Jewells of Thought

Sunday Afternoons for the longest time would be in his living room. Grandma Doris and Uncle Bob; they would welcome this deluge of Bishop’s as we filled their entire room. Great-Grandpa Arlie as some called him or the newspaper would misspell his name as Arle; was an intriguing man.

The Lord has blessed me over and over. My Great-Grandparents, especially Arla found himself in the local papers quite a bit growing up then as a graduate and a teacher. Grandpa Arla was even in the papers because he went to a friends Church as a guest and vice versa.

Unlike My Grandma Betty and her siblings, I didn’t get to see him as a younger man. Seeing these newspaper clips from the digital scans makes me feel I have gotten to see a glimpse of this young boy as he grew into a man. Church was a big percentage of what he was being written about in these articles. Only about 5 or so were personal or school reasons.

Compared to the Bishop Family the Lester’s didn’t need as big of a garden for their family. From what I have gleaned of Arla, his hands were kept busy. I imagine this man from his attention to his Church duties was an avid reader. Just recently in Grandma Betty’s home a big bible nearly 3 times bigger than any of my bibles had the name Lester on it. Being a teacher, I can so picture this man taking care-holding a book to read it whether to prepare for teaching in school or for Sunday School. Not to forget that even living in Linton he kept a garden of sorts.

This man loved telling us stories on those Sunday afternoons when we all visited or even just a few of us. Those memories are so sweet to me. Nearly as sweet as the apple cider I remember us making at Grandma Betty’s House. He had this old apple cider press and I vaguely remember him and Uncle Bob working that press. It took a lot of energy for our guys to work that machine. We have pictures somewhere I need to look for them again.

Those hands read from scripture and all sorts of books that allowed him to teach and remember stories so well. They helped to cultivate a garden over the decades that he had one in the country and in town and with the cider he enjoyed making whenever he was fortunate enough to make it. I am blessed from what those hands did and am grateful I have similar habits.

The books on this table next to Uncle Bob are a Bible and a Lesson book with commentary for a whole year. I now have this set of Commentaries to research, myself. So now my hands get to touch what my Great-Grandpas hands touched.