This is Roy French’s annual Christmas memoir. It is near midnight in late December. I have just returned home from a country schoolhouse. It is a very old building with uneven floors and drafty windows. The doors do not close as tightly as they did 50 years ago when a teacher and children spent time […]
Roy French
Posted inArts & Culture
A mysterious blessing
This is Roy French’s annual Christmas memóir. Mr. Houck came early to the Sangamon Valley while it was still a wilderness without many inhabitants. He came before the land was surveyed so his fields stretched from the big sycamore tree to the east to the large cottonwood on the creek bank to the west. All […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The spatula
It was a year past her leaving that Anna made her request, a simple thing and reasonable, that William bring with him the spatula, the one with the red handle. “I kept it in the drawer by the stove,” she said. He thought a moment, then said, “I’ll look for it.” They had come a […]
