I'm the living proof for the old saying, "You can take a boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy." My family gave up on farming in the mid-sixties after one crop failure too many. Forty plus years later I can still smell the fresh turned soil, the sweet fragrance of growing maize, the unique smell of frost on a field of cotton in the early fall, dust stirred up by a strong westerly breeze, and my favorite, the smoke of burning cotton burs from a distant gin. I remember the innocence of the honest peoples that made up rural Texas and America; whose words were more binding than any legal contract available today.

It is those things I like to write about today; to let my words take me back in time where I hope to regain the unforgettable joy of being absolutely free; to experience again holding hands with a pretty girl when the classroom lights were dimmed as the class watched a film on World History; to relive the electricity from that first kiss on the lips by an excited cheerleader after walking off the football field at the end of a game.