Dad's First Car

Somewhere in the ‘20s that would have been,

when a man learned about magnetos and mudholes,

when he took care not to break an elbow or thumb

when twirling a crank, carried a cake of soap

for a squeaky fan belt and a pinch of oatmeal

to seal a radiator leak, knew that somewhere

on a back road he’d borrow a fence rail for a jack,

have to back up the steepest hills

when the engine was starved for gas—

small bits of lore from a time long gone,

as he is, but strong in his memory

as he is in mine, lips still moving in some silent language,

still telling me stories I really want to hear.

              © David Black, 2018

Woman hand cranking the car to start it on a rainy day, August 1926
Photo by Infrogmation of New Orleans
from Wikimedia Commons

Small Town

My childhood self

still walks the streets of the village

where I loved to visit

a grandmother, dead long ago.

Her aged friends

are still vivid in my mind.

One had a parrot that nipped my nose

and a goldfish pond

where the brilliant fish

eluded my childish grasp.

Another came to tea

and was given elderberry wine

because “the doctor ordered it.”

A glowering distant cousin 

with a crippled foot who came to visit

preferred to sleep on a feather bed,

so in the heat of summer

I dragged the dusty thing from the attic,

grumbling and resentful of that gloomy relative.

A box of demi-tasse cups

was given me by one of those women.

“Don’t wait too long to marry,”

was her advice.  -- ”I did.”

I sensed the sorrow of her life.

Unmarried women of uncertain age

seemed prevalent.

Why did they never wed?

Did the young men leave

for livelier towns?

Or did their beaux

go off to war and die?

Their locked trunks in the attic

were seldom opened,

holding treasures (I supposed)

for which they had no room

in the straitened circumstances

to which they had come.

Now aging as well,

I return to find

old houses remain,

still beautiful and cared for,

and the county courthouse

with the Civil War cannonball

still lodged in its pillar

looks solid and unchanged.

But busy stores

that then sold thread

and shoes and ice cream

now stand empty and forlorn,

and the ghosts of my childhood friends

walk the silent streets.

© Peggy Latham, 2012

County Courthouse; photo by Tony Russell