Christmas should be a joyous
time when memories from years long gone bubble up in our minds.
We have honed the past
into a golden world never marred by human
excess.
Historians
know there are exceptions to this ideal.
For men at Valley
Forge, Christmas could have been another day of hunger and misery.
When the armies in blue
or grey along the Rappahannock near Fredericksburg,
Fought
by day and sang in unison by night,
Christmas could have been a day of dread.
The
Dust Bowl seared
© 5 Dec 2005
About the Author
Although
I have done other things, my fame now rests upon the durability of my
partnership with Carl Shepherd; we have been together for forty-two years and
nine months as of today, August 18th, 2012.
Although
I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the
Great Depression. No doubt I still carry
invisible scars caused by that era. No
matter we survived. I am talking about
my sister, brother, and I. There are two
things that set me apart from people.
From about the third grade I was a voracious reader of books on almost
any subject. Had I concentrated, I would
have been an authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.
After
the University of Alabama and the Air Force, I came to Denver. Here I met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s
Bar. Through our early life we traveled
extensively in the mountain West. Carl
is from Helena, Montana, and is a Blackfoot Indian. Our being from nearly opposite ends of the
country made “going to see the folks” a broadening experience. We went so many times that we finally had
“must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and
the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming. Now
those happy travels are only memories.
I was
amongst the first members of the memory writing class. While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does
offer feedback. Also just trying to
improve your writing helps no end.
Carl
is now in a nursing home; I don’t drive any more. We totter on.
No comments:
Post a Comment