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Ghosts (Part Two)

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Earlier today I posted some reflections on the first seven Ghosts because I’d lost track of how many there are; how many are either real or based on someone real; and of those who are fictional, which are composites of the real. Periodic review is no bad thing.

#8  As the only child of an only child, I have no aunts or uncles; no cousins. [That’s mostly true. If circumstances have allowed me to fabricate a family, am I permitted to purge it of one or two inconvenient relatives?] So twins Phyllis and Ella Rose Tabor, Agincourt’s “Daughters of Flight” and its pioneer aviatrixes, are my Explorers (a.k.a. its seekers, iconoclasts, wanderers, individualists, pilgrims), come home from lives of adventure. But, just because you’ve come home doesn’t mean the adventure is over.

#9  One summer I was reading in The Little House. The door was open; the air was still. Then I heard what sounded like gravel hitting the front porch. By the time I got to the door, there was Ray Jackson going round the corner and then I noticed he had slung a bucket of dried dog shit onto the porch. When you were Ray Jackson’s neighbor, there was no question where you stood with him. As one of the most unforgettable people of my long experience, Ray had to find his way into the Agincourt matrix. And so he did.

#10  Ernest “Red” Anhauser may seem one-dimensional to you. And so, in a sense, he is. But this single characteristic of Mr Anhauser is drawn from a dozen years’ experience with another Great Unbeliever, Cecil Elliott. You may get a glimpse of him in “Red” Anhauser’s single-mindedness atheism.

#11  Please don’t think that this one short entry will be all there is to say of Agincourt’s men and women of the military. There is a considerably larger and richer story to be told and tell it I will, however erroneously.

#12  Brother Crucible was a fleeting attempt to speak of faith in action. But coming, as it does, from someone of little spiritual orthodoxy, take it with a grain of salt—or pepper.

#13  Robina Lyle is another Jungian type, representing sacrifice and service. She was very real, the school nurse for much of my elementary education, who I thought would have slipped into those historical crevices that have swallowed greater souls. And then I discovered an elementary school in my old district has been named for her. Do you suppose the children who attend have any idea what a wonderful person she was.

#14  Mike Corbett is also very real and ought to have been left alone (so I changed the name from “Corbitt”). But because he beat the shit out of me during recess every day in Junior High School, Mike may forgive his inclusion here.

#15  Yes, “Whitey” is me. Enough said.

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