He called it his Greenwood tree, a tall white pine that towered above his neighborhood across from the railroad tracks. The town wanted to cut it down, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He said he liked to believe that it had been planted before his birth, which would have made it nearly one-hundred.
Arthur was 96, the youngest son of a former slave from South Carolina. He was the fourteenth child in his family and durning his long life he had worked as a locksmith, a tailor, a barber, an artist, a coal miner, and a Baptist minister. When I met him, Arthur was working as a gardener, a man who seemed to me to have a magical touch on the outdoors.
Each Tuesday morning at 4:30am I would wake up to his whistle outside my bedroom window. I don’t know how he saw his way around in the dark, but he would eventually break into a spiritual song. He would sing, “This is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it, for the joy of the Lord has become my strength.” He called it his work music.
He wore rubber bands around the bottom of his pant legs to keep the ticks away. On his head he wore an old leather hat which he never removed. As early as I can remember I worked at Arthur’s side. The first lesson he ever taught me was
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how to get leaves off a rake when they were stuck. He showed me how to turn the rake upside down and then pull it backward across the grass. He taught me how to edge the lawn and transplant flowers, how to properly chop wood, mend a stone wall, and how to break up outcroppings with a sledge hammer. He taught me to be patient, explaining that no job was too small. Without me realizing it, during the fifteen years of our friendship, he taught me lessons about life, death, honesty, and about what really matters. Every day that we were together, he preached the benefits of a simple, humble lifestyle. During the cold months Arthur did not work. And each Christmas Eve we had a tradition of visiting him. I was always nervous going into his dark house. I preferred seeing him outside. Inside he seemed smaller and I barely recognized him without his hat. His head was almost bald. He lived with his wife, Lucille, who suffered a stroke. She could not use her hands very well, but she would motion for me to sit next to her and I remember always being scared. I remember once asking Arthur why he did not have a Christmas tree. He pointed to his Greenwood tree. “There’s my tree” he said proudly. His tree, once arrogantly laden with leaves, now looked vulnerable with part of their wardrobe gone. After Lucille died, Arthur aged quickly.
His clothes were often dirty. His buttons or zipper left open. He stopped brushing his teeth and grew increasingly forgetful. Once he arrived to work at 2:30 in the morning, unaware that it was the middle of the night. His edging along the border of the lawn was not long, straight and tight. Once I found him asleep, sitting against a tree. And then one day he too suffered a stroke. When we visited him in the hospital, I told Arthur that while he was sick I would keep the land in shape. As I worked, I convinced myself that Arthur would be back and how proud he would be to see what I’d done. But, he never did return. The day he died I worked outside all day long and into the evening, my mind
spinning. Recently I drove past Arthur’s house and noticed that the Greenwood tree had been cut down. A new family sat on his rickety front porch. As I drove home I listened to his early morning work music echo inside my head. “This is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it, for the joy of the Lord has become my strength.” It was a song that brought me to tears. It was a song of my friend and teacher… a teacher who taught much more than just gardening. It was the song of a very simple and decent life that helped shape who I am. As I walk down the tree-lined pathway toward University Hall, I listen for this song within my heart, and seek to find faculty, scholars, and friends who can teach me and shape me as much as Arthur.
...ome the dream of attainment slowly became a nightmare. His house has been abandoned, it is empty and dark, the entryway or doors are locked. The sign of age, rust comes off in his hands. His body is cold, and he has deteriorated physically & emotionally. He is weathered just like his house and life. He is damaged poor, homeless, and the abandoned one.
I woke up at John Morris’ house, on his coach. As I knocked a flyaway hair out of my face I noticed my face was wet, with tears, and then it all hit me at once that my Dad and Mrs. Borden were dead. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I heard John Morris ask if I was alright, but that seemed like a completely different world, I responded with a meek okay, so Mr. Morris wouldn’t see me like this. That didn’t work though, I saw his tall shadowy figure ducking under the door frame with tea. As Mr. Morris sat down and put the tea on the coffee table in front of us, I turned my head and quickly wiped the tears from my eyes in hopes he wouldn’t see.
Bill Strickland spends his days helping people through Manchester Bidwell. He founded job training programs and also a community arts program to help and mentor young people. When Bill Strickland was younger he did not have the tools and everything he gives to the kids now for mentoring. Strickland’s life changed when he found pottery. It was something he was good at from the start. Bill grew up in Pittsburgh, and it was not the prettiest. People were losing their jobs and the town was falling apart. Strickland’s mother shaped him to be a successful man. She did not let him “fall into the ghettos trapdoor”. Strickland spends his life trying to fix the substandard neighborhood that he grew up in.
It was a village on a hill, all joyous and fun where there was a meadow full of blossomed flowers. The folks there walked with humble smiles and greeted everyone they passed. The smell of baked bread and ginger took over the market. At the playing grounds the children ran around, flipped and did tricks. Mama would sing and Alice would hum. Papa went to work but was always home just in time to grab John for dinner. But Alice’s friend by the port soon fell ill, almost like weeds of a garden that takes over, all around her went unwell. Grave yards soon became over populated and overwhelmed with corpse.
As the young Wart growing up in the Forest Sauvage, Arthur "...had been taught by an aged benevolence, wagging a white beard. He had been taught by Merlyn to believe that man was perfectible: that he was on the whole more decent that beastly; that good was worth trying: that there was no such thing as origi...
To tarnish Arthur’s image of perfection demands a closer inspection at where his story begins. For those familiar with Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, it is common knowledge that Arthur was a child begotten by means of adultery when his father, Uther Pendragon, disguised himself with magic...
Then his family would appreciate him. But the garden fails, as does Willy. Works Cited and Consulted Baym, Franklin, Gottesman, Holland, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 4th ed.
I was just so tired from today I wanted it to be tomorrow. When I woke up the next day I checked the list Death gave me. There were Seven names on the list one for each day I thought to myself. The first name was Patty Schmelt and the location was the nursing home. At least she’s had a long life I thought. I got up to leave deciding to wear my suit it seemed to be the right thing to do. I ran down stairs and out the door hoping to finish it before school started. It I thought to myself how was ending a life. When I got to the funeral home it seemed that everyone knew what i was here for. I walked up to the front desk.
It felt so dragged out because all I wanted was to see him and tell him the news. Our connection felt different, phone calls were made shorter and they weren’t as frequent. I missed him. Two nights had gone by without a phone call or even a message. This wasn’t typical of Luke. I was becoming increasingly worried. I tried to distract myself from the situation and went to Atlanta to visit my parent’s for the weekend. This provided a distraction from my despair. When I arrived home, the flat fell silent. I sat aimlessly on the sofa, starring at the telephone, hoping that maybe it would ring. I tried turning my television on but I was oblivious to anything around me. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I knew something was wrong. Fifty-five minutes passed, as I stared at the phone. That was when I heard it
... Though I now felt connected to the bench, my fathers memory would always be here, where it belongs. I concluded that I may not have him physically here, but what is left are joyful memories of him in the one place that I will always be able to contact, priceless. Birds seemed to disappear as the night got darker. The trees seemed lonely and grass felt cold. Oddly, the bench felt older than usual and rougher than what I felt earlier. The park was telling me goodbye. Night critter seemed to disappear as the wind got heavier. The wind blew the opposite direction and to my surprise there was only three cars left in the parking lot, one being my car. I took a glance at the community garden and the flowers seemed lifeless, dark and sinister. I slowly walked to my car and turned the engine on. As I drove off I let go of my fathers ashes in the one place I felt close to him.
I see all my family members dressed in black. I wipe the tears with my sleeve. I look around to find people I haven't seen for years and years living miles and miles away from me. I look around. There's granny. Standing there. Looking sharp as can be. A handful of tissues ready to mourn someone else's death. Granny is alive. Who died? There's a big picture, leaning against a casket. A picture of me. Underneath reading, Brooke Elizabeth Peterson. My name. My picture. My casket. My death. I could feel a hand grabbing around my heart. Beads of water started falling down my cheek, one after another. I fall to the ground. The cellar, the fire. It killed me. Now lying in the casket I so selfishly hoped someone else was in. The world quickly turned into a blur, as well as the sounds, the tastes the smells, everything was gone. The last few emotions pounded against me as I slowly lost the feeling of feeling. The world around me went from colors to black. This was it. The four was three. I was one slowly becoming zero. So now
Arthur was an exceptionally gifted and talented sportsman who made a great contribution to rugby league both on and off the field throughout his extraordinary life. He had an engaging down to earth character, he was always demons...
As I peered outside the chilly window fogged up with my breath, I could see an endless rainstorm pouring down, each raindrop jumping off my grandparent’s driveway, which now consisted mostly of mud puddles. I quivered slightly and turned back to watch my grandpa drinking a cup of tea while looking at an old book. He was wearing a brown vest on top of a loose long-sleeve that covered his large stomach. His body has definitely been marked by the years, as his hair is white as snow, and his wrinkly hands showing as he turned the pages in the book. I moved from the sofa to stand to closer to his recliner and watched him look through the the mysterious book, his face smiling
As I was walking down the aisle of the funeral home, feeling pain and my eyes full of tears, I saw a white coffin. I slowly made my way towards the corpse. He was wearing his favorite white suit and shoes. His eyes where closed and his lips formed into a simple smile; there he was my grandfather or as I call him, Lolo. It was very saddening to see such a kindhearted and loveable man confined in a wooden box. It aggravates me to see him in that condition. I felt very lonely because I was used to having him right beside me at all times.
I never really thought about where my life was going. I always believed life took me where I wanted to go, I never thought that I was the one who took myself were I wanted to go. Once I entered high school I changed the way I thought. This is why I chose to go to college. I believe that college will give me the keys to unlock the doors of life. This way I can choose for myself where I go instead of someone choosing for me.