Читать книгу Rover - Barry Blackstone - Страница 8

It is a dark, black day on the coast of Maine. It is Friday, a writing day for me. As a late fall storm blackens the sky outside my office at the Emmanuel Baptist Church of Ellsworth, Maine, I am pondering again my boyhood of the 1950’s and 1960’s. I’ve written in the past of my favorite color (green), and though black is not one of my favorites or so I thought; it is a color that brings back many a fond memory. I would like to share a few of the ‘black’ imagines I still have in the color corner of my cranial!

Black (his “ . . . visage is blacker than a coal . . . ”—Lamentations 4:8) was the color of my favorite dog. Rover was his name. A mixture of collie and German/shepherd, Rover was a midnight black. I have written of him often in my memories (I have compiled nearly 900 boyhood memories in a collection I call “Blackstone Homestead Memories”), but have thought of him more often in the last month than for a long time. My wife and I have been dog sitting a black cocker spaniel of some friends of ours as they have been vacationing in Florida. ‘Nicky’ is a nice dog, but she is no Rover. Rover was an once-in-a-lifetime dog. Maybe, it was because he was my first and only boyhood dog worth remembering, so over the years Rover has been exalted into the Dog’s Hall of Fame, at least in my mind. We were walking ‘Nicky’ the other night and I said to my wife, Coleen, “Rover never had a leash.” Rover was a free spirit, and so was I. As I ponder Rover this morning with my cat Eddie sleeping on a bookshelf in front of my desk it hit me; that the reason Eddie is so dear to me is the fact he has the spirit of Rover: loyal and free and he even has a little of Rover’s black on his back!

Black was the color of the cows on the farm. We had a pure Holstein herd and the dominate colors of these creatures are black/white. I can still see in my mind’s eye between thirty and forty black and white cows grazing in a pasture of spring green. The black color of these animals caused them to stand out whether in the brown of fall or the white of winter just like Rover. The cows were a lot of work, but ever since the farm shut down its dairy, I have missed seeing this Blackstone black in the meadows with Rover.

Black was my father’s favorite color, or so I thought. In my early childhood I don’t remember we ever having a car that wasn’t black. Most of the pictures of my sister Sylvia and me as infants were taken near a black car. Whether or not black was Dad’s favorite color, you’ll have to ask him in heaven for he passed into glory during the writing of this book, as for me I only remember black as his color. What I also seemingly remember is the time the color of our car changed. It was the mid-sixties and it was time for a new car. I think Dad wanted another black car, but mother insisted on a red car. How strange it seemed to me then, when the car dealer drove into the potato field behind the tool shed and said, “Here is your new car!” It was red on the outside, but if my memory serves me correctly it was black on the inside, the color of Rover!

Black was also the color of the letters on the potato barrels. Each fall the Blackstone homestead would erupt in a fury of activity. The annual potato harvest was upon us, and there was much preparation. One of the things I remember doing was stenciling the letters B-L-A-C-K-S-T-O-N-E on the sides of all our barrels. Some only had to be redone, but the new barrels all had to have those letters painted on their side. For me, those black letters were a source of pride. And as I can see from this article, black was really and still is a favorite color of mine, a Blackstone black as seen in the fur of a dog! Jesus is recorded as saying in His famous sermon: “Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.” (Matthew 5:36)