shroom

every year beginning in mid april through mid may spring begins,"at least around here," and with the start of spring comes the mushrooms, growing small at first, then more towards the beginning of may the larger muriel mushrooms white mainly. i'm not very good at finding them, but i really enjoy eating them. this year i happened to be out hunting one day walking through briars and stepping over logs and looking in tall grass around the elm trees, for some odd reason they seem to grow near elm trees, but i tripped over what i thought was just another log on the forest floor but it was a mushroom the biggest mushroom i had ever seen or heard about. the mushroom must have been at least ten feet tall, it was enormous, it must have been two to two and a half foot across at the base, i had no idea how i would ever get it home to show my wife, i also had no idea how i would ever pick it. i decided to go back to the house since it was less than a mile away and get my chainsaw since the chain was still sharp from the last time i needed to cut wood, my wife and i are required to supplement our heat(forced air furnace), with the use of an add-on wood furnace. i also hooked up a hay wagon to carry the mushroom back to the house,"i was only hopeing i would be strong enough to lift the massive mushroom onto the bed of the wagon?" when i returned to the woods i parked the tractor with the wagon on behind of it what i thought was in the exact same spot i had been in earlier when i had found the mega-shroom so i walked into the woods looking for more mushrooms as i walked, i did find several regular size mushrooms but when i returned to the spot it seememed to have disappeared so i walked around more seaching and searching,"this was getting a little ridiculus," i was getting frantic, searching everywhere with chainsaw in hand and it was beginning to get dark. i searched a while longer, ate another of the mushrooms i had found earlier and went on home, i'm sure there's a moral to this yarn but i have no idea what it might be.

ira cooperrider and rachel van dyke cooperrider&uncle loy

i never really knew much about great-grandpa and grandma cooperrider,i was young and to me they always seemed old, grandpa died in 1970 or 71, and grandma in the 1980's at the age of 96, grandpa was in his 70's. grandpa was a really fascinating man, i would have enjoyed knowing him when he was younger and i was older. one thing i thought was remarkable was that he had a variety of unusual trees and berry bushes, he took the time to repaint the lables and mow around the trees and bushes like any other backyard or park. i'm not sure exactly of the spelling and i'm sure i don't remember them all but there were: apple,persimums,grape,gooseberry,locust(male,female),a variety of evergreen trees and bushes,plum,sassy frass,holly,etc. he also had a museum, located on the second floor of his garage, with thousands of (flint)arrowheads,stone tools(indian), antique guns(some from the civil war),an old crank phone(that would shock the crap out of you when you would hold some wires and someone would turn the crank), a samuri sword, one of those things i'm not sure the name of that a bull fighter sticks in that back of the bull towards the end of the fight),an abe lincoln type of top hat,ww1 german army helmet,etc. he also did things like made his own maple syrup(he actually had a maple syrup camp,a boiler, and a small building in my aunt's wood's"aunt jane,one of grandpa's daughter's who had the farm next door to grandpa's." all of the relatives would gather together and we would butcher hogs, now that's a wild memory, brad, bruce and i together with my cousin mike(butch), eating cracklins' and throwing hog parts(kidneys), in the fire, i can still picture aunt janie cleaning the hog guts preparing them for sausage. grandpa also hung hams and smoked them, he had a smoke house especially for this. grandpa had a huge garden, one with vegetables and one entirely sweet corn we later cut off with knives and froze. as i wrote before grandpa died in 70 or 71, it must have been in 1970 i think i was in 8th grade, he's buried at the zion church cemetary that's off st.rt.13 near thornville. i didn't really know grandma i'm sure she was really a nice person all i really know is she was always old(or at least it seemed that way to me), in later years she always smelled like ben-gay. when i was younger she always had or left food on the table covered with a white cloth, and believe it or not it didn't spoil not even her homemade butter that was always soft and good. the one thing i know of her is that she was also a teacher but she quit teaching before i entered the scene.anyway that's about all i can remember about them, i know this really isn't about them but in 1969 brad,bruce, and maybe mike brown and i were out on gramps and grandma's front porch where they had a swing and we brought a portable tv out and watched the moonlanding. oh! i almost forgot, uncle loy was grandpa's brother that lived with them i really don't know much about him other than he was nice and quiet and to me he was always old, he was in wwI, but i don't think he ever left the usa, the war was over when he was in boot camp, he always had a carton of kent cigarette's on the front seat of his car, he had a brick outhouse in the backyard at my grandparents home"his bowel movements must have been pretty rank," i would see him in the evenings at times sitting on a bench in front of the thornville drug store with a buddy or two,"i wonder if they were gay?" not really he had an old girlfriend he would see and at times bring to my grand parents, maybe he was bi? not really. he ended up in a resthome in newark and died in the 1980's, my grandparent's would visit him practicully daily and even i went a few times. grandpa and grandma and i'm not positive but i imagine uncle loy is too, buried at the zion church cemetary along with my grandparents(jerry&carrie)i also have several relatives there, i'd like to be laid to rest in the backyard, just put me in a trash bag.