Tuesday, January 10, 2023
-. Peter was not the proverbial nice guy. He was genuinely nice. He always made you comfortable, whether he was talking on the telephone with you, greeting you at the door, working with you or walking along a path by the Susquehanna.
-. When he had a garden, he told the rabbits and starlings fair warning before he got tough. He was joking, but serious, when he told me about it.
-.Oh, did he like the outdoors! One of my earliest memories when we were seven or eight years old is climbing trees with Peter, his brother Dick and the Katchuk cousins. Several trees, five or more boys. Somebody (wasn't me) got the idea of cutting small branches (we had jackknives in those days) and dropping little missiles on the boy further down the tree.
-.A few years later, Peter, Dick and I played in the woods in the winter in the snow on the hill behind his house. We tried to push over a dead tree. What else do boys do? We tried and tried for 10 minutes but couldn't do it.
-.Twenty years ago, Peter agreed to walk to the top of the hill behind his house. Peter had been to the top of the hill before, and, just as he said, we looked over a barbed wire fence at the fields above the end of Frank Hyde Road. On the way down, Peter showed me the place by the creek where he and Theresa used to collect dog tooth violets, the yellow ones.
-. Eight or nine years ago, I asked Peter about the pattern of a road that you can see in the trees as you look at the same Hill from Route 38. Peter said, yes, it had been a deserted Road there. He and Theresa had been there when they were younger. I wanted to go up there with Peter sometime, but that won't happen now.
-. A few years ago in the summer, Peter and I sat behind his house with the massive Hill and the massive trees on the other side of the creek. Peter said none of the trees had been cut or trimmed since the Niznik house had been built, about 1952. He and his father used to hear branches cracking and popping under the weight of snow at night in the winter.
-. As we sat there soaking ourselves in the view of the trees, Peter said a cat was walking, out of view among the trees. Peter pointed at the cat's path as it walked from right to left. I don't know how Peter knew a cat was there. I couldn't see it, but I believed him. Maybe he could hear it, or see or hear how birds acted.
-. The last time I talked with Peter about the hill, he said he not been on the other side of the creek for several years.
-. Other people will tell you about his life at the grocery store, his taking care of his parents and the older Niznik house, barn and yard. How many times did he go to mow the grass up there? He was too nice a guy to tell us.
-. Those are some of my experiences with Peter. Other people will tell other experiences at this time of Peter's passing.
-. He blessed us with his kindness and friendship.
