A Glory

By pbobby

Bobby Boy was a blond, tow-headed Kentucky Hillbilly when he first met up with life. His first recollection of being was recorded very near his second birthday about two miles south of the Ohio River where rolling hills, rich grasslands and giant hardwoods create a splendor. In the front yard of a little frame house that was mostly white, Bobby Boy was trying to make his little red wheelbarrow go. He had just loaded it with trash and stuff that needed to go somewhere else. He had nary a clue as to why his wheelbarrow was s'posed to go or why the trash and stuff needed to be moved. That's just the way he saw it.

Gripping the handles, he shoved and pushed repeatedly with all his might, but it wouldn't budge. With one last desperate lunge, his little hands lost hold of the handles only to find himself all mixed in with his load and wheelbarrow sprawled on the bluegrass. How long he lay in this heap, so confused and exhausted, he doesn't know - just recalls the angst of moment.

Some unremembered time later that day, Bobby found his father's axe and decided to chop some wood. He placed a board on the yard table inches taller than he and chopped, not the board, but his big toe. He doesn't remember crying, hurting, or who took him down the road a piece to Dr. Higdon's house/office. He doesn't remember getting sewn up, or how long he was there, but he does remember a powerful wonderment at his first sight of the doctor's Monarch butterflies framed and hung on the wall. There were vivid golds, blacks and purples in awesome arcs and patterns that simply hypnotized him. He was totally enthralled at this experience of ecstasy that was to be forever etched in his mind and soul, of which he knew nothing at the time.

Some fifteen years later (1951) while in a Physics class at Murray State College, Professor Wallace was propounding on the nature of fulcrums, pulleys, wheels, and gears, Bobby Boy took flight to the scene of his first memory of being. Hovering above a little blonde tow-headed boy in a pile of stuff and a tumbled-over little red wheelbarrow, he could see that it had no wheel. He stayed transfixed in his hovering and astonishment until God only knows when.

Now, after all these years he knew why his wheelbarrow would not go. This mystery is still one of his treasures even though he no longer feels a need to make a wheelbarrow go. Bobby does not remember leaving his Physics 101 class.