Almost everything remained neatly in its place at Ronald Gildow’s Lower Salem farm Thursday.
His impressive 1850s restored log cabin could be a museum. His woodshop is sans wood chips despite Gildow being midstream in a project. And the farmer’s lawn seemed manicured with just a scattering of fall leaves.
Yet across the road on Gildow’s cattle range, a scattered mess of wood fence posts and mud is a signal to anyone who knew the 64-year-old farmer that something is wrong.
The one place of disorder is where Gildow died Wednesday. A car hit the Lower Salem man as he loaded his cattle onto a trailer and truck on the road. The Ohio Highway Patrol is still investigating the accident.
Friends and family gathered Thursday at the farm on Ohio 145 to remember Gildow.
“He and his father restored that log cabin in 1990,” Gildow’s daughter, Kathi Gerber, said. “That was his big thing, it was his showcase.”
A week ago Gildow invited his granddaughter’s fourth-grade class from Lower Salem Elementary to the log cabin so she could present her “Little House on the Prairie” book report in a historical setting. The restored cabin is decorated with his father’s old farm tools and mother’s kitchenware. There is also a table for playing cards and a bed with a homemade quilt.
“We kind of put anything here that is back from that era,” Gildow’s wife, Betty, said. “We’d have people who stopped off the road wanting to look at the cabin.”
Everywhere on the 103-acre farm, Gildow displayed homage to simpler times during his 36-year stay. His father’s antique Ford tractor sits restored in the barn, up the slope on top of his stone built wall an old crank cistern still pumps water, and in his wood shop, a cream separator and school desk sit ready to be restored.
Across the road on the cattle portion of the farm, Gildow took pride in his livestock and hay, fellow farmer Frank Harrimann said.
“We worked together for 18 years,” Harrimann said. “He was always a happy guy and helped us do anything. I’ll continue to help here until she (Betty) figures out what she wants to do.”
Away from his farm, Gildow had become a big Fort Frye football and basketball fan since retiring in 1996. His four children and two stepchildren provided plenty of grandchildren to follow.
“He’d go to all the games and watch the kids play,” Gerber said.
Gildow’s latest hobby had become his woodworking. His meticulous personality yielded perfectly painted bald eagles with American flag wings hanging in his woodshop.
“This was his place to be on his own,” Betty Gildow said. “He even wired his old eight-track stereo to listen to music,” she said pointing to the speakers hanging on the wall.