SFHS writers spotlighted

(Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’ written by South Fulton High School student Grant Bivens)

It was like fishing on a boat….Nobody could understand this but the ones who did it. The rodeo was my home, every county fair put me to sleep with its ferris wheel spinning after hours.

“Alllllrite Marten, yew bout ready?”

I breathed a deep sigh. Preparing for anything.

“Haay, Shefter! Let me get another swig.”

I yelled, waiting for my requested moment of relief before jumping on the big bull, who we name Macey. Feminine name for such a beast. Shefter comes up, hands me his metallic flask, it’s a little warm from where the baking Texas sun had beamed it all day. The boys standing at the gate asked if I was ready.

“Yeeeep” I sputtered out.

I bout figured I was ready for anything. The fact I was about to be on one angry bull who could stomp me to shit doesn’t cross my mind anymore. I just let it happen. That’s all you can do.

The horn bussed and the gate opened, my mind became a slow motion picture. The girls in their flannel yelling. The old men with chewed up cigars looking with a slight grin on their face, assuring me God had granted my life another day. When I’m out their getting bucked around, I tend to think of my Pa and Ma back in Easten. Tending to the farm, I think about Miranda, my first love. Oh now how she must be one of those Southern Belles, so beautiful and blonde and gay picking up boys for marrying. I think about Tommy too, that’s my middle brother, stranded in that dang-ed jungle. Hearing the death cries of men from all over the US. People are quick to make fun of your accent, but they have the same death cry. When all they want is Momma and a blanket and some Godly assurance that angels will carry them from that tropical hell to some destination that has a fair year round temperature. Sometimes I wonder what President Johnson would think if he was sitting in them there stands, watching me.

I hear a buzzin and I wonder out of my brain and back into the Oliville County fair, Desmond Texas, July 15, 1967.

(Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from ‘ Letters from the War’, written by South Fulton High School student Emily Gaskins)

He had told her the process of the conditioning had been brutal. He told her that many times saying, “ I love you just felt wrong now.”

She wrote back regardless. The all told her that it kept the troops strong.

“ My dearest Lukas,

I miss you too. I cannot wait to see you come off the boat or the plane. I already have everything waiting for you to arrive. Win this war. Please. And come home to me soon. I love you with all of my heart.

-Josephine”

When the soldiers finally came home he did not get off the boat nor the plane.

Many soldiers passed her with somber and sorry looks.

She heard the whispers from reuniting couples.

He would not get off the boat for he had run into enemy fire and died. They say that they found in his hand a letter.

-Josephine

I’m sorry I will not return home to you. I cannot love. This world has not room for love anymore. We are in a world full of hate. The war showed me that.”