View From The Front Porch-Stan Hitchcock-December 20, 2012

*Just a Front Porch Story reprise.....Stan*

Who Am I Today?
Stan Hitchcock

Sometimes I awake……a young boy, running the mountains and creeks around our Ozark farm, with my black and white shepherd dog, treein’ squirrels, wading in the big creek, turning over big rocks looking for water moccasins for the dog to chase, swinging down from the barn loft on the hay fork rope playing Tarzan….or just laying in the grass under the big Walnut tree watching the clouds blow by and dream of what it must be like… out there somewhere…….

Sometimes I awake….a young man, working on the deck of the ship I was on, chipping paint in an endless war against the salt water erosion, running the 50 foot motor launch carrying my ship mates from ship to shore for liberty, standing the midnight watch just off the coast of some South Pacific island, climbing the ship’s mast to the very top while the deck far below is rolling and the big waves crest across the bow, just to be looking….out there somewhere….

Sometimes I awake….somewhat older, but still a young man, working with the homeless boys that we had taken out of the jailhouses, and off the back alleys of some street, carrying them to the Ranch and telling them of someone that loves them enough to give His life for them…watching them blossom with just a little care…and showing them that they had a future of their own….out there somewhere…

Sometimes I awake….a young hillbilly singer, roaming the world with a guitar full of songs to sing, burning with a passion for the music, wasting precious days and nights at pleasures only dreamed of by foolish men, moving through every town and city that had a venue but seeing none of it but the stages and the faces and the back stage dressing rooms with graffiti left by previous foolish men and women doing all the same things to beat off the loneliness of the road that brought you there, thinking that maybe the next town, the next song, the next anything….out there somewhere…

Sometimes I awake…..much older, still a dreamer, but with a certain sadness that comes to all who dare take paths uncharted, have made journeys of great adventure but suddenly realize that the mountains are getting harder to climb, the swift streams a little harder to cross…and the horizon, that once looked so far, seems now to be closer, if you can only keep going….out there somewhere…

Sometimes I awake….and realize I have fallen asleep in my front porch chair, listening to the birds singing my song that was just running through my mind or in my dreams…that the water sounds I was dreaming about are from the creek in front of our old farm house. Old Buck The Collie has gotten up and come over to me and is looking concerned like I must have been whimpering in my sleep or something, I put my hand on his head and scratch his ears a little to reassure him that I am back from wherever I had been…..out there somewhere….