Letter to an old and dear friend

The late Lewis B. Taylor

 

 

Dear Lew,

I’m typing this on the end of a file called Letters to Lew. In re-reading the previous ones, I see I have sermonized right often. Sorry. Except that after today’s letter dated 10 May ’04, you’re likely to get another one.

 

Your letter: did you keep a carbon copy?—has several good first lines for poems. Or prose, essays, perhaps. Here’s one: “When you don’t know where you’re going/ any road will get you there.” Notice how inherently rhythmic it is: two feet per line. With a little tweaking, the first line of your letter could go with it: “Not that I have anything to say (anywhere to go), but we shall proceed from here and see how I saw it this time (how far a road will lead).” You have a way with words/ phrases/ sentences, as well as a great, understated, wry sense of humor. USE IT OR LOSE IT, LEW!!

 

How would your life change if, as your last line, page one, says: “I have been here herding kids, dogs, cats, and house,” if that’s what life dealt you RIGHT NOW? Can you see yourself pulling in, breathing deeply, tightening your metaphorical belt and getting on with your life/ responsibility/ purpose? Brainstorm what you could/ would do to take back the rest of your life.

 

The way I see it, you have given up. You seem to have no hope. Is that what aging does to one? Aging unhappily? I guess at a certain year Old Man Age snares us with his cane-around-the-ankle-around-the-eyes weaknesses. Just hope I can pelt him/ her/ it long enough to get done what I have to do, and then do a little of what I’d like to. Which is . . . I don’t know now, but I’ll know when it’s time.

 

Thank you for your kind words, speaking of aging. Your eyesight must have slipped. I have wrinkles and have gained more than a pound in ten years, but thanks anyway. I knew looking young would one day act in my favor. When I first began teaching, I had to buy cord golf dresses and sling-heeled wedgies to look older than the high schoolers in my classes. Now, that’s gotta be genes, for I didn’t wear makeup, couldn’t afford cool clothes, etc. So, yes, a lot of it’s inherited. Mom at 92 still goes to family parties and gatherings, and church. She plans on attending the family reunion the last of this month.

 

You didn’t answer my question about whether or not Lucidity Larks (round-robin poetry critiques) was helping you. Guess there could be other reasons for participating, right?

 

Doris F. has put their house on the market; as soon as they can, they are moving back to Texas to a retirement village. Her husband has Alzheimer’s, and they’re both in their 80s. She’s too small and fragile in case he gets violent. She walks a tightrope with him—a PhD educator, world traveler, etc.

 

Thanks for thinking about me. I think about you at times, too, and smile. Which reminds me, I have an unfinished poem. Dare I finish it and send it through the Larks???

That would be a lark, huh?

GUEST COLUMN on folklore adages

Will Rogers inspires recollections of    
                                   childhood sayings
                                             by Lew Taylor

         Will Rogers is famous for a number of his activities, not the least of which is his origin of quotable sound bites of encapsulated wisdom. One of the most quoted, “I never met a man I didn’t like,” can be a source of wonder and dispute. Another one of my favorites: “The trouble is, we know so many things that ain’t so.”

         History has proved him right on that one, but it set me to wondering about the things we knew in my youth that seem to have no basis in fact. We knew those things with a certainty, and since there was no one to dispute them around in our mountain home at the head of the creek, they must have been true; at least in those days as far as we were concerned.

         Take, for instance, “If a turtle bites you, he won’t let go until it thunders.” Now, on our trips we often caught turtles of various types and sizes. Since getting the hook out of the mouth of a turtle could be risky, we frequently cut the hook off the line before we dispatched him with a rock.
         Thus, we never knew anyone who tested the premise; that is, no one we knew was ever bitten by a turtle—which was good, because it could be a long time between thunderstorms.

          Another, while we’re on the creek bank. “Snakes won’t or can’t, bite under water.” Thus we confidently waded the streams known to harbor water snakes of two or three kinds, knowing we could see them swimming toward us on the surface and beat them off. And, of course, they did not pose a danger under water.
         Never mind that the Dawkins boy was bitten on one toe wading Big Cedar Creek. He must have stepped on its head, because snakes don’t bite under water. No one thought to ask how they caught the fish and frogs on which they thrived. It was just reassuring to know they don’t bite under water.

          Another well-known fact in our mountain home was that eating fish and drinking milk at the same meal would make us sick. How we came to know that I cannot surmise, but no one at our house ever ate fish and drank milk at the same meal. None of us got sick afterward. That was all the proof one should need for that wisdom.

         Of course, a lot of our quotes to live by from my childhood proved themselves valuable. One of those wise pieces of advice, “Let sleeping dogs lie,” proved its worth in some way almost every day.

        Some sayings have passed into cliché, or common folk lore. “Don’t take any wooden nickels.” I had no problem with that one, as I do not recall seeing any wooden nickels, although there must be some historical event that gave rise to it.

        “Not enough room to swing a cat by the tail without getting fur in your mouth” always sounded like good advice, too, but I never saw anyone try to swing a cat by the tail in a larger space to check the need for the adage.

        The real gems from childhood, though, were all the things we knew that weren’t so.   

        Will Rogers was more than a pretty trick roper.

 Lew Taylor is retired from the Foreign Service and is a poet living in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

c 2012 by  Lew Taylor and Pat Laster dba lovepat press