Memorial Day, 2006

In Memory Of The Love And The Lost

The Boys, Their Dad & Their Cars About 1954: Rebuilding The Garage

Top: Clifton LaVerne, David John, Wayne Maurice, Douglas Maynard, Gerald Elmer, Clifton John
Bottom Left: 1952 Studebaker Champion & 1951 Ford, David & Wayne In The Background
Bottom Right: 1952 Studebaker Champion, Gerald In The Background

LaVerne owned the Studebaker, Dad owned the Ford.

One time, Laverne let me use the Studebaker to go to a drive-in movie and when I left, I forgot about the speaker and drove away breaking the driver side window.

The fender skirts and the fins on the Ford were supposed to be cool.......

Carp Diem

Carp Diem

Eugene Carman

Rhodes’s slave! Selling shoes and gingham,
Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day
long
For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and
thirteen days
For more than twenty years,
Saying “Yes’m” and “Yes Sir” and Thank
you”
A thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a
month.
Living in this stinking room in the rattle-trap
“Commercial.”
And compelled to go to Sunday School and to
listen
To the Rev. Abner Peet one hundred and four times
a year
For more than an hour at a time,
Because Thomas Rhodes ran the church
As well as the store and the bank.
So while I was tying my neck-tie that morning
I suddenly saw myself in the glass:
My hair all gray, my face like a sodden pie.
So I cursed and cursed: You damned old thing!
You cowardly dog! You rotten pauper!
You Rhode’s slave! Till Roger Baughman
Thought I was having a fight with some one,
And looked over the transom just in time
To see me fall on the floor in a heap
From a broken vein in my head.


From "The Spoon River Anthology", Edgar Lee Masters, 1915