BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE MAN IN THE STORE. The old glass door opened, then closed. The air was air-conditioned cool, smelling faintly of mothballs. Long tables stretched far to the back, tables upon which were stacked work shirts, undershirts, slacks, work pants, blue jeans. The long-reaching walls of the store were lined with shelves —…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… BLEAK SUN. A winter sun set fire to the west and I stopped. For a moment, time stilled. The living room windows were dirty. The windows have needed cleaning for a season or two. Little time for that in the treadmill of surviving, responding, reacting. There are journalism notes to be thrown…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… BENDING MEMORY TIME. The white bread is nearly gone from the shelves, along with the cases of hamburger at the meat counter, the mounds of tomatoes and onions and peppers and avocados from the produce section, and the chili and pinto beans from the canned food aisle. Fortunately, I score a pint…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… OLD FRENCH BRICKS. I remember the summer’s light dappled through the urban tree canopy of maple and birch and ginkgo, the summer sky a patchy blue over St. Louis, the old doors blue, red, green and white, each stoop, each 19th century doorway, leading to another home, another series of lives and…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… DARK TOWN SNOW. The painting hangs in the gallery, testament to a thousand small towns, a thousand Americas across the winter, a thousand winter nights. The weathered, lonely red bricks of an easily overlooked downtown, the black of the sky, white snow piled on old wooden steps. Unseen street lamp illuminates the…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… BURNT WOOD PRAYERS. The full wolf moon rises slowly in the early evening’s eastern sky. Last light of day and the Ozarks are shades of rust and umber, red and lemon yellow, the sky that pale creamy blue of early winter. Too daylight yet for stars. Only the moon can be seen,…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… A GREEN CHRISTMAS. “A green Christmas makes a full graveyard,” goes the old mountain saying. It is an old Appalachian omen, dating back likely to old Britain. But Vance Randolph recorded the saying in the Ozarks too and the words have echoed in my mind the past several days. Days in which…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… ONCE UPON A CHRISTMAS. The wind was a ragged squall line in the dark, blowing hard over the Missouri Ozarks, dropping temperatures some 30 degrees not long after the sun — a distant orange ball — had passed beyond misty western clouds. The longest night of the year is upon us. The…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE SHIPS & THE STARS. “I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by…” And I remember a long ago and cold December evening, standing, ready for bed, barefoot, wearing one…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… COMMON CATHEDRALS. The limestone cliffs on Highway 165 near Table Rock Mountain tower above the road and above the lake which flows, ribbon-like, far below. Brief afternoon sun highlights the bluff, etching ancient karst rock in warm relief. Cathedral walls in nature are easy enough to overlook on a busy schedule —…