04/15/07
My father turned 90 today. There was a party at his church, and many members of the community showed up. One old friend brought a dinner from the Community Hall Annual Chicken Feed for my father. Lots of people signed a large card, and even included money. One of the organizers of the event gave an amusingly apt gift: a pack of Cherry Cokes! My father has a passion for only one soft drink, really, and that's Cherry Coke. (Of course, he remembers the Fountain version of this drink, from days of yore. There are few fountain bars left.) I met some of my cousins, old and new, and talked with neighbors and relatives from the area.
Robert Michael Pyle stopped by, and gave my father a signed copy of his new book, Sky Time in Gray's River. He added a very nice inscription.
Bob spent a fair amount of time mingling with the nice crowd, and then left as the party started to wind down. But he had noticed me talking to my aunt, Alma, who is herself over 80. He walked back in the door and asked to be introduced. I introduced the two, and explained that my aunt is the mother (step-mother, really, but who's particular at such times?) of someone Bob knows: Bob Saari, local tree-climber extraordinaire.
What impressed me about this little chat is how socially adept author Bob Pyle was. He made time for an ancient woman whom he'd never met. He was polite, interested, complimentary.
Most people wouldn't try. I think that some of that interest in real people is detectable even in his book, which might remind people to be good neighbors, even in places where there's more anonymity than in Grays River Valley.
Comments:
No Comments for this post yet...
Leave a comment:
Pingbacks:
No Pingbacks for this post yet...
RSS Feed