All of this silence and lack of traffic around here makes me think of Queens Creek in the 1930’s. It was so lonely on Queens Creek that even the buzzards and crows wouldn’t fly over it. They would land and walk around it. And we didn’t have the corona virus. I imagine it followed the crows and buzzards. But seriously now, there was more cars on Queens Creek at election time than there where I live now. Some of them perhaps loaded with half pint bottles and two dollar bills probably. Yep, election time was a busy time. The county politicians would come once each year and grade your rough, rutted road and they never showed up again until the next election. That was my introduction to politics.
I was thinking the other day how we communicated with the outside world. There were three ways, one was Emma (everybody called her emmie) Lalonde’s Cincinnati news paper, two was an old Philco radio, and three was the local rural mailman, Paul Beckly, who came rain or shine, sleet or snow, sickness and in health every day except Sunday. I will probably have some more to say about Mrs. Lalonde later on. So as you can imagine without these news sources it could be a lonely place.
Speaking of Paul Beckley, he was our mailman for all of the years that I lived there. He lived in Prichard and was a true gentleman. Paul had, I believe four sons, three who served their country in WW2. One of them, at least, served in the Army Air Corps, now the US Air Force. He acquired some fleece lined leather clothing for paul to wear on those cold winter days on his mail route. He traveled it most of the time in a cart that was much like a racing sulky you would see at a race track. I am thinking of an incident that involved Paul that I had not thought of for years. It seems that on a warm summers day, Paul and his horse and mail cart was traveling along at a pretty good clip on his route when a large black snake decided to cross the road in front of him. Paul in his wooden spoke cart and him sitting high off of the ground decided he would challenge mister snake. He hit the snake at a pretty good clip and the snake wasn’t having any part of that. He simply wound around a wheel spoke and guess where he landed? That’s right, Paul suddenly had a passenger. Well, Paul went off of the back of the cart and the snake went God knows where, and the horse and cart continued on. Paul caught his horse, climbed on board and, I am sure, never challenged a snake in the middle of the road again.
Well, I am sitting here and my glass is getting empty and I must go look for toilet paper and other hard to find items. I will refill my glass and write more about life soon. May God Bless and Keep You Through These Trying Times.
The Viking Chronicles 