Remembering Pete

Pete Mose, at one time or another was probably in your basement tending to your furnace or water heater; or he was in your garage where the electrical fuse box is located.
On the hottest day of summer he might have been in your back yard fixing the air-conditioner on a Saturday because you had guests; and, in your mind at least, it was a real emergency.
Pete was the guy who would come by just before Thanksgiving to fix the garbage disposal or run a new line to you electric range. At Christmas when you nearly burned down the house trying to put up lights or add just one more string of 30-year-old bubble bulbs to the Christmas tree – you called Pete Mose.
That time you tried to rewire a simple three-way switch yourself -to prove your manhood or because you were so poor you could not afford a proper electrician- it was Mose to the rescue. Then the Mose and Son Electric Company put you on a payment plan that sometimes stretched into “old age.”
For over 40 years Pete Mose kept liberty warm and cool, lighted and cooking. He made sure we had a warm bath and the laundry done. He kept us wired and then wireless, alarmed, lighted, motored, timered and powered up.
Pete was a great man.
He never judged anybody, and he helped anyone who came his way.
On my birthday he gave me a card with a quarter inside. “How nice,” I thought and then Pete quietly said, “Check the date.” It was a beautiful new looking quarter from the year I was born. (I thought the only thing that still existed from the year I was born was dirt.)
Pete was always too easy to underestimate.
He made it all look easy. He moved slow and kept it simple. Late in the night he tinkered in his workshop, and as a result, old motors ran again, switches worked and the impossible was reduced to its smallest parts and repaired. Pete fixed people the same way.
Pete was a great man. Did I say that?
Legions of one the once young know Pete Mose. He was their scoutmaster; he supplied the van that took them to church camp. He married the lady who became the calendar girl for Girl Scouts and the forever Rainbow Queen.
Pete was solid; and almost, but not quite, clumsy. Pete was big in heart and body. He liked to groan when he got up from being in a small place. He knew how to sweat.
Everything about Pete Mose was so comfortable and natural you never stopped to think he would remember your birthday, and the year you born. He was like that 1949 quarter –Always so much more than you expected or understood.
Pete’s refuge was his lake house. He was unreachable there - the only place that was true. Boats and beer, docks and bunks, sun and summer - Pete personified all of that.
I was working with him on his dock one hot summer day.
We were groaning and sweating.
“Time to take a dip,” Pete said and he dived into the lake to cool down.
Big, lumbering, earthbound Pete Mose was transformed in water. He was a powerful swimmer, graceful and fluid. As he swam, he was agile and light, sleek and strong; moving backwards in time to a yesterday when he was young.
That how I see Pete Mose now. He has “slipped the surly bonds” and floats free, transformed again, healthy and alive, in the cool waters of forever.
Pete Mose died last week. It’s a wonder that anything in Liberty still works without Pete to take care of it; and us. Did I say he was great man?