Hubby and I enjoyed the blessing of spending the evening with this half of the Feldman team--our dear neighbors across the street. Yes, he saddled and rode up on his tractor lawn mower...I was surprised he didn't drive up his front end loader or the big tractor. He often likes to take those out to see how many folks he can hold up on the highway!
Anyway, his better half is helping take care of the grandchild down in Atlanta thus we couldn't let him dine alone, so we invited him up for sup. Life's always an adventure with this retired school teacher, artist, writer, octogenarian turned garlic farmer! On the riding mower, He brought up a bushel basket filled with a thick 3-ring binder, a cassette tape player, and a huge canning pot filled with eight different types of lettuce and radishes just picked from the farm. One item was noticeably missing from the load--his 4-octave harmonica! It's hard getting through a meal with this man without feeling like you've had an ab workout from all the hilarity! But the tales don't start until after he blesses the meal and our time together, of course.
Following our supper, he asked Steve and I to hold hands while he played the recording of an ol' song from the forties. And he was serious about the holding hands part! Of course we were a little embarrassed and just a little hesitant not sure what was coming, but we complied. Behind the hiss and scratches of the obviously old song that he recorded on this ancient cassette tape recorder from a tune he found on YouTube--a song he remembered from his coming of age favorites from the 1940s sung by a humble country couple backed up with banjo and harmonica accompaniment--"We'll Grow Old Together". The song finished with a yodel to which our dinner guest joined with his own skilled epiglottis, flipping into his adorable falsetto to which I half-expected the fox, and Bob, the ghost of our resident woodchuck, the Bedford bear, a half dozen deer, and his dear beloved Marge followed by a few annoyed neighbors and even the Hudson police to appear from round the bend. Until the yodeling part, he kept his head bowed in utter seriousness, lost in his own reverie, expecting hubby and I to listen to the entire song with devotion in our hearts. We swayed in time to the Appalachian rendition of this old love song while hubby winked at me as if to say, I feel a sermon coming. Sure enough, as though stepping up to the pulpit, clicking the cassette off button with a flourish, he prefaced his sermon with, Well now that your youngest has flown the
nest, it really is just the two of you now. You know, I've known my beloved Wife of 55 years was the one since she told me she gave her heart to The Lord and said, 'I'll never turn back.' We've heard the story a few times but never mind hearing it told again by this godly man and master storyteller who never fails to touch our hearts, tickle our funny bone, and entertain us with his unique view on politics and world events topped off with a yodel or accompanied by the 4-octave harmonica while wreaking of garlic!
Oh , and the notebook? He recently finished another chapter of his (so far) 600-page memoir replete with thousands of photos! This chapter recounts his 2-year deployment to Germany post WWII and he wanted to discuss how he could market this part of the story. What soldier do you know who actually kept a running narrative--both visual and textual-of every detail of his time in the service! Well, Folks, that's our Chuck Feldman, our one-of-a-kind Chuckie. Trust me, the Lord broke the mold after making this one! We love him and Margie so dearly and feel very blessed to have them and their family in our lives. Feel like the good Lord planted us here for a reason. OK, well since this is starting to seem like a book, I'll sign out for tonight I mean this morning. Hugs
