Not long ago, I had the pleasure of reading a bit of historical fiction from the not-so-distant past. It was a short story that had probably taken place in rural Kansas, and yes, it’s probably most of Kansas, but I suspect this story was about an older gentleman in his later years who lived near the border between Kansas and Colorado, maybe along the Wyoming border. where all the states meet there. It was quite revealing, and while also quite brief, it gave me a sense of what one side of my ancestral chain was like, or those distant aunts and uncles, and grandparents from, where.

The tale was shelved with many others in an interesting read titled; “Creative Fiction, The Universal Chord” Volume number 9, edited by Lee Gutkind, published by the Creative Nonfiction Foundation, 1998, 132 pages, ISSN: 1070-0714.

The title of the story is; “Rural Nobody” by Jill Carpenter.

In fact, I was immediately struck by the reality of the main character, an elderly father and grandfather living in an apartment while his health was failing, but he wouldn’t quit smoking. He reflected on what it would have been like if he had been born 50 years later, he was born in 1907. If that had happened, it would have prevented the flu pandemic, two world wars, the bank failure and much more. Still, he marveled at the fact that his life spanned from horse and carriage to the space age.

He wondered how life could have been different, among other things, you see, he didn’t have Alzheimer’s and was as sharp as a whip, with an almost perfect memory for most things; names, dates and history. Her daughters cared for him, one lived near her and she saw to it that he lived comfortably and was taken care of, she even worried that she didn’t have what she needed when she took her family on vacation to Hawaii.

As I was reading this story, I was taken to that place and I realized that a lot of the stories and lifestyle of that generation is gone, they haven’t been given their due online, because when he died at the end of the The 1990s Internet didn’t have all these social networks and much of that entire time period may have been lost. Sure it exists in non-fictional biographies here and there, but not all of it, and not to the extent that life is recorded online today. I think maybe it’s a story worth reading and the author of that piece is talented.

Jill Carpenter, you did well, thank you for this piece of life and for this wonderful story.