Lucky Draw

[Excerpt from a letter to "Clarus and Gwennie", dated 3/15/1989.]

Before the days of Green Stamps, Instant Rebates, and Mail-In Refunds, the Saturday night Drawing held at closing time and sponsored by the progressive merchants of Alexis was one of the highlights of Keith's boyhood when his beloved neighbors Bessie and Rollie McKnight took him into town with them. As some of you will recall, a purchase of 25 cents gave the purchaser a ticket to be deposited in a big barrel. At the magic hour of nine o'clock, the winning numbers would be drawn. In 1937 Keith's family bought a new Ford for $700. Figure that one out--it makes a lot of tickets for the barrel. Keith doesn't remember what the competition was that particular Saturday night, but he was feeling very hopeful holding onto his big wad of tickets held together with a rubber band. (Have you noticed that even computers haven't put rubber bands out of business!) He recollects that he didn't receive the Grand Prize but close to it, for when the winning numbers were announced, he held one lucky ticket that awarded him 10 smackeroos. As all of us recall, in 1937 and for a few more years, that was a grand and wonderful sum. However one might want to construct luck, the laws of probability were definitely in his favor.

Fallen Leaf Lake

(for JKM, 7-7-84)

Now in our thirty-fourth summer
We come childless to the Bassett Cabin:
To dip our thickened frames in the Lake
As if to slake old puritan aches;
Could witch's water been colder,
More purifying than this noble Lake?

Bill's boat skims over the snow-fed
Water, clear to the secret bottom,
As steady goes our prow
Like Susan's crayon to draw the shore,
Setting it now once more
In memory's bank -- our Fallen Leaf,
Against the winter's lack
When the Big Dipper's dimmed
By the Bay's ruinous light.

At dusk we watch the Falls
Which feed so well our Lake,
Its fish, its ducks and ducklings,
Its continuous, Wordsworthian roar,
Reducing the Ski-Nautique
To puny mosquito-power.

Sated with spray, we stop
At St. Francis of the Mountains,
Bonnie and Marvin's place,
Beflowered in Columbine and Queen Anne's Lace,
To read in brass again the names who died in war --
Allen, Bassett, Brett, Canning, Culver, Etcheverry,
The words: "They will not grow old"
And we make bold to add our names
To those who also cannot leave this Lake.

[Poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann, presumably written in July, 1984. Photo by Steve Jurvetson.]

From the Market

The woman carries the cantaloupe in her palm,
Protruding like a proud pregnancy.
Her fingers turn up, become a bowl;
Each foot dances to ripeness.

Was the cantaloupe singing
As she made her way to home and mate?
Would she dare to eat
The golden flesh when she woke
With cravings in the night?

[Poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann. Dated "July, August, September 1997". Photo by Kabsik Park.]