At age 3, I had gone along to the store with my father to buy a couple of quarts of soda. They came in glass bottles at the time. My mother was at home waiting for the beverages. At about the same moment we arrived in the driveway one of my father’s friends pulled up to talk with him about going night hunting for raccoon. I asked if I could bring in the 2 quart bottles for my mother. I muckled on to them as best I could and started toward the front stone steps on my way toward the kitchen door. The first step was the hardest, in more ways than one.. Continue reading →

I remember sitting in the tall grass of our unmown lawn, while the neighbor’s horse named Bill came near the fence and reached under the strand of wire with his huge head. I looked up to see his big lips wrap around the grass, pull it into his yellow stained teeth and chew noisily. Perhaps this was my first look at the reality of the phrase, “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” The photograph just makes me happy to recall how things seemed carefree at the time. As a child, I didn’t realize I was poor. I was being kept warm and evidently well fed in a simple place called home. Other than my baby book, my words are the only documentation to color in the memories I carried all this way. To give them life, I am putting them down on the page and pressing them together between the covers formed by the green mountains.  Continue reading →