Perfect Gifts

In the last three months
I have received three perfect gifts:
1. a Big Bad Wolf doll
that eats Grandma
that Paul's family found at IKEA
2. a book titled "What If?"
that answers bizarre questions like
"What would happen
if the earth stopped turning?"
from science-son Luke
3. a remote-controlled,
battery-operated candle
from Uncle Jack
so I won't set the house on fire again.
Never leave a burning candle unattended.

Last week
I received yet another Perfect Gift:
Heidi gave me a t-shirt
emblazoned "Dances With Squirrels."
It came with a card that said
"To appreciate nonsense
requires a serious
interest in life."




Heidi and I started our nonsense in elementary school.
We sat beside each other,
skinny sixth graders
in the condemned Second Avenue building,
spending our spare time
writing notes in code
for the guys behind us to crack.
We were partners
on the class trip
to the Hershey zoo.
In junior high,
we cultivated new friendships
as she became the cheerleading mascot
while I spent hours with the band
and our paths diverged.

Forty five years later
we are again together in school,
she in third grade
and me in first grade
at Penfield Elementary.
It didn't take long to renew our friendship.
We were two old dogs,
circling and sniffing,
tails tentatively wagging,
catching up.
We have much in common
besides DAHS class of '74:
Cat dilemmas.
Aging mothers.
Love of quotes.
Goodwill bargains.
Appreciation of Einstein.
Children's literature.
We ask each other doggy questions:
How was the cancer?
Ruff.
Why is the hall wet?
Roof.
What do you think of Kate DiCamillo?
Grrrrrrrrrrrrr... great!
We compare doggy brains
and find that both are powered by squirrels.
Her squirrel runs nicely in her wheel,
analyzing situations,
neatly making to-do lists.
My brain hosts a family of hyperactive squirrels
who take their wheel apart
to see how it works
and then crank up the music
and boogie.
Heidi organizes
Read Across America Night
while I dress up as Clifford
and pelt kids with snowballs.
She reads the morning announcements
in a calm, quiet voice
while I make my loud, annoying math puppet Claw
read when it's my turn.
She catalogues the book room;
I greet kids dressed as Mother Nature
when the seasons change.
She makes me think.
I make her laugh,
and I love that
she appreciates my humor.

This week
when I took down our cardinal pictures in the hall
I could not bring myself
to throw away the ripped-paper letters
so I rearranged them instead
and added my own picture.
Heidi laughed,
shook her head,
and said I should blog about it.
And I have.


May your squirrels dance this week
as you contemplate perfect gifts.
Friendship is one of them.
 

Remembering Walt Shaffner

Denny's dad Walt was the ninth child in a family of thirteen.
He was born in Orviston,
learned to walk in Howard
(our cat is now named Howard)
and ran from the Deer Park in Snowshoe
when his house caught fire.
All that was saved from the blaze
was a deer hoof hat rack,
his dad's 32 Remington,
and the Edison record player.

Walt didn't speak until he was five.
"Him want cookie!" his younger brother Fred would say.
When Walt did start talking,
he made friends all up and down Mill Road.
Life in Clearfield was about school,
at least until the eighth grade,
but mostly life was about baseball.
He became known as "Slick" Shaffner
and was offered a tryout with the Pittsburgh Pirates
but couldn't afford the bus ticket to Pittsburgh.
He became a CCC boy instead
in Cross Forks
where he planted thousands of pines in the Pennsylvania mountains.

Walt signed on to help build Harbison Walker's third brickyard
and stayed to ultimately run a lift truck.
He married nurse Golda and became a family man.
Walt taught his sons
Paul (Bozo)
and Denny (Fozdick)
how to play catch,
rake stone,
plant trees,
cut brush,
build bonfires,
cut wood,
graft trees,
pick apples,
raise calves, 
mow backyards and graveyards,
shear trees,
ride on running boards,
drive Gravely tractors
and pickup trucks,
shoot a 22,
shovel coal,
raise turkeys,
kill snakes,
sleep on the ground,
cook bacon and eggs,
tear down buildings,
straighten nails,
recycle copper pipe,
build tree stands,
skin deer,
and shower by flashlight
when you didn't want anyone to know you were home.

He taught his boys about gift-giving:
"If you don't know what to get her,
get her something you like."

Walt also taught Paul and Denny to take a risk.
In 1956, he took out a second mortgage
to buy one hundred acres of
overgrown farm on the Rockton Mountain
and worked to build a second home on the old barn foundation.
It is that financial risk
that has allowed us to raise our family here on the mountain.

When Walt wasn't working,
he would tell scary stories of the Side Hill Gouge
and visit abandoned "Julius houses"
on Sunday drives in the Rambler.
Those drives often ended at Miller Dairy
where Whitehouse was a favorite.
Ice cream was also a treat during the Ed Sullivan Show,
but Walt could be persuaded to eat saltines with milk and sugar.
Vacations were mostly to visit family in "York State"
but after Paul was killed,
vacation destinations expanded.
Washington, DC,
the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel,
and Baltimore's fish market
were stops enroute to the traditional summer vacation spot,
the Islander Motel
on 42nd Street
in Ocean City, MD.

When Walt became a grandpa,
his name became "Pap"
and he took his grandsons
Paul and Luke
for rides in his truck.
We could hear that truck start up
from a quarter mile away.
"Pap's coming!"
"Wanna go for a ride around the horn?" he'd say
and the boys would hop in.
He'd let them steer
and laughed when they drove into the ditch.
They'd get a drink at the spring
and return dirtier than they left.
Always.

Walt always had a positive attitude
through many operations--
"Do you want to see where they rolled my guts out on the table?"
and as diabetes took his legs
and his vision
he would sit on the porch
and listen to the Pirate games
while chipmunks crawled onto his lap to eat peanuts.
He died young at eighty-five.
That was fifteen years ago.
Had he lived,
Walt would have been one hundred years old today.

We miss you, Pap.