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Most of my memories of Silas come from that golden childhood period when I assumed the stars (adults) revolved around the earth (me).  In other words, I really have no idea who he was.  Except for the obvious: farmer, father, salt of the earth, 'seng hunter, Gargamel.

We Pacifist-hippie offspring reacted to Silas's deer- and turkey-slaying with taunts of the worst evil we could imagine --- likening him to the villain in the Smurfs.  And our good-natured neighbor played along, pretended to chase us, and didn't mention our inconsistencies when we took home turkey primaries to cut into quill pens.

By the time I was in sixth grade, my family was still being drawn back to our long-sold farm like moths to a flame.  Silas and Onie's next-door house was a safe resting place in our afternoon journeys.  Mom made us bring shoes --- "You don't have to wear them, but they have to fit in case the car breaks down!"  And sometimes she'd let us sit in the open hatchback and bump our heels on the "dirt" (gravel) road along the way. 

We'd stop and gather berries or persimmons, depending on the season, at favored roadside spots, then I'd hunt minnows, scooping fish out of Silas and Onie's creek with a five-gallon bucket.  Back home, I poured the bucket through a banged-up colander and let our city cats enjoy a country feast as the fish flopped vainly in search of liquid air.

"You'll use all of our fish up!" Silas's grandson complained once.  Adult-Anna agrees, and cringes even more at the use to which we put our creek-caught crawdads, racing them down the gutter into the storm-sewer.  But at the time I was mourning the loss of our own wooded acres, and Silas and Onie tacitly took my side and let me treat their creek as my own.

During my fishing time, Mom was sitting under the spreading catalpa, talking to Onie, who had been a life-line during Mom's ten years on the farm, her own family 800 miles distant in Massachusetts.  I would drop by the shade tree, but soon became bored with adult conversation.  Instead, I ended up coaxing Silas's kittens out of the hole at the bottom of the shed.  There were always new kittens, but the farm didn't become overrun because the road was nearby and lethal.  I remember the passion with which Silas condemned the speeding drivers, and how easily he stroked the soft balls of fur.

Recently, Mom told me she learned easy family affection from Silas, mentioning how struck she was to find him holding three young daughters on his lap, when her New England parents had kept touch to a minimum.  Love --- so complicated for most of us --- was simple for Silas. 

Years earlier, when my mother-to-be showed up and turned a rented store into a honkey-tonk, Silas's teenage son was attracted to the action.  What did the newly-saved Silas do?  Invited the hippie to dinner, then crammed her into the car with his five kids and wife and brought them all to the fair.  The more the merrier.

My father's relationship to Silas was built around work.  I can only guess how Silas must have taken this overeducated, idealistic, new farmer under his wing and shared ideas as well as equipment.  Silas went so far as to turn Daddy on to the farm being auctioned off next door, which is how we became neighbors when I was a few months old.  Our right-of-way through Silas's land felt like a daily handshake, rather than an intrusion.

But you have to remember that the world still revolved around me then.  That I was intent on capturing tadpoles in Silas's cows' water trough and oohing and ahhing over the year's newest calves in the barn.  I was thrilled to drink from a dipper at the outside faucet, the water so cold it almost hurt, and to sneak stale potato chips discarded from the factory and trucked home to feed Silas's livestock.

The truth is that I knew Silas only as the non-astronomers among us know the stars.  He was bright and memorable --- definitely part of Orion's belt --- but I'd be hard-pressed to tell you a fact as simple as the color of his hair before it went gray.  All I knew was the gestalt of Silas --- warm and strong and full of boundless love.

And that's why, I explained to my family, I couldn't begin to eulogize him on the blog.  Because all I really know is how much I miss him and how his death has left a black hole in my life.  And reminded me of a time when the sun revolved around the earth...even though that sun had kids and grandkids of his own.  The more the merrier.