I get tired of writing "the news" every week. This week I'm tired in spades.

In the old days Jimmy Durham and this scribbler split the important news writing duties fairly evenly, and we didn't by-line every fire, wreck or ox in a ditch story. What we wrote for the county paper had to have some possibility of controversy, or be pure opinion for it to need to have a name attached.

Repeating myself, Times Change; Now I see my name in the paper all too often (some of you may feel the same), and for that reason, among others, I rarely write more than one Free Lance column a month.

Last week, I'd written two in a row. Musta been bad luck. Although it's often said that awful events come in threes, this week I will write another column. Two shoes (very leaden ones) have dropped on Lafayette and Macon County on Tuesday and Thursday. I really don't want to be around for the next shoe, if there is one to drop.

But I tempt fate: better to write a third column in a row, and perhaps jinx the jinx in the bud.

Macon County has been my home for 33 years; and never before have I see two events of such force and devastation occur in so few days, until this past week.

The wrath of nature Tuesday night was a nightmare shared by all. Nearly everyone in the county knew or was related to at least one of the dead, or seriously injured. Certainly, we all know one or more rendered homeless.

Then on Thursday afternoon, a second enormous loss was sustained by the Bratton Avenue Methodist Church family; the tragic death of their minister, his wife and two precious children.

This second event, so soon after the enormity of the first, reminded more than a few of the death of Robert and Sandra Garratt, and adopted son Bobby in a plane crash into the Tennessee River.

The image of a cherished, God-fearing, God-loving well-known and well-loved family all dying together instantly brought forth images of a rapture, the close and loving family members ascending into Heaven as though called.

All this is secondary to the job ahead. The community will rebuild. The dead will be buried but not forgotten. In one hundred years, we won't care or remember.

But for the present we must remember all the brave, hard working first responders, the exhaustion of 18-20 hour days, the pain and suffering shared and endured by nearly everyone in ours and several neighboring counties.



ALL THAT'S BRIGHT MUST FADE



All that's bright must fade,--

The brightest still the fleetest;

All that's sweet was made

But to be lost when sweetest.



--Thomas Moore



All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as flowers of the field.



--Book of Isaiah,

The Old Testament