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.

jeremiah

grandpa never really liked the name jeremiah, everyone just called him jerry. he was born somewhere around logan,ohio in 1913, from what he's said and what i heard his father was mean as a snake, spending the majority of his money on whiskey,gambling, and women. his father wesley inherited 22,ooo.oo dollars in 1919 when grandpa's mother died from the flu. wesley wasted that money and married a woman with six children, so along with his eight the mouths to be fed including grandpa was now 16. grandpa left home at the age of 17 and married my grandmother around 1931, grandpa and grandma had my father in 1935 and my aunt elizabeth ann in 1937, before and during he was building up his business the thornville elevator a local grain elevator and feed store. my grandmother was a very stick woman but would do anything for you, grandpa used to say "she's tighter than the bark on a tree," and she probably was, but she had a big heart. sometime in the 1960's grandpa bought the local hardware store located in thornville making my father manager of the elevator and grandpa manager of the hardware. in 1964 or 65 grandpa gave my dad money for the down payment on a new home in thornville (80 lakeview dr.) i'm not sure but i wouldn't doubt it, my aunt annie also had a home their. grandpa was always doing things like that, school board "local and county," lions club, masons,church(united church of christ). he seemed to always be giving but first to his family. as a smaller child we used to go on fishing vacations in canada grandpa, grandma, and myself,mom,dad, and the entire family and at times ann and her family. one memory i have is on the way home from elementary school in thornville my brothers and i would stop by the hardware and bum a quarter for candy or a hostess fruit pie. after high school my brothers brad and bruce went to college, betsy became a nurse, barbie moved off and married, and i "at least before my accident," worked at the elevator. grandpa seemed to be the most generous guy, he was always helping family monetarily, he even helped this one old drifter(bum), they called him picalo pete. grandpa,besides giving him money, he would allow him to stay in the basement of the elevator in the winter,"at times at least." grandpa and grandma were constantly fighting, or grandma was, she was stubborn as a mule, but grandpa loved her, they were sort of like jackie gleason was on the honeymooner's, they would argue but make up in the end and grandma was always "right." now i'm older grandpa died in 2006 grandma in 2001, i'm the next grandpa blackstone but i'll never be grandpa.

sara emily blackstone

gini and my number 2 child, a beautiful baby and child, frustrated by the amount of work she has at school but an excellent student, thank god she takes after her mother in the physical beauty department, but she's got my feet.

brent hamilton blackstone pg7

when gini,aaron and i were living in thornville in the mid 1980's to 1994 it was alright but it was beginning to change, then was when it was more noticable that the elderly resident's were dying off and the "granville-esk","stick in the butt" element was starting to occur. i can handle change but come on.so in 1994 was when gini,aaron and i moved to gini's families farm, her great grandfather had built the home and the barn, the house was alright but it did require quite a lot of work. my wife's father milks cows, and maybe or probably it's because of his age but he's a horrible farmer, but i help where i can.i've always enjoyed bailing hay, even as a small child when still in school i bailed for various farmers in and around thornville, farming is hot, often dirty work, that really doesn't pay very well but i love it,at times.

brent hamilton blackstone pg6

for several years all i really did was exercise and party(this was after becoming disabled), i did attempt going back to osu(newark) for awhile but the walking was pretty difficult, i soon tired of it. i think it was in 1982 brad(back from portugal), brad's girlfriend, luisa, and i rented an apartment at forest hills just outside of newark, it was alright i spent a great deal of time partying, i definitely wasn't a very good handicapper unemployed dude. i lived with brad and luisa till the spring of 1983 then i finally got a job at the licking county board on mental retardation and developmental disabilities and moved into an apartment in newark. the job was as a resident advisor at a group home taking care of a group of retarded guys, physically it was easy, but really not my cup of tea. later i met gini fell in love and got married, 9 months later aaron michael jeremiah was born, i was there for his birth and i swear when he arrived he smiled at me, no kidding. several weeks later mom said we could move into the house in foster manor in thornville, so we did. i quit the group home job and became a full time dad, i soon was required(because of my disability), to retake the driving test, because of my double vision i failed. home life was good, we didn't have much money, but we seemed to make it. in the early 1990's dad died of cancer while living in florida. i failed to mention that my mom and dad divorced in 1984,i really don't know exactly why but at the time my mom became mentally unstable, in the end she did end up with the house and i ended up back in thornville.i've always loved thornville, at least the way it used to be, when it was more of a farming community with the elevator and hardware and older folks who at one time were farmers, now the elevator has been sold and bulldozed out of existence the hardware is still around but who knows what it is this week, all the older folks have died off and thornville has become a stick in the butt Granville(hoity toity),but i guess you can't stop change.

late april

winter is over ,"already" it's extremely hot, but it's better than cold,snow,ice,and burning wood, i guess