Ozark Eulogy On the Valley Floor

Bobby George Rowell: 1932-2016

Life is not one if not ten thousand acts of florid find. That, then a ramrod exit, past a star’s worth of candled footlights, stage left. Which, mind you, is stage right to the audience, if there is any. That’s the rub, being that everything is a bell wrung opposite to the audience view. But once you know this, a path is crystal cleared. To pursue any craft is to first understand this. One must then write that into the quotient of their tale, bearing on the first account. But it seems somehow that we find to feel that just because the stores replenish fresh costumes for us, that we might, or shall live forever.

I had only a few mentors growing into a writer’s space, but the few I did have I did have. One was a razorback whom I’ll tell you about. He hailed from Hattieville, an unincorporated collection of dust, ensconced in tandem beside such other luck-thirsty Arkansas towns as, Old Hickory, Lick Mountain, Buttermilk, and Jerusalem. Arkansas was not so subtle as California, it was a tad hard edged, more like a golf course for dinosaurs. And this was the birthplace of one Bobby George Rowell in 1932, a man blessed with a perpetually embarrassed skin tone, and lips that didn’t bother to volunteer much movement when he spoke. Relocating to Fontana, California he ventriliqued his way through twelve sun belted years of the attempted teaching of English literature, through a blue collar stunted audience’s gaze, to a bevy of mill spawned and pubescent youths. Only one being me.

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