Tag: #amblogging

Posted in Fiction

The Song of the Horns

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When they were children, they would lie on the bank of the river and watch the barges and boats as they passed by. It was a game to count them. A way to fill their lonely existence at home. They only had each other as playmates.

As teenagers, they started feeling romantic feelings for each other as they watched those boats pass by. They held hands. They chased each other along trails by the river. They pitched a tent and spent the night by the river, but in separate sleeping bags. They listened to the lonely horns of the boats sound their song.

Finally, they parted. She was older and went off to college. He missed her, but there was nothing he could do. It was many years before they saw each other again. When they did, at her mother’s funeral, the old magic was still there.

They walked back down to the river after the funeral. She didn’t know he’d thought of her every day. They clasped hands, heard the horns, and knew.

174 words

Photo Credit to Barb CT

Posted in Fiction

The Death of a Small Town

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Granny Atkins sat, hidden in the shadows, on the porch of the old house looking at what used to be a busy street in her hometown of Littleton, West Virginia. Drug addiction had killed this town. Littleton wasn’t even a town anymore. It was a death trap. Only a few people her age remained here. The rest had fled or died off. Her generation had worked on the gas wells, but they weren’t pumping much anymore. There was no work.

All that remained were a few families trying to raise some children. They didn’t have any money to move away. The teachers taught drug awareness classes in the only remaining school, but when the heroin came to town, it didn’t matter. The kids used it anyway. They got crazy, burned buildings, and overdosed.

Littleton was a ghost town now. Soon, she would be a ghost too.

Little Dude in Rehab

 

Posted in Fiction

Lifetime Learning

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In 1936, Mrs. Owen, the teacher in the Bratton Branch one-room schoolhouse, asked her students to write the three things in their notebooks they felt they had learned during their time there that would serve them best in life.

Fern wrote, “I learned to have humility, gratitude, and patience. I think these three virtues will serve me best in life.”

She graduated with perfect grades later that week.

3LineTales

 

Posted in Non-fiction

In God – or Guns – We Trust?

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America considers itself a Christian nation. We are also a nation armed to the teeth with guns to hunt food and guns to protect ourselves from other people with guns. We tell ourselves that we have the right to bear arms based on the Second Amendment of our Constitution. To protect ourselves against the tyranny of the federal government. How’s that all working out for us now, America?

It seems to me that it’s all out of control. We have the National Rifle Association as the largest lobby in Congress. In other words, they buy the votes of our Senators and Representatives. Millions of Americans are members of the NRA. We worship the NRA instead of God. We worship our guns instead of God. We worship the Second Amendment instead of God. Protecting ourselves against tyranny has become nothing but an excuse for gun ownership.

We’ve put ourselves in the position of having to own guns to protect ourselves – from each other. Does that sound like a Christian nation? A nation of people that love each other? Don’t kid yourselves! We even let the NRA run the legislative branch of our government.

The first guns I ever saw were a rifle and a shotgun standing in the corner of my grandparent’s bedroom. My cousins and I knew what they were for. They were for hunting. That was back in the day when hunting for food was still commonplace, even necessary. There wasn’t much hunting for sport. In fact, I can hear my grandfather ask who would kill an animal for such a thing as sport?

Our gun laws are so lax that mass murderers and the mentally ill buy guns and gun equipment. What Christian nation would allow that? What Christian would object to tightening up the gun laws so that would not happen? Remember Sandy Hook? Remember Las Vegas? Remember all the rest? Now remember the NRA? Who gave the NRA their power?

We did. The supposed Christians. Who has caused the mass murders? We have. The people. We have refused to support tightening up the gun laws. See that broken window in the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas? Who caused that?

All of us Americans in this supposedly Christian nation.

Posted in Fiction, Flash Fiction

Carnage

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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A small crowd of protestors formed in a midwestern town in the U.S. They were taking a chance of being arrested by the roaming police of the U.S. government.

“Aaron, I’m terrified that we’re actually doing this,” Mandy said.

Aaron replied, “We have to be brave or we will never get our freedom back.”

The crowd was protesting the discontinued social programs, particularly those that provided them food and medical attention. The President had all social programs abolished in 2017. Since then, the disabled and the elderly people in their community had suffered and many had died.

Now it was 2019. There were few jobs. People tried to farm, but the change in the climate made it almost impossible. Aaron had organized this small protest.

A young girl was carrying a sign that said, “Love.”

They heard the police before they saw them marching in. They stood their ground. The police began the carnage by knocking the sign out of the young girl’s hands.

162 words

Photo credit to Elaine Farrington Johnson

Posted in Fiction

Retribution

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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Jack lived in a quiet, wooded subdivision outside of town. The lots were large. Lots of privacy. Jack and his friend, Charles, liked to hunt. They said it was for fun. Everyone knew it was because they enjoyed the kill.

Jack and Charles didn’t think they had to go far to kill a deer. There were many all around Jack’s home. Jack set up a tree stand and baited the deer. Every year, he shot at least one right in his yard, in the midst of the subdivision.

Jack and Charles hunted other animals as well. There was a family of red foxes that lived in the subdivision. They were sly and crafty. Even though the men tried to lure them out to shoot them, they were smarter than the hunters. They never shot a red fox.

One year, Jack took his deer to the taxidermist. To his surprise, there sat a red fox, ready to be picked up. As Jack left the shop, he could have sworn he saw that fox move. He turned around to leave. The last thing he felt were the teeth of the fox sink into the back of his neck.

Sunday Photo Fiction

Photo Courtesy Natural History Museum of London

 

 

Posted in Non-fiction

The Circle

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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The first time I ever walked into my new dentist’s office, one thing slapped me in the face. Her office was decorated with many paintings and pictures depicted circles. A single circle. Groups of circles. Except for pictures of her children, pictures of circles were the only wall decor she had. They were beautiful and interesting.

The second time I was there, I asked her about her circles and why her office was filled with them. She didn’t really answer me. She just smiled and said she liked them and they made her feel calm. They seemed to make me, who had always been fearful of going to the dentist, feel calm as well. Since changing to this dentist, I’ve never been fearful again. I decided to investigate circles and what they mean. I wanted to know why she had them in her office and even I seemed to respond to them with a feeling of peace and calmness. I’ll share with you what I found.

From Wikipedia: “A perfect circle is an ancient and universal symbol of unity, wholeness, infinity, the goddess, female power, and the sun. You can merge it with various elements and can develop new meaning.”

If you believe in spirituality, that is a pretty powerful symbol, particularly for a female professional like my dentist.

In symbolism:

“A perfect circle is symbolic of something that is whole, complete, ideal and eternal; a circle has no ending and no beginning, making it synonymous with cyclical ideas and processes. For example, a circular wedding ring is used as a symbol of everlasting love.”

This is my take on today’s prompt,circle.

Posted in Non-fiction

#SoCS – 9/30/2017 – Mountain Dew

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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When I was growing up in northeastern Kentucky, I was fortunate enough to know my grandfather, who lived deep in the heart of Appalachia. He lived only until I was 23 years of age, but I was lucky enough to be old enough to have talked to him. Really talked to him. Conversations that, to me, were important. He was a fine man. Moral, ethical, smart. I’d like to write about him and men like him some day.

There were so many things that I never had the chance or knowledge to talk to him about. My mother, his daughter, told me stories about him. Not enough stories. I wish I knew more. One story that she told me was that my grandfather was determined that she and her seven siblings would never be involved in two endeavors that were prominent in those days in southeastern Kentucky. They would never work in the coal mines and they would never be engaged in the production of “mountain dew.”

Mountain Dew. Not the soft drink. Mountain dew is the slang term for homemade liquor or moonshine, corn liquor, hooch, and a dozen other names. Southeastern Kentucky was “dry.” In other words, liquor could not be sold legally. People made their own and made it for other people. There were stills to make the liquor hidden all over the mountains that were characteristic of the area. Moonshine is 100 percent alcohol and is still made in those mountains.

My grandfather was successful. All of his children left the area, at least long enough to get a college education. My grandfather, himself, got what passed for a college education in his day and was an advocate of higher education for his entire life.

Posted in Flash Fiction

Above the Weeds

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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She took a walk that hot, sweltering day, taking her puppy who was learning to walk on a leash. She lived in the country and the road in front of her house was deserted. A day could pass, hours would go by with no traffic coming or going. She thinks that her sneaker caught on broken asphalt and down she went. She was walking too fast. For some reason, she couldn’t get up. Hours passed. Her puppy laid down beside her. She raised her hand in desperation, hoping someone would see it above the weeds.

3LineTales

Posted in Flash Fiction

Lost Life

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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The old man and the boy slowly walked into the old factory facility even though there was a “No Trespassing” sign.

The boy said, “Why have you brought me here? There’s nothing I can do.”

”I worked here for 24 years. Then, they closed it up. I didn’t get my retirement. You’re going to help me get it going again.”

The old man’s eyes were wild in his head. His hands were shaking. The boy came to the old man.

”Grandfather, it’s gone. There’s nothing we can do.”

He put his arms around him. The old man shook and cried.

 

99 words

Photo Credit J Hardy Carrell