Nostalgia Trails; Ol' Blue and Charlie

As we celebrate this fourth of July, 2009, Oris George’s new story brings you back to a time frame when the fourth of July also meant learning how to grow up.

Some say freedom is about speaking your mind. Others say it’s all about moving anytime you wish and living where you choose. Freedom includes the ability to choose your career, the size of your family, the books you choose to write – or read. Living in a nation that allows public gatherings without fear for your safety as well as being able to safely walk the streets of your town at night, are also part of America’s freedoms.

There is also something to say for the freedom to think and learn and grow and hold events and ideas and yes – people, dear in our hearts.

Ol’ Blue and Charlie, takes the reader into the heart of a young man trying to grow into his ‘man-full-grown’ view of himself even as he also struggles with the pains of being ‘only’ eleven. Here are some excerpts:

-"I don’t care what your dad said. You have no business up there alone.”
What did she know about anything anyway? I had my donkey, ol’ Blue, and Ring, my trusty black dog going with me. I was eleven years old and didn’t need anyone telling me what I could or couldn’t do.



-“Thanks for the lunch, Mom. You make the best lunches.” I figured it wouldn’t cause me pain to elaborate on the lunch. (Moms like to hear those kinda things.) “Don’t worry. I’ll be home in time to do chores.”

-I responded by saying, “You don’t look like much of a cowboy to me.” As soon as the words dropped out of my mouth, I was sorry I’d said anything. (All at once I didn’t feel very smart.) I could tell at a glance he was in bad shape. His right leg was twisted and lying at an awkward angle. A trickle of blood showed at the left corner of his mouth. I felt as dumb as the knots on a potato. I knew he needed help.

-That September morning in 1945 started like any other Saturday morning – out of bed by 5:00 a.m. Mom snapped from her bedroom, “Quit clattering around and let the rest of us sleep.”

Don’t let this nostalgic peek into the past slip by. You’ll leave this story (as with all of Mr. George’s stories along the backroads of yesterday), with a refreshed feeling that times past really do matter and growing up in the harsher times during WWII may leave you with a broader, deeper sense of what life really means…to an eleven-year-old who believes he is a man-full-grown.








"A mule is everything a horse wishes it was!"
Oris George











Visit Oris George down his backroads of yesterday at orisgeorge.com.