The Art of Cooking from Scratch: October 2009

I collect Nativity scenes. I don’t know how many I have, but I have lots – I have some that I personally acquired on my adventures and some that have been given to me. They are all from different places in the world – some are ornaments on our Christmas tree and the rest get set up on fireplace mantels, on top of the old piano or where ever I can find a spot to best display each scene. There is one or 2 that I keep out all year and the rest I just bring out at Christmas time. A woman who works in the Habitat office here in Americus, has a really cool tradition – she gives Nativity sets to newly married couples as a wedding gift. I can’t think of anything more fitting than a Nativity scene gift for a young couple starting out in their own home together. Nativities represent love and homey coziness to me. I grew up on a dairy farm in Illinois and I know how warm and snug and cozy barns full of straw and cows and baby calves and other little critters can be in the bitter cold winter-time. Way back, Habitat used to have a saying “Every house is a sermon about God’s love” I haven’t seen that phrase used in a long time, but to me it hits the heart of what the mission of Habitat for Humanity is about. Here is a story that I wrote about a house – my house, the house where I live and have lived for about 17 years. This is a true story as I know it to be, put together from various stories told to me. I have used this story in different ways – mostly to use as an Advent devotional, but now I want to use it to help set the scene for my blog. I call it Christmas of 1997.

Christmas 1997

I must have cleaned out that closet a zillion times, trying to figure out what I really wanted to store in there. It was such an awkwardly sized & shaped closet -- an obvious later addition to the old house -- located on the stairway landing heading up to the kids’ bedrooms on the second floor.

We lived in the house at least 4 years the summer that David finally decided to pull the shelves out of the closet. It was another attempt to figure out what would be best stored in there -- this time we were going to try storing the Christmas decorations and camping gear in the closet. Anyway, David finally decided to just yank out all of the shelves, to make the large boxes of decorations fit. Again he took everything out of that closet and then began pulling out the shelves, when he realized there was still something way back in the corner on that one shelf. He reached in and found an old metal tackle box. He certainly didn’t recognize it as one that he owned...

...Here in Americus, back in the 1920’s to the early 1930’s, located in the valley between Church & Lamar Streets in the general area near where the Char-Narr Beauty Salon and the Salvation Army used to be, before the tornado of March 2007, stood a bootleg casino. It was nothing to brag about -- just an old run-down shed with some dime and nickel slot machines and a place to buy some contraband liquor -- possibly even some good old home-brewed moonshine. When the revenuers came to shut the place down, they didn’t confiscate the slot machines, but instead took axes and sledge hammers and tore the place up and smashed everything in it...

...When Mrs. Rightmyer was moved to the nursing home to finish out her days, the family home on Taylor street was sold and purchased by a young couple with 4 young children. It was a fabulous old Victorian house, built in 1898 by the Rylanders’ for one of the Rylander sons. The Rylander family were prominent contractors and developers in Americus who constructed many of the old historic downtown business structures.

Anyway, in spite of all of the character, the old Southern house needed a significant amount of work. The old woman, Mrs. Rightmyer, who lived in it was not well and was eventually only living in 2 of the rooms when she moved from the large run-down Victorian house. There was a huge back yard and plenty of room inside the house -- with some fixing up, it had potential to be a great house in which to raise children. Unfortunately the house required more work and money than the young family could afford and it was just too much for them. The young mother taught music part-time at one of the private schools in Americus. She confided to the school’s head master, whose wife was a Realtor, that they were thinking about selling the house. They couldn’t make up their mind whether to list the house or not, but if either the headmaster or his wife knew of anyone who wanted to buy a house, they might be willing to sell it privately...

...In 1973 or thereabouts, 11 year old Peter Rightmyer and his friend were out playing at the old casino site, when they found a bunch of old coins. Now Peter knew his father, Charlie Rightmyer, the strict and upright minister at First Presbyterian Church would not approve of young Peter playing at the old casino site. But he also knew that his father was an avid coin collector and might not be able to resist looking at the coins Peter and his friend found laying on the ground in that area. He also knew that his father would be able to get his hands on a metal detector and might even help the boys dig around to see if they could find any more coins.

So the 2 boys went back to the Rightmyer house on 218 Taylor Street and found Charlie to show him the coins they found. Charlie was indeed interested in the silver mercury head dimes and buffalo head nickels -- he did indeed manage to borrow a metal detector and accompanied the boys, now joined by Peter’s friend’s brother. Unbeknownst by Mary Winn and the older Rightmyer children, Charlie and the three boys headed out to the old casino ruins to do some treasure hunting. They spent all afternoon scrounging around and digging. It was one of those memorable impromptu afternoons when a father and son sometimes get the opportunity to engage in “male bonding.” They also found an impressive pile of coins, which the 3 boys split up among themselves...

...My friend, Mary C, accompanied me on many of my house-hunting excursions. I was looking for the right house for our family of 5 children. The price had to be right (low!) and the house had to have at least 4 roomy bedrooms, more than one bathroom, a large kitchen and some kind of family room plus be in “move-in” condition. We wanted a house that was big enough and welcoming enough for our kids to bring their friends home and “hang-out”. We wanted a house that was nice enough in order for us to entertain and host over-night guests on a regular basis. After looking at the house on Taylor Street, I was ready to check another house off the list. It wasn’t falling down in disrepair, but it certainly did need more work than I thought we would ever get around to doing. It was my friend Mary’s comment, “This house has a friendly spirit to it.” that caused me to take a second look at it...

...Charlie took Peter’s coins, cleaned them up, looked them over to discover that this was indeed a very valuable collection of nickels & dimes. He sorted them, catalogued them, put them in a metal box and promptly hid them. He sat down and had a chat with Peter. Peter was an impulsive, daring boy -- well, let’s just say he was the youngest of 10 children being raised by a staunch Presbyterian minister in the Bible belt of the deep south. I’ve often heard Peter described as a free-spirit - rambunctious and extremely adventuresome and entrepreneurial -- these are the words of genteel Southern gentleman and belles, so consider them rather polite comments! Charlie’s chat with eleven year old Peter consisted of saying that the coins did indeed belong to Peter, but to avoid Peter “accidentally” spending the money, the coins were put away for a time when Peter was older and could better appreciate their value...

...It was the organist, Tom W, at the church that we had recently joined, who first told us that the house we were interested in buying on Taylor Street was the former home of Charlie and Mary Winn Rightmyer. Charlie was a former pastor at First Presbyterian, the church we attended. Later we heard many stories about how the Rightmyers’ raised 10 children in the house and how it was a home meant for raising kids. In fact, anytime we told anyone in Americus where we lived, the immediate response was invariably, “Oh, that’s the old Rightmyer house! I remember when...” and he or she then would launch into some story about taking piano lessons from Mary Winn or some escapade with one or more of the Rightmyer kids at the Rightmyer house. When we bought the house on 218 Taylor Street, we wanted it to be a loving home, a place of hospitality with a warm welcoming atmosphere -- especially for children...

...Not too long after the coin hunting expedition, Charlie unexpectedly died of a heart attack leaving his wife, Mary Winn Rightmyer without a husband, and 10 children fatherless. Eleven-year old Peter never did find the coin collection that he and Charlie spent that afternoon together digging and scavenging at the old casino ruins. His mother and siblings never really believed it existed and thought it was just another of Peter’s tall tales for which he was known for telling...

...We have heard that it was not unusual for there to be at least 15 kids overnight on a Saturday night at the Rightmyers’ -- the only rule was that if you stayed over on Saturday, you had to attend church on Sunday morning and it was fine if you wanted to accompany the Rightmyers’ to First Presbyterian. When we had a bunch of church members over to help us with a weekend renovation project in the house, we heard a multitude of stories about memories of times spent with the Rightmyers’ in the house -- one was about the time Charlie got so mad at the dinner table at one of the kids, that he slammed the ketchup bottle down on the table and ketchup squirted out and up to splatter all over the ceiling -- “in fact, that looks like it might be the spot!” That had to have been a memorable moment. Charlie must have really been mad to slam the bottle so hard to get ketchup to squirt high enough to hit the 12 or 14 foot tall ceiling!!!

From time to time, one of the Rightmyer children -- now grown with young children of their own, would stop by and say hello. Invariably they were passing through town and wanted to stop and see the old house -- the house that was so full of love and meant so much to them growing up. Of course, we would hear more stories. Some of the stories caused our own kids to wonder how these strangers knew so much. Our kids were sure they were the only ones in the world who knew that you had to walk very carefully going down the stairway if you didn’t want mom & dad to know what you were up to, because that one step when you almost get down to the bottom of the stairway, creaks rather loudly if you don’t step in just the right spot! It always feels good to show one of the Rightmyer kids something that we have done to the house and hear them say, “Oh Mother would have loved that window looking out over the backyard!” or “Mother always wanted that door moved so that it was a straight shot from the kitchen to the dining room.”...

... Peter was in Switzerland when he got a call from his sister saying that Mother was no longer able to care for herself in the old house. They were moving her to a nursing home -- was there anything in the house that Peter wanted? “I really don’t want anything, but could you please keep your eyes out for my coin collection when you empty out the house?” “Sure, Peter, we’ll look for it.” The coin collection, which nobody really believed existed, was never found...

...The box was rather heavy. When David opened it up, it was full of old coins -- all neatly sorted and catalogued and grouped in little envelopes. He turned one of the envelopes over and read “First Presbyterian Church”. They were old church offering envelopes. We knew right away to whom those coins used to belong.

We called the pastor of our church and told him about the very valuable coin collection that we found and said that we believed it must have belonged to the Rightmyers’. Legally, the coin collection belonged to us, but it just didn’t feel like it belonged to us. We knew that somebody in the Rightmyer family missed that collection. Our pastor called one of the Rightmyer kids -- I think it was Joe, but it was one of the girls -- Doris or Julie -- who ended up coming to Americus one day to get the coin collection...

Then, on Christmas Day in 1997, the doorbell rang. I was busy, bustling around trying to get a Christmas dinner in the oven. I was impatient and bossing everyone around. There were at least 20 different things going on, and we assumed that it was a friend of one our kids’ coming over to compare Christmas “loot”. Then one of the kids said, “Mom, Dad, there’s someone at the door to see you.” “Oh no!” we groaned. Who could be disturbing our family Christmas? We shared a look of dismay. “He says his name is Peter Rightmyer.” Our look turned to one of interested curiosity. Peter apologized for disturbing our Christmas celebration and we apologized for a house strewn with wrapping paper, batteries, new socks and CDs.

Peter said, “I came to thank you for returning my coin collection -- Where in the world did you find it?” We launched into our story of constantly cleaning out that old closet, but never finding the coins until we decided to pull out the shelves. Peter then launched into his story of finding the coins -- one of his last fond memories of spending time with his father as a boy and then how after his father died, nobody believed him when he told them about the coin collection.

For Peter, finding that collection meant reclaiming a legacy and also vindication in the eyes of his older siblings! For us, it was reaffirmation that this house was to always be a home full of love and family hospitality. I kept this in mind when there were 10 roughhousing boys playing football in our backyard, who eventually found their way inside through the back door, tracking in grass, leaves & mud and leaving a trail of food and empty water glasses or soda cans behind as they headed out again through the front door. I remember this when I am introduced to someone and hear that I live in “the Minich house on Taylor Street -- used to be the old Rightmyer Place.”

It was the Rightmyer family who gave this house its reputation as a welcoming, loving and nurturing place for children. On Christmas Day, God sent Charlie and Mary Winn’s son to remind us a little bit of what’s important in life...not a tidy house or a shiny trinket, but a place where God calls us to be brothers, sisters, friends and neighbors – a house, no, A HOME, which is a sermon about God’s love.

Ya'll come see us and have dinner with us now, ya hear?