Tag Archives: the man who loved graves

Jump start down by the old Mill stream

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My battery went dead on January 8. I had no interest. Nothing to say. Views from the Edge was dead as a doornail. I wondered if the juices would ever flow again, but didn’t much care whether they did.

Then a funny thing happened. A stranger dropped by with the comment that jump-started the battery:

The Man Who Loved Graves

Howdy. Seems the whippersnapper is selling you family’s mill. Thought you might be interested in seeing the current pix of it posted in the listing at the weblog linked below. Cheers! J

https://www.oldhousedreams.com/2020/01/14/1864-mill-in-bryant-pond-me/
Andrews Casket Company mill in Woodstock, ME
Andrews Casket Company Mill, South Woodstock, ME featured in “The Man Who Loved Graves”

Click HERE to view the current photographs of the real estate listing ($85,000) for the Mill and 2.7 acres on Mill Pond in my ancestral home of Andrews Hollow, the same property described in “The Man Who Loved Graves” (Views from the Edge, 2012) back when the battery was fresh. The photographs did more than take me back to childhood. They took where I’ve never been: inside the Mill, which I’d assumed had gone to rot — and living quarters that come as a complete surprise.

By January 13 the number of Views from the Edge daily visits had fallen to an all-time low of 20. The battery was dead. But life is a funny thing. The next day the number jumped to 495. All because a stranger dropped by with jumper cables that jump-started a dead battery down by the old Mill stream.

Thank you, J, whoever and wherever you are,

Gordon C. Stewart, author, Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness, Chaska, MN, January 20, 2020.

Steve Shoemaker “Last” verse

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“The Man Who Loved the Graves”

– Steve Shoemaker, April 24, 2012

When I was just a young and naive pastor,

an old man in the congregation

would always arrive long before the rest

of the people at the grave site. He’d shun

the funeral, but haunt the cemetery…

Standing by the open grave, he’d state

his opinion of the deceased and share

with me the type, style and brand of casket

he’d told his wife he wanted when he died.

As the morticians say, he “predeceased”

his spouse, and when we met to plan, she tried

to grant his wishes to the very last

She blessed their common gravestone with her tears,

but smiled through life for many happy years…

NOTE: Steve predeceased Nadja, the love of his life all the way back to high school.

Tonight at 7:00 p.m. CST, Nadja and a host of Shoemaker relatives and friends will gather at First Presbyterian Church of Champaign, Illinois for Steve’s memorial service followed by a dessert potluck to smile “for many happy years.”

Blessed are the dead who die in the LORD, for they rest from their labors, and their works follow them: A Sin a Week: Fifty-two Sins Are Described Here in Loving Detail for Folks With the Inclination and Ability to Do Wrong, but Who Have Run Out of Bad Ideas  Order a copy in honor of Steve and for some good ideas!

-Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, October 15, 2016

 

 

 

The Man Who Loved Graves

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  • Andrews Casket Company mill in Woodstock, ME
Old family sawmill of Andrews Casket Company, Woodstock, Maine

My great-great-great-grandfather Isaac Andrews founded the Andrews Casket Company and Funeral Home next to the trout stream in Woodstock, Maine more than 250 years ago. Isaac was a minister.Because there was no carpenter in town, he not only stood at the graves. He built pine boxes for those he buried.

Over the course of time, the simple boxes became the caskets of the Andrews Casket Company and Funeral Home. You might say Isaac had a monopoly in those Maine woods.

Only recently did the Andrews property leave the family when Pete Andrews, my late mother’s favorite cousin, sold it to some whippersnapper who just wanted to make a buck.

My mother used to chuckle as she recalled playing hide-and-seek with her siblings in and among the caskets at the casket factory. The land, the mill, the old homestead,the funeral home and the trout stream that had belonged to the family all those years belongs to someone new…which means that it, like Garrison Keillor’s fictional “Lake Woebegone,” never really did belong to us and does not belong to them. It does not belong to time.

Last October my brother Bob and I stood with my cousins at the open grave of my 99 year-old Aunt Gertrude – our one remaining Andrews elders. I recited from The Book of Common Worship the prayer I have prayed a thousand times at the open grave, the one my classmate Steve and I learned as young, naive pastors, a prayer for the living that feeds me day and nigh until the lights go out. I wonder if Isaac Andrews did the same way back when.

“O Lord, support us all the day long until the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then, in your mercy, grant us a safe lodging and peace at the last.”

Book of Common Worship

Here’s the poem from Steve from a few days ago that inspired the above reflection.

When I was just a young and naive pastor,
an old man in the congregation
would always arrive long before the rest
of the people at the grave site. He’d shun
the funeral, but haunt the cemetery…
Standing by the open grave, he’d state
his opinion of the deceased and share
with me the type, style and brand of casket
he’d told his wife he wanted when he died.
As the morticians say, he “predeceased”
his spouse, and when we met to plan, she tried
to grant his wishes to the very last
She blessed their common gravestone with her tears,
but smiled through life for many happy years.

“The Man Who Loved Graves” – Steve Shoemaker, April 24, 2012

Like the widow of the man who loved graves, I smile through tears for all the years, and I take ancestral solace in knowing that I don’t really “own” a thing.

Gordon C. Stewart, the not-so-great great-great-great grandson of Isaac Andrews