The Cozy Corner by Steve Nauman

For 35 years I’ve observed some old fence posts at various places on our farm. I cut a piece off one of those old posts and from the “smell” it was clearly cedar – that explains why bugs have not destroyed them! Until around 1900, this part of northern Indiana where we live, had many…

After I had been working in that factory for 6 months, the owner of the factory came up to me and said Mike had requested that they make me his apprentice! To me, it was a dream come true to be able to work with those automatic screw machines, but everyone else in the factory…

Sometimes, lessons we learn in our childhood, even if they may seem small at the time, can go on to have a major impact in our lives as adults. That was certainly true in my life, and like so many of my childhood lessons, I learned this very important lesson in my father’s general store.…

Did you ever take time to really listen to what people say and “how” they say it? It does take time, something most people don’t ever seem to have enough of, but it can be very interesting. I first started learning to listen to what people say while working in my father’s general store. In…

Today my father Arnold Nauman would have been 100 years old. He was born on Long Island New York and moved with most of his family to upstate New York after WWII. His father, my grandfather bought a country general store and the plan was for my uncle and my father to work in the…

Those years as a boy working and growing up in my father’s store, I started to understand something about a few people…Most of the customers who came in regularly would seem to be happy most of the time, but a few were almost never happy and it seemed like they didn’t want to be happy!…

This was originally posted several years ago, entitled “Keep it Simple” In 1976 while I was working full time in my father’s general store, I learned a lot with my eyes and my ears-and that’s where today’s story comes from. It was a weekday midafternoon, fairly quiet in that country general store. My father was…

What happens in 46 days? The first day of spring-when the length of day and night is about equal. And of course, the days will keep getting longer for three months after that until the first day of summer and the cycle continues just as God designed it! But since today is “Groundhog Day” I…

While the congregation waited for spring to be able to start building the upper level of the church building, they were all still praying for so many things that were needed to complete the building. One by one, in a way that I can only describe as continued miraculous answers to prayer, those needs were…

Before I continue, I should probably let you know that the information to write these stories came from Dan Gelatt himself. Dan came to my home twice and watched a DVD made from the original construction project of the West Smyrna Baptist Church. Since the DVD was made from old home movies, there was no…