Welcome to our new web site!

To give our readers a chance to experience all that our new website has to offer, we have made all content freely avaiable, through October 1, 2018.

During this time, print and digital subscribers will not need to log in to view our stories or e-editions.

Hunker Down with Kes

And God Said, Let There Be Light

Posted

Leon had a birthday this week.

It might seem odd to you but I still celebrate it. I call Paula and we cry. And we laugh. And we remember. And we thank our lucky stars.

It wasn’t always easy to be his little brother, especially in the early years. I blame that on World War II. Leon was born in October of 1942. Dad left for the army a month later. His tour through basic training, amphibious landing practice and eight island invasions in the South Pacific didn’t get him back home until December of 1945.

Leon should have been a couple of years older than me. It turned out to be five. That was not an unusual occurrence at the time. One of the effects of war that doesn’t make the front pages...

Let me tell you, those five years made a serious difference when we were kids wrestling in the backyard. I didn’t have a chance!

And with no TV, no close neighbors and not much prospects, we wrestled a lot. And boxed some; and threw a few dirt clods at each other. We’d sword fight with broom handles and straightened out bailing wire. He’d beat me every time.

He’d pin my shoulders to the braided rug in the living room and let a drop of spit slide almost out of his mouth aimed at my left eye….oh, I couldn’t stand that. I’d fight with all my might but his five years of added weight and strength were more than I could budge.

Then he’d smile...and that wonderful laugh would break out all over him. He’d roll over on the rug and laugh even harder as I jumped on his head and went to flailing away at him.

He took me and our little brother to see “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” in 1954...and on the way home he slipped off and left us alone in the woods behind the swimming pool. I was scared out of my gourd. David was about to squeeze my arm off. I didn’t see the smile…..but my heart leaped for joy when I heard the laughter.

He threw an arm around each of us as we walked, safe now, toward the house. As he hugged us close, he went into this long dissertation on the difference between real and imaginary things.

He laughed a lot of knowledge into us back in those days.

Leon was the first person ever to place a baseball in my hand. And a football. He showed me how to hold each. And we’d toss them back and forth for as long as I wanted. For a guy always in a hurry, he could show you the patience of Job if the need arose.

He kidded me about girls and warned me not to use too much Vanilla Extract as cologne, “They will be all over you”….until he saw I’d met one I cared about. His whole demeanor changed. He sat me down on the porch and, as serious as could be, explained a bit about special relationships.

You have no idea how I idolized him.

He would mess with me a little, that was a big brother’s right; but he made darn sure no one else ever did!

And he made every day of our lives an exciting adventure when hum drum was the norm. He concentrated on what we had and the unending possibilities...and he saw things nobody else could even imagine!

I met Paula when I was 13. She has truly been the sister I never had. She reminds me every year of how Leon would leave work early on Friday afternoons when I was a senior in high school. They were living in Pocahontas, Arkansas, a five-hour drive from the football field in McKenzie, Tennessee. She laughs NOW at the harrowing drive he would take them on to make the eight o’clock kick-off.

He didn’t miss a game. I thought at the time it was nice of him to show up and cheer me on. I realized as the years rolled into decades, he had been cheering me on my entire life!

When I’d be leaving after a visit, for a day, or two, or a week, it didn’t matter to Leon, he’d walk out by the car, give me a big hug and say loud enough for the whole world to hear “Love you like a brother!”

I don’t pretend to know how life and death work. But I know Leon is more real to me this morning than he’s ever been; still leading and still guiding!

And now, I can see the smile - even in the dark or from miles away - right before the laughter envelops my ears...and my heart.

Lucky Stars Indeed,
KC

PS: And he knew the words to every song Hank Williams ever sung. And Ben E. King. And the Coasters. Jerry Lee Lewis, Clarence “Frogman” Henry…