Amiss

Someone once said, "A miss is as good as a mile." At times I guess that is the perfect answer. Sometimes it might be amiss. Go figure.

I'm listening to a dead woman this morning. She's singing the blues. Janis Joplin was a unique woman. I think if she'd lived long enough she'd probably be a lot like Erma Baxter over in Freedom Cove. Erma is approaching a hundred years old. She can still walk around her mountain. She has gotten slower the last year or two.

Erma has lived in these mountains all of her life. I hear tell that there was a time that she could drink any man in the County under the table with some of the locally produced medicinal spirits and that included her old man. She is reported to have arm wrestled a man who was a rock driller on the railroad. He used a sledge ten hours a day. She beat him.

Now about the only thing that Erma can enter into a contest and whup anyone with is her voice and her memory. I swear there are times when the wind is just right I can hear her screaming out, "Yes! Again!"

She lives two miles away as the crow. And yet I think I can hear her. Indeed, that sound makes me wonder.

Quite a voice.

G