My mother with the movie camera. I am taking slides in my favorite pink skirt, I think it is the the summer of 1953, but it could be 1954, my cousin Susan Peters might know what year they visited our Farm near Schenectady, She is the child on this picture. This shows the corner of the house that my father was lifting gradually with a jack; it is where he explained a plumb bob to me.
I have been reading Scott Momaday... this is about his father...
From The Names; a memoir, by N.Scott Momaday. page 41. University of Arizona Press, 1976.
I see. There us moonlight on the Southern Plains. I see the black trees in the north, where the river runs and my father has set out poles on the bank, When he goes before daylight with the lantern to take them up there will be catfishes on the lines, their heads flat and green and shining, and there wide mouths grinning under their whiskers.
There is a whole silence on the earth--only here and there are surfaces made of sound, frogs purring at 'the water's edge, a rooster crowing across the distance, the river running and lapping. And the plain rolls like water in the low light; the light is like chalk on the ripples of the land; the slow, warm wind seems to ruffle the soft light, to stir up like dust. Oklahoma shines like the moon.
Your assignment. Write a paragraph or two about your father. I am hoping to resume this blog...
