My mother loves her home, her place. It’s in Perrysburg, Ohio, a village when I grew up, a town, nearly a city now, about ten miles up the Maumee river from Toledo, and just across the river from the town of Maumee. The Battle of Fallen Timbers was fought in the area, Fort Meigs has been preserved as a park; I remember being told of Indians shooting arrows from the Maumee side of the river into Fort Meigs on the Perrysburg side. In the days of my youth we learned our local history; the first four lane boulevard, from Maumee into Toledo, was called the Anthony Wayne trail after General “Mad” Anthony Wayne. The Erie Canal ended near Maumee as the train era made the canals into instant folly.

577 East Front Street to be exact, and not in town, but at the edge of town. Dixie Highway lies North and South along the East side of the North-flowing Maumee River. As Dixie Highway enters the North end of Perrysburg it becomes Front Street, which it remains until it exits Perrysburg, a hefty arrow shot away from Fort Meigs. 577 is the exact street number of this transformation. I was born in Perrysburg, my first ten years were spent at 422 East Second Street, one block East and one and a half blocks South of  577 East Front Street.

The childless Greenough family owned the place before, and it had been their horse farm. Mrs. Greenough was heavy into horses and horse shows. I remember being told that she had slashed with her quirt at the face of a judge unfortunate enough to have placed her second. Apparently she had tired of the horse business and sold the 14 acres to my mother and father. The barn, always called “The Barn,” was a horseshoe shape and lay just East of the opening defined by a circle of mature trees and bushes which was always known as “The Circle.” From the West end of the circle, it was seventy yards to the house that was built, and from the house about 250 yards, down a hill of jumbled brush, to “The Bayou,” a narrow diversion of the Maumee River which made “The Island” what it was—an island.

When the house was built, in 1941, of stone exterior and slate roof, a landscape architect of some local fame—Mrs. Shipman, I believe—supervised the placing of trees, shrubs, vines, and rose gardens. When we moved in, it seemed like the house had already been there for a long time. It was war-time, food was rationed, as were gasoline and shoes. We had a Victory Garden, it was the thing to do to support our boys over there. We had chickens and pigs, several steer one summer. At age 10 I became the husbandman of the livestock. During the summer I also worked in the gardens, which produced flowers as well as vegetables. My mother loved the gardens particularly.

I remember the time she decided that we needed pigs. She found a farmer with two youngsters to sell and I went with her to pick them up. They were driven back to “The Barn” in a gunny sack in the back seat of her Lincoln Continental; this was perhaps the first year of this model. One I called “Mr. Friendly” because he did not bite at my ankles when I filled their troughs. In the middle of the school year a call came to release me, for Mr. Friendly had delivered six little piglets. My mother told this as a joke for many years, always when drinking, “Mr. Friendly had six little piglets!” Between pigs, steer, and chickens there was plenty of excellent manure for the gardens. When the war ended, the beds were so fertile, their tilth so perfect, that they have remained, evermore, as garden to both vegetables and flowers.

As I said, my mother loved the place. In March, the East facing window of the dining room sprouted flats and flats of seeds, tomatoes, beans, and peas, you name it. At the edge of the garden were cold frames which were also used to get an early start on summer. Compost was important, my mother was an early pioneer in the art of composting. She loved walking around the place. She loved walking around just alone, and she loved giving the tour: “And these Marigolds are placed here because they protect the asparagus from Leyden’s rust.”

My father, at age seventy, divorced my mother, then sixty six. He moved away, and the place became my mother’s alone, not that it hadn’t been that all along; but now it was official. She bought more trees; the tennis court was replaced with dirt for more gardens; one Christmas we pooled together and bought her a little greenhouse to go just off her bathroom. To my mother, the promise of another spring, another growing season, seems to ameliorate the rather lengthy and grismal winter. She is never tempted to leave for a warmer climate; she waits winter out, planning, reading seed catalogs.

My mother invested a great deal of worry into what would become of the place when she was gone, passed away. For awhile, she hoped one of her children might move in; and then she worried that it would be the one with the wife that she didn’t much like. She thought about giving it to the local university; I know that we talked often about this issue when I visited. Every possibility had some down-side, like that wife that she didn’t much like: it was nearly an obsession.

I don’t think she ever hatched the full-blown plan of what was supposed to happen, I think little happenstances came along, and they began to fit together, as they began to fit together, it began to make sense, and it was easier to see what the next step should be. Perhaps it was Edith Franklin asking if she could use part of the Barn space for ceramics classes, perhaps it was Michael’s enthusiasm for Bio-Domes, but Edith spruced up the South section of the Barn and started ceramics classes, and a fifty foot Bio-Dome came from Colorado to occupy the center of the Circle. I have no idea who came up with the bookstore idea, but the North section of the barn became a community-operated used bookstore. Volunteers organize and shelve the donated books. There is a mayonnaise jar for the money, the door is unlocked, people come, find a book, leave a buck for a hardback, a quarter for a paperback, and half the profits go to charity.

A man had an automobile accident and suffered brain damage; he had been an executive in one of Toledo’s manufacturing businesses. He could do bees, and he wanted to do bees. The Cottage became a bee center, and the man became a volunteer organizer for the activities around the Barn and in the Circle. Radiating away from the Bio-Dome towards the trees of the Circle are garden plots, each perhaps two hundred square feet; they are available to the community on a first-come, first-served basis. One elder planted a garden with all white flowers of many varieties because she thought it would look beautiful in the moonlight. Another, a father of several youngsters, planted varieties of African grasses in another plot. He thought the community would be interested in African grasses. Another gentleman went to a little clearing in the trees of the Circle, laid down and raked smooth some white pebbles, a placed a little seat at one end; someone else added a large stone at the end of the pebbles away from the seat.

In the Bio-Dome there is a worm farm with instructions; “These little gardeners like your garbage if it doesn’t have too much grease.” Everybody contributes, and children love to poke around and pull out worms for study and eventual replacement into the garbage. Somebody started a banana tree, and, by golly, even in Northern Ohio, it grew bananas! There is a community compost heap with a large visible thermometer sticking out so that the curious can discover just how bloody hot a compost pile can get when composting. There is a trail which runs from the Barn down to the Bayou; it is called “The River Walk” and various people have made little signs identifying the flora observed. There is a little wooden shack just outside of the circle on the South side where one can sit, and a sign that lists the birds that might be seen.

Others than Edith offer ceramics classes; the Barn is busy. There are classes in making wooden chairs, classes on flower arranging, many, many classes about environmental issues, particularly targeted towards children. There are so many people out there who know something and offer a class. Children come from the mental home, a man with a stroke has been assigned in his therapy to make clay pots.

My mother’s circulation is not too good, she smokes a lot and has her martinis in the evening. She can’t walk from the Big House to the Barn and she uses an electric golf cart. She loves driving around the place. She loves driving around just alone; and she loves giving the tour: “And these Marigolds are placed here because they protect the asparagus from Leyden’s rust.” She has set up a foundation, the 577 Foundation, with a little endowment to pay for fixing things up and someone to keep track of classes, books, and gardeners. She is quite content with her place now, even a bit proud, because the Governor sent her a letter praising her for what she has done for the community; and she likes very much that she created what survives her before she passes away, and that it is good.

George’s mother Mary Virginia Secor Stranahan (“Did”) died in 1997 at the age of 91. Because of inclement weather, George could not fly out of Aspen in time and therefore missed her funeral. One could say that even at the very end, George never did let his mother catch him, and yet…

There are 500 acres or more in Woody Creek that might evolve into a community asset beyond, but including, green space. Evolution is the only way to go. I trust that nobody can sit down and draw up a plan that would work. Let the first person stand up and say “I have an idea! Down by the creek we can build three little cabins, each 10 feet by 10, and each will have just enough solar power to run a word processor; and each will be available to the community because they will be good places in which to write.” And if this idea is right we will say, “Yes, and we will help you.” And then let the next person stand up and say “I have an idea ….” And if it is good we will say yes, and if it is not we will say no. And we will know the difference between what is good and what is not, and we will trust each other in these decisions, and we will trust our heirs, successors, and assigns also if we do it right.

Posted in chapters | No Comments