𝑾𝒂𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘮 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 Getting me Back (The Voices Within) 𝘗𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘰𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 . 🫶🏼
“ All eyes were on Wall Street, but truth be told, the market crash paled in comparison to the Navarro County drought.”
Black Thursday was no different. Margin calls and ticker-talk; it was all a foreign language to the average man of Navarro county. New York, Chicago and any place not adjacent to the dying province could have just as well been another country – another planet.
Suicides headlined newspapers across the globe. Although desperate men (and women) chose gas or bullets; poison or tablets to avoid poverty the stories of men leaping from windows sold more papers and it seemed to pacify the masses, at least for a while.
EIGHT MORE TAKE THE PLUNGE.
The headlines went on and on. Tales of a brutal bearish market where stock prices were plummeting and fortunes were being dissolved. The days grew long and the soup lines grew longer…
From Famine & Fortune (the Sharecropper’s Son) Available on sale at your favorite retailer.
And psssst Google still has it listed at 98¢
Happy Friday Y’all. 🍻
On this day forty-eight years ago…
In the spring of 1977 I was in the early prime of my teenage years; she was in the latter prime of her teens.
Life was stretched out before us like a long, hot summer with an endless amount of options- of opportunities and roads to be traveled.
Could she imagine that [on that beautiful spring day] that she’d never see summer?
I don’t think so, I know I couldn’t.
Did anyone predict a (legally blind) man would be driving a little too fast in a residential area?
No, none of us could foresee the future on that dreadful day of the accident.
Nor could we ever have envisioned the short days ahead.
The hazy hours of hope and disbelief and denial until …
Until there was nothing left to do but mourn.
Oddly enough (or not) I still mourn.
The grief is not near as raw and not quite as heart wrenching as it was forty-eight years ago.
It’s more like a constant dull throbbing you learn to live with and usually ignore …
But sometimes it sneaks past the smiles and laughs of grandchildren, family and friends.
Sometimes the grief creeps in among life, among the daily routines…
and all I can do is sit with the bittersweet memories.
This personal little tidbit is what inspired the writing of Odd Man Out, a short story that can be found in the collection Once Upon a Dead Gull. Or read it in the larger story collections of More or Short Stories & Such.
Except from Odd Man Out
My mother used to say I never met a stranger. I reckon she was right but that didn’t keep me from feeling like a foreigner.
I was the peculiar child that didn’t look quite like the others; a raucous summer born among winter babies. I cared too much and cried too easy and sometimes I forgot that I wasnt everybody’s mother.
I like to believe that the spring equinox marks the actual New Year. It just makes more sense with all of the new life and new activities going on in nature.
I believe we can find the same newness within ourselves if we let nature guide us.
So cheers 🥂!! Here’s to new life, new growth, and a happy HaPpY new year.
P. S. Speaking of new … I have new book covers in the works. I’m kinda looking forward to these new creations.
Yesterday was Thanksgiving. I didn’t have time to post my annual Pilgrim’s Prayer as I was up to my arse in dinner preparation and then a bunch of celebration. Whew! I am grateful.
It was another Thursday and another Thanksgiving holiday in the USA. So the earth has not quite spun off her axis; some of her inhabitants may have but a lot of us are here today so let’s make the most of it.
I have shared the following bit of prose in one form or another for … I don’t know… decades maybe?
Occasionally I vary the wording but the sentiment is always the same, so without further ado, here we go…
A Pilgrim’s Prayer
Once upon a time – a long, long time ago (before Black Friday) Thanksgiving was a celebration of harvest and a time to give thanks. Hence the name thanksgiving.
I don’t think the early pilgrims had a Super Walmart, a Sears or a Best Buy. They had never heard of an indie distributor called Smashwords (yikes, imagine how scary that might have sounded)
I’m sure they didn’t have the www to answer all of you questions or a beastly giant named Amazon— yet somehow they managed.
Can you imagine having to grow your own food and prepare it without the help of of a search engine like google?
When did they have time? Where did they get their Stove Top stuffing and who canned the yams and plucked the turkeys? How did those crazy pilgrims do it?
I didn’t really know any of those pilgrims but I did see a John Wayne movie once. John knew a pilgrim when he saw one. He seemed to know a lot of pilgrims but that was a long time ago too.
I propose we are all pilgrims, each one of us on a journey of sorts. Our own personal pilgrimage…
Aren’t we are all looking for something? Be it a quest for self-confirmation, truth, a cure, enrichment, comfort, a friend, a lover, a job, a meal or a place to lay our weary head at the end of another day.
I believe life is a journey, or at least it should be. It would be terrible to think we were just flailing through this experience; killing time on this giant floating gumball while waiting for the next Black Friday specials.
I believe we all have one destination though we travel different roads and I trust that we have choices.
Hopefully we will choose well. On the occasion we do take a wrong turn [and we will from time to time] I pray we have enough sense and humility to stop and seek direction… to reassess our route and to be considerate in our voyage.
So here’s wishing all of you pilgrims a Happy, Happy Thanksgiving from the Hill house and may we all, whatever road we’re on, take time to look ahead, pause and bow our head in thanks.
My personal prayer:
I pray our good seeds of hope, humility, toil and courage produce abundantly; that love and kindness grow wild like the weeds of early spring – fruitful and undeterred. And may our harvest be rich with wisdom and discernment.
Thank you Father, The Creator of all things, for this day and all it holds. Thank you for the days past, and Father forgive me for my wrong turns. Thank you for the day to come and guide me to make better choices. Thank you for all the pilgrims in my life – for those who’ve gone ahead and the ones that come behind and for those who read this prayer. And Thank You Father for the beacon that lights my way.
In Jesus name, Amen.
BTW Thanksgiving & John Wayne (A Pilgrim’s Prayer) is also in Getting Me Back (The Voices Within)
It all started with a simple photograph of an old dilapidated door. Throw in an ounce of imagination & tada!
Happy Friday Y’all.
Torn [first] from the pages of Horror Writer’s Association Poetry Volume 1
DID YOU SHAKE HIS HAND –?
the hand of a man’s man?
Did you see how his eyes searched the space around him as the world grew smaller?
Did you learn the secrets of Africa or discuss his tomes over drinks?
Of course not.
You could not for we were mere children –
our wedding day marking the twenty second anniversary of his exodus… his rise to immortality.
He won the Nobel Prize for Literature the year you were born – did you know that?
I was but two months in the womb when he placed the beloved twelve-gauge inside his mouth and obliterated the ciphering pheasants once and for all.
Did you see how he caressed her?
How her cold, soft metal against his finger was as pacifying as the perfect daiquiri… how she (his beloved) alas cured him of the demons.
In a flash she rooted them loose one by one
from their hiding place – a place liquor nor currents could mole; a cavern so deep no joule or watt could grasp.
Ahh, but she did.
She exorcized them, set them to flight riding on soft grey tissue laden with hemochromatosis and fragments of bone.
Christ might have offered the fiends a swine but not her or better yet not him…
A sacrifice for the Bay of Pigs?
It was all such folly—such unholy madness for a simple man and a literary saint.
*Hemingway’s Beloved was republished in Getting Me Back ( The Voices Within)
For hopes that hung on a chicken bones
For hearts that lived in chains
For pods of green that died unknown
While waiting for the rain
For dreams left bare on empty prayer
For souls that wished in vain
For tears unshared in mute despair
While waiting for a change
For you and I and all mankind
For worlds where peace was slain
For faith and mind no man can bind
We wait and wait again.
Remember, it’s National Poetry Month. Get out there & enjoy the journey.
Poem from Getting me Back (The Voices Within)
Well we are in the final hours of Women’s History Month or Herstory as it’s been announced daily for the last 31 days.
Every year, March is designated Women’s History Month by presidential proclamation. The month is set aside to honor women’s contributions in American history.
I guess that’s a good thing. Either way, here’s my annual contribution in all her glory.
The poem below was inspired by the sage advice I received years ago from an elderly lady who truly fought to make a difference in the role (and treatment) of women in society. I feel she made a historical impact by influencing the small groups around her. She certainly left an impression with me.
I won’t name her because her M.O was to act subtly and not bring attention to herself. Surprisingly she got a lot accomplished with her (ur-um) antics. RIP A
We did not burn our bras but wore them proudly; Holding–supporting–glorifying the mammary glands that would feed the next generation;
For the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.
We did not give animated voices to our vaginas for the world to hear but let them speak in secret whispers that moved mountains.
We did not make a spectacle in the streets to prove our equality For we knew in our hearts [already] that we were superior.
The above poem is from Getting Me Back (The Voices Within)
Happy Friday y’all & remember tomorrow starts National Poetry Month.
An old man once told me, “Saint Patrick ran the snakes out of Ireland and now they rule the world.”
I thought I would share that belief along with a little history. Oh, and a little poem.
St. Patrick’s Day, feast day (March 17) of St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland. Born in Roman Britain in the late 4th century, he was kidnapped at the age of 16 and taken to Ireland as a slave. He escaped but returned about 432 CE to convert the Irish to Christianity. By the time of his death on March 17, 461, he had established monasteries, churches, and schools. Many legends grew up around him—for example, that he drove the snakes out of Ireland and used the shamrock to explain the Trinity.
Source: Brittanica
Poem by Janna Hill.
The Real Janna Hill in 