It’s the quintessential autumn Sunday morning and I’m driving on the road that connects our home to Life Church, Pleasantville Road. This wonderfully named road has borne us and our ancestors for nearly two centuries now. It has connected us to one another, our families and the community.
“Ah, there she is! There goes Annabelle.” Marilyn and I travel this road each morning on our way to Life Church, and weekly we look forward to seeing my 98-year-old Aunt Annabelle at about the same location each Sabbath. There she goes, faithfully chauffeured by my cousin Terry, toward the church where she was she raised—the church where Marilyn and I were raised, the church where we were married—Oakthorpe Church.
I recently discovered an old photograph featuring an assemblage of ragamuffin kids. Many were in bare feet, ranging from ages six to sixteen, peering expressionless toward the camera. The photograph was taken in front of Oakthorpe’s one-room-school house in the 1920’s. There, in the midst of those honest stares (no selfie-styled posers in this pic), two very familiar faces peered back at me: a boy named Marvin and a pretty little girl named Carrie Mae. Thirty years later, I would come to know them as Mom and Dad. Twenty years after that, this overconfident groom led his incredibly beautiful bride up the same worn sandstone steps in the photograph for our wedding reception.
For decades our ancestors burst forth as children from the single room at the end of each day, blinking into the orange glow of autumn’s late afternoon sun. These same farm kids made their way toward home and chores. They would eventually stretch their hike all the way into Pleasantville to attend the newly built, completely modern public school. The dust raised by their bare feet tamped down the foundation for the paved road we drive over today.
Pleasantville Road politely points travelers to and from the village of Pleasantville. At the turn of the twentieth century, villages like Pleasantville provided the civic foundation necessary to consolidate dozens of one-room-school houses scattered across this rural landscape into one efficient school building.
As I crest a knoll on Pleasantville Road, I’m able to see for miles in every direction. Expansive fields of sun-dried corn and soy beans roasted brown; lay in wait. The only thing that interrupts this vista is small clusters of buildings—each a family farmstead. Anchoring each farm, tall grain bins rise proudly out of the mist, like monuments in a well-mown cemetery. I catch myself whispering the names of each farm, “That’s the Mollendick Farm way over there; there’s the Rowles Farm, and there is the Miller Farm.” Although they represent large businesses, they don’t carry the name of a company or a product. There is no commercial branding used to identify these thriving agri-businesses; only the names of the families who live there… real names of real people.
That thought stirred my spirit and caused me to remember I share in a rich family heritage. My niece, Katie, and her family live today in the original Grubb Farmhouse (circa1820). Aunt Annabelle was born and raised there, along with my father—as was his father before him. Each brick was made by hand and kilned on location then patiently laid by my Great-Great-Grandpa Grubb. Today, almost 200 years later that house stands straight and true on its hand-carved sandstone foundation.
It’s not lost on me that my oldest son, superintendent of Fairfield County Roads, is currently charged with the protection and oversight of the road that leads to Pleasantville. What goes around comes around.
I’m deeply struck by the quality of life that came to me via this road to Pleasantville. The Lord loves to bless His people with pleasant things—
The godly people in the land are my true heroes! I take pleasure in them!
The land you have given me is a pleasant land. What a wonderful inheritance!
Psalm 16:3,6 NLT
Read Ron’s column, Simple Faith, each Saturday on the Faith Page (page 3) of the Lancaster Eagle Gazette, or visit www.lancastereaglegazette.com.