Lessons from the deaf, mute and blind

Our shopping lists were very short when I was a little girl growing up on a remote farm in Kansas. Flour, sugar, salt, coffee, baking soda and powder, seeds to plant,  grains to feed the chickens and livestock, parts and belts for machinery, and kerosene for lamps and lanterns in case the electricity went off. ...Essentials. We purchased no yeast for making the loaves of bread baked each week. All farm wives used "starter", a pure culture made from fermented cream. As I sit here writing I can almost catch a whiff of the baking bread that greeted me when I came in our kitchen door from the long, usually freezing walk from my one-room country school.  We planted and raised all of our own meat, dairy products, fruits and vegetables.  All other necessities were ordered from the Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Ward catalogs, which I have mentioned served an important purpose in their retirement years, in the North Pole, ... our name for our unheated outdoor two-holer toilet, located 'way past the wash house and the vegetable garden.  Some of you may be hung up on that "two -holer" image. Son Doug, always the creative sentimentalist confiscated that seat after the farm was abandoned, took it to his beautiful country home in Texas,  hung it,  and behind the holes, planted vines that cascaded down the wall to the floor. Remembering that "conversation piece" warms my heart, for my parent's decisions were made in that privy, from which comes the word private.

I have told you about Clair Anderson's family in prior blogs but today I feel compelled to tell you more about this unique family of five that lived several miles from our farm. ...too far for my young legs to make it both ways before dark.  I saddled up our ornery mare, Patsy, and away we went down a dirt road to Helmick, a tiny little train station settlement that had been abandoned by all except this remarkable family.

Clair was the sole provider for his wife, her mother, father and a maiden aunt. All but his wife Julie were deaf, mute and totally blind, except for Julie's mother whose sight was fast dimming. The couple had no children of their own, lest the sightless, soundless genes be passed down to the next generation.  The worn linoleum-covered floors in this old farmhouse were spotlessly clean. Each member's clothing, starched and ironed with flat irons heated on the wood-fed cast iron stove had been scrubbed with homemade lye soap on a wash board in tubs filled with water from a well of spring water, drawn up hand-over-hand by buckets attached to a rope.

When we moved here to Bear Valley thirty-one years ago a neighbor who was raised in these mountains warned us not to set sprinklers beneath our ancient oaks. Her valid reason: "These mighty oaks have done the hard work of pressing down and down to drink from the deep springs buried in our mountains. If given the opportunity the roots will take the line of least resistance and come to the surface to drink. When the blizzards and winds come they will topple over because their roots will be weakened". ...kind of reminds us of our nation, doesn't it? ...and what was the offer Jesus gave the Woman at the Well  who had drunk dirty surface water all of her life?

Everyone in Clair and Julie's family went silently about their work,  pausing to communicate by a language transmitted through their fingers to one another's hands and arms, as they nodded and smiled.  Oh, that all of us humans could understand one another's hearts and meanings in such a way, and stop yelling at each other!

By the time I was born even farmers had a telephone.. ...the type that hung on the wall with a crank on the side that we turned but once to reach a live woman we called "Central". We gave her the name of the person we wanted to reach and she rang them with either two, three or four rings on their party line. I don't recall that we had a phone book for "Central" knew everybody and their particular "ring" within a radius of twenty or thirty miles. She was kind to all of us.as long as we called before dark and after sun-up. We knew it was bad manners to pick up the phone when someone else's ring was heard on our party line,  but many a farm family learned how to ever-so-carefully pick up the receiver and listen in.  Who needed Face book?

...back to the Helmick family: When Patsy and I galloped up to the home of my friends,  Julie's mother became excited, grabbed the slate off the kitchen wall,  grasped a piece of chalk and began to write. We wrote to each other and laughed,  she from deep in her throat. ...not an unpleasant sound at all. This lady was my friend, and I was the granddaughter she would never have. I usually lingered, counting on my ride home being a hair-flyin',  rein-yankin'  race toward the barn once Patsy knew we were headed that way.

My dear friends of the 21st century, I like to hear your voices, but I welcome your loving Emails and texts. I know if I refuse to keep up with technology I will never hear from most of you, including my grandchildren. I do have a land phone: 661-821-1214.  Right now I am learning to use my new 10 inch "Samsung Tablet". Granddaughter Lexi and I are going to begin to play cards together. ... she in her Bay Area college and me on my mountain. ... and I must make more use of Skype so I can see faces and hear voices.  I watch Netflix as well as TV,  choose to listen on my cell and Tablet to scripture and great teachers of the Word. I think of how terribly lonely widows, widowers and parents have been down through the centuries as their loved ones have left.   Many families continued to live too close to one another. Abe and his nephew Lot figured that out, but Abe and Sarah sure did mess up. The Arabs are still getting even with Abe for booting out Hagar and Ishmael.

To me, one of the funniest scenarios in scripture is in John 9. Do you ever wonder if the blind man that Jesus healed didn't wish he could go back and be blind again so he wouldn't have to view the scene that unfolded right before his eyes when the absurd Pharisees and his own parents tried to steal the joy from his beautiful miracle? One of the great advantages of being my age is that I don't have to hang around people who try to take the joy out of my miracles. Soon I shall see Him face-to-face, in all His Glory! Until then,  dear Lord, ...

Open my eyes that I may see visions of Truth Thou hast for me.
Place in my hands the wonderful key that shall unclasp and set me free.

Open my ears that I may hear voices of Truth Thou sendeth clear.
And while the wavenotes fall on my ear, everything false will disappear.

Open my mouth and let me bear gladly the warm Truth everywhere;
Open my heart, and let me prepare love for your children that I can share.

SILENTLY NOW I WAIT FOR THEE; READY MY GOD THY WILL TO SEE.
OPEN MY EYES, ILLUMINE ME, SPIRIT DIVINE!

Love,  Jo