Inside Looking Out: Charlie’s storybook

He will soon begin his 90th year of life.

To give this long length of time on earth a perspective, Charlie Reiter grew up on a farm in Coatesville with no indoor plumbing. One of nine children, he had to bathe in a big metal tub of water dirtied by the bodies of his siblings who had been washed before him.

Having eaten food cooked on a coal stove and gone to the bathroom in an outhouse, he now lives in Lancaster and enjoys modern conveniences, but automatic bill pay and a smartphone have not altered the DNA of this man who was born during the Great Depression.

Riding in the back seat of the car the other afternoon, he spoke of his past as if his entire life had all happened in one long yesterday. He looked across the moving landscape and his mind traveled to places that have since gone by. A shopping center was built over a field where he shot his first buck. A parking lot loaded with shiny new cars had replaced an ice-skating rink he had frequented with his friends and down the road a ways, a doctor’s office stood on the same spot where he used to buy paint from a hardware store.

When I listened to Charlie reminisce, he spoke his words from a personal history book that he had deposited into his memory savings bank. He withdrew from his account the names of these boys and those girls who he remembered from back in the day. When he recounted his four-year term in the Navy in vivid description, I felt like I was there on board with him when his ship had docked at ports of call in the Orient and along the Mediterranean Sea during his voyage around the world.

As the car turned the corner, Charlie leaned forward. “Down this street lived a girl I used to know,” he said. “She asked me to visit her there a couple of times.”

He got me thinking. Charlie barely talked about what he did for a living. He talked about the living he did. Years ago, my friends and I would share thoughts about our jobs and owning this new house or buying that new car. Since we’ve retired, money and things have meant less. Now our conversations are about eating homemade blueberry pie, kicking our feet from a backyard swing, or reeling in a bigmouth bass from a farm pond while a friend stood watch by a “No Trespassing” sign.

Charlie has unknowingly taught a valuable lesson. We get on the carousel ride every day for 30 or 40 years trying to grab that gold ring, but after we reach the twilight of life, what matters most are kids’ birthday parties and dinners with the family and the silly banter we enjoy with our friends. Happiness does not come from making a living. It comes from making a life with the simple joys we have every day.

Our car passed a barn, one of many that dot the Amish farmlands in Lancaster County, sending Charlie into another story. “When I wasn’t even school age yet, some older boys were in our barn one day and they made me walk up the ladder to the top where the hay was stored in the loft,” he said. “They laughed about it and left me up there. I was scared. I had to turn around and walk back down very slow with my back against the ladder.”

I suddenly realized how Charlie’s stories were my stories, too. I knew a girl who lived at the end of my street. She had asked me to visit her. His barn story got me to recall Mr. Boyle’s old brown clapboard in New Market where I used to play hide and seek until that scary day when someone locked the barn door and I had to jump through the broken glass window to get out.

In his book, “The Five People You Meet in Heaven,” Mitch Albom wrote, “There are no random acts. … We are all connected. … You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind. …”

I marveled at Charlie’s miles of memories he has gathered from 32,000 mornings of getting out of bed and stepping into his shoes to begin a new day. His stories are brief, yet heartfelt. He often mentioned his dear, departed LaVerne, his wife of 61 years. “She could turn a few heads,” he said with a smile. I could tell from his voice that he was proud to have been a loving husband to his beautiful bride.

Now, I hear this man of nine decades speak his affection to his sons and daughter and I can tell that unconditional love is a risk he took a long time ago that was well worth taking. When people like Charlie Reiter talk about the loves of their lives, they help us better appreciate ours.

Albom ends his novel with these thoughtful words. “Each affects the other, and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.”

In 2020, Charlie Reiter opens his eyes to the dawn of his tenth decade. He will spin his yarns around the moments of his ordinary days. If you are fortunate to be in his presence, his tales will be of certain significance. Once you sit with him for a while, you might think to ask him what he believes is the real meaning of life.

Just listen to his storybook. It’s my storybook and yours, too. The answer to the question is there.

Rich Strack can be reached at katehep11@gmail.com.