A Positive Force in the Universe...part 1

We were barely 10, my twin brother and I. She was barely 54. Her life had been filled with more tragedy than one woman should have to know and more would be on the way....but that's another story. This story is about the strength of a woman and the generosity of a man. A women who had no more to give and a man who had given all he had. Neither knew each other but both would play prominent roles in the lives of my brother and myself.


The spring of 1967 was cool and crisp. The shore birds, long gone from their tropical digs, had not yet arrived to their summer home along the cliffs of Lake Erie but the spring robins were making enough noise for all of them. My mother had loaded us up in the car to take us "grocery shopping". For her that meant pushing a heavy cart up and down the isles at the local Pick-N-Pay. For us it meant a trip to the local Grey Drug store just down the strip mall to share the $.50 my mother had given each of us. Just enough for a box of milk duds and a batman comic book, you know the thick ones that looked like a novel book. As we past Kanyuh's, the local bar on the corner, my mother asked a question that would change all of that.

" How would you like to go to a school where you couldn't live with me but I could come and visit you?" she asked as she drove the car glancing at us in the rear-view mirror waiting for our reaction.

"Sure" I said.

"You wouldn't mind living away from home?"

" No" I said. " I'd still get to see ya" And that was it. no mention before, no mention after. Little did I know that the work had already been started, the paperwork finished, referrals already referred and the acceptances already extended. All that was left was to fill the empty space on the dotted line with a signature.

August 1 st 1967 would be the beginning. We didn't know it. We had woken early after a long 8 hr drive from Cleveland. As I took in my surroundings I couldn't help but notice the faint but eternal hint of chocolate in the air. Mom hurried us into our suits, spruced us up and loaded us into the car for the now short drive to Milton Hershey School.

To be continued.....

These are, after all, the musings of amind that wanders.