Tomorrow's Road Home

By Mel Carney

In 1989, Mel Carney set out to write a different kind of Christmas letter, and to do so, he dipped into his memories of growing up on an Iowa farm in the 1940s and 1950s. Over the years, his stories traveled from the family farm to his experience as a lieutenant in Viet Nam to the aftermath of 9/11 and became a way to connect the next generation with a childhood where hard work, faith and close family bonds created a backbone that supports him today. These stories bring to life the experiences of day-to-day farming from a kid's point of view, and at the same time, they preserve the memory of the author's parents and siblings for future generations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mel Carney
• Release date: Sep 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9780988179400

Mel Carney

When Mel Carney left the family farm, he attended St. Ambrose College and Notre Dame College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in theater and English. He received his master’s degree in marketing communications from Webster College. He served in Viet Nam as an Infantry Platoon Leader in the field. When he returned to the States, he married his wife, Barb, and together they have three grown children, Stacie, Pat and Ryan, who have given them six grandchildren. Mel sells computer software to wholesalers across the United States.

Book preview

Tomorrow’s Road Home

By

Mel Carney

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

Mel Carney on Smashwords

TOMORROW’S ROAD HOME

Copyright 2012 by Mel Carney

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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TOMORROW’S ROAD HOME

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1: Rural Iowa in the ’50s

Chapter 2: Bill and Verdie

Chapter 3: Convenience Was Just a Word

Chapter 4: Cray Crust

Chapter 5: Traditions

Chapter 6: The Great Depression

Chapter 7: In Harm’s Way, 1968

Chapter 8: The Magic of Christmas on the Plaza

Chapter 9: The Road - Tomorrow

Chapter 10: When Two Roads Diverge

Chapter 11: Ho-Ho-Ho’s from Long Ago

Chapter 12: Expanding Your Soul

Chapter 13: The Horse Traders

Chapter 14: The Piano Stool

Chapter 15: Philosophy of Life

Chapter 16: The Gathering

Chapter 17: It Takes a Child

Chapter 18: The Sleigh

Chapter 19: In Remembrance, 9/11

Chapter 20: Good Ol’ Days

Chapter 21: The Beauty of Distance

Chapter 22: I Wish for a Dream

About the Author

Prologue

For many years at Christmas time, my wife and I would dutifully go to the Hallmark store or to some charity that was selling Christmas cards and buy ours. We would try to find one with the right picture and a saying that would let our relatives and friends know that we were thinking of them. We hoped that the pre-written verse would let each person know that we took some time making our selection.

We would then set aside time to sign and put these missives into envelopes into the mail. As I went through our list, I would take the time to write a short message to an old friend or relative to let them know that I was keeping them in my thoughts. This personalization would push the time spent on this task to at least two evenings before we would be able to head to the post office.

At the closing of the 1980s, we lost my dad and then my oldest brother, Luverne. I was neither prepared nor equipped to handle the loss of two people from my immediate family. In 1989 as Christmas drew nearer, it occurred to me that that my children as well as my nieces and nephews knew very little about Dad and my brother or about our Iowa farm.

The next generation of our family had been raised in the city. Luverne’s children were the exception; while they were not raised on a farm, they were raised a few miles outside of a little town called Parnell, Iowa, where they tended a huge garden. The rest of the kids were born and raised city, which meant that life on the farm was way beyond foreign to them. I did not want to write the normal Christmas letter with a list of everything we did that year. My writings are about being raised in a generation where hard work and Christian values were important.

Over the years I had been writing small pieces about my life on the farm, and they were stacked ten inches high in my desk drawer. To create my first Christmas letter in 1989, I searched the stack and wrote two pages about a special day on the farm. In the Christmas letters that followed over the next 20 plus years, I would return to my childhood memories about the farm and the people in my town of Millersburg, Iowa.

In these stories you will meet my folks, Pat and Verla Carney. You will also meet my only sister, Luree, who was blessed with being the oldest of six siblings. Her five brothers were Luverne, Gerald, Jamesy, Melvin and Mick. Grandma and Grandpa Septer were my only living grandparents, and they were always a part of our lives. Even when they are not mentioned, their impact on me has been felt throughout my life, and they still have always an impact on everything I do.

Over the years my hometown of Millersburg, Iowa, has grown smaller. When I go back these days, I wonder about all the people who were adults in my life. The town is just a single row of stores that once held a restaurant, tavern, grocery store, hardware store, barber shop and post office. Today the restaurant is still serving some excellent food and it looks like there is a small convenience store where the grocery store once stood.

Last year they closed the grade school, and I believe that beautiful old building has been sold by now. Two years ago I attended the last high school reunion to be held there. Knowing that this was the last time I would be inside a place that had wrapped itself around my life for twelve years, I left the alumni banquet and took a walk through the building.

As we grow older, we all get to a point where we have a last chance to talk with someone or the last chance to walk through a special place in our memories. It is the hardest to understand and accept because this represents a finality to someone or something that was or is dear to your heart.

In this case I was saying goodbye to a building that I first walked into wearing short pants and long socks in September 1947, a few days before my fifth birthday. The front door had changed over the years, but the six steps going down to the first floor of the school were exactly the same. On that night I sat quietly on the bottom step and just remembered a place that was a big part of my life. Moments flooded my brain in a sort of staccato hit-and-miss procession. Kindness does not let us remember every minute of every day, but some moments in our life stand out. Often there is no reason for the memory; it is just a mental picture of a fleeting moment in time that is forever stuck in our memory.

The second room on my right was where I went to kindergarten. I do not remember much about that year except that every afternoon we got to lay down on the floor and take a nap. Everyone had some kind of blanket or rug that they used to sleep on at naptime. I was the proudest of them all because I had a rug that Grandpa Tom Septer had made for me on a large loom.

The kindergarten classroom was also where I spent fifth grade with our teacher, Ms. Sigriest. She married my neighbor Harold Koehn after he got home from Korea. I went to her wedding in some small town in southern Iowa. Her son is still on my email list so that she can keep up with what I am doing.

The first room on the right was where I went through my fourth grade with our teacher, Miss Riley. It was her first year out of college, and I remember that she had us bring kernels of corn to use for arithmetic. I kept my kernels of corn in a Hershey’s Cocoa can. Why do I remember that? I guess the small props we use in our life can help to fill up memories and make events memorable.

On the left was where Miss Ogle taught me for the first and second grade. In the middle of the hallway there used to be a single water fountain with three spigots. We would have to stand in line with two other classes to get a drink before school or before coming in from noon recess. I seemed to get in more trouble in that line. That beautiful old porcelain fountain has been gone for a lot of years, but in my mind I put it back just for tonight.

The coatroom was still there. There must have been 200 kids who put their coats and overshoes in that six-by-eight-foot closet every day. As a farm kid who walked to school in five-buckle overshoes, my boots were always easy to find. I used to hate the clunk of kids who were trying to find their coats and their boots to go outside for recess or to go home.

On the window side of Miss Sigriest’s room there used to be a storage shed where we played Olly Olly Oxen Free or something like that.