WHEN A STONE IS MORE THAN A STONE
- Kevyn Bashore
- Mar 10, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 19
In the year 2000, while sitting in a restaurant reading and journaling during breakfast, early before work, I saw an elderly man sitting alone. My heart broke for him. But I shrugged it off and kept reading my Bible and journaling wise thoughts for the day. My eyes kept wandering back to him, sitting alone by the window. I was actually ticked off, because I wanted to have my "me" time with God. I finally realized how hypocritical I was acting.
I couldn’t shake the sense that I was supposed to lay aside my own comfort level and agenda and offer companionship to this elderly man. So I finally gave in and asked him if I could join him. To my surprise, he excitedly said yes.
After telling me his name was Harry, I learned that he lived just two miles from where I grew up. And as we continued chatting, I enjoyed listening to the stories of his life. He eventually asked me my last name and I said, "Bashore." He looked stunned. He asked, "Are you related to Nathan Bashore?" I was shocked. I told him that Nathan Bashore was my great grandfather. He grinned and let out a guffaw. And then he shared this surprise twist:
Harry worked for my great grandfather Nathan Bashore in the 1940s. My great grandfather was known in the first half of the twentieth century as a successful potato farmer in Pennsylvania and around the northeast. Harry labored in his fields picking potatoes when he was 20 years old. He also knew my grandfather, Herman, and my father, Melvin, who also worked in the potato fields. Harry then shared an odd side note: "I picked up a potato in your great grand-dad's field one day, but it turned out to be a "petrified potato." A stone. I held onto it all these years, since the '40s."
I was speechless.
Not because of the worthless stone, but because Harry held onto it for decades. There was obvious meaning in it for him. And for me, I knew if I could touch it, I'd be reaching back in time and touching the soil of my great grandfather's farm. And his legacy.
Harry and I became friends. I invited him to Bashore family gatherings, because he felt like family now. But not for long: he died within a year or two. And not before he gave me the "potato stone" from my great grandfather’s field. A stone which I carry with me to this day. It’s a reminder of my family history.
A family history riddled in a lack of wisdom and generosity.
You see, my great grandfather had a gift for growing potatoes. Apparently, potatoes are very challenging to grow. My father lamented that Nathan never passed his secret knowledge of growing potatoes to him or his father. Or to anyone. Nathan died a wealthy man having never passed along his legacy to his family. Harry acknowledged this as well when he told me he had attempted to grow potatoes on his own, but he couldn't.
Nathan also declined Milton Hershey's request to invest in his chocolate company. THE Milton Hershey of the Hershey Chocolate fortune. Nathan owned a large farm and swath of land on the eastern side of Hershey, Pennsylvania, land today that is packed with housing developments, townhomes, and condos.
What possesses a man to keep valuable secrets from his own family?
Later, my grandfather purchased two farms north of Hershey. He eventually sold one, and after his death the family sold the final 150 acres for a meager $180,000. Many years later, the same farm was on the market for 5 million.
It would appear there was a curse on my father's side of the family of withholding blessing when the means to do so were readily available. I received nothing as an inheritance from my great grandfather's and grandfather's wealth, but what I did receive was a token of a petrified "potato stone" from a poor laborer in the filed, working the rich soil of my great grandfather's farm. A stone that I hold 80 years later.
I carry two lessons from this story: 1) to listen to my "gut" (the Spirit of God) when I feel led to do something unusual or odd (as in talking to a lonely elderly man in a restaurant), and 2) to carry the "potato stone" as reminder to pray for the blessing on my hometown, and to reclaim my ancestor's authority to bring goodness, wealth, and justice to the very ground on which I walk.
Though my father's ancestors lost or sold nearly all the significant farmlands they owned in Pennsylvania, my "potato stone" keeps me rooted in the knowledge that my spiritual inheritance is greater than my physical inheritance could ever be.
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