Joan Nash was a presence here for many years as she was pro-active about everything in the school system, from special needs students to music and the band program, not to mention her leadership of the school’s newspaper, “Polk Sallet.” We became colleagues in the promotion of good music in Our Area as I enjoyed being in her home and meeting some of her many protegées. One of these was one of her granddaughters, who could play almost anything written for the violin . . . I was astonished when I learned later that she had joined the Army!

I have missed Joan and her husband John very much in recent years, as I considered both of them friends. John provided me with photos of Mazzy’s studio, which I have used frequently as one who knew the Mazzanoviches very well.

I met Frank Giordano at a local garage in Columbus when I came back here to live in 1988. We chatted while we waited for our car repairs. When our son Thomas needed work, I sent him to Frank, who was happy to hire him for a temporary job on his farm. Frank later thanked me for referring a “good worker” to him, lavish in his praise for a boy we “raised right.”

We only met in passing in recent years, but I remember being in Frank’s home several times and seeing his devotion to his wife “Pete” as Alzheimer’s took its toll on her vivacious personality. Frank always greeted me warmly whenever we met over the intervening years. Tough to lose even casual acquaintances remembered as friends . . .

We recently watched a Nova thing about the sun’s ability to send a burst of energy our way that could knock out our electric power grid and thus set us all back a century. What would we do without Reddy Kilowatt coming into our homes and businesses 24-7?

I remember, as a child in the 30s, visiting my relatives who lived in the country, well beyond the reach of electric power. Their johnny houses and dug wells were not there because of poverty, but because there were no water lines or electricity to drive the necessary pumps. My grandmother Goodwin did have a huge hand pump to lift water from their well, and also gutters on her “tin roof” to catch water for washing clothes.

We kids could not work Grandma’s big pump handle very far, and thereby often caused the pump to “lose its prime.” We also could not pull a full bucket up from a dug well to get fresh, cool water to drink, as I related in a column long ago. But I still remember fondly the taste of that water!

Does anyone today use a dug well to get water? There were two such wells on Rippy Hill, one now filled in and the other just grown over and protected by only a fence. I never liked the taste of the pump that accompanied the water from private wells back in the 30s. I don’t think the pumps of today add their lubricants to the water, though.

Like the earthquake along the San Andreas fault that could destroy California, there is also a possibility that we could suddenly lose our electric power. Unlike the inconvenience of a tree falling on a local power line, this outage could last for months. Is anyone today prepared to live without the benefits of those big power generating plants and the world economy they support? I am glad that such a world is only a fond memory of my childhood and equally glad that I could enjoy watching our modern world develop over some 80 years since then.