Brian and Johanna Hewitt and family with Jean Kerr swapping tales in Storytelling Area
At the 2008 Reunion a storytelling area was set up to encourage the swapping of “yarns” and eavesdropping. Several mystery items of “old technology” were set out to challenge the memories of the storytellers.
Brian Hewitt told a wonderful story of his grandfather and a chunk of wood.
When I was about 15 to 16 years old (1979-1980), I was “cleaning out” the old hip roof barn on Greenwood Road. My Grandfather, Derrell Hewitt, as was his custom, sat in an old wooden chair and carefully watched my every move. (My Grandfather was a Depression era farmer and saved everything in ‘tidy little piles’ all about the barn, shop, basement, etc.)
I threw a block of wood with a hole in it into the tractor loader bucket bound for the burn pile. When my Grandfather loudly protested, “Hey Kid, you don’t even know what the Hell you got there!” I retorted, “Oh, yes, I do. It’s an oak block with a hole in it!”
He said, this was “my Dad’s hammer that built this barn!”
Today, the hammer head still hangs by Great Grandpa’s old surge vacuum pump where he milked his prime Jersey cattle. To me the moral of this story is we cannot put value solely based upon our own assessment, as that wooden block is one of my favorite family heirlooms.” — Brian Hewitt 8/3/2008
[Henry & Elizabeth Matheny Hewitt > Daniel Matheny Hewitt > Guy Glenn Hewitt > Derrell D. Hewitt > Richard Hewitt > Brian Hewitt]