Tag Archives: Howard Thomas

One of My First Loves

Anybody that knows me, knows that Lori is the love of my life. We were truly meant to be together, in fact, we really didn’t have a whole lot of choice, but that’s a different post.

One of my very first loves though, was writing. There is just something about putting words down on a page, or a screen, that people read and get something out of. I’ve just never found anything else that feels the same way. Photography comes close but it isn’t the same.

I guess part of why writing feels the way it does to me is because I’ve never been able to write much that didn’t have bits and pieces of me in it, even when I tried to keep them out. The funny thing is that I don’t necessarily notice it at the time. It’s when I’ve finished and read back through that I realize that I’ve left more on the page than I intended. I guess that’s just the nature of the beast, all these words have to come from somewhere.

Probably one of my favorite things that I’ve ever written was originally written for a column in the Williston Pioneer. I set out to write about an older gentleman who was very important to me and actually helped form the way I looked at the world. I lamented that, because I was so young, I couldn’t really remember exactly what we talked about or even how his voice sounded. I thought it was strange that I could know that he had made such a difference in my life and then not really remember exactly what he did to accomplish that.

I’ve thought about it over the years and a couple things have become clear. Whatever it was that Mr. Thomas said to me while we walked up to the post office every morning, it stuck. Though I’ve wandered away from writing many times, I always come back. I always realize that there is a part of me that isn’t quite realized any other way. Maybe that was what he did for me, he pointed my compass in this particular direction and whenever I need to get my bearings, I get that compass out and the words start to stream out. I’m always a little rusty when I first come back but that’s okay because that’s part of the process. Unlike a real compass that comes around instantly, mine always takes a few swings before it finds true North.

So, in talking about one of my first true loves, I guess what I’m doing is telling Mr. Thomas that I’m back. I might not always write the same sort of things that he did, he was a historian, but I can’t help but hope that some of these words belong to him and I’m just borrowing them to keep them, and maybe him, alive.

Mr. Thomas

So much time has passed that details elude me. I try to remember because I know how much it would mean to me to remember. But I’ve forgotten so much.
Prospect, New York, a town of three hundred and fifty people or so, even now, was an excellent place to grow up in the 1960s. It taught me lessons about community and knowing your neighbors, about reaching out and helping where I could. It was the kind of place where a little boy could sell yesterday’s newspapers to the neighbors for a nickel with a cookie thrown in as a tip for delivering them right to their front door. It was the kind of place where a neighbor would stop by every day to have a little boy tag along with him up the hill to the post office and impart on him more wisdom and direction than he could ever know.
Mr. Thomas was very tall, or so it seemed to me but then I was quite small. I do remember that I had to reach high to hold his giant hand. He was a published author, though I didn’t really understand what that meant. He was most definitely a local historian, that being the subject of his writing, but I didn’t really understand about that either. I know that we started our daily walks to the post office before the age that I started school but I’m not sure if they ended altogether when I entered kindergarten or whether they were only relegated to weekends. You see, I’m not sure just when they started or exactly when they ended.
I don’t remember the contents of even one conversation we had. I don’t remember what his voice sounded like or what his face looked like. I only know that we had conversations. I know that whatever he said to me at such a young age clung to my heart and sparked a fire that has wafted and waned from time to time, but has never gone completely out. It has lost its way while I wandered down paths too numerous to recall, but it has always held tight in piece or part and is an ingredient in that recipe that has served as the core of that which defines myself to me. It is a component of me that seems as if it was always there. Its roots sunk deep into stone even when the wind and rain tried their hardest to sweep it away.
That spark has been a place to escape when things were difficult. It’s been an old friend to me on stormy days. A candle in the window and a fire in the hearth, arms to hold me, a gentle voice to comfort me. It has been a way to scream my most painful epithets to those who never had to feel their sting or bite. It has kept me from apologies I could never have found the words for. It helped me to decide what to keep within my heart and what to allow to peel from me like a skin that needed shed. It has saved me from myself and sorted out the webs and vines that twist from time to time to confuse me and make me lose my way.
In figurative terms, it has been a god to me but in reality, it has been the bridge back to my God. It has helped me to unwind and refine that which I believe and that which I don’t. It has helped to sort those things that I draw near to me and bask in, but also, those things which I shun. It has allowed things to flow from my heart that I did not know were mine. For better or for worse, it has shown me all those things that I am made of.
Such a difference the spark of writing has made in my life. Such a difference a kind old gentleman made, whether I can remember the details or not. I gave him my company in walking to the post office at the top of the hill and he showed me my eyes for seeing the world around me and turning it to writing on a page.