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The Pencil Seller
When I was a boy, I used to see an old blind man outside the Kress’s store on Main Street in our town. He would sit on a little chair outside the back entrance, wearing his dark glasses, his white cane propped against his leg. He would hold out a tin cup and would extend a fistful of white pencils in the other hand, all the while hawking his wares with his impeded speech. He would say “PEN-suls! PEN-suls!” over and over. Every once in a while, some benevolent soul would stop and say “I’ll take two,” etc. and drop coins into his cup. The old man would nod in…
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Last Saturday in the Fall
The good news is that Joy Cartwright is feeling much better, and I am grateful. The bad news is that I am feeling pretty crappy. Started feeling very droopy yesterday after, with all those flulike symptoms of dizziness, achy bones, flushed face, sneezing, completed congested head, etc. It’s been a real fun time and I’m trying not to re-gift it to Mrs. Orr. *** Speaking of Mrs. Orr, she took the oldest granddaughters out yesterday for their birthday. They wanted Chinese, and so after they ate, they asked their MeeMaw to take them to a used bookstore they particularly enjoy. Yes, they are definitely our granddaughters with their hunger for…
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Wang Dang…
A short while ago, there was a ruckus on the back porch. The dogs and I went out to investigate, and when I shined my light around, I saw a hunched, gray figure hurrying up the ridge into the woods. All I can say is that if Joy Cartwright and I get awakened in the wee hours because of this interloper and our dogs’ determination to dialogue with him, someone is going to get a piece of firewood laid across the cranium with precision and dispatch. Like livin’ in Nashville up in here… ~ S.K. Orr
- Bluebelle, Church Life, Daily Life, I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation, Jinx, Mrs. Orr, Photographs, Reflections
Paths of Freeze
Upon our second awakening this morning, the sun showed the crushed glass rug of frost all over everything, and my bones felt as if someone had injected crushed glass into the joints. Second awakening? Oh, yes. Our first awakening of the day was at about, ohhhhhh, 0230, when the dogs began snorting around outside our bedroom and demanding some attention. We got up to let ’em out and and see what might be yanking their emotional chains. They ran straight to the maple tree in the back yard and started leaping up on it like trained coon dogs. I shined the flashlight up into the bare branches and expected to…
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Draws Near
From now on, to the end of this blog, I’m going to try to just put it all down as it comes to me, for good or for ill. All I can do is place my memories and my thoughts on the palette, and daub from there. *** I went to the landfill today to dump our accumulated week’s worth of trash. It was pleasant to cross over the mountain, down through the pass and into the valley where Daniel Boone labored and fought, all without a 401(k) or a Facebook page. The mountains still have a tinge of green on them, owing to the presence of good conifers, and…
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Quietus, Hiatus, and Other Us’s
Since returning from our trip home to Texas, I’ve been poleaxed with a deep lethargy, augmented in no small part by the weather. The warmer climes of the Lone Star State were a lovely but too-brief respite from the chill we’ve had since we returned to the farm. This morning it was in the teens and neither of us really warmed up all day, even with the heat pump running constantly (a pox on the house of whatever maladroit conceived of the idea of a “heat” pump….probably an ancestor of whoever designed the modern cars, washing machines, etc.). I’ll observe yet again that the difference between the cold months and…
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Home, Home
We were back home in Texas this past week, and we’re still decompressing, so it’ll be a few days before I post a new one. Suffice it to say the dogs are very happy to be back in their own home and have been spending approximately 2 hours per day romping and rassling, and 22 hours per day sleeping the deepest sleep. Deep sleep to the point where we are envious of them. Ah, to be able to fall down into that sort of restful slumber with nothing to disturb us. I hope all of you are well and having a stress-free season of Thanksgiving Day preparation. ~ S.K. Orr…
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Two Years Gone
Today marks two years since Bluebelle came to live with us. We still marvel at how this came to be. Jinx’s own littermate was abandoned just as she was, several miles from our farm, and for some strange coincidental reason, I just happened to look at the local animal shelter’s website — something I had never done before nor had any reason for doing — and saw the photo of the little girl. We paid a visit to the shelter and within ten seconds knew this was Jinx’s sister. His former owner had told us about Bluebelle and her beautiful markings. We had no idea we would ever have the…
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Like A Star
Like A Star I’m just a little Russian girl, too small to be seen, too still to be spied, too watchful to be calm. Plucked off the slush-choked streets of old Moscow and hurried to a warmer, slightly brighter place, I learned to trust the men, their patient hands, the regular food. I’m just now three years on this tortured orb, and I cannot speak the words of men, but I can moan and I can whimper and I can make my needs known. And the serious men have been so light with me, scent of cucumbers and tea and fish and vodka on their exhalations, kneeling before me to…
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Fall Of Every Year: A Hallowe’en Tale
Fall of Every Year: A Hallowe’en Tale Russell came into the kitchen with his shuffling stomp, his heavy boots spilling crumbs of red clay from their deep tread. The linoleum-covered floor sagged beneath his bulk as he crossed to the table, beneath the dust-draped avocado-green ceiling fixture. The cone of 60-watt light it spilled onto the table was as feeble as his mother-in-law’s voice. Wont grits with yore aigs? she asked around a mouthful of blue smoke. He grunted in response to her bobcat voice and the cigarette dangling from her lips. Russell neither drank nor smoked, but he did allow himself a can of worm-dirt tobacco every couple of…