Who I Am

   An old man sat crying by the side of the road. He had been making his way to Amarillo when several young men in an automobile stopped and offered him a ride. Since it was a long distance he had yet to travel, he accepted, but as he was about to climb into the auto one of the young men grabbed his straw hat and sailed it high into the air where the wind caught it and carried it far into the adjacent meadow. Upon retrieving his hat he discovered that the young men, now gone, had taken the contents of his knapsack, including an old tin of papers and photographs and scattered them throughout the roadside grass. As I helped him gather those he said to me, "I am in here," and indicated the handful of papers he was inspecting before returning them to the tin. "This is who I am," he added, nodding.

   "Have  you no family?" I asked, being concerned that he was on the road alone.

   "None."

   "Wife and children?"  "No and no. Never wanted any."

   "Father?"  "A hopeless drunk."

   "Mother?"  "Died of bitterness."

   Then he realized that missing among his papers was a letter he valued above all other things, including his straw hat, and he began crying again. After several minutes of searching, we found it farther down the road, undamaged. The old man grinned and thanked me and wiped the remaining tears from his face with his sleeve.  "This is a letter from Auntie Gallagher," he explained as he added it to the tin. He would not accept a ride to Amarillo from me, being "once bitten" I suppose, but as we parted he shouted back:

   "She was the last living person to have known me when I was a child!"

-glwarren, 2014