“…And so she died at last. But she left a sizeable legacy in sorted nails!

1. My foray as an “author.” My only book… Tales from my (misspent?) youth. You might enjoy. The following “excerpts” are meant to tease you into checking it out at:. http://bwpowell.com/george/index.html

2. “He was chewing a cigar stub (more - much more, anon), and swatting flies as they droned around the open office in the summer heat. Hooded, but piercing eyes took me in at a glance, then fixated somewhere in space above my head…” …”He paused to let this sink in. The flies, sort of a third party to this discussion, seemed unimpressed by this sinister achievement and continued to crawl across his bald pate. He took his time. Vigorous chewing for several minutes on his unlit cigar resulted in its perceptible shortening; only vaguely did I become aware that he was actually eatinghis cigar and not smoking it... Two dark furrows ran down from each corner of his mouth and disappeared in the jowls below. In time, I came to know these permanent nicotine waterways and his preferred snack habits, but at this juncture these idiosyncrasies excited little attention…”

3. “Andy opens the door to the attic...as memory suddenly returns to me… Horror scene!  The wooden tubs have all burst.  Herring eyeballs and other parts too fierce to mention all gleam in the sudden light through the barrel cracks.  Salt crystals glitter on the floor in dried-up pools of brine.  Brilliant green moss of some kind waves tentacles in the hot attic air - green grassy moss growing all over the wrack and ruin of the wooden barrels... ”

4. “And then at last, he beheld the Cottage!  But what surreal effect the new inhabitants had wrought upon it!  For there - upon the roof - by God! - was a monstrous, baggy, saggy, broken-springs-and-all - gigantic couch!  A couch, moreover, that was leaking and dripping a steady torrent of bright orange water …”

5. “ Pretty soon we had dozens and dozens of mortally-wounded but still viable frogs bleeding through the sack and in the boat all over us and everywhere. The bourbon helped dull our sensibilities a lot of course... “

6. “ So he found employment for Grandma: she was put to work sorting nails for the many different construction and building projects that were always afoot. George had bought a number of kegs of mixed nails at an auction some time before. To facilitate their later use, George set Grandma up with coffee cans and trays in the sun parlor and day after day she sat and rocked and sorted and hummed her way toward that inevitable end that awaits all flesh…” “…And so she died at last. But she left a sizeable legacy in sorted nails!      They took Grandma back to Missouri to be laid at rest midst familiar surroundings - as those writers of yesteryear used to delicately put it. Details of Grandma's last rites, however, only came out bit by bit in the years that lay ahead. In time, however, I came to understand that Grandma had been delivered back to the old farmstead where she lay in state for some indeterminate time - till the family decided it was, indeed, time! - so they finished up - and buried Grandma on the farm themselves. No civil authorities were brought into the matter, no papers filed, no death notices given. The undertaker had been paid in Greenwich and the body dispatched westward so far as he was concerned…”

7. “It was a hot, very hot day in mid-summer, I remember. George's "viewing" was in a Funeral Home up in Ridgefield, just off the main street downtown. The service was simple…” “…There were a lot of new faces. But some old ones, too. "Sarge" was there and Tony-the-Mexican, greyer now. He had his pants on. Of the newer factotums who had followed in my footsteps, even as I had followed those worthies who preceded me, there were a few I knew... "Tinker" a short, wiry little guy who ran a blacksmith shop up at the bend in the road ("Tinker Shop") and who inherited George's great big anvil (I'd give my eye tooth yet to have gotten that - 300 pounder at least). And "The Lugger" or Harry Mills - a local garbage collector and general all round good hand in a fight, at a picnic, or a drinking bout (which latter later did him in, it seems)…” “….So we buried him there and left him. Left him and cleared out one and all. Mom sold the place, his goods were scattered to the wind …” “….I went back to the cemetery once. There was a tiny little stone there. All it said on it was "Sgt. Rhine". I have tried herein to extend that too-short epitaph: we buried a giant that day. His like will come no more…”