In last week’s column you saw me seated in my big green chair dreaming about past Christmases.
This week you’ll find me in the same place. Honest, I haven’t been there all week. Life has caught me in a whirlwind of busyness.
Recently someone asked me if I planned to retire. I replied, “No. I tried that once. It doesn’t work.”
Well, back to my comfortable old chair. I sat back and thought about the nearly 19 years of column writing and the people who appeared in them. You will remember the characters only if you read me prior to appearing in The Wellington Advertiser. Most people rate Aunt Harri as the most memorable of them. She is my favourite. I can shut my eyes and see her now as Anna and I did in June 1993.
She had arrived at our door, asking to borrow a hammer, but refused any help. Later we encountered her walking along the county road, tapping her cane briskly, her other hand swinging freely and her chin thrust forward.
Only her slightly-stooped shoulders betrayed her age. When we stopped and chatted briefly; she said she learned to walk as a former WAAC.
Without another word, she nodded and moved briskly on her way. Her voice drifted back on the wind; I could hear a mezzo soprano singing a marching song to the beat of a cane: “I had a good home and I left . . . left . . . left.”
Anna looked at me in wonder and said, “From what she said, that woman was in the First World War. She must be in her 90s!”
Watching the retreating, elderly but definitely energetic figure, I said, “Yes, either that or the Anglo-Boer War.”
How could I forget Aunt Harri? She marched into my columns regularly and even managed to get into the pages of a book named for her, Aunt Harri Walks the Line.
Maybe you remember another character who wormed his way into my weekly submissions beginning in January 1995. Bert often arrived at my door, elbowed me aside and beat me to my chair. Every time this guy showed up, something memorable happened. I described him as my great half uncle, or second-cousin twice removed or something or other.
In our mixed-up family, due to our patriarch’s two marriages separated by 40 years, no one knows for sure who is what. Bert then carried over 200 pounds on his big-boned, 63-year-old frame. Only his mother ever used his real name: Egbert. I loved Bert like my own brother.
In July of 1997, The Reverend Frank Barklay burst into print with all the energy of a young man. And why not, at 62 he weighed the same and felt no different than he did 30 years prior. Early in the story Frank’s wife died. One reader became so involved with the character, he thought I had lost Anna.
However, I remember best a host of interesting characters who never appear in the column, my readers: those who phone or e-mail; those who stop me in the street, or while shopping or in church.
You are my true heroes, because you keep reading me, year after year. In the spirit of Christmas, I wish everyone a manger full of love in the new year.