Category: Holding onto the Past
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Along The Red Tavern Road
In the northwest edge of the Adirondack Park is a lonely road. It winds through the forest connecting a highway intersection with a small hamlet that sits beside a waterfall and a small dam. This is a place founded on the lumber industry. Now, it’s a country for hunters, trappers, snowmobilers, fisherman and retired…
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John Tumbledown’s House
I pushed the button on the camera and heard the shutter snap. I captured my son midway through his pirouette in the field, in the field in front of the old farmhouse. Something caught my eye just as the mirror flipped up in the camera. Something in the farmhouse. I lowered the Pentax slowly from…
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A Solitary Child in the Woods
You won’t find it in the guidebooks. You probably won’t find it at all without sitting in a dusty room of a Historical Society and doing your homework. Not many people know it exists. I found it because I had a decades-old topographic map in my possession. And still, I found it by accident. The…
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To Betty: An Alpha and Omega Life
On a Tuesday Betty sat in the passenger’s seat of her car in our driveway. Her husband, Bob, was behind the wheel. They took our Netflix DVD (we share an account) and drove home. On Wednesday, she became unresponsive at her kitchen table. She suffered a stroke. On Friday, she was in the ICU for…
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The Fortune Teller on the Wall
Her eyes do not see my face, my grey beard, my grey hair or my imperfect eyesight. No, but she can see my very soul. She can speak to me without moving her porcelain lips. I feel that she can see my past and my future. Will she tell me why my heart…
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Forever Janis
If you’re busted flat in Baton Rouge…then pull out your harp from your dirty red bandanna…and play the blues, softly. Pull out your file cabinet and check that your Elvis and Marilyn stamps are safe. Make room for another lost soul. Today, the Janis Joplin Forever Stamp is on sale at the Post Office. Why…
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The Stranger at the Other End of Front Street
I can feel the soft cool breeze blowing through my room from the Susquehanna River behind me. I am sitting at a small desk writing this post. My wife is sleeping deeply on the bed to my right. I am facing Front Street. The trucks speed past the town on the Southern Tier Expressway (Future…
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The Resurrection of Forgotten Love
In my youth, I loved with an intensity that burned hot and blinding-white, like a strip of Phosphorus. It consumed me and took control of my personal and private self. All my waking moments were devoted to devising ways to make this love, love me in return. In this vain attempt, I failed. How can…
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27 Years Ago Today
To recall something that happened over a quarter of a century ago, in detail…minute detail, is a remarkable gift. Sometimes, I can’t recall who won the World Series a month after the last pitch. Who ran for Vice-President two elections ago? How old am I? I have to stop and think about many of these…
patrickjegan 