As a kid, I remember a cousins’ plan to buy the LaBrake farm. The meetings typically would take place at The Farm on a holiday or a Saturday evening visit. As I recall, the discussions usually involved my brother Will, my cousin Stephen, my cousins Julie and Tammy, and on occasion we would allow younger siblings to attend these impromptu meetings. It seemed like we were discussing how all of us could live at The Farm at once, if I recall correctly. There were a lot of rooms in the 2-story house and lots of land around it so it’s reasonable to think we felt there would be room for everybody. Or maybe we talked about buying The Farm and taking turns living there. Timeshare Farm! I think anyone who took their turn in the summer would automatically be responsible for all the haying demands. Oh, I really wish I could remember the plan, and nobody ever wrote it down.
You can probably guess our Timeshare Farm idea never became a reality. As we grew older, The Farm still held a special place in our hearts, but the idea of buying it was never brought up. I suppose it was replaced by other interests we each had developed in our teenage and early adulthood years. Some of us got married. Some found a steady job in the workforce or the military. Others went through a string of relationships or bounced from job to job. By the time The Farm was being sold, not one of us had the funds or the focus to make that earlier dream come true.
This month marks ten years since I was last at The Farm. My Grandpa died that month, and all 14 of his children, many grandchildren and great-grandchildren came together to mourn the loss of our family patriarch. I didn’t want to leave. I knew that visit would be the last time I went into the house, as it was, and walked through the barn, as it was, passed through the machine shed and the garage. The whole place would be different eventually, and I wanted to absorb as much of it as I could.
The visit was cut short. While many relatives were still gathered inside and outside the house, I was getting back on the road with my wife. We would make the 45 minute drive from Lisbon to Alexandria Bay, leaving the Brown Road and taking Route 68 to Route 37 to Route 12. The emotionally-charged day would continue when we arrived at my in-laws home to discuss the health problems of my mother-in-law. (It turns out, she would only live a little over two more years after that day.)
In the month following my grandfather’s death, my wife and I moved from Albany, New York to Houston, Texas. The distance away from family felt painfully long in the days following the 9/11 attacks, and made it difficult to visit home in the months ahead when the business of auctioning items from The Farm and selling the property was underway.
Later I would learn that my absence during that process was a blessing. Unlike my brother Will who was in the house after it was emptied, I have no memories at all like that. I can still see how the furniture was set up in the living room and some of my favorite family photos on display in there. I can still see the large dining room table, with my aunts and uncles surrounding every inch of it on a Saturday night. I can still see the Christmas tree in the front room, beautifully decorated and visible to cars passing by. I can see it all as if it’s still going on right now. I could walk right into that house today and—
Of course, it’s not there to see. Sure, the house is still there but it’s not the same house, really. Someone outside the family owns it these days. I’ve been by it a couple times during trips to see my parents. I think I even took Aidan over there once when was very little so I know she has no memories of it.
Perhaps that’s the most profoundly sad part of the story for me. I can go to The Farm anytime, in my mind, but my daughter will never know the place the way I did. She was born almost four years after my grandfather died. But knowing her, she would have relished a visit to her great-grandfather’s farm. She would have wanted to explore every bit of it, just like her daddy did starting almost 40 years ago. I can see her wanting to help unload hay, just like her great-grandmother did for years. I imagine she would sneak into the machine shed, just her like daddy did, to play hide and seek and climb on equipment that we knew was dangerous to be around, just for the thrill of it. She might even try to climb a silo, like her daddy and Uncle Will did—until Grandpa caught us and “convinced” us to come down. She would find some of the same books in the living room, from decades ago, and enjoy them like I did. She would mingle with her grandmother and great aunts in the kitchen, wanting to help cook the large meals necessary to feed so many people on a holiday. She would love every kid she met and ask every time if she could have a sleepover. She might accompany her great-grandfather on trips to the diner down the road and offer to help in the garden. She would have wonderful memories and the smell of Cedar trees anywhere else in the country would always make her smile and cry a little bit.
Now at least she’s been there, in my mind.
Please visit the fundraising page of my latest book project, Outside the Touch of Time, and consider making a donation. Your support will help us preserve stories of the love, lessons and longevity of 14 siblings born between 1933-1955.
Five Sundays on the Sidelines
5 AugI heard some great news on Thursday from my friend Drea Avent in L.A. She will be working as a sideline reporter during five games for FOX NFL SUNDAY during the upcoming season. The news came via Facebook, and I quickly posted a message of congratulations. This is national TV, the big time for a sports reporter who has been working her way up for years.
I’ve known Drea since she and I worked together at News 24 Houston, a now defunct 24-hour cable news channel owned by Time Warner Cable. She was very green at the time, but clearly demonstrated both an in-depth knowledge of key sports and a passion for learning her craft as a sports reporter. Seven years later, I am so proud to see her move to the next level in her career.
There are football fans who don’t share my appreciation for female sports reporters. Some may keep their opinion to themselves; others boldly tell anyone who will listen. In fact, on Friday morning I heard from a friend online who didn’t hesitate to share this perspective:
“I don’t think women should be police officers, fight in combat or be NFL sideline reporters. Period.”
This statement wasn’t made by a man. It came from a woman who considers herself a die-hard football fan. It reminded me of a story my ex-wife once told me about her line of work as a radio news anchor. Despite her superb on-air delivery, listeners in some of her markets have called to complain about a radio station having a woman anchor the news. Some listeners even said they couldn’t understand her. Clearly they must be deaf or have ears that were programmed to understand men’s voices only. Otherwise, I have no explanation for this phenomenon.
But back to football, one could argue that networks place women in high profile positions on camera to draw more men to the broadcast. Female sideline reporters may also draw more viewers who are women, perhaps looking to find someone they can relate to during the game. Whatever the argument, or the reasons given, women are here to stay in the field of sports reporting. They’ve earned it. They deserve it. And just like the men in the same field, there are good ones and not-so-good ones in those roles.
I suspect some people mistakenly use the argument that women can’t understand football because they haven’t played it. But one of America’s most celebrated sportscasters, Bob Costas, hadn’t played a single professional sport when he began his play-by-play duties for minor league hockey games while still attending Syracuse University. Later, at NBC Sports, Costas served as a play-by-play for NBA games despite never having dunked a basketball or even attempted as much as a foul shot.
As Derek Jeter approached the 3000-hit milestone this season, he wore a wire so the experience from his perspective could be captured by HBO for a documentary on the Yankee captain. But Jeter didn’t suddenly start doing his own play-by-play. He continued doing what he gets paid to do: play baseball. He left the play-by-play and color commentary to the people whose job it is to provide it.
You see, sports reporting and announcing is a different game altogether. Those talented men and women who bring us stories from the studio, the booth or the field come a variety of backgrounds, but the mission is always the same. They serve to tell us what we need to know and what we want to know about a sport, a particular game and its players. They’re storytellers. Plain and simple. The good ones provide helpful insight and observations; the best ones break national stories. Ultimately, they all look at what’s going on, interpret what they see, and communicate with us, the fans.
It’s a similar situation in wartime news coverage. We don’t assume radio, TV and print journalists and photojournalists covering the stories actually spent time in basic training or on a battle field fighting the enemy. Their training came in how to effectively tell a story using the medium in which they work. The award-winning journalists—who often risk their lives to get the story—did not become better at their jobs because they had tours of duty in Iraq. They mastered their craft.
As the father of a six year-old girl, I listen to the “women shouldn’t be” objections carefully. I can’t brush them aside because that’s the reality of the world my daughter is growing up in. Once upon a time not everyone accepted women as doctors, but it still happened. Not everyone agreed that women could be astronauts, but it still happened. And not everyone is happy to see women working as sideline reporters, especially my friend who said, ” I’d rather look at a man than a woman.”
As for me, I’ll be watching the upcoming NFL season with a new sense of excitement and purpose. On five Sundays, my dear friend will be on the sidelines doing what she enjoys most in front of a national TV audience. And I’ll have Aidan by my side so she can see, despite the objections of some, it can be done.
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