'These Hills.........Will Always Keep Calling You Back"

by Tom B Thu Sep 25, 2014 10:30 am

That has been many years ago. She is gone as are everyone else except my sister and me. I borrowed her line that I've since learned has been repeated from many elders to a departing precious soul. I've been blessed with wanderlust while my sister has been blessed with roots. You can take the boy out of the country but ...I've learned, If he was an idiot there he will still be an idiot when he awakes from his errant ways.

I got into writing just to make a record of some of my wilder inspirations and offbeat actions. I thank God and my English Professor at Tech for: 1. Instilling a Spirit of Destiny 2. Making me write 350-500 words (Outside of class) up and above the regular syllabus requirements. It took me 5-8 years to appreciate it and another 20 to begin to see how to use it.

It took becoming a 24/7 caregiver to slow me down and take the time first to investigate my Family Tree, My DNA and reconciling the two. Now, I do those two and write most weeks but when the mood hits me it becomes a passion that can't be fed enough to satisfy. I started with short stories more in the Memoir accounting of my fractured childhood and later travels. I collected those stories and bound them together more or less chronologically. I titled it...What Else: "These Hills." Along the bottom, ""Will Always Keep Calling You Back." In the middle of the page I used a fog shrouded view of New River Gorge taken not far from my Sister's Summersville home.

My next project was a novel that loosely described life as I recalled parts of it along the Ohio River county in which I was raised. Sadly, I shared parts of it with so called friends who found it entertaining to share passages at the local hair salon. They seemed to have had a rush to discover who all of these made up characters were in my novel. (Lost a few friends over that one. Now, I can never go home again.) Holy Cow!!! What a mess. I asked, "Don't you know a novel from a memoir?" Too late, they already got it all figured out. Those hair driers can excite brain synapses to delirium.