Tag: flash non-fiction

Interlude

The Carrot Ranch Literary Community‘s word prompt this time is Interlude. Since my last six sentences was about war, it was still on my mind.

My grandparents met in an interlude, peacetime between our nation’s many wars. Yet, turbulence attended their meeting.

My grandfather arrived from Ohio with Uncle Johnny Bivens, my grandmother’s grandmother’s brother. The men spent a night in the Douglas Nebraska, train depot, held by the first horizontal snow Grandpa George had ever seen—a plains blizzard.

Later, the town cop, drawn by light in the station, came to make sure the escaped murders from the state penitentiary hadn’t holed up there.

Once the excitement ended, though, Hazel and George had two peaceful years to assemble a grubstake and get acquainted.

Here they are. Hazel at high school graduation and George just arriving from a hunting trip.

Categories: Families Non-fiction

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The Poisoned Apple

On Tuesdays, I like to post my contribution to the week’s 99-word Carrot Ranch Literary Community. I like it especially because, although it’s not poetry, it encourages me to condense my narrative line. Perhaps those of you who write might want to try it here.

We used to have a row of mulberry trees on one side of our driveway. In midsummer, when the skies shone cerulean and ships of clouds sailed the prairie, the trees turned green and shiny as holly and began producing the first sweet purple fruit.

My sister and I climbed those trees, but like Snow White’s sweet apple, they exacted a price.  We’d climb out of the trees with scratches and rips on our bare legs and arms, even our faces, twigs in our tousled hair. Our purple mouths, fingers, and purple-stained playsuits testified to our willingness to pay.

I find that I don’t have a single mulberry tree in my photo archives and I can’t swear the linked image is a mulberry tree, but I see similar density.

The linked image shows what we were after–the only thing I can think of that’s better is blackberries and they don’t grow well here.

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Categories: Non-fiction

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Grandma’s Comet

Grandma Hazel was 100 years old when Hale-Bopp streaked across the silent night sky at thousands of miles per second. For 4,000 years it had burned its way through the Milky Way, out of our sight.

When I realized I could see it through the back door, I asked Grandma to come look. She complied, more to please me, I suspect, than to see one more sight in a lifetime of looking. I pointed and described its position, but she hadn’t the gumption to lift her eyes. Maybe she was already out there, flying among the fire and ice.

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Categories: Our Prairie Habitat

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Out of Touch

“Ella Mae, what’s wrong?”

My mother had not heard from her own mother for ten years. Not one word. She didn’t know where Grandma Mae lived. Still in Chicago, she thought, but how would she know? She had no address and no ‘phone number. Grandma had moved and left no forwarding address, but the night my father suddenly died of a massive coronary, Grandma called. She didn’t wait for “hello,” didn’t waste time on small talk. Her first words went right to the heart of the devastation in our household.

“Ella Mae. What’s wrong?”

Categories: Families Non-fiction

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