GORDON BALL … VANDALS HAVE BEEN HERE

(AND OLD MAN’S WINTER NIGHT, by Robert Frost)

alan skeoch

November 12, 2019

There was a shadow…some would say a ghost…at the Grodon Ball Farm today.

A chill in the air. Snow on the ground early in November. Some roads closed. others

as slippery as a scam artist. Perfect kind of day for a shadow to fall over the

farm. The shadow was in my mind really…locked there.

It was the shadow of Gordon Ball. He was dead, had been so for several years.

Killed in a car accident. After that the farm was boarded up. Not well boarded

as things turned out

Gordan Ball was eccentric. He wore bib overalls. He carried cash to pay his

debts and for his purchases. This bankroll carrying, whether fact to not, drew the

attention of some unsavoury characters. For the most part though Gordon was a

regular antique buyer…Scottish grandfather clocks and whole inventory of Applachian

lamp collectors. Was he rich? Some thought so. I was never sure. He was a collector

and his farm with its many barns was jam packed with things…crocks, dog treadmills,

coal oil lamps by the barrel load, old cars, a sawmill, a shingle making machine, enough

fine wooden chairs and tables to outfit a hotel.

Today all that remained was up for auction.

Gordon Ball once lived here…is that him stepping out? No! Couldn’t be. Gordon

Ball is only alive in my mind.

THE SETTING

The south field was jam packed with half ton trucks. All expecting a plethora of

great finds that Gordon had squirrelled away.

But what we found is best seen below.

Vandals had been here before us. And they had come often it seems.

EVERYTHING Gordon once owned was thrown aside by vandals thinking

squirrelled money might be hidden in an old sock or behind a picture frame.

They…must have been several of them…got the good things and threw the rest aside.

Ravages of time … peeling paint

could not explain away the presence of thieves, vandals…low life criminals

Just looking at Gordon Ball broken kitchen stove brought back a flood of memories.

like the time one winter when Marjorie, Kevin, Andrew and I dropped in to visit. It was early

December and Gordan, Florida and their boys were in a Christmas mood. The stone house

was cold in the corners but warm around this stove. On s side table Gordon or Florida

had erected a small Christmas tree on which hung a couple of coloured balls. The

tree was scraggly. It had been cut in Gordan’s forest. Chosen not because of its

perfection but because it was of little value. The vibrant trees were left to grow.

Visiting that winter was Dickensian…a time warp that put us in the home of Cratchet

or even Scrooge after his conversion from penny pincher to do goober. The room

was lit with coal oil lamps.

This was Gordon’s problem. He wanted to be living in the 19th century and he

forced that longing onto Florida who came from the Philippines. Gordon could

not understand why Florida and her eventual two boy progeny were in revolt.

I am not sure what happened in the months after our visit. But I know it was

tragic for Gordon. Shyly he asked me once about child raising. Just asking

me was embarrassing. It seems some social agency was interfering.

After he died, Florida and the boys went forward into another life.

They nailed up the doors and window I suppose. No barrier for vandals.

The whole collection of buildings had been stripped. Gordon’s collections

thrown in piles here snd there. Whatever had much value was taken.

Today, what was left behind was in a public auction. A mish mash of broken artifacts.

One large iron container held treasures. The container had been shipped here

from Scotland and firmly locked. Vandal proof. It was here that the Gordon Ball

collection could really be seen. Grandfather clocks, sea chests, rum crocks, impeccable

examples of fine Scottish carpentry…including cases of wooden carpenter tools.

Elsewhere … the vandals had their say

Gordon could make fine furniture himself. He converted two of this barns

into 19th century industrial factories where his line shafts drove saws, planers,

jointers…and the end result was beautiful furniture. One or our sons commissioned

Gordon to make a harvest table which remains the pride and joy of Andrew and

Julie.

The vandals had ignored the Gordon Ball factory which was now up for sale

to the highest bidder. Our son Andrew bought Gordon’s ancient iron mounted jig saw…

“that’s for you Dad’ he said, “A reminder of Gordon.”

Gordon built several small log buildings on the farm and he moved others from

other doomed farms to his place. He also had purchased an ancient saw mill

and their were piles of planks here and there, all carefully spaced for drying.

I had hoped to buy Gordon’s fanning mill…hidden here under old clothes and

furniture. Price was too high for me which made me glad in a way. A high price

means the machine if valued and unlikely to become kindling for some fireplace.

Andrew wanted to buy Gordon’s shingle making saw but

price got too steep. A good thing I suppose….$550.00

That’s Jim McCartney urging a bidder on with his pointer.

“And so it ended. The broken and the perfect …all auctioned off to men and women

with half ton trucks. Most of whom knew Gordon Ball the same way we did. A man

with his feet in the past. Shy. Shrewd. Capable. But out of touch with the world

around him.

That’s Bob Severn in the white hat ..extolling the virtues of a case full of broken

coal oil lamps. “Who will give me five dollars?”

And here are the crew that take the money. There was lots of it today. all of

those who once new Gorden come to buy a memory. And that includes myself and

son Andrew. Nancy Belviso on the left.

Let me tell one final story about Gordon. One winter he found tracks in the snow

around his stone house. Someone was casing his place. Someone planning to

rob him. Someone or some group who believed he kept cash. Gordon asked the

police to keep an eye on his house. They did for a night or two but could not

do so forever. They gave up. The tracks reappeared. Gordon was alone at

the end of a dead end road with no neighbours. And he knew he was being watched.

So he waited…hidden in his own home. Then sure enough a man appeared and

pushed open the front door with his shoulder. “There were others out there in

the dark.” Gordon said to me. Gordon had a club…perhaps a baseball bat. He knocked the intruder

down and hit him several times. Bloodied him and shoved him back into the the snow

where others waited. They slipped away. But he knew who they were. Young

punks whose father Gordon had done business with…antique business.

Next Day he drove to Guelph, dropped in on the father and said, “If your son

and his friends show up on my property again, they may not get back

one piece. I have friends in Toronto who know how to deal with them.”

As far as I know they never came back.

I could be wrong. They could have seen the death notice and returned

…vandals. They knew that Gordon could not get them with a baseball

bat if he was dead.

SUGGETION: Read Robert Frost’s poem titled “And old Man’s Winter Night”

and imagine yourself as Gordon Ball waiting for Thieves. Would you have

Gordon’s courage. I think not.

An Old Man’s Winter Night

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All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him – at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; – and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man – one man – can’t fill a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It’s thus he does it of a winter night.