ChAngE

By MARLENE L. STUMPF

Sun­bury News Columnist

Three quar­ters of a cen­tury turns out a vari­ety of changes in one’s life. “Change hap­pens” or we can leave it to the young to per­fect. Grow­ing up, we had horses, but that wasn’t the mode of trans­porta­tion for our fam­ily. My father had a large truck to haul fruits and veg­eta­bles to the stores and restau­rants between Cleve­land and Madi­son, Ohio. Stores East of Madison—Ashtabula and Jef­fer­son Coun­ties were ser­viced by my mater­nal grand­fa­ther. Towards the end of World War II, we were able to get an Inter­na­tional Sta­tion Wagon. The only other vehi­cle was our “trac­tor.” It was a 30’s Model T Ford stripped down. It never saw the road after it came to our place. My sis­ter and I were priv­i­leged to have the windshield—unlike the one in our sta­tion wagon, it was very rec­tan­gu­lar and flat. It had swung up and out to let air con­di­tion­ing hap­pen when attached to the Model T. Some things are best changed in order to keep the bugs out of the mouth while cruis­ing at 30 or 40 miles per hour.

It’s hard to find now, but a good deal on a house 25 years ago, might have been one that still had an outhouse—a privy—an out­side toi­let with­out the flush. That was a needed improve­ment. I know, because I never saw a new house built with one out behind. The “process of elimination”found a warmer seat.

In 1980s, my dad bought a three bed­room, story and a half with a barn and a three-holer right in the town of Broughton, Ohio. It had a red tile uri­nal and a lower seat for the chil­dren. Before Dad turned the “laun­dry” room into a bath­room, he hooked up a sun lamp in the out­house hung over his favorite hole. By the time he arrived from the house on a cold win­ter night, the seat was warm. Even­tu­ally, it became a bird coup. Dad raised Pigeons and Bob-White Quail for hunt­ing. Broughton had lost its wild quail pop­u­la­tion in a huge NW Ohio snow­storm with weeks of drift­ing snow. A few couped-birds flew out; the res­i­dents were so happy to have their quail back, even if they hung out on the back porch. Broughton had gone from quail to change to being some­what like it was! If you need to—ChAngE!

Posted by Marlene Stumpf on Apr 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.