This Book

Books.

I have read literally thousands of books in my life.  Some more than once.  Some only once as the endings were too hard to take.  Very few have I ever started that I did not finish.

Some of my earliest memories are of reading and discovering what the words in the newspaper meant.  I then graduated to summer reading programs and books ordered through school.  My parents, especially my mother, encouraged me to read.  She never refused to buy a book for me nor to take me to the library to check out books on my own.

I have met great leaders and heroes through books.  From Alexander the Great to Harry S Truman (before some one says something the S in his name is not an initial.  It is just S.).  From Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, to CW 5 Novecel of the US Army and Medal of Honor recipient.  Come to think of it I met Mr. Novecel in person.

I have been inspired by Gulliver and his travels, by Dickens and his "Tale of Two Cities".  I have been there with Custer and his men at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.  I have jump into space with the 101st Air Borne when they went "A Bridge Too Far."  I have ridden along with the men who flew in the B17's, B24's, and Lancaster's over Europe.  I have hunted with the Native Americans on the plains and mountains of the west.  I have frozen with Admiral Perry in the Arctic and Antarctic when he was in search of the poles and glory.

I have helped white wash fences and floated on the Mississippi with Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.  I have had adventures galore and never left my home.  I have known the joy of seeing places for the first time and having the joy of revisiting them again and again always with a different perspective than from the first time, but with no less awe.

Now I am living a very different adventure and one that is all too real.

I think that I could stop and put the book down now and not read the ending, in hopes that in not reading the ending, that the ending would not come to pass.  I know that is not realistic, but I can imagine it.

I know one thing,  I will not read this book more than once as the ending is just too hard to take.

Until next time.......................