I pause suddenly while watering my flowers and ponder whether I have become my mother. But no, the situation has gone way beyond that: I have become Peter Rabbit’s mother. I am at this moment tending to pansies and alyssum that I have planted in a defunct wheelbarrow, and I am wearing a straw hat […]
Author: Evelyn J. Willburn
Pardon our dust!
Hello, readers! I am making some changes to the format of my page–the dust will settle soon, I promise.
The Morgue
Chapter Five in “Decades with the Squad,” by William Palmer Jervey, Jr. It began as a simple suicide, if any suicide is really simple. The elderly recluse went out into the yard one summer evening, sat down in a chair in the shade of an old oak tree and put a pistol bullet through his […]
Full circle
I am once. . . twice. . . three times a. . . senior. Did you think I was going to say lady? The first go round of my seniorhood was of course in high school, in the fall of 1977. In my high school, as in every high school before and since, there was […]
A little bit of backstory
True to my word, I have been posting stories from my father’s memoirs entitled “Decades with the Squad.” My sisters and I agree that, for two of the stories I have published so far, there is a little more to each. First, “The Wig.” This story concerned a woman who died of breast cancer. My […]
The Board
Chapter Four in “Decades with the Squad,” by William Palmer Jervey, Jr. This can only de described as a tragedy most ghastly. An example of the fickle nature of this thing called fate. Many young men have engaged in folly similar to that of the one in this case. Few have paid so horrible a […]
My beautiful golden chain
“I want a gold ingot,” said my mother. “I don’t want to do anything with it. I just want to hold it and look at it from time to time.” I, and probably most of humanity, can relate. For example, I don’t wear much jewelry, but I sure do like owning jewelry. There is something […]
The Ribbon
Chapter Three in “Decades with the Squad,” by my father, William Palmer Jervey, Jr. “I’m OK. Help the girls,” pleaded the elderly gentleman as he stood shakily beside his demolished car. As was later determined, he was indeed alright, having sustained no injury. Most remarkable, considering the tattered wreck that had been his automobile. In […]
Forces of nature
(Blogger’s note: this one is from me! More installments from my Dad are coming soon.) Yesterday was the summer solstice; that is, the days are now getting shorter in the northern hemisphere. (Somehow, myopic little troll that I am, I cannot take seriously the concept that elsewhere in the world it is the beginning of […]
The Wig
From “Decades with the Squad,” by my father, William Palmer Jervey, Jr. She was a typical youngish grandmother, loved her grandchildren, was adept at grandmotherly things like baking cookies and making doll clothes. When the illness struck, she took it bravely. Fought the good fight. She endured the surgery, the treatments, the medicine. More surgery, […]