Here is my latest little essay.  As always this story is 99.3% true. 

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OF GRAVEL AND SUNBEAMS

By John Kelly Ross, Jr.

    Have you ever held to your nose a handful of crushed amber colored gravel that had been baking all day under a hot summer sun? It has a flinty, chalky, dusty scent.

    That scent brings to mind my childhood visits to my Carroll County, TN, farmer grandparents.  They lived far out in the country and had gravel roads. 

    I loved to hunt for fossil seashells & seaweed in the gravel road in front of their house.  I still have a shoe box full that I found all those years ago. 

    In the 1950s my family would drive day & night the 1000 miles from south Texas to Tennessee without stopping.  Why waste money on motels? 

    Mom and Dad would take turns driving and I would sleep in the back seat. 

    My favorite place to ride was on the flat shelf between the back seat and the rear window.  I could see both the countryside we passed through and watch the sky. 

    Plus this had the delightful bonus that when Dad or Mom hit the brakes too hard I would go flying off the shelf and land in the floorboards.  Wow, what fun!  That was better than any carnival ride. 

    At night when traveling outside of the towns & cities the stars would be winking diamonds and the moon would play hide & seek with the clouds.    

    One afternoon as I lay on that rear window shelf I saw storm clouds gathering around the sun.  A dozen or so broad sunbeams pierced the clouds all the way to the ground.  The sight was stunningly beautiful.  And worrisome. 

    The scene was strikingly similar to a framed print on the wall of my farm grandmother's living room.  The print showed the Second Coming with Jesus and His Angels walking down broad sunbeams in a clouded sky. 

    Oh, oh.  The world was ending RIGHT NOW and I had been a naughty boy that day.  

    I screamed. 

    Dad, startled, immediately hit the brakes and off the shelf I went flying!