Saddened by loss of Eagle

Last week we lost a good friend to covid – Steve Box. He and his wife and I ate lunch together nearly every day at a familiar lunch spot here. He did a lot of nice things for people that everyone did not know about and will be missed by friends, family and his wife of six months.
One of the books I got for Christmas was a great book to read – Rick Bragg’s “Where I Came From,” a collection of stories from the South. Rick Bragg and his two brothers were raised by their mom in northeastern Alabama. Their father was in the picture only occasionally.

Mrs. Bragg picked cotton and ironed for others to get by financially. She bought the boys’ clothes at Good Will stores and got her own from church give-aways.
If there was not enough food to eat, she would feed the boys and just say that she was not hungry. The boys were good at baseball and basketball, but she never went to their games. Bragg said that years later he realized that she thought her clothes were not good enough to wear to a school event.

His stories come from his columns in Southern Living and Garden and Gun magazines. His humor is unique and I would find myself reading and suddenly laughing out loud numerous times.
He won a Pulitzer prize for his work. He teaches writing at the University of Alabama. Enough about this for now. More later on his book about Jerry Lee Lewis.
We always had cats and the one our girls liked best was named Rosabelle. The name came from one of my favorite English teachers in Macon.

Coming home from church one Sunday we heard a strange thumping noise in the back yard. We hurried to investigate. It was Rosabelle with her head stuck in an empty quart canning jar.
Gale went to the storage room and got a hammer to free her. Ever protective of our pets, the girls started screaming in unison, “Don’t kill Rosabelle.”
She was saved but forgot to say “Thank you.”

You may email Jo Ann Denley at joanndenley@brucetelephone.com