Letter #29
FOUNDER’S DAY
01 July 1950
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Dear Heavenly Father,
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Maybe it weren’t the clean
and sanitized version that the City Girl had in mind, but that was some Founder’s Day Celebration in town today weren’t
it, Father? We heard long distance over the phone from Molly Beatrice, the children, they is fine, they
miss their pa but being children, as long as their ma is near, that’s reason enough to be happy. James, he wanted to
talk with me later as much as I wanted to talk with him, but Cynthia Cromwell, she was all flustered and red with excitement
at the success of the changes she forced on the merchants and the City Council for to do her bidding, and James, he seems
to need her breathless adoration these days. I see him moving in the right direction and don’t we all deserve the freedom
to make our mistakes, learn from them and leave them behind in the dust? I been so strict in my fear for
his body and soul that I near drove him in loneliness to the thing we both abhor. It’s his life and his shoulders what
has to carry the cross You set before each in their own lifetime.
I just love him so much I ache for
him to be as perfect as I never was. I hated that in my pa, that no matter what I did it was never good enough, not I have
carried to the next generation! Thank You for helping me to get that hatefulness out of my system. Sides, there’s so
many more good things I want to talk with You about and most especially to thank you for, Father! That’s for a fact
honest!
Please forgive me, I have the hiccups! Even that ole silver moon, she seems to jump and twitch as I jerk upright here
in the rocker.
Heather Cox, she entered her a lemon meringue pie of her own recipe into the Founder’s Day Celebration. And her
a Spinster what ain’t never had to cook except to please herself! I am right proud of her. I even helped to squeeze
out the lemon oil from the rind and thrice strain the pulp from the lemon juice. It’s too much trouble to do for anything
but the most special occasions to be sure, but she used the egg whites from a special group of hennies she had fed so their
eggs wouldn’t taste “off”. She won first place and told the reporter who took her picture
(beaming like a hundred degree watt luminary) that you couldn’t afford to let the meringue get over brown in the cooking
of it, like so many people do because it presents a pretty picture. She was so sure that the woman who used hand grated cocoanut
on hers would win first place that she almost didn’t answer the call of her name by the ringing microphone used by the
Judge for the Pie Contest. Then she turned around, kissed me full on the mouth, we me trapped between her arms and she said
very clearly,
“ Yes, Amos Webb! I will marry you! “
With quite some firm conviction in her voice, her face shinning twice as bright, if’fn that’s possible!
I know mine was for sure, and we got our picture took during it, though I don’t rightly remember asking her direct out
about the question she answered; but that don’t really matter. We both knew what we were leaving
unspoken in our pauses between one another. It must be harder for her, a fifty-eight year old spinster and virgin to conceive
of the joys I long ago took for granted. Even if she dies a married virgin because she couldn’t bring
herself to it, we’ll have had such a good time just being friends with one another, that it’ll be alright. We’ll
all be virgins in heaven and stay that way without a second thought about it. Right?
She gave
up her Real Estate license, for now. Maybe some good sense will come out of this War talk over there in Korea. Look’y
how America changed so profoundly the last time the Nations come to war against a central enemy. Heather
Cox, she don’t share my views, but she lets me speak them. That’s enough. It does put me in the mind of my own
mortality.
You are so near to me now in memory, Sugar. I look forward to being with you again, spirit flesh to spirit flesh. I
cain’t help but wonder if Queenie, with all the things she got to amuse herself and fill her mind with will remember
us as clearly as Vernon does his ma and brothers and sisters? Guess it ain’t for me to know. Will I see that look of love and fellowship all the more sweetly in Your eyes,
Jesus? How I long to know You as real as I do Sicily’s oldest boy child, in the days You have left me sweetly upon this
earth. I ain’t going to struggle against this final walk in the days You have allotted me.
Good
night, Sugar Babe. Watch over Rich…Beau, special like for us, will you?
See you
in the morning.
Yours in ways so far beyond my own means to comply,
Your grateful and finally happy son,
Amos
Webb
