mike ashley

Chris Knight's avatar

 His name was Mike Ashley.

I don’t have a photo of him.  But in my mind’s eye I can still see him.  Nineteen years old.  Brown hair and a little bit of a mustache.  He was a handsome young man.  With a twinkle in his eye and kindness in his words.  He was as all-American a boy as you’d ever be likely to find.  A pure wholesome country Christian man.  And a hard worker and just as much an eager learner.

Dad had known Mike’s father.  The elder Ashley had died a few years earlier.  Mike’s father had been a farmer.  Something that Mike had found himself wanting to get into.  And so it was that late in the spring of 1985 my dad brought Mike aboard on our family’s farm.  Mike wasn’t just going to help out with the operation.  Dad made it his mission that he was going ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

“The good die young.”

Those were the words of my grandmother, twenty-five years ago this evening. And when those words were the most semblance of comfort that an eleven-year old kid had to grasp – even if he didn’t really understand what it meant at the time – on what was at the time the absolute worst day of his life…

…well, they kinda stick with ya, even a quarter century later.

Heck, I can even still remember what I was wearing that day, what Granny was wearing, the most miserable dinner of pizza that I would ever have, all of the vehicles like neighbors’ cars and the ambulance and the deputy sheriff cruisers that descended on our farm that afternoon. I can even tell you what show that I watched on television that night, trying and failing to lose myself, to stop thinking about it all…

…but most of ...

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