donbosco
Legend of ZZL
- Messages
- 6,402
“Snow in the South is wonderful. It has a kind of magic and mystery that it has nowhere else. And the reason for this is that it comes to people of the South not as a grim, unyielding tenant of Winter’s keep, but as a strange and wild visitor from the secret North.” ~ Thomas Wolfe’ “The Child by Tyger.”
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That’s my father-like I’ve never really seen him. He’s 23 years old in this wintry photograph. It is Saturday, February 3, 1940. I suspect that’s his car back there. His left hand is thrust into his pocket — it consisted of only a thumb and palm because at 13 he reached too far ‘in’ and was pulled into a molasses mill twisting off the other four. He seems to have always been cognizant or self-conscious of that physical trauma as no photos exist of that hand — it exists only in my memory — it was not an ugly thing nor a handicap but rather a dramatically ‘different’ thing — and never did I see it slow him, only cause him to think something through since the ways that other folks did it didn’t usually work for him. “Going around your elbow to get to your thumb” had true and daily resonance for him.
He’s in my mother’s front yard of the old farmhouse near Blood Run Creek, near Siler City. He must have driven the 7 miles over the ice and snow from Sandy Branch to see her. The roads would have been a rough go but such are the ways of true love. They were married 5 months later.