Kith & Kin

  I was playing with toys on the threadbare gray carpet in the dining room. Mom was working on supper in the kitchen—one of my favorite meals: waffles! But things didn’t seem to be going well. “Rrrrrr!” I could hear her say. “This stupid thing!” Apparently the waffle iron wasn’t the only thing heating up in the kitchen today. More groans and growls of frustration emanated from the kitchen. I peeked through the doorway to see what the problem was. Just then Mom opened the waffle iron. The top half of the waffle was stuck to the top heating element. The bottom half of the waffle was stuck to the bottom heating element. The middle of the waffle was goopy and dripping. The edges of the waffle were black, crispy, and smoking.   “Grrrrr! This is crazy ! I’ve about had it!” She began scraping the waffle remains off both surfaces with a spatula and flinging them into a wastebasket. For once in my life I didn’t ask any questions, deeming it wiser to go back to playing with ...

“Carl G. Lytle cutting Holmes County Swiss Cheese in his general store in Fredericksburg, Ohio.” From the Cleveland Plain Dealer , August 5, 1963. You can disagree with me if you want to, but I believe if everyone everywhere could be raised in small towns, the world would be a better place. Having been raised in a small town myself, I am both an expert on this topic and completely unbiased. When I was a child, Mom told me our hometown, Fredericksburg, Ohio, had “about six hundred” residents. Well, she had it right: census data from 1970 shows there were 601 residents. That was the all-time high for the town (which dates back to 1850), though: the population has been steadily declining ever since. In 2020 the population was only 409. The Freedom to Roam When you lived in a small town in those days, you could walk or bike anywhere you needed to go without a parent. School, the general store, the post office, the bank, or down to the “crick,” it didn’t matter. Someone would be keepi...