Now and Then
Power Struggle
“I’ve got the beast under control”,
He thought (for the millionth time).
“Now I see. Now I know,
To release him would be a crime. 
This past Saturday night, the Harmon family was among the noisy crowd in the Fairce Woods Coliseum. We thoroughly enjoyed the double-header, which ended up with Breathitt winning both the girls’ and boys’ games.
As you can see, the column is a little short this week. I have waited until the last minute to write something and I need to get this typed up and sent in very quickly. I have been submitting mostly previously written material for the past few weeks, but writer’s block is not the problem. The real villain is my old friend, procrastination.
As of this writing, it is two more days until Christmas. Of course, I realize that to you, the reader, the holiday is already past. I try to keep this time delay in mind, but sometimes I mess up. An example of that would be when I forgot about early publication and wrote Top of the Third expecting it to be read after Thanksgiving and not before.
The next thing Bryanna knew, she was standing in a green valley. Daddy was about ten feet in front of her and on past him she could see a hole in the hillside that looked like a cave.
Where had she seen this place before? Then she realized that this was the game. Bryanna and her daddy were in front of the cave in the computer game! But how did that happen?
Last week I started this compare and contrast story of two divorces. As some of you may have guessed it is semi-autobiographical. Anyway, here’s the conclusion.
1983 - Brad handled the filing of the divorce without a lawyer. The $200 cost of a Do-It-Yourself-Divorce kit was a substantial savings over hiring professional legal counsel. His wife was two years gone and since she was not objecting to the divorce, the case progressed smoothly. Anita helped him with filling out and making copies of the various legal forms, filing them for him so he wouldn’t have to take off from work. The judge merely asked if the parties were present and, on learning that only the petitioner was, he granted the divorce and stated that a copy of the decree would be sent to the now ex-wife.
Brad woke up at his work place, having lived at the TV repair shop for the past few months. Turning off the alarm, he dressed and began folding his bedclothes. He rolled up the large foam-rubber pad which served as his bed and stored it back under his workbench. It was almost time for his fellow employees to begin arriving and he always tried to have the shop back to normal before they showed up.
Well, Blue, I’m really gonna do it. Yep, me an Evie Johnson is a gittin’ hitched this Saturday. She’s been after me somethin’ fierce fer a while now, an I reckon it ain’t setch a bad idea after all. Livin’ by myself in this old house is a gittin’ old, jest like me.
This is the first column of my third year of writing for The Voice. I don’t know about y’all, but it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long to me. I was gonna do this last week, as the finale for my second year, but I couldn’t help gloating over the election results. So I wrote my thoughts on that subject instead.
I know I have done a lot of political pieces lately, but now maybe I can mix it up a little bit. More than likely, there will be events occurring in Washington or overseas that cry out for a response, but I promise not to neglect other subjects.
Folks never tell me they like the political stuff anyway, but they do say they enjoy the reminiscing pieces and the ones about Bryanna or Samatha. My dad says I should avoid getting political because I’m probably turning off about half the readers, but sometimes I can’t help myself. There are some subjects that demand to be commented on.
Anyway, in the coming year, you can expect to read about my family in this space. And there should be more stuff about Breathitt County in the sixties and seventies.
I plan on doing more stories about Zeke Howard and Blue. You can expect Mr. Howard to finally marry the widow, Evie Johnson. I’ll do other fiction as well, including some children’s stories.
There should also be pieces that don’t really fit into any of these categories. Like I said two weeks ago, I got a lot of time to think and sometimes I get strange ideas. What I don’t want to do is fall into a rut. If I’m doing my job, y’all should never know what to expect in this space.
Well, now it’s time for the second annual second-person story. The response was underwhelming last year, but here goes another one.
You picked up your copy of The Voice today. After lunching on turkey and dressing (somebody’s gotta eat all those leftovers), you were still starved for local news and commentary. So, you poured yourself a cup of coffee, grabbed a slice of pumpkin pie, and sat down to enjoy.
When you got to the editorial section, you agreed with James Fugate and Pete Longfellow, and expressed your disagreement with what Bobby Deaton and the good Rabbi had to say. Or it could have been the other way around. This paper caters to all political persuasions.
Then you decided to see what that Bryan Harmon has come up with this week. You never know what to expect, but he has been writing a lot of liberal stuff lately. You get ready to heartily agree with his position (or not, you might be from the other side of the aisle).
Well, what do you know about that? You didn’t realize he had been at this for two years. Or maybe it seems much longer since he started writing that leftist rubbish. “Good,” you thought, “No partisan pandering this week.”
But then you got down to this part. “Now he’s gone too far,” you yelled. “He’s been trying to tell me what to think. That’s bad enough, but now he’s trying to tell me what I am thinking!”
Then you realized Bryan was right. Not necessarily in his political views, but this is exactly what you are thinking. Or maybe not. You could be laughing out loud about how far off he is. You’re not thinking anything close to what he says you are.
