Human Life Is Too Difficult For People.

To Eat In The Same Room Where Food Is Cooked - That Is The Way To Thank The Lord For His Abundance.

The Years Rolled Their Brutal Course Down The Hill Of Time. Still Poor, My Clothes Still Smelling Of The Horse Barn, Still Writing Those Doubtful Poems Where Too Much Emotion Clashed With Too Many Words.

Other Families Bought Automobiles; We Had A Horse-headed Hitching Post In Front Of Our House And Drove Horses.

Touch Was Important. The Evening Of The Third Of July We Would Go Around The Neighborhood And Look At The Fireworks Others Had Bought, Taking Them Out Of The Brown Paper Sack And Handling Them Cautiously As If They Were Precious Stones. There Was Envy When We Saw Sacks With More In Them Than We Had.

I Grew Up In The Prolonged Survival Of The Great Age Of The Horse, With Harness And Saddle And Sleigh Bells And Horse Pictures, Not As Antiques But The Facts Of Our Lives.