REMEMBERING GEORGE

Many years ago, when I was a barefooted, toe-headed little kid in South Georgia helping my family scratch out a living as sharecroppers on eighty acres of pretty good farmland, I remember hearing our old rooster, George, start in every morning as day was breaking from one of his high roosts; calling us and his world to attention. It was a very hard life but a very fond memory, stark, clean and honest.

I also have amazing life memories of other roosters, human roosters, standing on mountain tops above the whole world crowing as loud and proud as old George from my childhood. Old George was just doing his job and I guess the mountain climbers are too but human roosters live much, much longer than George and are expected to realize that the mountain peaks we’re standing on was once and will again, one day, be at the bottom of the ocean when God and the earth shrugs.

Jack