When it is the 1950s and you are five years old, the son of a sharecropper, when you are an adventurous little kid, when the occasional whack of a hickory stick against your behind does not deter you from ignoring your mother’s instructions … sometimes you might take things a little too far.
I was that five-year-old kid.
Read MoreI can remember a beautiful morning, walking through the park, birds singing, sun shining. On that day a woman approached me from behind. I heard her and turned, then stepped off the path out of her way. She wore sunglasses, with head down, hat pulled over her forehead, some sort of music blaring into her ears through tiny headphones. She was speed-walking or something like that. She did not acknowledge my presence, just sped past me, as though I was not there.
I stood beside that trail, feeling sorry for her, as she hurried out of sight. On this beautiful morning out in nature, her total focus was on something else. Every single thing that I experienced, things that pleased my eyes, pleased my ears, pleased all my senses … she probably didn’t even notice them. I thought to myself, she could have gotten everything she wanted from that walk on an exercise bike in her home, and would not have had to drive to the park.
Read MoreWhat really took place in that little town in France is a tiny unrecorded speck of history. My father’s memory may have been clouded by his angst or his desire to forget. Over sixty years ago my father told me a story. My own mind has since suffered mightily and my memory has sometimes proven faulty, including a few times when a previous creative effort impersonated an actual memory.
I can only tell you what I remember … or what I think I remember.
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