When I hear someone say that a book changed their lives, I feel the need to tell that that any book , if you read it and pay attention to what you are reading changes your life.
For a long time now I have wanted to write about the book Yes, it is a childrens book, I was watching "Reading Rainbow" with my then very young son, and it was the featured book of the day, read by none other than Lorne Greene, his deep and expressive voice
blending with the gentle story of The Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall. The book was an expansion of a poem that first appeared in the New Yorker on October 3, 1977.
POEM
Ox Cart Man
by Donald Hall
In October of the year,
he counts potatoes dug from the brown field,
counting the seed, counting
the cellar’s portion out,
and bags the rest on the cart’s floor.
He packs wool sheared in April, honey
in combs, linen, leather
tanned from deerhide,
and vinegar in a barrel
hooped by hand at the forge’s fire.
He walks by his ox’s head, ten days
to Portsmouth Market, and sells potatoes,
and the bag that carried potatoes,
flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goose
feathers, yarn.
When the cart is empty he sells the cart.
When the cart is sold he sells the ox,
harness and yoke, and walks
home, his pockets heavy
with the year’s coin for salt and taxes,
and at home by fire’s light in November cold
stitches new harness
for next year’s ox in the barn,
and carves the yoke, and saws planks
building the cart again.
In 1979 The Ox Cart Man by Donald Hall and illustrated by Barbara Cooney was published, and in won the 1980 Caldecott Medal.
I was watched in total delight, thinking with so few words how someone had described the year and the spirit of a family working to establish themselves. Is this story for the adult who reads it as well, possibly even more so?
the book followed that family through the years activities, and ends in the late fall with the return of the Ox-cart Man, from market where he sold what he and his family had gathered, grown or made, the purchased what he needed and could not make and walked home The journey was a 10 day walk, each way.
Not to be overly romantic about the "olden days" , I have a deep appreciation of indoor plumbing, electric service and grocery stores, and central heating. The changing seasons have lost some of their meaning, we no longer need to, spend out winters inside looking out, dreaming of spring, mending harnesses and making cloth, knitting mittens or whittling brooms.
And it is no longer necessary to spend out summer and fall making preparation to survive the winter, making candles and splitting wood, maintaining livestock and tending a garden.
I feel that the changing seasons are part of making a life, if no longer part of making a living.
That the richness making something or growing vegetables, gives us roots we can carry with us where ever we may end up..
