Back Road Ramblings

by Donna Poole

I looked with a critical eye at My First Valentine. He seemed to have no sense of propriety. Did he not know that one simply did not appear in public with a red or black upper lip and chin, depending on which color crepe paper bow one had chewed that Sunday morning? And had he not heard the choir director tell us kids in cherub choir to fasten the snaps at the wrists of our little white angel robes?

What kind of mother does this kid have? Had I appeared on the platform week after week with red or black dye all over my face, and with my angel robe flapping at the wrists, my mother would have had plenty to say!

Come to think of it, why didn’t the cherub choir leader tell this little Johnnie Poole to stop chewing his crepe paper bow and fasten his snaps? Must be God wanted me to do the job. I was a strange little girl, painfully shy, but if I thought someone was doing something wrong, shyness aside, I was on a righteous crusade!

I edged closer. “Johnnie Poole,” I said, in my most authoritative preschool voice, “stop chewing that bow this minute and fasten your snaps.”

That Johnnie Poole gave me a look I was to learn only too well. With inscrutable, deep brown eyes he calmly stared directly at me, then looked away and kept right on chewing. Oh, but this little boy was about to learn I didn’t give up easily. Every week I gave him the same lecture. Every week he gave me the same look and kept doing what he wanted to do. It was infuriating.

I remember our first real argument, several years later. Our dads were counting the offering after church.

“I can spell my name. Want to see?”

He wrote on a blackboard, “John.”

“That is totally wrong. Listen to me.” I pronounced his name over and over. “Do you hear any ‘h’? I didn’t think so. Your name is spelled J-O-N.”

He looked at me calmly, erased his name, and said, “I guess I know how to spell my own name.” And he walked away.

See? Infuriating.

At some point we must have decided we liked each other, but I don’t remember any conversation about it. I do remember we held hands behind the pole in children’s church until Johnnie Poole decided it wasn’t the right thing to do; his standards always were higher than mine. Except when it came to chewing crepe paper.

A boy whose dad also counted money offered to marry us. He said he knew how to do it because his older sister had just gotten married. We were bored; the money-counting took a long time, so we agreed.

The boy finished the ceremony and said, “You may now kiss your bride.”

“I’m not kissing no girl!”

“I’m not letting him kiss me!”

Our officiant was distressed. “But, then you can’t be married.”

“Okay!”

Our divorce or annulment was quite painless. We paid our officiant nothing, and without even thanking him, we ran off to play with our friends.

After fourth grade our family moved and left that church. I don’t remember saying goodbye to Johnnie Poole.

Dad’s job transferred him back to the area the summer before eighth grade.

One Sunday a boy I knew said, “Someone wants to sit with you in church. He’s really handsome and nice, but he’s too shy to ask you himself, so he sent me.”

“Who is it?” I wasn’t interested in any boys. Still, I was curious about this handsome, shy stranger.

“Well, it’s Johnnie Poole.”

“Johnnie Poole!” I laughed. “I’ve known him all my life. You tell him if he ever wants to sit with me in church, he better ask me himself!”

Moving time came all too soon, and my parents were distressed. Moving was expensive and emotionally draining on the whole family.

“I can’t understand why God would move us back here just for three months,” Dad said.

None of us could, but looking back, I can see why.

It was our last Sunday at church.

“Goodbye,” Johnnie said.

He left, circled around, and returned. “Well, I guess this is goodbye.”

He repeated that several times. Finally, he asked, “Is it okay if I write to you?”

“Sure!”

And that began a weekly correspondence of half-page letters. His always started with, “How are you? I am fine,” They ended with, “Your friend, Johnnie Poole.”

I grew older and began dating the way most girls did in the 1960’s, but the weekly letters continued. I never thought of Johnnie Poole as anything more than a friend and had no reason to think he felt any thing but friendship for me. True, he did send Valentines, starting in 1963, the “Thinking of You” kind, signed “Yours truly,” or, “Your friend.”

When I got my senior pictures, I enclosed a small one in a letter to him, and he did the same for me. I gave my large picture to my boyfriend at the time.

During my senior year, the choir from John’s Ithaca High School went on tour, and one of their stops was my high school, Maine-Endwell. Each choir member from my high school signed up to house a student from Ithaca.

“I got some kid named John Poole,” my boyfriend told me.

“Oh, you’ll like him. He’s nice. I’ve known him for as long as I can remember.”

After the Ithaca choir left for their next stop, two things happened. First, my boyfriend told me, “That John Poole looked at me real funny when he saw your picture by my bed. He sounded kind of mad and asked, ‘Where’d you get that picture?’ I told him you were my girlfriend.”

The second thing was a very upset letter written on hotel stationary where the Ithaca choir was staying next. I was shocked to find out that for all those years Johnnie had considered me his girlfriend and felt betrayed when he discovered I was dating someone else.

In my return letter I tried to reason with Johnnie and explain I had no idea he thought of me as a girlfriend, and he couldn’t assume a girl knew how a guy felt if he’d never told her. That went about as well as our argument when I’d tried to tell him how to spell his name.

It was inevitable. Johnnie and I started dating in college in 1966 and married in 1969.

It hasn’t all been hearts and flowers, moonlight and roses for us. The first time he said, “I love you,” I responded, “But how does a person really know something like that for sure?”

In our fifty years of marriage we’ve faced physical, spiritual, emotional, and financial challenges. Sometimes we’ve been so busy we’ve almost lost each other in life’s shuffle. The wisdom that came with age taught us not to be so busy reaching out with both hands to help others that we forgot each other. Now we try to hold hands and reach out to a needy world with one free hand each. Still, we can get so busy we feel like we should introduce ourselves at the end of the day before we kiss goodnight.  

God has been good to give me all these years with My First Valentine. When I tell John what to do, he still looks at me calmly with those inscrutable brown eyes and does exactly what he wants, but I haven’t given up trying. I’ll probably be bossy to my last breath. I hope he’s with me when I take it, and I hope he knows how grateful I am for all his years of faithful love, even if he still doesn’t know how to spell his name.

I mean, say it out loud and listen to yourself. John. John. Do you hear an “h”? I didn’t think so.

by Donna Poole

It was getting old, this standing, red-faced, in a new classroom in the middle of a school year, trying to help a teacher pronounce and spell my name. Why couldn’t I be Donna Smith instead of Donna Piarulli?

We moved often because Dad worked for an airline. I was in eighth grade now, and I really hoped this would be our last move. I looked with a critical eye at the little town of Maine, New York, population around 5,000, and sighed. I’d loved the few years we’d lived near Taberg, New York, in the foothills of the Adirondacks. If my parents asked me—they didn’t—this town had about 4,950 too many people. I wanted my wild, isolated country back.

Once again, a truck backed our ten-foot by fifty-foot house trailer into yet another spot in yet another trailer park.

I felt a little better about the move when I discovered the nearby Nanticoke Creek. At least my sisters, Mary, Ginny, and I had somewhere close to wade, swim, and ice skate.  And we had our bikes. Who knew what adventures awaited?

I didn’t relish the adventure of finding a church, but I knew we had to do it. That’s one of the first things Mom and Dad did whenever we moved. A new church was as bad as a new school, especially a church where all the kids had known each other since they were born. When my parents chose First Baptist, I had a feeling no one would even talk to us.

I was wrong. First Baptist, Maine, New York was easy to love. The church orchestra forgave Mary and me when we played our clarinets off key. They patiently explained we didn’t have to try so unsuccessfully to transpose our music because it was already written for B-flat instruments. They didn’t even laugh, at least not in front of us.

We were welcome in the Bunts’ home anytime. They had fifty-seven children, or maybe it was only eleven. No one there cared if everything was perfectly neat. They just shoved things aside and made room for us in their hearts and home. I loved Mrs. Bunts, always smiling, never ruffled, never saying her kids were going to give her a nervous breakdown. Not only that, but Mr. Bunts worked for a dairy, and we could drink all the milk we wanted.

Bonnie Ward was only a year or so older than I was, but she was a serene, comforting mother hen. I still remember her tiny bedroom with its lavender flowered wallpaper. It was beautiful, just like she was.

I had so much fun at Jim and Judy Cole’s house. They taught me to play pinochle. I didn’t tell my parents. Playing cards was on their rather long list of sins.

Half the girls in the church had a crush on one of the older boys, Donnie and Jack Olson and Rodney Post. Many years later, my sister, Mary, married Rodney’s younger brother, Steve.

And then there was Ronnie Lewis.  I thought he was cute; he never knew I existed.  I remember getting an awesome fleece hat with a long tail and a big pom-pom. I wore it when we church kids went Christmas caroling. Maybe, I thought, Ronnie will notice my hat and say he likes it. He didn’t.

Time passed with youth group parties and outings, water skiing, bowling, and roller skating. We had struggles at home about many of the church activities. Water skiing happened on Sunday afternoons; that was the Lord’s Day. Bowling was another issue because they sold beer in the basement of the bowling alley. And roller skating? That was an awful lot like dancing. Mom and Dad finally did let us do most activities with the other church kids. One thing they refused to budge on was letting us dance in gym class. The Piarulli girls sat on the bleachers and watched while some of the other church kids had fun learning dance steps. I wondered if anyone from church who did let their kids dance wanted to adopt me.

Some kids dread going to church, but I loved it. Looking back, I don’t remember a single sermon. I just remember how the pastor and people made me feel: warm, wanted, and loved. If more churches made kids feel that way today, they might lose fewer of them.

By the time we were high schoolers our church youth group had our own room for prayer meeting. We met upstairs with no adult supervision. Pastor Barackman said he knew he could trust us. We had wonderful times in that room. We talked, laughed, prayed, and mostly behaved. Until that Halloween night.

Someone said, “Hey, where’s Ronnie?”

“I don’t know. I think the Lewis’s had to go out of town.”

“Really?”

The pastor’s son just happened to have a dozen or so bars of tiny soap, the kind you get at motels. Someone suggested we go soap Ronnie’s window. I don’t know if anyone objected; I’m pretty sure we all went.

We had all heard the warning. Soaping windows was strictly prohibited. If anyone was caught, the offender would get arrested and must wash all the soaped windows in the town of Maine. But we didn’t intend to get caught.

We snuck down the creaky stairs and passed the open doors of the auditorium where the adults were praying. Had anyone heard us? Nope.

Giggling with relief we hurried the few blocks to Ronnie’s house, getting more nervous the closer we got. It was a dark night, and we had no flashlights; it felt spooky. We didn’t see anyone else.

When we got to the house, the conversation started. “I don’t think we should do this. I’m scared we’ll get caught.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Well, someone should do it. The rest of us could keep look out.”

“I’ll do it,” I said.  “Which window is Ronnie’s?”

I was terrified, but I wasn’t going to admit it. Through the dark, shadowy yard I crept, finally arriving at the window. I gave it a good soaping. Then, feeling as triumphant as Caesar on a victory march home, I ran back toward my friends, laughing. I was high on adrenaline; nothing had ever been this much fun, not even the amusement park at Harvey’s Lake.

“You guys! I did it! I. . . .”

That’s when I noticed my friends were strangely quiet. No one said anything. Not only that, but two tall men were standing with them. I squinted into the darkness. It couldn’t be…but it was. Cops. Two of them. They turned on a flashlight and shined it in my face.

“What were you doing?” One policeman demanded.

“Ummm, I was soaping our friend’s window,” I said.

“Whadda ya know,” he said, sarcastically, looking at his partner. “We got an honest one. The rest of you who told us you were just out for a walk? Do you think we’re idiots?”

Fortunately, none of the kids answered that question.

The policeman pointed his flashlight at the ground. There was a big pile of soap the kids had ditched when they had seen the men coming.

Those policemen scolded us until our stomachs churned. Then they marched us back to church and into the auditorium where the adults were still praying, heads bowed reverently, murmuring in hushed tones.

“Who’s in charge here?” One of the policemen shouted.

Prayer stopped. Parents looked at us in horrified disbelief. Pastor Barackman looked at us, hurt on his gentle face. “I guess you could say I am,” he said.

Then the policeman scolded our pastor. “If you can’t be responsible enough to keep your church kids under control. . ..” he said. I can’t remember the rest of it. I just remember how betrayed Pastor looked when he glanced at us.

I don’t remember what Mom and Dad did to us; I’m sure it wasn’t fun. I do remember that was the end of our youth group having our own prayer room. The adults said we couldn’t be trusted.

I can still see our pastor standing there, taking that tongue lashing from the policeman, and it was our fault. It was my fault. The adrenaline rush long gone, all I felt was regret, not for what might happen to me, but for what was happening to him. And there was nothing I could do about it.

That was the day I learned it doesn’t pay to sin against love.

Isn’t that what every infraction does though, sins against love? Inexplicable love sent Jesus to the cross to take the sins of the world into his heart, to suffer the guilt, to feel the shame, to pay the price so that we lost sinners, every last one of us, could be offered His gift of eternal life.

Well, so many of those people who looked at us in shocked disbelief that night are in heaven now, Mom and Dad, Pastor Barackman, and even Ronnie Lewis. With their glorified sense of humor, perhaps they will forgive me if I still get a trace of a grin when I remember flying through the shadows, soap in hand, a triumphant night warrior.

by Donna Poole

I couldn’t stop watching. The tiny window at the top of the stairs was the perfect spot to see Mama Robin begin building her nest on the windowsill. I wondered if this was her first nest; I doubted it, because that same windowsill had been home to previous nests.

How old was she? I had no idea, but I knew some robins live twelve years and build twenty or thirty nests.

Mama Robin worked almost a week on her nest, diligently gathering grass and twigs, intricately weaving them, and gluing them to each other and the windowsill with beakfuls of mud. She made hundreds, thousands of trips. I loved seeing her fly into the nest, flap her wings, and wiggle around to shape a perfect cradle for her babies. The nest grew large enough to hold a baseball. When it was almost finished, she lined it with soft grass. Research told me her completed nest weighed 7.23 ounces, almost half a pound.

I hoped, over the next five weeks, to see her lay her eggs and watch the baby robins grow. I knew it was unlikely I’d be there to observe their solo flight, but maybe it would happen.

Mama Robin didn’t lay her eggs right away, but one day a pale blue egg appeared, and a few days later another. Finally, she had four beautiful eggs and began sitting on her nest. She only left for short times. One day I noticed an egg was missing. I checked the ground for fragments of blue shell to see if the egg had fallen but found nothing. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one watching the eggs. Squirrels, blue jays, and crows all steal and eat eggs. Snakes will swallow the eggs whole, and coons love robin eggs as a tasty treat. I never saw the thief, but one by one, all the eggs disappeared

Then Mama Robin broke my heart. Instead of flying away she sat on a nearby tree branch hours at a time and stared at her empty nest. She did this for days. Is she an old robin? Is this her last chance to lay eggs and raise babies? Is that why she’s staying here so long? I knew she was mourning. Robins don’t cry, but my eyes were wet enough for both of us.

Finally, Mama Robin left, but through summer storms, fall winds, and winter snows, the nest has stayed. She built it well. I see it every time I go up or downstairs, and it makes me wonder about wasted things.

Elisabeth Elliot wrote of wasted things. When she was a young, single missionary, she lived with the Colorado Indians in San Miguel, Ecuador. They had no written language, and Elisabeth determined to learn their language and write it so they could have the Bible in their own language. She worked for almost a year, tediously reducing sounds to an alphabet. At the end of nine months she packed the only copy of all her handwritten work into a suitcase and gave it to another missionary so translation could begin. Someone stole the suitcase from that missionary.

At first Elisabeth expected a miracle. How would the suitcase be found? In what way would God have it suddenly reappear? It never did. It was a hard lesson of loss, nine months of difficult labor gone in an instant.

Was Elisabeth’s work wasted? The loss taught her to trust God with the inexplicable. The hard work sharpened her mind, and if you, like me, are a fan of her writing, you appreciate that deeply spiritual and awesomely creative mind. That early loss also made Elisabeth stronger to face deeper losses to come. So, no, it wasn’t wasted.  

Elisabeth lost her first husband, Jim Elliot, to the spears of the Auca Indians in Ecuador, and her second husband, Addison Leithch, to an agonizing cancer. When she was seventy-eight, Elisabeth began a ten-year battle against dementia. She lost her beautiful mind to that disease.

What a waste! That might be our first response.

When Elisabeth found out she had dementia she determined to accept it from God’s hand and for His glory just as she had everything else in her life. And now, as my own memory begins a downward slide, she is my teacher. How can such beautiful teaching be a waste?

Throughout our forty-five year ministry at our country church I’ve often thought of Elisabeth Elliot’s suitcase when people we’ve loved and poured our lives into have turned from us, or worse, from God, when misunderstandings happened and people refused reconciliation, when years of labor seemed to produce so few results.

Is our poured-out love wasted? My mind might cry “wasted” in its gloomy moments, but my heart knows better.

Even through tears my heart sings. Why? Because, in God’s economy, He wastes nothing. Love is never wasted.

Mama Robin, if you’re still alive, if you fly back to Michigan for another spring and see your empty nest, don’t feel like it was wasted. I wish you’d been able to have four beautiful babies, but maybe that will happen this summer. You built well, and you loved well, and love always means something.

by Donna Poole

Maddie dropped her bucket, bait, ice-auger, and homemade fishing pole. She groaned and put both hands on her back as she tried to straighten. “Degenerative disc disease isn’t going to stop me,” she muttered.  “At least I don’t have dementia, in spite of what my family and the townspeople think.”

She’s heard the whispers. “What’s a woman her age doing on that ice every day? She’s a brick shy of a full load.”

What choice did she have?

Maddie shivered, wrapped her worn coat tighter, and pulled the old scarf up over her mouth. That north wind off the mountains had teeth in its bite today. As soon as she got a bit farther out she’d sit on her bucket and turn her back to Old Man North. That would help some.

She’d been trying to keep the wind at her back for well over seventy years, but wind is slippery and sneaky. Before you can say zip-a-dee-doo-dah, it zero-turns from a warm breeze to a blizzard that smacks you in the face and rips your heart apart.

Old Man North had torn Maddie’s heart more than once. The most recent blow had been Walter’s death. They’d had fifty years, more than most. She and Walter had laughed and cried together, raised three great kids, and built “The Water’s Edge” from a shack into an elegant restaurant, famous for its freshwater fish caught right here in Georgetown Lake.

“Don’t cry over what’s gone forever,” Maddie chided herself. “Tears will freeze your cheeks in this Montana wind chill.”

Walking on clear ice always felt satisfyingly surreal. This ice was just right at about six inches. It would easily support her weight. The cold though, the cold. . . . But really, what choice did she have?

If the fishing was good today she might catch Salmon, Rainbow, or even a Brook Trout. She’d sell a few to The Water’s Edge. They were always willing to buy her fish. She hoped they didn’t pay extra because they felt sorry for her.

Maddie was short of breath after drilling a six-inch hole. With her back to the wind, she pulled up the scarf that had slipped and sat down. She expertly baited two maggots on a glow hook, dropped the line, and twitched the bait slightly up and down. Trout sure would taste good. She noticed how loosely her coat hung. She needed to eat better.

It was a good day. Within minutes she had two Rainbows and a Brook Trout.

That’s when she noticed the two little boys on the shore, shouting and waving their arms. Had someone broken through the ice? Were the boys crying? No, it sounded more like laughing.

Maddie stood and squinted to see. Was that. . .?

“Grandma!” Their voices carried. “Hurry! We’ve come to see you!”

Her family had driven ninety miles from Missoula to Anaconda without telling her they were coming? Why?

The little boys ran out on the ice to help. Kaleb carried the bucket with its fifteen pounds of fish.

“Kaleb, that’s too heavy for you.”

“I’m almost eight, Grandma. I have more muscles than you.”

She laughed. It was probably true. Well, she wouldn’t be selling fish to The Water’s Edge today. They’d need all the fish for supper.

Kaleb and Reece laughed and talked all the way to shore, but her son and daughter-in-law met her with tight lipped frowns. She knew a lecture was coming, but maybe they’d wait until they got home. That was always an issue too. They didn’t like her living conditions either.

After a lovely fish dinner prepared by Maddie’s cook, they sat in the luxurious living room in front of a roaring fire. The boys romped with Blackie the old lab and Sunny the golden retriever. The six cats curled up on laps and wound around feet.

Max pushed a cat away. He wanted Maddie to get rid of the menagerie.

“Mom.” Max sighed. “Why do you keep ice fishing every day? It’s not safe.”

“I have to.”

He raised his eyebrows, waiting.

“The menagerie likes fresh fish.” It was lame; she knew it.

“And with all your money, you could afford an entire fish store.”

“You don’t understand. I have no choice. It’s how I keep Old Man North at my back.”

She thought he’d be angry. Suddenly, he roared with laughter. “Everyone has to get old sometime, Mom, even you! Will you at least buy a warmer coat?”

“I always wore that coat when I fished with your dad.”

He waited.

“Okay! I’ll buy a new coat.”

“And you’ll call every time before you go out on the ice and when you get back?”

“I will, but the day I don’t call, don’t think Old Man North won. He never will, because I’m going where Dad already is, and they don’t allow any north wind there.”

“No,” Max said, “I’m pretty sure Old Man North loses the game there.”

Maddie stood in the curved driveway and waved goodbye to her family before she walked back inside. The cook was gone now, but it didn’t feel lonely. Old Man North howled around the chimney, but she was safe and warm; he couldn’t get in here yet. Maybe not for a long time.

Thank you to my friend, Lonie Hutchison, for helping me locate this picture of Georgetown Lake, and to her friend, Pam Burgess Morfitt for the beautiful photography!