Living amid and airbase, an airport, and three air strips is nothing compared to a back yard filled with cardinals, mockingbirds, robins, crows, hawks, owls, wrens, (they're on my porch), and a few buzzards. At certain times of the year, we'd get geese and a few other migratory airborne rats and mice.

I'm used to country living, having been born and raised in Mantee, Mississippi with its less than two hundred population. Country church, country school, garden bicycle, bales of hay, and Pappy's sorghum molasses mill, sugar cane fields and farm animals.

You can't get too much more country than that! There's plenty to write about!Shade trees made good tree houses; pine made good igloos; uneven ground made great cone war bunkers. These were all of the elements that constitute my poetry.

My education was in Mississippi breeding at Elementary School in Cumberland, high school in West Point, and the rest of Mississippi State University. Work ethics came in factories, retail and the classroom, as a teacher.

With the scholarships and awards given me by poetry groups and educational outlet, I have had a life that is very close to perfect with the help of God, his perfect Son. .

. and Mantee, Mississippi.

. .

My Eden. Twenty-five years of teaching has given me the rest.

Hundreds of students have added what I couldn't, and I love them all for their contributions. I am truly blessed and hope to continue being so until my daughter and son agree to continue my legacy! LOL!.