Animate Inanimate Objects

Animate Inanimate Objects
            Behind the 1870 vintage wooden door framed by thick stone walls of the house I grew up in, in the dark cellar dimly lit by sparse incandescent light bulbs and amply filled with large, fuzzy-legged spiders in every corner, a shovel with a worn wooden shaft and dark-rust-tinted metal blade was kept in easy reach. It was handy for yard projects, as well as for catapulting the occasional dead critter over the wild grape vines that covered our back fence and into the farmer’s unused back field.
            My earliest memories include images of that old shovel, which felt to me like it had a spirit of its own, having passed on to my father from his childhood home further north in Tug Hill snow country. Was it the sense of the wood? The rusty blade? The way my father used it for so many purposes, always kept so easily at hand?
            A similar sense emanated from the honey-colored wood stock of the old .22 rifle my father also inherited from his childhood home. He didn’t like to hunt, but his father and brothers taught him to shoot deer during hunting season in the cold north, where venison was a helpful addition to the dinner table. It was a very basic, unpretentious rifle, but something about that wooden stock gave it a magical feel.
            Being country kids, my older brothers took up hunting with our BB gun and the .22 from before they were teenagers. I didn’t like the idea of killing rabbits and pheasants, but my brothers taught me how to aim and shoot the BB gun and the .22. It was gratifying to hit the old tree trunk across the swamp at the bottom of our sledding hill.
            Both the old shovel, featured in the photo for this Insights post, and the old guns kept in our cellar, have cameo appearances in my new story, “My Atticus Finch Takes Aim,” featured on The RGG web site (also known as The Renaissance Garden Guy). John, co-publisher of The RGG, mentioned to me that he also feels that objects can emanate a spirit of their own.
            I hope readers will take a few minutes to read the story in this week’s featured link, “My Atticus Finch Takes Aim,” a story in which these animate-yet-inanimate objects from my childhood play a role. 
            Are there objects in your life that bring you a powerful sense of emotion or connection? Feel free to share in the comments. Keep putting one foot forward!
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This week’s featured links:
RGG story: My Atticus Finch Takes Aim
Find other podcast and article links under Media