March 2016
Page 25
Windsor Writers
Theme: Music
Reuben Mott was by far the best roller skater in our elementary
school. He skated all the time – up and down the street, even where
there were no sidewalks, leaping over the ditch by the side of the
road, over wagon wheel ruts in the road – effortlessly. He made flips
and twist-arounds look easier than walking, running or jumping. He
moved fast along his roller skate path, yet he didn’t yell and scream
like the other boys did as they raced around the school yard. The
principal said she really appreciated that.
Man, was he fun to watch. Through his soft wide smile, the thick black
dreads standing straight up on his head, shirttail flapping in the wind
you knew he was headed for places unknown at zing speed. Reuben
made a point never to run into anybody like many of the other boys
did and we girls appreciated that.
When Reuben had time, he taught some of the younger kids how to
skate and how to clean and oil their skate wheels. I couldn’t take his
lessons because my legs weren’t strong enough to lift those heavy
metal skates strapped to the sole of my shoes and roll anywhere.
I lost track of Reuben when I was sent away to high school, but I
heard he was drafted into the army after his high school graduation.
During his army years we saw him on one of those amateur hour
television shows dancing away wearing fancy lace-up roller skates.
He looked fantastic gracefully performing forward and backward
flips and spins like we had never seen before. What a show! One
The Homecoming
by Loweta Kimball
of the television announcers called his performance ‘electric and
magical’ so we nick-named him ‘magic.’ He easily won the amateur
contest. His family was sent a copy of the television performance
that was later shown at the elementary school. Those of us who knew
him as the kid who was allowed to wear roller skates in the school
building were proud we knew of his beginnings.
A few years into Reuben’s enlistment in the US Army, his family
received word he had been wounded and was being sent home.
Townspeople got together and planned a homecoming celebration
for our hometown celebrity. A more exciting time none of us had ever
seen! The elementary school marching band would march wearing
roller skates and as many townspeople as possible would be asked
to wear roller skates during the celebration. Banners were decorated
with pictures of roller skates and the parade route marked with a
‘roller skates only’ lane.
On that designated parade day, several of us old schoolmates
were assigned to greet Reuben at the airport and bring him to the
parade. Reuben was one of the last passengers to exit the airplane.
We waved to him, he waved back. I hadn’t seen Reuben in years,
but I recognized his ever present smile. He was in a wheelchair. He
had one arm and no legs. We all yelled in unison, “Welcome home,
Reuben.”
Sing to Us, Mother Nature
by Dennis Payton Knight
Playlists around the world are filled with songs about peace and
love, desire and despair. But humans will never play the music of life
as well as nature herself. Neither horns, nor strings, nor woodwinds,
bells or drums, nor all of them together can give a concert as
moving as the rhythms of our natural surroundings.
Sing to us, Mother Nature.
Around the world oceans roar in waves and lap with splashing
sounds on the sands of beaches. Rivers whisper around rocks,
through hanging brush and beaver dams, and cascade in a roar
over well-polished cliffs. Marsh ponds sleep through the night,
peaceful stages for frogs to croak, ducks to quack, geese to honk,
and warblers to warble in the willows.
Children and puppies sleep to the cooing of a mourning dove
perched on a telephone line, a human invasion that nature has
hijacked for her own beautiful purposes. On the ground a cricket
chirps, a fox barks and in the tree a mockingbird mimics them all.
Nature has drama in its music, too. Tchaikovsky could do no better
than the roar of a cougar in Colorado, a grizzly in Alaska, a tiger in
Bengal or a lion on the Serengeti. Hear the cry of a golden eagle’s
quarry snapped from a colony of prairie dogs. Hear the sound and
rage of a Nor’easter in Maine, a tornado in Oklahoma, a volcano in
Hawaii.
Nature sings to Windsor Gardens, too. Sit in the cooling breeze
of your lanai and soak in the melody of robins singing, squirrels
chattering in the branches and geese prattling on the lake. Magpies
chime in with bars of sweet harmony, and in the next stanza squawk
like banshees in a rock band. You may want to throw a boot at the
percussion of a flicker rat-a-tat-tatting by your window but instead
you distinguish in nature’s opera the baritone of owls and the aria
of a coyote.
Nature’s music lulls you into serene contemplation when you sense
the wafting of a breeze and a clap of thunder breaks your reverie.
Hailstones bang on the ledge and you retreat to safety behind
the sliding glass door. Lightning flashes in the darkened skies
unleash the fury of a late evening thunderstorm. The hail turns to
rain, intensifying and driving rhythmically against your window.
You marvel in the rumble of thunder near and far, and revel in the
crackling choreography of lightning. After a dozen minutes the wind
and rains give way to naught but the sound of water in the rain
pipe, a distant thunderclap bids adieu, the moon returns, a cricket
gives the cue and nature’s philharmonic strikes up again.
Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound? You bet it does,
in a crash that shakes the woods and the fauna, as great as the
crescendo of cymbals in a Sousa band, yet as peaceful as a kitten’s
purr.
Sing to us again, Mother Nature.
