CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith and Life from a Place of Winter for the Years
of Winter…
When
James Whitcomb Riley was a little boy, an orphan girl, age 12, came to live
with his family. She was basically a maid, but it gave her a place to live.
Little James and his brothers and sisters loved her, especially since she told
them ghost and goblin stories, about “things that go bump in the night.” Her
name was Allie. Later Riley wrote a famous poem about her: “Little orphan
Allie’s come to our house to stay…” But when the newspaper printed it, the type
setter grabbed the “n” instead of “l”. She became Little Orphan Annie. So she
has remained.
Gil
Hodge grew up in Petersburg, IN, 13 miles up IN Hwy 57 from my home town of
Oakland City. He attended Oakland City College for a while, but his baseball
skills were too great to be ignored. He signed a contract with the Brooklyn
Dodgers. The secretary who typed up the contract let a little finger drag, and
his name on the contract got an s.
Gil could crush a baseball, but he was far too gentlemanly to point out a
mistake to a woman. He is not in The Hall of Fame despite a career worthy of
the Hall. Perhaps the HOF is too cheap to pay for the extra s on his plaque. If he ever gets to the
Hall, it will be as Hodges, not Hodge. [1]
My
dental hygienist is proud of her Norwegian heritage. Her maiden name was Scott.
“Norwegian?” I said. “Yes. My ancestors had to leave Scotland. They escaped to
Norway. There people just called them ‘the Scots.’ They were probably the
MacSomethings, but our Norwegian name ever since has just been Scott.”
As
the winter Olympics approach, it is good to remember Bonnie Blair. One Saturday
when she was about ten, she accompanied her father on some errands. He
introduced her at one place. “This is my daughter, Bonnie. She’s a skater, and
some day she’ll win an Olympic medal.” She thought, “Oh, so that’s what I’m
supposed to do.” So she did. Six of them, five gold.
We
get a lot of our identity from the mistakes and throw-away lines of others.
I
wonder about Allie. When she was grown up, when she said to the other women as
they worked in the church kitchen, “You know, Mr. Riley, the famous poet, wrote
about me,” did they roll their eyes and say, “Oh, yeah,” and then think to
themselves, “He never wrote a word about anybody named Allie.”
JRMcF
1]
One boy from the area did make it to the Hall, Oakland City’s Edd Roush, the
Reds’ center fielder, who played from 1913 to 1931. I wrote his biography for
Scribners’ American Lives. His twin
brother, Fred, was one of my coaches when I was a kid playing church league
ball, which was our version of Little League.
I
tweet occasionally as yooper1721.
The
“place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s
Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer!
[This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] Having met and
married while at IU in Bloomington, IN, we became Bloomarangs in May of 2015,
moving back to where we started, closing the circle. We no longer live in the
land of winter, but I am in the winter of my years, and so I am still trying to
understand Christ in winter.
I grew up with that James Whitcomb Riley poem, and in my Granny's book of his poems it read "Little Orphant (sic) Annie." Granny would recite that poem to us often at bedtime, "The Goblins will get you if you don't watch out!"
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