Please allow me to introduce myself. My parents gave me the name Jonathan Emerson Twining. If my last name looks familiar, it may be because you have seen boxes of Twining’s Breakfast Tea in the grocery store. Yes, I am somehow related to that branch of the family. And yes, I have visited the Twining’s Tea Store at Epcot Center.
I was born in 1962. Let’s see, what was happening at that time? Well, the Cuban Missile Crisis for one. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the planet Earth. The Space Needle was erected in time for the World’s Fair. Marilyn Monroe sang happy birthday to the President, and months later committed suicide. Walmart and Motel 6 made their first appearance. And perhaps most importantly, it was the year that Spiderman first appeared in a comic book.
I was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania to L. Emerson and Rita Twining. A couple of years later we made the leap to western New York State where I would spend the next 15 years of my life. After Dad taught at Houghton Academy for a year, he got his ministerial license and became Rev. L. Emerson Twining. His first pastorate was in the little hamlet of Hallsport, NY and then we moved to Lyndonville, NY five years later.
Those were the days when you could go just about anywhere outdoors and not have to be worried about someone kidnapping you. Some of my earliest and strongest memories are of walking through the beautiful fall foliage , or playing in the “creek” near the church with Tom Roeske and Brian Perkins, finding mud puppies and crayfish and lots of other goodies. One time I got in serious trouble for removing the bark all the way around one of Mr. Roeske’s favorite trees, which of course can be quite bad for the tree. I didn’t know any better. I also have a vivid memory of catching a black and white snake that to this day I can’t identify. And I remember sledding down the hill near my house and smacking myself right into a tree – that hurt for quite awhile!
When we moved to Lyndonville, we still lived out in the rural parts of town. The land was a lot flatter, and much of it was either crop fields that had returned to nature, or was maintained as fruit orchards. I grew up in a house that had a huge back yard, and beyond that were fields with lots of wildflowers, pheasants, and deer. And this was where my saga with snakes truly began.
We lived in an old house with a stone foundation and a large front porch. Every spring we would start to see garter snakes on the south side of the house where the sun was shining. They seemed to congregate near or under the front porch, and I wonder to this day if there was some type of hibernaculum (winter den) under that porch. We would also find snakes in the basement from time to time. One day I opened the side door to the house and on the landing I thought I was looking at a toy black mamba snake that my grandmother had given me. But then the tongue flicked out, and I realized that this was indeed a live snake. Unfortunately, my mother hated snakes, so my father dispatched with that snake (and many others) very quickly.
I began to be fascinated by snakes and wanted to learn more. My grandparents and uncle would tell me stories of the snakes that they had encountered in Zambia when they were missionaries. I joined a book club and purchased books about snakes and other reptiles. I soaked up every word and could not wait to have my own snake adventures.
My grandparents on my mother’s side would come up to visit us every summer, and I would go down to Old Orchard Creek to go fishing with my Grandpa Howells. Then, later in the summer, my family would drive down to Richmond, VA to see them, and we would all go to Nags Head, NC for a week at the beach. Every time we went down there, the road took us past a place called Clyde Peeling’s Reptileland. I cannot tell you how badly i wanted to go to that place. But my parents didn’t make much money so the answer was always “NO” (not to mention my mother did not want to set foot in that place). Then one summer, my cousin Carl came up with Grandma and Grandpa and guess what they did … they took him to Reptileland … and got a picture of him holding a boa constrictor. When I got wind of that, boy was I angry. I cried and cried “IT’S NOT FAIR!” I’m not sure, but I still might hold a grudge on Carl for that one …
When I was in high school, I decided I wanted to pursue marine biology instead of herpetology, which is the study of reptiles and amphibians. I think I was influenced by Jacques Cousteau and my experiences at the beach in the summer, and it pulled me away. So I headed off to Eastern Nazarene College to study biology. Little did I know that my adventures with snakes had just begun … but that’s a story for another day …
Tending To the Garden 