Editor's note: The following is all true, every bit even as strange as it sounds. Though I doubt most will believe that in the middle of the Holiday season I, being but a kid, could bring a family that had long been separated by pain and misplaced hatred. This is their story.
My town was a decent size, two thousand at best, though compared to Harrisburg or Philly it was pretty small. Back then we were spread out, I remember loving it. That while I had neighbors that were close I also had open woods that circled my home, a creek to play in and most importantly hills for snow sledding. That I remember so clearly, a bunch of us kids with cheap plastic sleds in hand trekking up one of those monster hills for that five seconds of speed.
Sometimes I'd end up crashing into a pile of snow, laughing loud as I dusted the snow from my blond hair. Before I'd pick up my sled and go back at it until well into the twilight when our parents would holler for us to come home.
Maybe that's what first drew me to the newspaper. The articles on page five; The best sledding spots in all of PA; How to make perfect snowballs . Many I would read, then when my Papa was finished with it, would cut them out to save, much to his own amusement. In fact I'm sure if I looked hard enough I could still find one or two tucked away in an old book or shoe box. Yellow and worn with age I had saved them for a few years until I took noticed that they were all written by the same man.
By Alfred Jones.
I remember being so enthralled, wondering what he must have done and seen in his life to be able to write about, not just common local news but talk about far off lands that I, being twelve with no internet, could only imagine. Some would stir such an interest that I would sneak into Papa's National Geographic just to see them, then oh how my eyes would widen even more. I yearned for so much more and soon my curiosity got the best of me.
Who was this man and did he have more to tell? Stories and ideas that had yet to be discovered and if so, would he tell them if asked?
