We Don’t Use Telegrams These Days

kitchen-window

She remembered when they had named the road in honor of the family. It was the same day they gave her father one of those Century Farm plaques.

New name or not, not many people came up this road. Farm trucks, mostly. Lots of tractors.

She could see the official car coming a long way off. She knew what it meant, same as it had meant to her grandmother in 1945 when a black War Department car carrying a priest and a maimed Marine Corps captain brought the telegram up onto the porch and her son out of their lives forever.

 

9 thoughts on “We Don’t Use Telegrams These Days

  1. Very moving. I love how you’ve built up to the ending – the road, the plaque, the new name, the farm trucks – all little glimpses of a family’s life, and a contrast with the tragic ending.

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