I felt like I was carrying the broken spirits

55 days to go...

Growing up, I never heard anyone in my family talk about politics in my house; the lone time was when my mom said something negative about Harry Truman. And although I assumed my parents were Republicans, my grandmother kept a photo of FDR on her TV. When I asked her about it, she said, "That's the man who gave me my Social Security."

Me, I've always felt some superiority in declaring myself an Independent. I've been AC/DC in my voting patterns, voting for both parties throughout the years.

However, the Republican Party has sold it's soul in these Trump Times. The party of small government and fiscal responsibility is now one of white nationalism, guns, Evangelical Christianity and hate. 

This is all the result of Trump; he fans the flames with his ignorance, corruption, treason and hate-mongering. I can't see myself visiting that side of the ballot anytime soon.

This, from the Washington Post:

"He has welcomed Russian election help; called white supremacists “very fine people”; put children in cages; gotten impeached for trying to blackmail an ally into helping him politically; kowtowed to Vladimir Putin and avowed his love for Kim Jong Un; unleashed security forces on peaceful protesters; fomented violence; espoused insane conspiracy theories; refused to say that he would accept the election results; and, most recently, urged his fans to vote twice in violation of the law. He has erased every red line, and none of it seems to matter to his base."

And this is just the tip of the Trump iceberg.

And I remain shocked that so many people are OK with this. People I thought I respected. People who I thought were reasonable, thoughtful, caring people. The fact that these people are OK with any of this saddens me to no end. 

All my life, I thought our system of government and checks and balances would protect us from a mad man and a party gone awry. 

At least that was The Promise.

Song for our Ancestors

Europe West 54% (Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein)

Great Britain 18% (England, Scotland, Wales)

Ireland 10%

Italy/Greece 6%

Iberian Peninsula 4% (Spain/Portugal)

West Asia 3% (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey)

Europe East 2% (Hungary, Czech Republic, Austria)

Scandinavia 2% (Finland, Norway, Sweden)

European Jewish 1% (Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Israel)

To the best of my knowledge, my extended family had next to no interest in their ancestors. No one really talked much about forebears, other than the weekend drives through the cemetery to look at stones. Still, that only consisted of discussing a generation or two.

I dug a bit when I went to Scotland, finding that Lockard could be spelled Lockheart, Lockhart, Lochard, just for starters. These Scottish roots were a surprise to my Aunt Dolly, who told me upon my return that she thought we were mostly German. I told her otherwise.

She may have been right. The above list contains the findings from my DNA Ancestry test. I am a mutt, with a family flag planted firmly in Western Europe. The minor traces of the Middle East and Jewishness (Bud Abbott anyone?) are a bit of a surprise, but I would have guessed 70 percent or so would be Scotland and England. Lockard/Scottish and Warburton/English.

Surprise, surprise, surprise. Not earth-shaking by any means, but still interesting.

I don't have any real insight to any of this, just recording it for posterity so it doesn't get misplaced.

The things I had somebody took away

The wildest things we'd ever seen

Odds and Sods.....

I've been listening lately to the vinyl of the best album the E Street Band never made -- Gary U.S. Bonds' "On the Line."

Except they did make it. Bonds is backed by the E Streeters on a remarkably solid set of tunes, seven written by Springsteen himself. And the album's closer, "Last Time" is one of Miami Steve's best efforts. It doesn't quite take me back to Kingsley Avenue in Asbury Park like Southside's "This Time it's for Real," but it does the trick. This was Springsteen at the height of his power, when he could give away songs of this caliber.  An album worth seeking out, vinyl or otherwise.

I've searched all for my life to songs that reflect me, my story. I've posted some of them in this blog. I've attempted to do it myself with my limited musical ability. So I've tried to post them, some in this blog.

But perhaps the best answer is action, you know, speaks louder than words and all that.

I've been thinking about mortality a lot lately. You can't escape it. Wills and the future and what's left behind, if anything. Where does it all end? When does it all end? And does it matter?

I don't see too many new "adult" movies. Tonight I watched "Manchester by the Sea," an unflinching study on profound grief. A grief that can subside but that never disappear.

Sometimes I think that's where I live, the sadness ebbing and flowing. But every day you wake up and it's still there. No pity, as some is self-inflected. But some hasn't been.

The protagonist in "Manchester by the Sea" says that he "can't get past it." For some, it's uphill all the way.

Springsteen was once asked why he keeps going for three hours, night after night, when he could just do a rote 90 minutes, play the hits and get out.

"You can't save everyone," he said. "But you gotta try."

Even if the only person you are trying to save is yourself.

I come from down in the Valley

Speaking of the Wyoming Valley and Back Mountain, this was where we picked up our regular go-to Friday night dinner:

That sign, which sits along Route 309 in Dallas, is one of the most iconic images of my childhood. I loved everything about it, especially at night in all its neon glory.

We weren't Catholic, but once a week we ate like it. The prevalence of Catholics in our area meant that the Friday night Fried Haddock, Fries and Slaw special (PA fish and chips as it were) was often brought home in a cardboard box by my Dad. I think that meat-free Friday meant cheap fish at King Neptune. It was the first fish I ever liked, and I could go for it right now -- which is OK because the Interwebs tells me they are still in business.

Where I come from, that's what passed for multiculturalism.

And it was damn great.

There are places I remember

This was the place: Shavertown, PA

I had a paper route starting in 5th grade. I only delivered about 22 papers six days a week, but they were to houses fairly well spread apart. After school, it would take me about an hour and a half to finish, with another 15-minute walk home.

Unless I stopped at McCrory's, which was a fairly common occurrence. This 5&10 was at the end of a shopping center that was a centerpiece of my family's life for around ten years. At one end there was an Acme, where we got the majority of our groceries. I still remember the average tally for the week coming to around $20, an astronomical figure in my head.

But it was McCrory's and their small but hugely influential record department that is still with me. They also had a soda fountain, where in the summertime heat I might stop for a 10-cent orangeade after my paper route. That dime though put a large dent in my 44-cents-a-day take home pay from my route (2 cents a paper).

Rather I tried hard to save my money for important purchases, such as a new baseball glove that was the first thing I ever really earned with my own money. And as important as that was, it probably didn't rate as highly as the 45s I bought at that record counter.

Shortly before I had my paper route, my mother gave me the 69 cents at McCrorys so that I could come home with this:

How I wish I still had the picture sleeve (I do, however, still have the record itself). This record was life-altering in so many ways. I played both sides nonstop for weeks. I stared at that photo for hours. I sang "I Saw Her Standing There," to my parents from the back seat on the way to the Acme.

Soon thereafter I was able to buy my records with my money -- the real start of my record addiction. For the next 5 years or so, I bought dozens of 45s there, and even a couple of albums -- at $2.99 they were harder to save up for.

One day, a new Beatles 45 appeared in the rack behind the register, and I had to have it. There was no clerk around, and I leaned, leaned, leaned over the counter to grab it. Just as the counter started to tilt over, the clerk came to the rescue, telling me to be patient.

How could I be patient in the face of this:

I still do have this sleeve, but the record is missing. If I only knew then what I know now.

McCrory's is no longer there, and so many other things from that time are also gone: my parents, many relatives, and even some friends. All now just memories.

But today, on the 52nd anniversary of The Beatles first appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show, I am reminded how one unassuming department store held so many treasures that also led to memories that will also never go away.

At the wall

My brother was drafted sometime in the mid-to-late '60s (or so the story goes). He failed his physical due to a deformity in his right hand.

My father went for his military physical in the early '40s (or so the story goes).
He failed due to a hernia.

So obviously, we were not a military family, except for two brother's of my mom and our cousin Joe Lockard.

But no one in my immediate family.

Once, when my dad was worried about me and my future, he arranged to have an Army recruiter come to the house to talk to me about what I was doing with my life. I left the house and was not home, so I missed the appointment. I am not especially proud of that.

But no way, no how was I going to get anywhere near the military.

Another time, when I was aimless and listening to rock and roll for hours on end (not unlike today), my dad remarked, "I can't wait until the Army gets a hold of you." He thought they would straighten out what ailed me.

Of course, they didn't. And I guess I never did straighten out.

I never knew anyone who didn't come home from Vietnam. I was lucky.

Running into the darkness

While I was with the kids last week in PA, “Born to Run” celebrated its 40^th anniversary. I read several remembrances of the album, but have not had a chance to jot down my own. Until now.

I’m often wondered if I can say the album changed my life; the previous effort, “The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle may have had more of an effect on me, at least at the time. That record signified that something major was happening, and was the first time since “Abbey Road” that I felt something that strongly about an album. “Wild and Innocent” made me rabid. But “Born to Run” confirmed that I was right.

“Born to Run” had cornerstones that remain signposts, and still nothing in his catalog (or just about anyone else’s, for that matter) moves me more than “Backstreets.” Add in “Thunder Road,” “Jungleland” and the title track and you have something that reeks of grandeur and brilliance. It is one of the great rock albums. I think it’s THE great American rock album.

I saw an ad in mid-August in “Rolling Stone” that the album was imminent:

I cannot tell you how I felt when I saw this ad

I could hardly control my excitement. I had waited and waited for news about the album, and with no Internet or many news sources, that was hard to come by in Central Pa.

I wasn’t sure exactly when the album was actually coming out, so I took a trip to Wilkes-Barre, about an hour away, to visit a couple of stores. The first one (and I am ashamed that the name is gone from my memory), several blocks south of the Public Square, had an employee unboxing albums.

I can still see this guy and store in my mind. It was primarily an appliance store, with a couple of aisles of albums. But it was known for having the best prices in town.

The employee had opened several boxes and gone off to do something else. I peeked in one, and there it was  -- the Holy Grail. I just grabbed it and headed for the register. He hadn’t even put the price tag on it yet, and that didn’t matter. I would have paid any price they asked. He immediately came back and told me to put it back in the box and wait until he put in the racks. It’s amazing how I can remember the minute details of this, some 40 years ago, but can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday.

I paid (I think it was $4.99), ran to the car, and started my 47-mile trip home in my white-hot '72 Torino. I think I drove recklessly, I know I drove too fast. I picked up a couple of hitchhikers who wondered why I was driving like a maniac. I got a speeding ticket. I may have been out of my mind.

When the needle hit the vinyl on my Sony Quadrophonic system in my bedroom, I knew the wait was worth it. It seemed as if the opening piano and harmonica of “Thunder Road” said more about my life than anything I had heard since the Liverpool invasion. I played the album over and over that day. Into the next week, throughout the year, and to this day. It seemed like the culmination of everything I liked about rock and roll rolled up into 39 minutes and 22 seconds. There’s no need for me to go into each song; that’s been done ad infinitum by people much smarter than me. But it looked important when I stared at the cover. It felt important when I opened the gatefold. And it sounded more than important when I heard it.

You know, yeah, it did change my life.

During the trip, I mentioned to Jack that it was the anniversary of an important Springsteen album. Although he has seen Bruce twice, he doesn’t quite grasp the significance of it all – yet.

And I am well that Springsteen is so very uncool is this hip-hop world, and is so very uncool to the synth-pop crowd, and so very uncool to the death metal, grunge, hipster crowds and you-name-the-trend crowd. And I am well aware that he is referred to as "Dad-rock."

That's just perfect, as least for me. My kids probably prefer the Beatles at the moment. Grandad-rock if you will.

But they like Springsteen, and he is alright in their eyes.

And that’s all right with me.

I'd build me a castle from memories just so I'd have someplace to go

Sorry about the poor image and its composition...

At right is the product of more of Jack's rummaging through my boxes of memories.

This is from his grandmother's high school yearbook: "The Monarch," from Hughesville High School, 1939.

I've obviously seen this before, but haven't given it much thought in years.

From the description by her photo and her limited presence throughout the book, it appears she wasn't one of the "cool kids." She had an active Home Ec career and she was in a couple of plays, although I can find no record of anything anywhere called "The Slip of a Slipper." I knew she could sing, as evidenced by the her time in Chorus, but the Art Club and Athletic Association memberships are a surprise, and come to think of it, what exactly did an "Athletic Association" do? And I am surprised at the Hunting Club; in fact, I am surprised girls were even included in such a group back then. To my knowledge, she actually never went hunting.

This listing with the name "Fannie," probably bothered and embarrassed her; oh how she hated it. She was always Betty to everyone except me and my brother.

I wish she had the opportunity to be called Grandma or Grammy or the like by my kids.

She most certainly would have preferred those to Fannie.

If you're looking for a sad song, well I ain't gonna play it

It was on April 7, 45 years ago, that I came home from school to see my Uncle Bob sitting in my grandmother's chair. My grandmother (Grammy Warburton) lived with us and she had her own special chair in the corner of the dining room.

I thought this was odd, but not that odd; after all, Uncle Bob lived next door. Uncle Bob was my Mom's brother and it was not uncommon for him to be over visiting his mother.

A short time later, my Dad came home early from the hospital where he was visiting my gravely ill Mom.

She had been in Geisinger Medical Center for about 10 days and we had been by her side (well, not really at her side for me -- my Dad wouldn't let me in her room so I didn't see her in that condition. I'm still not sure if that was good or bad) all that time, but on this day my Dad thought it would be better if I had a break from that and got back into my school routine.

He came in the door, hugged me and said, "It's over."

This was not surprising given her condition, but it sent shock waves through me that I feel to this day. It was a moment, and a feeling, that never goes away.

Never.

So, I just wanted to note the significance of this date and also rerun this post. And this one too.

Memories may fade, but the feelings, and there are many, many warm ones, remain.

I'm sorry sir, no one by that name lives here any more

When I was young, I would spend time looking at my grandmother's photo album, which was filled with faded and torn pictures, some from the very beginning of the the 20th century.

Many of those photos were taken closer in time to when I was viewing them than the one at the right is to now.

Translation: Time moves on rapidly.

So, to anyone who reads this, specifically Jack and Ruby in the future, here is more information than anyone will probably ever need or want to know about one family's home.

61 Grace Ave, Shavertown, PA, circa 1960

• That's my brother's bike leaning against the house -- there was a lattice gate that lifted up where the push mower was kept under the screened-in porch.
• That's the small patio where my dad would sometimes grill hamburgers and hot dogs. 
• That's our 1956 Ford (I think) at the far right.
• That's the clothesline where my mom (and sometimes my dad) hung out all of our laundry to dry -- we had no dryer.
• That's the back yard where I spent hours and hours hitting a baseball, kicking a football, playing catch with my dad, and having lunchtime picnics under whatever kind of tree that was with my mom.
• That's the window to our one and only bathroom upstairs to the left.
• That's my parent's bedroom window at the upper right
• That's where the living room housed our black-and-white Philco. 
• That's the same living room that had a fireplace that was not often used for warmth, but more often for popping popcorn and Santa's visits. Except that night when I heard screaming downstairs after I had gone to bed; I ran down the stairs to see my mom standing on a chair and my dad chasing a bat with a broom -- said bat supposedly entered the room down the chimney.
• That's the same house I where I first heard rock and roll, and soul, and country, and gospel -- much of it through the sounds of brother's record collection.
• That's the house with the kitchen that always had a radio playing -- my mom listening to WILK and Rag Mop" by the Mills Brothers, and my brother's transistor forever turned to WARM, the Mighty 590.
• That's where I first saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.
• That's where I was shielded from the turbulence of the times -- Vietnam and the Civil Rights Era.
• That's where my parents sent my brother off to college -- the first member of my extended families to do so.
• That's where, starting in 5th grade, I walked to and from Shavertown Elementary, fitting my paper route in right after school.
• That's the house with very few books, save for a couple of Reader's Digest Condensed Books and a Funk &Wagnall's encyclopedia, which was bought in weekly installments from the local Acme Market.
• That's the house we moved from 3/4 of the way through 6th grade,
• That's the house that really felt like a home, and that sure is a hard feeling to replicate.

He was the egg man

While I was out wasting my time at rock concerts and sitting in my room listening to records and baseball games, this is what my grandfather was doing.

Royal Lockard had no time for any frivolities. I don't really remember him much like this, but I do know he was always working. He seemed to hold not much use for the modern world, and he seemed to live a code that was rooted in the 19th century, at least to me.

Men had their roles, women has theirs. Men took care of work outside the house, women took care of work inside the house. My grandmother didn't drive, or example. He didn't have much use for television, and for shows he did watch (Lawrence Welk, for example), it became a problem for him when the show began to feature more and more women. He was the youngest of 11 children, and as I have mentioned before, arthritis left him a virtual cripple in his mid-60s.

Royal and Orpha (along with their children Kline, Florence (known as Dolly) and Rolland (my dad) grew most of their own food on their 40-acre farm, which featured a very large vegetable garden and field upon field of sweet corn. They raised cows, chickens and pigs. Kline and my dad had to drop out of school after the 8th grade to work on the farm. And for as much as women seemed to take a back seat, I was told he encouraged Dolly to finish her education, which she did down the road five miles in Picture Rocks.

Theirs was a simple life for sure. Work seven days a week, with church on Sundays. We often visited on the weekends when I was very young, and I got to help milk cows and collect eggs.

If Royal was alive today, he would not call what I do working. Sitting at a desk was for city folks, and if you weren't using your hands and back, you weren't working.

The only time I saw him relax was on Sunday afternoon drives. The women would sit in the back and the men in the front, me in the middle between Royal and Rolland, who drove.  We would drive around for a couple of hours, look at neighboring farms and end up with ice cream, which was extravagant (or so it seemed to me) in my grandparents world,

On the way home, "Pappy" could see I was getting sleepy and invite me to put my head on his shoulder for a nap.

And between faith and family and the sweat of the working day, you could feel the silence  of these far, far simpler times.

In rural Pennsylvania. In another time. In another place.

At the end of every hard earned day....

Jake has joined our family. 

My family had a dog when I was growing up, a beagle-basset mix named Fred. Fred was none-too-smart, but somewhat lovable in his own, significantly smelly way.

Fred loved to go hunting with my dad and I, or perhaps running across fields chasing random smells with no purpose would better describe it. He got a rather nasty form of cancer when he was 9 or 10 and had to be put down.

Jake, the Australian Shepherd, came to us from a shelter, purportedly 10-years-old (although none of us are buying that advanced-age estimate), and one day from finding out if all dogs really do go to heaven. So lucky him.

But lucky us, too.

He arrived mostly finished – housebroken, walks well on leash, gentle, very sweet, AND HE DOES NOT BARK. He loves to stay outdoors, taking shelter if needed in the shed with the doggy door.

He’s also very smart, able to push the latch and get out of his crate on the way to knocking down gates to track down any available cat food, or to take a few treats from the litter box. We are working on limiting his escape skills, but honestly, given his overall makeup, his faults are minor and easy to overlook.

In other words, he is the right dog at the right time.

Others can rhapsodize about the importance of dogs in their lives.

I will just leave it at this….

The 70s: In the end it was something more I guess

My dad was a Buick man, at least he was when I was old enough to really know him.

The decade consisted of a new LeSabre every two years, bought from a local dealer who was a friend who never ever gave my old man a deal, or at least none that I am aware of. My dad was loyal to a fault.

I fairly sure he wasn't all that interested in new car technology. But he sure liked that new car smell and the status of having a new shiny car on a regular basis.

One of my dad's sweet rides during the 70s

Perhaps this was his way of dealing with losing my mom at the beginning in early 1970. Perhaps that new car was a balm for not only a midlife crisis, but a sort of whole life crisis from the bad hand he was dealt.

I remember several times when he drive home from the local Pontiac-Buick dealer with a new model, looking somewhat self satisfied with his purchase. But it always seemed a bit forced, a sort of a “here’s my shot at a bit of happiness.” It felt similar to when he stumbled into a disastrous rebound second marriage, which was thankfully short lived.

But the cars remained a constant. A couple of them were red, and there was at least one sort of a two tone green model. There were never leather seats, just cloth, and he would cruise slowly (no person on the planet drove more deliberately than C. Rolland Lockard) up Route 220 listening to The Statler Brothers on the 8-track, with about 35 cars behind him and all unable to pass on the winding two-lane blacktop.

My cars during that time including the infamous ‘63 Tempest, a Torino that I wrecked, another two-tone Pontiac, a brown Pinto and a ‘78 Sunbird.

Hey, I just realized that I had three different Pontiacs.

I guess that made me a Pontiac man.

The Lockards were never big on fine automobiles.

And don't you know that all he saw was all there was to see

It’s sort of a shock to the system and a hard lesson to learn when someone, and not even your partner or the person who is closest to you, reveals their true self to you.

Someone who is in your life on a very frequent basis, someone whom you trusted, for the most part.

And it doesn’t matter how the revealing occurred, just that it did.

Anyway, just noting this occurrence, which of course is not a life and death situation as in the John Prine brilliance below. So perhaps it’s a stretch to equate this situation with “Six O’Clock News.” But words matter, and words have consequences.

And can cause a lot of hurt. And forever change the relationship with that person.

Everybody been good out there, or what?

Christmas 2013 (but it felt like Father's Day to me)

Apology and forgiveness have no place here

Thanksgivings for my family often meant trips to grandparents, not much extended family, mostly smallish gatherings. No drama, not a big deal, lots of food and plenty of football, both inside and outside. And since we visited grandparents regularly, it wasn’t really different than many other days.

Of course, after my mom died, these holidays became stilted and more than somewhat empty. My dad sort of going through the motions. Everything a slightly out-of-focus color snapshot of something akin  to watching someone else’s family on a cable-access TV show. Detached and unflinching.

One particularly memorable holiday occasion had me sitting at the counter with my dad at the Kingston Diner. Turkey dinner with all the works. The waitress had to leave her crossword puzzle book to wait on us. The diner was as empty as we felt; I think it was the first Thanksgiving that we were alone for the day. There were faintly twinkling Christmas lights hung up around the place, which I don't think had ever seen better days. This was it. "Rocking Around the Christmas Tree" was softly playing on WILK on the old transistor next to the cash register.

My dad smiled weakly at the waitress, who, in turn, weakly returned the favor as she came back several times to refill his coffee. No much was said; I think I commented how good everything was, even though it was surely out of a can. My dad paid the bill and we got into his Buick and drove off to someplace I can't remember, as we searched for the thing that could never be found.

Now the Kingston Diner is gone, my dad is gone, but the memories of that particular Thanksgiving remain, and there is no nostalgia involved. But it is good to remember these things, as they have a way of putting the good times into more perspective. And it is important to note that not all subsequent Thanksgiving celebrations felt as desolate as this particular one.

Ray Davies, the quintessential British songwriter, took on the quintessential American holiday, and captured the love, longing, isolation and uniqueness of the annual occasion. Putting things into perspective, as it were.

The choruses of “it’s all over” followed by “come on over” are heartfelt and poignant, and then the last verse brings home, literally and figuratively, the joy and importance of family.

For me, there are many, many things to be thankful for: friends, my job, my health, and in particular, Jack and Ruby.

Happy Thanksgiving.



There's treasures for the takin'

Lockard's General Store
Huntersville, PA, Circa 1950s

The store pictured in this photo is the very definition of a mom and pop store. In particular, this was my dad's mom and pop's store.

This one-room store, which stocked mostly staples such as bread, eggs and milk, was attached to the side of the grandparent’s farmhouse at the corner of Dutchtown Road and Route 87. There was a Texaco gas pump to the left of the store’s entrance; I can remember gas as cheap as 39 cents a gallon. A cooler that held milk and soda bottles and a freezer for ice cream was to the right after you entered the heavy door with the an oversized black latch.

Behind the counter was a big old gold behemoth of a cash register with giant keys that you had to press down hard on to open the drawer. And on the counter were giant (to my eyes) containers of mints that you paid for by the ounce or pound. Later on, a bookmobile came each week with 45-50 books that you could borrow and bring back as you please.

You had to walk through a storeroom to get to the store from the kitchen. A bell was attached over the entryway to the storeroom that rang when someone entered the store, and Royal or Orpha (mostly) would walk from wherever they were in the house through the storeroom to wait on the customer. After my grandfather’s arthritis debilitated him, the walk was long and laborious. But the customers (almost all locals) knew about this condition and patiently waited in the store.

Perhaps they knew about it too well.

The honor system of sorts came crashing down one day when a pair came in the store, and while one held the door so my grandfather could not enter the store, the other cleaned out the cash register.

That event sent shockwaves through the idea that this little part of the world was immune from troubles that seemed confined to newspapers and television. And it meant the end of the store. Shortly thereafter, my grandfather had a stroke, went to the hospital and died. My grandmother sold the house and farm and moved into a tiny house about 10 miles away where she lived for another 15 years or so.

My strongest memories of the store are the wooden, creaky floor and the wonders of the candy case. For 25 cents, you could get a whole bag of penny candy: root beer barrels, Mary Janes and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, a veritable treasure trove. I especially loved the creamsicles and fudgesicles from the freezer, as well as the 7-Up and Coke bottles from the cooler with the fascinating built-in bottle opener. When we visited, my dad would often wait on customers, so I would tag along into the store, and if I was lucky I would get a piece of candy. It sure seemed like a penny went a long way back then.

The store remained open for about 50 years, serving farmers and others who didn’t want to drive the five miles to Picture Rocks to the next closest store.

In today's era of chain convenience stores, this almost seems like a relic from an unimaginable world many years ago.

Which I guess it was.

Dressed to kill.....

For a Sunday-School teaching, God-fearing, member of the Order of the Eastern Star farm wife, my grandmother was plenty tough. I think she had to be.

My grandparents used to have boarders during hunting season; men from out-of-town (mostly near Philadelphia), would come and stay at the big farmhouse for several days during doe and buck season. This photo was from a hunter named Joe and was taken in December 1956 (the back of the photo was inscribed). This particular hunter went home without his buck and signed off, “Better Luck Next Year.”

My grandfather by this point did not hunt (nor did my grandmother) as he was too busy with this farming chores and slowing down from the crippling effects of arthritis. Not sure why Orpha was holding the gun (there is the chance they were about to head out to the smokehouse to kill something for supper), but more-than-likely she was just holding it for posterity. I never saw her shoot anything, but she did cook up a mess of critters and wild game. And made a mean applesauce from the apple trees in the back yard.

And I never, ever saw her in anything but a dress – her “Sunday go-to-meeting” dresses, as she called them, and her everyday working house dresses, which could also double as her gun-totin’ dress.

Open to pain and crossed by the rain

My grandmother on my dad’s side left me the family photo album after she passed away. It’s been sitting in a box for a few years, and I’ve decided, as this blog is purportedly a testament to what has gone before in my life, to pick some of those that are most representative to showcase for my stated purpose of “Farther On.”

Given how mementos if not memories have disappeared from the combined Lockard/Warburton household, this is priceless stuff to me, and it is well past time to get it documented. So this is the first in a series that I will be sprinkling into my posts.

While we obviously had a camera in our family, there are precious few photos of my immediate family. This is the only known photo of the four Lockards as a unit from Grace Ave. in Shavertown, Pa. There are several others that contain all of us, but other family members have wandered into the frames.

This was taken in front of my paternal grandparents farmhouse in Huntersville, Pa. I imagine my grandmother (Orpha, the one who had the photo album) took the photo, and probably snapped it with a Kodak Instamatic. She must have literally been standing in the road when the photo was taken, as the front door of the house was only about 10-12 feet from the winding road that was Route 87.

By this time, my grandfather (Pappy, we called him), would be retired from farming and walking with two canes, severely crippled from arthritis. That is mostly how I remember him, moving about in such a labored manner from the kitchen through a storage room to wait on customers in a general store that was attached to their home. Pictures of that are forthcoming.

This photo finds us in summer with open upstairs bedroom windows. It could be stifling in the big old place as circulating air was hard to come by. The gutters need attention and the house looks like it needs a paint job as well; funny, in my memories the Lockard homestead at the corner of Dutchtown Road is sparkling, up-to-date and ready for the long haul. Just the way I thought of my family at the time of this photo.

My dad looks distressed about something (which was mostly unlike him then) and my mom is hidden, which is not surprising given her aversion to the camera. I am about four, which makes my brother around 14. And indeed, this is my family’s regular summer attire: No shorts (except me) and my mom in a dress.

In about 10 years or so, this unit would be blown up, and that look on my dad’s face would be very common. My mom would be gone, my brother would live 1200 miles away in Florida, and my dad and I would be muddling through on our own.

You slipped into your darkness and now all that remains, is my love for you brother, lying still and unchanged

My parents always referred to today as "Decoration Day." And, although to the best of my knowledge, we did not have any family members die while serving the country, it was still a somewhat solemn and mostly quiet day at our house. My dad was one of the few men of his age who did not serve during the Second World War, due to a medical deferment. Still, his friends served, and he carried a lot of respect for those who sacrificed.

Sometimes we went to the town parade, but there was never a celebratory tone to the activities during this holiday.

Nowadays, Memorial Day is an excuse for trips to the beach and grilling out for just about everyone, and that seems to more and more the case as the older WWII generation leaves us.

And I am guilty of that as well, I suppose.

So I will take a moment to remember the reason for this holiday in the first place.