(FROM 12/16/2022, A GOODBYE LETTER TURNED GENESIS: We all have landmarks on our human journey, significant places or events like Peniel in Genesis for Jacob after a night grappling with an angel or Ray Kinsella in the Iowa corn after grappling with his heart & head. This is one of mine. A year ago, I was gifted a website & “Stories from the Steps” was thrust upon the digital world. Two years ago, I had no clue this opus, what has now become Volume 1, Chronicle 51 of the digital effort, would be the genesis…)

ARRIVING HOME, LEGENDS, AND GOODBYE: Dear 10 of you, The clock on my phone read 2:29AM as I failed at sleeping on a friend’s couch in Pearl, Mississippi Tuesday morning. I nodded off thinking about you, the windows, doors & seafoam green hallway tiles as you serve your last week on a job you began in 1949, left behind for the reason you came to exist. In a few hours, the final student footprints will meet you. I thought about you on the Tuesday drive home, in Wednesday’s rain, in Thursday’s sun. It’s now Friday, a little after 5:00AM, I’m clutching a cup of coffee in my hand & you in my brain. In March, I visited & told stories about the building you give access to. Every legend story has an origin, a vehicle to get the subject from “there to here”, to be “The Sandlot” line come to life, “…heroes get remembered but legends never die…”, to get the subject home. Disney demigod Maui lost his hook, Batman lost his parents, Superman lost a planet, Ray Kinsella had voices & a cornfield & he’s who I most relate to, he didn’t figure it out until the end. Soon, you, the vehicle of my there to here, will be lost to a demolition team like Ray’s corn to a tractor. I wanted to apologize for the oversight, for not figuring it out until the end, & say thank you before you meet your obituary & to give a significance I’m in no hurry to give to mine, to help you never die. Thank you for getting me in & out for recess in elementary school, for letting me tie my 6th grade football shoes on fall evenings & Saturdays in youth league for the Falcons at your landing like the junior high Trojans I longed to be part of, for the countless Trojan baseball & football practices I went up & down you & tied & untied my cleats & spikes, for the tired legs you supported after double line drills at the end of basketball practice, for the post game trips up to the locker room after contests we’d read about winning or losing in the next days paper, for the trips down post practice & performances we’d read about in the mirror in the eyes of the guy combing our hair, for the assist carrying the math homework of Mrs. Farrow & the steps she took on you to our home games, or Mrs. Pitts English assignment or the ideas she gave me to write a short story on the side because she was more committed to my writing than me, I was barely involved. So much so that the first time I heard the bacon & egg breakfast story on commitment was from her, “…the chicken is involved & the pig is committed…”, she informed me, & I’m still not sure if the double entendre was intentional, that I was the chicken in that instance. Or carrying the book Mrs. Hoover knew I’d like & had checked out in my name before I entered her library, for school janitor Mr. Chapman, the angel with a dust mop at another staircase, having to find his broom once again when we waited to bang the mud off our spikes at your base instead of the grass on the other side of the parking lot, for the boost up as I met Coach Careathers on Sunday afternoon to work on Thursday’s game plan as we verified his 3rd rule of leadership, “there’s no substitute for preparation in the 4th quarter” or meeting Coach Moser in the summer to put in the work hitting 80% of my free throws & hitting a baseball, for being there when a not so confident fella went up you before the Homecoming Dance in ’76 & then stepped down like a Rockette at evening’s end as he risked a “No” & got a “Yes” as the cute cheerleader let him fill a line on her dance card, for providing a way to the two story 90° angle of brick & mortar & life lesson learning where cafeteria & gym met Coach Moser’s art room & Mrs. Farrow’s math room, for being my example of the algebra of a crisis as you’re built on the formula of rise over run & every crisis must be met by rising or running & either’s going to hurt with the pain of discipline or the pain of regret & regret has a long shelf life, for letting me & my best friend wait on top of you, sit on you, or lean on your rail as we waited on my dad’s copper Barracuda or his father’s blue rear engine VW to be our end of day Uber, for helping a group of adolescent boys that covered every point on the compass rose of religion & socioeconomic status remain friends as grandfathers, for turning the abstract of treating your neighbor right that I heard at the church a ¼ mile away into the actual I learned inside the doors, & that the color of the jersey is more important than the shade of skin. And for the aid in navigating the truths & lies & in-betweens & detractors in the reckoning of self, like that time I lost my starting point guard job & never got it back, dealing with the fact that some Jericho walls never fall as I trudged on your incline but that day I came off the bench & played the game of my life I came down like a Rockette again knowing that sometimes you bring a slingshot & a stone to fight one with a sword & shield & you may not win but you’re sure gonna lose if you don’t sling the rock, a fact that came in handy in the big boy times when a job was lost, a fire consumed,  or I followed an ambulance carrying my child. The overlooked reality is nothing would have happened without the collective 10 of you, the voices in my corn, the there that got me here. Last Sunday I was privileged to attempt to make Mrs. Pitts proud, to commit & be the pig & write narration for my church’s Christmas program, that same church a ¼ mile away. After the performance, two people told me I’d missed my call. I know they meant it to be complementary & I took it that way, but in my mind I thought, “no, I think I finally found it” & you ten steps, you legends, helped lead me home. Thank you for getting me here,
Mike