A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media: First Person

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by Dennis Redwine
December 7, 2006

It was in the dog days of August, 1961, and we had run and played so hard,
that for relief, I drank straight from the garden hose.

Dawdling on my way toward home
where I had been summoned,
stopping at a place in the creek that needed a rock thrown in it,
a neighbor called out from his front porch,
"Get on home, boy, don't you know your Daddys dead?"

For as I had romped and played that Summer Sunday,
He had lain in his hospital bed, looking out the window,
and in a drugged dream had called out,
because he thought he was watching the shift change at the Mayflower Mine.

And then he passed from our lives,
putting on the thorny crown of the martyr,
and wearing it low over his eyes,
like his old work hat.

About the author:
I'm 55, and I was 10 in 1961, when my Dad died of lung cancer after a life of working in the coal mines of Southwest Virginia. I am in technology sales and about the most strenuous thing I do is push a mouse around a pad and click with my forefinger. I keep a picture of shift change, Mayflower Mine, framed in my home office, so when I'm having a bad day, I can look at it and say, well, Dad, its better than working in a coal mine.