The Old Fostorian - Gary Wargo

I remember walking with my older brother Tom and a neighbor girl, Pat Graham two miles to Skelton school, the one room country schoolhouse where I attended kindergarten in the fall of ‘51. On the way, we'd find cans, stomp on the middle so it wrapped around the soles of our shoes to elevate ourselves, but mostly to make noise. Other times we would just exchange kicking the can on down the road. On the way home from school one day an 'old' fellow, who lived on the route carved a whistle for me from a hollow branch. The last time I went past there was no trace of that house. 

My role in the school Christmas play was a shepherd. My acting debut instructions were to stand at the back of the stage hold a stick and not move. After the play was over, I heard bells from out front of the schoolhouse. In a familiar voice I heard; ‘Whoa Dasher, whoa Dancer, whoa Prancer, whoa, whoa!’ Shortly after, Santa entered the school with a hardy “HO HO HO”. I looked around for my dad, but he was nowhere in sight. Then Santa shouted, “Merry Christmas!” Hey, that's my dad. My dad was Santa Claus! How cool is that!

At noon or recess we would normally go out behind to the school playground but in cold or rainy weather we would play at the back of the schoolhouse. I remember watching my brother, Tom and the older boys draw a chalk marble playing circle on the wooden floor at the back of the schoolhouse Even back then I recall Tom kneeling around the players circle with a very serious look on his face. 

I remember one summer Tom and I walking out to M-24 a half mile away from our home to sell fishing worms. When we went home for lunch, we didn't want the worms stolen so we buried them. The worms were packed in dirt filled soup cans without lids. The cans were still there when we got back, but no worms. 

During the summer my brother and I would swim and hang out with the owner's kids at King's Landing, a Miller Lake private beach about a half mile north from where we lived. King's Landing was where I learned to swim, but only the dog-paddle stroke and underwater.

I vividly recall nearly being hit by a car while learning how to ride Tom's 20-inch bicycle. I wobbly wandered into a gravel road intersection while watching a car skidding sideways throwing gravel everywhere. I really don't know how close it came to running me over. I can still visualize that car sliding sideways to this day. I just stood there watching it. I had no idea I was in danger. At 4 years old distance, speed and fear were dimensions and feelings I had little experience with.

We had a horse, a pinto named ‘Silver.’ In order for me to ride Silver I would prop a ladder against him, get on, push the ladder away and ride. In 1952 when we moved to our newly purchased family farm near Fostoria, Tom who was about 9 at the time, rode Silver the eight miles down M-24 to the new farm on Rich Road in front of our Hudson automobile my dad drove. My memory of Silver simply disappears from my memory bank and I have no recollection of what finally happened to him after we moved to the farm on Rich road. Many years later my brother Tom told me that dad gave Silver to our farmer neighbors near our previous home at Miller Lake. Dad replaced him with a young bay mare that I would ride the roads with on occasion. That was Babe, but she hated to be ridden. She was quite young, and my dad trained, and saddle broke her with the same beliefs he had in raising children. 

When we moved to the farm Tom's 20-inch bicycle was in the trunk of the car along with my tricycle. My tricycle got ran over and crushed when a visitor's daughter left it behind a parked car. Later, the 20-inch bicycle was a handed down to me where I rode it for the rest of my life on the farm. My bicycle was still my main method for local transportation. It was two wheels, a frame, handlebars, and pedals with fading and scarred paint. I did abandon it for a while after I used it to pedal around door to door selling packets of Burpee seeds to the neighbors. With the money I earned I bought a 10 speed "English Racer". It was cool but it had tires that were only about an inch wide and hard. It didn't last long. I beat the poor thing to death on the bumpy country gravel roads. It was also mechanically complicated for a young kid around 8 years old and I eventually went back to my 20-inch hand me down. 

I rode that 20-inch bike almost to the day I left the farm but was less often as time went by. From the sale of a piglet litter I raised, I later purchased a red Cushman Allstate motor scooter to transport me from place to place. It, nor I were licensed so most of the time I kept it's travels local on the dirt country roads. However, the serenity I got from riding my bicycle was lost and replaced with my yearn for young teenager's need for speed. There were also neighbor kids near my age that had motorized transportation. 

Later, in 1971 after I married and had three children of my own, my wife and I moved two miles south of my boyhood farm home. Sometime after the move, I asked dad what happened to the scooter and the bicycle. In the back of my mind, I guess I was hoping to pass them down to my children. He told me he sold the scooter and gave the bicycle to a relative. When I asked him what relative he told me he couldn't remember. 

It wouldn't be until 2010 when I would purchase my Trek 21-speed bicycle and began riding through the countryside of my childhood stomping grounds visiting neighbors, friends, relatives, and old schoolmates. Riding it brought back memories as I rode the same paths of my younger days when I rode that old fenderless 20-inch bike. The rides were peaceful, solitude journeys as I passed my familiar childhood places. I felt like I was a kid again reminiscing my adolescent days up until the day I left the farm. 

Some days I would take a ride two miles down the road, stop at the old family farm creek bridge, and kick stones from the bridge into the water below or toss stone bombs at a stick floating in the deep pool created by the water's eddy, like the kid I once was. I would recall when a neighbor fellow, I called 'Old Man Oliver', used to fish for suckers off the south bank. Some days I would prop a foot on the bridge's railing, gaze at the farm and let my mind wander back to the 1950s. I would take a reminiscent trip through the farmhouse where I slept, played and ate. I'd recall Sunday meals my mother would cook. I'd recall the chicken coop where I fed chickens, collected eggs, and cleaned the coop, along with the granary where the grain from the fields were stored and the barn where we milked the cows, stored hay, and did chores. 

I'd also recall the day I left the farm and dad, and that meant eventually leaving Mayville school. I would, at times, regret that day because if I had stayed on the farm and finished my last year and a half, I would have played out my senior year of football at Mayville with my teammates. I so loved football. I was told by our football coach I would have my favorite position of center linebacker and be my team's defensive co-captain in my senior year. I would have graduated from Mayville High School with my classmates and team members. It wasn't to be. I headed out down the road at close to midnight not knowing where I was headed but also knowing I wasn’t turning back. This time I was running away from home for good.

I also abandoned a girl in my haste to go. I was too involved in myself at the time to think about someone else. She told me many years later as other schoolmates have, "You just disappeared". Later in life she said to me “We were just kids.” 

'Regret' isn’t the best word because if I hadn't left, I would have never met the love of my life, my wife Sherry, and experienced the joys of watching my three children, Dave, Tom and Paula grow and start their own lives and their own memories. Actually, I am rather thankful ... for the so many wonderful years of life and memories of our Fostoria rural home.

'Cycling through Life' - “Life Began at Five”