If It Is To Be It Is Up To Me

You can read the Writer's rukes I post all day long...but why not get busy and write!  Ten little words that serve me well: If It Is To Be, It Is Up To Me. I want you to take them for yourself.  You have a story to tell. Maybe telling you mine will make you see how easy it is and get you started. Mine may bore you, but remember it is to my children I am writing, and my grandchildren. 

Maya Angelon, poet, wrote in 1928, "There's no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you."

Let's see, I was born in Harris Memorial Hospital in Ft. Worth,Texas. At age 5, my folks traded Cowtown for Capitol, Austin.

We lived in Tarrytown, almost in shouting distance of Lake Austin, and this great body of water drew us all. Now 'brother Gene, almost 11 years older, was shackled with me from time to time, reluctantly carrying his 5 year old sister on his handlebars down to the lake. On weekends, he and Richard Sturdivant worked endlessly to rebuild boat motors. My brother, would, actually,. dive for lost motors from the boat dock where Enfield Road ends at the lake. 

Any spare hour he could slip off without me, he would take off fishing below the dam. About dark mother would  drive the car down there back and forth across the low-water bridge, giving the signal--- 3 short honks on the horn, and he would emerge, usually carrying fish.

He played football on the State Championship team of the Austin High Maroons under Coach Tony Burger. Because I could twirl a baton, I got to be the mascot that year! He red-shirted at the University of Texas one year  before he and all his football buddies enlisted in various branches of the service. He chose the Air Force, I remember Ruell Nash enlisted in the Navy. 

The Texas University tower continued to guard the Austin skyline as did the Capitol itself.  As a citadel, the Tower's round, gold-faced clock declared the time in four directions. It' s shadow almost reached Wooldridge Elementary, an experiental arm of the University, where I attended grade school.You might want to know that we had our own private war on that grass-dotted, gravel playground, over who gets a piece of the much-coveted Fleer Double Bubble Gum! 

(more next week). How's yours coming along?