Perceptions

As a child growing up in tornado alley having a warm, dry, safe, well lit, and regularly exterminated cellar was truly a luxury. My Grandfather dug cellars. They were always cut into the down wind side of a hill or knoll. The only water one of his cellars ever took dripped off an occupant coming in late out of the storm.

Our personal cellar was big enough to hold our family and all of our neighbors, who by the way, knew they were welcome and were thankful for it. Our cellar was like none other I've ever known. It was filled with bins of home grown potatoes, winter squash, onions, and paper wrapped pears. There were shelves on two sides filled with thousands of jars of home canned tomatoes, ketchup, pickles, relishes, green beans, corn, carrots, peas, jellies, jams, juices, apple sauce, peaches, plums and so much more.

There were cots, pillows, blankets and lots of flashlights with fresh batteries. We had electricity down there after 1951 and a working toilet in the corner in what we called a water closet. Grandpa kept board games, card decks, a supply of books and magazines, and one or two of his old fiddles. There were folding chairs, card tables and a rocker for the babies. My folks ran a grocery store so there was soda pop and a large air tight chest filled with chocolate, chips, crackers, and assorted goodies. This was also where Grandpa stored his home made wild cherry wine and his jarred honey and honey comb.

When Grandma made trips to the cellar to fetch groceries she always grabbed the broom and dust pan up out of the corner and a clean dust rag or two, which meant our cellar was always clean and fresh. There were a couple of buckets of fresh sweet well water, switched out daily, except for really slick and slippery winter days. It never froze in one of Grandpa's cellars, but the steps going down would ice over, so in bad wintry weather we stayed clear for several days. One bucket he kept for drinking and it had an aluminum dipper. The other bucket had a standing rack with lye and ivory soaps and assorted towels.

My Grandfather witched wells in a five state area using a spring native peach bough or sometimes just a metal coat hanger. It all depended on the weather and the time of year. It was not by choice but by reputation in the beginning, as was the cellar digging but over the years both jobs paid well and Will Reiter became a household name. He played his good fiddles at barn dances and square dances and pie suppers all over northeast Oklahoma from Centralia to Bunker Hill and beyond. He played with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Marvin Rainwater, and Arthur Godfrey. He was also known for taking 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes year after year with his juicy sweet hearted ninety + pound black diamond watermelons.

He was a bee keeper and I loved to watch him don his gear complete with metal mess hood and gloves. Often when harvesting honeycomb he would be head to heels covered in a swarm, but oddly enough he was rarely stung. He raised his bees on red clover and his honey was award winning and we sold out, always reserving enough for our own use. He would always give me little pieces dripping with honey and I would chew the
comb until there was nothing left but a little bit of bees wax. Grandma used the cured combs to make jelly sealing paraffin and candles.

Well witching, fiddle playing and bee keeping are all other stories. Now we're talking about perceptions and it was unanimous that when spring followed winter and the storms began to blow in we all just grabbed our dog and favorite cat and maybe the parakeet and headed for Grandpa's cellar. Once the door was tightly shut the fear of the storm left and laughter took its place. Up top a tornado once drove chicken feathers into a solid oak tree. They tore off roofs and porches, uprooted trees, ravaged barns, and blew things away that were never recovered.

Down below in Grandpa's cellar he was playing an old fiddle. The women were quilting or crocheting. Grandmother always kept some unfinished project tucked away. Dad was busy beating the socks off his neighbors at pitch or checkers. The babies were snuggled down surrounded by dozing dogs and cats that would have have taken on a grizzly to protect them. The teenagers were huddled in a giggling mass. Usually girls in one corner and boys in another. There was warmth, music, and laughter and that tornado could knock itself out, because everything for the moment was right with our world.

When those storms were over we took our sweet time coming up to access the damage and everyone just pitched in picking things up and putting them back together. It was old school neighbor helping neighbor.. With that being said you have my childhood perception of right. I have nurtured that perception for what will soon be sixty years. I admit that over the years I have experienced some personal perception changes, but as concerning Grandpa's cellars, that was a shining example of right.

As an adult setting out to purchase my own place, it had to be in the country and it had to have a warm, dry, well lit cellar.Searching for property in the seventies I encountered some diverse cellars. I found damp cellars, spidery cellars, some so moldy you were safer facing the raging storm than you would have been down under inhaling spores. I came across a cellar in an August drought that had what I perceived to be about 9 feet of water and shining my flashlight down into the depths I spotted some little and some not so little triangular heads with beady eyes that I sure enough recognized as water moccasins. I did not get close enough to report to you whether they were cotton mouths or not. My mouth however did turn to dry cotton as my high tailing backside hit the truck seat and I left a cloud of late summer dust and gravel in the air. I was at that moment in fully tuned perception with both fear and the term "Out of here."

I actually came across a cellar that I sincerely thought should be filled with gasoline and burned before the first load of filler dirt was dumped. That was the day I quit looking at places with existing cellars. After all Grandpa was still able and would just have to supervise digging one last cellar for me. It was later that same evening that my family attended a local high school concert. One of the area churches had opened up their choir section and auditorium in order to handle the expected crowd. We were using their dining hall for the pie supper and box dinner auction to follow. I loved those affairs. I miss them and sorely wish someone would reinvent those auctions. The performance was excellent. I'd say the best ever. It's not surprising as we had some super talent come out of Oklahoma in that era and I truly perceived talent in the Oklahoma hills that night.

When the last box was auctioned off we were sitting around long tables, opening food boxes to see just what we'd bought for supper. We had bid on and purchased our own knowing that it contained fried chicken, fresh biscuits, honey butter and lemon meringue pie. It cost us way too much because the auctioneer had put our name on our box and asked what was inside and told its contents when he started the bidding. Those boxes were always so beautifully wrapped and covered with curled ribbons and exquisite bows. They represented another perception in my mind of something done absolutely right.

As the dinner conversation started I began to fully realize the true meaning of individual perceptions. I'd thought the boys acapello barber shop quartet was the best act of the night. Brother, was I soon schooled in being wrong. It was the soprano solo. No! It was the German number. No! It was the military march. It was not! It was the "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." That was actually my second choice.Then began "The did you hear my child?" segment of the conversation.The topper of the evening came when one woman described her perception of the piano concerto. To me it had represented a thunder storm and I envisioned lightening and torrential rain, but she perceived the pianist as a construction worker handling the piano as a jack hammer and anticipated the player and his instrument falling through a self drilled hole in the stage at any moment. Have you ever choked on fried chicken? It is not always safe to eat while listening to a visionary speak.

It was that lady that set my mind to pondering peoples varying perceptions. I have muddled through such wonders as the brick cheese debate. Do you think someone perceived the cheese to be as hard as a brick? Was it so named because it was set in a brick shaped mold? Maybe Mrs. John Brick created the recipe? Now ponder that.. This type of pondering eventually led to thoughts like who perceives soft or hard, quiet or loud, fast or slow, and even rough or smooth. Lets examine a single feather floating down unto a motionless pond in pitch darkness. Was its landing soft and silent to the perch underneath or did it make a loud, hard, explosive sound? Did the bull frog on the bank think its dissension was too fast? Did the night sky notice if the water rippled? Was the earth moved or in the darkness was it noticed not at all?

With such pondering I have come to realize in everything we have freedom to perceive. As a people does this freedom lead us to create a multitude of gray shaded thinking, or bundles of, "what if only," or a myriad of personalized acceptable excuses? I wonder then is there no exact right, no wrong? Consider personal perceptions created within individual imaginations allowing each of us to see things our way. Once seen does this open the door to doing things our own way? Once done this must make our way the only correct and appropriate way. No question mark needed here.

Deep down below just like a properly executed and well dug, well lit, safety cellar each of us has a personal place where right lives and wrong even our very own conceived and orchestrated wrong is still recognized. Don't we?
Grandpa I'm so thankful not just that you knew how to, but carried through witching sweet water wells, playing first fiddle, growing record setting, sweet hearted watermelons, developing pure silky honey, digging dry cellars and hand crafting character in our family and our neighborhood. I rejoice in my internal knowledge of right and I'm thankful to still flinch when contemplating wrong.

The greatest gift you gave this world was not doing all those great things your way. It was leading those whose lives you touched to do things, "The right way." You are my hero of heroes. Just so you know, I'm still using Grandma's torque down canner. I have it tested at the extension office and it's still holds pressure with precision. One of Sissies boys still has your bible and I've got Dads. God is still my light in the darkest night and I'm not afraid of the storm,

In loving memory of William Raymond Reiter July 1889 - March 1978