Hadn't been up there in awhile
(with all this summer heat)
and I turned on the AC to
cool things a bit, and
opened the window
for fresh air
I sat on my rugged steel GI
surplus bed, that probly
some general...Ike or Patton,
or maybe Bradley had
slept on, during some campaign,
maybe the ETO
Sitting there, on that bunk,
piled with quilts at one end,
my eyes naturally went to
the wall to
the big six by six raw pine
bookshelf I had hammered
together myself (wth skill.
rustic-like) and the worn K-BAR
rakishly stabbed at an
angle into one end, right into
the wood....cool...
At the other end of the bookshelf
was my aging
collection of
a dozen-and-a-half Zane Grey
books, acquired back
in the sixties, for likely $4.95 per
volume...
Young Mil first read ZG back when
he was thirteen and in the
eighth grade...my CHS friend Mardis
lived two blocks away, on
Edwards Street, and I borrowed
his family's Zane's over time,
maybe ten volumes...read 'em all
I lived that summer of '47
on a horse out some'ers
in the west, riding around to
ranches, and meeting
beautiful maidens, and falling
in love with 'em--- every one!
Tales, tales...of the old West...
rugged cowboys, high.
mountain canyons and passes,
campfires...
beans out of a skillet,
sleeping under the stars,
to the smell of purple sage,
and experiencing all
old Wetzel's vicissitudes...
"And what might yore name be,
pardner?"
"Wal, it MIGHT be Jones, but
it ain't."
"As shore as God made little apples,"
it was a great time, and great
reading, and WWII was over...
If you can find a cuss word...
or an f-word, in any ZG novel,
I will buy you a Big Mac, with
double-meat!
What thrilled am eighth grader,
with no woman yet,
was when that cowboy and his girl
were being chased by the
mean old wicked villains, and
they headed lickety-split
thru that only tight mountain pass,
(on their faithful steeds)
and toppled rocks and blocked
that pass forever...remember that?!
Well, they lived forevermore
in bliss, and no one
could bother them, ever again.
Wonderful !!!
So went my thinking, upstairs
in my attic, this morning
sitting there on
Patton's surplus campaign bed...
....tempted to open that can of
Potato Soup for breakfast---
but ah, sometime during the summer
someone ate all my Ritz Crackers.
Coffee's still warm, in my Ozark Trail...
*******************
MIL
17 July 17
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