I army-crawled under the house and point­ed my flash­light at the far cor­ner. Through the haze of gold­en dust motes and sil­ver spi­der web­bing, I saw the alu­minum duct lying on the ground. My goal was to reat­tach it to the bed­room floor-vent above it.

In my sum­mer job as a plumber’s helper, I’d crawled under hous­es before. Musty, filthy, insect-infest­ed, dark­er than a moon­less night, it was nev­er a pleas­ant expe­ri­ence, but the under­side of this ante­bel­lum manse was the worst so far. Since its con­struc­tion, the ground had shift­ed and the ancient floor joists had warped. In some places the clear­ance was less than six inches.

Slith­er­ing along on my bel­ly, I came to a joist that blocked my path. I scooped out a trough in the dirt, rolled over on my back, and scuffed for­ward. I pushed my head through, but my chest wouldn’t clear. Squirm­ing around, I got stuck so tight­ly I couldn’t move. Pinned like an insect on a poster board, I was fight­ing off claus­tro­pho­bic pan­ic when I heard a dry rustling sound to my left.

Alarmed, I cast my light in that direc­tion. A black snake lay coiled an arm’s length away, star­ing at me, its eyes glow­ing like lit­tle dia­monds, its tongue flick­ing in and out.

Mer­ri­am-Web­ster defines ophid­io­pho­bia as the “abnor­mal fear of snakes.” The genius who put the word “abnor­mal” in there obvi­ous­ly nev­er squared off against a snake under a house.

I tore all the flesh off my chest lurch­ing out from under that joist, set a land-speed record for a man crab-scut­tling on his back, and flopped through the crawl­space open­ing into the twi­light. After check­ing to make sure the black rac­er hadn’t fol­lowed me, I col­lapsed on the grass, my heart pound­ing as loud and fast as the ket­tle­drums in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

This all went down at the tail end of a long hard day. Weeks ear­li­er, the plumber, my boss, had land­ed a sub­con­tract installing air con­di­tion­ing sys­tems in a hous­ing devel­op­ment in Char­lottesville. He trained me to run the duct­work and rough-in the vents, then hired Gilly Fra­zier and told me to teach him to do what I did.

Among the hun­dreds of peo­ple I’ve worked with over my long life, Gilly ranked at the bot­tom in intel­li­gence. Six­teen years old, five-five and 120 pounds with flam­ing red hair and a freck­led face, he sport­ed a cast on his fore­arm his first day on the job. When I asked about it, he said his dad­dy took him and his broth­er, Floyd, to a wrestling match in Char­lottesville where some char­ac­ter named Mad Dog jumped off the ring’s turn­buck­le onto an oppo­nent lying flat

on the mat. Floyd came up with the bright idea of reen­act­ing the match in their back­yard, where­upon he jumped off a fence post onto Gilly’s fore­arm, snap­ping it like a brit­tle stick. “Floyd’s a dum­b­ass,” Gilly said, dou­bling over in a fit of gig­gling, bliss­ful­ly unaware that the big­ger dum­b­ass might be the broth­er who lay still while Floyd’s size twelves came crash­ing down on his arm.

Gilly said he dropped out of school because it was a “waste a time. Don’t larn noth­in’. Cain’t fig­ger what they’s talkin’ ‘bout.” He couldn’t fig­ure what I was talk­ing about either. He for­got every­thing I told him before I could fin­ish telling him. With Gilly in tow, I had to work twice as hard to keep up with our pro­duc­tion schedule.

Despite Gilly’s help, I’d fin­ished installing an AC sys­tem by quit­ting time that day when the plumber got an emer­gency call to repair the AC in an invalid’s bed­room in the old manse, drove us there, diag­nosed the prob­lem, and sent me under the house while he and Gilly wait­ed in the bed­room at the AC vent.

I was still stretched out on the grass try­ing to recu­per­ate from acute ophid­io­pho­bia when the plumber and Gilly walked up on me. In his late for­ties, short and paunchy, the plumber was a good guy, but he oper­at­ed on a tight bud­get and slow-downs on the job lit his short fuse. When he found me lying flat on my back in a cata­ton­ic stu­por on his nick­el, he exploded.

“What the hell are you doing?” he boomed.

I strug­gled to my feet. “I ran into a snake under there,” I said defensively.

“What hap­pened to your chest?” he said.

I looked down to see crim­son blood­stains on my t‑shirt and felt the sting of abra­sions for the first time. I told him what hap­pened. “There’s not enough clear­ance,” I said. “I couldn’t have made it to the duct even if the snake hadn’t showed up.”

The plumber’s tem­per usu­al­ly cooled as quick­ly as it flared. This blast fol­lowed the pat­tern. “Sor­ry I yelled at you. We’ll put dis­in­fec­tant on those cuts when we get home, but first we’ve got to find a way to fix the AC. Old man Wood­son can’t breathe in this heat.”

The plumber knelt and flashed his light in the crawl­space. “The snake’s gone, but you’re right about the clear­ance. You can’t make it back to the cor­ner.” He peered into the space for a while, then stood, and turned to Gilly. “It’s a tight fit, but you’re skin­ny enough to slip through.”

Gilly’s eyes widened. “It’s too dark,” he said.

“Take my light.”

Gilly swal­lowed hard. “I cain’t do it.”

“Don’t wor­ry about the snake. He’s long gone. They’re more afraid of us than we are of them.”

“I ain’t scared a snakes.”

“Good. Then crawl under there and fix the duct so we can go home.”

His face twitch­ing, Gilly backed away. “I don’t want to!”

The plumber’s tight-bud­get vol­cano erupt­ed. “The hell with what you want! I pay you to do what I want! Get under there! Now!”

It was obvi­ous where this was head­ed. In the month we’d worked togeth­er Gilly told me things he was ashamed to admit to most peo­ple. I knew why he couldn’t crawl under the house. I could tell the plumber and save Gilly’s job, but I’d car­ried him on my back like a dead body all day every day since he’d been hired. Stay out of it, I told myself.

I don’t think it was the tears slid­ing down Gilly’s freck­led cheeks that got to me. More like­ly, it was the cumu­la­tive effect of a string of tell-tale signs: a pur­plish healed-over scar above his eye I’d noticed his first day of work, a dis­col­ored knot on his fore­head that came and went a week lat­er, red marks that encir­cled his throat short­ly after that, and my grow­ing doubts about his plas­ter-cast story.

“He’s afraid of the dark,” I said to the plumber.

“Who asked you to butt in?” the plumber shout­ed, turn­ing on me.

“Gilly’s afraid of dark enclosed spaces,” I said even­ly. “He has vivid night­mares about being locked in a clos­et all night long.”

A look of con­cern came across the plumber’s tense face.

“He dreams about that dark clos­et every night,” I said, giv­ing the plumber a long, know­ing look, hop­ing he’d pick up on my sus­pi­cion that Gilly’s night­mare wasn’t just a dream.

We both looked at Gilly. He kept his head down and said noth­ing. The plumber stared at him for a long time, then knelt down, and flashed his light under the house.

“The duct’s on the ground right below the vent,” he said. “The line’s joints held togeth­er.” He looked up at me. “You think we can recon­nect it from the bedroom?”

I thought about it. “We should be able to reach it from above. If I can lift the line and nail the duct to the joists with­out the joints pulling apart, it’ll work.”

“Give it a try.”

It worked.

The next day, the plumber assigned Gilly to the senior man on the AC sub­con­tract. A few days lat­er, he told the plumber Gilly was untrainable.

I thought the plumber would fire him then, but instead he put him on a job run­ning water lines and lay­ing sew­er pipe. Tra­di­tion­al plumb­ing is more straight­for­ward than heat­ing and air. Most of what you need to know springs off the trade’s three pri­ma­ry rules: “Hot on the left; cold on the right; and s*** don’t run uphill.” I hoped Gilly could catch on to it. When I left to return to UVA, he was hang­ing on to the job by his fingernails.

Three years lat­er, I ran into him at Wyant’s Store in White Hall. He still worked for the plumber and was liv­ing on his own in Brown’s Cove. I didn’t see any fresh tell-tale signs.

As I watched Gilly’s beat-up pick­up rat­tle off down the road to Crozet, I thought about the plumber pay­ing him good mon­ey he couldn’t spare week after week, refus­ing to give up on him, stub­born­ly deter­mined to unearth what­ev­er tal­ent lay buried deep down inside that sad kid.

It made no sense from a busi­ness stand­point, but like I said, the plumber was a good guy. Real­ly good.

Post Script: The fear of snakes is among the most com­mon of the 120 rec­og­nized pho­bias, afflict­ing 56 per­cent of adults, while Gilly’s fear of the dark, Nyc­to­pho­bia, and its first cousin, Claus­tro­pho­bia, each plague about 12 per­cent. Some extreme­ly rare pho­bias must be dif­fi­cult to cope with, like Bara­pho­bia, the fear of grav­i­ty; Omphalo­pho­bia, bel­ly but­tons; Opto­pho­bia, open­ing your eyes; and my per­son­al favorite, Hip­popo­tomon­strose­quipedalio­pho­bia, the fear of long words.

I was tool­ing down Hunt­ing­ton Dri­ve in my two-toned beige and brown 1954 Hud­son Hor­net when smoke bil­lowed from the hood. I hit the brakes; the Hud­son lurched vio­lent­ly to the right; the front tire rammed into the curb; and the engine stalled out.

I hopped out and slammed the door. The air was thick with the scent of burn­ing rub­ber as steam­ing yel­low-green coolant gushed from the Hudson’s front end and streamed along the curb to the gut­ter. I let out a long dis­gust­ed sigh.

By then the tow truck com­pa­ny occu­pied the top spot on my cell phone’s speed-dial direc­to­ry. Con­nie, my fre­quent com­mis­er­a­tor, picked up on the first ring. “That old crate’s cost­ing you a for­tune,” she said. “You ough­ta sell it.”

“No one in his right mind would buy it.”

“You did.”

“Proves my point. How long a wait this time?”

“Lester’ll be there in twenty.”

I pock­et­ed my phone and leaned against the front fend­er, brood­ing yet again about the rash deci­sion that got me into this mess. Years ear­li­er, my broth­ers and I bought a bro­ken-down 1954 Hud­son Hor­net for our dad. A Hud­son deal­er as a young man, Dad con­sid­ered the Hor­net the best car ever made. Restor­ing his Hud­son became a labor of love for him and us. See The 1954 Hud­son Hor­net.

If the sto­ry had end­ed there, I would have lived hap­pi­ly ever after, but noooo. After we bought Dad’s car, my broth­er sent me the link to an ad on E‑Bay for the sale of a 1954 Hud­son Hor­net in Los Ange­les. In the pho­to­graph it looked in near-mint con­di­tion. I made an offer con­di­tioned on an inspec­tion. My bid stood alone at the dead­line, so the sell­er and I arranged to meet in a park­ing lot in Cul­ver City.

Replac­ing a burned-out tail­light tax­es the lim­it of my auto­mo­tive exper­tise, so I hired a young mechan­ic, Brad, to go with me. When we pulled into the lot, a hulk­ing giant with a shaved head, sausage neck, and ugly scar slash­ing across his fore­head stood beside the Hudson.

Brad looked under the hood while I tried to make con­ver­sa­tion with the heavy. “You restore it your­self?” I asked.

“Man who fixed it up owes me mon­ey,” he said in a grav­el­ly voice. “You buy it, he’s off the hook.” From his angry scowl I gath­ered he planned to break the man’s legs if I didn’t fork over the dough.

“Looks okay,” Brad said, “but we should test-dri­ve her.”

“You can test-dri­ve her all you want after you pay me,” Mr. Con­ge­nial­i­ty snarled, “and there won’t be no refund.”

Stu­pid­ly, I paid him.

The radi­a­tor boiled over twice on the way home. Brad found some pin-holes and sol­dered them. It over­heat­ed again, so he slathered sealant over the whole thing.

Then the brakes start­ed pulling hard to the right. Brad fixed them. They did it again. He fixed them again. They did it again, and he fixed them a third time.

On the short dri­ves to and from Brad’s shop, acces­sories spon­ta­neous­ly fell off. A door han­dle, the radio aer­i­al, the Hud­son emblem on the grill, the winged hood-orna­ment, the dec­o­ra­tive chrome space­ship affixed to the trunk. These babies cost from 50 to 500 smack­ers each on the Hud­son Club web­site, which was the only place you could buy them.

My repair costs exceed­ed the Hudson’s pur­chase price by the time the Hud­son stalled out on Hunt­ing­ton Dri­ve that morn­ing when the fresh­ly sealed radi­a­tor boiled over yet again and the thrice-fixed brakes jerked to the right.

While I was wait­ing for Lester and the tow truck, a shriv­eled-up ancient woman limped out of the Wells Far­go Bank and squint­ed at my car. “Is that a Hudson?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She shuf­fled clos­er to it and peered in its rear win­dow. “When I was a young girl, me and Bob­by Dugan had us some fun in his daddy’s Hud­son,” she said, gig­gling like a teenager.

This sort of thing is a com­mon occur­rence when you own a Hud­son. Hud­sons are chick mag­nets. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, most of the chicks they attract don’t still have their own teeth. Judg­ing by the wist­ful smiles of the sweet old ladies who admired my car, myr­i­ad roman­tic trysts involv­ing cou­ples born between World Wars I and II took place in a Hudson’s roomy back seat.

“I’d give you a ride in her, ma’am,” I said, “but she’s broke down.”

“Under­stand­able. She’s near­ly as old as I am.” She touched the front fend­er gen­tly. “Thank you for the mem­o­ries,” she said in a soft voice. Still smil­ing, Bob­by Dugan’s long ago para­mour turned and hob­bled slow­ly down the side­walk to Starbucks.

Lester towed the Hud­son to Brad’s shop. He “fixed” the brakes again. Since he couldn’t find any­thing wrong with the radi­a­tor, we tried a dif­fer­ent engine coolant. On the way home, the inte­ri­or rear-view mir­ror fell from its mount and shat­tered on the floor­board. I drove to O’Reilly Auto Parts in San Gabriel to see if I could pick up a replace­ment on the cheap. The elder­ly clerk who wait­ed on me was famil­iar with Hud­sons. When I men­tioned my recur­ring boil­ing-over adven­tures, he asked if he could take a look.

Out in the park­ing lot, he unscrewed the Hudson’s radi­a­tor cap and turned it over in his hand. “This is your prob­lem,” he said. “Belongs on a Hon­da.” He rum­maged around in the dis­con­tin­ued parts room and found a 1956 Oldsmo­bile cap. “It’s sim­i­lar to a Hud­son cap,” he said. “It ough­ta work.”

It worked. Cost me $2.56. Brad’s face turned fire-engine red when I told him.

After that, the Hud­son ran great and noth­ing fell off. For about a week. We were chug­ging up Sier­ra Madre Boule­vard when the engine sput­tered. I head­ed for home in a pan­ic. Miss­ing bad­ly when I pulled in the dri­ve­way, she conked out twen­ty feet from my garage.

Mad as hell, I stomped into the kitchen and unleashed a pro­fan­i­ty-laced rant about my piece-of-crap Hudson.

“Maybe it’s out of gas,” Cindy said.

“It’s got plen­ty of gas!”

“How do you know? Thought you said the gas gauge was broken.”

“I put ten gal­lons in the damned thing two weeks ago!”

“It’s a big car. Maybe it guz­zled it up.”

“Look, I know what I’m talk­ing about! It’s not out of gas!”

“Okay, okay. I was just try­ing to help.”

Cindy’s sug­ges­tion was ridicu­lous! The Hud­son had been sit­ting in the shop almost full time since I pumped in that ten gal­lons, for pity’s sake. Just to prove I was right, I filled a five-gal­lon can at the sta­tion, poured the fuel in the Hudson’s tank, got behind the wheel, and turned the key in the ignition.

It start­ed right up.

I sat per­fect­ly still for a good five min­utes, star­ing blankly through the wind­shield, pon­der­ing betray­al, humil­i­a­tion, and the futil­i­ty of life in general.

“How’d you fix the Hud­son?” Cindy asked when I slouched back into the kitchen.

“The sol­id lifters were stuck,” I said. “I greased up the cams and lugs.”

“That’s great! I didn’t real­ize you knew so much about cars.”

“Yeah, well …”

Tak­ing care not to make eye con­tact, I retreat­ed to my home office, cranked up the com­put­er, and put the Hud­son up for sale on E‑bay.

No bid­ders. I cut the price in half. Still no action. Two more cuts brought me down to rock-bot­tom, but even bot­tom-feed­ers wouldn’t take the bait.

I began to think the Hud­son had become my Red Chief. In O. Henry’s short sto­ry, The Ran­som of Red Chief, a cou­ple of mis­cre­ants kid­nap a boy to extort a ran­som from his rich dad, but the kid is such a holy ter­ror the dad is glad to be rid of him and won’t pay. When the kid pre­tends he’s the fierce Red Chief, ties one of the kid­nap­pers to a stake, and sets his pants on fire, the bad guys end up pay­ing the dad a healthy sum to take him back.

I was on the verge of offer­ing a cash reward to any­one will­ing to take the Hud­son off my hands when a young cou­ple fell in love with her. They were friends of ours so I almost warned them off.

Almost.

I mean, come on, that car was dri­ving me nuts. Besides, the hus­band was a heavy equip­ment mechan­ic and had the skill to keep her run­ning, and just in case he couldn’t keep her run­ning, I gave them the Hud­son for free.

So in the end this sad tale turned out well for every­one. The loan shark got his cash. The mark didn’t get his legs broke. Brad made a lot of mon­ey. The Hud­son found a hap­py home. The young cou­ple is still over­joyed with her.

And, most impor­tant­ly, I’m over­joyed with­out her.

Post Script: Even smart suc­cess­ful peo­ple make trag­ic mis­takes. Jay Leno’s col­lec­tion of 169 cars includes a whole bunch of Hud­sons. His net worth is esti­mat­ed at $450,000,000. For now.

Mom woke me at dawn. I washed up, put on my new school clothes, and grabbed my Roy Rogers lunch box. She walked me down our dirt dri­ve­way and held my hand while we stood on the shoul­der of Route 60, wait­ing for the school bus.

It was the first day of the first grade, and I was scared. There were no pre-schools or kinder­gartens where I lived, so I didn’t know what to expect.

Mom was scared, too. Her hand tight­ened around mine when the bus came over the hill, and she had tears in her eyes when she helped me up the steps and sat me in the front seat.

The bus pulled away and rolled along towards Williams­burg, stop­ping to pick up kids at falling-down shacks, trail­er courts, and truck farms. At a run-down gas sta­tion, Georgie Thomp­son, anoth­er first grad­er, climbed aboard and sat next to me. Too scared to talk, nei­ther of us breathed a word until the bus pulled up in front of a dark hulk­ing brick build­ing that looked like a jail­house, where­upon Georgie said in a small voice, “Oh, God.”

Two sixth-grade girls were wait­ing for us on the curb. They pulled us by the hand into Matthew Wha­ley Ele­men­tary School and down a long hall through a swarm­ing fren­zy of shout­ing, laugh­ing kids. Georgie’s guide shoved him through a door on the left; mine pushed me into a class­room on the right.

Mrs. Pear­son, a short frail gray-haired teacher, met me at the door and sat me down at a table with oth­er dazed first graders. After a few more stunned kids trick­led into the room, she launched into a wel­come-to-school speech.

In the mid­dle of it, a tall stout woman dressed in Sun­day-go-to-church clothes appeared at the door.

“It’s the prin­ci­pal,” a girl at my table hissed. “Somebody’s in big trouble.”

“Is there a Ken­ny Oder here?” the prin­ci­pal asked.

My stom­ach did a backflip.

Mrs. Pear­son pounced on me and hand­ed me off to the prin­ci­pal. With a grip as tight as a pair of pli­ers, she pulled me across the hall into anoth­er class­room and plopped me down in a chair next to a boy slumped over a desk bawl­ing hys­ter­i­cal­ly at the top of his lungs.

“Calm down now,” the prin­ci­pal said to the boy. “Here’s the friend you asked for.”

The boy raised his head and looked at me. I sucked in my breath at the sight of my dread­ed child­hood neme­sis, Robert West. Once a week Robert vis­it­ed his ten-year-old cousin, who lived next door to me, and they teamed up to tor­ment me mer­ci­less­ly. Robert tried to make me cry every time he came around, and with his cousin’s help, he usu­al­ly suc­ceed­ed. I hat­ed him.

Robert stopped cry­ing when he saw me and clamped his sweaty hand onto mine. I tried to jerk free, but he held on like his life depend­ed on it. He scoot­ed his chair clos­er to mine and grabbed my arm with his oth­er hand. I couldn’t make him let go, so we sat like that until the prin­ci­pal final­ly returned, dis­en­tan­gled me from Robert, and took me back to my class.

“Thank you, Ken­ny,” she said. “You’ve been a big help to your friend.”

Inside my head I screamed, “He’s not my friend! He’s a big dog turd!” But out loud all I could man­age was a meek “Okay.”

I don’t remem­ber the rest of the day except that Mom hugged me for a long time when I got off the bus, and lat­er when I told her about Robert, she laughed so hard she cried.

The first grade turned out to be fun for the most part – sto­ry­time, craft time, nap time. Recess was the best. They turned us loose on a play­ground that would qual­i­fy as a killing field under today’s safe­ty stan­dards. No plas­tic slides, rub­ber mats, or guardrails, and a fall from the giant iron jun­gle gym’s mon­key bars held the promise of per­ma­nent paral­y­sis, if not out­right death.

Mirac­u­lous­ly, I didn’t get hurt on the play­ground. As it turned out, a much greater men­ace lurked on the school bus. Our bus car­ried kids in grades one through twelve, and the big kids bul­lied the lit­tle ones. I was espe­cial­ly afraid of a teenag­er I’d heard talk­ing to oth­er boys about wash­ing his hands in the blood of a deer he’d killed and stran­gling chick­ens just to hear their pan­icked death-squawks. I was care­ful to stay away from him, but one day when I got on the bus the only open seat was behind him.

He turned around and smiled at me with a wound­ed look in his eyes, sad and hurt, but mean at the same time. He reached over the seat, wrapped his hands around my throat, and began to choke me. I don’t know if the oth­er kids didn’t notice or just didn’t care, but none of them did anything.

I clawed at the boy’s wrists, but his grip only tight­ened and his sick smile grew wider. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t scream.

Pol­ly Craw­ford was a fat ugly eighth-grad­er with dirty hair who smelled bad. No one liked her. That’s why the seat next to her was emp­ty when I got on the bus.

“Let him go,” Pol­ly said.

The boy squeezed hard­er. My vision began to fade.

“I said let him go!”

“Shut up,” the boy said.

Pol­ly slapped him as hard as she could. He let go of me and lunged at Polly.

I must have faint­ed because the next thing I recall is lying on the floor, cough­ing and gagging.

There was a big fight. The dri­ver, a William and Mary stu­dent, stopped the bus, threw the boy off, picked me up, sat me beside Pol­ly, and drove on as though noth­ing had happened.

Where I lived you had to be tough, even as a lit­tle boy. For the rest of the year I sat beside Pol­ly every chance I got and avoid­ed the boy as best I could, but I didn’t report him to the prin­ci­pal or any­one else. I didn’t even tell Mom and Dad about him.

As a coun­ter­bal­ance to that god-awful trau­ma, the first grade pro­duced one of the most impor­tant learn­ing expe­ri­ences of my life. One after­noon Mrs. Pear­son arranged our chairs in a cir­cle and asked us to share sto­ries about our fathers’ jobs. The first kid said her dad was an engi­neer at VEPCO. A boy’s dad worked for Chesa­peake Bank. And so on. No one’s dad did any­thing inter­est­ing, and the sto­ries about them were dead­ly boring.

When Mrs. Pear­son called on me, I start­ed to say my dad sold cars, but a strange feel­ing came over me and I fell silent.

“Ken­ny?” Mrs. Pear­son said.

I looked at her blankly.

“What does your father do for a liv­ing?” she said, try­ing to get me back on track.

The strange feel­ing swelled up inside me. “My dad dri­ves air­planes in big races every Sat­ur­day in Rich­mond,” I said.

The kids perked up.

“Your dad races air­planes?” the boy next to me said, awe-struck.

“Yeah. He almost crashed in the last race.”

Every­one stared at me, wide-eyed.

Ideas bub­bled up so fast my mouth could bare­ly keep pace with my brain. I put Dad in a blue plane shaped like a cig­ar with wings, small­er than the oth­ers, but sneaky fast, dip­ping, ris­ing, zig-zag­ging, and soar­ing. The kids were on the edge of their chairs when Dad lost pow­er and had to use the gaso­line choke to restart the engine and pull the plane up off the ground just before it crashed, and they were hang­ing on my every word when Dad opened the throt­tle, steadi­ly gained on the oth­er planes, caught the leader at the end, and won by a nosecone.

After the kids stopped cheer­ing, I looked at Mrs. Pear­son. Her mouth was hang­ing open. A chill went up my spine. She knows it’s a big lie, I thought. She’s going to yell at me.

But she didn’t yell. Instead, she said, “That was a won­der­ful sto­ry, Ken­ny, and you told it well.”

Then she called on the girl to my left, whose father was an accoun­tant. While the girl droned on about keep­ing track of bills, Mrs. Pear­son smiled at me. I smiled back, and a bond formed between us that inspired me long after I left her class.

That was my first sto­ry; it was real­ly fun to tell; and it set me on a long wind­ing path that even­tu­al­ly led to Whip­poor­will Hollow.

Sev­er­al months ago, almost sev­en decades after Dad won that air­plane race, my deep well of sto­ries final­ly seemed to have run dry. I tried hard, but noth­ing good came forth. With more than a lit­tle sad­ness, I stopped writ­ing and told Bob­bye to let my blog go qui­et­ly into that goodnight.

A few weeks passed. Then Against All Odds cried out to me. Turn­ing Points came along soon after­wards. The Down­fall fol­lowed. Now this one. As I close it out, I hear more ghost-voic­es whis­per­ing from the bot­tom of that deep well.

The time to quit may come some­day, but it seems I’m not there yet.

Post Script: “There is no greater agony than bear­ing an untold sto­ry inside you.” Maya Angelou