Colorful, fun-loving and hard-working my neighbor was both a gifted  ballroom dancer and a dairy farmer for whom success was dependent on  dogged determination. In his younger days he would drive “over the hill”  to Coconut Grove, a dancehall where old and young alike would gather to  mix music and motion.

Rhythm was in his bones. As an adult he  frequented weekend dances and loved to gather with family and friends to sing songs around the piano. 

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After serving in World War II he operated a dairy farm in a mountain valley with short summers and long winters, which he regularly referred to as “this godforsaken place.” With insolvency as an ongoing threat, dairy  cows were an economic necessity. The never-ending, year-after-year cow-milker’s routine, however, would threaten anyone’s sanity. 

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Although a devout religious believer, his speech was peppered with barnyard profanity, and he sometimes skipped Sunday services, to bail hay on the Sabbath day. 

The only way he could retire was to sell the farm, but farming was his way  of life. He persevered in the profession into his advanced years, and had it not been for the intervention of mortality, would have stayed on indefinitely!