Why do you live There?
Read Psalm 84
Country Roads. I love driving them. We live on a paved road, but when I have time I love to take the back roads home for the last 7 miles or so. How would you like to drive the last 7 miles home without passing another car? It’s not uncommon to pass a herd of deer or other wildlife on the way home. Our nearest neighbor in the back yard is .9 miles away. That would be like living on Maumee and your backyard goes all the way to Mack Ave. We have a bonfire whenever we feel like it. The nearest streetlight is 1.2 miles away.
Our yard features a stocked fishing/swimming pond that covers ¾ acre. The pond alone is bigger than the yard I grew up in. Kids go nuts when they catch a 4 lb bass right here in the back yard. We entertain a lot and in summer and we have the space for baseball, football, badminton, Frisbees, kites, horseshoes, swimming, fishing, cards, fireworks, and any number of things kids dream up all going on at once. Our home is one of those places kids always whine about going to, then the parents can’t get them in the car to leave.
Our home is modest but includes all the modern conveniences and updates we want. Our classic Chris Craft 27’ Commander fishing boat spends her winter in a heated/air-conditioned barn on our property. We can visit and tinker whenever we like. Your barn isn’t heated and air-conditioned? Your boat is on some strangers place? How do you live?
Sometimes Jeri and I sit in the rockers on the back porch and use the .22 cal. rifle to shoot flies off the rocks in the back 40 about 130 yards away.
At Christmas a dozen farmers with their hay wagons loaded with kids go to see Santa on the edge of town. Santa flies in on a candy apple red helicopter, lands in a corn field then rides on an old pickup truck with antlers and a big red nose on the hood so the kids can come see Santa. You don’t get this in the ‘burbs.
It’s not all fun and games though; the local paper crime blotter can be pretty scary. One time the 4H cow got out, wandering and lurking in the shadows in the woods for a week until caught at the Bruno farm howling to the bull in the pen. Then there was the time someone stole a concrete goose statue from someone's front porch. The heinous part of the crime is that the perpetrator also took the Goose’s new holiday outfit and the poinsettia plant next to it. Yup this stuff makes the paper out here. If we do need the cops though they’re only a phone call away, 45 minutes to an hour later they’re here, and ready for anything.
12-year-old boys ride dirt bikes for miles on the back trails between the farms. They don’t ask for bee bee guns. They ask for and get real shotguns; youth hunting day is a rite of passage. The video game people don’t do very well around here. One of the farmers has a heated barn that’s so big the little league uses it as a batting cage in the winter. That can be a lot of fun to watch on a winter’s night.
The old farmer down the road, Big Daddy Tom is a great neighbor. His family’s been farming this area for over a hundred years. Sometimes I spend a day with him to go see the Amish. Amos the Amish makes windows, Jacob the Amish runs the lumber mill, and Elizabeth the Amish makes the cookies. Whatever you need, you can probably get it from the Amish. On the way back Big Daddy Tom knows every watering hole and hidden haunt from the Tip of the Thumb to Toledo. You’d be surprised how many there are and where some of them are. At least one is in an old root cellar that has served libations since prohibition. You can’t pay to get in; you have to bring a good story to tell. Drinks are still a buck. Take it from me, some of the beer lappin’, belly slappin’, broad beam baloombas can tell a pretty tall tale for a dollar drink.
Sometimes I feel inadequate in church because we live so far from Grosse Pointe, although we can make it to Church in 33 minutes. Nothing beats the Pointes in spring and fall and I do miss the area. We have to make a choice though. As the great 20th century philosopher Bob Seger once said, “You just can’t have it all”. We could never afford to have all we want in Grosse Pointe.
We once invited the entire congregation to our home for a picnic and many of you came. It was a lot of fun. We could probably be talked into doing that again.
Having all of you makes the drive to church worth it, and having open space makes the drive home worth it too.
For us, Country Roads isn’t just a song it’s a way of life. We don’t live fancy but we sure live free. No one has ever asked why we live here after having spent an afternoon with us. If you’re reading this I hope we’ll get to see you out here sometime.
Ron & Jeri Draper
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