Whoops, sorry, I just lied to you. It wasn’t a garage sale – it was a carport sale.
And, wow, what a sale it was. It was not just a sale – it was an education in itself. What a great cross section of the human population showed up. Talk about beehives; we were swarmed. And my apologies go out to each and every one of whom I failed to shake hands. I’m going to blame that on my mother – the possibilities would have been three times greater had I been born triplets.
Nevertheless, folks, whether you know it or not, you have all helped me through a very difficult time. It is not easy to download 52 years of collected memorabilia, having lived with my Little Lady, whom I just happen to still have a long and lingering hunger for deep in my heart.
Being from the old school, it is my hope that the massive circulation of this newspaper will do the justice in sending my heartfelt thanks out to each and every one of you, which should really be done with a personal handshake.
Now, don’t read me wrong, folks, as quite a number already have, with their cards and inquiries. I will still be sending a weekly column to the Wellington Advertiser. The magic of email and its worldwide capabilities will still allow me to click the “send” button, and my scribbles will arrive on the editor’s screen just as it has for the past many years.
The fact is, though it took a couple of mind-adjusting years, and a tornado to boot, I am now looking forward to my final move along about the receding weeks of August. My new stomping grounds will open up a far wider range of topics for me to write about.
A couple of mornings or so ago, at the breaking of dawn, as I sat on the newly repaired, across-the-front farm porch, sipping the first of three cups of coffee, the sun slowly brightened the eastern sky.
As it slowly gobbled the mist shrouds that hung between hilltop and valley, the whole area became alive with life.
A small flock of Canada geese, too young to be guarding nests, voiced their opinions as they flew across the dew-covered fields. From over the rise, I could hear the gobble of a wild tom turkey as he advised his harem, with their newly hatched chicks, to get up and get at it.
A rook, the English recognition of the giant crow, which we call here in Canada raven, sounded his harsh gravelly opinion to any and all as he methodically flopped his way across the meadow.
From down the front lane, across from where the tree swallow is nesting, a bluebird warbled its fluted call as it watched for the ground-dwelling creepy-crawlies to feed its nest full of ravenous young. A song sparrow sang, a killdeer called, a wren chattered and a hummingbird swooped and circled, again and again, the little hook on the porch where the last year’s feeder was not yet replaced.
A kingbird voiced his return to the single wild hawthorn that survived the tornado. And swallows, both barn and cliff, swiftly circled again and again, definitely missing the huge old barn in which they nested in great numbers the year before. Gone with it, too, was the big old beam on which a robin and phoebe had claimed nesting sites for many years before. Yet the meadow lark still sings from the post top in the valley, and both horned lark and bobolink sing their aerial song up against the bluest of sky.
The fact is, folks, though not yet in Heaven with my Little Lady, I’ll be living in the best, of the best, of two worlds. So worry not about my whereabouts, my care and my keep. I’ll be living in my little piece of Heaven on earth.
Take care, ’cause we care.
Barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-843-4544