Attribution: Photo by kim giseok on Unsplash
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper and Phyllis and everyone else in a post snowstorm St. Patrick’s Day full of bright sunshine and white snow covering everything green except the shadow of billionaires’ money.
As is his fallback—not fall down—position the keeper goes back over the years to the day when the mile and one-half walk to the country school was made over a sideroad completely clogged with huge drifts as hard as concrete, and how the county bulldozer with its unstoppable blade came in the afternoon as the keeper and his siblings walked home from school.
The big dozer was operated by a friend of the keeper’s father who stopped to stick his head out for a personal greeting. His name was Ole Sockness and remembering his name and the image of him grinning and waving from the dozer cab has stayed with the keeper as tenaciously as his toenails.
The keeper now forgets a neighbor’s name between floors in the elevator, but he remembers Ole on days like this one from 80 or more years ago.
It’s called remembering up a storm.
