"You better"

Three weeks ago, Heaven gained a saint and Smock lost one of it's most beloved people. Dorothy Hovanic was married to her husband John for 61 years. Now that she's gone, I miss her. I visited with her just 3 weeks before she died, which once again proves that no one knows when it's time to say goodbye.

But I'd like to dwell on the living and tell you about Dorothy's husband John. I've mentioned him several times in my meanderings here but I really want you to know more about this man.

First, he had a son who he also named John who is my age. We went to school together, were altar boys at St. Hedwig, engaged in the seasonal tomato and crab apple wars, and played football and baseball. John raised a fine man who today still lives in Smock with his wife and next door daughter and son-in-law.

Two years ago, my Delaware best buddy Brian and I rented a couple of very large Harley Davidson motorcycles and roared through Smock. We parked the bikes and started walking around that single block of streets that were all too familiar. I saw John trimming the hedges in his yard and introduced him to Brian. In less than 30 seconds, John offered to fill Brian's saddlebag with tomatoes. What Brian thought was rather unique was just normal for me. It was John being John. No frills. Nothing fancy. Just a man offering another man something that he grew in his garden.

Do you see the importance in this? Do you really see it???

John Hovanic goes to church rather often. Every day. And its not because the church is only 100 yards from his house. He takes that religion stuff seriously. And he lives it seriously. Both in his actions and even in the wonderfully simple Bible based rhymes he still can recite since he was in the third grade.

Today, I visited John, thinking that I could do something for him by spending some serious quality time with this great man who just lost his wife only weeks ago. Instead of feeling like I accomplished something, I came away feeling that I have been given something much more than I expected. The genuine thanks and love from a genuinely solid man. When we were saying our farewells, I told John that I'd be back soon. His response was "You better." Two words that spoke volumes.

This is why I write this stuff. I want to do my best to insure that you, the reader, never forget these people in my little town. Because if us kids, like John Michael (John's son) and Johnny, and Pickey and Junie and Tommy learned anything, we learned to be.....real. And we learned it from our parents and from neighbors like John Hovanic.

It is never too late to put a little love in this world for our families and those around us. Some of us, like me, learned this lesson rather late in life. Others learned many years ago. But the bottom line is that we learned respect and admiration for people who are the true saints that still walk the earth.

John Hovanic would agree that we need to yank out the I-Pods and Walkmen and stereos and spend some time appreciating the people and things around us. We should all promise ourselves to open our ears to non-electronically generated sounds once in a while.

If we don't do this, we'll end up being no better than last month's tomatoes.