Jack’s Winning Words 2/27/14
“Home is where our feet may leave, but not our hearts.”  (Oliver Wendell Holmes)  What’s wrong?  I Googled “There’s no place like home” and got a Motley Crue song.  I expected Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz.  In life, many of us follow yellow brick roads and leave home in the rearview mirror.  The wrecking ball destroyed my home in Moline, but it didn’t destroy my memories.  Do you have a “no place like” memory?    ;-)  Jack

 FROM TARMART REV:  Living it as we correspond today, Jack . . . I've found it took many other "feeling at home" experiences before I discovered this one over twenty years ago.====JACK:  You have a unique ministry.  It's not for everyone, but that why you do it so well...and the popcorn is a side benefit.

 FROM PEPPERMINT MARY:  i don't have to think back very far.  i experience  "no place like home" everyday when i step through the door, no matter which of the eight homes i've lived in my life.  i love home. ====JACK:  I read recently that "Home is where the pillow fits your head."  Ahhhh!====MARY: exactly!

 FROM TRIHARDER:  I've recently befriended two guys who I went to high school with in Oak Park. I was never close with either.  Peripherally friendly with one of the guys; not even a word to the other all through high school. The first is a "mad" scientist in SF; the second of the two is a photographer (not wedding) in Israel. The three of us lived in the same neighborhood in Detroit (near NW side), the Dexter/Joy Road/Davison neighborhood, a Jewish area in the mid 50s, it rapidly changed and became a  "black" neighborhood. We all took a photo trip down memory land courtesy of Google Maps and made a real connection as friends through the pictures of google, each of us locating our homes and talking about the businesses that didn't survive -- the Dexter Theater, Dexter Chevrolet, the Grand River Theater, Velvet Peanut Butter, ... Quite a connection for the three of us. ====JACK:  One of the benefits of the internet is that it allows us to "go home again" and reconnect with people who otherwise would be lost in the dust of the passing parade.====TH:  In many cases for me, very meaningful people.====JACK:  Most people have "meaning" when you get to know them.====TH:  Some have the wrong meaning.  Fortunately most do.
Present company included.====JACK:  Wrong or right, the outcome is usually positive, when we seek to understand "the meaning" in the people we meet up with.

 FROM RI IN BOSTON:  On a sentimental journey there are a lot of stopping places.  They are milestones of different sorts, but almost all seem to be linked to "home".  Experiences like sliding down the straw stack in the field, swimming in the pond in the meadow, and eating a fresh juicy peach right off the tree in the orchard.  In later years, going back to the home where I grew up, I found special satisfaction sitting in the shade of several tall trees that I planted as a kid, when they were hardly more than twigs.  There are proud memories like coming up our driveway in the first jalopy I bought, or driving out the driveway of my girlfriend's home on our first date.  There's a list of homes we've had since then, and each one has its own set of treasured memories.====JACK:  Back in the 70s, Mary transplanted, into our front yard, a twig of a tree from from the property where our church was being built.  It had a thin double trunk, until you pruned it.  Mary held her breath.  Now, it is a stately one-trunk beautiful maple shade tree.  Thank you!====RI:  That's the sort of thing I enjoy recounting.  Thanks for remembering and telling me about it.  On another note, I like comments of yours such as "made a withdrawal from my memory bank."

 FROM QUILTING CAROL IN RICE LAKE:  Our Lake Villa home is no longer standing, but like you we all have our happy memories of living there.  I’m sure the school now owns the property. The mighty oaks are still standing.====JACK:  I drove by that LV property a few months ago and made a withdrawal from my memory bank.  Those were good old days.

 FROM HONEST JOHN:  My folks built our house the year before I was born it was on 11 acres I absolutely loved it there.====JACK:  Didn't you once tell me that you had room for a big garden on that property?  Those were the days when people grew a lot of their food.  Why don't we do that anymore? ====JOHN:  We had a vineyard, fruit trees, berries...it was a paradise for me.====JACK:  Was there also a serpent?

 FROM HCC CHUCK: WOW, I have many, Grandpa Cobb's old homestead still stands and is occupied by a cousin, the home I grew up in still stands but is owned by someone I do not know,  we have lived in six homes in NY and Mich all still stand and hold many fond memories,  one is lived in by our youngest daughter ====JACK:  A few months ago daughter Beth and I stood in the street looking at the house in Grayslake where she lived as a child.  We didn't know the people living there now, but a young girl came out and asked if she could help us.  After explaining what we were doing, she invited us in to look around.  She had lived in that house all her life and was excited to meet someone who had grown up in there, also.  Maybe you can have a similar experience.  Just go and stand in the street, gawking!.====CHUCK:  Have done that and usually if someone is at home you get invited in for a tour  Great help with memories

 FROM OUTHOUSE JUDY:  My yes, we do have some very special memories of homes we have lived in or had loved ones who lived there.  When you leave someplace you love, you leave a little part of yourselves there too. ====JACK:  Is the outhouse still standing out in the back?


 FROM GOOD DEBT JON:  As Samuel Smiles said in Home, “If they have enjoyed the advantage of neither the home nor school, but have been allowed to grow up untrained, untaught, and undisciplined, then woe to themselves—woe to the society of which they form part.”  Maybe what we learn at “home” is just as important as the memories we have of home. Here is a song (lyric) I did about my memories of our old home (and Dad) in Reynoldsburg. My Dad died in 68 between MLK and RLK.  Here is a link to listen if you wish:  http://www.songramp.com/mod/mps/viewtrack.php?trackid=80833
MY DAD  © 2010 Jon Hanson  Lyric/melody: Jon Hanson  Vocal and Guitar Dale Crockett
I used to work with Dad; sometimes he’d take me out of school
By the time I was eleven, I could use most any tool
He taught me how to frame a wall and how to hang a door
I saw how much loved my Mom and five kids he adored
MY DAD WAS A CARPENTER AND TAUGHT ME HOW TO BUILD
I LEARNED BY WATCHING HIM—SOMETIMES I SEE HIM STILL
DADS TEACH SONS MORE THAN WORK AND HOW TO BE A MAN
NOW THAT I’M A DAD—I THINK I UNDERSTAND
If Dad had lived we would have finished that house on Jackson Street
And I know of a couple of grandkids that he’d sure love to meet
He’d know his grandson serves in the Army just like his Grandpa
And maybe we could take a walk and he’d say son I’m so proud
CHORUS  Bridge
It’s hard to believe God called Dad home more than forty years ago
When I look back on all I’ve built I know I wasn’t working alone
CHORUS  Tag
I used to work with Dad...
====JACK:  I remember when you once told me about your dad...so I know some of the rest of the story that is not in the song.

 FROM WISCONSIN JEANNE:  Our family farm in Irma WI and Bethany Lutheran Church with the beautiful red doors will always have a special place in my heart. ====JACK:  As you may know, the church was sold at an auction and moved down the road to a farm property.  It may have been the place where you lived...or close by.  The owners have kept it pretty much like I remember it...but I remember the most the people who worshipped there when I was the pastor, people like your family.====WJ:  Yes, the people who own it live in the place just before where our place was.  I also have fond memories of you and many of the people who called Bethany "home".

 FROM JT IN MICHIGAN:  My memory is not as far back as yours but it sure lives in my heart.  There is no place like Keego Harbor.  It has produced some of the most important people in my life!  (Of course that extends to the Keego annex (W.B.)====JACK:   Keego Harbor is one of those places known for the people who have lived there.  Even now, as in the past, Keego had character...and characters.

 FROM GO BLUE IN OHIO:  WINNING WORDS has taken on a life of its own, as it were. For a very long time now (when did you begin this effort?), WW has served as a continuing source of engagement both for mind and heart. It is certain that your readers, family and friends alike, have come to anticipate WW as a regular and most valuable form of soul food, sustaining and encouraging all of us to live on in ways meaningful and helpful to others. Whatever your initial intent with the first daily "publication" of WINNING WORDS, your enterprise has proven the highest friendship to many.====JACK:  Winning Words got its start in 1992 with the gift of a computer disc from Daughter Jeanne.  It was full of positive messages.  I began sharing a few of them with family and friends...who suggested that I forward them to others.  Slow, but sure, it grew.  It now numbers about 400 who receive them.  I post some responses (anonymously) on a blog.  An internet "newspaper," West Bloomfield Patch, also posts them.  One of the reasons I enjoy getting up at 5 am, is that I can sit down at my computer and set out the day's words.  I call the people who receive them...C-WOW, my Congregation WithOut Walls.

 FROM MOLINER JT:  The Teske "Farm". Long time gone but the memories will last forever. Started today making the John Deere road 3 lanes each way. This is progress !====JACK:  There were fewer cars and trucks in "those" days.  During WW 2, Midvale Dairy even used some horses to pull their milk wagons
====JT:  Yes- We sold milk and some cream to them. The Blood Bank now sits on their spot. (16th St) ====JACK:  So....you know how to milk a cow?  I never learned that skill.

 FROM BLAZING OAKS:  My oldest son John had a terrible time celebrating Christmas, when we no longer traveled to Moline, and Grandma Blaser's house. 2041 - 13th Street will always be a revered home to the Blasers, Bolms, and Oaks' families, and now I dare say, my family looks to "home" at the Oaks place, where we have all gathered for Thanksgiving for so many years, and most other Holidays, as well. Wonderful memories!!  There truly is "no place like home", be it ever so humble....how thankful  we are to be snug and cozy and safe inside, where love abounds!!====JACK:  Do you remember the book, "Giants in the Earth?"  The Norwegian immigrant family sought to make a home in the Dakota Territory, in spite of poverty, hunger, loneliness, locusts and snowstorms.  As I recall, they lived in a house made of sod.  I like what Edgar Guest wrote..."It tales a heap o' livin' in a house t' make it home."

 FROM MW IN ILLINOIS:  Now don't fall off your chair! with me replying! But this brought back a childhood memory, as a young girl, my family lived about 1/2 a block from the Lake Michigan lakefront in Waukegan.  My older brother & sister would take  my other sister & me  and spend time on the beach.
Unknown to us,one day, there had been an oil spill, & guess who swam into it? My sister Alice & I. Mama was so mad, it took about a week to get rid of the oil & the smell. At that time we both  had long hair past our shoulders.====JACK:  Today, parents would "sue" over such an incident.  Your mom probably said that you should know better than to swim in oily water.  Times change.