The Best of Slim Acres: October 2010

Sunday, October 31, 2010

NO DEAL

Editor's note: "Envy is one of the inherent traits of human nature and causes more troubles than ragweed or mumps," Dad wrote as the introduction to this poem. "The grass is always greener in somebody else's pasture, our troubles are greater than the other fellow's, and why couldn't we have been born rich and talented like that guy over there?"

I used to ponder quite a lot,
And think perhaps I should have got
A better deal from Nature when she passed the talents out;
But when I try to pick a guy
I think is better off than I,
I come to this conclusion: There's a lot to think about.

Comparing talents, more or less,
Is like comparing kids, I guess.
When taken all together, your own are not so bad;
If we could trade for others, just
To try a little while, I trust
We'd all decide we much prefer to keep the ones we had.

Of all the people I have met,
I've never known a person yet
Exactly like the man I think I'd like to be;
All things considered well, I find
I'm satisfied, with peace of mind,
It's just as well I can't be anyone else but me!

--Down Country Roads (1970)

Sunday, October 24, 2010

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

Editor's note: "It's nice to have someone to blame all our troubles onto, even if we have to go a long way back to find a whipping boy," Dad wrote as the introduction to this poem.

In the Garden of Eden,
A long time ago,
No evil existed,
No sin did they know;
Till the Devil slipped in,
And soon after that,
Adam and Eve
Began to begat!

No longer allowed
In the garden to remain,
They promptly went out
To raise a little Cain;
And that was the start
Of the whole human race;
Their descendants begatted
All over the place!

This chain reproduction
Which they set in motion,
Led up to the present
Population explosion;
So, let us remember,
Not that it matters,
The whole thing began
With those first two begatters!

--Acres of Verse (1994)

Sunday, October 17, 2010

THE FISHERMAN'S DREAM

I had a dream the other night,
While deep in peaceful slumber--
I dreamed I died and traveled on,
For Fate had called my number;
And as I crossed the Great Divide,
And hurried on alone,
With eager step I made my way
Into the Land Unknown.

And there, before my very eyes,
Was a grand sight to behold--
I saw a sportsman's paradise
Instead of streets of gold;
For dancing down the mountainside,
In the sunset afterglow,
A brook was singing on its way
To meet the lake below.

The mossy bank was smooth and green,
'Neath the overhanging trees,
While flowers on the mountain top
Added perfume to the breeze.
The stream was full of finny folk--
I saw them flash and shine;
O, such a spot I'd never seen
To wet a casting line!

And as I stood enraptured there,
I heard a footstep fall,
And coming down the path I saw
An old man, gaunt and tall.
"Please tell me, sir," I cried to him,
"Please tell me, if you will,
Where I can find a rod and reel,
So I may try my skill!"

"I need some tackle right away,
No matter what the price;
I never dreamed, when down on earth,
That Heaven would be so nice!"
The old man slowly shook his head,
Quoth he, "It can't be done.
I'm afraid that you're just out of luck--
You ain't in Heaven, son!"

--Down Country Roads (1970)

Sunday, October 10, 2010

TV and B-O

Editor's note: "The latest census figures lead to some startling disclosures," Dad wrote in the introduction to this poem. "I can't vouch for their accuracy, but some are very interesting!"

Figures show we have today,
From census tabulations,
Twice as many TV sets
As bathtubs in our nation.

Now this is most amazing,
And it isn't true, I hope,
That people watch soap operas,
But neglect to use the soap!

There are many TV watchers
With bright and shiny faces,
But one begins to wondeer,
Are they clean in other places?

And what about the ratings,
That tell who's watching shows?
Would the sponsor care how many
Need a bath, do you suppose?

One thing helps a little,
For this is also known
That most who skip the bathing
Do use twice as much cologne!

Everything considered,
I have come to this decision:
A lot of dirty people
Have been watching television!

--Acres of Verse (1994)

Sunday, October 3, 2010

LIFE BY THE TENS

Editor's note: "We tend to consider the life span of man in decimal units," Dad wrote in the introduction to this poem. "Nobody, for example, looks at thirty-six or fifty-two as turning points."

At twenty, no longer in your teens,
You've become a grown-up at last;
Your future's a shining beacon ahead,
And darkness swallows your past.
You reach your peak of vigor and vim
At the age of thirty or so;
Now, you're smack in the prime of ife,
And full of the old gung-ho!

At forty, they tell us life begins,
For some people maybe it will;
But others now are fighting the fear
They're almost over the hill.
At fifty, you've come to the awkward age,
And are losing some of your fire,
Feeling the wear and tear of life,
But still too young to retire!

The next decade goes galloping by,
Faster than ever, it seems;
You find that you're beginning to have
More memories now than dreams.
Seventy falls in the golden years,
But also, let me remind you,
Three-score and ten decidedly means
Your future is mostly behind you!

I hate to end on a negative note,
But there's another thing to it,--
If you haven't made your pile by now,
You probably ain't gonna do it.
If I had any precept in mind,
Or moral, in writing this rhyme,
It's give it your best, at whatever age,
And to heck with Old Father Time!

--Acres of Verse (1994)

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