By Rev. Robert Plaisted

Guest Columnist

“Gonna take a sentimental journey, gonna set my heart at ease. Gonna make a sentimental journey, to renew old memories.” That song, featuring Doris Day with Les Brown’s band, was a huge hit when I was a kid growing up on our family farm in Jay. Several weeks ago, Sue and I took one of those journeys “to renew old memories.” We drove up to Jay and spent some time walking the land, where I was born and raised. I hadn’t visited the old home place since my mother died 11 years ago. It’s been vacant since my older brother Walt grew too frail to keep the property up and went to live with his children.

Walking that land turned into a walk with the ghosts from much of my life. I could still trace the foundation of the ell from the 19th century farmhouse where I was born. I could stand where the room once stood in which I drew my first breath. That is long gone — the house, shed and barn all devoured by fire. Today’s 1950s ranch house followed. Building it was mostly a family project. I drove many nails, laid shingles, and did some finish carpentry in that house. It was surprising how much the place has changed since I last saw it in 2010. The natural world reasserts itself quickly once we humans stop messing with it.

Out beyond the house, I walked in constant company with shadows and spirits from long ago and far away. I passed memories of outbuildings that survived the fire — three chicken houses and a small storage shed. We tore them down soon after we moved into our new house. None of them had a reason to exist any longer. I could still see depressions in the ground where the lane leading from the barn once had moved cows downhill past hay and cornfields, all the way to the summer pasture. I stood there a moment to remember a bright-eyed, freckle-faced little boy in bib overalls running to open the gate, so my father could send his herd of 10 or 12 Guernseys out to pasture after their morning milking.

A couple of years later, that kid moved a lot slower, dragging one leg. Polio does that to you. The big boulder alongside the edge of the pasture lane looked about the way it looked when I climbed on top of it 70 years ago. That was my test of how well my semi-paralyzed left leg was working. Climbing up was easier as a lame eight-year-old than it was when I climbed up last month. Age also does that to you, but I have no complaints.

I’m glad I took the time to go back home. We can go home again, but it won’t be what we remember. This “Earth Note” is simple: Our ties to the land from which we sprang are strong as any we can have. I’m proud I once was that little boy, growing up poor on a subsistence family farm. The greater the distance from our roots, the more frenetic and discordant our lives can become. All true value resides in the earth under our feet. Human conveniences — money, stocks, bonds, nonsense called “financial products”— are passing shadows. The music of Earth is eternal; our lives are just background noise. 

“Never thought my heart could be so yearny. Why did I decide to roam? Gotta take that sentimental journey, sentimental journey home.”