my parent's shimmy.

My parents are too cute.

They operate an alumni charity golf tournament and fundraiser (party) each year for the high school that my dad graduated from. Watching my parents dance on a wooden floor was one of the most beautiful sights of my adult life. It was as if time peeled away and there was no one else swaying back and forth but a young man and woman basking in the glow of it all. Wondrous really.

that cheesy song from the movie "ghost" came on at one point and he even re-enacted the scene with the penny. (buncha dorks. they are cute)

Shortly thereafter, my father “got down with his bad self” and disco danced all over that floor much the same as he had in his heyday. My dad is a mean dancer. Of course it just makes me laugh, a bit embarrassed, but whatever makes him happy is fine with me.

During the silent auction, I bid on a set of

three books by an author named Rick Bragg. He grew up penniless in Alabama and, in his own words, “crawled up the backbone of his mother” to be come a Pulitzer Prize winning writer. His father abandoned his wife and three small children after battling with demons left over from the war in Korea and a fondness for the bottom of a bottle. Reading his story has rearranged my perception on a lot of things, one of which is my grandparents. I do not doubt that the experiences of his mother; taking in ironing, cleaning houses, and pocking other people’s cotton just so that she could feed her children, were not much unlike my grandmother’s experiences. It is sobering in an ironic way given that so many men return from war to find solace in a jug of what the author refers to as “likker.” Should anyone have an interest or a link to someone who worked in the fields in the South shortly after the Depression, they should consider reading “All Over But the Shouting.”

my grandmother went to town once a week. she just told me on the phone while i was talking to her. i should interview her to find out more....