SHERWOOD
“Life is not a private affair. A story and its lessons are only made useful if shared.”
-Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior
Times have certainly changed from focus on community with others to deliberately created, enticed, and marketed distraction to accept less quantity and quality at a higher price. We are living through times that test our faith in humanity. Political division. Environmental crisis. Social fragmentation. It is easy to feel powerless or lose hope.
January 6, 1940, was the birth date in Defiance Hospital, Defiance, Ohio. When returning for a tonsillectomy and removal of adenoids in 1945, there is recollection of a high-fenced Japanese Internment Camp about a mile West down the road from the Hospital.
After birth, was taken home to Sherwood, Ohio to the home Dad had built while he was establishing a hardware-appliance store in downtown Sherwood, population 500 folks. Mom was Catholic, Dad was a convert…the Sunday routine was attending Mass at St. Stephen’s in The Bend…name chosen because of the curve in the Baltimore & Ohio railroad as it passed through The Bend. I recall during a Sunday sermon by Father Maumeister that a train blasted its horn as it approached the street near the church. My response from our pew was Beeeeee… Ooooooo… and deserved, parental discipline certainly followed. There are fond memories of learning altar boy, Latin prayers while sitting with Mom on the bottom bunk of the bunk beds where younger brother, Dan, and I slept. Many memories surface of serving Mass for Father Maumeister and Father Pfeifer. During a funeral one day, Dan Singer, a fellow altar boy, backed into a candle alongside the casket and set his white surplus on-fire. We scurried, put out the fire…no one was hurt…and on went the ceremony and burial in the nearby church cemetery. There are many fond memories of ceremonies during Easter week… Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. During a Saturday evening Benediction recall dumping the entire boat of incense on the altar floor…worked out fine, I used the boat spoon to scoop some incense from the floor and put it on the charcoal in the incensor being held by Father Maumeister.
The first allowance was five nickels in a matchbox; and at 10 years old started to work in the family hardware store. Sweeping the floor was a Saturday task, and it was essential to make sure all the sweeping compound was swept up because Dad would make the rounds for a quick and dirty check. Cleaning the 50+ weapons we inventoried and sold was also a Saturday task…Remington, Stevens, Savage, Winchester, Smith and Wesson…shotguns, rifles, pistols, and plenty of ammo, too.
Christmas was an absolute blast…annually, having attended the June Bostwick-Braun toy show in Toledo, Ohio with Dad to buy toy inventory, it was always fun to unpack the Christmas toys and put them on display during the Christmas season. A real highlight was installing the operating American Flyer and Lionel electric train displays in the front window. Selling Hoffert Christmas trees added to the Holiday fun. It was always fun to close the store at 5 PM on Christmas Eve and go home for family time, Christmas presents, the Christmas Carol on TV, and Midnight Mass at St. Stephen’s. Christmas day was always a day for relaxation, family, and lots of play with the anticipated Christmas toy.
Other duties at the store were many…helped with annual inventory, waited on customers, ran the store while Dad played golf on Thursday afternoons at Orchard Hills Country Club, unpacked and shelved merchandise, burned trash, made keys for customers…certainly wonderful years full of learning and making friends, all while playing Little League Baseball for the Sherwood Giants.
School for grades one through eight was at Sherwood-Delaware High School. Opted to go to Defiance High School to play football and attend high school. Graduated in 1958.
Reflecting on these early years has been interesting, and there are many more fond memories. As mentioned, times have changed…there was no internet, no cell phones, and we played together, we worked together, we knew all the folks in the community, we watched outdoor movies together, all the folks knew our family, we went to church and school together, we grieved together, we spent a lot of time with Gma, Gpa, Aunt Alvia and Uncle Ray and family…these were wonderful, focused times in my life…a life of simply being happy and getting ready for more life, and experiencing this marvelous gift.
Today, whether it is working out at LA Fitness, picking up groceries at Fry’s, or driving through our 55+ community, it is distraction personified…folks young and old on LA Fitness machines focused on phones, watching TV as they work-out…media, media, media, and more media, including AI. At home it is cell phones, TV, and personal computers.. Fry’s is wall-to-wall people, sparse greetings and conversation, and shopping. Watching folks in the parking lot is an education about lives motoring along ignoring all that is transpiring around them. The 55+ community is a resort community. Sixty percent of the community is “snow-birds,” who are absent for one-half the year. Candidly, naming more that seven neighbors is tough. Perhaps that is a learned, personal issue of not wanting to be bothered. Simply one of the numerous awareness changes noted since those happy, together, and community days in Sherwood… just seen, heard, and simply present.
Perhaps the peace-of-mind, purpose, connections, and compassion we cultivate within ourselves become the force that transforms our communities, relationships, and ultimately, our world. Distraction is easy. Happiness is not escaping difficulty, it simply requires presence with the self and others. Inner mindfulness and awareness can impact worldly healing and acts of kindness can help us evolve to a less distracted world with more “Sherwood like” childhood learning and creative experiences. Have a great day, love you!
