Yesterday, I attended a department seminar about the Dust Bowl, given by former professor Lyell Thompson. He is 86 years old. He hobbled around, bent at the waist and legs kicking out from side to side, to illustrate on the whiteboard the location of his childhood in the Oklahoma panhandle.
He was honest. He would speak and pause and cough and speak and cough and go on to another thought.
He talked about his one-room school house. 20 students in all the grades. A funny contrast next to the relatively small lecture hall we all sat in, most likely twice the size of his entire school. And the lecture hall is only one small basement room in one building of one university of thousands across the country.
He spoke of meeting his wife on the first day of high school. He recalled her socks and the way she wore her hair and how she sat on one side of the room with all the other girls. He said the principal told the boys and girls to mix together. Some of the girls got up to sit with the boys. I don't know if his wife was one of them. He never finished that thought.
He said the only time the boys and girls were separated was when the boys went to agriculture and the girls went to home ec.
I kept staring at his arms, the strange colorings and freckles and veins and skin that have seen 15 presidents and a lifetime of history.
They reminded me of the arms of my grandparents. And how I know so much about this man's childhood and so little of theirs.
I don't know where the times goes.
My writing? How about yours.
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