Introduction
Giovanni
Boccaccio’s “The Decameron” is a classic work of Italian literature written
during times of the Black Plague in Italy. Seven young women and three men
moved to the country to isolate themselves and avoid becoming infected, and
during their self-imposed exile, each person had to tell the others a story a
day for 10 days, and thus the book tells 100 different stories.
Because of COVID-19, I have only been able to travel
to Italy once in 2020 and 2021, and like Boccaccio, I have used some of my time
to reflect and write. The result is a story that is unrelated to my time spent
in Italy but is, rather, a reflection on a childhood experience. I had the
privilege to grow up in the Rosedale neighborhood of Gig Harbor next to a man
who is now largely forgotten, but during my youth, he was the stuff of legends,
a man of mystery who inspired many stories. Some stories were actually true,
but others were the fantastical products of half-truths and the vivid
imaginations of his neighbors.
What follows is the result of my investigations into
our childhood neighbor, Mr. Raynard Sohrweide.
***
The
Old Goat Man of Rosedale
By
Paul Spadoni
A
fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is
the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope. Dean Koontz
 |
| Silas Marner, as drawn by Hugh Thomson |
We called him Mr. Shorewidey, or “the old goat man,”
though by the time I was old enough to meet him, his goats were gone, replaced
for a time by dogs. I have little to no recollection of the dogs, either; they
didn’t last long. Mr. Sohrweide—his true last name—spent his final years next
to Spadoni Hill in Rosedale living in nearly utter seclusion.
To me and the many cousins who grew up as my
neighbors, Sohrweide was a man of mystery. I encountered him only a few times.
Some of my neighbors and cousins can’t even recall meeting him, yet he somehow
made a deep impression.
Dick Meyer Jr, with whom I grew up playing youth
league and high school baseball, lived on a farm just north of Sohrweide.
“He was a legend of mythic proportions in our house,”
Dick said of Sohrweide. “I have no memory of actually meeting him. But I do
remember always running anytime we passed the trail that led to his house in
the event he would see us and take us up the hill, and we would never be seen
or heard from again. My dad really enjoyed playing on our imaginations.”
My sister Linda, eight years older than I, remembers
Sohrweide and his goats. One of the goats head-butted her to the ground,
resulting in a childhood fear of goats—though as an adult Linda farmed goats
herself, so the fear was not permanent.
“He wasn’t friendly to us,” she said. “We were all
scared of him because the reputation was that if you came on his property, he
would shoot you with a shotgun. But we never went over there. We’d dare each
other to go further down the trail and further down the trail, but if we heard
a noise, we’d run back. We didn’t know if he’d actually shoot people with a
shotgun.”
Cousin Dave Langhelm grew up on property at the head
of the Rosedale lagoon that shared a border with Sohrweide on the south. The
family moved there in 1949. “As a kid, I was terrified of him,” Dave said. “I
can’t remember meeting him, but we used to play around in the woods near his
property, and sometimes we went on it. It stunk highly of goats around his
house. We considered it a great feat to go on his land without being caught and
yelled at.”
The story of sneaking around the edges of Sohrweide’s
property was repeated by several childhood friends and neighbors.
“I never talked to Mr. Sohrweide, but he was source of
great excitement,” said Darlene Elford Kiefer, who grew up on Spadoni Hill. “We
never saw him, but we used to sneak as close to his cabin as we could and watch
for him. We believed that he had a rifle and would shoot us. I remember one
time looking around his cabin, but the only thing that stuck in my mind is that
he had little packets that you added to butter to make it yellow.”
Darlene’s sister Maize (known as Patty when younger)
Elford recalls being unafraid of Sohrweide, but she agrees that he was
enigmatic. “Mr. Sohrweide was a mysterious character to us,” she said. “We were
fascinated by him and wanted to know more about him. Now and then we would see
him walking down the road past our homes. His persona was gentle; he was not
threatening.”
Jim Langhelm, Dave’s older brother, said, “We kids
were scared of him and never went on his land, and I don’t remember ever
talking to him. My only contact with him was on the occasion that I was in the
car when dad gave him a ride when he came upon him walking on the road. I also
remembered that he ‘witched’ the spot in the back yard where dad and I dug the
well we used for several years. I was around 10 when we dug it.”
How did Sohrweide come to live on his wooded 50 acres?
What was he like? What was his source of income? His past? Did he have family
somewhere? What drove him into seclusion?
For Silas Marner, the betrayal of his business
partner, who stole Marner’s fiancé and framed Marner for embezzlement, drove
him into seclusion. He worked alone on the edge of a rock pit, weaving cloth
for sustenance.
The questionable sound of Silas’s loom, so unlike the
natural cheerful trotting of the winnowing-machine, or the simpler rhythm of
the flail, had a half-fearful fascination for the Raveloe boys, who would often
leave off their nutting or birds’-nesting to peep in at the window of the stone
cottage, counterbalancing a certain awe at the mysterious action of the loom,
by a pleasant sense of scornful superiority, drawn from the mockery of its
alternating noises, along with the bent, tread-mill attitude of the weaver. But
sometimes it happened that Marner, pausing to adjust an irregularity in his
thread, became aware of the small scoundrels, and, though chary of his time, he
liked their intrusion so ill that he would descend from his loom, and, opening
the door, would fix on them a gaze that was always enough to make them take to
their legs in terror. Nobody in this world but himself knew that he was the
same Silas Marner who had once loved his fellow with tender love, and trusted
in an unseen goodness. Even to himself that past experience had become dim.
Continue to chapter 2
