Saturday, February 28, 2009

Loss of a friend.


Our good friend Paul Harvey died today.

One of my very earliest memories was sitting next to my Grandpa in his old truck one Christmas eve. I was just the right height to have the heat from the registers blow right in my face, and had my hands on the gearshift feeling the motor as it ran. He was going slow, trying to see the road, because it was snowing, and still dark, or got dark already, and we were on some county road in the middle of nowhere. It could have been scary, but I was with Grandpa. When he got quiet and concentrated on the road, I listened to the radio, and when Paul Harvey came on with his daily program, and for some reason it was soothing. From that time hearing him on the radio always made me think of my grandpa and his old truck. Twenty-eight plus years later and I can still smell the cab of the truck and remember the way the snow looked like stars flying past, the dash lights reflected off of grandpa's glasses, and the gearshift felt under my hands.

And that's one more tiny piece of the rest of the story.