every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
Uncle Buck
I did not really know him, and I should have. He came along and rescued me at a time when I needed rescuing. He had no reason I know of to take in a couple of frightened children who had lost their parents and their brothers and knew nothing about what had happened to them. He'd already raised his own two children and was still putting them through college. He was the owner, I think, and manager of a radio station on the outskirts of Perryton, Texas, a then tiny town in a huge state. How tiny? He walked me through and across much of the town, clear that the only way you learn a place is by walking it. I met gas station owners, meat plant managers, restaurant owners, cafe owners, the people who made up his customer base, people who might buy thirty seconds or a minute of radio time to advertise their business, but also people who could tell a kid how their business worked and how it fit into the business that a town is. Or they could tell him the candy-coated version of those. A kid only needs to know the candy-coated version of how things work. He never told me that. I figured it out on my own. But the neat thing was that he taught a scared kid whose world had exploded what the kid needed to know to stand on his own in a new world, to learn what other people would teach him, and to figure out what that really meant on his own, to listen respectfully but not too respectfully, and to keep learning. I don't think life treated Uncle Buck very well. I think he had to replan his life over and over before he could finally retire to his beloved pecan orchard and grow and sell pecans, but he did what he needed to and did it with grace. This is a belated thank you to him for what he did for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment