Donald Kearns the Writer

I guess it has taken me all these years to realize that my father was a good writer. While sifting through my (poorly organized) archives, I found this email that I had saved, written in 1994 to someone that I identified as Sterlin Spooner. Just a description of an ordinary day, and yet I love it.

from Dads Emails

Email to Sterlin Spooner (?) April 1994

Ellen and I had gone to church for a 9:30 mass.  The church (and parking lot) contained more people that I have ever seen in it before and more that the building was supposed to hold.  The mass was enhanced by magnificant music and by an equally inspiring sermon (which, however, was too long causing the mass to run over time so that there was grid lock in the parking lot--cars trying to get out while at the same time cars were trying to get in for the 11 o'clock mass). 

I think spring has finally come to New England.  Last weekend we went up  with Jere and his kids to the campground at which stay in the summer.  One of the people who live there year round had built a post and beam building to house his maple syrup operation and we wanted to show the grandchildren how this fantastic goo is made. We saw the sap driping into buckets on the trees, the processing of the sap, etc.  Bought a couple of half gallons jugs of the stuff. My grandson thought it might go good in milk so when we stopped for lunch he put a teaspoon or so in the milk and pronounced it delicious--a verdict echoed by his sister when she tried it....Although the weather was not too cold and there was a lot of mud around, the river was still frozen and snow covered.  I looked like a large, flat while meadow.  There was still a lot of snow in New Hampshire that weekend. 

This weekend, around Andover the only snow are the sad remains of the piles deposited by snow plows and relatively small patches of ice in places the sun does not reach.  Yesterday, I took my first relative long walk along a railroad bed boardering one bank of a fairly large pond.  Although there was still ice on the pond, the shores were free of it and water extended out perhaps 10 to 15 feet from the land.  There was not much ice on the rail bed itself which for the first three quarters of a mile is raised above the surrounding swampy land. The last stretch was dug through some small hills, however, and was quit muddy--you would have laughed to see me scramble up the side of these little hills to dryer ground and make my way along through the brush, dead branches and thorns.  But this did not detract from the enjoyment of walking in brisk (30 degree) weather for the first time after a long winter.  There was no foliage other than the needles on the pine trees;  oak leaves and acorns covered the trail for most of the way; and it was possible to look further into the woods than it will be when the leaves and brush again hide the swamps and lake shore.  This mile or so along the railroad bed was only about a fifth of the total walk, but it is about the only part of the trip during which I was aware of the world around me rather than being totally engrossed with every day concerns.   

Well, that's it for now. Regards to all.  Hope to hear from you sometime when you finish the books you are reading. 

Don