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Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Before I get started this week someone pointed out that I had the wrong percentage down last week in this column in concern to my body’s degeneration as I age beyond 30. It should have read 93% instead of 97%, and obviously my brain is the first part to go…now on to this week.
Christmas week on the farm. That time of calmness when there are nights spent in the dark watching the twinkle of the Christmas lights as the radio plays the tunes of the season non stop. It will be a week filled with last minute planning and shopping, family and friends and joy and sorrow as all the emotions that come this time of year well up and bring themselves to the forefront of our minds.
I’m always brought back to growing up as a small boy on the farm and Christmas time. The house filled with smells of baking and Christmas goodies. Thoughts of my brothers waking me up those early mornings with the shouts that Santa had come in the night when we were nestled in our beds in that cold west bedroom upstairs. I remember the presents, always some clothes and more often than not what we had asked for or close to it, but always something special each year.
Now I’m surely not one to call anyone out in my column but I thought it proper to put my brothers on notice about one very special Christmas gift from long ago. I don’t remember the exact year, but there was one gift, a very special gift that we were “given”. As farm kids we played with our tractors and combines and farm machinery every day, and we always had wanted a shed to park our items in. One special Christmas morning there was a huge present under the tree. As we unwrapped it and were warned to share, there it appeared. Beautiful, red with white trim and wood shingles. Our own barn! Our very own barn where we could play for hours with our plastic animals. That wonderful hand crafted barn quickly got put up and didn’t see much use, which I am sure is probably the only reason it survives today. I see it every once in a while when I visit Dad’s house. It sits in a quiet corner waiting to be played with. And just in case any of my brothers get any strange ideas, don’t make me mark my name on the bottom of it with masking tape. I’m sure they’ll know what that means.
Merry Christmas to you all and may we all be here next year to celebrate again…
See you next week…Remember, we’re all in this together.