Georgia Green Stamper – Georgia On Her Mind

I’m pretty sure I gasped. Maybe I only think I did, embellishing the memory, but a sight that unexpected can make you gasp, and I’m pretty sure I did.

We almost didn’t stop by the farm that afternoon. I was tired. Early that morning, we’d driven to Cincinnati where I’d given a lecture. We needed to get home to Lexington for an evening obligation. But my family’s vacant home-place is halfway between those two cities, and only a few miles off the Interstate. Ernie and I agreed we needed to check on it after a winter of neglect.

My husband would say that we bought our nothing-out-of-the-ordinary suburban home because it had a walkout basement. That’s an uncommon feature, we were surprised to learn, in our more flat than not sub-division. The real reason, however, was its tiny front room.

I opened the window of the car and summer slipped in beside me.
“I know him,” I said when the air conditioner objected to our picking up this hitchhiker. I’d been following him, I could have explained, watching for glimpses of him through the windshield.
I had almost forgotten the smell of his cologne, one part fresh-cut bluegrass, one part humidity, one part – oh, I can’t name it. Maybe heat, the kind you see rising up in a haze on the horizon? But now I remembered: The scent of summer before time ran away.

Ernie and I have hit upon a new plan to supplement our retirement income.
We’re starting up the Georgia & Ernie Detective Agency.
I’m kidding around, of course, but with the help of our classmates, friends, the News-Herald and the Internet, we’ve done the near impossible - to announce our 51st Class Reunion (yes we forgot to plan a 50th) on Aug. 2, we’ve located a mailing address for the 58 living members of the Owen County High School Class of 1963.