Thursday, January 18, 2018

Rest in Peace, Little Brother. (In Memories) PT. 1

As the title suggests I just received work my brother passed away a few hours ago.  He has been sick for many years for many reasons.  Today a massive heart attack took him out.  Quickly at least.  So, I thought I'd write down a few random memories.

He was 23 years older than me so I really only knew him as an adult.  I guess my earliest memory of him was when I was about two years old.  I had a new tricycle and he took me up to the top of the Wash Rock hill and let me try to ride down by myself.

Now, the hill was not that steep or that far.  But, it was a dirt road and it was pretty rutted so I did not make it very far until the ruts interrupted my journey.

Somewhere around that same time I remember he, our mother and I wading the creek a little way above the Wash Rock.  I had a little, toy windup submarine.  He was showing me how to use it and it disappeared under the creek bank and was never seen again.

Not long after that we moved to a different house just down from the Spicy Gap on Rte 40 a mile or so inside of Martin County.  He used to whittle wooden rocket for me.  He'd cut a notch up near the front of the rocket then used a knotted string tied to a handle and use that to accelerate the wooden rocket to, what for me was immeasurable heights.  

That was where I first ran into the idea of people dying.  I don't remember who it was but my mother took me to the grave site for the funeral and explained to me when people died they were put in a "bury hole".  

Odd, I don't know what it has to do with my brother but it, somehow, seemed to be worth mentioning.  I think it may fit in this set of memories later, though.

We moved to the Spring Knob forestry tower somewhere around when I was four of five years old.  My memories of that place are much cleared and there are many more of them.  I remember my brother and one or two of his friends walking out on the tower beams on the first flight and jumping off to tumble like a paratrooper hitting the ground.  

I remember one day I got fascinated by the sound of the air hissing out of the car tire and just kept trying it until it stopped.  Only had a small "bicycle pump"  but he pumped it up and  never sad a word that I can recall.

The place we lived was a log cabin.  Had one large room for living and sleeping, a reasonable sized kitchen to the left as one faced the house and one other room kind of propped up with posts as it hung out over the slope of the hill.  There was also a front and a tiny back porch.

I recall one time our mother told me to go wake him up for breakfast.  He slept on a couch in the big room.  So I walked up to him, asleep on the sofa, and punched him as hard as I could in the nose.  Bled like a "stuck pig".  He threatened me when the bleeding stopped but I don't remember him doing anything later.

We had a green nineteen fifty sever Chevy which had been under water in the fifty seven flood.  When I was growing up that was the flood every other flood was judged by.  It was the definition of a lemon.  Always something wrong with it.

One day my father griped he "wished it would just roll over the hill".  Next morning the car was not in the parking place.  It was found a mile or so down the road.  Over the hill.  Three guesses what happened to it.

He quit school when he was sixteen so he could go to Mayo Voc-Tech and graduate before he would be eighteen and the tuition went up.  Stood him in good stead I guess.  He was a diesel mechanic in the Navy.  Became a "Master" mechanic for Ford, Chevy and Chrysler later in life.  Also became a very good welder. He was sent to the Great Lakes for training and immediately got double pneumonia and spent his first several days in the Navy in the hospital.  That was the beginning of all his health issues.

When I was six they sent me to live with my grandparents during the week to go to a little one room school called Preston Gap.  On Friday evenings he'd come to pick me up to take me home for the weekends then bring me back on Sunday evenings.

At that point in time all the roads for miles were dirt or in the creek.  One cold night we had not gotten very far on the rutted, old road when the tires slid in a deep rut and the care got "Center Bound".     He had to get out in freezing weather, jack up the car then find rocks to fill up the ruts under the tires.  Don't remember how long it took him but we made it home that night.


Monday, January 8, 2018

Just a Hill in Spring Time

Just a Hill in Spring Time
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A long time ago
I was another person
In another place
A place now gone
Replaced by fading memories.

There was a hill
Behind our house
Where I'd go
To lie in the Sun
In the yellow sedge.

A small space
Among the trees
Open to the sky
Home to one Apple tree
Covered in lovely, white blooms.

A peaceful place
To be alone in body
As well as in my thoughts
just watching the clouds
Drifting like my mind.

I don't think of it often
It was so long ago
I wonder if it is still there
Or has it disappeared
Alongside so many memories.

And when I die,
Will it be gone forever
A fleeting, frozen moment
In time for a kid
Who loved it long ago.