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He won many awards including the National Headliners Club award for writing the best local interest column in the country in 1962. In 1977 his fellow Tri-State Journalists honored him with with the first Distinguished Service Award. He is the author of five book: A Pig In The Gray Panel Truck, A Dandelion in Winter, Day of a President, Just a 100 Miles From Home, and The Journey in the Red Jalopy. He worked for newspapers in Santa Fe, N.M., Monett, MO, Beckley WV, and Memphis, TN. He began working for the Evansville Courier in 1957. Aaron was born in Cone, Texas and reared on a farm in Portales, NM. He attented the University of New Mexico where he graduated with honors with a degree in journalism.
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by Joe Aaron Wives, as you yourself may have noted, are generally rather thoughtful people.
They cook your favorite foods, they uncomplainingly scratch your back upon request and - given a dollar to blow in for something they would like to have - they return with a pair of socks for you.
And it is equally true that husbands - or SOME husbands, anyway; husbands in MY social circle - often have a mighty peculiar way of showing their gratitude.
In my own household, to cite a fairly typical example, Bernice tries to make the endless farm work a bit more palatable by venturing forth occasionally to the scene of my labors with a revivifying container of refreshments in her hands.
Sometimes it's ice water, tinkling most fetchingly in the plastic jug.
Sometimes it's ice cream, melted to the consistency of a shake on the walk from the house to the barn.
Sometimes it's a chilled bowl of coconut fruit salad, which in my estimate is a failry realistic likeness of Olympian nectar of the gods.
Sometimes it's a candy bar, or a slice of watermelon from Gene Mulkey's farm, or a soda pop fresh from the refrigerator, with beads of moisture gathering on the bottle.
Usually my mood is such that, while I don't gush and carry on and take her tenderly into my arms and shower her with kisses, I still appreciate her efforts.
Usually, I say. But not always.
Just the other day, for example, things had been going badly, almost from the moment I got my shoes on.
I was wrestling oak 2-by-10's into the hayloft, for on thing, and each weighed about a lousy ton.
They were full of rusty nails, and I had ripped my shirt to shreds on them and tender parts of my person as well.
Some of the most extraordinarily ugly little spiders and other crawling fauna ran endlessly up and down them, so that every time I got a harmless splinter in my hand I simply collapsed, thinking I'd surely just taken a fatal bite from a brown recluse spider.
And every time I got my arms full of 2-by-10's, and was grunting and straining and stumbling about, and getting cobwebs up my nose, one of the three kittens that are in residence in the barn would grab me around the ankle with a viciousness that harked back to his days in the jungle.
My nerves were shot, and the day was hot, and I was a filthy mess.
And at that moment Bernice hove to, carrying a bowl in her hands. From where I stood, it looked a great deal like coconut fruit salad.
But I was disinclined to be grateful, or even very nice. Brown recluse spider bites almost always affect me that way.
"Just take it right back to the house," I snarled. "I haven't got time to take a break."
And as an accusatory afterthought I said, "SOMEBODY'S got to do the work around here.
"So take your fruit salad and git."
A fleeting look of pain at the callous rebuff swept across her face. And then she recovered quite remarkably, smiling the smuggest, most truimphant smile you can imagine.
"For your information," she said in a voice that would keep celery crisp for a week or 10 days, "this is not fruit salad and it is most certanly not for you."
Then she stooped and put the bowl on the ground and called, "Kitty, kitty, kitty, heeere, kitty."
I stood there and glowered for a moment, then went back to my work without a word.
I couldn't think of anything to say.
Boy, I hate it when I can't think of anything to say.
