This is a true family story about a dad, an uncle, and a son, only one of them related to me. It goes back to the 40’s I’d guess, the 1940’s that is, remembering now that this may be read well past the – gasp – 2040’s, and ended in 2014. Or maybe it hasn’t ended yet. Maybe that will be up to someone who wasn’t even born when I wrote this, as I wasn’t when this story began.
The story starts…or continues…or possibly ends…in 2014, when
Cheryl and I were making a very big push to get our property ready for our
niece Becca’s wedding to a very cool guy name of Mark. I took a week off from
work to complete a number of projects around the property that needed to be
done so badly, I’d put them off for years. But now, in my judgement, they
really did need to get done.
And the biggest job of all, and most germane to this story,
was to re-do the 80-foot walkway that runs along the front of our house. The walk had consisted only of a very fine
gravel from when mom and dad built the house back in the 1950’s, and I vaguely
remember Mom saying she’d never liked it that way.
So my vision was to embed pieces of flagstone into the
walkway with dirt or gravel, or hopefully, eventually, moss in between. But it
was important to Cheryl and me that the flagstone be irregular, not perfectly
precut to interlock or be perfectly spaced. We wanted something more along the
lines of a jigsaw where the pieces might fit in a more creative arrangement.
But…we didn’t know where to go to find it, so we asked our
local expert and amazing neighbor Aidan Myles who told us exactly where to go:
to see Stephen Senn right down the road in the town of Eagle, just a few miles
away. But, Aidan warned us, the entrance to his business would be really hard
to find and we’d probably pass it by a few times before making the correct turn
on to his semi-hidden gravel driveway. It seemed unlikely to us, given that
Eagle had gone from a sleepy little theoretical mark on a map when I was a kid,
more than any recognizable destination, to a half-mile long stretch with 5
traffic lights, a CVS, a Starbucks, an Acme, some beauty salons, and a few bars
and restaurants.
So, Cheryl and I set out in search of the aforementioned Mr.
Senn. And as Aidan predicted, we did
indeed pass by his drive at least once, not believing that weed strewn little
dirt road could possibly be the entrance to an actual business. So, still not
sure, we turned down the driveway, looking for an office, and not seeing one,
looking just for any sign of life. For the most part, we only saw piles of
dirt, a lot of brush and occasional stacks of empty pallets. It felt like a
place either spooky or magical, where we either would never get alive or we’d
happened into Brigadoon.
We had passed one backhoe in operation down a short side
path, so we went back there, parked behind the large now unmanned machine and
ventured past it to find a tall, round-faced man, who looked a little
intimidating, serious and at the same time, at least potentially to be a tad
jolly. Turned out to be a some of each.
As we walked toward him, he stopped what he was doing and
looked at us, seeming to wonder why we were interrupting him. “Hi! Are you
Steve Senn?” I asked, to which he replied, his eyes narrowing, “Depends on who
wants to know!” I paused for a moment, wondering if we’d made a mistake in
coming here at all. And then as we stared at each other, I noticed a twinkle in
his eye and the start of a smile at the corners of his mouth, and I chanced an
introduction of myself and then Cheryl. And now, his face changed again. He
seemed to grow quite pensive, looking upward and stroking his beard gently, as
he said slowly, “McVickar. McVickar. I remember a McVickar. Are you Art
McVickar’s son?”
Now I was both excited and somewhat perplexed. Many years
ago, one of the local Senn families had lived across from us on Black Horse
Road, though we never really socialized much, and I wondered if he was
forgetting Dad’s name. And I said, “No, I am Paul McVickar’s son. I had an
uncle named Art but you may be thinking of my parents who used to live on Black
Horse Road across from a Senn family, but I don’t know if that was your family
or one of your brothers’ families.”
Listening carefully, but now maybe a little confused
himself, he said “No, no. I’m talking about an Art McVickar. Did he used to
work at a nursery – Vicks - down in the Gladwyne
area many years ago? And then he taught at a private school on City Line – Friends Central?” My eyes widening, I said “Yeah!
Yeah, that was my uncle!” And again, he spoke slowly and thoughtfully and said,
“Yeah…way back in some really hard years when my dad was having a tough time
finding work, your uncle always seemed to find work at the school for my
dad.” We could almost see him getting a
little misty as he remembered it. But he quickly caught himself and said, “So
what are you looking for?”
We explained our goal of finding some irregular shapes of flagstone
for our front walk, making it clear that we didn’t want the perfect rectangular
pieces so popular these days. Well, I don’t know that we could’ve said anything
better, as his face brightened and he said “Follow me!”. As we walked, he went
on a diatribe of sorts about all the developments going in all around, where
all they want are those very pre-cut, perfectly interlocking pieces sold en
masse at the Lowes and Home Depots of the world.
And now we found ourselves walking down a barely-there path,
with waste-high weeds on either side of us, when we came to a clearing of sorts
where we found some piles of exactly what we were looking for. Steve walked
over toward 2 of the piles and said “So I can give you these, which are
probably what you’re looking for, or those over there, which are probably too long
for you.”
Cheryl and I walked over toward the piles he stood by,
knowing immediately that they were exactly what we were looking for. Cheryl and
I looked at each other and nodded and Cheryl asked Steve, “I think these are what
we were hoping for. How much would these two piles cost?”
And at this point, Steve reverted back to that same
intimidating, serious look when we first arrived and, with a touch of anger in
his voice said, “I told you I would GIVE them to you!” Now, both a little
flustered and shocked but incredibly blown away by his generosity, we thanked
him profusely and made arrangements for how we could get them to our house.
Left unsaid was the obvious. He was repaying us for Uncle
Art’s having been so helpful to his father and his family maybe 70 years
earlier.
(Not relevant to the story but in some ways even more
entertaining were some family secrets Steve then went on to regale us with in
considerable detail, sharing stories about things his parents never told the
kids directly but which they figured out, much as we kids did about our own
family’s eventually uncovered secrets.)
Sadly, I’ve learned that Stephen has since passed away, or I would have liked to have gone back
to thank him again.
The End…or is it? J
And lastly, I need to add one more picture of a stone that brought me to tears: the right hand side of this one piece reminding me very much of my dad’s profile – my dad who had taught me when I was a child how to build stone walls and who now
seemed to be giving me his approval of the job I was doing. That rock is now a part of the wall that holds up the path that I hope will be there for many years to come.
