Category: Memoir Publisher: Bucko and Chicky Publishing
ISBN-10: 055794810X
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 286
Copyright: Jan 3, 2011
ISBN-13: 9780557948109
A Ouija Board, claiming to be the archangel, Gabriel, takes control of a dysfunctional family. Gabriel sets the family on the strange and perilous road to Kabul, Afghanistan to build an international church. This road takes them through Berkeley, California; Corinth, Mississippi and finally to Kabul. At its heart, this is a story about coming of age amid angels, devils and mental illness. It is about four children who get caught in the middle. This is a true memoir set against the backdrop of the crazy sixties.
Excerpt
Mother balanced the lacquered woven laundry basket on her plump hip while she lumbered from the washing machine, on the back porch, to the clothes lines strung between two not-so-straight T-shaped poles. She carried a home-made ivory-colored bag, sewn onto a coat hanger, in the other hand. I ran after her from the back porch where I’d been playing jacks with Dinie. I was four-years-old and thought I was Mother’s little helper, always underfoot, and anxious to be in the middle of whatever she was doing.
“Lord have mercy, sister. The humidity’s thick enough to cut with a knife,” she complained. “I’ll be damned surprised if these clothes dry before it’s time to hang tomorrow’s laundry.” Mother sat the basket of laundry down and dabbed the perspiration droplets from her forehead, with a corner of her gingham apron.
She hung the coat-hanger bag over one of the lines and took out three wooden clothespins that looked like duck bills, wearing little caps. She retrieved two white tee-shirts from the basket. As she hung the tee-shirts, connecting the corners in the middle, I sang, softly.
For a time, I perched myself on a flat rock, comparing my life with the Guyandotte River. Just as its tributaries replenish it daily, changing it in some small—sometimes great—degree, so have the day-to-day occurrences of life changed me. Like the ri
This book is an autobiographical account of the lessons I learned about life and how I was able to apply them to inspire, motivate and empower others in my own work as a firefighter, as well in my daily life as a husband, a father and a man. When I w
