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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 I awakened deep in the night and a chill March wind was whimpering restlessly against the bedroom window.
The budding limbs of the sassafras tree out front stirred nervously in the moonlight, and the tattered barking of a dog, distant and muted, came from somewhere across the countryside.
Bernice slept soundly on the far side of the bed, wrapped in a cocoon of quilts, her blonde hair spread out on the pillow and one arm flung above her head.
I rearranged the covers and pulled them to my chin against the midnight chill, and lay there staring into the peaceful darkness.
Suddenly, and for no reason that I can easily put a meaning to, I was smitten with the sheer, beautiful luxury of being alive, and of being who I am, and of living where I live, and of working each day at a job I enjoy above all others that I can imagine.
I suppose that sounds terribly conceited, but that’s the way I felt, just the same.
And it was most unusual, too, for more often that not I am victimized by a vague, unscratchable discontent with myself, wishing that I made more money, or that I wasn’t bald, or that I had the knack for easy sociability in a crowd.
I’ve gone through life waiting defensively for somebody to laugh at my big ears, or the huge, ugly freckles that cover my neck.
And sometimes – often – I get the restive urge to travel to places far away, to the frozen summits of Tibet or to Easter Islands, and this has left me many times dissatisfied.
But on this night of which I speak, I lay there at peace, and in profoundest thankfulness, a soothing contentment washing over me like the therapeutic surge of waves along the ocean beach.
And a flood of happy memories – truly, I believe, the woof and warp of contentment – came rushing in to lull me back toward sleep.
The defiant roar of a heating stove on a winter’s day, with sleet tattooing the rooftop and a slicing wind rattling the window panes. But the house is warm and cozy – a fortress against the day – and a huge bowl of popcorn is on the table …
The muted rumble of summer thunder, after the storm has spent its fury and moved away, and the lawn flashes a diamond sparkle to the reemergent sun …
The incomparable taste of homemade ice cream at twilight of a summer’s day, after you have worked long in the blistering fields – and have spent the time in greediest anticipation of suppertime …
The thrill of the first real storm of winter, with deep snow, untouched and dazzlingly white, beautifying the countryside – and people drawn together, somehow, as they seldom are at any other time …
Grown men throw snowballs at one another and seem, as if by magic, to shed the years that have made them somber.
And little kids with dishpans dash out into the day for the main ingredient of snow-cream, a wintertime treat as tasty as pancakes for supper …
There is the splendid feel of stretching your legs toward the foot of the bed, between brand clean sheets fresh from the line, and the fragrance of homemade bread baking in the oven. You stand with a knife poised over the butter dish, waiting …
And the attar of honeysuckle, and of clover freshly cut, and the lazy clucking of hens as they fluff their feathers in the dust, and the feel of the springtime sun on your back, after winter has ended and the tulips are in bloom …
And when you pass a little country church, its paint peeling and the huge maples casting it into Sunday morning shadow, you can hear the congregation singing “Blessed Assurance” – not only with their voices but with their hearts as well, singing of a promise that was made a long time ago …
And one day, on a decaying downtown street bereft of hope, you hear an old Negro woman crooning “Rock of Ages” the way it was meant to be sung, while she sits fanning herself behind the fragrant morning glories that all but hide the porch swing of her rickety home …
There is a lot wrong with this old world; much heartbreak and many tears are here.
But there is a lot right with it too – a lot that is almost perfect.
And I went to sleep that night, a long time after I had awakened, grateful for the gift of being alive.
