Ordinarily I write this column with a certain amount of exuberance.

Thursday, August 30, 2001

Ordinarily I write this column with a certain amount of exuberance. Your kindness in welcoming me back to a field from which I had retired gives me the feeling of writing to friends rather than tacking up an assignment.

Tonight, though, it has hit me that I am writing in the last full month of summer. I’m not a winter person. Under irritated cross examination by friends gone to dwell in warmer parts, I’m not at all hard put to explain why I remain in Minnesota.

I like the state. I like the people. Moreover, even for the gift of no ice, no snow, I have no desire to pay the price – alligators walking around on my lawn, sharks nipping at me, cockroaches almost as big as alligators, trotting around my kitchen counters.

Besides, I may be wrong, but I think when I go to the trouble of voting, my vote gets counted.

It’s hard for me to understand why winter seems so much longer than summer. After all, we can usually count on good weather during the last half of April and the first half of October. That’s six months of good weather. So there can be only six months of winter.

And winter has its compensations. There’s oyster stew. There’s probably something else good about winter, but it may take me a little while to remember what it is.

Part of my problem is, perhaps, that I’ve reached an age when I don’t like to see time fly so swiftly. It sets me remembering much that has been wonderful in my life and is now seemingly gone.

I feel a little like the young black man in the story. You’re probably familiar with it. The grandson of slaves and the son of a sharecropper, the young man is a good boy, a hard worker and gifted with an amazing memory.

One day, while still in his teens, he is toiling on his father’s farm, and suddenly the devil pops up beside him. &uot;Are you Josh Wilkins?&uot; he asks the young man.

&uot;Yes, sir.&uot; says the teenager when he has recovered enough to catch his breath.

The devil ponders it. After awhile he asks another question, &uot;They tell me you have quite a memory. Do you?&uot;

The young man modestly allows that he probably has a better than average memory. The devil ponders a little longer. Then finally asks, &uot;Do you like eggs?

&uot;Yes, sir,&uot; is the response. At which point the devil with a sort of hiss, stamps his foot and disappears in a cloud of smoke and flame.

The whole experience is naturally a little unnerving, but the young man doesn’t have too much time to think about it. His parents grow old and he works hard to get a farm of his own, freeing himself after their death of the whole sharecropping drill.

He marries a worthwhile young woman that he has grown up with. They have children, their children have children. The young man is an old man now, old and tired, no longer able to work. He is happy, though, his family turned out well. There is always a place for him among them. They carry on with the work he started and prosper.

It is his great pleasure to sit on the porch of his little cabin, look out over the fruitful fields and rejoice in the happiness of his children. One day when he is so engaged, there is again a flash of scarlet and gold and the devil stands beside him.

&uot;How?&uot; demands his Satanic majesty.

Without a moment’s hesitation the now old man replies, &uot;Scrambled.&uot;

It has been my lot since earliest childhood to remember what seemed to me interesting and to forget a great deal of which I was expected to remember.

People who have become recently my friends blame it, I suspect, on senility. Those who have known me for most of my life know it has never been otherwise. Probably because every place I have ever lived has had winter.

Love Cruikshank is an Albert Lea resident. Her column appears Thursdays.