One of my favorite words is “serendipity.” I like the sound of the word, and I like the concept that it names. Serendipity means a “fortunate happenstance” or “pleasant surprise.” The word was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754 in a letter he wrote to a friend.
Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had made by reference to a Persian fairy tale, “The Three Princes of Serendip.” The princes, Walpole told his friend, were “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.”
Sometimes nice things occur that you simply do not expect. Serendipity!
Here’s an example. A few weeks ago, one of my readers, Mrs. Ehlenfeldt, called me. “Do you get Country Magazine?” she asked. When I said no, she said, “Well, there’s an article in the current issue, and I thought of you immediately because you write about Oconto County sometimes, and this article is about Oconto County. Stop by sometime and I’ll give it to you.”
So one evening when we were out on our bikes, we stopped at her house, and she gave me the magazine. Imagine my surprise when I opened the magazine to find an article about barn quilts, and the barn in the article belonged to my late cousin John Konitzer!
John and I grew up next door to each other on Konitzer Road south of Oconto Falls and spent a lot of time working and playing together.
The article contained a number of quotes from John’s widow, Cookie, and some beautiful pictures of the restored barn and the dazzling new “quilt” attached to its gable. I read the article closely several times, but I knew it didn’t tell the whole story, so I called Cookie and got her slant on it.
The article in Country was titled: “Beautiful Barn Quilt an Outward Symbol of Family Pride.” And Cookie’s story really emphasized that.
The story’s main emphasis was on a unique initiative of New View Industries, a county sheltered workshop program that provides social and vocational services for disabled residents. In addition to training people for the mainstream workforce, New View also employs up to 100 disabled clients in a large warehouse, assembly room and shop. One of their projects is the production of these decorative wooden barn quilts.
Cookie said she and a friend had visited New View in Gillett, and she decided she wanted one of their quilts on a barn she had restored on her farm near Abrams.
Cookie (her real name is Carol) said, “I decided to fix up this barn because we had another barn that we didn’t keep up, and we finally had to let the fire department use it for practice before somebody went in there and got hurt. The day they burned it down was really rough, and I decided I was not going to let this barn deteriorate, too.”
The barn is the tallest one in Oconto County, about five stories high, built in the early 1940s by the Delzer family, and John and Cookie had bought it, and the farm, from the Delzers in the ’70s. She had it painted bright red and hired her nephew Nick Holtger to install a gleaming white steel roof.
She chose a quilt pattern called Gentleman’s Fancy because “John was a gentle man, and a gentleman farmer.” John was known as “Farmer John” when he was a competitor on the truck racing circuit. He was a truly nice guy, friendly and loving.
When the quilt was finished and volunteers from the Oconto Electric Cooperative came with their cherry-picker to raise and secure the quilt to the barn gable, Cookie said, “A bird circled the operation for the entire time it was going on. And when it was finished, the bird made one last circuit and left! It was really weird. I know it sounds silly, but I decided that that was John, inspecting the installation and giving his approval. It was a really uplifting moment for my family and me.”
Since the time of the article, Cookie has had another signboard painted and installed on the barn, explaining the quilt and dedicating it to John.
What a nice tribute to a nice guy.
Thanks to Mrs. Ehlenfeldt for bringing the article to my attention. Serendipity, right?
PS: If you’d like to see the article, go to
http://www.country-magazine.com/short-stories/inspirational-stories/beau...
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