By: Marlene Oxender
Blessed are those who hold the door open for another. Or is it they are holding open the door? Which comes first – are we holding the door open or holding open the door?
Do we jot the words down or do we jot down the words? Are we picking up the pen or picking the pen up?
If I knew these grammar rules back in my school days – I’ve forgotten them. So I say: Blessed are the punctuation kings and queens.
Those who can edit – more power to them. They deserve a crown indeed. Or indeed, they deserve a crown. I am a writer who is stingy with her use of exclamation points. My thinking is: If I’ve written the words as they should be, the reader does not need an exclamation point.
Now if the house is on fire, I will add an exclamation point. Every family has at least one story that ought to be written down. You know the story I’m talking about. That one. It’s fun to retell, especially if there’s someone who hasn’t heard it before.
Ask any Kimpel kid about our family stories, and the “Evening of the Fire-That-Wasn’t,” is probably the most talked about. My siblings and I can offer our individual memories of the night we stood in the front yard, having evacuated a house that wasn’t on fire.
We watched the fire trucks pull up. Three of them. The firefighters sat in their idling trucks while the fire chief and a few others jumped out of their trucks to find out what was going on. Why did they drive across town only to find their assistance wasn’t needed?
My late brother Stevie, who had Down syndrome, was with me when we visited Joe Hinkle on a Sunday evening a few years back. Joe is a retired Edgerton fireman who had kept a scrapbook collection of articles and photos from his volunteer fireman days.
Stevie and I enjoyed looking through Joe’s books and listening to him tell us more. Stevie loved firefighters and firetrucks – and everyone knew it.
Within Joe’s scrapbook collection is a newspaper clipping about the fire at the Edgerton Metal Products building in June of 1968.
Joe recalled how bad the fire really was, how terribly exhausted the firemen were, and how many surrounding units had to be called in.
Joe remembered the night my sisters called the fire department back in the 1960s. They were just young girls who thought the house was on fire because a smoke alarm was sounding from behind a closed door. They ran to the Wickerhams’ house to ask Warnie and Odelia to call the fire department.
The firetrucks showed up quickly because the men were already at the fire hall for a meeting. The firemen were kind as they assured my sisters that they did the right thing by calling the fire department, and it’s always good for them to have a practice run.
With Father’s Day just around the corner, perhaps it’s a good time to pick up our pen, or pick our pen up, and write a note to a guy who made a difference in your life.
Whether he’s still here on earth, or not, we can jot a few things down. Or jot down a few things. There are coaches, leaders, and parents who were there for us.
Who taught us how to write. Who cared about commas and dashes. And exclamation points only when necessary.
I found a letter my brother Ed had written to my parents at the time of their 50th wedding anniversary. Ed thanked them for their prayers while he was in the service.
He told them the best gift he’d ever received was his first letter from them after being stationed in Vietnam. It arrived on December 24th.
I can read the many letters Ed had sent home while he was in the service, but he was unable to save the cards and letters he’d received from his family and friends. It would have required too many suitcases.
In his letters, he mentioned the names of those who had sent him mail. And because he was receiving The Edgerton Earth newspaper, he was able to keep up on the hometown news.
Ed’s letter to my parents was penned in 1997. He’d shared some humorous thoughts as well as heartwarming memories. He was the oldest boy in a family of eleven children.
He watched as Mom held so many newborns, who were then the baby of the family, only until the next baby came along. Then the baby became one of us.
He ended his letter with the following memory:
One of the things I would like to mention is I can’t remember getting turned down when I asked for your help in anything, except for one time. I had bought an old car and the floorboards were full of holes and needed some new sheet metal. I asked Dad if he would patch it up for me and he said, “Why don’t you try doing it yourself?” So I did. That may have been the start of my getting in the furnace business. When I started working for the Hardware, Dad taught me a trade, and I would like to thank him for that. Couldn’t have done it without you. I think some of his grandsons have inherited his mechanical ability.
I’ve been writing for six years now, and I’ve written plenty of stories about the generation before us. How they loved. How they gave. Perhaps a gift we could give to the special people in our lives – the dads, the neighbors, the firefighters, those who’ve taught us in any way – is an acknowledgment of the love they’ve shown through their actions.
We don’t have to write a book. An editor is not needed. Just the picking up of a pen. Just the jotting down of a few good thoughts. Written words. On a piece of paper.
The best gift a guy could ever receive.
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Marlene Oxender is a writer, speaker, and author. She writes about growing up in the small town of Edgerton, her ten siblings, the memorabilia in her parents’ estate, and her late younger brother, Stevie Kimpel, who was born with Down syndrome. Her three published books, Picket Fences, Stevie, and “Grandma, You Already Am Old!” are available on Amazon. Marlene can be reached at mpoxender@gmail.com
