A Reminder from Yesteryear
Each day I meet people who know I have long lived on Cook Corner in Stone Arabia. Usually they say how much better they can see to get around the corner since two old buildings have been removed. Doubtless they are correct. The old horse barn torn down has had a most vivid past to generations of young people who grew up in our area. Each fall for many years the Stone Arabia Pumpkin Lady stored the fruits of her labor there as a first step from garden to front lawn where they would get their fall decorations or jack-o-lantern pumpkins. Possibly no other spot in Stone Arabia was better known. The last year that happened was in 2006 when their friend the Pumpkin Lady passed away in November. It is strange how yesterdays sometimes again emerge to the forefront by small bits and pieces.
That old building had for a long time caught the no longer used things that were just too good or connected by sentiment to throw away. Doubtless long before I came here people would say, “What are we going to do with this?” The answer always was, “Put it up over the garage”. The horse drawn sleighs from a different day and age would have been a good example. The Pumpkin Lady, Ethel Nellis Barshied, carried things u there just as we all did. I brought things and put them in there sixty four years ago. When the building was being cleaned out awaiting demolition, a few things from my past were still hard to throw away. I carefully saved a box of small stones that were my first collection. Only someone who had caught the collecting disease as I have could understand. Surprisingly there are more people even in this throwaway day and age that would do the same. Most might not admit it.
The old building someway clung to the past in an unexpected way. It was almost as if it wanted this writer to bring back the past. When nothing was left but the sturdy hand hewn frame, something still sprung out at me. Hanging on one of the ceiling beams were five colored onion or fruit bags. What was in them? Indian corn seed for the 2007 crop. A crop that was never to be.
