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Make Time To Dance
A Promise Is A Promise
With Uncle John’s death certificate signed who knows when I’ll ever be back this way.
Take that next right, that’s the cemetery road.
I was sent to live with him and Aunt Ellen here in Plainfield when my parents died unexpectedly.
I was 15 when social workers pretty much dropped me off on their doorstep.
It was 1972.
They lived on Hell Hollow Road, right next to Blow Me Down Brook. We’ll drive that way after the cemetery so you’ll know I’m not making this stuff up.
In my hometown of Winooski, in Vermont, I was one of the hippie kids. With the draft hanging over my head I became informed enough to know that Vietnam was in that special echelon of human craziness that I was not going to participate. I was always at the protests.
It turned out that Uncle John and I were from different planets. He was a walking fillibuster of every military patriotic nationalistic cliche of the time. There was the Support Our Boys bumper sticker, flags everywhere, an American Legion cap, etc.
Aunt Ellen managed to protect me from the haircut Uncle John wanted to enforce. A saint, living with Beelzebub.
There was no way he was going to put up with my anti-war…
