My busy month ahead

The summer is nearly over.  Certainly we hope the hot part is over - how many days above ninety degrees?  Is it really 58 or 59 days?  Now it's September, and I'm ready to be busy, busy, busy. 

Yesterday was the reunion that Linda S. organized at her ancestral (Hobbs) farm near Fairfield, PA.  Then on the 10th Lorelei and Andreas and the baby arrive for my 70th birthday weekend.  On the 12th we'll all go to Nationals Park for my 70th birthday with lunch and a baseball game - - I've ordered tickets for 22 at the PNC Diamond Club.  Then on the 16th, I fly to Chicago to spend time with L and A and baby, who will celebrate his 2nd birthday on the 18th.  After that I fly very early on the 20th to Rochester, NY for the World Canals Conference, where I'll deliver a paper at 8:30 am on the 22nd about the C & O Canal Park's plan for Williamsport, MD.  The conference ends on the 24th and the following day I'll drive with three friends to the Poconos for a hiking trip of 4 or 5 days.  And finally home at the end of the month.  I think that's a recap of the month ahead.

But first was the reunion.  The farm has been in the family since, what?  Civil War days?  Was it our great-grandparents Isaac Pecher and wife Annie Long who bought it?  If so, they would have done so after the war, because Isaac served toward the end. 

I used to go the the farm for a week or so in the summer, so very long ago.  There were cows to be milked, hogs to be fed, chickens who didn't like some little girl's hand reaching under for a freshly laid egg. I was mightily afraid of lots of things up there on the farm, and my cousins were mightily amused by me.  We all shared a very large bed upstairs in the hot attic, and we bathed once a week in a washtub on the kitchen floor, and we used the outhouse because there was no indoor plumbing, and, yes, there was a Sears catalog in the outhouse.  Well, there was a hand pump in the kitchen sink as well as a larger one outside and the water was always cold.. 

The huge stove was ancient and stood on four tall legs.  It wasn't gas or electric - it burned firewood, and Aunt Zita baked bread every day and served it with home-churned butter - a wonderful thing to eat.  All of the food came from the farm:  milk from their cows, meat from their smokehouse, eggs from the henhouse, fresh vegs from the garden, fresh berries from the vines and fresh peaches and cherries from the orchard.  And my aunt and the older girls spent hours canning fruits and vegetables in big glass jars for storage in the dirt celler.  That's what they ate during the winter and spring months. 

The farm house had a long porch across the front, and the entrance to the dirt cellar wa through two nearly-flat doors that pulled open to reveal steps that went down into the dark that smelled of damp dirt.  It was always cool.  I remember shelves and shelves that were nearly empty in the summer and boxes and boxes of glass canning jars.  But I didn't like the cellar, and tried to stay away.

That front porch was a gathering place in the evening after chores were done.  Uncle Raymond played the fiddle, or so I recall.  Others played the guitar, was there an accordian?  And I seem to recall a pump organ somewhere in the house.  Music was pretty much country  music, probably like Jimmy Rogers/Hank Williams.  Or so I recall.  Down the road was an older couple whom my mother called Uncle Harry Pecher and Aunt ??.  I think that Uncle Harry was a brother to my mother's mother.   I have very few recollections of them other than the obligatory visits when my mother delivered me and picked me up.

So September 5th was this great reunion.  Linda says she had RSVPs from 143, so no one could bring an extra guest.  All of my brothers and sisters will be there, and most of us with spouses.  So that makes 15 people whom I definitely recognized.  The other 127 all wore nametags!!  And I did something terribly dumb:  I left my camera back in Maryland on Ellen's kitchen table.  So I have no photographs.  And when I have properly digested everything that went on, I'll write about it.  But for now, I'm satisfied with memories of long time gone.