The Best of Slim Acres: January 2010

Sunday, January 31, 2010

A SMILE

Like a little ray of sunshine
On a dark and gloomy day,
A little bit of cheeriness
Will go a long, long way;
When things are going backward,
And a body's feelin' blue,
It's a most amazing wonder
What a little smile can do.

When the blahs have really got you,
And you're most inclined to frown,
You don't look very pretty
When your smile is upside down;
So brighten up your visage,
You'll feel better if you do.
What's more, somebody else may get
The point, and try it too.

So when I'm socializing,
Or just walking down the street,
I try to smile a greeting to most everyone I meet;
Though some may think I'm silly
To be grinning all the while,
I may give a lift to others
With a warm and friendly smile.

--Autumn Acres (1982)

Sunday, January 24, 2010

THE SUPER-FELLOW

Editor's note: Perhaps because of his Quaker background, Dad never felt he was better than anyone else; for him, it was do unto others and live and let live. He was a hard worker and proud of his accomplishments (and those of others), but he had little use for anyone who "put on airs."

He was quite a dignitary,
Not of ordinary stride,
And his name was quoted frequently
In circles far and wide.
Many were his lackeys,
This man of great renown,
And his wishes were commandments
To the elders of the town.

Fortune seemed to follow
Every venture he began,
For he, you see, was truly
Not an ordinary man.
But Mortal never holds back
The time nor the tide,
And so eventually, of course,
This man of stature died.

His coffin was selected
From the finest and the best.
Expenses were no object
When they carried him to rest.
At peace beneath the daisies now,
This super-fellow lies,
But he's resting in a hole
That's just of ordinary size!

--Autumn Acres (1982)

Sunday, January 17, 2010

UPS AND DOWNS

Now it has been established,
People everywhere behave
On a scientific schedule,
From the cradle to the grave.

They call it biorhythm,
And it's easy understood--
We have a string of bad days,
Then we have a string of good.

With rhythmic undulations,
Like the tide, it ebbs and flows,
Going up to reach the high points,
Then down into the lows.

Sometimes I do have good days,
When I'm really going strong,
But more, it seems, the other kind,
When everything goes wrong!

If I could change the program,
I'd be having, goodness knows,
A little less of this kind,
And a little more of those!

--Square Marbles (1978)

Sunday, January 10, 2010

FLY-SPECK PHILOSOPHY

Editor's note: This one is a favorite of Dad's sister, Olive Alspach, who's a resident of The Brethren's Retirement Community in Greenville, Ohio, where Dad lived. It's a favorite of mine as well.

The Good Book tells us mortal man
Was made from common clay,
And also that in a thousand years,
To God, is like one day.

The vastness of the universe
Is hard to understand,
But every human being's like
One little grain of sand.

Contemplating all of this,
Eternity, and such,
The time and space we occupy
Just don't amount to much!

We linger very briefly,
On our way in passing by;
We cannot slacken off our pace,
No matter how we try.

It seems like only yesterday
That I was in my prime;
And now, in almost nothing flat,
I'm running out of time!

I sprang from dust, and soon will be
Returning to the same;
But though it's been too short a stay,
I'm awfully glad I came!

--Eighty After Eighty (1995)

Sunday, January 3, 2010

RE-RESOLVE

New Year's Day has come again,
Another year is spent!
And though it's gone, to save my soul,
I don't know where it went!

It seems like only yesterday
The old year had begun,
And I made resolutions,
Just the way I've always done.

I never fail to make 'em,
If only one or two;
I feel, for self-improvement,
It's the proper thing to do.

I know I have my foibles,
And I'm really proud to say,
I lay 'em on the table,
Never fail, come New Year's Day!

It takes a little gumption,
But I'm certain, if you try,
With honest self-appraisal,
You can do as well as I.

I've made a couple good ones
For this New Year, even though
I really haven't used the ones
I made a year ago!

--Eighty After Eighty (1995)

Why Slim Acres?

Growing up on a small 50-acre farm in southwestern Ohio back in the 1950s, I learned the value of honesty and a strong work ethic from my parents. Of course, I didn't appreciate it much back then -- what teenager wants to clean a room, mow an acre or so of front yard or paint the boards in the rail fence my father built (even if he did agree to pay me and my best friend Marcia 5 cents a board to do it)? All I knew was that my mother spent most of her time cleaning the house, tending to her beautiful flower gardens and conjuring up home improvement projects for my dad to complete when he wasn't doing something else.

The "something else" included a full-time day job as a tool-and-die engineer (later on as the manager of an entire plant). Until he retired, he had several different jobs, a couple of which required an hour's drive one way. He and my mother operated an evergreen nursery at our farm, so that meant they spent endless hours planting and cultivating. In between all that (and doing my mom's remodeling projects), dad managed to earn a law degree from a correspondence school and -- most important for the purposes of this blog -- transform himself into a sort of country bumpkin poet known as Slim Acres and later billed himself as "The Buckeye Poet." His real name, for the record, was Harold Asa Pickett.

"Slim Acres had a distinct personality," dad wrote in the introduction to Down Country Roads, his first book of poems. "He was a sort of combination of two genuine gentle bumpkins that I have known. One was an uncle of mine, born and raised in Tennessee, who could not write his name until after he married. The other one was a neighbor, also with a scanty formal education, but with a lot of common sense and wit. Both were as honest as peanut butter. Slim Acres embodied a few traits of each, and perhaps a little bit of me."

And his name? "I can't really say where his name came from, but it sounded fitting," dad wrote.

Slim Acres was "born" as a series of snippets titled "Slim Acres Says" submitted anonymously to the Times Gazette, the local newspaper in Union City, Indiana, such as:

The Golden Rule
Is easy fergot
If we'uns can git
What you'uns have got.

Those little ditties grew into years of being a popular humorous speaker at events ranging from club meetings to graduations throughout Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. But back in the mid-1930s, Slim's writing career got a boost Reader's Digest magazine published this poem:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue;
But they don't get around
Like the dandelions do.

In 1978, in his book Square Marbles, he revised this one just a bit:

Rose's are red,
Violet's are blue;
Jeanie's are pink,
With lace on 'em, too!

As he wrote and collected his poems, he published and sold them far and wide, starting with the flagship Down Country Roads. He drew heavily on his Quaker upbringing, his family, and of course, my mother -- the "Lucy" in his poems. Writing in Down Country Roads, he noted that there "is still something about rural life that is considerably different. It's hard to define, but it is there. It's a certain something that makes country people just a little bit friendlier, a little bit steadier, a little bit happier. Maybe it's the clean, fresh air; maybe it's the lack of confinement; perhaps the cooing of doves on a dewy morning, or the clear, starry skies on a winter evening: Perhaps a thousand other factors all put together."

He kept on writing: Shortly after his 80th birthday, he published what would be his final book, simply titled Eighty After Eighty. My mother passed away in 2000, and after something like 60 years of marriage, dad simply didn't want to live in a house by himself. So, he moved to the Brethren's Retirement Community in Greenville, Ohio. There, he continued to write poems -- even winning a state award for one of them -- right up until a week or so before his death on June 24, 2009, at the age of 96. Now, one of his sisters, my Aunt Olive, is continuing his tradition of having a poem in each issue of the home's newsletter, "Fanfare," by choosing one or two from his books to be published posthumously.

Lest I forget, there's one interesting note about that Reader's Digest poem: When it was accepted for publication, dad had a choice of a small cash payment or a "lifetime" subscription to the magazine. He chose the latter -- and it's pretty clear that the more than 60 years of magazines he received for free put him ahead of the game by far.

And so it is that I, too, wanted to keep the memory of his poetry alive. Lots of folks know him, be it by "Hap," "Harold" or "Slim." I've never heard anyone speak an unkind word about him, and I can count on the fingers of one hand (with a few fingers left over) the times he ever uttered a negative word about another human being. At his heart, he remained a simple, honest man for all of his 96 years -- a man I'm proud to have called my "Pop."

Hopefully, others will get to know him through this blog. My intent is to start with a couple of my favorite poems, adding a new one each week for, well, who knows how long? One thing is certain: I've got plenty of material. If you like what you read, please drop me a line!

Also, since I've been asked about whether copies of Dad's books are available, the gift shop at the Brethren's Retirement Community in Greenville has a stash of the Eighty After Eighty paperback that we donated after he passed away. I believe the book is selling there for $5, and the profits are put to good use helping residents in financial need. I also have a number of copies here at home -- I'll pack one up and mail it to anyone who's interested for $10 including postage. This is the only book for which multiple copies exist as far as we know.

--Ramonda Pickett Ryan (more commonly known as Monnie)

The Best of Slim Acres