“The RoseBouquet”

Back in 1987-88 I self-published my first family history book (A Godly Inheritance). I started it in 1985, to honour my beloved Grosz’mama, but then she got sick and so did Mom and Dad, so I was very busy with my own private nursing home for a while. Persistence is my middle name, so of course, I finished it eventually, typing every page onto a waxy Gestetner stencil, then cranking them off, 500 of each on the old Gestetner behind our furnace. - Mom told me I was aiming too high,300 would be enough, but I was sure that in time I could sell 500 copies of this book.

Now I wish I had listened to Mom. You see, I did get 300 bound and after giving the first 100 copies to Grosz’mama’s children and grandchildren as heirloom copies, I have sold all but about 14-15 of the rest. However, those last 200 copies of each page were still stashed in 13 boxes in the basement at Dad’s house. When I started packing up to move I asked the Lord, “What shall I do about them?” I didn’t feel good about dumping them in the garbage, but oh– I have no room for them here! I had no intentions of binding them any more.

By last Saturday night I knew what I must do. Despite the heat I carried one box after another - with rest breaks in between - up the stairs, and into my car. Five boxes in the trunk and the other eight on the back seat, stacked two layers high. It took me over two hours! Even before I finished I could see the car was hanging low at the rear.

I camped there overnight. When I backed out of the garage for church on Sunday, the rear of the car scraped the ground! It did so again that afternoon, when I had spent hours picking the very ripe and ready raspberries.

Monday morning I took this load to a recycling place here in Saskatoon that had said they paid for bulk office papers. There I had to drive onto a truck scale, then off and around through a maze of huge bales of paper and into the warehouse-work area. One man on a forklift pointed me to the corner with the office paper bales, but no one came to help me unload, so I parked there, and by myself, unloaded all these boxes, plus a few flattened cardboard ones. Since I was just pulling them out of the car and dropping them on the floor beside the car, it only took about 5-10 minutes and I was finished.

I nearly took a wrong exit and would have dropped down a long way at a dock where semi-trucks backup to load, if I hadn’t stopped and got out of the car to see how steep the ramp might be there. Whew! Close call!

Then I drove around to the weigh scale again, and went into the office where the gal at the window gave me a yellow slip showing that my load had been 335 kg. (The next day when I told someone else who is quicker at math, he said, “700 lbs?!”)

But I had another shock when the woman handed me the money for that load. “What? I did all that for $6.70?”

I wish I had listened to Mom!

Now as I mull this over, I think the 700 lbs (I’m of the old school and understand that better) stands for a miracle. Didn’t I have a 40% compresssion fracture in my T6 vertebrae in February? God has given me Sampson’s strength over the last 5 months, and I didn’t even have to grow my hair long.