3/21/2023.

It was a tad chilly this March afternoon, but there I sat wearing my down coat, ensconced on the writer’s perch and taking in the rays. I was alone; Judy off running errands hither and yon. She wouldn’t be back for a while.

A totally unpredictable sequence was then visited upon me. It occurred with pinpoint timing, as though previously planned, but no such arrangement was afoot. At least, I didn’t think so.

It was unusual for my longtime buddy, Charlie Mann, to show up, unusual only because his visit was unexpected. Otherwise, Charlie is virtually part of my family. In a matter of seconds, we were engaged in our standard banter. It’s always good to see Charlie.

He had barely gotten seated when my brother Dave made his way up the driveway. In short order, this combination inched the conversation up a notch. Since childhood, Charlie was part of the mix down here in the hollow. Among many endeavors, Charlie helped me bale hay commonly. Although he lived a stone’s throw from Little York, Charlie was around the farm frequently.

He didn’t just mix with the Tucker boys. The Mitchells were the other family in the hollow. They had daughters!! No other explanation is needed for Charlie’s consistent presence.

The Mitchells have long since flown their coop. Alex Mitchell, my boyhood buddy, was also pals with Charlie. These days Alex lives out near Gettysburg, a long haul. Indeed, we had all been together a few years back. Alex (we call him Arlo) brought us all together at the State Theatre in Easton.

Arlo, you see, plays an accomplished fiddle. Playing at the time with the John Denver Tribute Band, at show’s end he separated himself from the band and broke into his version of Orange Blossom Special. The applause cracked the plaster in the ceiling!

That sets up the next domino. Brother Dave, Charlie and I sat in the living room reminiscing about any number of notables when up the driveway came yet another vehicle. Without a clue, I peered out the window to ascertain who had arrived . This was nothing short of surreal. Alex Mitchell stepped out of the car.

We all sat there in, at least a smidgen of disbelief . How did this unlikely conclave fall together? I mean Bretton Woods was one thing, but Tuckaway Woods was another! We fettered not with such detail; rather let the party begin.

– Do note. This post will be blog bound at http://www.petetucker.net

Perhaps someone should write about stiles before they totally go out of style!

I know what you’re asking. Has this old farmer finally been jilted from his senses? What the hell is he talking about? Bare with me a moment while I back up several decades.

It’s the very early 1950s. My folks just purchased a farm in Alexandria Township. Many years later, I purchased most of it from them, but the folks’ original acquisition was from the former New Jersey Congressman Fred Allan Hartley, renowned for his legislation, the Taft/Hartley Act which, to this day limits some of the powers of labor unions.

This was not without a battle in Congress. The legislation survived President Truman’s veto before it became federal law, but I digress. Hartley later retired to a different Alexandria property off of Rick Road where he peacefully lived out his days.

In the meantime, what about this stile? It is from an Old English word meaning a set of stairs that allows ascent/ descent up and over a fence without use of any gate, yet disallowing use by livestock.Stiles were clever and certainly a throwback to distant old times.

In the earlier days of Tuckaway Farm, there was still a stile or two left in the fences, left there by Mr. Hartley. Apparently he spared no expense in creating stylish stiles, complete with twisted finials atop the stair posts. I, an enthused toddler at the time, took delight in an untold number of trips back and forth over the stile closest to the house. A youngster delights in the simplest things, don’t you think?

Not long ago, some folks in my humble circle were reminiscing about the coldest temperature they’d ever witnessed here in Hunterdon County. A logical progression from that subject would seem to be the heaviest snowfall that ever WOWED any of us, that is, here in Hunterdon.

I am humored by the memory of my Dad, a Michigan boy in childhood, describing a certain snowstorm with the words, “it snowed like the hammers of hell”. That seemed quite descriptive to me.

One snowfall, I think in 1966 , it snowed like the proverbial hammers of Hell. I could hardly believe the sheer depth of the snow. Mind you, I’ve since witnessed a “lake effect” snow or two up on New York’s Tug Hill Plateau. That ‘66 snow surely rivaled what Tug Hill had to offer. That year it really did snow like the hammers of hell.

I recall the Piell farm here in Alexandria (corner of Mt. Salem Road and Rt. 579) a spot where the snow drifts so deeply that a plow wouldn’t move it. With a backhoe the road crew tunneled a path for the school bus through Piell’s barnyard, then re-joined the road. The view looking out the school bus window was simply a wall of white, taller than the top of the bus. That scene is indelibly etched in the mind of this former school kid…

Given this snapshot of history, I am disposed to ponder how present day Alexandria would have fared through the likes of that storm. What do you think?

Mrs. Case’s class got themselves into a bit of hot water that day. It was nap time, a tradition steeped in the rituals of “Kinnygarten”, as my classmate, the late Ed Bush called it. The year? 1958, Alexandria Township School. Each kid had brought his/her own blanket to school, such to repose on the rock-hard floor for 20 minutes in the middle of the day. (Did Mrs. Case really think that any of us would sleep?)

You’ll pardon me please. I know that I’ve written about this incident already in my book, MEMOIRS of a JERSEY FARM BOY, but there’s a new wrinkle now. We’ve started to die! Not to mention, township residents are convulsing over what to do with the old structure. Rent it (who would?) or tear it down. For the love of Ed Bush, is nothing sacred? I want a souvenir brick from it when they do.

Rest assured that nap time had parameters. Silence was the Golden Rule. Mrs. Case would finally get us bedded down, though us five year-olds didn’t speak of the procedure in that term. Then we’d lie there in attempted stone silence. Mrs. Case would leave the room for a few minutes. When she returned, it had REALLY better be quiet.

That one day we commenced our nod when just outside of the classroom window a cock- pheasant began to crow, Very loudly! Well, far be it from us to take this lying down. In fact, when Mrs. Case re-entered the room, there was the entire class, all 14 of us, lined up along the windows. Our faces were glued to the glass, doing our best to catch a glimpse of this glorious bird. Undoubtedly, we were in TROUBLE!

Mrs. Case’s lip quivered with an angry tremor. She was PISSED, though us five-year-olds never would have said so.

As I recollect this episode, I am struck by its innocence. There were plenty of pheasants about the Alexandria countryside in those days. There was nothing terribly malicious in my classmates’ action that day. Mrs. Case eventually got over it. It reminds me of a lyric from an old Barbara Mandrell tune. “I was country before country was cool.”

The world is full of coincidence. If you don’t believe that, travel a little. You’ll see how your conversations bear out what I’m saying.

For example, I sit here on a plane this morning in Sarasota, Florida, soon to be bound for Allentown, PA. It always pains me to abandon the Florida sunshine only to re-enter the UGH ZONE. That is Jersey/Pennsylvania snow, freezing rain, sleet and the like, but I drift.

I’m seated next to Linda and Duane. Here the coincidence enters the fray. Linda has a gorgeous horse, a quarter horse that she keeps at her home near Point Pleasant, PA. To boot, she has horse friends that live in Alexandria Township, New Jersey. That township, she informs me, has an indoor arena where she occasionally rides with her Alexandria friends.

I’m sorry all of you lofty scholars that I should invoke the hideous subject of probabilities, but I need ask: what are the chances that I would have this discussion this morning with a perfect stranger in Sarasota, Florida?

You get my drift, don’t you?

Conversation this morning with my dear daughter-in-law, Becky, flitted from one subject to another. Yesterday we had touched on the fact that I was DISTANTLY related to Johann Sebastian Bach. To have a little fun with the fact, I tapped the keyboard of my iPad to play his Toccata and Fugue in D -minor. The organ never sounded so good.

This morning Becky evoked the subject of Ray Manzarek, the former keyboardist of rock n roll’s one and only THE DOORS. That, of course, had me lurching for my iPad again. Manzarek’s organ riff in Light My Fire sounded pretty good, too!

While we had the iPad in hand, why not Google a little info on Ray Manzarek? We did. We didn’t have to read much longer to learn who it was in the music world who motivated Manzarek: Johann Sebastian Bach. What goes around comes around!

I wonder how many folks reading this have ever “hilled” potatoes.

What’s that you say? “Hilled potatoes”?

That’s right. Let’s start with the basics. We’re in the family garden. Mom and Dad never did anything small when it came to the garden, so our potato section could have fed the Irish during their famine!

Potatoes don’t grow on trees. They grow underground. The tiny plant shoots out of the ground and is allowed to grow for a while. While the soil is still loose from tillage, Bro and I, hoes in hand, would heap the soil at the base of each plant, forming a little “hill” around it. This provided the underground condition most conducive for potatoes to grow.

Hilling potatoes was never fun. It was hot, sweaty work. Prior to starting, we’d already done a few hours of hot, sweaty work in the cow barn, so hilling potatoes was just a hot, sweaty variation.

It always amazed me, the number of potatoes grown by a single plant. Scads of them! No wonder hilling potatoes was just nothing but ingratifying work. Nothing was left too show for it.

Digging potatoes at harvest time was, at least, a little gratifying. The Jersey ground grew them like mad, some too big to fit on a dinner plate. When baked, cut one open, throw in a generous hunk of freshly churned butter, salt and voila.

I quote from the cover of MEMOIRS of a JERSEY FARM BOY, “We worked like peasants, we ate like kings.” Funny how, at the time, my juvenile mind didn’t realize how privileged I was.

And here I thought that it couldn’t get any sweeter. but the Autumn of the year seems to have outdone itself… again. The understated browns, the yellows, the scarlets, the russets, even dare I say, the last of the lavenders are yet to tumble from the trees.

They’ll have to hurry. They do have a deadline, you know. It is commonly called “whenever”, the very last moment of the very last day when that very last leaf could possibly come to rest on the forest floor.

You might attempt to foretell when that moment will occur. I, in the meantime, am content to keep guessing. I live deep in the woods. How well do I know that your guess is as good as mine.

There is a special privilege about living in the woods. It is defined by the inability to see or hear those things that are commonly identified with human presence. Yes, the occasional airplane is heard. Quite infrequently a car rumbles down the gravel lane, but most commonly one’s attention is compelled by wildlife, if compelled at all.

The sounds of the night are, well, intriguing. Commonly unidentifiable. But, we’ll not worry about that, shall we? Surely the cicada will intone again tomorrow night with its same subtle vigor. The distant coyote will remind us again of its free forest life and the sun will rise in the morning, complete with its array of silent deer and jumping fish.

The most wonderful phenom is that it occurs again on the morrow. A day has thinly veiled itself, but eternity remains. Another day lies in wait and if Divinity will allow, it is ours to embrace.

If, indeed, there is such a phenom, it was bestowed upon the teams of New York City last night. Shall we call it the Evening of the Long Ball? Or, to evoke a bit of the Babe, Swat Evening.

For those who don’t follow, the Yankees are in 1st place in their division of the American League. The Mets are in 1st place of their division of the National League. In both leagues there is an ever-tightening pennant race. Baseball is nearly convulsing! Ya gotta love it!

Last night’s game wasn’t cooperating with the Mets. A three run Pete Alonso bomb aided the cause. Better yet, in the eighth inning the Mets loaded the bases. Entering the batter’s box is the Mets’ slugging Short Stop, Francisco Lindor.

No, not many Short Stops are power hitters, but Lindor swats a monster Grand -Slam home run, putting the game out of reach to the hosting Milwaukee Brewers and cementing the Mets’ spot in the play-offs.

Not to be out-done, the Yankees have a few power hitters of their own. Aaron Judge had been closing in on Babe Ruth’s home-run record for a year, but last night’s game was getting gloomy. The Yankees trailed by 4 runs. And then, SWAT. Over the wall goes Judge’s #60, tying Ruth’s record.

Still, the Yankees trailed, but later loaded the bases. Enter the slumping Giancarlo Stanton for the Yankees. You guessed it. SWAT, a grand slam. The Yankees win the game and accomplish multiple reasons to celebrate.

What a night for New York baseball!