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Thank you.

My grandmother taught me to read having learned herself late in her life; she didn't have a great vocabulary but she had wonderful stories to tell, of her childhood days, the friends she had in school and the happy, hard times she went through in the Great Depression.

My dad taught me to spell and to sound out words and then laughed at me every time I pulled the pieces apart in my mind and put them back together in my mouth like toy soldiers in a row when it came to words like Ply-mouth instead of "plimuth" or Char-acter instead of "karakter."

By the time I was four, the Sears catalog was my special treasure, a place to wander and wonder through the cold, winter nights with the fond hope that all that I could see would somehow end up under that scrawny little tree tilting oddly in the only spare corner across from the gas heater with little clay castles sprouting from the base like sentinels glowing a dull red the whole night long.

Too early, my grandmother would nudge me and, half-lifting, half-pushing get me off to bed in the biggest, most bottomless feathertick in all the "Holler."

Somewhere still, on the slope of that craggy hill is a path worn long ago that leads to some of the most pathetic pine trees you could ever see, mute memories of disappointments and glorious mornings both and, if you look carefully enough down low amongst the branches, you might catch a glimpse of silver tinsel shining brightly in the fading sun, still wet with the tears and grimy with the sweaty hand prints of a small boy whose dreams were trusted to that old Sears "Wishbook" so long ago.