Celebrating the Christmas Season with our Neighbors and Friends

Last night we had a little Christmas Party/Home Evening  at our place.  All of our little senior subdivision neighbors were invited and most of them showed up.  We all seem to get along well and tend to look out for each other.  We have been blessed to have such good people around us wherever we have gone in our lives. Here is the Bretner neighborhood has been no exception.  Alison vetted the place pretty well for us before we moved in here almost three and a half years ago.  According to our HOA bi-laws, the head of the household  has to be fifty-five years old or older to live here.  None of us have a problem with that.  It's good in some ways but we do miss the fun of little children in the neighborhood.  Of course, our old neighborhood in Montpelier had pretty much become a senior subdivision before we left to, so in that respect there hasn't been much of a change.  I couldn't help but feel last night while our neighbors were here, what a great place the world would be if every neighborhood was as caring as ours is.  Not all of us get a lot accomplished on a typical day, but when you are old just making it through the day with a smile on your face is perhaps enough.  Three years ago all these people were strangers, but now they all sort of feel like family.  Actually, I did know one of our neighbors here from long ago.  Eldon Drake, who is now in his ninety years old was one of my professors at Utah State when I was in college so long ago.  When we moved in here, we had just started to unload the truck when a white car pulled up along side and and elderly, familiar looking gentleman, looked at me and said: "Bart Eborn, welcome to our neighborhood."  This man has a memory like no one else I know.  I don't know how many students he had during about forty years as a professor at USU, but you can imagine that it was many thousands.  I must have either been very bad or very good, because in spite of all the years, he has always remembered me.  He even looked us up in Montpelier, when I was teaching over there.  He was coming home from Yellowstone by way of Star Valley and stopped down at the USave and asked if they knew me and where I lived.  It was about nine o'clock at night when we heard the door bell ring and as we opened the door there was my old college professor from thirty years before.  He was genuinely interested in what was going on in our lives.

It was rather humbling for me to be remembered after such a long time.

     Another time , this was before Dr. Drake's surprise visit to us in Montpelier, we got a phone call from Jason.  It seems he was out at the Maverick in Providence getting gas for his car.  There was an elderly gentleman there who was trying to get gas too.  He seemed to be having trouble with the pumps or something.  Jason, being the good man that he is, went over to this elderly gentleman and volunteered to help him.  After they got the pump working a were filling the man's gas tank, he looked over at Jason, and then said: "Are you Bart Eborn's boy?"  He had never seen Jason before in his life and he hadn't seen me in thirty years.  It just astounds me that he could make that association after all that time in a setting like the gas pumps at the Providence Maverick.  It brought joy to my heart, though no real surprise, to think that Jason was looking out for others and especially that in this act of kindness, Dr. Drake was for some reason unknown to me, thought of Jason's dad.  There are some truly astounding and wonderful people in the world. Some are in our family, some are our neighbors, and many more surround us in our daily lives and help to make us  what we are.  I can't help but think of the hymn we sometimes sing, Each Life That Touches Ours For Good. Our lives have been influenced by so many good people.  I hope that in turn we are doing some good for others in our every day walk of life as well.

By the way, Eldon Drake is the second person on the left of the above photograph take at our home last night.