I can no longer wait, I must leap the narrative and share my story of meeting up Godfrey. I believe it was Barbara Kingsolver said-“memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth but not it’s twin”.
Old Lady now,my fengers often painful to type, but of my memories , clear as one of those prairie deep winter afternoons , sun on snow creating that shale blue hue,the color of the worried eyes of Godfrey that peered down at me so long ago on the edge of a dusty playing field…It was his first visit to Canada, late in what would pass into legend as The Summer of Poetic Infamy, but that is yet another chapter.
Godfrey loved the prairie sky, at the closing of the summer day. Cool lanquid evenings now with harvest under way. He camped by the Valley River, drove the Swather and Combine. he swam at night to wash away the barley dust and grime, for Godfrey all was big and new and such a happy time.
He fit in well amid the small town social whirl, and a sign on the bakery window, said Sign Up Here For The Fall Fair -Mangold- Wurzel Hurl. Oh the fowl suppers, perogy making, nail hitting, prize calves sxxlling, fair rides swirling, the ancient sport of Wurzel- Hurling revived with pride on the Valley River Side.
And it was Godfrey in the second heat, hurled with joy the dreaded beet, hurled it long and high and slow- and felled me as I , was eating ice-cream, sun in my eyes with the blow.
They said I was out cold, given brandy and placed neath a tree, all I recall coming to were those worried eyes of Godfrey. I do not like beets was the first thing to Godfrey I said, now they are falling from the sky on my head. I to dislike beets said he, there are turtles at my campsite would you like to come and see?
That was me long ago, no more than a girl, I made a lifelong friend of Godfrey, and he won first place in the Valley River Mangold- Wurzel Hurl.
The Collected Wisdom OF Godfrey 