Ripley Roots Stories /Twigs

	Ripley Roots

Neighbors

by theresa m ripley, neighbor

All neighbors lived within a four-mile radius of Ocoya Elevator

I just finished reading a book by M. Scott Peck, M.D. who is the author of the popular, at least in terms of sales, The Road Less Traveled. The book I read was entitled A Different Drum, and it was about building a sense of community in today's society. Dr. Peck writes:

". . .that isolation and fragmentation have become the order of the day.

"I personally know of this isolation and fragmentation. From the age of five until I left home at twenty-three I lived with my parents in an apartment building in New York City. There were two apartments to a floor, separated by a small foyer and elevator. As there were eleven stories above the first, this building was the compact home for twenty-two families. I knew the last name of the family across the foyer. I never knew the first names of their children. I stepped foot in their apartment once in those seventeen years. I knew the last names of two other families in the build ing; I could not even address the remaining eighteen. I did address most of the elevatormen and doormen by their first names; I never knew any of their last names."

Dr. Peck and I had the opposite experience growing up. My family knew everyone within a 4-mile radius, and we were truly neighbors. Our dictionary defines neighbors as "to be friendly; to render mutual favors or assistance." And that describes our neighbors.

The names of our neighbors included Craddock, Wooding, Shook, Wendling, Rutherford, Donovan, Hinshaw, Graves, Weber, Kridner, Cleary, Winterland, Rhoda, Streid, Wagner, Feit, Otto, Cottrell, Stuckemeyer, Boian, Koerner, Reeser, Vercler, Nagel, Whitmar, Sommers, Wilkens, Nylander, Oltman, Trachsel, Murphy, Yordy, Zehr, Stalter, Klein, Seeman, and Heins. There were many more and we knew them all. I knew every kid's name in these families from the oldest to the youngest even if they were a decade older or a decade younger than myself.

Dr. Peck spends much of his book describing how he finally found community by going to a Quaker school and being a part of the NTL Group Therapy movement in the 60's. These experiences, he says, have changed his life.

As for me, I now know I experienced a sense of community from the day I was born. My family and extended family, whom all lived within a few miles, celebrated my arrival. But equally as important, I was ushered into a well-established community that appreciated that I was "Skinny's girl" or "Blanche finally got her girl. We're so glad." And they meant it.

My brother, who was 9 1/2 when I was born, told me numerous people came laden with gifts when I came home from the hospital. My baby book, which was destroyed in the fire of '77, had pages describing the gifts brought to the newborn. For better or worse they all greeted me into the community and wished me well and assumed I was a part of them; and in turn after living there two decades, they became a part of me.Let me give a flavor of our neighborhood. The concept of next-door neighbor was defined by sections. A section is a 1-mile square and contains 640 acres. Our farm was 200 acres so our section was also shared by the Craddocks, Woodings, and Reeds. The Craddocks, who lived next door--which meant about a mile away, were my godparents. They had four girls, all much older than I. As godmother, Sara Craddock continued to send me birthday gifts well into my 30's and her 80's. She had her family bring her to my brother's funeral in 1986 when she was 89. She told me it was important for her to be there for me. Sara gave me my first paid employment at age 10. My job was to dust the house once a week. No small job since, like us, they lived within a mile of a limestone quarry noted for its dispensing of fine, white dust in the air. I am sure I was a lousy housekeeper but I loved to dust all the furniture in the house because it was wood, and old, and beautiful. Unlike us, they had their lovely oak furniture in the house instead of in storage in the cob house outside.

The other main occupant of our section was the Woodings. There were two families of Woodings. The first "family" consisted of three adult siblings living together--Dorothy, Walter, and Charlie. A gigantic St. Bernard took equal family status. The Wooding trio had one brother, Frank, who lived "down the road a piece"--that's really how we talked. Frank was married and had two kids.

The Wooding Crib

Our house abounded with Wooding stories. To say the least the Wooding trio were a bit eccentric.They were quite land wealthy; and if their musings to Dad were accurate, they kept literally thousands of dollars under a mattress and in the backyard. They trusted my parents without reservation and were always telling Dad stories about evening avengers with guns coming to attack them or to poison their dog. They lived in abject poverty as far as clothes and home furnishings (but not cars I might add), but at Christmas time they would bring us overly expensive gifts just for being good neighbors. And there was continuing family discussion of when their corn crib might fall over.

On the scale of unusual neighbors Woodings would have been on one end of the continuum but most of our neighbors were just average; and as I look back on it, I think them quite wonderful.

Take the Hemkens, for example. They lived in the next section and were a shirt-tail relative of Moms. We would go to their house with our oversupply of apples and in return we would get their oversupply of peaches. Take the Feits for another example. The Feits had four girls, the youngest being my age. The oldest was my junior leader in 4-H, the next oldest ended up marrying my first cousin, the next married an Ocoya neighbor, and the last married a Rutherford. Now take the Rutherfords. The one that married a Feit was my singing partner for several bridal showers when we were six years old. We were "cute" they said. The next family of Rutherfords, down the road a piece, were first cousins to the Rutherfords just mentioned. One of these Rutherfords was my age and his sister was 9 years younger. The one my age had me help him with geometry on the school bus every day. The Rutherfords lived near the Kridners who lived near the Donovans. The Donovans were Catholic. They had six kids; the last two were the nearest my age. We attended catechism together with Fr. Malady (which shall bond us forever), and we were the kids not having hamburgers at Steve's Cafe after the Friday night football game. I could go on with this stream of conscientious for a long time, but I hope the reader understands that each family was connected to every other family in some way day after day, month after month, year after year.

All of our neighbors were farmers and shared the same life and disappointments. We shared telephone party lines (and thus knew everyone else's business) and cooperated on getting every one's haying done. We would loan out Ray and our haywagons for 10 haying jobs; and when we did our own haying, we had 10 guys show up and plenty of wagons. We shared butchering. We butchered one winter and shared half a beef with one neighbor, and they would butcher the following year. (The farmer who butchered got to keep the tongue; I loved tongue sandwiches!) Many farmers would share livestock chores when they had to be gone. In our case we had Ray to do our daily chores when we took our vacations Out West and the shorter one-day trips.

At the same time that we shared, there was an independence about our living that was respected by all. We rarely shared equipment that was not a tit for tat arrangement like haying. You did not take advantage of a neighbor and you allowed them plenty of breathing room to be their own per son. Dad did not give unsolicited advice to any other farmer on how to do his farming. If asked, yes; but if not, keep your thoughts to yourself. Families were also allowed to work out their own personal problems. I never knew anyone who went to a counselor, let alone a psychologist or psychiatrist. Even going to the clergy was suspect in most instances. Working it out among yourselves, or perhaps with the rest of the family, meaning extended family, might be acceptable.

The neighbors were at their best when they came together for a common purpose. The Ocoya School brought them together for a long time. It closed in 1949 so I did not attend country school but the folklore of being a part of the school is in my consciousness because everybody talked about it for years after the closing. In fact, they still do. My brother went to Ocoya School through eighth grade and some of his best storytelling (and he was a terrific storyteller) was about those school days.

Neighbors were also brought together by tragedy. All responded upon the death of someone in the community. By the time I was ten I estimate I had ventured inside the two funeral homes of Pontiac and the one in Chenoa at least 50 times, and that is a very conservative number. I knew what to say and do at a visitation and did not mind the somewhat subdued but party-like atmo sphere with a corpse being the center of attention. All community members went to either the visitation or funeral and some went to both if you knew the deceased particularly well. If you had to choose one, you usually went to the visitation because you had more of an opportunity to talk with the family and other neighbors. Dad, and later Ray, were pallbearers at least a half a dozen times a year. As Dad got older, and Ray worked up to his 6'2" frame with attending size and muscle, we often got calls asking if "young Ray" could be a pallbearer for X. Sometimes we did not know the deceased particularly well, but Ray was big and, I guess, seemed appropriate for the job by the family in need. It was in this context that we visited all the churches in the community. As Catholics, this was your only shot at attending a Protestant service.

The rest of death and funeral behavior by the community was pretty standard. The deceased's family was inundated with food brought to the house, and the funeral home was besieged with flowers and gifts donated to the particular charity designated. The family usually received hundreds of cards expressing sympathy in the passing of a loved one. Although the ritual was the same for everyone, it seemed genuine in its tradition by rote in the community.

The community also shared in the tragedy of being disabled. In my twenty years as an ongoing part of the community, I witnessed numerous times when neighbors helped neighbor. Sometimes it was an accident, like the year one of the neighbors caught his arm in the dump and the arm was ripped off. The neighbors brought in the crops that year. Sometimes it was illness, like when my best friend's father had a heart condition come on suddenly and he had to give up farming immediately. The neighbors brought in the crops that year. And finally it was the time that we needed help. And the neighbors brought in the crops that year for us. The expression of gratitude was beyond us.

And ultimately it has been the times when the neighbors have helped me face the deaths of my parents and brother. On each of the three occasions their outpouring has been sincere and sus tained. Their response has helped to make what seemed untimely, unfair, and just plain awful another part in the cycle of our well established community. I know my family was well liked and respected in their community. That was demonstrated time and again when they were alive and equalled at the time of each of their deaths.

Thus I have experienced what eluded Dr. Peck in his youth. And I am ever so appreciative of the life I was given as a child. Yes, there were chains of convention; and yes, I was eager to leave the confines of the community to go to the larger world; and no, I don't want to return and live there permanently now. But it did have a special quality that has become a part of me and has become a part of the way I relate to people, I hope. My adult community includes people living on many continents and many states of the union. I can never have the same type of community that I was born into, but the memory of that initial community often guides how I relate to my adult community.