Maybe Mama was that strong because she was born to harsher times: Times when the curfew laws were enforced with the long horse whip; times when thicknin' gravy really made with milk was served as a celebration; times of violence when threatening men with guns at the door were in deadly anger met.

Half Choctaw, she seldom spoke; once she even knocked me across the room for failing to hear her nod. I learned to watch her eyes when I entered her presence after being gone a short time. Fierce and angry waves often heaved in scathing turmoil from azure depths within her eyes and bade me tread lightly. Even at the best of times, words frothing with anger could explode like pistol shots from her churning tongue.

Only once did she find time to tell us how she came to marry Daddy. Mama said Aunt Ruth stopped her one night out on the darkened porch. "There's a new man on Snake Island, and he's MINE!"

"No he's not," Mama bristled instantly. "He's MINE!"

I was about seven when Mama told us the tale. She ended the short narrative with a sad shaking of her head, and the ebbing words still sigh inside my soul. "I've wished a thousand times I had let Ruth have the old fool!"

Me and Lib glanced knowingly at each other. We had been wishing the very same thing. Daddy made us work; Mama made us candy. Just as simple as that, we knew Mama was the good guy. So, no matter how hot it got, we gladly followed her anywhere she went in the blistering sun. If we wanted to go she said I had to pull Lib in the wagon, and as we struggled to keep up with her down those dusty, winding roads, I'd cry out as I lunged against the wagon tongue, "Mama, Mama. Wait on me. I'm a going too!"

Those days are gone; with my youth they have fled. Mama's work is done. Her once piercing blue eyes now tug inwards with constant pain. Once she could heave tubs of boiling water up by herself alone. Now she needs our help to glance out upon the quay.

The curling currents of time are snatching her away; away from us into the sunset; the sunset that comes but once to man, to no more be. The white-frocked priests in our glimmering glass temples have given up. After doing their best, Mama's doctors have told us to stand helplessly aside and let the waves of time hurl her beyond our ken. They say there is no need for Mama to struggle on like she does as her life seeps away. "She is only making it worse. There is no way she can win."

The wave of her life is wringing out like a breaker against the writhing shore. And no man helpless, can stem that darkened tide. But Mama never quit on a thing, and I know she won't give up the fight now.

As I gaze beyond her hospital bed, through her window to the open sea, I find myself wondering if all of life is like that vast ocean with waves of time throbbing beneath the mariner's moon. Are we all tramps poised forever like a speck of flotsam, each perched on our own frothing wave? Won't my life and yours yet erase, like Mama's, upon some unknown shore, always reached too soon.

All those ancient mariners of Mu, Crete, and Greece; we know they once frolicked ahead of us on life's same tossed ocean score. Like us, they also felt securely blessed while their history reached a billowed crest. Yet we see them here no more. No eye can pierce the shallows where their shades are now so humbly beached.

Only our faith in God whispers what haven awaits the soul, or what silent bay is ever reached. Just as all those lives on ancient waves ahead of us have crashed in with crescending roars and clawed defiant their way, clinging in death against all the distant shores, so too will our own lives soon vanish from view.

The currents of eternity are sweeping Mama closer, ever closer to the battered cove, as part after defiant part in her body flinches from the stern commands she yet snaps their way. Her dim-lit eyes have clearly seen the reefs that churn the waters flooding home. And though I'd do anything to row her backward against the ripping tide, she hears the siren calling from those boulders dark and green.

Mama's almost gone now. She is too limp to hold even in my arms to weep. I can only kiss once more her troubled brow. Then as another moment together is ripped forever aside I hear those ancient words rumble again now, pleading from my longing heart inside --- "Mama, Mama. Wait for me.
     I'm a going too!"

the end 

And then, we have these essays in the GENERAL ESSAYS category which don't seem to fit anywhere in particular:

By Reason Alone..  That Roosevelt can do no wrong is Burroughs’s opinion; and that Burroughs is always right is Roosevelt’s opinion.  Both are agreed that animals do not reason.  They assert that all animals below man are automatons and perform actions only of two sorts—mechanical and reflex—and that in such actions no reasoning enters at all.  They believe that man is the only animal capable of reasoning and that ever does reason.

***

No man is an island, is an old saying that was meant to say that no man stood alone, but needed help from others, and gave strength to others.  But, here is the story of an island that was a man.  In the short history of time, there was one island that was a monument to a single man.  It starts out like a fairy tale.. Once upon a time there was a barren island.    This almost insignificant little man was sent off to this barren island and turned it into a mirror of his soul and the fulfillment of his vision.  One stick at a time he turned his barren island into a work of lasting, world-renowned beauty and peace, an island where the nightingales sang songs of singular wonder ne'er found elsewhere since this little man set down roots on a barren island, and bloomed. 

**

Most of man's dreams are based on false assumptions. We dream of loping free with the wolves, but really don't like fleas. We dream of the security that lambs must feel, but don't want to be sheared. We dream of being lions, but gag at eating raw meat. We dream of being loved, but can't see the way or take the time to make ourselves lovable.

Was There EVER A Man On The Moon?  How far can reason alone take us from the beaten path of acknowledged history?

***

RIGHT CLICK on this one.  LIVES ON THE LINE, Americans can be proud of today's soldiers.

A Definition Of History by Leo Tolstoy gives us yet another peg to hang our ratiocinations upon.

**

Definition of Art?

**

Charity never faileth, especially when our hearts fill to overflowing with charity.

**

Global Warming freezes thermometers 

**

Man, the Meanie of the Planet.  This is a high resolution pdf document so you can print it out and hang it on the wall.  Be sure to RIGHT Click the link, and save it to your computer.

**

Are we forever Doomed?  An essayic poem by Rudyard Kipling

*

I see Grandpa. He's calling out for me.

God Does Not Fit  -- by Lance Nalley

*

SOCIALISM, Slavery and Tyranny by R. J. Harris

**

Deliberate Fraud:  Evolutionists resort to the lowest forms of fraud in order to gain more believers.

**

When Theories fail.. Petty science teachers can rage until doomsday that no two snowflakes are identical, but until every snowflake that has ever fallen or ever shall fall is matched against every other snowflake that has already fallen or ever shall try to fall -- the identical snowflake theory remains just a theory resting in lolly-gagging land.

That first day of school  

**

A Break From Boredom  --  by Lance Nalley

**

INVICTUS... Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit, from pole to pole 

**

The gods and Heroes of the Ancient World 

**

Staunch, steadfast, loyal and true.  What better friend can a man have?

***

**

Friendship, by Ralph Waldo Emerson.  A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs, The world uncertain comes and goes, The lover rooted stays. I fancied he was fled, And, after many a year, Glowed unexhausted kindliness Like daily sunrise there. My careful heart was free again, -- O friend, my bosom said, Through thee alone the sky is arched, Through thee the rose is red, All things through thee take nobler form, And look beyond the earth, And is the mill-round of our fate A sun-path in thy worth. Me too thy nobleness has taught To master my despair; The fountains of my hidden life Are through thy friendship fair.

**

This Web is MY Web  

***

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

The Moon on Six Pence Uncle Bob was an unforgettable character who traveled the world on bargain rates and golden smiles!

**

The Almost Good Housekeeping monograph is a good excuse for the harried homemaker to put off until tomorrow all those burdens of yesteryear, and quit trying so hard.

**

Sex before the Sax:  The first thing I learned about Lois was she had a label for being froward.  Kids at school said she had had sex with Alfred.  Not long after I arrived, another boy came forward to admit he had made a score at her door.

**

Old Rattler, and the King Snake. 

Down and Dirty with Darwin  Evolutionists are now feeling so battered that university professors advise their students not to discuss this theory with non-believers.  "Sounds like a religious cult to me," say some.

Pleasures of the open fire: The Fireplace Revisited.

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