Pastoral Ponderings:
A Shepherd's Blog

Shorty, We Got To Go!

The apple trees set a light crop this year. Last summer Alaskan Jack had admonished me to thin the apples but I complained about lack of time. So when he greeted Lance on his last visit three weeks ago, he began with his characteristic critique, “Why, you folks don’t have any food around here!” He had really come for the pears and since his 83 years had prevented him from climbing fruit ladders, I had already picked the last two bags for him. A few years earlier and he would have never let a woman pick his fruit. Alaskan Jack was here with his friend Larry for their annual load of sheep manure. They both grew bountiful vegetable gardens and shared the excess with friends and the less fortunate.

We met Alaskan Jack thirty years ago. Lance and I had rented a home in Auburn, California to help care for my sick father. Jack was our neighbor who was also the local firewood dealer. When we mentioned to my father that Alaskan Jack would be delivering a cord of oak wood for our woodstove, Dad perked up. He knew Jack. They had met at the local AA meeting. Alaskan Jack was my father’s friend.

Our rented home was a log cabin perched in the middle of six acres. A planted vegetable garden, irrigated pastures and a horse, a cow and a dog and a cat were all included. For two nomadic twenty-somethings, we couldn’t have asked for a more comprehensive class in Back –To-The-Land 1A. Alaskan jack was our mentor.

“You lookin’ to play golf, Gail?” (My name is Gay.) My sports visor was the object of kind derision as Jack dumped his three cords of wood in our driveway. He invited Lance and I over to his home where we were welcomed with a hot cup of coffee and a fresh baked muffin from Jack’s wife Helene. Their cozy home, to, was set in the middle of six acres, but his acreage provided all of their food. Alaskan Jack’s vegetable garden was prolific and orderly, his orchard perfectly pruned, the chickens contentedly plump, and the hens readily laying. A few beef grazed on the hillside and a dairy cow supplemented some neighbors’ supply of milk in addition to all of Jack and Helene’s needs. Helene opened a cabinet in her tidy living room and a year’s worth of fruit and produce were presented as colorful gems in their glistening Mason jars. We were inspired.

Jack was from Oklahoma where his life was molded from the self-survival instinct of the Great Depression. Helene and her sister grew up in an orphanage in North Dakota. They met and forged a future that eventually led Alaskan Jack to a blasting job for the routing of the new Alaskan oil pipeline. Once the pipeline construction was complete, Alaskan Jack and helene were able to purchase their six acres of raw land in the Northern California community of Auburn. We were now enjoying the warmth of their home that they built and marveling at the resulting bounty of their labor.

We, too, settled down. Following the blueprint delineated by Alaskan Jack and Helene, we built a similar homestead before finding the historical ranch which we now call home. Alaskan Jack and Helene moved to a smaller placer in town so they could take their camper to Baja in the winter before Baja was ‘discovered’. Jack joined a gym. Now he wore the sports visor; we had long ago switched to wide-brimmed straw hats. But their visits were never without bags of fresh vegetables that he continued to grow. His were always the earliest tomatoes in the county.

On this particular visit Jack declared that he wouldn’t be needing sheep manure for his vegetable garden anymore. This would be his last. He was now living in a mobile home park and his garden plot was shrinking. There were too many rules and regulations. As Jack put it, “Some people know how to garden and some people don’t.”

Jack sat on our porch to eat one of his pears while Lance loaded Larry’s pick-up and trailer with the barn-cleaning bounty. We talked about our two daughters, Crystal, 25, and Laura, 22, who grew up on the ranch. Jack and Helene had never had children. I mentioned that the girls are devising ways to return to the ranch but that they cdontinue to help out on their frequent trips home from San Francisco. “You couldn’t do it without Lance; he makes the ranch work.” I remember asking Jack to record his memories. “Why?” Alaskan Jack and Helene and others like them are what made America great.

He took a recent picture of the four of us as he cautiously left the porch and navigated the three brick steps with his cane. My hand was ready to grab his thinning frame, but such assistance from a woman was heresy. We both knew it.

During past visits with Helene, who had passed away two years ago, he’d prepare for departure with his customary remark, “Shorty, we got to go.” This time it was time to go. Lance said we lost our only friend. I know I’ll do a better job thinning the apple trees.

In Memoriam:
Jack Hodges 1926 - 2009

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Lance and Gay Columbel. All rights reserved.