Library Notes
March 26, 2005
By Pansy Hundley, Librarian.
You will recall our recent fumigating fragrance that permeated the library a few weeks ago, I presume. Well, if you happened to wander in during that time, I feel sure you’ll remember that fragrance.
Someone else has come forward with a similar experience. And they’ve written a couple of poems about it. Now, I was not moved to put words to paper about that happening. Poetry did not enter my soul. Bit it did for Dick Seward’s daughter. She had a similar experience about the same time that we did. She even named hers’. She called him "Sammy". But I just called mine "Dead Stinkin’ Rat."
Here’s her poem:
"Here lies Sammy,
Dead and buried.
No one found him.
I wish they had hurried."
Her poem is complete with a picture of Sammy, upside down, but appearing to be in good health at the taking of his picture.
Evidently daughter sent her poem to Dad and then he was moved to write a longer poem, eulogizing the feller’s passing. Again, complete with pictures of that long-tailed feller, Dick called his poem, "A Week With Rat Extremis."
So, allow yourself to be moved as you read, feeling the depth of sentiment that Dick has striven to incorporate into his poem, of the final demise, the passing, and smelling, of Mr. Rat.
"A Week With Extremis"
Monday stench was around
On Friday corpus found.
For the Whole Week
The room did reek
The rat was really dead.
The scent went to your head.
Was hard to think
With all that stink.
My friends brought in a lot
To hide the dead rat’s rot.
Odor eaters, sprays, and such
They meant so very much.
My pals are great
And so they rate.
This poem to rat, deceased."
And, so, we close another chapter in the sad tale of stench and rat rot, hoping and trusting that there is no brother, sister or cousin, lurking about to repeat this smelly experience that we have endured, hopefully for the last time this winter.
Now that we have taken care of the demise of rat, let us move on. Let us move on with Jonathon King, in reading about "A Killing Night". Sounds as though that title could easily be worked into our poems, doesn’t it? Let’s wait to see what the gal who does the headings for my articles does with that! Doesn’t she do some great headings, tying in the title of each book with whatever I’m talking about that week? If I wore a hat, I would take it off to her.
"Max Freeman if at a crossroads. No longer content to live solely in his remote shack in the Everglades, he is looking to move beyond his self-imposed isolation. So when his onetime girlfriend, Detective Sherry Richards, asks for his help as a private investigator in nailing an ex-cop she suspects of killing several young women in South Florida, Max is ready to help her see justice done.
But there’s a problem. Sherry’s suspect is a former officer from Philadelphia who served with Max—a brother-in-blue who once saved Max’s life. Matters are made worse when Max’s own aggressive investigation leads him to believe that Sherry’s crusade to protect these women is about to roll over a potentially innocent man.
Caught between his loyalty to Sherry and his debt to his fellow ex-cop, Max’s search for the truth will take him back to the streets of Philadelphia, where he will dig into his fellow officer’s troubled past…..only to come face-to-face with his own. And while Max continues his quest, a controlling, cunning killer inexorably closes in on what could be his next victim…"