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Dyre
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Commentary by Arnold Dyre
I understand that the groundhog that wears a top hat up in Pennsylvania did not see his shadow on my mother’s birthday, and that we are, thus, in store for an early spring. I will buy that!
Here it is only slightly into February, but the daffodils are bursting out everywhere. This morning, I got a report from a reliable source that the Moore jonquils at Gore Springs are already blooming. Bluebirds are into nest building at my house in Madison. Personally, I think we might still get a February snowfall, but it will not delay the early spring that I see looming. Besides, daffodils in the snow are one of my most favorite things – right up there with “brown paper packages tied up with string” as in the Sound of Music song.
A Grown Up Buddy
When I was a boy, Mister Jim Moore was the best grown up buddy I had. He was a wonderful man!
One of the things Mister Jim frequently did was to go to the various cemeteries in the community and cleanup around the graves. He even went to some grave sites way off in the woods and to graveyards that others had forgotten.
I would go with him, and as we worked with hoe and shovel, he would tell me stories about the people buried in those spots. At the various church cemeteries, he would replace old flowers with new ones and frequently took up old, artificial flower arrangements and, once back at home, would re-work the arrangements to make them suitable for reuse. Accordingly, the rafters of Mister Jim’s garage were generally full of old artificial flower arrangements.
Spring Snow
I remember one year it started snowing just after evening milking. Mister Jim told me to go home and get my supper, and then come back with a flashlight. I thought maybe we were going ’coon hunting. My mother did not put up any argument when I told her that Mister Jim had told me to come with a flashlight. She just made me dress warmly. It was still snowing!
When I got to Mister Jim’s house, we went out to his garage, and he held the light while I climbed up in the rafters and handed him down artificial flower arrangements as he directed. We worked there in the garage rigging up perhaps two dozen spans of artificial flowers on three to five feet lengths of wire. Despite my repeated inquiries, Mister Jim provided no hint of what he was up to.
Snow Still Falling
Soon, Mister Jim announced that we were finished, and we went inside for some of Miss Willie’s hot chocolate and ate parched peanuts for a while by the wood stove.
From time to time we checked on the snow by turning on the back porch light and peering outside. It was still coming down! I wanted to stay the night with Mister Jim and Miss Willie, but Mister Jim told me he reckoned I better go on home, because my mother would be worried about me. Mister Jim said he would see me in the morning, and that we would go track some rabbits.
It was tough sleeping that night, what with the snow falling and my thinking about tracking rabbits and wondering why we had strung up all those artificial flowers.
By morning, it had stopped snowing. I usually milked before I ate breakfast, but that morning I had breakfast before going to milk the cow. Mother said there would be no school, and I told her that I had not planned on going to school anyway. As she gave me a stern look, I told her that Mister Jim had said we would track rabbits. She told me when I had finished milking just to bring the milk pail to the back door, and I could go track rabbits all day long if I wanted.
What A Day!
It was a day I will never forget!
Snow covered everything! I milked the cow and raced back to the house and headed out to Mister Jim’s house.
I saw the flowers as soon as I topped the little rise between our houses. Waiting until sometime during the night so that the flowers would not get covered by the snowfall, Mister Jim had strung the strands of flowers all through the bushes at the front and along the sides of his and Miss Willie’s house. It looked like Miss Willie’s flowers were blooming in the snow.
It was quite a sight!
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