The Rock Wall

Ronald Bland shared The Busy Praying Mom’s post – Grace is when people throw you to the wolves and you land in the arms of the Shepherd.

• Kimball and I went to Cheryl Carpenter’s visitation Friday evening. I learned that Jerry and I have more in common than I knew. My first question to Jerry, her husband, was, “Why were you an hour late for your wedding?”

His answer was quick and simple: “The time change. I was exactly one hour late.”

I went around the house Saturday thinking it was April 31. Even wrote that in a notebook where I record some things.

Jerry invited Kimball to speak in the open mic portion of the memorial, something Cheryl really favored, he said.

We couldn’t stay, but I can tell you what Kimball would have said, or at least part of it: Cheryl usually called the town or village of Harwood Hardwood.

I told Jami and Kali, her and Jerry’s daughters. I didn’t even know their mom was sick.  Think it was Jami who told me that the cancer was really fast acting.

I don’t remember if Cheryl and her mother, Moody Graves, worked here at the same time. But they could have.

We went to Cheryl’s Memorial directly from the fish fry in Fair Haven. We try not to miss one and arrived just after 4 p.m. when it started. The fried fish and pork and beans were delicious. So was the ice cream and blueberry pie.

We talked to several people including Moses Eicher, one of the honchos of the event, who was holding a very patient nine-month-old daughter. That probably explains why Moses had not gone turkey hunting this year, but he still liked to talk about it.

He had read in the Rock Wall that Davis got a 24-10 gobbler. Moses had taken many gobblers himself when he was hunting, he said. He had a slightly different experience with turkey hunting in the rain than I ever had. He said he had been calling a while when it started to rain. Two gobblers he had been working decided to come walking in anyway. One of them got a free ride home with Moses.

• I had a good turkey hunting talk with Scotty Scott when he came to assess our gravel needs. Scotty and I figured that when we were learning to hunt turkeys, we made about every mistake you could make and the gobblers always appreciated it.

• Oh, I made a mistake on time when I was talking to you last week. Like Jerry Carpenter, I forgot to take Daylight Savings Time into account.  And I didn’t allow for the effect wind has on turkey gobbles.

• I was going to help Davis by listening early before he got there. I was about a half hour early and still hadn’t heard any gobblers when Davis drove by where I was parked. I called his cell phone and he said gobblers were ripping it where he was, downwind from me. I drove down to where he had stopped and I could hear them plainly.

• Where I had been sitting, the wind was pretty brisk out of the northwest. The turkeys were east of me.  I had hoped to locate some gobblers roosting north and south of me. Didn’t happen. I went home and had breakfast – more fun than listening to the wind huff and puff.    KL