From "Home Town Tales." Buy it online!

    In the summer I drive around town. I like to go back to 29 Martin Drive, where we lived until I was eight years old. The maple trees my dad planted in the side yard now tower over the house.

    I especially liked summers at Martin Drive. We didn’t have air conditioning, so in the evenings we’d sit outside on our back porch. If it were near pay day, mom would go to Johnston’s IGA and buy the ingredients for homemade ice cream. Dad would sit on the back step and let us take turns cranking the handle on the blue wooden ice-cream maker. After we couldn’t turn it anymore, Dad would drape a towel over the maker while the ice cream cured. As an adult I had a handcranked ice-cream maker, but I gave it away before our boys came along. I’m in the market for another one. I want my kids to know the feel of turning the crank on an ice-cream maker, how it starts out easy and gets progressively harder. It’s a good way to teach them how something worth having takes a little effort.

    Twenty-nine Martin Drive had an eat-in kitchen, living room, one bathroom, and three bedrooms. My sister got her own bedroom since she was the only girl. We four boys shared a room until my dad added an extra room. I drive by today and marvel that seven people used to live in that house, though it didn’t seem crowded at the time. Houses today are a lot bigger, and kids don’t share bedrooms anymore. I’m not sure that’s the blessing we make it out to be.

It’s a good way to teach them how something worth having takes a little effort.

    The house my wife and I live in now was built about the same time as 29 Martin Drive. It’s a small house, too. Once a year, I think about buying a big, old house with a front porch and fireplace. Joan doesn’t understand this. “So the kids can have their privacy and we can have ours,” I tell her.

    She says privacy is overrated, that someday we’ll be living in a quiet house with all kinds of privacy, longing for the days when our children were underfoot. She’s right, as usual. By then, if we’re blessed, we’ll have grandchildren. They’ll come to see us every Sunday after church. If it’s summer, I’ll teach my grandchildren how to make ice cream. They’ll ask to turn the handle, and I’ll let them. When their skinny arms grow tired, I’ll bend down and whisper in their ears what my daddy used to whisper in mine: “Keep going, honey. Anything worth having is worth working for.”

    When I was younger, I thought the things worth working for were the things I could buy — the big houses and shiny cars. But now I remember how love grew large in that tiny house, how joy came to visit and decided to stay.

From the book Home Town Tales: Recollections of Peace, Love, and Joy by Philip Gulley. (c) 1999 by Multnomah Pub., used by permission. Also available on audio cassette!