Echoes of the Past: Stories of a Wondering Man

Stories from my youth were told at the supper table and often continued until bedtime. They were told at social gatherings, and after church. We had no television, little league games, or bowling leagues when I was a child. Adults and kids alike entertained themselves - horseshoes, footraces, pick-up ball games, shooting matches, arm wrestling and telling stories. Some say that story telling is a dying art. Maybe so, but books of fiction are still being written and bought. People like a yarn, and that is the metric by which I wish to be judged. These stories reflect events that occurred between the dying days of the Great Depression and the present day. Insofar as possible, they portray life of the time. Most have a bit of a moral. Literary license has been used to improve readability and to omit details that are not pertinent. Everyone introduced in these stories actually lived. With the exception of my elementary and high school teachers, names of people (and locations) have been changed. Political correctness is eschewed, for it and a good story are mutually exclusive and literally repugnant. It has never ceased to astonish me at how much the world has changed since my Cousin Grace’s funeral in 1938. Although I am optimistic about our Nation’s future, I am ineffably saddened to see how much the significance of our accomplishments as a Nation and society are being belittled daily by the media and those in academia. We could do with more people like Matt Schnell in A Good Boss and with much fewer than those like Gerald McDonald in Come to Grief.