Grandpas Desk
I close my eyes and drift back over the chasm of time which has been my existence. The place of arrival is my boyhood home in Marshville, N.Y. The house sits close to the road on the south and almost too close to the creek bank on the north. Across the road, a high wooded bank rises to obscure the south sun of winter. I was brought here to my grandfather’s house in 1932 by my parents not long after my grandmother passed away. I was two years old. The house remained my home until I left at the age of eighteen. The occupants of this place at the time of my arrival were my grandfather Benjamin J. Garlock (my mother’s father), and my mother’s nine-year-old brother Douglas Garlock. Even though the house is now long gone, it and its furnishings remain clearly etched in my mind. I’ll shove the other material possessions back into the recesses of my mind and bring forth one special piece of furniture, my grandfather’s slant-top desk. Over the desk hung a large steel engraved picture of t...