preferences, it suddenly dawned on me that Dad had grown up on a dairy farm where his father milked Guernsey cows. His first exposure to Angus cattle was working at Cornell University’s beef farm under a Scotsman who loved the breed. I guess some boys never get over their first love.

I can see that tendency in myself sometimes, too.

That revelation brought another memory to the surface during that same sunlit ride: Dad’s fierce loyalty to Farmall tractors. He despised all other makes and never considered buying anything else. I had always assumed this preference was based on a lifetime of practical machinery experience, but then I remembered that Dad’s uncle ran the county Farmall dealership where Dad grew up! His very first exposure to tractors in the 1920s had been Farmalls.

Some boys really never do get over their first love.

Realizing these things about my father hasn't diminished him in my eyes. I still see him as a giant of a man with an amazing amount of knowledge and confidence—someone who could do almost anything. But I know now that he was human, with his own flaws and foibles. And while, as it turned out that he didn’t know everything, he instilled in me a love of learning, he nurtured my native curiosity, and he set an example of how a man should live. His code was simple: treat people the way that you want to be treated, your word should be your bond, if you take the money you do the work, don’t make promises that you don’t keep,. if you say that you’re going to do it, you do it or you try until there isn’t any try left. Maybe most importantly he taught me that no matter what is happening, the sun will come up again tomorrow and life will go on.  This understanding adds depth to my memories; I recognize that he was as flawed and vulnerable as the rest of us, yet he taught me some of the most important things that a man can know.

These lines from Dan Fogelberg’s song, “Leader of the Band,” capture so much of how I feel here in the late innings of life:

“I thank you for the music and your stories of the road
I thank you for the freedom when it came my time to go
I thank you for the kindness and the times when you got tough
And papa, I don't think I said I love you near enough”

Daddy, I don’t think I said, “I love you” near enough either and I still miss you all these years later

        

 

                    Dad with the 3 of us kids                           Three generations of Gerow  "men".

A Big Sister's Request

For all of you who have a "big sister," you know that a lot of times their requests are hard to refuse. Part of that refusal comes from a certain sentimentality - and, maybe, just maybe, part of it comes from the memories of beatings past. Even with 1,800 miles between us, there are still those memories of a long-ago childhood when big sister enforced the familial hierarchy.

My own big sister recently asked me to share these 2 short bits of poetry with you all. I truly hope that you enjoy them and that they stir a thought or two within you.

Many thanks - hope you all are well.

- - - - 

Playback: My Voice in Five Haikus

Pauses like the space

Between the claps of thunder

Distant thunder sounds.

Quiet as snowfall

Filling empty spaces with

Flakes that pile up high.

Crisp as the air of

The first frost where breath is steam

As the words fall out.

Soft as a spring rain

Splashing in puddles on roads

Tapping on windows.

Clear as ringing out

Voices of the young children

See you tomorrow.

Graveyard Secrets

Inside these graves

Although they’re dead

Secrets make waves

It’s often said.

I have heard cries

From the living

The long goodbyes

The forgiving.

Confessions made

Of secrets kept.

People who stayed

And those who wept.

Insides these graves

Tossing, turning

Moments are snatched

Lighting yearning.

And then it ends.

The mourners go.

The graves pretend

Nothing to know.

 

 

 

My Vision of America

 

It baffles, confounds, and deeply saddens me to hear Americans denigrate our nation. I cannot comprehend; I cannot begin to fathom how any native born, or naturalized American citizen is not able, or not willing, to see this nation for the exceptional idea and nation that it is, and always has been. I think that President Ronald Reagan said it best in his inaugural address: “If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on Earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on Earth.” It is that very individual freedom and dignity that sets this nation apart from every other nation in the history of the world and is the bedrock foundation of American Exceptionalism.

My personal concept of myself is deeply intertwined with the concept of America. I am a Christian, American man. My identity as an American even comes before my identity as a man. So much of what I think, so much of what I’ve done with my life are BECAUSE I am an American and have the guaranteed freedom and human dignity personified by being an American.

In my view, my family is America, and America is my family. The history of my family is deeply entwined with the history of my beloved country. The first of my father’s father’s family were in New York before the 1700 census. They came to this country from France for religious freedom. The first of my father’s mother’s family was an early master shipbuilder in colonial New England who arrived in 1629 and built the first vessels in Salem and Medford, Massachusetts. He came for economic opportunity.

The first of my mother’s father’s family came to America in 1750 to escape the horrific.
anti-Semitic violence in Russia; he came for religious freedom. The first of my mother’s mother’s family settled on land granted to them in Pennsylvania by William Penn. They too came to America in search of religious freedom and economic opportunity. I feel the roots of my being going into the very beginnings of this, my beloved country. I am America – America is me. We are the same.

Several of my mother’s sisters were in the Daughters of the American Revolution. At least 1 of my ancestors fought for American independence.  My father’s family split at that time, with some of them going to Canada because the English crown had given them sanctuary when they first escaped from France, and some stayed in America. (The Curse of Cain; but that is a story for another time.) My mother’s grandfather fought at Gettysburg in the American Civil War. My father’s uncle died in the Great War in 1918. My father’s brother crewed on B-17s with the 8^th Air Force in England in World War II and served in Korea. My cousin was a submariner in the Vietnam Era. His son is a major in the Army Special Forces. My own younger son stands on the wall with Customs and Border Patrol. American history runs in my veins like blood; though I may be a lesser son of greater sires, my love of this country burns as hot and bright as that of any of these great and valiant warriors.

America sheltered and nurtured my mother as she grew 3 children in her womb. America gave my father opportunities to feed, clothe, and house his family. America gave me the individual liberty to live out my dreams. She gave me the opportunities to try, no matter how often I tried and failed.

She is my Motherland. She has fed and nurtured my hopes and dreams for nearly ¾ of a century now. She has rocked me to sleep in countless places across the length and breadth of the continent.

America is my Fatherland. America has sheltered and protected me. America taught me values and gave me a code to live by – just as my natural father did.

America is my home. I can travel anywhere in this country and be at home. Americans are my family; I can be anyplace and feel at home. I can go anywhere and feel safe. Home, family, Mother, Father, and refuge – America is all these things to me.

Again, to quote President Reagan, “America is the last, best hope of man on Earth."

Are we always President Reagan’s "shining city on a hill"? No, we have fallen short throughout our history, but the American Ideal remains “the last, best hope of man on Earth." Yet even with our shortcomings, millions of people around the world risk everything to come here for freedom, opportunities, and the chance to create a new life.

Each new generation must re-envision President Reagan’s "shining city on a hill," while holding firm to the fundamental founding principles as set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, preserving the “freedom and the dignity of the individual” while fostering and expanding the creative “energy and individual genius of man.”    

No structure, no organization, no building, no nation can be built without a solid foundation. Tomorrow’s American "shining city on a hill" must be built on the rock-solid foundation of the great ideals outlined in our founding documents. If it is not, there will be no great future, no continuation of America’s great past.

I look forward to this weekend’s celebration of the 250^th anniversary of this country. May God continue to bless this country. And may we always be a nation worthy of God’s blessings.

                 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those Tears Are For You

Special Contribution 

This is a first-time event for me. I am going to post a short essay and 2 poems that my sister wrote for a writers’ group to which she belongs. She is involved in writing as a way to organize her memories and “the feelings that they brought “.

I totally understand that.

Please take a few minutes and read this essay. Please share your reactions.

Many thanks to you all.

***

The day of my father’s funeral service marks one of the saddest days of my life. The service took place outside. We gathered on my brother Jeff’s front yard. My father’s urn was placed in the center of a table that was covered with a white, linen cloth. We were surrounded by woods, fields, livestock, and a beautiful open sky in bright sunshine. This provided the perfect place for remembrance of John, my father. His love of nature and family had run deep within him.

I sat close to my mother, Charlotte, who felt deep physical and emotional pain. I wrapped my arms around her as we listened to the voice of Father Jim perform the ritual for the funeral service for John. For the fifteen years we lived in Charlottesville, Father Jim had been our priest and a close friend of the family. Over the years he had performed the weddings for me and my two brothers. And now he had flown to upstate New York for my father’s funeral.

I remember going with my mother into Jeff’s house to rest after the service. We stretched out on the sofa; her feet by my head, mine by hers. As we lay there I felt transported in time to when it had just been my father, my mother and me. I did not want this feeling of unity with my father, who was gone, and my mother, who was going, to end.

Very late into the night, I remember riding down dark country roads on the way back to the motel. Father Jim drove and my friend, Laura, sat in the front. I cried alone, in the back seat, for the two hour trip through that dark night. The next day Laura and I drove back to Pennsylvania.

My mother died two weeks later. I know that my father sat by her side, telling her that it was okay to cross over, every single day until she did.

As a child and young person, I remember my father telling me not to cry when he was gone. I recently wrote this for John.

***

No Tears

Many, many times 

You said, ‘no tears.’

‘Those tears are for you

Not me.  Don’t cry.

I will be in a better place’.

Daddy, I miss you

And yes I cry for me

And the early morning walks

We will never take again or

Going through the fields to pick raspberries

In the early morning dew.

And this is the one that I wrote for my mother, Charlotte.

A Bit Fey

You told me

‘Your mother always

Was a bit fey.’

My brother told me that

You were in love with her.

Is that why you were

At our house

Most days

Father Jim?

She was lovable.

Intelligent, witty

And beautiful and

Yes, other worldly

A bit fey.

Fresh Cut Flowers and a Single Tear – for my father

The first 2 visual memories that come to mind when I think about my father are the vase of flowers on the dining room table and a single tear running down his cheek. Now, there is the image of a vase of flowers on the table when I think about parts of my past, but they are more like Ian Tyson’s vision; “Some dead wild flowers and a bottle of vodka on the kitchen table/ Flowers for the good times and the booze for the bad . . .” ¹ The image that comes to mind of Dad’s flowers is much, much less dark.

For as long as I can remember, every few days from spring until deep in the fall, Dad would bring home a bouquet for the cut glass vase on the dining room table. Every year, he would start with the first pussy willow buds that he could find and follow them with forsythia, daffodils, apple blossoms, and lilacs.

Not content with just wildflowers, Dad planted a huge flower garden every year. This garden sat along the driveway fence and extended from the sidewalk to the orchard fence. I’ve never thought about it until now, but Dad’s flowers greeted everyone who walked into the yard. My father may not have been articulate in any conventional sense, but there was beautiful poetry and lovely lyrics in the work of his hands.

It has been nearly 60 years since he planted that flower garden for the last time, and if I ever knew the various types of flowers that he planted, I’ve forgotten them by now. All I know is that he had flowers blooming and available for cutting from spring through fall. After the early-season wildflowers, there were flowers to cut for the dining room table until the killing frosts in November.

It’s funny how our understanding of things changes with the passing of time. As a child, I thought the flowers on the table were just a normal thing in our house. When I was a younger man, I remembered them as being a curious peculiarity of my father’s quirky personality. At this point, deep in the late innings of this game, I realize now that flowers on the table were a deep, profound statement of my father’s love and commitment to my mother. The flowers were always there, no matter what was going on in his life.

There were times when Mother’s health created awful stress in our home. Farming is never easy, and there were days – hell, whole seasons – when it was all that Dad could do to drag crops out of that red clay soil, and get healthy hogs to market; times when the rain wouldn’t come or when the rain wouldn’t stop. There were summers when the boattailed blackbird swarms covered the whole of the sky for an hour or more as they flew over, and could destroy an entire 80 acres of corn in a single day. Dad’s life was not always easy, but no matter what was going on, what difficulties Dad was dealing with, there were always fresh-cut flowers on the table for Mom.

I have had countless hours alone over the years to think and contemplate on things, both seen and unseen. Those flowers continue to surface in my thoughts. I am awed by what Dad did to make sure that Mom had her flowers. It wasn’t that she ever asked for them – it was just my father’s expression of devotion. Although “Heartache and sorrow and sadness unendingly find, Wings on a memory”²,  the memory of the flowers on the table seems to override all the darker memories.

Of all the gifts that my father gave me, the memory of the flowers might be one of the best.

The second memory of my father that always comes to mind is the single teardrop that ran down his cheek for the last 20 years of his life. When Dad was about 60 years old, he blew his nose one day and ruptured a tear duct in his left eye. For the rest of his life, that tear duct leaked, and there was always, constantly, a single tear running slowly down his left cheek. Just one tear, and as it would finally drip off his chin, another single tear would begin working its way down his cheek.

Dad had worked all his life outdoors. His face was a weathered, almost walnut colored shade of brown. His prominent cheekbones gave his cheeks a rather hollowed look. He had expressive, brown eyes. The years of hard work, being outdoors, and life’s stresses left his face deeply lined. Not all the lines and wrinkles recorded hardship. No, many of them were laugh lines, and the deep crows' feet at the corners of his eyes marked a lifetime of smiles and laughter; marks of a man who was comfortable with himself.

When I remember that single tear, my mind does not necessarily jump to the hard and troubled times of Dad’s life; “for not all tears are an evil.”³ it is just as easy for me to remember the times when Dad did not struggle as to dwell on the hard times. He was a good man who lived by a simple code. He loved his family in his own inarticulate, maybe turbulent way. He always did the best that he could do with what he had. He tried to set a good example for his children. No, not all tears are evil.

These, then, are the first 2 things that come to mind when I think of my father: fresh-cut flowers on the dining room table and a single tear on his brown and weathered cheek. From where I am, with much more behind me than ahead of me, I think that these are wonderful images to ride with, down the last of the years.

Footnotes:

1.      Ian Tyson, “Alcohol in the Bloodstream”, “Eighteen Inches of Rain”, 1994
Mickey Newberry, "Angeline", recorded by Joan Baez, “Blessed Are...”, 1971
J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Lord of the Rings”, published by George Allen and Unwin (UK), Houghton Mifflin (US), 1954

The House in the Shade of the Sycamore Trees

"The House in the Shade of the Sycamore Trees" 
About 60 years after we lived there.

The front gate at the "Barracks Farm" circa 2025.
The brick pilliars and the fence were there in the 1960s. The historical 
marker and the house were not there at that time.

The house on the hilltop farm in Virginia that I grew up in was a small, old cottage that sat below the brow of the hill, sheltered from the north by the bulk of the hill. An apple orchard shielded the house on the west, and a long outbuilding stood on the eastern edge of the yard. Several old Sycamore trees shaded the house. That little house was home, the center of my world for 15 of my first 17 years.

There were several Sycamore trees along the orchard fence and a couple of rose bushes. The rose bushes received minimal care – in that place and time, having a bit of a wild streak was an aid to survival, for both children and rose bushes.

The house faced the orchard, and a concrete sidewalk ran from the driveway to the front porch. The porch had waist-high walls and was screened to the ceiling. We often ate supper on the front porch. It tended to be cooler than inside, until the sun dropped below the apple trees, throwing shade across the front yard.

Just north of the house, between the house and the yard fence, there was “a place”, a depression, a sort of wild spot in the yard. A couple of locust trees grew there, covered in ivy that spread over stones that bordered the “place”. It was always dark there. The “place” didn’t seem to belong there. With the advantage of time and experience, I realize now that the “place” had to have been the foundation of an older building. As that property had been occupied since the American Revolution, it is not surprising that there might have been foundations around the farm.

During the American Revolution, about 2,000 Hessian mercenaries were captured by the American army at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777. These prisoners were marched to New York City, where General Washington hoped for a prisoner exchange with the British – the mercenaries for captured colonial soldiers. After months of failed negotiations, these POWs were forced to march to Charlottesville, Virginia, where they cleared a hilltop and constructed a walled camp. Local lore placed the camp on the hilltop just north of our house. The farm and the “big house” had always been called “The Barracks”. (More on this later.)

The 'Big Housee" on the farm that I grew up on. 
This was the owners house, built just after the American Revolution.

There was a foot path from the back porch steps, along the side of the house, that we always walked to go to the barnyard. The path ended at the farm lane that went from the barnyard through the back pasture to the 2 tenet houses along the woodlot at the very east end of the farm. At the front corner of the house, the path turned left, south, and ran parallel to the orchard fence alongside of the end of Dad’s vegetable garden. Having come of age during the Great Depression, Dad grew nearly all of the vegetables that our family needed. I wish that I could say that my siblings and I worked hard in the garden, but that would not be completely truthful. We helped – grudgingly and reluctantly. Looking back, that is one of the things that I regret about my childhood. I was well into my 30’s before I started gardening. I am sad that I never appreciated all of work that Dad put into feeding us. I realize now that work in the garden was an absolute labor of love.

I never eat a meal without appreciating all of the work that went into raising, growing, harvesting, storing, and preparing that meal. One of the most important lessons that my father ever taught me.

The front door opened from the front porch into a room that doubled as an entry and Dad’s office. An open staircase separated this room from the living room, and the entry-office was set off from the dining room by a “half-wall”. The back half of the house held the kitchen, directly behind the dining room, the bathroom was directly behind the entry/office, and a bedroom was behind the living room. It was a simple 3 - front – 3 back house plan. There were 2 bedrooms upstairs, and at some point, a previous tenant had “raised the roof” with a flat-roofed dormer that served my family as a bedroom for my younger brother and me.

A big screened back porch served as pantry, laundry, and “mud-room”. A huge chest-type freezer shared the porch with cured hams and sides of bacon hanging from a rafter, our barn clothes, and baskets of eggs. Rubber boots, hats, and coats were not to be worn in the house, so the back porch also served as the “mud room” – an essential room in rural houses, even today.

That little house had a forced-air oil furnace, but the house was heated by wood stoves when we first moved in. I remember a potbellied stove in the kitchen and a charred area of the floor in the downstairs bedroom. At some point in time, a fire started on the floor in front of the wood stove. I have wondered over the years why Dad never repaired that floor. Maybe he left it as a reminder to be careful – maybe he just never got around to it. The house was old, even when we lived there, and it had not been built for central heating. The house was not insulated, and the walls and old windows could not keep the winter cold and wind completely out. But, as Bat Masterson once wrote, “There are many in this old world of ours who hold that things break about even for all of us. I have observed for example that we all get the same amount of ice. The rich get it in the summertime, and the poor get it in the winter.” Just as the house tended to be cold in the winter, unless there was a good breeze, it was hot in the summer. Even with good breezes, the upstairs was always hot in the summer! That may have been the beginning of my understanding of the phrase, “It is what it is.”

During the time that we lived there, the world that we knew spun out of control. The smoldering social unrest began to surface with the assassination of President Kennedy and burst into wildfire with the Vietnam War and Civil Rights protests. Every long-held belief and social norm in American society was under attack. Nothing seemed solid, real, certain - - except on the hilltop farm and the house in the shade of the sycamore trees. There, life continued to be controlled by the seasons and the weather and the needs of the livestock. On the farm, in that little house, there was a certainty and a reality that the winds of change could not reach. The timeless cycle of the seasons continued steady, predictable, eternal. That certainty and permanence there was safe and comforting to me.

That little house, with all its flaws and shortcomings, was home. From my earliest memories, and well beyond the last time that I saw it, sitting empty and forlorn on a cold gray January morning, it was safety and security. Through all the traumas, pains, awkwardness of growing up, it was my safe place – the place that made the most sense to an awkward boy who was growing up not sure where the roads might lead.

 

There was Magic in the Back Pasture

 

Looking back over nearly ¾ of a century, I find it fascinating the things that I remember and the things that I have forgotten. I wonder if children today create make-believe worlds in their imaginations, or if that is a characteristic that the constant exposure to electronic media has relegated to our past. Is imagination a lost treasure from our cultural past?

On the hilltop farm in Virginia that I grew up on, a large pasture took up the better half of the back of the farm. The horse paddocks and stable occupied the rest. The back pasture ran from directly behind the chicken yard behind the house all the way to the eastern end of the farm. Three parallel ridges ran from the brow off the hill off to the south, deepening and steepening as they went. There was a small stand of hardwoods that ran from a small spring fed stream in the bottom of the last hollow up to and beyond the line fence at the top of the next ridge.

The property line at the eastern end was an old road that had been built before the Revolutionary War and abandoned in 1863. During the Revolution, this road served the “Albemarle Barracks”, a camp that held British and Hessian soldiers captured at the battle of Saratoga in 1777. This camp was on the relatively level hilltop just a few yards north of the house that I grew up in. (More about this later.)  A multi-flora rose hedge, long neglected and no longer serving as a “living fence” ran between the pasture and the hilltop cropland. The hedge stood on what had likely been the eastern wall of the camp. At the southern end of the hedge was an ancient oak tree, sitting right outside of what was likely the corner of the camp palisade fence. As children, we called this “the big fat, juicy tree.” Along the pasture’s southern line fence several old oak trees provided shade along the old wire fence. Beyond the line fence nearly a thousand acres of abandoned farmland stretched between the place we farmed to the very edges of the city of Charlottesville.

That big back pasture was a magical world filled with fairies, elves, pioneers, and marauding Indian warriors. There were even trolls that lurked beneath the “bridge” that was really a log fallen across the little stream in the far hollow. Each of the landmarks in the pasture had its own denizens and stories. Even the bull wallows became “fairy rings” that served as both places where the “fairies” held their celebrations, and “council sites” where the elfish kings met, and where the Indian chiefs held their councils, and where the pioneers met to plan their forays into the unknown lands ahead of them.

It is funny, though, the things that we remember and the things that we forget. Without trying too hard, I can remember my brother and I climbing on the Angus bull as he rested in the shade of “the big, fat, juicy tree”, completely ignoring the little boys climbing on him. I remember how the wind would blow the grass, sending wave after wave up the long ridges. I still can see the spiderweb strands, wet with morning dew glistening in the autumn sunlight. Almost 70 years gone, these memories are vivid and very real.

“A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant's rings make way for other toys”

And like Peter, Paul, and Mary’s “Little Jackie Paper”, the Gerow children outgrew the magical world they had created in the back pasture. Our version of “Puff the Magic Dragon”, the fairies, the elves, Daniel Boone and his pioneers, and the marauding Indians all receded into a world of forever twilight awaiting some other children in some other place and time.

It wasn’t just the Gerow kids that grew up and changed. The back pasture changed too. After the cow herd was dispersed, the pasture became a hayfield and the little boys who played in their magic world became teenagers who worked in the hay field, raking hay and running wagons; cursing when the front wheels of the old Farmall tractor would hit a “fairy ring” and snap the steering wheel from their grasp, sending painful shocks all the way to their shoulders.

And later still, Dad plowed the pasture to grow corn. The wind waves in the grass no longer ran across the ridges. The bull wallows, our “fairy rings”, disappeared beneath the leveling of the plow, the disk harrow, and the packer. And the Gerow boys worked the soil in those clouds of red dust, preparing the ground for planting. The “big, fat, juicy tree” was about all that remained of the magical world of our childhood. It stood silent sentinel on the high point as it had done for hundreds of years as the cowherd gave way to haying, and the haying evolved into cropping.

The years have relentlessly rolled on. It is much farther than the nearly ¾ of a century back to the childhood magic of the back pasture. The distance can’t be measured in just time or distance, one must also calculate in the lost hopes and dreams, the wins and losses, the loves and the heartbreaks across all those years. It is not just nearly 70 years and over 300 miles back to that hilltop farm and the magical world in that back pasture; it is the unmeasurable distance of life long-lived.

John Knowles ended his great novel “A Separate Peace” with this phrase, "Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence." I have no way of knowing if the great old oak tree still stands guard on the high point of what was, way back then, the back pasture. I know with absolute certainty that even if it is still standing there a quarter way through the 21^st century, someday it will be gone, as will I. That passing is inevitable for "Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence."

“A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys . . .”

As I move deeper into the very late innings of this game, I know with ontological certainty that there is life after this earthly existence. It would be a truly heavenly experience to be able to revisit that magical place and time and be one of those Gerow children again.