Mailboxes and Old Barns Guest Post: Some Assembly Required, by Maxine Lee

Maxine Lee is grandmother of our good friend carterzest. We will continue to share the narrative of her family’s history as presented in the book she published in 2005 entitled Some Assembly Required. The gathering of her stories in the book was a result of her dream “to leave a printed account to my family, of my beginning, my birth place and childhood, and a few of the lessons life has taught to me.” Thank you, Maxine, for sharing with us what you gathered for them.

Links to previous posts in the series will be shared at the end of each Sunday’s post.

Christmas

Santa Claus came and he brought peanuts and oranges. Dad laughed a lot, kind of embarrassed. I sat in Santa’s lap and he “fixed” me a peanut. He didn’t leave any presents. That was later.

Our evergreen tree had one long, beautiful ornament that Mom always put away wrapped in cotton batting. We put real candles on the tree in little clip–on metal bases. The candles were only lighted for a few minutes. That was lovely, and when they were blown out, the fragrance of the warm wax filled the little room.

We never had a lot of presents because we were poor, but we didn’t know that, so it was alright. One gift was all we expected. Once I longed (out loud) for a doll buggy. Christmas morning, while we waited for the fire to warm the ice-cold floor, Dad wheeled around the room with a bright, brand new buggy. Naturally, I assumed there would be a doll with it, but there wasn’t. Fortunately, I had a lively imagination.

One year our joint gift was a big red wagon that came with side racks and runners for sleighing. Dad made skis out of barrel boards, and we also had a sled. Then he hauled cream cans of water to the top of the hill behind the barn, all the way past the house and down that hill. He and my brothers rode that icy, wild ride a lot, but I was too scared to try.

Another year, when we lived in the big house, Mom took an old petticoat and made dresses with fancy lace collars for our old dolls, but she used the pin with which I kept the diaper on to close the back. That year my sister and I received girl dolls with hair and bonnets. They wore beautiful organza dresses, one in green and one in pink. The dolls came with shoes and little white stockings.

When we got older, Christmases got leaner. My aunts sent little gifts. Once she sent me a handkerchief in a box with a little bottle of perfume. I loved it.

The year we had the measles, a tin full of hard Christmas candy arrived in the mail with a picture of Santa Claus on the lid. Mom kept that tin for years. I sat wrapped in a quilt in the rocking chair too sick and feverish to get excited about the candy.

One Christmas, my sister and I got a pair of gorgeous red mittens with embroidery on the top. I played Christmas all day, wrapping my mittens in tissue and putting them under the tree again and again. Mom, while tidying the room, swept up the tissue and tossed it into the stove. As the paper burned away, I realized my mittens were going up in flames. She scolded and scolded me for being so careless, but I know she just hurt because she had burned my one Christmas gift. I hurt because I knew she did. (That’s love.)

There was the time when I was in my brother’s Christmas program. I still remember my poem. I believe it was the opener. I was four years old. All was silent as I walked up to the little platform. I had not practiced with all those people (about fifty, maybe) looking at me. My poem went:

Here I stand with courage grand

My masterpiece to say,

But since I can’t think how it starts,

I think I’ll run away.

I ran before I got it said. See, I did know it! So much for my theatrical debut. I barely qualified for the bag of candy passed out at the end of the program.

Bulls

Those beasts sent terror through the neighborhood.

In the days before artificial insemination, every farmer kept a bull or had access to a neighbor’s bull. I was so terrified of bulls that I dreamed about being chased by them for years after I grew up. When my brother, Ralph, and I went to school — I was six and he was eight — we went through a lot of wooded areas, through the peat swamp, over a couple of small hills, through a poplar grove and up a long hill to the same little one-room schoolhouse that Dad had attended before us.

One morning when we were on our way to school, we heard a low growling or grumbling – like approaching thunder. Ralph made me climb a tree and wait for him to check out the noise. From my perch in the tree I could see this huge, white and brown animal just standing there, moaning low. He must have weighed as much as a big horse. Other cattle were with him, among them a red bull. They stood in that clearing like cops at a donut shop, talking over the latest hay raid and just growling at everything.After my brother came back, we either went back home or took a different route to school. I guess the most fearful bull was a huge Guernsey owned by Clarence Quesberg. Dad had him in our barnyard for a while, locked in a pen. He would take him out to water down the hill behind the house. I watched from a safe distance as Dad led him by a long pole, hooked into a ring in the bull’s nose. Obviously, the bull did not like that ring one little, but did what my dad wanted him to do, growling all the way, pawing the ground!

Dad would stand with arms outstretched like a fence, when we ran from the house to the barn after milking time, as though that “fence” could hold back that ton of mean animal if he decided to get at us.

The most scary bull incident happened when my little brother, Jerry, was about six months old. We were playing outside in the dirt where there was no grass. My baby brother was wrapped in a blanket sitting in a wooden apple box. Mother was doing housework inside. It was late spring. Suddenly, ambling into the yard with his head swinging and growling way down deep in his throat, came Mr. Mean. That bull was the biggest terror of my life. We all tore into the house, which, fortunately, was close. But my poor little baby brother was still sitting in his apple box. The bull went up to the box, and stared at that mysterious being when Mom realized what was happening. I still marvel at what she did. She did not wait to see if the bull would upend the box and baby. If she had, he would have mauled him. She grabbed a broom, raced out into the yard, shooed that belligerent bull back, picked up the baby and slowly backed her way into the house.

The bull followed her up to the three-foot wide stoop and pushed its slobbering nose against the window while we kids screamed. Mom went to the door and continued to ward off the beast until he finally lost interest and took off. There is nothing quite as mean and ferocious as a Guernsey bull, and this one fit the bill.

(Maxine’s faith is part of her story, and included in the book are Scripture lessons which are illustrated with stories from her life)

Transport to Heaven

Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son. (Colossians 1:13)

At the top of Camas Valley, which is actually a low mountain, you can find the evidence of the past. This place is the graveyard for worn out, rusting, deserted vehicles of every description from twenty to fifty years back.

One of my favorite toys as a child was the remnant of such a chariot, an abandoned car that had coughed its last effort into the grass below our cow barn. The car’s roof was gone along with its ambition for life and it became the vehicle for many “trips” to faraway places for me and some of my siblings. The absence of doors gave easy access for small passengers and driver.

That old car was held in place by the ruts where its tireless wheels had stopped some ten years ago, but that didn’t slow us down one bit. The driver took his place behind the steering wheel and worked it frantically to keep the car steady in the imaginary direction it was headed. The driver then yelled “oogle, oogle, oogle,” to warn the unsuspecting and imaginary traffic ahead to make away. Since the gasoline had evaporated long ago, there was nothing to generate power to engine or horn. That old wreck of a car was going nowhere, except in our imaginations.

It was powerless. Power is important to get something moving. Cars need it, trains use it, airplanes can’t get off the ground without. Transportation takes power.

I am thrilled when I consider that the Good News of the Gospel, the real gospel, is a power-filled means of transporting us from earth to heaven. It was purchased with the precious blood of God’s only Son, and like the song says, “the Blood will never lose its power!” We are saved through that power, from our sins. We are sanctified through that Blood and its power. Amazing grace, the power of God.

Because of that sacrificed Blood, we are transported from darkness into “the kingdom of His dear Son,” and will be lifted from here to glory by that same power. And that will never grow old, or be outdated like an old car.

There are many “gospels which are not gospels” that have been deserted or permanently “parked” in religious graveyards for lack of power. They were toys in the imagination of some man, offered as entertainment or excitement for a short period of time, but without power they grew boring and were left along the way in a search for something that is working, has been working since “the foundation of the world.” Some may have settled for those “toys” because of “easy access”, but those who do are not going anywhere. They may even make a little “noise”, but there is no power behind it.

Imagination can entertain children, but the time comes when we put away “childish things” and invest in what is real. When I see a deserted old car, I am reminded of my life before I gave it to the Lord, from a “vehicle” going nowhere, to a vessel filled with God’s power, headed for heaven. Thank God for a power filled gospel that found me and put me on a new path. I know where I am going. Heaven is ahead.

Mailboxes along the roads and old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds often served as landmarks in rural Montana. These landmarks told us where we were, and how far we had to go. Sometimes they signaled “home” and the end of the road. At other times, barely visible through swirling snow, they told us we had miles to go.

Maybe you’ve seen some of the same mailboxes along your roads, or glimpsed some of the same old barns through your storms.

In one way or another, anything you read in this weekly feature is a word picture of some mailbox or some old barn, tangible or intangible, seen by the author somewhere along the roads of their memory. Our stories of other times and places become word pictures of our mailboxes, our old barns.

This current series from Maxine Lee has elements of Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Oregon in it. Others have shared MBOBs from Kansas and Texas and Oklahoma and MBOBs from anywhere show up in the threads. Thank you to all who share in the posts and in the threads, and thanks again to Maxine today.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2014/05/04/mailboxes-and-old-barns-guest-post-some-assembly-required-by-maxine-lee/