Ben Towner's Plea

Howdy ma’am, sir. Allow me to introduce myself, Benevolent Towner (known as Ben) a ‘maginary kid of Oxford.

I come from a time when boys were whipped unfairly or spoiled and coddled. The schools had no heat or ‘lectric lights and most everyone walked. Yet we mostly grew up strong and proud, chopping and stacking firewood, paddling in streams and rivers, skating on ponds. We worked on family farms raising diary cattle and market gardens, picking wild berries and cultivated fruit, learning to be responsible men. Our grandchildren helped run the town and our great great grandchildren roam the town still.

I represent the past but aim to reach today’s children and families who call Oxford home. They can visit the old saltbox house in the neighborhood where me and my friends grew up. It has a name now - the Twitchell Rowland Homestead. Can you imagine, that old house is now a museum! And what it took to make THAT happen is another story.

Now those folks have a new project and pretty soon the Munn Schoolhouse will get moved next to that old house and spiffed up. Once it is fixed up this one room school will open a door for kids to experience in person what books only describe. Sit at the desks on those board seats, try doing lessons using those squeaky pencils on our old slates. Feel the cold in Spring with no heat and maybe even get switched if that old teacher gets too crotchety!

You and me – we can make those kids feel a sense of ownership that comes from contributing to something. They will see their donations invested in a real building with a roof, windows with shutters, a big stone step with a big boot scraper – that you better be sure to use. A school used by real children who left their names and initials carved into the beams in the basement. Some of those names are now on plaques in places like churches, schools and town halls, not to mention in the cemeteries.

It would help these folks with their new project if you could donate something to aid their work. From what I am hearing there’s ways to spend money without having a bill or coin in your hand. I surely would love to see that happen – would be almost magical for you to help out. They call it ‘online donating’ – makes near to no sense to me as I don’t know where that line is they are on. But I would so love to see their faces when all that “money” starts to move into their account. If anyone asks, tell them “It was a hint from Ben.”

Tale is you use a gizmo called a ‘computer’ and you can punch buttons with letters and numbers on ‘em...you can see a picture in a frame with those letters and numbers. If that’s not magic, then what could be?!

So Tuesday, April 23, 7:00 a.m. to Wednesday, 24, 7:00 p.m. please make those letters with http://www.givelocalccf.org/or... and see what that picture frame tells you to do.

And once they get that money just watch their schoolhouse start to rise and shine! When you visit that school in its new place by the farmhouse museum, look around for me…. Help make history – again – and then make it real everyday. And the whole town will thank you!