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The theme of an early accompaniment featuring a heavenly host becomes evident to me as an older fellow of nearly 54, by now the last surviving Green in Wichita. It was great to have family to hold me close and consider me someone precious. By 2003 the 4 brothers had dispersed all over the world, and all the others had passed away and Mother Ruth had moved to an old folks home in Oklahoma. Although I am still fairly youthful, I feel humorously mirrored in Lorne Greene, as a "Cartwright" from Bonanza, or as an old spaceman from Battlestar Galactica. After all, it was I who deduced the secret of Galaxy Formation, from the He++ to He+ pressure jog in the Big Bang fireball induced by the formation of the first bound atoms of He+. I am energetically seeking more company this April of 2003, since the old family here has really evaporated and my isolation as a scholar has lost some of the charm of an extended sabbatical. I shall try to return. Do forgive the bad manners of an old recluse.

M om in 1940, as The Lady of the Lake, later a mother of 4 boys, while on vacation with her parents to Whitefish Lake. She was born in 1923 in Oklahoma, and Dad, born in 1920, liked to say that wherever Ruth was you just enjoyed another day of grace. Dad loved to read, and kept on doing it until he passed away in 1983. In February of 2003 at 80 Mom decided to head South toward Rick & Lien Green and a managed care facility near Oklahoma City, forsaking the home of the gods at the end of Murray Court, along which I often walked with the reverent attitude of a scholar about to enter Valhalla. In earlier times the doorway to the place had a woodwork design featuring 6 souls, the home being placed at the end of a circular drive like an allegory of The End of the World near an island of common ground I sometimes viewed as This Island Earth.

That circular drive was Langrenus Crater on the moon, it seemed, a place to park my tail as a household pet. On High I saw Ruth in the constellation Virgo, also known as Ruth, the Maiden of the Wheat Fields, and as Kanya, the mother of Krishna. I was there as Leo and Centaurus, near the rump-like formation called Heaven's Gate in Hydra featuring galaxy M83, which seemed to commemorate my 2nd marriage to Jo in 1983. Each Fall I would seem to fall off the coffeepot constellation Ophiuchus as Hercules in Florida through Boötes to land on Ruth with Spica coming down like the pointy heel of a shoe, so that the celestial sphere seemed to be a mythic mirror of my own existence. Now that my pet-self has moved away from Langrenus Crater, perhaps I will become a bearded old boy with a beret and his eyes on the wings, as if the moon were made of green cheese.

As a General Contractor, my uncle Wilbur Nuckolls cultivated a strong interest in railroads and locomotives, kept a model train set in a shed out behind his house, and took me along on vacations riding trains through the mountains of Colorado. Finally, he turned up with a finger sawed off from a construction project, which didn't seem to slow him down for long, although it was sore for a long time. Carpentry can be a crucifying profession, and danger to the limbs has been noted since workers were damaged building the pyramids. The photo to shows me as a baby with Uncle Wilbur and Aunt Betty. They lived by the railroad tracks on Green street just north of Central, and when I stayed with them I could hear the roar of the locomotives and whistle of the train in the morning early, around 6:00 AM. Betty taught me the song "I've Been Working on the Railroad" when I was a child, and my mother was fond of reading a story to me about a little locomotive that could function OK, as long as it kept saying "I think I can, I think I can" to itself as it chugged along. Uncle Wilbur built mostly homes and small shopping centers. He also built a West side workshop addition to my Grandad Green's house at 401 North Quentin where Grandad liked to paint in oil and hobby carved wooden chairs together. Grandad Green was very impressed with his work after inspecting a house Uncle Wilbur had built with plenty of wrought iron grillwork included in Edinburg, Texas, where Grandad Green retired around 1970. After that he used to swear that Uncle Wilbur was an artist of tremendous skill. Uncle Wilbur attended KU for a time, intending to study civil engineering and architecture, but settled for his General Contractor license. His father had also been a general contractor. He was in fact quite an architect, who kept a large engineer's drafting table at home that was always covered with elaborate architectural drawings. Otherwise, it was not only Uncle Wilbur's hand that got crucified, but also his feet. The military marched him around in World War II until they went flat, after which he received an honorable discharge. I myself developed flat feet by repeatedly jumping off a swingset in a Superman suit at the tender age of ten.