Paying it forward...at no charge

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.